CatholicaTranslated into English from the Latin of the Acta Sanctorum, March I (the 1643–1668 edition). This dossier comprises a Bollandist historical commentary on St Suidbert, bishop and apostle of the Frisians and Bructeri, founder of Kaiserswerth on the Rhine; then a sermon for his feast by St Radbod, bishop of Utrecht, with Radbod’s allegorical poem on the same saint, and a further verse encomium. The commentary’s chief business is to separate the genuine record — above all Bede’s — from the apocryphal Life which circulates under the name of the priest “Marcellinus”. Editorial footnote-marks are omitted; the marginal summaries are folded into the text where useful.
Historical Commentary #
§ One. In Frisia Christ is first preached by St Wilfrid, bishop. St Egbert aspires there, and sends St Wicbert; then SS. Suidbert and Willibrord with ten companions. #
1. The nation of the Phruneisians, or Frisians or Fresiones, named by ancient writers — Tacitus, Pliny, Ptolemy — once held a wider stretch of lands than now. Nowadays the name attaches chiefly to those who dwell between the lake Flevo, which its inhabitants call the South Sea, and the river Amisius [Ems]; save that a part of northern Holland, West-Frisia or Western Frisia, is so called in public edicts and decrees rather than in common usage. The territory lying to the right of the Amisius is called East-Frisia or Eastern Frisia, for the most part subject to the Roman Empire; while the rest this side of the Amisius, by whatever name they are called, are numbered among the United Provinces of Belgium. Into those lands of the Frisians the Christian religion was brought only in the seventh century of Christ. For even if some were joined to Christ in the Romans’ times, as in neighbouring Batavia, yet the heavenly seed was either torn up gradually by the fury of the heathen or stifled for lack of cultivation; and much sweat was needed afterwards, and even the shedding of blood, that a fruit not empty might at last be reaped. The first to preach Christ there — not so much by set purpose as by rightly using an occasion that offered — was St Wilfrid, bishop of York, who, when driven from his bishopric by king Egfrid, was making for Rome in the year 678 (as Bede writes, book 5 of the History of the English People, ch. 20) to plead his cause before the Apostolic Pope; when he boarded ship, a west wind drove him to Frisia, and honourably received by the barbarians and their king Aldgisl, he preached Christ to them and, instructing many thousands of them in the word of truth, washed them from the filth of their sins in the Saviour’s font. And as Bede adds, there he happily passed the winter with the new people of God. The same is told from Bede and Stephen Eddius by William of Malmesbury, book 3 of the Deeds of the Bishops of the English, who also adds this of the king: at once at his preaching king Aldgisl, bending his heathen pride, opened an easier way for his preaching to the rest — and also from Dagobert, king of Austrasia. Thomas Stubbs in the Chronicle of the Bishops of York writes thus of Wilfrid: driven to Frisia, the first to preach the word of God to that nation, he converted it to Christ. And indeed, if Wilfrid could have stayed on there, had his own church’s needs — which he was bound chiefly to care for — allowed it, the whole conversion of that nation might have been hoped for under a king so just and moderate as Malmesbury proclaims him; of whom he immediately subjoins this of Wilfrid:
2. And now the mild spring season was opening into flowers, when Wilfrid, his journey resumed, came to Dagobert, king of the Franks beyond the Rhine. He, not unmindful that he had once received him hospitably when driven by the faction of the magnates and coming to him from Ireland, and had sent him home aided with horses and companions, treated him kindly and wearied him with many prayers that he would deign to remain in his province, accepting the bishopric of Strasbourg. Wilfrid did not acquiesce in king Dagobert’s wish; yet there seems no doubt that he told him what had been done by himself in Frisia, and asked him to defend with his favour and patronage those whom he had there converted to the faith, and to continue to win over king Adalgisus or Aldgisl for them — from whom Dagobert obtained for them leave to build a church, toward whose erection perhaps Dagobert himself contributed some cost, and gave charge to the bishop of Cologne to set some priest over that church. And it is of this church, as we have noted elsewhere, that St Boniface seems to speak in the letter which, seventy-two years after this meeting of St Wilfrid with Dagobert the son of king Sigebert, he addressed to pope Stephen III, in which he writes: that by the ancient king of the Franks, Dagobert, the fortress of Utrecht with its church, which is said to have been destroyed, was given to the diocese of Cologne on this condition, that the bishop of Cologne should convert the Frisian people to the faith of Christ and be their preacher — which he did not do: he did not preach, he did not convert the Frisians to the faith of Christ; but the Frisian people remained pagan, until the venerable pontiff of the Roman see, Sergius, sent the servant of God Willibrord as bishop to preach to the aforementioned people, etc. Certain more recent writers would have it that this church in the fortress of Utrecht was committed to the bishop of Cologne by Dagobert I, grandfather of this king, who died at the beginning of the year 640. This commends itself to us the less, because under that Dagobert St Cunibert, bishop of Cologne, was in the height of favour and authority — who also under Sigebert, king of Austrasia, his son, was so dear to the king and the nobles and in such esteem with them that nothing of great moment was done without his counsel. Would so holy a bishop, so zealous for the salvation of souls and for the divine honour, have neglected such a charge, and not laboured that the Frisians be converted? But of the zeal of the Cologne bishops for spreading the faith in the time of the Austrasian Dagobert we can make no sure conjecture, since scarcely more than their bore names survive — and some of those perhaps fictitious. And even were we to grant that the mandate proceeded from Dagobert I, St Boniface’s reproach touches the bishops themselves, complaining that the people of the Frisians remained pagan until St Willibrord was sent as bishop to preach to the aforementioned nation.
3. But before we come to Willibrord, we must treat of St Egbert the priest, by whom he and St Suidbert and ten other comrades were sent to the Frisians. He is venerated on the 24th of April, as may be seen in the Roman Martyrology and others; here, however, we must say a good deal about him, that it may be possible to understand the grounds on which we wished to reject the tract patched together by an incompetent writer who calls himself Marcellinus and makes himself the companion of SS. Willibrord and Suidbert. Of Egbert then St Bede writes thus in the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, book 3, ch. 27: In the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 664, when an eclipse of the sun occurred on the third of May about the tenth hour of the day, a sudden pestilence devastated first the southern parts of Britain, then seizing the province of the Northumbrians, raging far and wide with savage destruction, it laid low a great multitude of people … [Bede continues]: Bishop Tuda was carried off by that plague and honourably buried in the monastery called Paegnalaech. … This plague likewise did very great damage in the island of Ireland. Among the many of the English nation, noble and lowly alike, whom that plague struck down there, were two most learned scholars of the English, of the nation of the Northumbrians, living in that island, Ethelhun and Egbert, of whom the former was brother of the abbot Ethelwine, a man also most beloved of God, who afterwards was ordained bishop of Lindsey; the latter was a man most devoted to God, whose duty was to fulfil the office of a bishop among the regions of the English. [And Bede relates that Ethelhun died, while Egbert recovered by a vow of lifelong devotion — reciting the Psalter daily and fasting.]
4. The same Egbert afterwards, living as a pilgrim in Ireland for love of the eternal country, resolved to preach the gospel to the nations of Germany from which the Angles or Saxons who now inhabit Britain are known to have drawn their origin — the Frisians, Rugini, Danes, Huns, Old Saxons, Bructeri — and to send monks there. But divine counsel intervened: he was warned by visions and by the report of a certain brother who had been a disciple and priest of Boisil at Melrose, that he should rather go to the monasteries of Columba in the isle of Iona; and he himself sent in his stead to Frisia first Wicbert — who laboured two years there under king Radbod without fruit and returned to Ireland — and then twelve holy men, of whom the best known were St Willibrord and St Suidbert. [Bede’s account in book 5, chs. 9–11, is quoted at length: Egbert’s vow not to return to Britain, the mission of the twelve in the year 690, their landing at the mouth of the Rhine, their preaching under Pippin’s protection after Radbod’s expulsion from nearer Frisia, the consecration of Willibrord by pope Sergius at Rome, and Suidbert’s ordination by Wilfrid in Britain.] The companions whom Bede names in the Ewald story are the two brothers Ewald, called the Black and the White, priests of the English nation who had long lived in Ireland for the heavenly country and, fired by the examples of their forerunners, went out to preach in the land of the Old Saxons and were martyred on the 3rd of October — their bodies thrown into the Rhine and miraculously discovered, as Bede relates.
§ Two. The apocryphal Life of St Suidbert, wrongly attributed to St Marcellinus or Marchelmus. #
5. In all the old manuscripts of the Life of St Suidbert, and in the letter published under the false name of St Ludger on his canonization, the author is called Marcellinus. Nor do we attack the name, which, adapted to Roman form, may seem the more fitting for the divine offices and public supplications decreed to him by the Church; but let us see what the gravest contemporary writers relate of the true St Marchelm. First Alfrid, third prelate of the church of Münster, who died about the year 810, in the Life of St Ludger, book 4, ch. 2, no. 14, treating of St Gregory, rector of the church of Utrecht — when Gregory sends St Liafwin or Lebuin to the place called Deventer by the river IJssel — adds this: He sent also with him Marchelmus, a servant of God, of the race of the English, and instructed from boyhood in holy manners by the holy bishop Willibrord, that he might set him before the people. In the other Life of the same St Ludger, whose author Christopher Brower judged to be Othelgrim (he was certainly a contemporary, as we shall show in its place), he writes thus in ch. 2, no. 9: Giving him as companion and co-worker in the word of God the servant of the Lord Marchelmus, himself also of the race of the English, reared from boyhood by St Willibrord. The anonymous monk of Werden agrees, who before the year of Christ 912 described the life of the same St Ludger in rhythmic verse. His first litany, as he calls it, treating of St Lebuin the priest, sings thus:
He asked that Gregory direct him to the neighbouring bounds of the Franks and Saxons, where the river IJssel flows, being named by the mouth of God to him. Which Gregory, most devoted to God, striving to bring to pass through faithful friends, sent a certain worthy man, Marchelmus, to whom the place sought out was known: who also, sprung from the land of England, was surely a stranger in Utrecht, and one of bishop Willibrord’s disciples, and by him instructed to Christ.
6. Where, then, do we reckon that Marchelmus was reared by St Willibrord and instructed in holy manners? In Ireland, where Willibrord himself was formed in the discipline of St Egbert — a discipline assuredly so strict that the boy Marchelmus could hardly have borne it? It seems certain he was brought to Utrecht, to Willibrord’s school, from England, and indeed some time after king Radbod’s death, and there reared, instructed in holy manners, and imbued with letters. And from there at last he seems to have set out for Rome, or to have been sent by his holy master (as was then the custom of the English, and is still), that he might venerate the holy places and learn thoroughly the discipline of the rites and every rule of the Church. There St Gregory found him in the year of Christ 738, having accompanied St Boniface to Rome to pope Gregory III. St Ludger attests this in his Life of the same St Gregory his master, where among other things he has this on page 10: And he brought from there with him two boys, with the master’s consent (Boniface’s, that is), into his discipleship — namely Marchelmus and Marcwinus, of the nation of the English. Of the elder of whom, Marchelmus, a most religious and holy man, as is fitting, with God’s help I shall speak more fully in its place. That Ludger says Marchelmus was then a boy must be taken in the sense in which the same Ludger says of Gregory himself on page 5: Then a lector was sought, and by God’s will the boy Gregory was found chosen, who at that same time … [The commentary discusses at length the chronology of Marchelmus’s life — his ordination as priest, his mission to Deventer with Lebuin, his later career — and shows that the “Marcellinus” who claims companionship with Suidbert belongs to a different generation and cannot have written the Life.]
§ Three. The writer’s further errors concerning the companions of St Willibrord. #
7. [The commentary examines the wish of the twelve whom Bede says were sent with Willibrord.] Bede names only Suidbert and the two Ewalds. A later author — taken to be St Adalbert the deacon — claims to have followed the pretended Marcellinus: he says Suidbert was the son of a king of the Deiri, and gave up a royal patrimony for Christ; nothing of the sort is found in the earlier Life. More of him at the 25th of June. We have therefore as companions of St Willibrord: St Suidbert, and St Adalbert; St Werenfrid — uncertain whether disciple only or comrade from the outset; St Marchelmus, Willibrord’s disciple from boyhood, thereafter St Gregory’s. Where then shall we track down the remaining eight or nine? No sure reason or plan has yet occurred to us. It once seemed to us very probable that Tilmon or Tilmannus, to whom the bodies of the holy Ewalds were revealed, was one of St Willibrord’s companions. In most copies of Bede he is called Tilmon; in another manuscript used by Abraham Wheloc for the Cambridge edition he is Tilmannus; in king Alfred’s Saxon paraphrase, Tilman. [The commentary continues enumerating candidates — Engelmund and others — and refuting the pseudo-Marcellinus’s fabrication that the companions were sons of kings.]
§ Four. Other errors of the same writer concerning SS. Columbanus, Ceadwalla, Judoc, Winnoc, Aidan, Wiro, Plechelm and others. #
8. Lest a more prolix disputation weary the reader, I shall gather as it were into a heap, briefly, the blunders scattered through this writer’s whole story — not so much errors of history rashly sprinkled in as useless and idle patchwork, made as though to obscure the splendour of truth. Nor shall I hunt out every one, but pick the chief, and without care for order note each as it comes. To pass over that he almost perpetually uses “Anglia” as we now do for Britain — or at least calls “Angles” all those of German origin dwelling in Britain, because most of the apostolic men of whom he treats were sprung from England, and Bede too, himself born of English parents, entitles his five books the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, in which he recounts how within the space of about 140 years the three German nations which subdued Britain were imbued with the Christian religion — they came, he says in book 1, ch. 15, from the stronger peoples of Germany, that is, the Saxons, Angles and Jutes: of Jutish origin are the people of Kent and the Isle of Wight, and that which to this day in the province of the West Saxons is called the Nation of the Jutes, set over against the isle of Wight itself; from the Saxons, that is the nation now called the Old Saxons, came the East Saxons … [The commentary then works through the pseudo-Marcellinus’s chapter-by-chapter inventions: that Columbanus taught Suidbert, that Ceadwalla sent him, that Judoc, Winnoc, Aidan, Wiro and Plechelm were woven into his story — all refuted from chronology and from the genuine sources.]
§ Five. Other uncertain and apocryphal matters, concerning St Suidbert’s country, parents, birth, monastic training among the English, and deeds before and after his episcopate. #
9. It would be endless labour to pursue each blunder of the incompetent writer; let us despatch first those that concern St Suidbert. He writes that he was born in the kingdom of the Northumbrians, on the northern side of the river Humber, in the year of the Lord’s Nativity 648, under pope St Martin, in the reign of Constantine or Constans, who had succeeded his grandfather the blessed emperor Heraclius — while Oswine, brother of St Oswald, auspiciously governed the sceptres of the kingdom of England. Who would not credit the historian with solid faith, who so precisely recites the kings, emperors and pontiffs in whose times his subject was born? And indeed in that year St Martin was made pope at the beginning of July, while Constans — also called Constantius and sometimes Constantine — ruled the Roman empire. But he did not succeed his grandfather Heraclius: for when Heraclius died on the 11th of March in the year 641, his son Constantine succeeded; who being murdered after four months by the guile of his stepmother Martina, as most relate, Heracleonas, Martina’s son, was brought to the sceptre; and when he with his mother was cast into perpetual exile after two months, Constans, son of Constantine and grandson of Heraclius, reigned. But why is Heraclius called “blessed”? He won glorious victories over the Persians while he chastely cultivated piety; but when he joined himself in incestuous marriage to his brother’s daughter, the aforementioned Martina, and was led to uphold the heresy of the Monothelites, then indeed the many and great provinces of the empire were torn by the most grievous calamities at the hands of the Saracens and other barbarians. At that time Oswald ruled the Northumbrians … [The commentary refutes in detail the pseudo-Marcellinus’s account of Suidbert’s baptism by Columbanus or Gallus, his banishment, his formation at Selsey, his ordination, and the martyrs of Dorsten; shows the impossibility of the stated dates; and establishes the true chronology — Suidbert ordained bishop by Wilfrid in Britain about 692–693, his mission among the Bructeri, and the “Brunswick” anachronism, since Brunswick received its name only 130 years after Suidbert’s death, from St Bruno the Saxon duke, uncle of king Henry the Fowler.]
10. Let us hear the rest. “And he came,” says the writer, “to a great village called Brunswick, and there preached Christ for some days and converted many.” But we, on the 9th of February, when treating of the martyrs of Ebbekesdorp, for this very reason pronounced that this Life of St Suidbert published under the name of the priest Marcellinus seemed in no moderate degree interpolated by later hands — a milder judgement than was fitting: it ought to have been wholly repudiated as spurious; though everything cannot everywhere be more fully discussed. We showed there that Brunswick received its name no earlier than 130 years after St Suidbert’s death, from St Bruno, duke of Saxony, uncle of king Henry the Fowler, who himself first laid the foundations of that notable town — of which, as Krantz writes (book 2 of Saxony, ch. 34), the small beginnings underwent many additions through the ages, until, enlarged by degrees, it grew to such strength and wealth that it readily conferred its title upon its princes, who are from there called dukes of Brunswick. But this was long after. So says Krantz. Let those who will judge that in St Suidbert’s age there was a great village called Brunswick — which in the next chapter the author calls a city.
11. From that place then, as the same records, Suidbert withdrew through various provinces, preaching Christ everywhere, until he came to the Bructeri — where, as ch. 19 relates, he came in the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 705. Again and again the man’s ignorance (I would almost say folly) checks the flow of my discourse, that I may show how he wars both with himself and with the writers greater beyond all exception, and with reason itself. We heard above from Bede, the gravest and holiest of authors, that St Suidbert, having received the episcopate and returned from Britain, withdrew NOT LONG AFTER to the nation of the Bructeri. That journey the writer postpones by twelve years, namely from 693 to 705; and, contradicting what we have already more than once refuted from many ancient writers, he says it was undertaken some space of years after king Radbod’s death — while admitting that Suidbert had reached the Bructeri nineteen years before that king, by the accepted reckoning of time, departed this life. And to what end was it necessary to go to the dwellers on the river Oker, beside which Brunswick was afterwards built, and to traverse so much earth before reaching the Bructeri — who by the testimony of grave authors were far nearer to the Rhine and the lands of the Franks and Batavians than the peoples afterwards called Brunswicensians? Nor does Marcellinus himself deny this: he writes in ch. 29 that in the village of Ratingen, in the province of the Bructeri, a cause of war arose between the Saxons and the Bructeri, by which war these last were driven from their seats, and Suidbert torn away from them. Ratingen is a small town of the duchy of Berg, not far from the Rhine.
§ Six. The island of the Rhine given to St Suidbert by duke Pippin, whose wife Plectrudis was never separated from him by divorce. #
12. By the same river, in the place now called Kaiserswerth (Caesaris insula), Suidbert built a monastery, Pippin granting him the site. How this came about we have already related from Bede. But what Bede despatches in a few words, the pseudo-Marcellinus adorns with prolix and silly fables: he says Suidbert, while still among the Bructeri, was admonished by an angelic revelation to go to Cologne to duke Pippin and his wife Plectrudis, that they might grant him a fit place to dwell with his companions. Immediately he subjoins that Pippin then lived at Jupille with his concubine Alpaïde, but Plectrudis was staying at Cologne — as though, truly, separated from him in bed and habitation; which is as true as what he adds, that she there lived in the palace of the Lotharingian dukes, whose name begins to be heard only a century later. Then a certain “Palatine of the Ardennes”, Gerald, sent to her by Pippin from Herstal to Jupille, came to Cologne; immediately seized by a quinsy and brought to extremity, Suidbert delivered him from peril by prayer and the sign of the Cross, and cast a devil out of another. To them then sent to him by the same Plectrudis, to whom he had suggested this, Pippin gave the village of Werden on the island or shore of the Rhine, and a great quantity of gold and silver, that he might build there a church or monastery; while Plectrudis at Cologne provided the masons and architects. Much I pass over in silence which the censure of others has already touched — such as that this author seems to confuse Jupille and Herstal, though the latter lies this side of the Meuse below Liège and the former across the same river. Then too, who at that date knew the dignity of a “Palatine of the Ardennes”? I hasten to the rest — no, to the end of the silly fable. In the year 714 he says Pippin, grieving over the innocent death of bishop St Lambert, lay sick to death. Then Suidbert, summoned by noble men to visit him, went first to Cologne to the illustrious duchess of Lotharingia or Austrasia, asking counsel of her what he should do; and she sent him with Agilolf, archbishop of Cologne, and very many other prelates, to prince Pippin her husband, to instruct him that, should he die, he must not disinherit his illustrious legitimate sons Drogo, duke of Champagne, and Grimoald, mayor of the palace of Childebert king of the Franks, by writing as his heir Charles Martel, the bastard born of the concubine Alpaïde, etc. But Pippin, dying that same year, left the same Charles Martel heir to all his principalities. Which when the aforementioned prelates saw, inglorious and sad they returned to Cologne, relating to Plectrudis all that had been done by Pippin at Jupille, comforting her and urging her to patient endurance.
13. This is the glorious crown of a work built up to this point of so many lies by the pseudo-Marcellinus — which collapses at once in the light of the ancient annals of the Franks and the public charters of donation. For first, as we have shown elsewhere, Plectrudis never either departed from her husband of her own will or was put away by him: so much so that the pious donations made by him in his last years are signed in both their names. This may be seen in the monument of the donation and exchange made to St Vitonus of the church of Verdun, part of which from Wassenberg and Labbé we recited in book 3 of the Three Dagoberts, ch. 2, p. 159, where it is added: This exchange was made on the 13th of the Kalends of February in the sixth year of our lord king Childebert. “I, Hardric, by order of lord Pippin and his illustrious matron Plectrudis, wrote and subscribed this charter.” Therefore at least in the year 709, when this exchange was made and written, Pippin and Plectrudis were living together, although Charles (who afterwards was surnamed Martel or Tudites from the deeds gloriously done against various enemies) was then about ten years old. They were also living together in the year 708, as is plain from the Deeds of the Holy Fathers of Fontenelle, ch. 2, where we read that Pippin, the most glorious duke, together with his noble wife Plectrudis, built the monastery of Fleury [St-Wandrille], which is situated in the Vexin country, in the ninth year of Hilibert, which was the twenty-second year of his exarchate and the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 708. Likewise in the year 709 or the following, a diploma was given of a donation to the monastery of Echternach, over which St Willibrord presided, made jointly by both those spouses — a diploma extant in book 2 of the Three Dagoberts, ch. 11, earlier recited by our Brower from the manuscript of Theodoric of Echternach in book 7 of the Annals of Trier. [The section closes by showing that Drogo was dead and Grimoald a child before Pippin’s last illness, so the embassy could never have occurred.]
§ Seven. This Life of St Suidbert repudiated by learned men; wrongly defended by others; to be cut out of our work. #
14. Not unmindful of what John Molanus inculcates in his booklet on the Martyrologies, ch. 23 — that in censuring one must be slow and modest — I have long been labouring, unwilling and with great weariness, in discussing this commentary of an unlearned man. Therefore, although very many things remain which deserve castigation, and not with a gentle pen, I shall break off and make an end, if I first note that before me others have censured this tract of his with deserved reproof. But some did it so lightly that they nevertheless confessed it was composed by St Marcellinus, yet corrupted and violated by some more recent hand. Thus, after others, Aubertus Miraeus in his Supplement on Ecclesiastical Writers, ch. 905, where he imprudently sprinkles on the author another blemish, writing that he was St Suidbert’s companion and comrade in his pious pilgrimage in converting the Frisians, Westphalians, Bructeri and other German peoples — whereas the author himself in ch. 19 denies certain of these things: “Thus far,” he says, “I Marcellinus … living with St Suidbert, have written what I saw, and was present at almost all the things aforewritten”; and then, when Suidbert himself set out with his followers for Minimigardum, that is Münster (for so he writes), “I returned, having received his blessing, toward Frisia,” and so writes the things that follow from the report of truthful brethren — and then in ch. 38 and the four following treats of the Bructeri.
15. Then also, and reverently, our Christopher Brower in the Sidera Germanae, published at Mainz in 1616, in the Notes to the Life of St Gregory of Utrecht written by St Ludger, when he had cited “Marcellinus on Suidbert”, immediately tempers the saying with this correction: “If, however, he is maintaining his own person.” Molanus in his Little Index of the Belgian Saints, under “Egbert”, writes among other things: But the deeds of St Suidbert have been manifestly corrupted by someone’s ignorance. James Gretser, one of ours, treats the same writing at greater length in his book on the Patron Saints of the Church of Eichstätt, published at Ingolstadt in 1617, Observations book 1, ch. 9, which chapter begins thus: “Wonderful — no, utterly wonderful — things Marcellinus chants to us, who committed the deeds of St Suidbert to letters. If these were true, many things we now reckon established would collapse.” And in the same sense immediately: “These things of Marcellinus, if they are true, make it necessary that much which is held most certain crumble away and vanish into thin air.” And a little later he calls Marcellinus “supposititious, or at least corrupted and spoiled by a bad hand”. Finally he comes somewhat nearer to our own opinion: “Those deeds are corrupted, if not wholly supposititious, and were composed not even at first by the true Marcellinus, St Suidbert’s disciple, but by someone else some centuries later: for that these things which are now extant, and which Surius exhibits to us, did not issue from the workshop of the true Marcellinus can be shown by two chief arguments. For first, this author uses names of regions and provinces which did not exist until some hundreds of years after St Suidbert’s death — such as Lotharingia, Brunswick, Münster a city of Westphalia, etc.” And afterwards he concludes: “From these things it is plain that the History of the Deeds of St Suidbert undeservedly bears the name of that old Marcellinus the Englishman, since it could not be that he used in his writing names of provinces and towns not yet born. Secondly, the same is proved from many things which the author asserts that do not square with Bede or with the other older and more truthful English historians.” And somewhat later: “Therefore what pseudo-Marcellinus fables collapses, concerning the blessing which those twelve ecclesiastics sought from archbishop Egbert as they departed into Frisia.” Finally, toward the end of the chapter he says: “Many more errors, indeed far more, occur in that Suidbertine history, veiled with the specious name of Marcellinus.” Much also against pseudo-Marcellinus and this Life of St Suidbert was written by Willebrord Boschart, canon of the monastery of St Mary of Tongerlo, Premonstratensian order, in his Dissertations on the First Apostles of Old Frisia, published at Mechelen in 1650; but much of it seemed to us not chiefly pertinent to the Life of St Suidbert, and we therefore referred it to the Life of St Willibrord — and besides, in many points he does not press very hard; yet he put in good work, and of no few years, though deprived of the aid of many books, which either had not yet come into his hands or had appeared after he was already failing in years.
16. Yet there have been some — not otherwise unlearned men — who either rashly followed this commentary of Marcellinus without ever examining it, or even tried to defend it. Easily the chief of these was Ægidius Gelenius, then canon of St Andrew’s at Cologne, afterwards adopted by the most eminent cardinal of Wartenberg as suffragan of the bishopric of Osnabrück, and appointed by the Roman pontiff bishop of Aureliopolis in Asia. He published a writing entitled The Shield of Suidbert, averting the javelins hurled against the writer of the Life of St Suidbert. I would not refute the dead man too sharply, whose humanity I always cultivated while he lived and whom all the learned loved. Otherwise, the arguments he brings are of such a kind that whoever [reads our treatise will see them answered]. The reasons Gretser urges against this commentary of Marcellinus, the same Gelenius strives to refute — but with little success: some he does not even touch, some he drags off in another direction. As for Brunswick, he thinks it received its name from Bruno, brother of Windekind the Great, though the town began to be built only later by Bruno, great-great-nephew of the same Windekind. But to whichever the origin of town and name be referred, the Life is proved earlier-written than that the place could have taken its name from Windekind’s brother. Yet Gelenius doubts whether by a slip of the pen “Brunswick” was not written for Bardowick, the most ancient town of Saxony; and a little later judges that Brunswick ought by no means to be taken for that city from which the duchy of Brunswick drew its name, since no trace exists by which it can be proved that St Suidbert crossed the Weser. For what he calls Suidbert’s going to Brunswick would have been this side of the Weser, in the district of Engern and the march or county or lordship which was then commonly called after Bruno its lord, as was then the custom. But no memory of any Bruno survives anywhere whose dominion that village — or “city” as ch. 18 calls it — was subject to. Nor do those conjectures, gratuitously devised, greatly help Marcellinus.
17. Therefore, as for the others who patronise this commentary as the legitimate offspring of St Marcellinus — they nevertheless confess that it is now interpolated, now corrupted, and indeed in many places: patches of various kinds sewn on, many needing explanation, more recent place-names added while the old ones which have now fallen out of use were worn away. But we ask why this happened in that book rather than in innumerable others, in which the very antiquity of the names gives splendour and worth? Why at least is no genuine exemplar of that ancient time produced from some other quarter? We have indeed seen and perused many most ancient volumes of the deeds of the saints; not one — which we could reckon even 800 years old — in which this Life under Marcellinus’s name exists, or is even cited. Would not Sigebert of Gembloux have cited its author in his most accurate catalogue of writers composed 500 years ago? It is said that old, grave and holy writers remembered the Life — Rathfrid bishop of Utrecht in a letter to St Ludger bishop of Münster, whom the writer unseasonably calls “bishop of Münster”, as Ludger himself does in the history of St Suidbert’s canonization. But that history we have said above is supposititious, and shall show more fully at St Ludger’s Life on 26 March — both from the many blunders with which it teems, and from the Werden monks’ silence about it, though they accurately enumerate St Ludger’s other writings, including the rhythmic poet who about the year 915 wove his deeds into a triple litany. And if that history had ever been written by Ludger, would it not exist at Werden, or at least its memory? Ludger indeed mentions St Marchelmus or Marcellinus in the Life of his master St Gregory; and those who wrote down Ludger’s deeds mention him too; but no one mentions a history of the canonization of St Suidbert, no one this Life.
18. Yet some contend that this Life wonderfully agrees with the traditions and monuments of various churches, and conduces to the knowledge of antiquity — so that we may deservedly fear lest they demand a sharper vindication than we would wish. The more sharply and solidly they do so, the greater grace they will obtain from us and from the saints in heaven themselves. For we look to nothing but the truth. If they show that it stands with them, we shall gladly assent, and shall erase these very things we now pen for the truth, as we suppose. If they themselves wander palpably from it, by that very fact they will confirm ours. There is no Frenchman who is angry with those who explode the old fables of the origin of the Franks, traced even from the Trojans and some Hector or other. There are here too, as elsewhere — if not everywhere — tales devised by idle men and smeared upon parchments, which can be the less tolerated if they touch sacred things or the acts of the saints.
19. “What then?” they say — “do you deny that St Suidbert was the first apostle of the men of Münster, as they are now called?” Not at all; but we do not affirm it on this writer’s sole authority. It seems credible to us because St Radbod writes below that Suidbert entered the Saxon fields in which Münster stands. “Do you deny that Hildegarius, bishop of Cologne, was crowned with martyrdom?” Not even the Cologne people themselves agree about his martyrdom, or the year and day of his death. “What of Agilolf?” He is venerated as saint and martyr. That he was sent as legate with St Suidbert to Pippin in the year 714 for the cause which pseudo-Marcellinus records, we have shown above to be in no way credible — yet the glory of his martyrdom is not dimmed by this matter being denied to so frivolous a writer. It will be discussed elsewhere from what cause he fell, at what time, and by whom. The Life which we shall give in its place from the Malmundary and Cologne St-Mary-ad-Gradus manuscripts relates that he was sent as legate by Charles Martel to king Daniel or Chilperic and Raginfrid the mayor of the palace, who […]
§ Eight. St Suidbert’s miracles, sacred cult, relics. Another St Suidbert the younger, bishop of Verden. #
20. That very many miracles have befallen through the merits of St Suidbert we have no doubt, since his cult has flourished now for so many centuries at Kaiserswerth and the neighbouring places; such devotion is not custom to go unrecompensed by heavenly benefits. Whether the things the rejected author recounts are to be set down in the number of them, there is no cause why we should affirm or deny. Our mind inclines this way, that we judge his help is accustomed to be invoked against the plague of quinsy — because the writer is so insistent that it had often been healed by his patronage, that it was famous by common rumour in his own time. For it often happens that the aid of certain saints is implored for the cure of certain ailments, not because they could not obtain from God’s favourable power the remedy of others too, but because men, moved by the example of others whom they have seen freed by the saints from the ill under which they themselves labour, also supplicate them with modest confidence and are heard with like happiness — and so the force of example spreads to more. And indeed Hermann Greven, in his Additions to Usuard, though he takes almost the whole eulogy of St Suidbert from Bede, yet adds, as do other martyrologies, that he used to cure the squinantia or quinsy. Moreover, that many things were wrought by him is indicated by the prayer recited in the proper offices of the archdiocese of Utrecht and its suffragan bishoprics on the Kalends of March, the day on which he is celebrated in those churches with double rite. It runs thus: O God, who did exalt blessed Suidbert your confessor and bishop to the conversion of the nations by the grace of evangelical preaching and the glory of miracles; graciously grant that we, who through his ministry have been taught your faith, may by his intercession be brought to the vision of your glory. Through the Lord.
21. His name is inscribed for that day in very many martyrologies, both manuscript and printed. Baronius in his notes to the Martyrology cites Bede, Usuard, Ado. The Bede printed in the Basel and Plantin Antwerp editions runs thus: The same day, the deposition of St Suidbert, bishop and confessor. But it does not stand in the genuine manuscripts of Bede, the most ancient, written by hand. Nor in the best copies of Usuard, whether written by hand or the one printed at Paris in 1536, nor in Bellinus at Padua. An exemplar of Usuard — but an interpolated one, written about 240 years ago under the emperor Sigismund by Widon Krentzelin in Alsace — has this, which is also read in various Belgian manuscripts of no great age which we possess, and in Molanus’s Additions to Usuard: At the imperial town called Werden, the feast of St Suidbert, bishop of Werden and confessor, who in the times of Pippin, together with St Willibrord, preached the word of salvation to the nations. He, among other kinds of sickness, used to cure the disease which physicians call squinantia. Baronius, using some like exemplar when he cited Usuard, seems to have composed the eulogy of the saint which is now read in the Roman Martyrology, expressed in these words: At the town of Werden, St Suidbert, bishop, who in the time of pope Sergius preached the gospel among the Frisians, Batavians and other peoples of Germany. The martyrology printed at Cologne in 1490 begins the Kalends of March thus: In the territory of Berg, at the imperial town … the rest as in Molanus. As for the Ado’s Martyrology which Baronius also cites, it is the one which James Mosander added in his Supplement to Surius’s Lives from four manuscripts; there he relates it from one only of those manuscripts, prefixing an asterisk by which he indicates that he doubts whether it is Ado’s or another more recent writer’s — the codex being interpolated; for which reason our Rosweyde, when he published Ado, relegated those entries to an appendix, in which, as in Mosander, we read: The same day, Suidbert, bishop and confessor. The same stands in a manuscript of the church of St Mary at Utrecht. But in the manuscript of the monastery of St Martin at Trier it is recited first: Svitbert, bishop and confessor. In the manuscript of the collegiate church of St Mary ad Gradus at Cologne: St Svitbert, confessor. Francis Maurolycus has it erroneously: Likewise Cutbert of Verdun, in the times of king Pippin. The error arose from a corrupt codex in which S had been turned into C and I into T. The same blunder stands in the Roman Martyrology translated into French and interpolated, printed at Liège in 1524: “Verde in Flandria”, it says. But Verden is a long way from Flanders — though the writer seems by synecdoche to take Flanders for the whole of Belgium; and even so Verden will not belong to it. Constantius Felicius brings forward not a few things about him drawn from Marcellinus, and writes — a most shameful blunder — that he was enrolled in the number of the saints by Honorius III in the presence of the emperor Charlemagne. He meant to write Leo III, who was Charlemagne’s contemporary; but Honorius III is four hundred years younger than either. And that he was enrolled among the saints by Leo is likewise asserted by all who cleave to Marcellinus, to whom we by no means subscribe; nor do we approve what Galesinius affirms in his Notations, that the life of St Suidbert, flourishing with the praise of sanctity and miracles, was set forth by several — by Marcellinus the priest and Ludger. For St Ludger, whom he wrongly calls “Lulgerus”, is said to have written not the Life but the apotheosis [canonization] of St Suidbert, and St Marcellinus the Life; both of which we deny. Saussay in the Gallican Martyrology also records the memory of this canonization at 17 September.
22. Many towns in Germany beyond the Rhine and in our Belgium are distinguished by the name Werda, which in the Teutonic tongue signifies an island; there are three famous ones mentioned both in this Life of St Suidbert and in others through this month. The first, and nearest to us, is that which is now called Kaiserswerth (Caesaris insula), formerly — as Gelenius testifies — St Suidbert’s island. The same describes it thus: It is washed by the Rhine, and girt by an arm of it shows in the lower diocese of Cologne a stronghold and town impregnable by the nature of the place, distinguished by a notable college of canons (formerly a monastery) and rich in the relics of SS. Suidbert and Willeic. The second Werda, or Werthina as the ancients generally wrote, in the same diocese of Cologne on the river Ruhr, in the country once called of the Ripuarians, is an illustrious monastery first built by St Ludger, bishop of Münster, as we shall relate at length at his Life on 26 March, with a strong town adjoining the monastery. The third Werda or Verda — formerly, they say, called Fardium — lies on the river Aller beyond the Weser; it was adorned with an episcopal see about the year 786 by Charles, king of the Franks, with the assent of pope Adrian, at the very time when Ludger was turning over in his mind plans for building the monastery of Werden.
23. The first prelate given to this Verden also bore the name Suidbert. And many indeed believed he was the same man who came with St Willibrord into Frisia or Gaul in the year 690. We ourselves elsewhere fell into this error, deceived by Marcellinus’s words before we had duly examined him and condemned him of untrustworthiness. He writes plainly in ch. 27: The most holy Suidbert, bishop of Werden, died. And in the title (which however was prefixed by another, not by the author himself) we read: The Life of St Suidbert, first bishop of the church of Verden. Yet reason had not so far forsaken us as to think that St Suidbert had prolonged his life to the year 786 from Christ’s birth, when the bishopric of Verden beyond the Weser is said to have been founded by king Charles — he who is said to have died in 713, while the great-grandfather of the same Charles, Pippin, was still alive; nor certainly that he was bishop of the see erected by the elder Suidbert at Werden on the Rhine: for what would the Cologne bishops have suffered — they who were eager to recall the church of Utrecht itself to themselves? But since St Suidbert was a bishop, though bound to no certain see; and since he is said to have carried the gospel beyond the Weser even into those territories now held by the city and duchy of Brunswick and in the county of Hoya near the diocese of Verden, and a memory is said to survive there of the faith sown by the same Suidbert — it seemed not at variance with the truth that when the city of Verden with its territory was fully formed in the Christian religion and an episcopal see founded among them, the people began to glory in that earlier Suidbert as their apostle and bishop, as all peoples are accustomed to hunt out and celebrate in speech the antiquity of any praiseworthy institution; unless perhaps they called their bishop “surviving”. Thus Rohing, prince of the Antwerpians, in a diploma which Aubertus Miraeus published from a very ancient book of the abbey of Echternach, professes to give certain possessions to the most holy church of the apostles Peter and Paul which the lord Amandus the bishop built in Antwerp, WHERE WILLIBRORD THE BISHOP SEEMS TO HAVE PRESIDED — Willibrord the bishop was then caring for the Christian cause in Antwerp; yet not as bishop of Antwerp, as that prince might seem to anyone to have acknowledged; nor do those who much later, in our parents’ memory, were bishops proper to this city set him in the catalogue of their predecessors, though they venerate him with a double office as an apostolic husbandman of this vineyard.
24. But many martyrologies call St Suidbert bishop of Verden and do not sufficiently define to which of the two Werdens they suppose him to have presided. Some, because they relate that he died at the imperial town of Werden and call him bishop of Verden, may seem to assign him to both Werdens — to the nearer as founder and patron, to the other as prelate. Thus the one printed at Cologne in 1490: In the territory of Berg, at the imperial town called Werden, the feast of blessed Suidbert, bishop of Verden and confessor, etc. Hermann Greven the Carthusian has the same. But Molanus and the manuscript of our Louvain college: At the imperial town called Werden, the feast of St Suidbert, bishop of Werden and confessor, etc. Canisius expressly makes him bishop of the imperial Werden: In the territory of Berg, he says, at the imperial town of Werden, the feast of St Suidbert, there bishop and confessor, in the time of St Willibrord, etc. Arnold Wion, in the Notations he scraped together out of pseudo-Marcellinus, finally adds this: He founded the monastery of Werden in honour of St Mary the Mother of God in the duchy of Cleves in the year 711, where he was appointed first bishop. I believe he placed Werden in the duchy of Cleves because Berg, Jülich and Cleves had the same duke when Wion was writing the Lignum Vitae. The same author in book 2 ch. 59 reckons St Suidbert or Svitbert among the bishops of Verden, and then says he was created first bishop of Verden, that is of Caesaris-Werda, in the year 711; and, to involve the matter further, he enumerates his successors, who were successors of the other Svitbert, bishop of Verden on the Aller. Others have like things, following Wion. Most perturbed of all is the narrative of Cornelius Schulting, canon of St Andrew’s at Cologne, who says in tome 29 of the Bibliotheca Ecclesiastica that he drew it partly from Bede, Molanus, Wion, Marcellinus and Bruschius. But in none of them did he read that Suidbert — who was sent by Egbert with Willibrord and the other ten — afterwards returned from Frisia to England and kept himself there many years; then, when he had learned that the Saxons were converted to the ancient faith of the Roman church, ran back into Germany, and by Charles […]. [The section closes with a survey of the saint’s relics: the shrine at Kaiserswerth, kept by the Jesuit college there and often exposed to public veneration; and at Cologne, in the church of St Margaret, where among the relics gathered by Ægidius Gelenius, the archiepiscopal vicar-general — under which he himself wished to be buried — is the knee of St Suidbert the bishop, in a statue representing a mitred bishop from the navel up.]
25. It is strange that Marcellinus, and those who cling tooth and nail to the narrative published under his name, nowhere mention St Wulfram, archbishop of Sens, who at the same time as St Suidbert and Willibrord also imbued the Frisians with the faith of Christ and brought their king Radbod so far that he professed himself willing to be washed in baptism — who nevertheless, immediately fooled by the devil, when he had dipped one foot in the basin drew it back, and on the third day after perished by a sudden and eternal death; as we shall tell at his Life on the 20th of March.
On the Same St Suibbert #
Sermon of St Radbod, bishop [of Utrecht] #
1. Dearest brethren, on the day of our special joy, on which the most holy commemoration of our most blessed patron Suidbert is to be made, we must be ready for every good work and have our minds eager: first indeed for hearing the commands of the divine law; and then, so far as we can, that we may strive to fulfil them in deed, and so at last be able to teach others. For this our Lord Jesus Christ did, of whom it is written: Jesus began to do and to teach. Otherwise our teaching will be vain and empty, if we destroy by doing nothing the things we say. For what profits a man if he hears well and does ill? Or what does it profit him if he shows others the way of the feet, while he himself ceases not to stray from the way of right conduct? We therefore, following the footsteps of our Redeemer, let us most gladly hear whatever is good; and what we have heard let us fulfil in worthy acts; and so, proceeding in order to the instructing of our neighbours, let us furnish them with the teachings and examples alike of good things. That this may be done without delay, the works of our Father, of whom we spoke above, must be recalled to our memory — he who in all things he taught first gave his hearers an example from himself, and never said anything was to be done in the church save what he himself had done first in the doing. But that this also may become most manifest to those who wish to imitate him, let his deeds, pleasing to God and needful enough to every hearer, be recited in public; that from them the people of Christ may receive edification, and ever rejoice in the glorious prayers of so great a man.
But since certain things which he did are hidden from us, known after God to antiquity alone — seeing he is proved to have come from the province of the English into our borders — let the writings of the venerable priest Bede be brought forward, who in the Annals of the English, among other things, left this written of this most holy man:
2. In the time of blessed Willibrord, bishop of Utrecht, the brethren who were in Frisia, devoted to the ministry of the word, chose from their number a man modest in manners and meek of heart, Suidbert, to be ordained their prelate. Being sent to Britain at their petition, the most reverend bishop Wilfrid ordained him — who at that time, driven from his country, happened to be in exile in the regions of the Mercians. For Kent had no bishop at that time, Theodore being dead and Berhtwald his successor, who had gone beyond the sea to be ordained, not yet returned to the seat of his bishopric. This Suidbert, having received the episcopate, returned from Britain and not long after withdrew to the nation of the Bructeri, and by preaching led many of them into the way of truth. But not long after, when the Bructeri were conquered by the nation of the Old Saxons, those who had received the word were scattered abroad; and the prelate himself with certain others went to Pippin, who, at the intercession of his wife Blithtrudis [Plectrudis], gave him a place of dwelling on an island of the Rhine which in their tongue is called “on the shore” [in littore — Kaiserswerth]. In which, having built a monastery which his heirs possess to this day, he led for a while a most continent life, and there closed his last day.
3. These things, then, set forth above of this most holy man, we believe no one doubts Bede recorded — unless perhaps some such person as, busy with other affairs, either has not read or at least has read carelessly the book in which they are written. For the rest, we ought in no wise to doubt that this man was trained in all the pursuits of the Christian religion — seeing that among such precious lamps of God’s church as marvellously shone in those days both in the nation of the English and of the Gauls, he merited to be ordained shepherd of Christ’s sheep by those most sacred men themselves. For had he not been fully instructed in the pastoral exercise, in no wise would the charge of so great a company of Christ’s flock have been entrusted to his keeping. Moreover, had he not been a soldier as it were a veteran, and in the contest of martyrdom strong and unterrified, in no wise would he have been appointed highest tribune in the battle-line of Christ, primipilus of the divine legion’s army. But having tasted these things allegorically, we must also open morally what are the exercises in which we doubt not that unconquerable soldier was glorious — to be shown first in pastoral things, wherein whether a ravening lion or a lurking wolf brings no small harm to Christ’s sheep: where if the shepherd be watchful, he will either beware the ambushes or shake off the plundering by strong resistance, and return with the flock safe to the Lord’s fold. But if, set in daily readiness for war, he has never laid down his arms, but either repelled the enemy from the camp or, fighting openly in the field, has duly triumphed, thereafter within the walls of the holy city he will most safely reign.
4. Both of which we know the most blessed Suidbert assuredly did. For while bearing the office of prelate in the church, whether he drew back his brethren from deceitful persuasions or recalled them from public contentions, he shut out from the Lord’s flock as it were a most savage lion and a most cunning wolf. And when he defended with the sword of God’s word and the shield of faith those oppressed by the power of kings or vexed by the cruelty of princes from tyrannical persecution, he surely, as a noble leader, brought his soldiers back unharmed to the camp. And so, if you wish to know what were the arms of this our leader in his daily encounters, know them for not forged ones but plainly spiritual. For he was not laden with iron, but rather girt with faith, hope and charity; holding David’s sling with its stone, and smiting the terrible Philistine in the forehead, and delivering all Israel from the peril of death. Nor should you think he was ever custom to lay aside such arms; he was adorned in peace with the same arms wherewith he stood armed in war. For he was ever humble, ever gentle and mild, patient in adversity, modest in prosperity.
5. He was also splendid in chastity, strenuous in abstinence, sober in vigils, most steadfast in prayer. In judgement he pleaded by equity, not by persons; in compassion he pitied humanly, not tenaciously; he was no coveter of others’ good, but a most lavish bestower of his own: vice in a man he pursued sharply, but the man he embraced familiarly. His speech was sweet as honey; his preaching exceeding delightful; his table full of spiritual dishes; his fellowship angelic. All evils he spat out like deadly poisons; all goods he loved like the spices of Paradise. Finally, if you wish to make an epilogue of it — he was wholly perfect and wholly full of God. These were the arms, brethren, of our most blessed patron Suidbert in adversity and prosperity; with these he fought in every contest, and ever and everywhere conquered. For he had no struggle against flesh and blood, but against princes and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
6. Let us therefore give thanks to almighty God on the day of this most holy prelate’s solemnity, praying likewise and beseeching that we whose glorious life we proclaim on earth may merit to enjoy his patronage in the heavens. Amen.
His allegorical poem on the same most blessed prelate #
Suidbert, a new light, has shone upon Franks and English, to give to both the bright lamp of faith; a memorable husbandman, he entered the Saxon fields to sow the seed of Christ’s love; nor was he wanting to the barren and empty field of the Frisians, and made it fruitful with new growth.
Now since the blind night of ancient evils had passed, and the day of the true sun had begun to be at hand — who with gentle rays bathes the whole world, consuming the ill and brightening the good — O how great and of what kind is that sun that shines through the twelve hours upon the sacred apostolic people!
How did he pour into them the exceeding heats, himself aflame — he who gave them fiery hearts! From there it is they so despised the threatening swords as though the laws of death were sweet to them. For a strong fire burned from the altar of the heart, which had made their limbs equal to the clay. The body stood stiff to all the violence of the wound dealt, and the stricken skin so rebounded from the fists as stout flint struck by tender wood, or adamant when it is tested by a modest point.
Kings stood astonished through their tents, marvelling that a head was harder than a helm; and that, unarmed, men would offer their breasts to the mailed, fearing not at all to be pressed by the drawn sword. And while the wars dragged on in windings: “What rigour is this,” said they, “or so great a desire of a hard death?”
Hear, fierce tigress; hear, lion roaring with opened jaws, what Faith joined with reason makes answer: The Sun, with whose rays we said the whole world is bathed — know that he is Christ the God: shining with light from the Father’s light, warm from the Father, aye burning, and in might and measure equal. With his perpetual fire he had kindled these men’s minds, burning all harmful things, cherishing all serious. By which, as though fired, they had grown hard like inflexible clay, amid enemies and arms; from which they could neither be bent by adversities nor terrified by threats poured from barbarous mouths.
Now they rejoice in rest, and from the lofty citadel of the mighty bend down the proud necks of those that war. Therefore good is that heat which so many things attend — riches, virtue, the palm, the crown, the sky. In this, surely, coming to our shores, Suidbert, bathed on every side, was aflame within.
O happy soldier, who were custom never to yield to Mars, but ever to conquer Mars!
What songs shall we render you for such deserts? What praises shall our pipe sing you? Do not sweet modulations delight your ears, meeting you from the empyrean orbs — where, when the world is hurled headlong into the adverse poles and the stars resound with parallel courses, then true music echoes among the ethereal cycles, all-singing, and accompanied with its own numbers, rising ever more, so that it resounds beyond the æther, thrice or four times, twice sounding the diapason — that sound which surpasses human sense with its long interval, and sings the noble chroma to the powers above?
Here a melodious strain is framed for you, holy man, which two and three, four and eight voices sing. I add another, which none can merit beneath the sun, save he who is perchance your peer in the art of good: the angelic companies, a thousand hundred thousand choirs to be tuned together in sacred harmonies — you hear with ever-happy ears in heaven those whose holy mouths sound without end. are you be, blessed prelate, blest in this hymn: this too you sing with the rest night and day; and therefore your praise needs not our mouth — from which the dread crash of sins resounds.
For the savage mind is swept away through monstrous guilt — alas! — and entangles itself in Stygian chaos; therefore the hoarse voice babbles dire wailings, and mourns with heavy groaning its sad fate. But you, who sing psalms to Christ with the typical strain and surpass all organs with such modulations, with bowed souls and contrite heart we pray: deign, gentle one, to be present to our humble prayer, that, as the honesty of life advanced you so far as to deserve to hear the angelic tones, us too, purged of the filth of wrongdoing, you, O saint, may make apt to enter the melody of your praise. Amen.
[Here the printed text passes to the next article: On St Monan, archdeacon in Scotland — “who was not a Hungarian by nation, but rather a Scot”.]