From: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum V, ed. B. Krusch & W. Levison (Hannover, 1910), pp. 25–40 — translated into modern British English. The editor’s long historical introduction and critical notes are condensed; the vita itself is translated in full.

Editors’ Introduction (condensed) #

How the teaching of Columbanus was carried by the monks of Luxeuil to the men of the Sornegau, settled in the far corner of Helvetia, and how that people, neighbour to the Burgundians, rebelled against the dukes of the Alamannic Alesatienses — and achieved nothing by it, being crushed — we learn from a biographer of small talent but weighty and reliable: the writer of the Life of Germanus, abbot of Grandval.

Gundoin, an illustrious man and duke, hearing that the monks of Luxeuil were seeking new seats on account of their great numbers, sent messengers to Abbot Waldebert (629–670) bidding him come at once; and giving him a charter confirmed by his own hands and those of good men, he granted him a site for a new monastery — a spot wholly suited to the desires of the Irish monks: a valley in the Jura forest, famous for its natural beauty but so shut in by piled rocks that access was hard, watered by the river Birs and abounding in fish — for the Irish monks always delighted in a fishing wilderness. Among Columbanus’s own monks still alive was the priest Fridoald, skilled in handiwork, who was sent with a few brothers to clear the site, cut timber, and prepare daily food.

When the hard labour was done, Waldebert chose as ruler of the monks no rustic countryman but one noble by birth, lettered, and conspicuous for holiness of life — Germanus of Trier. He subjected the brothers to the new abbot, releasing them from the obedience they owed himself; Germanus, having received the blessing, took the property into his own lordship, and held nothing more urgent than to cut away the rocks and open the valley on either side.

Germanus was born in the city of Trier of senatorial stock. His father was Optard; his brothers Opthomar and Numerian — the one distinguished in King Dagobert’s court for political learning and afterwards under King Sigebert (the same, it is believed, who became Numerian bishop of Trier, successor of Modoald). To Modoald himself the infant Germanus was handed to be taught the liberal letters; and when he reached seventeen he wished to enter a monastery — which the bishop dared not permit, since it depended on the king’s authority. So, distributing all his goods to the poor, with three boy companions he sought out Bishop Arnulf, who about 629–30 had left the world’s allurements for the hermitage of Horemberg; Arnulf did not refuse the help he sought and tonsured him. After living with him a while Germanus went to Romaric’s monastery called Castellum (Remiremont) on the mountaintop, where he afflicted his body with fasts, vigils and prayers, wearing the vilest clothing, and himself went into the woods to cut timber and carry it on his own shoulders for the devout sisters. He had his little brother Numerian brought there too, to be instructed in the fathers’ teaching and the monks’ rule. Since Luxeuil was then held the head of these studies — the mother to whom all the other monasteries of the Irish were subject — Germanus, longing at last to reach that height of the rule, took with him Chunna, a very religious man of Burgundian birth (the same who was afterwards made abbot of Réôme in 659, to whom Jonas dedicated his Life of John). Abbot Waldebert gladly enrolled the newcomers among the Luxeuil monks; and having proved Germanus an industrious man, he made him a priest and indeed set him over the monastery founded in the Jura forest to receive the monks’ overflow.

The monastery was dedicated to St Mary and took its name from the valley Waldebert had called Grandisvallis (“Great Valley”) — today Moutier (German Münster, canton Bern); the valley itself is now called Münstertal after the monastery, and only the neighbouring village of Grandval (German Granfelden) keeps the old name. The district — the pagus Sornegaudiensis — took its name from the river Sorne that joins the Birs.

That people, set between two kingdoms, followed the standards of the Alesatian dukes only under compulsion and, since their speech was Romance, inclined rather to the Burgundians. The dukes named in the Life — Gundoin, then Boniface, then Chatalrich or Chatic (afterwards called Adalric or Eticho in the charters) — ruled the Alesatienses. After King Childeric of Austrasia’s murder (675), when the Austrasian party set up Clovis III, Adalric sided with the rebels; King Theuderic, on gaining power, confiscated his goods — some of which he granted to the monastery of Besué in September 676.

The Sornegau countrymen were not of their dukes’ mind, and Chatic knew they had long been rebels. He summoned the valley’s centenars and sent them into exile, then gathered Alamannic forces and entered the valley from one side while Chatalmund entered from the north. Germanus, seeing his people in peril, went to the duke with the provost Randoald, carrying relics and books; he found him taking counsel with Count Ericho in St Maurice’s church, and gained nothing. The whole valley was ravaged by the barbarians and the rustics’ houses burned. The saint and his companion, returning home, were stripped of their clothes and each pierced with a spear — dying among their own people on 21 February. Germanus’s body, found that night, was carried to St Ursicinus’s church and from there to the monastery, where they buried it in St Peter’s church. The news reached the monastery while the brothers kept the vigil of St Peter’s Chair; and at the place of the killing a wondrous light from heaven was seen at Christmas. On the very day of the killing a brother found the saint’s girdle among the enemies’ companies — from which it appears he resisted his spiritual adversaries not with spiritual arms alone — and it was hung among the relics; a rustic of the monastery, washed in water dipped from it, was healed.

Bobolenus the priest, asked by the brothers themselves, wrote the life not long after Germanus’s death — probably after King Childeric’s murder (c. 675). He names among the abbots to whom the book is dedicated Ingofred, who succeeded Waldebert at Luxeuil in 670; his authorities he cites as the venerable Chadoald and Aridius, then still living, and he says he carried out the brothers’ command “within a very few days” — from which it may be inferred that Bobolenus was not of the Grandval congregation but a guest staying there. There was another Bobolenus, priest and abbot of Bobbio, who succeeded Bertulf c. 640 — and the biographer borrowed words and phrases from Jonas’s Life of Columbanus, dedicating his own work to three abbots in the same words. He also drew on the Vita Silvestri and Sulpicius Severus’s Life of Martin; but the facts he relates carry every mark of truth. The origins of Grandval owe their rescue from darkness to this writer, and his account of the dukes of that region is memorable for secular as well as ecclesiastical history. He was little practised in letters — a slow writer dragging out a rough style — but his work is weighty.

Grandval, arising from Luxeuil’s overflow, was already famous at Germanus’s death; the monks used a refectory and several of them held the deacon’s order. Abbot Waldebert had exercised the right of appointing its abbot, and it enjoyed the Irish monasteries’ privileges of exemption and royal immunity — for which Carloman’s privilege (768–771) to Abbot Gundoald survives, together with evidence of earlier Merovingian grants.

Under the Carolingians the monastery became a seat of learning — its ninth-century Bible still witnesses this — where the celebrated St Gall master Iso taught and died, and Helperic of Auxerre instructed the young. After the break-up of the Carolingian realm it fell under Rudolf I of Upper Burgundy; granted in benefice to the Alesatian count Lutfrid under Rudolf II, it was divided among his heirs and so hastened to ruin. King Conrad had it restored by the younger Lutfrid and re-endowed it in 968, and Rudolf III gave it to the impoverished bishopric of Basel in 999 — a gift repeated the next year and confirmed by Henry III and Leo IX. Canons then occupied it as a provostry under the bishop; under Provost Siginand in the mid-twelfth century “the most holy body of the precious martyr Germanus” was raised from darkness to due veneration. In 1477 the saint’s tomb was opened and the body found. At the Reformation the canons removed the provostry to Delémont (1530). St Ursicinus’s cell (Saint-Ursanne) was added to the abbey by Henry III in 1040 and likewise became a college of twelve canons.

[The edition’s text rests chiefly on St Gall MS 551 (10th c.), far superior to the Basel transcript and the printed editions of Bollandus and Mabillon; details of the recension, interpolations — the spurious cells of St Ursicinus and Verdun/Vertima added in the 11th–12th centuries — and the manuscript families are given in the apparatus. Sebastian Brant celebrated Germanus’s fortune in elegiacs, published among his Latin poems in 1498.]

Here Begins the Passion of St Germanus the Martyr #

To the lords exalted and adorned with the heights of holiness, and endowed with an abundance of religion, and in sanctity ever powerful everywhere — Deiculus, Leodemund and Ingofred, fathers — Bobolenus, the least of all priests.

It is but a few days since I was asked by certain holy brothers — men who were with Germanus in his lifetime and saw done what they now relate to me not as hearsay but as things seen — to weave with my pen the deeds of the gracious abbot Germanus of Grandval; and I have learned them also through the venerable men Chadoald and Aridius, who are still alive.

¹ Now St Germanus, abbot and martyr, priest of God, was a native of the city of Trier, born of senatorial stock but nobler in holiness. His father was Optard; his brothers Opthomar and Numerian. Opthomar, trained in the elegance and worldly learning of the royal court under King Dagobert, was afterwards under King Sigebert, by God’s support, more exalted than the other nobles. When St Germanus was a little child he was handed over to blessed Modoald, who himself in those days held the see of the city of Trier, the height of holiness; and when Modoald saw the boy was choice and of keen wit, he began to instruct him in the liberal letters.

² At length the man of God began to excel in learning and holiness, so much so that all wondered at his constancy. He often came to church and heard from the readers blessed Paul’s sentence: “For the fashion of this world passes away” — and again, that those who use this world should be as though they used it not. He pondered the Gospel saying that a rich man shall hardly enter the kingdom of heaven. God therefore gave the man such favour with all that he was loved with exceeding affection not only by the clergy but by everyone. There was in him no pride or arrogance; he was held in goodwill by all; placed on earth, he showed himself suited to heavenly things by his manner of life. For he was angelic in aspect, refined in speech, holy in work, pure in body, excellent in mind, great in counsel, catholic in faith, most patient in hope, overflowing in charity and conspicuous for every sweetness — and he meditated even in boyhood what he afterwards fulfilled as a devout man.

³ When he was seventeen years old, he began silently to consider within himself how he might escape the allurements and delights of the world, the blandishments of this age. He began to ask the blessed Bishop Modoald: “O venerable father, permit me to go where divine pity calls me, all else being set aside.” But blessed Modoald began to wonder at the youth’s spirit, that he acted so manfully as to desire the desert, and said to him: “O young man, you seek a great and lofty thing — but slippery is the path for young men on which you hasten to go with treading foot”; and he said to him: “I have not dared to give you permission, on account of the royal power — for it is written, There is no power but of God, and again, Whoever resists the power resists the ordinance of God.”

⁴ But he, being bold and trusting in the Lord, distributed all his goods to the poor according to the Gospel’s word, and taking three boys with him as companions sought out the blessed Bishop Arnulf, who in those days was living a holy life in the desert whose name is Horemberg. And blessed Arnulf, seeing him, rejoicing in spirit and giving thanks to the Maker of all, received him glad and cheerful, and cut off the hair of his head, and kept him with him for a while, imitating the life and ways of the man of God.

⁵ Then he sought the monastery of blessed Romaric, which is commonly called Castellum, built by his labour on the mountaintops — sending two of his own men to bring his little brother Numerian, still small in age, that he might draw him from the world’s doings to the ordinances of the holy fathers and the rule and holy life of monks. Then when blessed Germanus came to that monastery, all received him joyfully together with his own brother, giving thanks to the Maker that the Lord had called to His service one of so noble a lineage. Afflicting his whole body, ever intent on God in fasts and vigils and prayers, he kept nothing back beyond his daily food. The vileness of his dress showed all an example of humility and charity — so that he went with his companion into the woods to cut timber and carried it on his own shoulders to the sisters. He pondered the sentence of the blessed apostle Paul: “If a man will not work, neither shall he eat.” And the Lord gave him such favour that there was none who did not long to imitate his life and ways.

⁶ Then he took with him blessed Chunna, a man of great religion of Burgundian birth, and taking wholesome counsel together, the two sought the monastery built by the ancients’ labour whose name is Luxeuil, with their companions. The abbot and father of that monastery was named Waldebert, an excellent man of Sicambrian birth and of a most devout life. When the priest of God saw them, all with one accord received them with cheerful face within the monastery’s enclosure. The man of God, entering the monastery with his own brother, showed at once — both of them of their own free will — the mortification of the flesh, the religious life, and obedience, which they afterwards kept inviolate and unstained. And when blessed Waldebert saw he was an industrious man, he bade him be made a priest; the whole choir of brothers cried out in reverence for him, saying that Germanus was worthy of the priesthood. And so, the saint ordained priest, he surpassed all in grace among the clergy.

⁷ Now the priest of God Waldebert, full of the Holy Spirit, seeing the crowds of monks gathering from every side, began to long to find fertile places where he might settle some of his monks to dwell. But the illustrious man Gundoin, hearing that the blessed Abbot Waldebert was keenly seeking places where his monks might dwell and live the holy life, sent his messengers to him bidding him come to him with all speed. Then blessed Waldebert, without any hesitation, went to Gundoin and gave his advice. The illustrious man Gundoin offered him suitable places; and though their approach was difficult, they could find entrance to them. Then Waldebert began to soothe his spirit with gentle words, asking that, if he would, for the love of God and the remedy of his soul and the absolution of his sins, he would display a deed of gift for those places, confirmed by his own hands and by the hands of good men.

⁸ Then Waldebert, with the fear of God and the brothers’ prayers, went to the place and found a fertile spot among the hollow rocks — a valley he named Grandisvallis, Great Valley; and there is a stream in it with a multitude of fish. Then he urged his brothers to settle there. And he summoned one of his priests named Fridoald — one of the few monks of the late lord Abbot Columbanus — to go to the place. And he, nothing doubting in the good of obedience, went to the place with a few brothers in the fear of God; and labouring with his men, he began to cut timber for their sustenance.

⁹ After this the priest of God Waldebert began to think silently within himself whether he could find among his brothers one of noble birth, instructed in sacred letters, and conspicuous in holiness, who might govern and rule those monks according to the tenor of the rule. What more? By God’s bidding and inspiration, St Germanus was chosen abbot. So the venerable man, the priest of God, came with Germanus himself to the monastery of Grandval; and he began to exhort him with his counsels to fear nothing, but as a holy man to gird his loins. And he, nothing doubting in the good of obedience, took up the labour in the fear of God. Waldebert then exhorted the brothers that, being released from obedience to himself, they should for God’s sake submit their necks in obedience to St Germanus — which they did. And so, having received the blessing, he took all that monastery’s precincts into his own lordship. And the Lord gave him such favour that he was loved with exceeding affection not only by his own but by every age and sex.

Then St Germanus the abbot, seeing that the approach was difficult, began to break the hard rocks with his hands — and the gates of the valley opened on either side, and are open to those who enter to this day.

¹⁰ Now it happened that Duke Gundoin died, and Duke Boniface, and Chatalrich or Chatic succeeded in their place. He began wickedly to oppress the people who were neighbours of the monastery; he began to charge them that they had always been rebels to his predecessors; and they denying the charge — which was unjust — he tried in many ways to afflict them. And since Almighty God cares for those who strive in Him — wishing to crown His athlete, whom He foreknew would be crowned for his labours — Chatic was at last stirred up in zeal against the men of the Sornegau. Then he ordered the valley’s centenars to come to him and commanded them to go into exile.

¹¹ Then Chatic, eager wholly to carry out the wicked and malicious design he had begun, or the poison he had conceived in mind, took with him phalanxes of the Alamannic race — a wicked folk — and at sunrise entered upon the valley. And when it was told to blessed Germanus that Chatalmund was entering that valley from the north with a great host, and that Chatic was coming from the other side with a huge army, then blessed Germanus, taking with him the saints’ relics, hastened to him with books and the monastery’s provost named Randoald. But before he could reach him, wicked men full of the devil threw him violently to the ground. At last he reached Chatic and found him in the basilica of St Maurice, taking counsel with Count Ericho. And blessed Germanus began to address him and say: “Enemy of God and of the truth, why have you come upon Christian men? Why do you not fear to bring to shipwreck my monastery, which I myself built?” And the duke asked pardon for the crime committed; and they, with false humility, wished to give their pledge into his hand — but he refused to accept it, promising to make satisfaction in everything. Then he left him in the basilica of St Maurice with only his companion named Randoald.

¹² But he, seeing that he could do nothing, and seeing the whole valley being torn by the neighbours of the monastery as by wolves’ bites and their houses being consumed by fire, wept long; and stretching his hands and palms to heaven he said: “Look, Lord — be not silent — for a barbarous folk has come upon us.” Then, wishing to return to his own dwelling, he went on his way with his companion, and men full of the demon followed them. St Germanus, martyr and priest of God, seeing them, spoke to them with words of peace, saying: “Do not, my sons, commit so great a crime against the people of God.” But they, being filled with the demon, stripped him of his garments. And when blessed Germanus saw his martyrdom was at hand, he said to his brother Randoald: “Let us be at peace, brother mine — for today we receive the fruit of our labours.” And when they had stripped him with his companion, he said: “I give You thanks, good Shepherd, for you have not robbed me of Your good things: deign to receive me with my brother into the fellowship of Your saints.” After this a voice came to him from heaven, saying: “Come, faithful steward — the heavens are open to you; my angels rejoice with you and shall lead you into the heavenly Jerusalem.” And as he spoke, one of them — bolder than the rest, filled with the demon — pierced him with a spear, and Randoald with him. The body lay lifeless, but his soul entered into the heavens.

¹³ When this was done, his brothers went seeking him, going round this way and that. About the third hour of the night they found him already dead with his companion, and lifted up his body with great lamentation. They carried him into the basilica of Lord Ursicinus, built by his own labour, and laid him naked before the sight of God. These things were done that same night — the vigil of St Peter’s Chair. And while the brothers were keeping the vigils, a messenger came to say that the monastery’s father had been slain by a wicked enemy. And with great lamentation they carried him into the basilica of St Peter and buried him there — where the benefits of prayers are granted through Him who bestows them, to whom is honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

¹⁴ And it happened after this, as the year’s circle returned and the day of the Lord’s Nativity drew near, that so great a light — as they tell — shone in that very night of the Lord’s birth, at the place where the blessed bishop’s body had been slain, coming from heaven, that all wondered and were filled with great fear.

¹⁵ Then a certain one of the brothers, on the very day of his killing, found among the enemies’ companies a girdle — what is commonly called a bracile — in the hands of those dragging it, and brought it to the monastery’s sacristy. Then all the brothers received it with joy as a gift brought from heaven, and had it hung in the church among the saints’ relics. After this it happened that a certain man, a neighbour of the monastery, was held by great sickness of fevers, being full especially of the pest of the brugia [an obscure disease-name]. Hardly carried by his own folk, he came to the monastery; and when he reached the church’s threshold, he saw the girdle of the gracious Germanus hanging on the wall. Then he began to beg with great lamentation that he might be allowed to touch it. Then one of the deacons filled a cup with water and dipped it in, and gave the sick man drink — and as soon as he drank, he returned to his former health and gave thanks to God. So many are the wonders worked in the most blessed Germanus that words cannot compass them.

[Explicit: The Passion of Germanus of Grandval.]