Chapter One: Saint Foillan’s birth, his journey into Belgium, and his dwelling at Nivelles #

Here begins the Life or Passion of Saint Foillan, bishop and martyr, which is celebrated on the day before the kalends of November.

¹ By the voice of the psalmist we are admonished to praise the gracious Lord our God in His saints, as he says: “Praise the Lord in His saints.” Who, though He is in Himself great and exceedingly to be praised, yet in those same saints of His is glorious and wonderful, and through all things worthily to be praised. For what is more worthy than that we should render to our God, through His worthy ones, due praises and thanks in heart, in word, and in deed for His ineffable mercy — to which we can in no way make return — according to the saying of the Apostle: “Giving thanks to God the Father, who has made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light; who has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the remission of sins.” Since, therefore, by the grace of God alone we have been snatched from the power of darkness — that is, of the devil and his angels — and translated into the kingdom of the Son of His love, namely that we ourselves should be a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, let us offer Him the sacrifice of due praise, declaring the virtues of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvellous light, and into a portion of the lot of the saints. Of which holy calling He first appointed the apostles as ministers, to whom also He said: “You are the light of this world.” Then, as the light of that same faith grew strong and shone afar, He joined to them on every side the more splendid pastors of the Churches, whom He so exalted to the glory of grace that, joined to the flocks over which they presided — of every order, sex, and age — they might lead with them an innumerable host of noble soldiery, fighting even to a precious death for the love of their King. For the merit of whose faith, patience, and victory they deserved to receive the palm of heavenly glory and the crown of everlasting blessedness.

² In whose sacred company the kindly boy Foillan was foreknown from the beginning and predestined to have his place; he was sprung in Ireland of royal stock, and ennobled the nobility of his birth by the generosity of a noble mind. For from his very boyhood he devoted himself unceasingly to the service of God. And although by nation he seems not ours but a stranger, yet he was directed to us as one specially our own by the gift of divine providence, when it appointed ministers of man’s salvation to every part of the world. This holy man, then, grown to maturity through the advancing years in uprightness, while he passed the pilgrimage of this present life, showed himself in all things a pattern of good works. But after he had been translated, through the patronage of those same works, to the kingdom of the heavenly life, he now pleads for us by the merits of his intercessions.

³ The course of whose life, formerly indeed set down in a style not sufficiently polished, we are now compelled — your charity, brethren, demanding and rather commanding it — to write with our pen, humble though it be and, as is plain to all the learned, unskilled. Yet that all who shall wish to read or hear these things may know what manner of man he was and how great: to the praise of the Lord’s name, by whose gift he was such and so great, and that you may take hold of the examples of his praiseworthy life, we set before your holiness, as you have commanded, a few things out of many, briefly and faithfully commemorated.

⁴ Of very many saints, whom divine grace granted to His Church as patterns to be imitated, the manner of life was of this sort: that from lesser things they pressed on to greater, from lower to loftenier, from imperfect beginnings to the perfected heights of virtue. But this blessed father Foillan, as though it irked him to climb the rungs of the ladder stretching upward with slow labour of steps — borne aloften by divine grace — sought with an eagle’s flight, so to speak, the lofteniest summits of virtue; and with the most blessed patriarch Abraham, hearing the voice of the Lord, “Go forth out of your land and out of your kindred,” he most gladly obeyed, an imitator of his faith and of his work. He left his kindred, therefore, he left his country too, and entered upon a voluntary pilgrimage. And for that reason he rightly inherited, as Abraham’s son, the blessing of Abraham’s children — the land, that is, of promise, which is most truly called the land of the living, because there all live without fear of death. How wondrous indeed did that saint appear in this deed, who in one and the same act imitated the chief fathers of each testament, the old and the new! For he was not only an imitator of Abraham, in that at the angelic admonition he forsook his country and his kinsfolk, but also a follower in the apostles’ footsteps, in that at the Lord’s admonition he left all that he had, together with the will to possess. Since therefore he fulfilled what is highest in the precepts, he also gained what is highest in the rewards — namely a hundredfold in this world, and in the world to come eternal life and a throne of judgement. O how precious is that commerce which is made with God without any comparing of price! O how happy the merchants of so happy a merchandise! They give temporal things, they receive eternal. They abandon what falls away, they receive what flourishes with unmoved stability. They abandon transitory things, they receive things that abide without end. Who then would not with all eagerness seek so great a merchandise, whereby for clay is gained gold, for earthly things heavenly? Let us run therefore, brethren, let us all run, let us hasten with our whole desire; let there be no delay in our haste — while there is time, while there is leisure, while our trader waits; while without respect of persons He calls all to Himself, while also to the famishing and thirsting He daily cries through the herald of His grace: “All you that thirst, come to Me; and you that have no money, make haste, buy and eat. Come, buy without money, and without any exchange, wine and milk”; while He Himself also invites the labouring and distressed to Himself: “Come to Me, all you that labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you”; and again: “If any man thirst, let him come and drink.” These things having been perceived with the ears of hearing which are in the inward man, let us not be negligent, brethren, having before our eyes as a pattern and a mirror of all holiness this most blessed patron of ours, Foillan, who passed not by with closed heart nor with deaf ear the Lord when He called him, but followed Him with all the more speed of obedient foot. If we follow the examples of his deeds with a prompt and eager mind, we shall also deserve to be made sharers of his rewards. But now let us return to his praises, deservedly to be proclaimed.

⁵ The same man of God, then, beginning from the perfect, as has been said, and daily striving toward yet better things, and desiring to cleave the more freely to God alone — reckoning this also to be his only good — set every worldly desire behind him, and resolved that his soul should become a seat of wisdom. And since, being himself made the throne of God, he chose to have so great a sitter upon it, he deserved rightly to receive with the elders of heaven a throne of judiciary power. Of which thing, while yet he dwelt bodily on earth, he held as it were a most firm pledge, when that honourable man, raised to the honour of the pontificate, received with the blessed apostle Peter the office of binding and loosing, so that whatever he should ordain on earth should be ratified also in heaven. Which thing we have said for this reason, that it may the more plainly appear what manner of man he was.

⁶ Therefore, in the winning of this dignity — in the times of Sigebert king of the Franks, when Grimoald was mayor of the palace and Erchenald as it were patrician — after the departure from this life of his most holy brother Fursey, who once, coming into Francia according to an angelic revelation, shining with glorious virtues, was received by the same Erchenald with great honour, and cherished, and even buried with the honour due to so great a man — Foillan himself also, in company with Ultan the elder of the brethren, came into Francia for love of the pilgrimage so dear to him; and when they had traversed very many places preaching the Gospel, at last, the Lord leading them, they attained the holy fellowship of the most noble matron of that time, Itta, and of her daughter Gertrude, the most holy virgin, of whose holiness many monuments shine among us.

⁷ Truly a fellowship most worthy and welcome to God — that to the venerable bishop Foillan should be divinely joined and commended Gertrude, the most sacred virgin. For there is here set before us the evangelical image, figured forth in the fairest flowers of the virtues: as once to John, Christ’s beloved evangelist and apostle, was committed His mother at the sepulchre, so is the holy man here set in the stead of the man, that a virgin should likewise succeed a virgin in the keeping — in conceiving in the mind, in fostering in the memory, in begetting in every faculty with which she could a pattern of good conversation, and in fulfilling and guarding it in deeds. Nor is the recognition of Christ’s vicars in all respects unequal: the one was Christ’s apostle, the other apostolic; the one called evangelist by grace of the evangelical writing, the other by grace of the preaching of the faith. Each, endowed with the sanctity of virginity, received fitting ministries: the one received the mother of the Lord into his own, the other received the bride of his Lord — and, as has been said, the same — into his own. Of the cup of Jesus also, which the one professed himself able to drink, the other was not without part, as shall be made plain in the course of our discourse.

Chapter Two: The monastery founded at Fosses; the death of Saint Foillan; his body is found and translated to Fosses #

¹ Now in all these most fittingly ordered ways, the blessed bishop Foillan, made the fellow of the kindly virgin Gertrude, dwelt with her under her obedience in her monastery of Nivelles, where the virgin, esteeming him as a second self, loved him as her own soul. The holy virgin, knowing the holiness both of him and of his brother Ultan, offered to God through their hands a portion of her inheritance — namely the estate commonly called Fosses — which she handed over to them for the sustenance of God’s servants, that they might build a monastery in that place as a perpetual hospice for pilgrims, so that those arriving from far regions might there find fitting solace. And the holy men, God’s grace bringing the work to pass, fulfilled the sacred virgin’s vow as speedily as might be; and the monastery being built, Ultan indeed remained as rector in that same house, but Saint Foillan rendered himself back to his office in the blessed virgin’s company.

² And when he had accomplished this for a very long time, and had studied to raise the devout minds of the faithful to the height of virtue and to stir them to the summit of perfection — God working with him in all things for good — his calling to sacred martyrdom was already at hand. There came to him, therefore, from the fount of charity with which he ever overflowed, a thought welling up in this way: that he should show his presence, for comfort and exhortation, to his like-minded brother Ultan and to the servants of God dwelling in the same house. So, having duly celebrated the solemnities of the Mass, bidding farewell to the most holy virgin Gertrude and to the brethren and holy women, and earnestly commending himself to their holy prayers, he also with a certain perspicacity of mind commended to them the burial of his own poor body. After this, setting out upon his way — content with the company of but three disciples — while, unacquainted with the road, he wandered through a certain forest, a band of devilish temptation attached itself to him, which yet was turned for the holy man into an increase of virtue. For there suddenly drew near a minister of the devil, full of serpentine deceit and wickedness, who, feigning a false kindness of hospitality but meditating against them a cruelty abominable to all mortals and most inhuman, led the men — upright and simple in mind and deed — through byways to a place called Soneffe, and prepared for them a slaughter, as a most savage wolf for innocent sheep. Nor indeed could the snare of Satan’s minion be hid from the most prudent man, full of the spirit of knowledge and of foreknowledge. Therefore, bearing a mind most constant and patient against all adversities in the virtue of fortitude, after his accustomed manner passing the night in unbroken recitation of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs — in which the man of God, devoting himself to God alone, ceased neither by day nor by night — he awaited the outcome of the affair unterrified, commending himself and his companions more earnestly to Him.

³ After the fulfilment, therefore, of the morning praises, when the holy man saw his fellow-soldiers fearful at the death now looming and their approaching end, he — eloquent as he was, mighty in the work of virtue and in the word of exhortation — addressed them in this way, with placid face and serene speech: “Be not troubled, I beg you, brethren; be not shaken by the dread of death; be not afraid: these things must come to pass; we must all stand before the judgement-seat of Christ. Remember, dearest sons, the words of the Lord: ‘Fear not,’ He says, ‘them that kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.’ And if our time has drawn near, and the Lord by His just judgement, though hidden from us, has now delivered us into the hands of the wicked, let us — praising Him in whom is no iniquity, because He is just in all His ways — say, humble and undaunted, in the words of those who for His testament yielded their bodies to death: ‘Let us also die in our simplicity, and heaven and earth shall be witnesses over us that they slay us unjustly.’ For why should we, unprofitable servants, shrink from entering the way of death — without which no passage can be made to the true life — when we truly believe that our Lord and God Himself passed along the same? Rather, blessing Him, let us humbly ask with the psalmist: ‘Blessed be the Lord day by day: may the God of our salvation make our way prosperous. For our God is the God of salvation.’ Nor let us forget what follows for our comfort: ‘And of the Lord, of the Lord are the issues of death.’ And let us ponder with heedful mind that saying of the Apostle: ‘For the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.’” With such discourse he calmed their frightened hearts, and with his own heart restored the hearts of his companions, stricken with fear.

⁴ Meanwhile, driven on by the furies long since conceived in his mind, that wretch — yet no object of our pity — rushed in: no longer a feigned host but a most openly savage foe, attended indeed by but few companions, for he had no need of many, yet full of demons; and assailing with drawn blade the most holy man who awaited death unterrified, he profaned his sacrilegious hands with that sacred blood. When the venerable priest’s head had been cut off, he raged against his companions also with like fury, together with his own crew. This greatest of crimes accomplished, the sons of darkness, thinking that what they had done could be hid, made for the hidden places of the forest, and there most dishonourably cast away — rather than concealed — an honest treasure: to wit, the bodies of the holy men, naked and stripped of every covering. And lest they should perhaps be discovered by any suspicion of the neighbours, the sacred garments, together with the horses and the clothing taken from their bodies, they made haste to sell in distant parts, and for a little gain to profit themselves the greatest loss of their own souls. O detestable crime of avarice, O passion of covetousness and with it an insatiable thirst, with whose poison wretched men made drunk — no longer in sleep but in the living body sunk in deepest death — cannot hear with stopped ear that thundering terror: “What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?” or: “What exchange shall a man give for his soul?” and that also which follows, too dreadful for the impious: “For the Son of Man shall come in His glory with His angels, and then shall He render to every man according to his works.” Alas! how wretchedly do the miserly and the rapacious hold their own souls for sale, and like hell, to which they are likened and to which they hasten, ever insatiable they know no measure; and while with savage teeth they tear all things apart, they are wholly ignorant of satiety, but ever hunger, ever are in want. Indeed, strangers to all humanity, they cannot even be sated with blood: and therefore deservedly, without term and without measure, shall they be subdued by eternal torments, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched, and they themselves shall not be suffered to die; because death coming upon them shall itself not die, and the everlasting pain which afflicts them shall not destroy them, nor shall it itself have end. Those, then, unhappily enduring in eternal death without power of dying, as has been said — the just in eternal life, without fear of dying, ignorant of all misery, filled with gladness shall happily rejoice. With whom also our blessed father and martyr Foillan, as a good soldier, after the labours of his warfare, after the sweat which, his service now ended, he laid up in heaven — recounting the abundant rewards of his merits — enjoys unfailing joys, gazing with the angels upon the desirable face of the heavenly Father. The merit of whose holiness an angelic revelation made manifest even after the laying down of his sacred body.

⁵ After this manner of departure from the life of the blessed bishop Foillan, the days now rolled round in which the kindly virgin Gertrude awaited the desired return of her patron, wondering greatly why he had passed the time appointed for his return to her. At last she sends messengers to the house where the holy man had gone, that she might learn the causes of so long a delay. They, coming there and not finding the man they sought, approached Ultan, his brother, and asked what he knew of the matter. He indeed — full of wonder at these things, and made thoughtful by the discernment of a vision foreshown to him, and much pondering in his heart — rendered to the messengers of the holy virgin these words as it were oracles: “Let your discerning care, O most prudent virgin, see what these signs portend, foreshown to me in this way, not without cause of a sure presage. In the urgency of my vigils and prayers there seemed to appear to me a dove, whiter than snow in all its body, yet its wings suffused with pale and rose-hued blood, and mounting on high with gentle flight. What these things point to, let your watchful skill discern, O blessed virgin. For of my dear brother’s presence there is no other sign.” When the holy virgin’s ears had drunk in these things, they stirred her mind to the anxiety of a sharper care, and at once she sent forth swift messengers far and wide — who yet brought her back answers certain of nothing. What should the blessed virgin do; where should she turn, bereft of so great a father; what counsel should she take, widowed of so great a counsellor and helper? Yet in no way did the grace of the Father’s regard fail her, breathing into her mind those things which seemed hidden to men, from Him whom nothing escapes, and with whom is no shadow of change, seeking what should be revealed. And because she trusted not enough in her own merits, though they were great — knowing that the assiduous prayer of a just man avails much, and yet more the frequent intercession of many just — she gathered with her companies of the faithful: clerks of diverse order, holy women, and layfolk of both sexes, for the doing of this thing; and a three days’ observance of vigils, psalms, and litanies was devoutly begun and celebrated. The venerable virgin herself, whom a greater care gnawed in this matter, the more afflicted herself with fasting beyond them all, and with unceasing prayer, that sure tokens of her guide might be granted her from God. And see, the Lord looked upon the prayer of the humble, and despised not their petitions.

⁶ At last, before daybreak, while the virgin had fulfilled her accustomed office of vigils, and her mind, still bent on heavenly things, meditated in God in the morning watches after the psalmist, that she might see His power and His glory, she was held worthy — as a fosterer of the angelic life, though still dwelling on earth in the body — to enjoy angelic vision, and to be gladdened, comforted, and rejoiced by the fellowship and converse of heaven. For there stood by her an angel sent from God out of heaven, who with serene face and friendly voice addressed her thus: “O virgin,” he said, “Gertrude, devoted to God, chosen and beloved by Him whom you love continually with a sincere mind — receive the answers of Him, rendered to this your petition so dear to Him and sent to you through me. ‘Present,’ says your Bridegroom, ‘are the ears of My excellency to the prayers of your humility; and your tears, welling from the inmost fount of charity and bedewing without the roseate cheeks of your face, I have beheld — which you shall presently find turned into joy for you. For My faithful servant Foillan, about whom you are over-anxious, whom I willed to be for a time needful to you and the minister of your salvation and of the increase of grace, having faithfully discharged the office committed to him, has also run the course of this temporal life in martyrdom, and has won the prize of life eternal. And since he has fought the good fight, has finished the course, has kept the faith, he has rightly received the crown of righteousness laid up for him with the martyr’s palm.’” The blessed virgin, hearing the angel’s words, and rejoicing greatly in the Lord as was fitting, exults in the grace of a threefold gift: namely, the angelic visitation, the divine consolation, and the glory of her patron. And so she rendered magnificent tribute to the Holy Trinity. But the angel added this: “Lest you should be moved by any scruple over the not yet revealed body of your patron, go forth, diligently attend to the signs, that he may be sought where I shall show you.” Which when it had been done, he showed her a fiery column of the greatest splendour, stretching from the earth where the bodies of the saints were laid even to heaven. More rejoiced therefore by the token of this sign, she brought in also many witnesses for the seeing of it, for the sake of sure report and belief. And so all being made certain by this miracle, going forward by a direct way they came to the place marked out for them from heaven, and found the bodies of the just they sought — on the seventy-eighth day after their slaughter, which is the seventeenth of the kalends of February, on which day also blessed Fursey, his own brother, made the end of this life and gained the reward of that which never ends. O glorious bishop Foillan, whose pure simplicity of soul and blessed martyr’s gore the snow-white dove bore witness of, its wings suffused with blood; whose merit of holiness the angelic vision disclosed to the blessed virgin Gertrude; whose body’s hiding-place the fiery column revealed from heaven!

⁷ And that he who was glorious in merits before God might also be celebrated in fame and venerable in honour among men, it chanced that at that time Grimoald, who was mayor of the palace, and Dido, bishop of Poitiers, were staying in those parts. And while they were frequenting the thresholds of the saints of God for prayer, on that very day on which the bodies of blessed Foillan and his companions were being borne to burial — when the same bishop had given his limbs to sleep after the offices of the vigils — he received in a vision admonitions of this kind: that he should make haste to attend, as speedily as might be, the funeral rites of the body of the prophet Elijah. At once shaking off the heaviness of sleep and rising in haste, he caught with his ears the voices of various persons ringing out the melodies of psalms and hymns; and inquiring what these might be, he learned that they were ministering at the funeral rites of the men of God, and so understood what had been commanded him concerning the body of the prophet Elijah. Nor undeservedly did the blessed father Foillan, after his death, prove worthy to be declared under the figure of so great a prophet, whose merit of holiness he himself had studied to imitate while yet he lived. Summoning therefore Grimoald — then steward of the royal household and of the whole kingdom of the Franks — they fell to rendering the due service to the venerable funeral, and laying their shoulders beneath the bearing of the holy burden, rejoiced to have sweated in carrying it. So, when the bodies of the holy man’s three disciples had been committed to the earth in the monastery of blessed Gertrude and her sacred virgins, and when countless throngs had flocked to the funeral rites of so great a bishop — priests, clerks, and holy women, and layfolk also, noble and common alike, vying to pay their vows and offerings — the venerable pledge of his body was borne with the greatest honour, amid psalms and hymns, the choirs of the faithful resounding on every side, to the same monastery which he and his venerable brother Ultan had built upon the little river called Biesme, and which is named Fosses from the lie of the place; and there it was buried. Where also even now, to declare the merit of his holiness, the prayers of the humble and God-fearing who ask things that are for their salvation are heard through the intercession of his prayer — our Lord Jesus Christ granting it, who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, God, world without end. Amen.