CatholicaActa Sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti, saec. II (Mabillon, 1669) — translated from the Latin. The file contains, besides the Life of Livinus, the volume’s ensuing articles complete: the primitive Life of St Gertrude of Nivelles and the Life of St Geremarus of Flay, each with Mabillon’s preliminary observations and notes.
Part One — the Life of St Livinus, Bishop and Martyr, by Boniface his contemporary #
From the MS of the collegiate church of Compiègne, per Nicolaus Serarius.
Preliminary observations #
Nicolaus Serarius first published this Life of St Livinus after the Letters of St Boniface archbishop of Mainz, whose contemporary he judged the writer to be. But certain arguments prevent our assent. If the writer of that Life asserts that he learnt the deeds of St Livinus from the telling of three of his disciples — Foillan, Helias and Kilian — we must grant him a long old age. St Burchard was thrust upon the see of Würzburg by St Boniface of Mainz: he is said to have been chosen by Egywald in the year 741, after the passion of the martyrs St Kilian and his companions, which befell in the year of the Incarnation 689 — and that in Germany at a time when St Boniface was perhaps still passing his boyhood in England: he obtained the apostolic legation to the parts of Germany from Pope Boniface [V] in 719, and suffered martyrdom in 754 while still in the green of age. How then could he have learnt St Livinus’s deeds from Kilian and his companions? Add that St Boniface in his very many Letters nowhere sets down the name “Sinner” (Peccator), which name St Livinus’s panegyrist usurped to himself in the salutation of the Preface. This Boniface, then, is another than Boniface of Mainz — indeed an elder Boniface, whether bishop or abbot is uncertain: for abbots too, and others after Gregory the Great, sometimes called themselves “sinners, servants of the servants of God” in the superscriptions of letters. Goscelin the monk, in his Life of St Augustine bishop of Canterbury (book 1, ch. 28), borrowed certain things from this Life of St Livinus.
1 Livinus lived for some while in solitude with Foillan, Helias and Kilian; he had for teacher and instructor St Augustine, bishop of Canterbury, from whom he could also have learnt the rule of St Benedict. We wonder with William of Malmesbury that the venerable Bede never treated of Livinus even in a word, whose name is also missed in the sincere martyrologies of Usuard and Ado. Hence it is gathered that this Foillan is distinct from St Foillan brother of abbot Fursey, to whom this Foillan cleaved as that one did to Fursey; no mention or notice of this Foillan occurs after St Livinus’s death.
The author’s prologue #
Boniface, a sinful man, servant of the servants of our Lord Jesus Christ, to all the Churches founded upon the firm rock under the authority of the holy and undivided Trinity, the glory of everlasting joy in the highest felicity. The venerable triumph of the glorious passion of the most blessed father and pontiff beloved of God, Livinus, has hallowed for us today’s solemnity of our joy, to be celebrated ceremonially in honour of his great regeneration and with votive offerings — he the renowned father for declaring to the world the praises of whose merits we exhort you affectionately to rejoice together: that solemn season of the revolving year itself stirring us to the joys of this devotion, in which the most victorious agonothete and wondrous martyr of the triumphal palm of conflict, warring indomitably from the beginning of this present world for the confession of the holy Trinity, and triumphing over the threats of persecutors and the agitations of atrocious punishments, joyfully passed over and entered the kingdom of heaven, to be enthroned with the laurel of well-earned dignity in the confession of the martyrs and to be glorified with like honour, and to enjoy their fellowship in the blessedness of everlasting peace. The ensigns of the great virtues of this most excellent athlete of Christ’s holiness, which we spread abroad for your love, we learnt from the telling of his three disciples — Foillan, Helias and Kilian — who (as they confessed) by the affection of pious charity, each renouncing his own for the hope of eternal life, studied to cleave glued fast to his footsteps and to be instructed by his admonitions and formed by his examples; who with tears, kissing our hands and with knees bowed to the ground, besought us with heavy sighs that these things be written and preserved in memory for posterity. Greatly resisting their will, since we feared the pettiness of our little skill — yet the force of love’s due, by the tenderness of its own twofold strength and by the twin-flowing wings of twofold charity, transcended the secrets of our devoted breast; and at last that breathing-in of brotherly union bent back our very soul, distrustful of its own powers, by the cooperating grace of the Holy Spirit from frailty to the boldness of undertaking the task; and we have studied to satisfy their charity, and have judged it worthy to unfold these things word for word to the praise and glory of the pious father.
Here begins the Life #
1 In the time, then, when Colomagnus, the renowned king of the Scots, a great man in the Christian religion, prevailed in virtues and auspiciously governed the column of the royal and imperial monarchy by heavenly providence, there was a certain senator of Scottish birth named Theagnius, most excellent in the expectable lineage of native nobility, prince of that king’s nobles, and bearing the pre-eminence arch-wise over his own courtier primates — a vigorous man, a diligent confidant of the royal secrets, famed far and wide by talkative report for compositions of the highest prudence. He had also a wife named Agalmia, comely in her lineage and distinguished in merit, namely the daughter of Figenius, the most illustrious king of the Irish. These two, joined in confederacy by the like spirit under God’s inspiration and pre-signified by divine laws, shone with ensigns of wondrous virtue; and those whom the Lord had illumined with His graces He deigned to console with such glory.
2–4 On a certain Lord’s night, while they rested together on their royal couch adorned at pleasure — neither watching nor yet in deepest sleep — a dove of milky hue was seen to have descended from heaven, resplendent with the inestimable brightness of celestial glory, and to rest upon the headpiece of their bed and to regard them with serene countenance. Which, spreading its wings, overshadowed them, and from its mellifluous mouth let fall three little milky drops like most pure milk upon the blessed lips of the woman beloved of God, and flew up again, poured back into the heaven of the sky. At once a vaporous splendour of exceeding fragrant sweetness illumined all that royal palace, stretched with reverberating rays until morning. And the infant whom the blessed mother then bore in her womb, already irradiated by the life-giving breath, began to stir with moving limbs and — that you may surely believe — rejoiced in the regards of the heavenly visitation.
Then the great-hearted duke Theagnius and the venerable matron Agalmia, astounded by the rarity of such a thing discerned, when dawn was radiant came to Lord Menalchius, the duke’s own brother, who then ruled the rights of the arch-pontificate, a man estimable and eminent in the loftiness of holiness, and diligently unfolded to him the matter of so great a business. He, inspired by the grace of the Holy Spirit, answered in turn: “This vision divinely manifested is not only the matter of our exultation, but shall also be joy to the peoples of many nations: for by God’s gift a son shall be born to you, already sanctified in his mother’s womb and refreshed with spiritual milk — a supreme pontiff, a lamp of his country, and a most steadfast propagator of the divine law, who shall lead God’s peoples into the way of eternal salvation.” For when the venerable day arrived on which the most illustrious and name-worthy mother Agalmia, illumined by the heavenly visitation, brought forth her blessed offspring to this world, such joys of wondrous gladness touched all the inhabitants of that region, and so immense a serenity shone into mind with the most illustrious tokens, that they wondered all, and confessed that they had neither read in the most ancient codices nor heard from the sayings of the old fathers the urgency of such great joys and so great serenities.
5 At the same time blessed Augustine, a person of exceeding holiness — who, sent by blessed Gregory, apostolic pontiff of the Roman see, was the first bishop of the English nation and the most splendid lamp of the highest truth — for the sake of his business, divine providence ministering (that you may understand), had come to the aforementioned king Colomagnus, and himself wondered at the joy of so great a rarity. For all the king’s primates and the whole royal height with the citizens of the country were turned to wondrous joy of exultation, and by the foretelling spirit of truth and by mutual colloquies, rejoicing together and pronouncing certain things to one another, foretold that this infant, beloved of God, would be the light of the peoples and the supreme patron of the whole region. The pious king and most devout queen with the venerable pontiffs — Augustine bishop of the English and Menalchius the arch-prelate — received him from the sacred font of blessed regeneration, giving him the name Livinus from the name of his glorious mother Agalmia’s brother, the archbishop of the Irish Church, who among the Hunorians obtained the palm of martyrdom for Christ’s name. As soon as they lifted the boy from the water, with all who were present they saw in manifest vision a pillar-bearing splendour descend more radiant than rays, hang over the blessed boy’s head, and from there his right hand shine out more ruddy than brightest gold, and thrice sign the little infant with the sign of the holy Cross — and a voice sounded thus: “Beloved of God and of men, whose memory is in benediction” (Ecclus. 45:1). This verse finished, the divine vision returned to the ethereal palace. In such excellences of miracles and heavenly mysteries the king and queen rejoiced, and the venerable persons of the divine ministry — namely the supreme pontiffs Augustine and Menalchius — together praised Christ the Lord in the highest with the others in like intention of devotion.
6 God’s chosen boy, then, excelling his infantile age by his reasonable self-restraints, day by day — though as yet lacking the body’s powers — with mature manners wrought in the image of virtue, and already craved by the citizens from above, desired unceasingly to be made the friend of his fellow-dwellers; panting after a blessedness to be earned, he renounced temporal things in the contemplation of things to come. And because he feared to be cast down by the frailty of the flesh from the state of well-doing, strengthened by spiritual ministration he mightily prevailed in ascending by the zeal of perfection.
7 See, the youth now to be remembered — the most blessed Livinus, the perspicuous athlete of Christ, helmeted with the chastity of divine fervour, breastplated with constancy of faith, and kindled on every side by the height of the heavenly warfare — when he had now passed the age of nine years, to be praised for the everlasting virtues of his merits, the warlike standard-bearer of the highest King about to war triumphantly against the foulest tyrant of this world and its brimstone heats, began to be glorified in the world by such wondrous ensigns. For on the holy day of Pentecost, when the aforementioned duke Theagnius, hedged by the company of the venerable boy and of his nobles, came to the monastery built by him in honour of St Mary the Virgin Mother of God, desiring to be refreshed with the divine praises and fortified by the sacraments — see, the inhabitants of that place dragged in two men bound with iron chains, whom the old serpent had wretchedly driven mad and defrauded of human fellowship: one of whom had slain a man and two women, the other in like madness had struck down his own wife and two sons to death. The venerable boy Livinus, seeing them, said to his father and his company: “Join then with me, dearest ones, and all together entreat the clemency of almighty God, that by our prayers, for the quality of this business, He may open the regard of His glory.” And with hands outspread and eyes lifted up to heaven he prayed, saying: “God, eternal Father, immortal refuge of those who faithfully beseech You, propitious pitier of Your servants, be present and graciously grant our vows with a pious heart, and let the grace of Your blessing flower upon this fabric of Your own fashioning, bowed down with the burden of so dire a weakness, that Your name may be glorified in heaven and the favour of Your clemency be made known in the ages.” And when all cried out Amen, the venerable boy Livinus, the standard-bearer of heavenly piety, advanced fearless and, laying his hands upon the heads of both, said: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, may the onslaught of the devilish phantasm be rooted out from you, and be you cleansed into a most pure vessel of holy faith, and be you made the kingdom of the Holy Spirit.” Then, all beholding, a most foul smoke mixed with black gore welled out of their mouths and nostrils, and meanwhile a very black massing of flies poured out and, flying through the air with hissing and confused sound, vanished. The heavenly physician fortified them, thus cleansed, with the sign of the holy Cross and confirmed them in holy confession. They, made more clear-sighted of braver mind, renounced all their possessions and began to cleave to the footsteps of the blessed boy Livinus, and passed the rest of their life’s time in holy conversation with him; one of whom was called Helimas and the other Symphronius, who in the faith of the holy Trinity after the example of their pious master are experienced among us as worthy of God and eminent confessors, and co-heirs of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
8 By such and other divine ensigns of the great deeds to be praised, almighty God willed that this His beloved servant Livinus be manifested to the world, and by the perspicuous reason of His own arrangement — for the sake of the elect, whose manners He had pre-ordained for Himself to everlasting glory before the constitution of the world — He mercifully decreed that he be joined to the company of holy fellow-dwellers by virtues of merit, by whom as heralds He might show forth the light of His truth. But the boy of excellent parts, confederated with divine gifts, translucent with the spirit of humility, incomparably suspended in contemplation of the life to come — grace from above going before and his own benign will following — longed to possess the summit of all perfection. He had chosen to order his life to be moderated contemplatively by the ecclesiastical norm of discipline under blessed Benignus the priest, a man of Scottish nobility — of high blood but loftier in the clarification of holy virtues; by whom at last he sought to be conformed with tenderness of devout mind in spiritual strictness, and to be most perfectly instructed in the Davidic melodies of the Psalms and the mellifluous readings of the holy Gospels and the other divine exercises — as one refreshed by the foresight of the heavenly regard, already planting his foot in the spacious field of paradise’s pleasantness, to pass through the degrees of the virtues day by day most effectually into the glory of eternity. Who can unfold the subtlety of his intelligence and the efficacy of his wondrous genius? The grace of the Holy Spirit cooperating, no difficulty of learning things — in any readings of the divine studies or in any examples of good manners — impeded his capacity. Of such things that eminent preacher makes mention when he says: “There is no delay in learning where the Holy Spirit is the teacher.” While the youth Livinus, beloved of God, flourished most diligently in these studies, it befell that his master Benignus, a man of worthy memory, was loosed from this life and merited heavenly things; his departure the disciple daily commended to the Lord with vigils and prayers, devoted with wondrous piety.
9 A certain mother of a household named Silvia, nurse of the venerable boy Livinus, languishing through many days from her continual infirmity, had now drawn near the fatal hour. She had begun to be weighed down by the weight of death: her face, as it were grown strange to her, was oppressed with exhausted cheeks and exceeding pallor; and with benumbed eyes she feebly saw those standing round, recognising none, since the darkening of her last sight hindered her. At which not only the familiar assembly of citizens bewailing, and the devoted fellowship of her fellows, were saddened, but the glorious aforementioned duke and his venerable palatine excellency suffered together with so great a grief with tender contrition of heart. When she now seemed to verge upon the ruin of death and was utterly despaired of, the blessed Livinus, the prompt boy to be magnified with glorious virtues, being summoned came, and, relying on the light of heavenly illumination, hastened through the middle of the mourning throngs to the bed of his beloved nurse now beginning to die; and where he understood human solaces to lull, he busied himself with pious solicitude to apply heavenly ones. The youth Livinus, beloved of God, knew the strings of the dying, skilled in the art of heavenly medicine; hanging with eyes and hands toward heaven, his face bedewed with tears — and what he could not breathe forth with repeated sobs of grief, his heartfelt affection pleaded with shining merits.
And now the prayer was at an end: then the dead woman’s body, its spirit received back, grew strong and settled; she stretched her hands upward, gave thanks to God and said that, while she was being led through unknown and rough places of the ways and through darksome regions by black spirits, and was being plunged into a pit of air boiling with brimstone and fire, there came St Michael the archangel with the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and St Peter the apostle, resplendent with heavenly brightness, and threatening them said in the sight of those foul spirits: “Do not bring trouble upon that soul; let her go, since Christ bids her return into her body for the merits of His beloved Livinus.” They vanished in confusion. Then St Michael the archangel and the holy patriarchs and St Peter the apostle took up my soul and restored it to its body.
10 Declaring these and more such things with simple mouth, and having received the blessing of the blessed father, after this she lived unharmed through many spans of years. But while the eminent soldier of the heavenly warfare was being magnified among the people by such ensigns, dreading lest, elated by human favour, he should be deprived of the summit of his perfection, and fearing lest certain brandishments of seducing praises should be mingled into the mirror of his magnificent brightness — continually seeking solitude, he lurked with his three disciples, Foillan, Helias and Kilian (whom we praised above), amid copses and thickets, content with wild herbs and the scant libation of turbid waters, as was his custom.
11 Moreover, all things whatever he had or could have he distributed with liberal hand to the needy. For he was a skilled scribe, and kept sleepless watch upon this work, studying chiefly to acquire that wherewith he might refresh the destitute; the favour of this virtue of his, fuming like the sweetest odour of spices, illumined far and wide the palace of the aforementioned king Colomagnus and made the Scottish regions illustrious with famed report, and had graciously bedewed the breasts of all. The pious king wondered at the praises of so great a man, and rejoiced with him in the things gloriously wrought through him. And it happened that he bade him be presented before him with honour, and humbly besought him, saying: “O most blessed father, we know that you flower in the norm of all virtues, as the examples of your good deeds declare. For this cause we beg you with the whole affection of our mind that you deign to remain with us, to use our royal wealth, and that we may deserve to enjoy your most wholesome admonitions and evangelical doctrines.” With entreaties of this kind that glorious king, and his nobles, and the courtiers themselves, disquieted the friend of God every single day. The man of the Lord Livinus, however, did not bend his soul in the compact of this world, but thinking more of the things of God than of the world’s — as though, had he yielded to their will, the intention of his soul could have been defiled by some occasion of the malign ensnarer’s tickling, and cast down from the state of his sobriety.
12 While he was thus wavering ill at ease in these anxieties, the angel of the Lord stood by him and poured into him these words of consolation, calling him by his proper name and saying: “Hail, brother Livinus; be not solicitous: it is time that you receive consolation. Depart hence and go to the blessed Augustine the bishop, by whose doctrines and pious instructions you shall be wondrously raised aloft, the Lord cooperating.” This said, the angelic vision was removed. Blessed Livinus, knowing that all things were wrought for him divinely, having received the king’s permission, withdrew from the palace as quickly as might be, busying himself to fulfil the angelic commands. And while on his journey he drew near the great sea over which he had to cross, there came to meet him a youth translucent in aspect, apt in gait, who began thus to accost the saint of God with sweet address: “Do not delay, brother: I am he whom almighty God has deputed the guardian of your life, and care for you shall never be absent from me, but I shall be present as defender and guide in all your ways and works. I know the cause of your journey; let us hasten where you tend, for God will give us a prosperous voyage.”
13 While he spoke and went before, and blessed Livinus with his three disciples followed, they crossed that great sea together with dry feet, heavenly clemency attending. And blessed Livinus and his often-named disciples — Foillan, Helias and Kilian — as long as they trod upon the sea’s waters by the path of feet, so long it seemed to them they walked through a field whitening with greenest grass and the flowers of roses and lilies and blooming with every kind of excellent herb. But when they came to the shore and stood with safe steps upon the land, their guide departed from them and, in their sight, hedged about with the splendour of divine brightness, ascended into heaven. The man of God, astonished with humble awe and alike animated with hope of heavenly consolation, rendered with his disciples the praises due to the heavenly grace.
14 These things thus accomplished with swift course and prosperous journey, he came to the holy Augustine the bishop. The blessed bishop, clearly recognising his coming by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, and perceiving that the minister beloved of God was divinely to be trained up by his own instruction, received him kindly and nourished him with the devotion of wondrous charity for five years and three months, instructed him in letters, conformed him to the summit of the highest perfection according to the angelic promise by his own merits and examples worthy of God, and — consecrated in the sacrosanct order — raised him to the honour of the holy priesthood; and on the very day of his ordination the pious master bestowed upon his beloved disciple with devoted love, for a compact of eternal charity, a purple chasuble composed with gold and gems, and a stole with an orarium woven through with precious gems and gleaming gold.
15 When all these things had been worthily completed by the cooperating grace of the fostering Spirit, the priest of God Livinus with his disciples, the blessing of his pious master — blessed Augustine — received, heavenly clemency attending, returned to his own country. At his coming the princes of the realm and the citizens of the country rejoiced with great joy. Meanwhile it befell that Menalchius the arch-prelate, brother of the glorious duke Theagnius, father of Christ’s priest Livinus, had migrated from this world: at his passing all were confounded with grief and unutterable lamentation. Upon his death the aforementioned king Colomagnus and the choir of his palatines with their courtiers and the confluence of that whole region cried out with like affection of heart that the holy priest Livinus should most worthily be raised to the honour of this rank. The king consenting more devoutly than all, thrice and four times placed the blessed man in the chair of the archbishopric with due honour, the Lord commanding. At the same hour when he received the episcopal blessing — as is the custom when shepherds consecrate God’s holy churches, the other bishops being present and the clergy and the devout people — to declare blessed bishop Livinus’s merits to the world and to confirm these divine mysteries, a voice borne from above sounded openly to all, saying thus: See the great priest who in his days pleased God and was found just (Ecclus. 44:16). Nor had the holy voice yet finished these divine words when there suddenly appeared above the venerable pontiff Livinus’s head a crown composed of ruddy gold and flashing gems and interwoven with blooming flowers, and within and without and above lucidly bedewed with the purple hues of roses; and it filled those standing by with the fragrance of its sweetness. This also foreshowed that that most blessed bishop would be a worthy martyr of Christ, to be poured forth in the roseate blood of his martyrdom and to be crowned with the diadem of the heavenly kingdom and to enjoy for ever the blessed immortality of martyrdom’s confession.
16 The glorious pontiff Livinus therefore, receiving the rights of government with humble devotion by the Lord’s grant, kindled with spiritual love, vigilantly admonished, taught, corrected the flock committed to him with discreet piety, and refreshed them unceasingly with the pasture of everlasting greenness. For the heavenly Physician, as He kept watch to heal the souls of his disciples, so also by the favour of heavenly clemency restored the ailing bodies of many to the soundnesses of this life. Among these praiseworthy virtues of his merits, after he was raised to the pontifical honour, the Lord’s grace cooperating, he wrought these illustrious miracles.
17 A certain householder of Scottish birth named Abdias, paralytic and leper alike, destitute of all use of his limbs, as it were already dead, lay infirm for nine years, so that he could neither move his tongue to speak, nor stretch his hands to his mouth, nor draw up his feet; but lay all rigid on his pallet and had nothing vital movable in him save his eyes, by whose nods he scarce signified that his needs be supplied. When the eminent bishop Livinus, to be glorified for this thing’s sake, was going round the sheepfolds of his sheep administering to them the pastures of eternal life, by chance of his journey he entered that languid man’s house; and at his entrance the sick man at once raised his head, deserved to speak, and — feeling health within him — cried aloud saying: “O well for me, O well for me! Who enters? Either the Lord our God Himself, or His angel visits us.” The holy bishop stood marvelling, and, as it were consulting what the Lord had disposed to be done there by his foregoing merits, said to that languid man: “Why cry you so, brother? Peace to you: arise and reach me a little water to drink, for I am very weary.” Then he arose healed and devoutly fulfilled the man of God’s bidding, and together with the bishop joyfully gave thanks to God for his health, and thereafter passed the courses of his life unharmed. Upon this illustrious and admirable miracle gloriously wrought by God’s holy priest Livinus there followed a greater wonder.
18 While he was walking one day along the sea-shore, see certain sailors, overtaken by a violent tempest, began to be in vehement peril and to be wrecked with all their merchandise. The man of the Lord, seeing their end now imminent, relying on his wonted spirit of holy fervour, walking upon the sea by a safe path came hastening to them, held out the sign of the holy Cross and said: “Have confidence in the Lord, brothers, for He does not despise those who faithfully trust in Him.” At these words that tempest was stilled and there was a great calm. Seeing moreover the steersman, who had slipped from the prow and was beginning to sink — whom the force of the sea had dragged away as far as a bowshot — the venerable father ran to him over the billows and, grasping his right hand with his own, drew him out and brought him with himself to dry land; the others following with prosperous voyage and hymning praise with glad voices to the Lord almighty God, who deigned to save them through His holy pontiff Livinus. Who passes over the praises of this man, save he that is dumb? Who is weary of hearing the virtues of his merits, save he that neglects to love Christ? For we know him to have done nothing else than what we read Christ taught.
19 He was moreover a lover of virtue, the flower of humility, the lamp of justice, the gem of chastity, the norm of sobriety; he laboured in his studies that he might become an example and guide of all the virtues. He was frequent in prayer, intent on vigils and fasts; he magnificently relieved the needy in their necessities, and in the receiving of guests — and especially of pilgrims and monks — was most pious, keeping watch; with his own hands he washed their feet, most devotedly gave them water, most liberally ministered food and drink, and most richly bestowed garments on the destitute. He himself, beneath the pontifical vestments purpled with gold and adorned with gems, was ever clad in the hair-shirt, and lived each day on bread baked under ashes and mingled with ashes, most sparing, and a taste of water. With continual meditation he most vigilantly frequented the monasteries and holy places with prayers, psalm-singing and the celebrations of Masses. How many sick and feeble were made whole by the shadow of his body, by the touch of his garments, or by hearing the voice of his pious admonition — who could unfold? We surely believe him the peer of the blessed apostles, since he was endowed with equal dignity of purity of mind and of soberness of worldly body. He was also humble to the poor, mild to subjects, affable to the powerful — that by the mediocrity of his manners or the pleasantness of his speech he might draw all into the way of heavenly joys. For he knew that the necks of those who swelled with worldly powers could by no means be bent or turned back to the perfection of the Christian religion save by the gentlest admonitions of true piety. Imbued with apostolic doctrine, he became all things to all men that he might gain all; he prevented his betters with honour, and cherished his subjects with a father’s love, that by the familiarity of his conversation he might pour the readier word of life into all men’s hearts. The man of God was moreover in face, bearing, dress, and every bodily fashion of fit and harmonious comeliness — with limbs well-grown and workmanlike, eminent too in middling stature; a large head; yellow, flat hair, mingled with grey and very sparse on the forehead; ears broad and extended; vigilant and cheerful eyes; shaggy brows, and grey, wearing about his forehead and temples a whitest skin; cheeks thin as from frequent fasting, yet exceeding ruddy and pleasant; a white beard; ductile and slender fingers; and in short he bore no superfluity in his limbs. And the more beautifully he shone outwardly in bodily person, the more brightly he flamed within with the indwelling Holy Spirit.
20 And when by the increasing virtues of his merits he excelled in the contemplation of all holiness, he was seen to merit a heavenly summit, so that not only the Scottish nation but also the Britons and the Irish peoples and the neighbours of the regions round about with their princes wondered at the praises of his laud, and from every side a wondrous concourse flocked to him to hear the words of life from his mouth. All these, like a pious father, he fed with spiritual refection and confirmed with his blessing; and all the infirm and those weakened in limb and hindered by various languors who came to him, cooled by his benefactions and quickened with the desired strength, returned glad to their own. Yet for these things his soul was not raised into the vaunting of elation, but — more than can be told — the caution of true humility was founded on the foundation of eternal charity, in the pledge of meekness, patience, chastity, temperance, justice, love of God and neighbour. He abhorred the favourable gossipings of the crowd’s tattling tongues like the mouth of a fire-breathing dragon.
21 In these things he was ever solicitous for the things that are God’s, not the world’s — knowing that the Lord had magnified His grace with him, and that He breathed with him by the gravity of His holy meditation; and blaming fault in himself if, tarrying in the place of one region, he should only gather the talent entrusted to him — since he knew many peoples to be entangled in the bonds of their error, who ought to be irradiated with the splendour of the Lord’s brightness — it seemed to him more worthy that Christ’s lamp, kindled in himself with the torch of the Holy Spirit, be set upon the candlestick, that it might shine more profusely for the salvation of many and lead them to the brightest mansions of the heavenly life. Wavering therefore amid such cares, by the Lord’s providence he impressed the rights of government upon a certain archdeacon of holy memory named Silvanus, lest Christ’s sheep be without a rector while he the shepherd kept watch preaching through foreign regions of various nations to feed the flock.
22 When he had traversed very many places, sowing the seeds of the divine germ, driving demons from possessed bodies, and healing the bodies of many sick, he came with his disciples to a certain monastery called by the ancient name Ghent, which blessed Amand the bishop had caused to be founded when the shrines of the heathen were extirpated, and which he himself dedicated in honour of St Peter the apostle and all the apostles, gathering worshippers there over whom he set as abbot one Florbert, rector of the holy religion, composed of worthy manners and filled with examples of all honesty; by whom and the other brothers he was kindly received with the office of monastic charity. There also he found Bavo, a man of magnificent holiness and eminent confessor of Christ, recently resting in the Lord from death, buried with due honour in the monastery of St Peter and the holy apostles by the blessed bishop Amand and abbot Florbert and the devout brothers, and flashing with glorious miracles. In that same place he stayed thirty days, and at St Bavo’s sepulchre offered his prayers and celebrations of Masses to the Lord God, keeping vigil. These days being fulfilled, he blessed the brothers of the monastery and the devout folk of the district with pontifical right and confirmed them in the way of truth. And taking from the monastery’s office the provision necessary for the journey, he set forth and prospered, God disposing, into the land of Brabant. Into which the venerable pontiff entering with salutary steps, wondered at a land most pleasant, spacious and exceeding delectable, exuberant with God’s benignity — flowing with milk and honey and the fertility of various crops and trees and the abundance of all good things; its inhabitants shining in personal beauty of body, composed in the culture of their garments, honest in speech and in the gravity of manners — eminent men, apt warriors, and worthily confirmed in every exercise of their pursuits for this world. But because, according to the psalmist’s voice, “like the horse and mule in which there is no understanding,” they were constricted in the bit and bridle of Satan, they transgressed the law of God, defiled with adulteries, rapines, thefts, perjuries, murders — biting one another like fierce dogs with pestiferous madness, deceiving one another in turn with fraud, striking one another down with mutual slaughter. The evangelical man, therefore, seeing them grow daily worse in their deeds, laboured for them with vigils, tears and prayers, lest insatiable Tartarus swallow such venerable persons with voracious throat and drag them with itself into perdition; ceasing not daily to traverse the towns, villages and castles, sowing the words of life in their ears; and divine grace cooperating, very many by his instruction escaped the snares of the malign invader and obtained eternal life.
23–24 And it happened, while he was going round the various places of that region, correcting, exhorting to the way of life, calling back the peoples from the error of paganism, that he entered the estate called by the old name Holtem, where there met him a man agitated by a demon, crying and saying: “O servant of God Livinus, what have we to do with you? See, you have invaded my kingdom and deprived me of my warfare. Why do you persecute me further? Know you that if you drive me hence, I shall cause you to be afflicted with many injuries in that place.” The holy minister of truth, relying on the Holy Spirit, stretched forth his hand and, opposing to it the sign of the holy Cross, said: “Be silent, persecutor of all good things, and depart from this creature of God, and henceforth harm neither him nor any man.” Without delay that malignant spirit of error departed, and in the sight of all who were present issued from the man’s body like a smoke mingled with foulest blood. At which the man lay long as though dead, much wearied; and after the space of one hour he arose and gave thanks to God with the blessed man, and returned whole to his own, and confessed with unwearied voice to the folk the holy father’s virtue, by whose merits he was deemed worthy of deliverance.
25 Hearing therefore the fame of the renowned arch-prelate, matrons of the highest dignity — two sisters, one named Berna and the other Chraphaildis — received him into their devout hospitality, that they might enjoy his most sacred colloquies and be consoled by his presence, by God’s grace which they saw shining in him. Now the lady Chraphaildis had a son named Ingelbert, who from a disorder of the bladder had lost his eyes for thirteen years and five months and could not see the light of heaven. But when God’s saint Livinus made the sign of the Cross over his eyes, divine grace cooperating, he was enlightened. Meanwhile, as the report of this deed grew, an innumerable crowd of illustrious men and women flocked to God’s priest Livinus, bringing with them such sick as they had, and obtained the heavenly medicine and salvation of souls and bodies.
26 But it is most wretched to tell that nearly all the citizens of the provinces round about, indomitable in heart after the manner of beasts, were rebels against God: they said the virtues which they saw wrought in the world through the servants of God were vain, arrogantly despised God’s law, slew His priests, and either banished those who laboured to bring them into the way of salvation, or oppressed them with atrocious death in intolerable frenzy. Therefore the most steadfast athlete of Christ, girded with the divine laws, pressing upon these men, persisted in evangelical disputation and preaching; become an emulator of our Saviour, he accepted no man’s person, but reproved them with skilful enquiry according to the quality of their works, and as a faithful labourer strove to gather the fruit of the divine seed into the Lord’s barn in thirteenth harvest. He admonished believers to persevere in good deeds, but the unbelievers and perverse in heart, strengthened by the Holy Spirit, he more ardently rebuked.
27 At last, while the divine teacher daily persisted in pious instructions, proclaiming eternal joys to the blessed and eternal punishments to the wretched — the faithful received his salutary admonitions capaciously with eager heart, but the unbelievers stubbornly held out and said that this evangelical disputant was a deceiver and seducer, and had not kept watch for the salvation of souls but had gone round the regions of the nations for love of earthly gain; and that he deserved to be afflicted with insults, or banished, or cruelly slain, rather than that his doctrines be obeyed. Persevering stubbornly in this error of malignity, some struck God’s holy martyr with leaded scourges, others with cudgels, and macerated him with many injuries in their frenzy. Meanwhile one of them, named Walbert, seething at the devil’s instigation, put iron tongs into the saint’s mouth and cut off his tongue, and cast it in the people’s sight, and said: “See the tongue of that seducer which by speaking falsehood turned aside our nation: it deserves nothing else than to be cast to the dogs to be devoured.” But when the perverse man presumed to do such things, a flame issued from the mouth of God which burnt up that criminal and with him sixteen men who were counselling this crime, so that not even their ashes were found.
28 But the most steadfast herald of Christ was not forsaken by God; his tongue restored, he insinuated the divine laws into that people with ampler confidence. Nor did the company of the malignants, smitten by that blow, cease to rage against Christ’s holy martyr, but cried out saying he was a sorcerer and enchanter, and the things they saw divinely wrought about him were false and empty. While this was being done, a certain one of them named Gerard, crueler than the rest, stretched forth his arm to strike Christ’s holy martyr insolently with his fist; but hindered by God’s just judgement for three days, he remained rigid and confounded with arm outstretched. Returning to himself, he fell prostrate at the holy martyr’s feet and was restored to health. The blessed pontiff Livinus, therefore, for the divine virtues whereby he was daily made glorious, sang unwearied praises to God, and strove with all affection that he might himself be made a victim with the palm of martyrdom, for love of whom he had resolved to suffer death.
29 When the hour of his reward drew near, on the Lord’s night, when as was his custom he was keeping vigil in prayers, the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to him hedged about with great light, with His disciples, and said to him: “Rejoice, my beloved; work steadfastly: today about the sixth hour I will receive you into my kingdom, and you shall rejoice with Me with your brethren for ever.” Strengthened by this vision, God’s soldier and friend, knowing the day of his reward to be imminent — when morning dawned he convened the faithful people who had believed in Christ through his teaching; he admonished them to persist in the way of truth and taught them the things pertaining to God’s kingdom. And, the discourse finished, he blessed them and, bending his knees before them, gave thanks for the office of humanity wherewith they had most devotedly received him. Giving the kiss to each one he wept, and bent all the bystanders to pious tears; and having saluted them all in Christ, he departed against their will, and began to direct his journey with his disciples toward the village called Esse, to announce God’s kingdom to those citizens, if perchance he might obtain the promise even there.
30 Learning this, two brothers, Walbert and Meinzo, ministers of the devil — that God’s beloved friend was departing — supposed he meant to escape them; and gathering their comrades like them in ferocity, they belched these feral words with savage heart: “That blasphemer has profaned our law and seduced the people; knowing that he can no longer profit by his sorceries among us, he has purposed to depart from us unpunished. But he shall not thus emigrate unavenged: let us follow him more hastily, that we may be able to avenge our affront.” Their accomplices, hateful to God, sons of darkness, agitated by the angels of their father Satan, raging more cruelly, unjustly uttered greater revilings against God’s holy martyr: they ran together in like conspiracy to shed innocent blood — of whom it is plainly written: Their throat is an open sepulchre, etc. (Rom. 3:13). Meanwhile Christ’s most patient martyr Livinus stood in prayer, eyes and hands fixed on heaven; and when he was thus suddenly placed in the agony, the Holy Spirit appeared in the shape of a snowy dove, and dripping three rosy drops of blood upon his head with its sweetest mouth, said: “Fear not, dearest: the door of life is open to you; it is the hour for you to enter into the joy of your Lord.” This said, it flew thrice around him and slipped away to heaven. The holy pontiff pressed on more vigilantly in prayers; and see, one of his disciples named Foillan came to him and said: “Father, I hear the din of arms and a concourse of footmen drawing near.” He had not yet finished his words when see, the son of iniquity Walbert and his brother Meinzo — most rabid dogs — came upon him with their satellites, and gnashed upon God’s holy martyr with threatening eyes. But the bravest athlete of Christ, stepping forward, steadfastly said to them: “Why come, brothers? If you repent to have erred hitherto and seek pardon — God is ready to open the door of His mercy to those who knock, as He Himself says: Ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you (Matt. 7:7; Luke 9? sic).” Seeing that they could not perceive the heavenly admonitions with blinded mind, blessed Livinus, Christ’s martyr, said: “Brothers, I know that you seek to slay me, but I am confident in God’s mercy, who says: Fear not them that kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell (Matt. 10:28). You shall indeed now inflict temporal death upon me, but I shall begin to be born to the heavenly light, that I may live with Christ for ever. And now I pray you bear with me a little while until I pray.” And space for prayer being given, stretching his hands to heaven, raised sublime from the earth into the air, suffused with light from above, he prayed, saying: “O God, who did sanctify me in my mother’s womb and did illumine my birth with the splendour of Your grace and were my guide over the sea — hear me, Lord, Your servant, that these who unjustly persecute me for Your name may not be blotted from the book of life, but when they have been sated with my blood and, inspired by the grace of Your compassions, repent, are you receive them into the number of Your elect. Grant, Lord, that in the place where the presence of my relics shall be, or the memory of my name, there may ever be safety and abundance of peace, and fullness of all good things may flourish: and whoever on the sea or in the waters, or on land, or in prison or infirmity, or in any distress are straitened and shall remember my name — hear them, Lord, that they may truly know that you are faithful in Your elect and holy in all Your works; and if they have fallen into sins and shall invoke You through me, absolved by Your clemency, may they praise Your name for ever; and chiefly, Lord, may they who shall keep this day of my assumption with devout memory have the whole year secure with the perpetual presence of Your grace — let neither infirmity nor the trouble of molestations lord it over them, but let there be to them the tranquillity of peace and of health and of soberness, which may bring them to the kingdom of Your glory — grant it, You who live and reign together with Your Son our Lord Jesus Christ and with the Holy Spirit through all ages of ages.” His disciples with the faithful standing by answered: Amen. See, a voice divinely uttered: “Most kindly,” it says, “over all these things which you have benignly entreated, know for certain you are heard.”
31 After this the most steadfast martyr of Christ and magnificent triumphator Livinus, strengthened by divine help, came down to them and said: “My dearest brothers, I stand here the victim of the eternal King who calls me; I await the glory He has prepared for me in the heavens; His angels also are present awaiting me. Be strong, and if anything be wanting to your strength, let your cruelty supply it in my passion. These companions of mine are Christ’s sheep: I beg peace for them — they have never hurt anyone, for they are innocent.” And he kissed them and said: “May almighty God keep you, dearest, into eternal life.” And looking up to heaven he said: “Into Your hands I commend my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.” Meanwhile the aforementioned brothers, namely Walbert and Meinzo, rushed upon him and, many wounds inflicted, at last beheaded the doctor of the light of salvation; and in the sight of all his soul, received by angels, deserved to mount the secrets of heaven with the great brightness of celestial glory.
The most blessed pontiff and martyr of Christ Livinus suffered on the day before the Ides of November, our Lord Jesus Christ reigning, who wills that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth — who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns through all ages of ages.
32 The illustrious men and women who had been enlightened by his teaching, learning this deed, came groaning and weeping to the blessed body. Among whom was the aforementioned matron Chraphaildis, who had harboured the venerable man of God and most devotedly cherished him with her substance, bearing with her in her hands the little boy whom the holy martyr himself had lately lifted from the sacred font, giving him the name Brictius — still in his white chrism-cloth: she burst forth before all others into a tearful voice, declaring the blessed man the enlightener of his country, innocent and unjustly suffering so cruel a death. Then Satan’s satellite Walbert, inflamed by the devil, leaping upon her, cut her head in two with his little axe; she at once breathed her last. The little child he cut into three parts, which he cast beside the blessed martyr’s body. It is most surely believed that they have the glory of martyrdom in the lot of the venerable pontiff and martyr Livinus. The disciples then took up their pious master’s body and the parts of the little infant’s corpse and laid them together in a new tomb divinely prepared for him by angelic hands. Blessed Chraphaildis, Christ’s martyr, they buried apart near the sepulchre of the blessed martyr Livinus.
[Editor’s note m: We read various Translations of St Livinus in Surius, which take thus in brief: the first Theodore bishop of Cambrai celebrated in 842, lifting his body from the ground in the village of Hoste or Hauthem and setting it in a more notable place. The second: Eilbodo abbot of the monastery of St Bavo, who about 920 for safety’s sake transferred the whole body of St Livinus (the Hauthem church being subject to him) into his monastery — in which place the bodies of SS Livinus and Brictius were placed in a new shrine by Ramo bishop of Noyon and Tournai and by bishop Waltmann. Then another translation was made in 1010 under abbot Betto. Lastly, when in 1037 the relics of St Livinus were disturbed, Valcher bishop of Tournai placed them in a new shrine. Finally, in 1576 (as Sanderus writes in his Gandavum), when the Calvinists ravaged Ghent, the same relics with very many others were carried into the castle built at Ghent by the emperor Charles V; and from there afterwards in 1577 they were honourably deposited in the collegiate church of St Bavo, which is now the cathedral.]
Part Two — the Life of St Gertrude, First Abbess of Nivelles, by an anonymous contemporary monk #
From the Bollandist March volume and the MS of the fathers of the Jesuit college of Fuliens (royal monastery of St Bernard), Paris.
Preliminary observations #
1 The Benedictine Order celebrates several Gertrudes famous for piety: Gertrude the virgin and abbess of Nivelles, who was as it were the standard-bearer of the rest; Gertrude the noble woman, widow of duke Rigomar, foundress of the Hamage convent, sometimes called of Marchiennes because her sacred relics are kept in the monastery of Marchiennes; Gertrude the virgin, granddaughter of duke Rigomar and of the aforementioned Gertrude through her son Sigefrid and Serta, foundress and abbess of the monastery of Blangy in Artois; to whom must be added Gertrude the first abbess of Habenda or Remiremont, whom some call Gertrude. These Gertrudes flourished in this sixth age which we have in hand; Gertrudes of later ages followed: the illustrious virgin who under Charlemagne’s rule fled into Franconia to preserve her chastity and is said to have built the monasteries of Karlsburg and Neustadt of the Benedictine Order — wrongly confounded by some with Gertrude of Nivelles; Gertrude, formerly duchess, abbess of Zwiefalten in the twelfth century; Gertrude abbess of Trzebnica in Poland in the thirteenth; Gertrude the most illustrious virgin and abbess of Elps in the fourteenth; Gertrude the recluse in Westphalia; and lastly Gertrude of the Cistercian Order, prioress of Bijloke near Ghent, and Gertrude the nun of St Saviour’s mount in Germany. Leaving these to later ages, we must now treat of Gertrude praised in the first place.
2 St Gertrude the virgin, abbess of Nivelles, daughter of duke Pippin and mayor of the palace (in ancient parchments written “Geretrudis”), had two anonymous writers of her Life: one a monk of Nivelles who lived her contemporary and is said at the end of the Life to have been present at her death; the other a clerk or monk of Nivelles who interpolated the primary author about the tenth century. The former work is divided into two books — of her life and of her miracles; the latter into three books, the first on her carnal nobility, the second on her spiritual nobility, the third on her virtues. The first book of the later anonymous writer Johannes Bollandus published on 21 February as the Life of blessed Pippin, Gertrude’s father, omitting the preface in which he observed these things in commendation of the earlier author: “I think it worth the labour for the edification of holy virgins, especially of our church, to unfold what God granted concerning the life of the most blessed virgin Gertrude. Therefore, divine clemency inspiring, we have resolved to write the life of the most pious virgin for their edification, according as he delivered it to us in most true and faithful narration, though in unpolished speech — he who saw her life and virtues with his own eyes and was present at her sacred obsequies when the divine odour spread through the whole cell.” We reprint that primary ancient writing, contracted by Surius and sincerely edited by Henschenius, collated with the MS codex of the fathers of Fuliens of the royal monastery of St Bernard at Paris, with which we shall now and then compare the interpolator’s text.
3 The Roman continuation of the work in the preliminary commentary to the Life of St Gertrude of 17 March sets against us Gabriel Pennotto, arguing that the Benedictines claimed Gertrude for their Order. Strange if clear-sighted men subscribe to Pennotto, since even if we let Gertrude go she could by no means be enrolled among Augustinian canonesses: for before the ninth century the name and institution of canonesses was unheard-of in Gaul; it is first heard in the Council of Châlon, which for the nuns declining from their primitive religion and styling themselves canonesses first prescribed an instruction “for the nuns who call themselves canonesses” (ch. 33 ff.). The noteworthy words of ch. 33: “It has pleased this sacred assembly briefly to write certain little admonitions to those nuns who call themselves canonesses, since those who live under the norm of the monastic rule have the whole ordering of their life written in the same rule which they profess.” The name of canonesses, then, was new at that time — a new religion for which the council dictated rules, which the emperor Louis the Pious three years later in the Council of Aachen (in which a rule was made both for canons and for canonesses) took care to explain.
4 Nor even if we grant that canonesses existed before the ninth century can it be proved that their institution flourished in the Belgian monasteries of Nivelles, Andenne, Maubeuge and the rest. In the council held at Liptines in the Cambrai country in 743, St Boniface proposes to the nuns the single rule of St Benedict (ch. 7): “We have decreed that the monks and the monastic handmaids of God should study to order, govern and live in their monasteries or guest-houses according to the rule of St Benedict, and not neglect to live their own life according to the aforementioned father’s ordinance.” At that time, then, in the Belgian parts there were no other handmaids of God monastic or nuns save Benedictines, since the council indefinitely bids the monastic handmaids of God live according to St Benedict’s rule. And surely who could think that St Amand — himself monk-bishop and eminent propagator of the monastic order — would have incited Itta, St Gertrude’s mother, and Gertrude herself to the religion of canonesses, had they then existed?
5 At Nivelles, a town of Brabant, Itta built a double monastery of men and maidens; over the maidens she set her daughter Gertrude. In the men’s monastery there lived not canons but monks, among whom St Foillan, brother of blessed Fursey — a monk and abbot of monks formerly in Saxony — lived for some while with St Gertrude. This is proved clearer than light by the contemporary panegyrist of St Gertrude here edited by us, when in the book of Miracles, ch. 3, he describes a fire breaking out in the monastery of Nivelles in these words: “So violent, as they say, did the flame burst forth that none of the monks or virgins or men assembled there had any hope of delivering the monastery from the fire”; and ch. 11, treating of St Gertrude’s festival: “When that day drew near, all who had assembled there for that solemnity — men and women, monks and virgins of Christ.” There were then in the monastery of Nivelles monks, not canons; and there were nuns, not canonesses, whom monks governed — Benedictine nuns, I say, since by the synod of Liptines the monastic handmaids of God in the Belgian regions were bound to live according to St Benedict’s rule. So thoroughly had that contemporary author, the Nivelles monk, imbibed St Benedict’s rule that he more than once used the rule’s own words in this work: in the book of Miracles ch. 2 “they bore an equal service of servitude” — the very words read in the rule ch. 3; and he uses “the work of God” (ch. 6) and “the divine work” (ch. 9) for what they call the divine office, as St Benedict throughout the rule. These matters are more fully and copiously treated in the preface to this tome, where we expended time in showing when the nuns of Nivelles and others declined from the Benedictine rule and institute — to which we had hoped they might sometime be recalled by the example of the canonesses of the Horreum at Trier.
6 Niviala or Nivigella — modern Nivelles, a town of Brabant, famous for the monastery of St Gertrude — is situated between Brussels and Mons in Hainault, six leagues intervening on either side, subject formerly to the bishop of Liège, now to that of Namur. Here are two more celebrated churches: St Peter’s, occupied by forty secular canons; and the other collegiate of St Paul, consisting of thirty canons.
The author’s prologue #
By the bestowal of holy and inseparable charity we believe, and with inviolate and stable faith we hold, that those desiring to keep the way of the heavenly country and utterly to relinquish earthly gains, for the obtaining of eternal rewards, can be helped if we study by writing or preaching truly to admonish some things, though few, of the life or conversation of the saints and holiest virgins of Christ for the edification or profit of our neighbours: that the examples of the foregoing saints and holiest virgins may avail to illuminate the darkness of our heart with the flame of charity and the heat of praiseful compunction. Therefore, the Holy Spirit the worker of all things helping, I shall endeavour by writing to intimate to your charity concerning the life and conversation of the most blessed virgin and handmaid of Christ, mother Gertrude, who lived according to God and regular discipline under heaven’s vault — according to what we have either seen or heard through fit witnesses, Christ and the consecrated virgin abbess Dominica and the holy congregation of the monastery of Nivelles (where the holy virgin seemed to preside) petitioning. But in what order she assumed her earthly origin’s genealogy is too long to insert into this discourse; for who dwelling in Europe is ignorant of the loftiness of this descent, the names of her stock?
Here begins the Life #
1 When the holy maiden of God Gertrude was in the house of her parents, beside her mother of blessed memory Itta, day and night she meditated on the word and wisdom, and grew, dear to God and beloved of men, above her coevals. This was the first beginning of her election in Christ’s service, as we learnt through a just and truthful man who was present there: for when her father Pippin had invited King Dagobert to a noble banquet in his house, there came there a pestilential man, son of the duke of the Austrasians, who asked of the king and of the girl’s parents that the girl be promised him in marriage after the manner of the world. For earthly ambition and mutual friendship it pleased the king; and he persuaded the girl’s father that she with her mother be called into his presence. They not knowing for what cause the king called the infant, she is asked amid the feasting by the king whether she would have that boy — wrought in gold, clad in silk — for bridegroom. She, as though filled with fury, spurned him with an oath and said: “For neither him nor any other earthly man save Christ the Lord will I have for spouse” — so that the king himself and his nobles greatly wondered at the things spoken by so small a child at God’s bidding. That boy withdrew confounded, full of wrath. The holy maid betook herself to her mother; and from that day her parents knew that she had been loved by the king as it were.
2 After fourteen years, when her father Pippin migrated from this light, she followed her mother in widowhood and served her soberly and chastely in obedience and in God’s commandments. And while the aforementioned mother of the household daily pondered what she should do both for herself and for her orphaned daughter, the man of God Amandus the bishop, coming to their house and preaching God’s word by the Lord’s bidding, asked that she build a monastery for herself and her daughter Gertrude, God’s handmaid, and Christ’s family. She, as soon as she understood the knowledge of the unknown thing pertaining to the salvation of souls, received the sacred veil and delivered herself to God and all she had. But the enemy and instigator of the human race, who from the beginning is envious of good works, strengthened the hearts of the wicked to resist, so that she sustained no small temptation from those who ought to have helped her to do God’s will. What injuries, ignominies and hardships the aforementioned handmaid of God with her daughter suffered for Christ’s name would take long to write if told severally. But this much: how great devotion and what divine longing she had in herself — lest violators of souls should violently snatch her daughter to the enticements or pleasures of this world, she seized the shearer’s iron and cut off the holy maid’s hair after the likeness of a crown. And the holy handmaid of Christ, giving thanks to God, rejoiced that she had been deemed worthy in this brief life to receive a crown upon her head for Christ, that there she might deserve to have the everlasting crown, the integrity of body and soul. Then merciful God, a helper in tribulations, recalled the adversaries themselves to the concord of peace: the quarrels ceased; the devil’s part was vanquished. The mother of the household Itta delivered her daughter Gertrude, God’s elect, to the priests of the Lord to receive the sacred veil with her companions, and established her to preside over the holy flock of coenobites, Christ ordaining. For the virgin herself had great continence of manners: in sobriety of mind and moderation of words outrunning her age. She was gifted with charity, fair of face but fairer of mind, entire in chastity, liberal in alms, given to fasts and prayers, provident for the cares of the poor and pilgrims, pious to the sick and aged, strenuous toward the young in discipline, and with the highest zeal kept pastoral care over the church vessels. And through her messengers — men of good testimony — she summoned learned men from the city of Rome and from transmarine parts to teach the songs of the divine law, that she and hers, God inspiring, might deserve to have what should be meditated.
3 All these things thus disposed according to divine order, full of days and perfect in age, leaving posterity the example of good work — having issue and seeing grandchildren by them — more or less in the sixtieth year of her age, of blessed memory, Itta, after the death of her most illustrious husband Pippin in the twelfth year, commending her spirit to God and the angels, migrated to the Lord and is honourably delivered to burial in the monastery of Nivelles under the roof of blessed Peter the apostle. When therefore the blessed handmaid of God Gertrude, her mother dead, had alone received the whole burden of the government upon herself, she thought within herself of the heavenly contemplation which she had wished to have without the din of worldlings. To good and faithful stewards of the brothers without, and to spiritual sisters within the monastery’s enclosure, she commended the domestic care: that by days and nights in holy agony she might fight with holy vigils and prayers, readings and fasts, against spiritual wickedness. So the issue of the matter lay open in her that she committed wellnigh the whole library of the divine law to memory, and openly laid open to hearers the obscure mysteries of allegory, the Holy Spirit revealing. Likewise she built churches of the saints and other notable edifices from the foundations, and daily ministered sustenance with all liberality to orphans, widows, captives and pilgrims.
4 Nor must it be passed over, as I think, what God’s handmaid herself told us, as though stricken with terror. When she had stood at the altar of St Sixtus the martyr for prayer’s sake, she saw descending upon her a flaming sphere translucent, so that the whole basilica was illumined with its brightness for about half an hour; and little by little it withdrew from which it had come; and afterwards it appeared again upon her in the same manner, other sisters beholding it. What did the manifestation of this light indicate save the visitation of the true light which enlightens every saint praying for himself and for all the faithful in Christ?
5 On a certain day, when her envoys were in peril at sea, the commemoration of the same Gertrude of blessed memory opportunely succoured them to life. While they were sailing on the deep for the monastery’s business in tranquillity, there appeared far away as it were a ship of wondrous size coming from the side. When it drew near, a great tempest arose and the sea swelled with huge billows; and see, a great and terrible sea-beast appeared to the envoys as though at a sling’s cast: they saw not the whole of it but part of its back. The sailors, trembling, hoping nothing of life, vowed their vows to their idols; but the envoys, invoking the Lord’s name, awaited their last hour. And one of ours, who still lives, cried out and said thrice: “Gertrude, help us, as you did promise!” He surely who saw and heard was witness: the beast, as he repeated the word the third time, sought the abyss; and they with joy and tranquillity gained the port that night — so did Christ deign to deliver His poor ones from death through His handmaid’s prayer.
6 After some years, when by reason of excessive abstinence and the keeping of vigils her little body was heavily wearied with great sickness, by divine revelation the blessed virgin Gertrude knew that her passing from this light drew near. With the counsel therefore of God’s servants and handmaids, all the honour and the name of honour and the pastoral care which she bodily bore toward Christ’s flock she utterly relinquished for Christ’s love, save only the spiritual things; and her niece Wulfetrude — reared beside her feet from the cradle, imbued with letters and nourished under the norm of the holy rule — she established conjointly in her stead to rule God’s flock and minister to the poor. The consecrated maid Wulfetrude was then in her twentieth year; she too was sprung of an illustrious family of the ancient race of the Franks: serene of countenance, dear to the household, gentle to subjects, hard to the proud, liberal to the poor, dutiful to parents, bland in speech, fervent in charity toward God and neighbour, and remained pure in continence. Now it befell, from paternal hatred, that kings, queens and even priests through the devil’s envy wished to drag her from her place, first by persuasion, afterwards by force, that they might unjustly possess the things of God over which the blessed maid presided. But protected by the Lord’s mercy and the saints’ prayers, Christ — to whom she had vowed herself handmaid — wondrously resisted all her adversaries; and God so conferred His grace upon her that those who had before been ravishers and accusers through covetousness were afterwards her defenders by largesse and beneficence. All things being thus well disposed and Christ’s churches restored, in the eleventh year after she received the flock committed to her to rule, she is held to her bed for more than fifty days by an invading languor, bestowing liberal alms upon the poor and needy after her custom, remitted to all their dues according to the Gospel, received peace and blessing from all. Hoping faithfully amid the spiritual handmaids of God in faith and hope in Christ, in the thirtieth year of her age she sent forth her spirit on the ninth of the Kalends of December, and is covered in the bosom of the basilica of blessed Peter the apostle with a marble stone, where she awaits the day of the resurrection of all the saints. — From where we digressed, let us return there.
7 The blessed handmaid of God Gertrude, then, after she had loosed the bond of honour from her conscience, for the space of about three months ceased not to speak — praying, exhorting, preaching God’s word to her own: rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, unconquered in mind, serene of countenance; she longed for the last day of her passing to be at hand: she was hastening from prison to the kingdom, from darkness to light, from death to life; and while she was alone in the world here in body, daily she desired to pass over in soul to the eternal. She advanced in virtues, served singularly in continual prayers, affliction, abstinence. She added also a harsh hair-shirt garment, and clad her little body secretly; that she might have no sweetness of refreshment in this life save where the saints shall shine as the sun in their Father’s kingdom. And when she came to the last day, she decreed that in the very place of burial they should put upon her no woollen or linen garment, save one very mean veil (which a certain pilgrim nun had sent her many days before for a blessing) to cover her head, and the hair-shirt itself in the sepulchre where she rests in peace; and to be covered with no other veil save these two — the hair-shirt wherewith she was clad, and the old cloth wherewith that hair-shirt was covered. For she used to say that superfluous thing avails neither the dying nor the living: which wise men testify to be true. Then, when the day of her soul’s assumption drew near, she called one of the brothers and commanded him, saying: “Go hastily to that pilgrim named Ultan, who is far off in the monastery called Fosses, and say to him: ‘Christ’s virgin Gertrude sent me to ask you on what day she is to migrate from this light, for she says she fears much and likewise rejoices’; and he shall tell you what you must report to me. Go; doubt not.” At once he, the bidding fulfilled, asked what had been enjoined him. And that servant of God Ultan without delay gave answer to the messenger and said: “Today is the sixteenth of the Kalends of April; tomorrow, amid the solemnities of the Masses, that handmaid of God and virgin of Christ Gertrude is to migrate from the body. And tell her not to fear nor tremble at her death, but to go gladly; for blessed Patrick the bishop with the chosen angels of God is prepared to receive her with mighty glory. Go you also swiftly.” The brother who had been sent asked him whether he had seen this by divine revelation, that he might show it to him in order. And that servant of God Ultan said in answer: “Go you too, brother, hastening; know this, that the next day she shall migrate to the Lord. Why do you question me further?” Returning, he announced to Christ’s handmaid what had been said to him. She, as though waking from sleep, rendered a countenance glad with joy, thanking God that He had deigned through His servant to console His handmaid. So she remained joyful in His promise, spending the whole night with the sisters in psalms and prayers. On the next day — Sunday, about the sixth hour — according to the man of God’s word she received the most sacred viaticum of Christ’s body and blood. And when the priest had finished the secret sentence of the Lord’s [prayer], in the thirty-third year of her age, on the fifteenth of the Kalends of April, giving thanks to her Creator who deigned to call her to His kingdom without corruption, she rendered up her spirit desired of God. While I and another brother named Richinus had been summoned there for the sisters’ consolation, that servant of God called me by name — Richinus — and said: “do you perceive anything?” I answered: “No, save that I see the sisters in great grief.” When I had said this, there came a most sweet odour, as though the fragrance of mingled unguents perfumed that little cell where the holy body lay. And when we departed from there we still felt in our nostrils the sweetness of that wondrous odour. When all the offices which were done about her body had been honourably fulfilled, in her coffin which she had long ago prepared for herself, with the divine praises of the priests and God’s handmaids, the body of Christ’s most blessed virgin Gertrude is honourably delivered to burial — where the benefits of her prayers are daily bestowed.
Here begin the miracles which the Lord deigned to show after her death #
1 When we see many men living an angelic life in this world — from where can this be, save that, though they live bodily here among men as long as they subsist in the body, yet their mind and conscience are made firm in eternity, and their heart is unceasingly occupied in the contemplation of the Godhead? So also this handmaid of Christ Gertrude, whose life and conversation we have written from the first age of her youth — though she lived here carnally among mortals and was governess of the servants and handmaids of Christ who lived under her sway, yet she never gave over to oblivion the inner and perpetual life, nor lost the state of her rectitude, nor the gravity of her manners, nor the discipline of rigour. Therefore it is manifest that she has merited with almighty God that no small miracles should be wrought through her after her death — that it may now be known to all who knew her life or her bodily abstinence how much she can obtain with God by her prayers — when we shall have commemorated and brought to light some of the virtues which the Lord, as petitioners’ faith demands, has deigned to show at her sepulchre.
2 There was a certain abbess in the monastery of Trier named Modesta, who from her infancy had been consecrated to the Lord, and seemed likewise bound to St Gertrude in familiar divine friendship. And though far placed and far sundered from one another bodily, with many thousands of miles of land intervening — what they could not do with their eyes’ gaze, they were ever present to one another in mind and in the heart’s love: for they bore an equal service of servitude and served the Lord equally without guile in sincerity of heart. After a great space of time it befell — what I wish to recall to your memory by narrating — that on a certain day the aforementioned handmaid of God Modesta, being in her monastery, entered her church for prayer’s sake and prostrated herself before the altar of blessed Mary ever-Virgin. When she had risen from finished prayer and was looking round on every side, she suddenly saw and saw St Gertrude standing at the altar’s right side in the same habit and the same form in which she had been fashioned. And she said to her: “Sister Modesta, hold this vision certain and know without all ambiguity that today at this same hour I have been released from the dwelling of this flesh. I am Gertrude, whom you did love much.” And this said, she was taken away from the beholder’s eyes. Then she pondered silently within herself what so great a vision must mean, and told no man a word of that vision the same day. When the next day came, the bishop of the city named Chlodulf came to the monastery of the aforementioned handmaid of God Modesta. Then she, amid other colloquies, the virgin of God, asked the bishop about St Gertrude — in what habit, order or form she had been. He at once narrated in order the stature of her body and the form of her comeliness. Then blessed Modesta understood by the sign she had heard from the bishop that what she had heard before was true, and said to him: “This I now confess to you which I before concealed: it was revealed to me yesterday about the sixth hour that she migrated from this light on that very day and hour.” And afterwards she unfolded the whole matter in order to the bishop. The aforementioned bishop Chlodulf, marking that day and hour, found the order of the matter so done as the aforementioned abbess had first shown.
3 After the tenth year from the death of St Gertrude Christ’s virgin, they heard that fire had broken out in the monastery of Nivelles where that virgin of Christ St Gertrude had presided as long as she lived in the body. So violently, as they say, did the vehement flame burst forth that none of the monks or virgins or men assembled there had any hope of delivering the monastery from the fire. The handmaids of God who were congregated there fled outside the wall of the monastery to the neighbouring places. Then a certain man to whom the care of ruling the monastery had been committed, suddenly lifting his eyes above, saw St Gertrude standing on the summit of the reredos in the same form and habit in which she had been, and with that same veil wherewith she was ever covered she was beating the flame from the house. The man, not terrified by so great a vision but filled with great joy, exhorted his companions to stand fast. He himself with swift course ascended aloft to see the issue of the matter. Then wondrously they suddenly saw the monastery delivered from that fire.
4 Another time also certain of the sisters were admonished by a vision that in the very bed where St Gertrude, Christ’s handmaid, after the labour of vigils and the instance of prayer used to lay her wearied limbs, no man should further dare to rest. Then the aforementioned handmaid of God the lady abbess, St Gertrude’s niece who had been reared beside her feet, was filled with joy that the Lord deigned to manifest her by so great miracles of signs. The whole congregation being convened, they took up that little bed and carried it with great honour and God’s praises and set it down in the basilica of St Paul the apostle, where now the Lord deigns to show many signs and virtues.
5 There was a certain girl in the same region whom a most grievous sickness had so pressed that no physician could heal her for many years; and at last she lost the light of her eyes and was made blind. Then that girl’s parents took her and led her with them to the monastery of Nivelles, that they might find there some physicians who could cure her. Then on that very night St Gertrude appeared to her in a vision and said to her: “Maid, doubt not, but believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and go to the bed which is placed in the church of blessed Paul the apostle where Gertrude used to rest: there you shall receive health from every tribulation you suffer in your body.” The girl, by reason of the heaviness of her infirmity, could not come there before the third day. And when the congregation was standing at the third hour for the divine work and the work was being completed, the girl who had been infirm coming up, the priests took her and led her to the little bed where she had been bidden to walk. And when she had prostrated herself in prayer to the Lord and bowed toward the bed, at once her eyes were opened, and her whole body which had before been wounded was so suddenly healed that it was as though she had never had a wound. She gave thanks to God and was filled with great joy, and returned to her parents in exultation.
6 These things so done, it befell that the aforementioned abbess, the niece of blessed Gertrude Christ’s virgin [Wulfetrude], migrated from this light — she who had afterwards been governess of the monastery of Nivelles. Then the whole community unanimously chose for themselves one girl, sprung of noble stock, as abbess, named Agnes, who likewise had been reared by blessed Gertrude. She afterwards built a basilica in honour of Christ’s virgin St Gertrude. On the same day the church had been built, when the bed had been carried there with honour, that night all the sisters kept solemnities and vigils in that church with the highest reverence. The matins being finished and God’s work completed, and the seven lamps which were ever custom to burn in that oratory extinguished — when morning came and those sisters entered the same church for prayer, they saw all the lamps burning which they had left extinguished. From where it happened that this miracle was published through that whole region, and the fame went forth of the virtues of Christ’s handmaid Gertrude, so that all, whether far or near, coming to the virgin of God’s sepulchre there sought the remedy of souls and bodies alike; and with God’s help all who sought aid there with love of the Godhead returned sound and whole from there.
7 There was a certain man in these neighbouring parts whose wife was made blind. Then her husband led her where the holy virgin rests, to the aforementioned monastery of Nivelles. When they entered the church and she stood beneath a certain lamp, suddenly that candle was poured out where she stood underneath, and was poured over the mantle wherewith she was clad. All who were there and saw this miracle, taking of that drop, anointed her eyes — and at once the eyes of the woman who had been blind were enlightened. On the next day she was comforted in faith and hope in the virtues of the holy virgin Gertrude, and returned whole with joy to her home. Since it is long enough to enumerate the whole in order — how many benefits God through her daily bestows for His mercy’s sake on all who flee there for refuge and seek the cause of salvation from her — we have touched a few of many: how all coming there from every side who invoke her name with true faith deserve by her holy prayers to return from there unharmed, whatever tribulation they are oppressed by.
8 Another time also, when robbers had seized a certain boy, they bound him, wishing to sell him into captivity outside the country. While he was long held bound in chains, calling to mind the name of St Gertrude with confidence and imploring her to deign to lend him aid, at once the bonds wherewith he was bound fell from his hands; and he began to run to free himself. The men who had held him bound likewise began to run after him to seize him, and could not. And so the boy was freed from the hand of robbers and his enemies through St Gertrude’s help.
9 Again another time afterwards, a certain man, found in great crimes, as was just, his lord commanded to be held and bound in chains. Then that unhappy man, set in anguish and terrified with exceeding dread — for all who were present hoped nothing of the length of this life — he who was bound was comforted in hope, entreating the holy virgin of Christ Gertrude to help him in his misery. At once and at that very time the iron bonds wherewith he was straitened were broken, and he at once betook himself to the monastery of Nivelles and found all the monastery’s gates and the church doors open, and came to the holy bed itself, and there was freed through the holy virgin Gertrude’s power.
10 In the thirty-third year after the death of blessed Gertrude, God inspiring, it came into the heart of her sister named Begga that she herself wished to build a monastery. Afterwards she came in such spiritual devotion to the aforementioned monastery of Nivelles and asked the aforementioned abbess and the whole congregation to lend her some aid in the spiritual cause, from which she had most in necessity the beginning of her devotion. That whole congregation with most loving mind received the petition she had asked; and they gave her relics and books of the holy scriptures; likewise they gave her in the holy habit elder spiritual sisters who could teach that monastery the discipline of the regular life and the norm of religion, as was fitting at the beginning of such a work. And of that bed they gave her part — the one in which St Gertrude her sister migrated to Christ. Then the most Christian matron, having received all these things pertaining to religion’s reverence, carried all these with her with honour and reverence to her monastery, filled with joy and great exultation. When they drew near the monastery where they were bound, they lifted their voices in songs and sang praises to the Lord; and they carried the relics and the holy bed which they had brought with them, and set it beside the altar of St Geneviève the virgin. What man could unfold in words how many there are daily cleansed of the demon, how many sick healed? For from whatever tribulation they cry to the Lord there, they return delivered. In the second year, all things perfected and well disposed, that matron migrated to the Lord.
11 Not many days afterwards there came to the same monastery a certain religious woman, sprung of noble stock, named Adula — in all things a true handmaid of Christ, chaste in habit, religious in humility, unfeigned in charity, liberal in alms to the old and the poor, hospitable to the needy and pilgrims. Yet she had a doubt whether the Lord deigned to show such signs and virtues by the merit of blessed Gertrude or not. From where it befell that a contention arose therefrom — as it were in jest — between the aforementioned matron and one handmaid of God dwelling in the same monastery. On a certain day the matron asked her, saying: “On what day was the festival of St Gertrude?” She answering said: “In the fifth week of Lent on the sixth feria.” The other said: “Far be it from me that for this solemnity I should wish to add anything to the allotted task of our servitude beyond the custom in the refection.” She answering said: “If blessed Gertrude can obtain anything with the Lord, she will make you on that same day, willing or unwilling, do the charity due to religion.” When that day drew near, all who had assembled there for that solemnity — men and women, monks and virgins of Christ — celebrated that day with honour and reverence. And after the finished solemnity of the Masses, they took food and drink rejoicing with thanksgiving, of all the provisions lawful to be eaten at the Lenten season; the matron alone did not eat that day. She had a little son whom she loved much. The infant, coming in, asked of her that he might be allowed to play. She said to him: “Do what you will.” The infant played and ran here and there. And by sudden chance it befell that he fell into the spring which was there, and lay there so long until the sisters rose from table filled with joy, glad and well refreshed. One of the sisters came up and said: “Do you know that this matron’s son is dead?” They asked her who had slain him. She answered: “He fell into the spring and is drowned there.” Then the nun who had before contended with the matron about St Gertrude’s virtues cried out with a loud voice and said: “St Gertrude, you have done this for her sake, because this infant’s mother would not believe your virtues which the Lord has wrought through you.” And again she said: “I beseech your holiness, Gertrude virgin of Christ, and adjure you by our Lord Jesus Christ, that as you can obtain with the Lord, so deign to raise him to life.” And she began to go in haste to fetch the infant. As she went, his mother met her and said: “What are you doing, sister?” She answering said a third time with an oath: “What I do, do you likewise. Believe in truth that in this same hour St Gertrude shall restore your son to you alive.” She took the infant and set him beside blessed Gertrude’s bed. Wondrously soon, they looking on, the infant who had been dead arose. From that day the aforementioned matron began to believe St Gertrude’s virtues. At the same hour, convening her whole household, she afterwards fulfilled what she had before killed of charity. And the next day she celebrated Mass in honour of Christ’s virgin Gertrude, and took refection with all the sisters. The infant, without any hurt, ministered to them and with his hands offered drink to each in order. The aforementioned matron then adorned that holy bed most beautifully, girded all about with gold and precious gems. And lest this perchance should seem incredible to anyone, I call God to witness that I saw with my eyes and learnt through fit witnesses this which I have written. Now of her virtues and miracles let enough be said: yet we could not unfold all in order which the Lord daily deigns to work in her name. Let us now therefore entreat the Lord that through His virgin St Gertrude’s prayers He deign to help us — to whom is honour, power and empire and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Appendix from the Interpolator #
Of the girl born blind who was enlightened. In the times of abbess Eggiburg there was in the maritime parts, in the district of Waas, a girl named Adelberga, blind from birth. She was already in her twenty-second year and had never seen this sun and the fairest adornment of God’s works. Christ’s spouse, pitying her lasting calamity with wonted mercy, offered herself to her unasked in a nocturnal vision, clad in a whitest mantle, and accosted her with such speech: “Adelberga, go to Gertrude’s sepulchre, and by her benefit you shall be enlightened.” Lest she think this promise vain, she repeated it a third time in admonition. The girl, arising, told her mother the virgin vision and the promised grace of light. Her mother answered: “I think you not, daughter, of such merit that Christ’s spouse Gertrude should deign to appear to you: see lest rather from the brooding of your desire you have conceived these vain dreams.” She, saddened by her mother’s answer, yet did not lose the hope divinely imparted to her of recovering sight; but going to a certain priest of God, told him a vision of this kind. He, exhorting the girl with faithful and wholesome counsel, said: “Doubt not, daughter: go where the most pious virgin’s grace invites you. For though she had not called you, yet you ought uninvited to have gone to her mercy; how much more since she said to you, Come, and you shall be enlightened?” Comforted by these words of the man of God, she began her journey. A whole month being now consumed on the way, she came to the village of Brabant to the monastery called Luthoula, where while she rested at night scarce wearied by the way’s toil, she saw blessed Gertrude in the same form and habit saying to her: “Hasten; delay not to go to the virgin of Christ’s tomb, that you may receive light.” Recreated from all weariness by this joyful vision she arose and hastily seized the road. She came therefore to the monastery where she was bound; and, evening being come, before the venerable sepulchre prostrating herself in prayer, she began to invoke the most bounteous mercy of Christ’s spouse with most devoted supplication and with tears. The nuns also, keeping vigils with her in charity, praying together, bore aid to her vows. Nor did she long delay her mercy who had warned her to hasten, inviting her unasked: but at the first cock-crow she opened her eyes hitherto closed and damned to long darkness, and clothed them with joyful light. And so the nuns who were present saw the blood bursting forth from her parted eyelids and dropping as it were tears. When it was wiped away, the girl began to see clear and bright things, began to enjoy a new light and to wonder at the unknown face of things. So what nature’s parsimony had given less, Christ’s spouse’s liberality most fully restored. Truly a spouse of Christ, who in the working of virtues deserved to exhibit His likeness — that as her spouse and Lord opened the eyes of the man born blind, so she in her own sex enlightened one born blind. Finally, that promise of the Truth, He that believes in me, the works that I do shall he do also (John 14:12), can no one doubt to have been more familiarly fulfilled in this virgin’s servant. The enlightened girl, then, rendered worthy thanks to her helper, and the whole choir of the sisters standing round paid the Lord His due praises, who in His saints is ever to be feared.
Of the crippled girl set erect. In the hundred and twenty-seventh year from the death of the most blessed Gertrude, the fifteenth year of the reign of Charles the magnificent emperor, the virgin of Christ exhibited to the faithful an admonition and incitement of holiness after this manner. There was in the Ripuarian district a certain girl named Richburgis, so crippled from her first years that she leaned wholly upon her knees, and could neither stretch her feet to step nor raise the upper parts of her body to men’s gaze. With this disease she laboured also under the hardship of want: her own weakness had denied her the faculty of working, and her parents’ poverty sufficed not to supply necessaries. At length, to seek alms, she was presented to the eyes of queen Hildegard. Struck dumb by the novelty of her deformity, the queen was smitten at heart and bade the girl be brought to the palace to take sufficient necessaries from the royal table. While there for some time she made known her infirmity and could not now bear the various tumults attending the court’s amplitude by reason of her infirmity’s molestation, she asked to be sent to the monastery of Nivelles and there to be sustained more commodiously by the royal alms. For she had heard very many of the virgin of mercy’s ensigns, and therefore wished to go, hoping with most faithful hope that counsel would be taken for her soul or her ailing body, or perchance for both. The queen, benignly assenting to her wishes, had her carried to blessed Gertrude’s monastery, where she was mercifully received by the nuns and conveniently lodged in a certain cell. She was committed also to a certain pilgrim dwelling in the congregation, to minister to her and teach her the psalter. Received therefore and made secure of the things pertaining outwardly to the care of the body, she turned her whole soul to the study of prayer and began most devotedly to intercede with benign God and the virgin’s most merciful benignity for her lasting weakness. The heavenly grace, mercifully regarding her, delayed not to visit her through the minister of His mercy, blessed Gertrude. On a certain night, the sisters rising to the matin office, she remained in her little cell and invoked God’s mercy with wonted prayers — when see, the Virgin, entering, stood before her bed, holding in her hand a taper wondrously radiant and illuminating the whole dwelling with its splendour: for she who while living had ever borne the lamp of good works in her hands by the Lord’s precept, still appeared bearing the taper in token of her past action. The maid, trembling at the novelty of this vision — the virgin of God uttered words of wonted sweetness: “Why do you not sleep, girl?” She answered: “How should I sleep, venerable lady, who sustain so violent a toil of crippled body?” Then the Virgin with serene countenance said: “Be steadfast in soul; for if you hold sure faith, you shall not long feel this toil. Tell the sisters what you have heard and seen, and announce that Gertrude appeared to you. But if they will not believe, tomorrow before the third hour I will show in you so sure a sign that they can in no wise doubt it is so.” This said, the Virgin departed. At morn the girl, convening the sisters, set forth the whole matter in order. It was the vigil of the Lord’s Epiphany when this apparition of the Virgin was made. The sisters, certain of the vision nor doubting her coming health, brought her — a bath being prepared — to wash her little body, and strove to adorn her with shining clean garments as though in preparation for the heavenly visitation. Suddenly the blessed Gertrude, coming upon them in the very ministry of those handling her with the taper, appeared to the girl; and she was seen to touch her crippled limbs gently with her health-bringing hand. At which touch all the bonds of her lasting fettering were at once loosed, so that the girl at once raised herself on her feet and followed the Virgin withdrawing from her with sight and voice as far as the oratory of St Agatha, in which they testify that the spouse of Christ herself migrated in body. Then that pilgrim asked her, her worshipper, saying: “Daughter, what did you see?” She answered: “My lady Gertrude, holding a most splendid taper in her hand.” She, taking her right hand, led her into the church of St Mary Mother of God and set her before the little structure where blessed Gertrude used to pray. There too she testifies with sudden cry that she sees the Virgin. At whose voice the whole convent of nuns was at once present, and finding the girl erect and standing upon her feet with firm effort, most surely understood from her health that the divine form had appeared to her eyes. All therefore falling upon the earth began with profuse tears to magnify the divine power and to proclaim to the gathering crowd the Virgin’s most manifest mercy. Then, all the folk attending, they led the girl into the church of blessed Peter to holy Gertrude’s sepulchre with much devotion of exulting soul, praising and glorifying God, who through the merits of the most sacred virgin ceases not to visit them with frequent benefits — who is great and exceedingly to be praised, and of His greatness there is no end.
[Editorial note: To these miracles in Henschenius are appended letters in which St Gertrude’s relics are recorded as inspected in these words: “Let all know that in the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 1292, on the fourth feria before the Division of the Apostles, namely on the day of the martyrs SS Kilian and his companions, the relics of the most blessed virgin Gertrude in her shrine were inspected at the command and ordinance of the chapter of Nivelles — the lady Elizabs de Barbais abbess, Emma de T… provost, Sibylla de J…, James of St Syro … and other canons and canonesses of Nivelles; and they found the head and jaws (three teeth only excepted) and the whole body, save the bones…” And many of the chapter and other outside persons saw the aforementioned relics on the aforementioned day and year; at which innumerable miracles are wrought to this day, of which a few here narrated may suffice. There is then related the donation of Odelard, a Brabantine noble, who, angry with his daughter Berlanda, betook himself to Nivelles and handed over to most holy Gertrude whatever he had in estates — with turf and twig and a knife with white haft — and deprived his daughter of all right of inheritance. In that same conveyance a stupendous thing befell: for at the nod of the eternal God the shrine in which the holy virgin lay opened itself, and the lifeless corpse stretched out its hand and, in the sight of all, received the twig with the turf and the knife from the man’s hand into the shrine; and it remained closed and sealed as it had been before. Likewise is related the raising of a five-year-old girl who, plunged into a spring, received her life again at St Gertrude’s altar in 1644; which miracle Robert bishop of Liège willed to be celebrated yearly on the eve of the Nones of August. It is wonderful in how great honour this saint is held among the Belgians, who has no fewer than forty churches consecrated to her, which Gerard van Riet, abbot of St Gertrude’s of Louvain, enumerates in his lucubration on St Gertrude. The aforementioned consecration is kept on the Nones of December; the Elevation on the Ides of February; the first Translation on the third of the Kalends of June, the second on the Ides of April in the various martyrologies. The body of St Gertrude in the church of St Peter at St Gertrude’s is seen under the high altar enclosed in a shrine of wrought silver; beneath the altar the relics of SS Pippin and Itta, the parents of St Gertrude herself, are honourably kept.]
Part Three — the Life of St Geremarus, First Abbot of Flay (24 September) #
From the MSS, appendix to Guibert.
Preliminary observation #
The writer of this Life, if conjecture fail not, is a very ancient contemporary or near-contemporary. That he lived before the incursion of the Normans appears from these last words of the Life: “To his sepulchre the sick come and are healed” — since for nearly two hundred years St Geremarus’s sepulchre lay neglected amid the ruins of the overturned monastery, his relics carried off to Beauvais. What of the fact that the author reckons his computation by the years of Chlodoveus’s reign? He seems to have lived in a very early age. This Life already stood in the Appendix to the works of Guibert, abbot of Nogent and formerly monk of Flay, by us again collated with the MS codices and amended. That the monastery of Flay was established under St Benedict’s rule by blessed Geremarus appears from the Life, n. 25.
1 In the time of Hlothar king of the Franks, when the Christian faithful incurred hatred for the truth and throughout Gaul suffered many things at the hands of the devil’s members for Christ’s name, blessed Geremarus — to crush the madness of the perfidious and to confirm the Christians’ faith — was born, God’s clemency favouring, in the villa of Guarandra, situated in the confines of the Beauvaisis upon the river Thérain. His father was named Rigobert and his mother Aga, sprung of the noble race of the Franks. Rightly is he preached to be born of noble parents whose life shone with so many signs and virtues: consoler of orphans, helper of the wretched, in tribulation the assiduous defender of all, restorer of churches in word and work. Born, then, of illustrious parents, he is baptised in the sacred font and signed with the holy faith.
2 For he is handed over to be imbued with the sacred mysteries. His parents, tenderly loving him as their only son, delivered him to the schools to be trained and instructed in Christ’s doctrine. Placed in them he so surpassed all his coevals in ripeness of wisdom that he was held among them as it were a master rather than a learner. For heavenly grace illumined him, and the splendour of the divine light descending from the fount of piety above. So surely did he daily drink in the holy scriptures that he retained them almost by heart, and weighed them in his heart in assiduous meditation. He visited Christ’s church, which is the house of disciplines — in which, as blessed Augustine says, it is learnt to live well, that one may come to live for ever. For our life is Christ, through whom whoever shall have lived shall not suffer the loss of eternal hunger.
3 In the school of this discipline, therefore, he sought no other master or teacher save the Lord Jesus Christ; him he loved with his whole heart; him he set before the eyes of his mind. In His mercy he set his hope, and with the whole desire of his mind longed to cleave to Him. And he kept saying that Davidic word: It is good for me to cleave to God, to put my hope in the Lord God (Ps. 72:28); and again: I will love You, O Lord my strength; the Lord is my firmament and my refuge (Ps. 17:2). Revolving these and many such things in himself, he hoped God was everywhere present to him. He bent himself to assiduous prayers, studied alms and fasts, refreshed the poor, clothed the naked, and expended whatever he could of his father’s substance on the needy. The Lord conferred so great grace upon him that, still set in youthful years, he excelled all in wisdom and merit of holiness. Both his parents and all his friends and kinsfolk rejoiced, knowing God’s mercy poured abroad upon him. They were glad to have received such a son, by whose teaching the Christians’ faith daily grew. They rendered offices of praise to the Lord God for so great a gift of offspring. They invoked Him with assiduous prayers that He would deign to save and keep him, and more and more to enlarge him in His works.
4 And because they had no son save blessed Geremarus, when their death drew near they appointed him heir of their goods. After their death blessed Geremarus, burning more and more with the love of Christ, ceased not to expend his substance upon the poor. He honoured churches everywhere; he relieved from his substance whatever poor clerks he could find. To pilgrims whom he found roofless he gave roof and food for Christ’s name. He knew it had been said by the Lord: He who receives you receives Me; and therefore he received Him daily in His members. For he knew that what he gave to the poor he bestowed on the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, as the same Lord says in the Gospel: What you did to one of the least of mine, you did to Me. He was preparing for himself eternal things out of transitory, and out of falling things prizes to remain without end. Strengthened by these and many other examples, he unceasingly expended his substance on captives, orphans, widows and the poor.
5 But when it had already pleased the Lord to reveal blessed Geremarus’s merit to many — since He Himself says in the Gospel: No man lights a lamp and sets it in a hidden place or under a bushel, but upon the candlestick, that they who come in may see the light (Luke 11:33) — very many of the Franks began to flock to him and to enjoy his most holy discourse: whom, feeding daily with the bread of the heavenly word, he admonished to hold inviolably faith, charity, love of God and love of neighbour, and many other heavenly arms wherewith they might mount to heaven and vanquish the enemy of the human race.
6 While he so acted, king Dagobert heard the fame of his holiness and prudence and, sending messengers, summoned him into his palace. And seeing him elegant and learned in words and wise in counsels, he set him over his counsels; and as long as he acquiesced in his counsel, so long did he hold the kingdom of the Franks vigorously. Who would not believe his counsels? Who would not give faith to his words? For he was full of the Holy Spirit. It was fitting that he who had the Holy Spirit should know how to give useful counsel. The Holy Spirit spoke through his mouth, as the Lord says to the disciples: For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you (Matt. 10:20). Now to tell the quality of his body: in sharpness of eyes terrible to the evil, modest and humble to the good, and as one of the angelic order. And what is wonderful to tell, his aspect exceeded the human man of that time. The king honoured him and honourably kept him. Dukes and counts, rich and poor — all loved him, all venerated him with immense honour. He himself bore himself toward all as though he were the servant of all. And though he was in the lay habit, yet in obedience he was shown a true monk. He was all things to all men, that he might gain all.
7 Not many years of his youth being fulfilled in king Dagobert’s palace, he began to consider whom he could join to himself in his inheritance. While he pondered this, with the consent of the king and of the other Franks he joined to himself in marriage a maiden named Domana [sprung from the Vexin district]. This he did chiefly that he might from there beget some future heir, lest after his death grave scandals should arise among his kinsfolk over his inheritance — for he had very many estates, and many kinsmen in king Dagobert’s palace. Having received his wife, the Lord fulfilled His mercy upon him: he begot of her two daughters, of whom the elder, when she came to mature age, was destined to a spouse but remained a virgin, death of the flesh intervening; the younger, given over to monastic disciplines, remained in virginity. So both, remaining in bodily virginity, deserved to be reckoned among the prudent virgins. Blessed Geremarus buried them in the church of blessed Remigius in the aforementioned village, where he bestowed much of his own goods.
8 Many days being fulfilled, God gave him a son. Rejoicing and exulting over him, blessed Geremarus sent him to blessed Audoenus (Ouen), who in those days lived in the king’s palace — by whose counsel he did everything, and did nothing outside his precept. He was his most familiar friend and privy to all his secrets. He told him all that had befallen, and that a son had been born to him. Hearing all this he rejoiced, and taking the boy instructed him as a catechumen. The font of baptism being prepared, he baptised him in the name of the holy and undivided Trinity, calling him by the name Amalbert. And so, initiated in the mysteries that belong to the holy faith, he sent him back to blessed Geremarus.
9 The boy growing and daily advancing became honourable among the princes of the Franks and, still set in youthful age, afforded all a great spectacle of himself. For he was readier than all the youth of the Franks, humblest of all the poor. None could surpass him in anything: perfect in faith, proved in his deeds, stable and devout in every work and word. Rightly did he prevail in such good works, who was begotten of such a progenitor. King Dagobert loved him above all, seeing him strenuous in arms, powerful in words, useful in counsels. When the Franks were mustered for the army, he in all things in his father’s stead cleaved to the king’s side.
10 Blessed Geremarus, full of God’s Spirit, counting all the world’s things as nothing and now desiring the celibate life, bestowed much of his substance on the monks’ monasteries. By the counsel of blessed Audoenus he founded from his own substance the monastery which is called Isle, and built there all the edifices befitting the holy rule. He built churches there in honour of the apostles Peter and Paul, and placed there the relics of many saints. He established there a congregation of monks living in holy conversation; he set over them abbot Archarius, a man of great merit, by whose teaching and wisdom Christ’s flock might daily tend heavenward. Archarius himself ruled the flock committed to him decently and strenuously even to his life’s end.
11 When it pleased the Lord that blessed Geremarus’s life should be an example to others, He put it into his heart to leave all things and give himself over to God alone for service. After such a will had fallen into his mind, before he confessed it to any mortal, going to the king he asked of him that before the princes of the Franks he might hand over to his son Amalbert the things that were of his right and freely grant him all in the presence of the Franks. The king, hearing this, began greatly to wonder. At length, freely assenting to his petition, he not only bestowed on the youth what he asked but added to him many things besides. Having acquired for his son all things in his power, he went to St Audoenus, who was then in that same palace, that he might reveal his son’s deeds to him. And calling him secretly to himself he addressed him in these words: “I beseech you, holy father, refuse not to show me the way of God, by which I may be able to come to the eternal joys and avoid the shipwreck of this world. For I see that all things pass away and are reduced to nothing.” Hearing this, blessed Audoenus was exceeding glad. And drawing sighs from his heart he answered him in these words: “The way of God which you seek of me, brother, is shown you in evangelical words. The Lord Himself says to Peter asking of retribution and the future reward: Every man who shall leave house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for My name, shall receive a hundredfold and shall possess eternal life (Matt. 19:29). Alas, how ignorance leads the wretched by a devious path! For where the good they covet lies hid, they know not; and if they seek by the earth what has passed beyond the starry heaven… Blessed is he who could visit the light, while the fount of good is near; and blessed he who could loose the bonds of the heavy earth. If blessedness is the highest good of a nature living by reason, and that is not a good which can in any way be torn away — since it excels beyond what cannot be withdrawn — it is manifest that the instability of this fortune cannot aspire to the attainment of blessedness. It stands fixed by eternal law that nothing begotten endures. For this cause, brother, if you would set your seat perennial and flee the adverse blasts, climb the summit of the high mount — namely, the dignity of this world — and follow Christ’s footsteps.” Hearing these things, blessed Geremarus answered the holy Audoenus: “I know, holy father, that all things are true which I hear from your mouth. I shall relinquish all the transitory, vain, falling things of this world, which the more they seem to stand the more they pass and reduce men to destruction. And to use the Lord’s words: What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul? (Matt. 16:26).” These holy colloquies being fulfilled, blessed Geremarus, returning home, instructed his son and household in faith, hope and charity and the other virtues pertaining to the care of souls.
12 At the same time, Dagobert being dead in the eleventh year, Chlodoveus reigning, blessed Geremarus was corrected into the way of eternal salvation. Seeing therefore that he was acquiring nothing in the world of everlasting reward for his soul but rather preparing it perpetual loss — blessed Audoenus exhorting him — he approached king Chlodoveus and asked of him that he would grant to his son what his father had granted, and that he be allowed to lay aside the hair of his head and give himself over to a monastery for service. By the king’s command — though the Franks demurred — blessed Audoenus tonsured him and gave him the monastic habit; and instructing him in heavenly disciplines sent him into the monastery named Pentale, that there he might be abbot in obedience and pastor of Christ’s sheep and enlightener of souls. Blessed Geremarus, revolving that saying of the Psalmist — Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth (Ps. 123:8) — and again, The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? — setting all his hope in the Lord God, delayed not to obey the saint’s precept.
13 With great groaning, tears and sighs of heart he received the monastery to rule. Having left his wife and son and all the cares of this world, he followed the footsteps of Jesus Christ according to the evangelical precept, and went into the monastery which we have named above — Pentale, in the Rouen district upon the river Lézarde. What his life was, how holy it shone there upon all, the healings and the very many miracles wrought for the inhabitants bear witness. Days and nights he macerated himself in prayer, in vigils, in fasts, and in all things befitting the contemplative life. Prostrate in body, knees fixed to the ground, perennially pouring forth prayer with tears, he besought the Lord for the people’s sins, for God’s holy church that the Lord would keep it unharmed. He fasted daily; he passed the whole day in hymns and God’s praises, refreshing himself at evening. His food was a morsel of bread with little herbs, and his drink the saltiest water, that his belly might not be sated. Dead to the world, alive to Christ, he ceased not to show the way of salvation to all flocking to him. He warned each one to meditate on God’s law.
14 There was in that monastery a very great multitude of monks, over whom father Geremarus had been set to rule. In this congregation many, loving good and fearing God, gladly heard him and received his correction. But because the life of the good is ever hateful to the evil, there were there certain malicious and impious men — whose part was with Belial — who, unwilling to receive his preaching, began to plot his death, seeking a fitting place to slay him by some doom. Now it was his custom to rise at the first cock-crow for God’s praises and to pass the night in vigil in God’s praises until daybreak. The office completed, returning to the dormitory he used to lay himself upon his bed. The envious and profligate, learning this, took counsel among themselves to put a little knife beneath the bed’s bedding, that the holy man returning from church might cast himself with his body’s impetus upon the knife and so kill himself. And this they did: they fixed the knife’s handle in the ground and raised its bare iron point into the air’s space. O unspeakable crime, to be shuddered at by all in every age! Blessed Geremarus, returning as usual from church to his bed — the Holy Spirit admonishing him — did what he was not custom to do. For it was not his custom to touch the bed, but to cast himself upon the middle of the bed with his whole body. He touched the bed with his hand and, drawing his hand around, found what was hidden. As soon as he perceived a fraud prepared, leaving the pallet he returned to the temple, God’s friend, and what remained of the night he passed in shedding tears and in hymns and praises to God; and in the morning he disclosed to no man what had befallen him.
15 At the third hour of the day, after the collation upon the reading, prostrate in chapter before the feet of all he asked them to absolve him from the pastoral care and to choose over themselves some better father. There was a certain crypt in the vast solitude above the river Seine, from which St Samson had cast out the serpent. This he asked them to grant him for a dwelling. What clamour, what grief was there among all who feared God and lamented over father Geremarus, saying: “Why do you desert us, father, or to whom do you leave us desolate? What have we done? What have we committed against you? How have we been contrary to you?” He answered them: “None of you has ever been contrary to me in anything; none evil, none hard, none strange: all were to me as fathers, as brothers, as lovers of truth.” For he would not betray in public what he had found hidden in the bed, lest the place itself be turned into an example of worse things. Again and again prostrate before the feet of all he begged them to absolve him from the pastoral seat. They refused, but begged the more that he would not desert them.
16 At last, overcome by their petitions, they granted him the crypt he asked. Leaving the monastery to blessed Audoenus, he went into the aforementioned place and there gave himself to prayer days and nights, practising very great abstinence — greater than he had been custom. There all the needy came to him, whom he, regarding them for Christ’s love, suffered not to depart empty-handed. He covered the naked, refreshed the hungry and thirsty, visited the sick, buried the dead, comforted all oppressed by tribulation and anguish of body and mind. He was the father of orphans and lover of churches. The Lord conferred on His chosen servant so great grace that he transcended all worldly things and often-times tasted the heavenly. Audoenus the priest, hearing the fame of his holiness and bearing his merit, ordained him to the rank of the presbyterate. He much wished to resist his will, but the Holy Spirit compelling him, he obeyed the holy shepherd’s precepts; and made a priest, he studied to please the Lord God. For he offered Him the sacrifice every day with tears and contrition of heart. When he approached the sacrifice, so great was God’s guard and mercy about him that, set on earth in body, he lived in mind with the heavenly ones before God. O priest worthy of God — mild, just, benign, filled with all piety! May You keep him, Lord Jesus Christ, whose steps You ever did bring back to better things, whom you had hedged about with the shield of Your protection — who sleep not nor slumber, but ever keep and save those who hope in You.
17–18 Set as an example to all, for five years and three months he stood faithful to God’s service, sincere and devout to all His mandates. While he was so tarrying, a messenger came to him concerning his son Amalbert, whom he had left in the palace — that he had died: in the last act of life he lost the body’s life. For he was still a virgin and ignorant of worldly corruption. And because he was dear to the king and the Franks, he was carried even to the place of his own inheritance. When this had been announced, he uttered at once the patience of blessed Job: The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so is it done; blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21). And again: O praise the Lord, all you nations; praise Him, all you peoples: for Your hand is confirmed upon me, O God, and Your truth has not forsaken me. you have confirmed mercy upon me, and have received my lot in Your glory. Going out of that crypt, with all the clergy together he kept saying God’s praise in David’s hymns: The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup; it is You who shall restore my inheritance to me (Ps. 15:5).
19 Returning from there with a great choir of psalmists, he came into the district of Vexin; passing through it he entered the Beauvaisis, where his dead son’s body lay. Coming to where he lay, he was in no wise moved by his death, but praised the Lord God that He had deigned to receive his only son into His neighbourhood. Lifting him upon the bier they bear him to the monastery which blessed Geremarus had built in honour of Peter and Paul the apostles. A multitude of people followed, weeping and mourning over him — for he was dear to all rich and poor; all loved him with like love, and therefore rendered him this sad office of love in death whom they had loved in life. Coming to the place called Hans’s Bridge, they stood a little upon the ground.
20 For the people wished to know what the Lord deigned to work there about the dead body by blessed Geremarus’s merit, that all might recognise that both he and his son were of great merit. In that same place the body of blessed Amalbert was so weighed down that those who bore him could not move it. Very many were added, but not even thus could it be moved. A clamour of all the men and women arose. Such amazement invaded all behind and before that they could scarce walk. Then blessed Geremarus, perceiving this to be God’s will, bade the body be set down. When it was set down, prostrate on his knees upon the ground he poured forth prayer to the Lord, and so prayed over it a long while. The prayer complete, he said to those who were bearing the corpse: “Lift the pall from where it covers him, that we may see what has befallen.” When they had lifted the pall and looked more diligently, they found his face wet with blood, as though on that day he had fallen slain in battle: for blood flowed through his nostrils, irrigating his whole face. It is greatly to be wondered at and wondered and kept in memory with devout praises: so much time had flowed since he departed this life, returning from Gascony with the king and the Franks. What is more manifest than this deed? That virtue could accomplish this through blessed Geremarus’s merits and virtues, by whose power the four-days-dead Lazarus is raised. By this token blessed Amalbert is shown to live with Christ through St Geremarus’s merits.
21 Then blessed Geremarus bade a church be built in that place in honour of St John; he established twelve monks there, whose life should be the salvation of him and of his son’s soul. That they might live without want and serve God without murmuring, he left them many estates — namely his own properties by the instruments of charters.
22 These things thus premised, at once the body was found of such lightness that it could be carried by one man. O how great is Your power, O Christ! In how many miracles do you shine to those who hope! Who would not exalt Your name? Or who would not dread Your power toward Your servants? Moving from there they came to the aforementioned monastery which blessed Geremarus had built while still in the world, where they honourably buried him. Then blessed Geremarus received back his inheritance and made the Lord Jesus Christ heir of it. For he was hastening to reach the heavenly country and to attain the stole of immortality. He desired to have Him for heir in whom and by whom and through whom is the highest good, beyond which nothing is to be desired.
23 After all these things had been divinely fulfilled, turning in upon himself he began to consider how the old serpent’s cleverness strives by a thousand arts of harming to seduce the hearts of God’s servants to destruction and everlasting death’s damnation. For upon some perfected in the power of prayers, on some given to fasts, on others famed for the laud of the solitary life, he many times casts a certain face of vaunting, and with the foolish virgins renders their lamps empty: such, when the bridegroom comes, shall not enter with him to the wedding. Blessed Geremarus, foreseeing this lest the praise of the solitary life should touch his heart, began to address his most familiar friends: “O brothers, who have suffered many labours for Christ’s name, run unceasingly toward the way of the highest and incomprehensible good, and remain in God’s work which you have begun. We must use this counsel: let us hasten to St Audoenus and beg of him that by his prayer a place be shown us for dwelling where we may persevere in good works to life’s end.” The counsel of blessed Geremarus pleased all. Going therefore to the holy Audoenus he thus addressed him: “I entreat you, holy father, to make prayer to the Lord for me and by your prayers show me a place to dwell. For I trust that God will hear you, and what you shall ask you shall obtain.” Hearing this, blessed Audoenus answered him: “No, brother, say not so. Who am I to do this? Not by my merits but by your faith shall this be fulfilled. If you shall have faith, whatever you shall ask you shall obtain. By faith Abraham was made God’s friend; by faith Peter was saved. Let us await God’s mercy three days with fasts and prayers, whether perchance He will regard our humility.”
24 These things being said most familiarly between them, a three-day fast was enjoined upon them. On the third night, while they were set in fasts and prayers, the angel of the Lord appeared in a vision to both, saying: “The Lord has heard your prayers; He has regarded your affliction. Go to the place which is called Flaviacus, and there you shall find your desire.” When morning came, each recounted what he had seen, and giving thanks to God they make for the aforementioned place shown by the angel. And when they came near the village, by God’s nod and will they were turned aside from the straight track; and wandering the deserts of the vast solitude they came to the destined place. When they had come there, and much doubted, not knowing what to do — see, a cloud came down from heaven and surrounded the whole place where the monastery was to be built, and with the cloud a voice from above, saying: “Elect of God, see this place is to be feared: forty years have rolled since the Lord blessed and sanctified this place and destined it for His faithful Geremarus. For it shall be habitable for a multitude of monks so long as it stands fast in the Lord’s commandments; but to women no access shall ever lie open to it.” Both holy men, hearing this, greatly rejoiced. And when they fixed their gazes upon the sight of the cloud, at once it was withdrawn from their eyes. Yet from that same cloud a dew, encompassing the whole place round about like a sort of measuring-rod, remained — that it might be given to understand that what the heavenly voice had sung was true. Then, going round the place, they found the sign of the heavenly dew impressed.
25 Blessed Audoenus, certain of the angelic vision and the heavenly voice, taking a rod in his hand, measured out a square round about after the cloud’s footprints — where the church should be built, where the offices be constructed, and the other things serviceable for the monks’ life; and the place consigned to blessed Geremarus, he departed from him. Then blessed Geremarus, together with all committed to him, came to build the place: he built there a church in honour of the holy and undivided Trinity and of holy Mary the Virgin and of St John and of St Peter, prince of the apostles; and there he handed over his whole inheritance. He built there all things necessary and suitable to the monastic life and the various crafts useful to be exercised within the monastery, that there might be no necessity for the monks to wander abroad: since, as blessed Benedict says, it is altogether unexpedient for their souls. The monks round about, hearing, flocked to him as to a garden of all virtues; whom he, refreshing with the grace of God’s word, admonished to persevere in their purpose and to make themselves strangers to the world’s pleasures.
26 All his work being consummated, he fixed himself in prayer and remained in God’s work for three years and six months, and so sent forth his spirit in the Lord and passed over to the angels’ joys. His body was buried in that same church with great honour and reverence, where by his merit many benefits are bestowed. To his sepulchre the sick come and are healed; the blind are enlightened; the lame are reformed in their steps; the deaf are repaired in hearing; demons are put to flight from possessed bodies; many are healed of various languors — our Lord Jesus Christ bestowing, to whom is honour and glory, praise and power through infinite ages of ages. Amen.
[Editorial notes: a) Flaviacus — the village, five leagues distant from Beauvais on the Thérain, gave its name to the monastery of Flay, which after various fortunes — after canons instituted there in the Normans’ time, after the union of its revenues to the Beauvais church made by pope Nicholas I — was finally restored by Drogo bishop of Beauvais in 1030, Guntharius the monk of Fosses being set over it, who could not vindicate blessed Geremarus’s body for himself from the citizens of Beauvais. From that time the monastery’s name was St-Germer (de Fly); among others there presided St Genaud after Geremarus’s anonymous successor, St Benignus Genaud’s successor, and Ansicus under the emperor Louis the Pious — who three were also abbots of the monastery of Fontenelle, as in the Fontenelle Chronicle ch. 5. To this abbot Benignus St Gennard, vidame of the Reims church and abbot of the monastery of Flay, was near of kin, who was its restorer after the aforementioned Gennard’s death. On Ansicus see ch. 15 ff. b) If Amalbert died while Chlodoveus still reigned on the return from Gascony (as we computed above), Geremarus’s death cannot be deferred beyond 658: for Chlodoveus perished in 655, Geremarus sought the monastery of Pentale in 649 and afterwards Samson’s crypt, where after five years and three months he received the news of Amalbert’s death; Amalbert buried, he founded the monastery of Flay, in which he remained five years and six months — accordingly he migrated to the heights in 668 on the eighth of the Kalends of October, on which day he is commemorated by name in the Roman, Benedictine and Gallican martyrologies, and in Molanus’s Additions to Usuard. Louvet proves from the Aquitaine Annals under 940 that his body was carried, together with the relics of the martyr St Just, into the abbey of St Cyprien near the walls of Poitiers — which we nevertheless think wholly uncertain. In 891 Hastings, duke of the Normans, overturned both monasteries of blessed Geremarus — Isle and Flay. The same author says that when peace was restored, Geremarus’s sacred remains were brought to Beauvais, where they are kept to this day in the greater church of St Peter, enclosed in a shrine of gilt orichalc, and are solemnly carried round every year on Palm Sunday with the other relics of the saints. The memory is celebrated among the Beauvaisis of the miracle wrought by blessed Geremarus at the beginning of the eleventh century, when he freed the countryfolk stricken with the holy fire (a pest then miserably raging in Gaul) from the invading disease — which was Drogo’s occasion for restoring the monastery of Flay.]
[Here the file ends, at the heading of the ensuing article: Life of St Clarus, abbot of Vienne.]