But then he requires from each person so strict a practice of poverty, as to allow no one the property or even the long use of any thing; and orders them every year to change chambers, beds, crosses, beads, and books. He will have no manner of account to be made of birth, wit, or talents; but only of humility; {299} he obliges them only to the little office of our Lady, which all might easily learn to understand; meditations, spiritual reading, recollection, and retreats, abundantly compensating the defect. All his regulations tend to instil a spirit of piety, charity, meekness, and simplicity. He subjects his Order to the bishop of each place, without any general. Pope Paul V. approved it, and erected the congregation of the Visitation into a religious Order.
St. Francis, finding his health decline, and his affairs to multiply, after having consulted cardinal Frederic Borromeo, archbishop of Milan, chose for his coadjutor in the bishopric of Geneva, his brother John Francis of Sales, who was consecrated bishop of Chalcedon at Turin, in 1618. But the saint still applied himself to his functions as much as ever. He preached the Lent at Gren.o.ble, in 1617, and again in 1618, with his usual conquests of souls; converting many Calvinists, and among these the duke of Lesdiguieres. In 1619, he accompanied to Paris the cardinal of Savoy, to demand the sister of king Louis XIII., Christina of France, in marriage for the prince of Piedmont. He preached the Lent in St. Andre-des-Arcs, and had always such a numerous audience, that cardinals, bishops, and princes could scarce find room. His sermons and conferences, and still more the example of his holy life, and the engaging sweetness of his conversation, most powerfully moved not only the devout, but also heretics, libertines, and atheists; while his eloquence and learning convinced their understandings. The bishop of Bellay tells us, that he entreated the saint at Paris not to preach twice every day, morning and evening, for the sake of his health. St.
Francis answered him with a smile: "That it cost him much less to preach a sermon than to find an excuse for himself when invited to perform that function." He added: "G.o.d has appointed me a pastor and a preacher: and is not every one to follow his profession? But I am surprised that the people in this great city flock so eagerly to my sermons: for my tongue is slow and heavy, my conceptions low, and my discourses flat, as you yourself are witness." "Do you imagine," said the other, "that eloquence is what they seek in your discourses? It is enough for them to see you in the pulpit. Your heart speaks to them by your countenance, and by your eyes, were you only to say the Our Father with them. The most common words in your mouth, burning with the fire of charity, pierce and melt all hearts. There is I know not what so extraordinary in what you say, that every word is of weight, every word strikes deep into the heart. You have said every thing even when you seem to have said nothing. You are possessed of a kind of eloquence which is of heaven: the power of this is astonishing." St. Francis, smiling, turned off the discourse.[6] The match being concluded, the princess Christina chose Francis for her chief almoner, desiring to live always under his direction: but all her entreaties could neither prevail on him to leave his diocese, though he had a coadjutor, nor to accept of a pension: and it was only on these two conditions he undertook the charge, always urging that nothing could dispense with him from residence. The princess made him a present of a rich diamond, by way of an invest.i.ture, desiring him to keep it for her sake. "I will," said he, "unless the poor stand in need of it." She answered, she would then redeem it. He said, "This will happen so often, that I shall abuse your bounty." Finding it given to the poor afterwards at Turin, she gave him another, richer, charging him to keep that at least. He said. "Madam, I cannot promise you: I am very unfit to keep things of value." Inquiring after it one day, she was told it was always in p.a.w.n for the poor, and that {300} the diamond belonged not to the bishop, but to all the beggars of Geneva. He had indeed a heart which was not able to refuse any thing to those in want.
He often gave to beggars the waistcoat off his own back, and sometimes the cruets of his chapel. The pious cardinal, Henry de Gondi, bishop of Paris, used all manner of arguments to obtain his consent to be his coadjutor in the see of Paris; but he was resolved never to quit the church which G.o.d had first committed to his charge.
Upon his return to Annecy he would not touch a farthing of his revenue for the eighteen months he was absent; but gave it to his cathedral, saying, it could not be his, for he had not earned it. He applied himself to preaching, instructing, and hearing confessions with greater zeal than ever. In a plague which raged there, he daily exposed his own life to a.s.sist his flock. The saint often met with injurious treatment, and very reviling words, which he ever repaid with such meekness and beneficence as never failed to gain his very enemies. A lewd wretch, exasperated against him for his zeal against a wicked harlot, forged a letter of intrigue in the holy prelate"s name, which made him pa.s.s for a profligate and a hypocrite with the duke of Nemours and many others: the calumny reflected also on the nuns of the Visitation. Two years after, the author of it, lying on his death-bed, called in witnesses, publicly justified the saint, and made an open confession of the slander and forgery. The saint had ever an entire confidence in the divine providence, was ever full of joy, and resigned to all the appointments of heaven, to which he committed all events. He had a sovereign contempt of all earthly things, whether riches, honors, dangers, or sufferings.
He considered only G.o.d and his honor in all things: his soul perpetually breathed nothing but his love and praises; nor could he contain this fire within his breast, for it discovered itself in his countenance; which, especially while he said ma.s.s, or distributed the blessed eucharist, appeared shining, as it were, with rays of glory, and breathing holy fervor. Often he could not contain himself in his conversation, and would thus express himself to his intimate friends: "Did you but know how G.o.d treats my heart, you would thank his goodness, and beg for me the strength to execute the inspirations which he communicates to me. My heart is filled with an inexpressible desire to be forever sacrificed to the pure and holy love of my Saviour. Oh! it is good to live, to labor, to rejoice only in G.o.d. By his grace I will forevermore be nothing to any creature; nor shall any creature be anything to me but in him and for him." At another time, he cried out to a devout friend: "Oh! if I knew but one string of my heart which was not all G.o.d"s, I would instantly tear it out. Yes; if I knew that there was one thread in my heart which was not marked with the crucifix, I would not keep it one moment."
In the year 1622, he received an order from the duke of Savoy to go to Avignon to wait on Louis XIII., who had just finished the civil wars in Languedoc. Finding himself indisposed, he took his last leave of his friends, saying, he should see them no more; which drew from them floods of tears. At Avignon he was at his prayers during the king"s triumphant entry, and never went to the window to see any part of that great pomp.
He was obliged to attend the king and the cardinal of Savoy to Lyons, where he refused all the grand apartments offered him by the intendant of he province and others, to lodge to the poor chamber of the gardener to the monastery of the Visitation: as he was never better pleased than when he could most imitate the poverty of his Saviour. He received from the king and queen-mother, and from all the princes, the greatest marks of honor and esteem: and though indisposed, continued to preach and perform all his {301} functions, especially on Christmas-day, and St.
John"s in the morning. After dinner he began to fall gradually into an apoplexy, was put to bed by his servant, and received extreme unction; but as he had said ma.s.s that day and his vomiting continued, it was thought proper not to give him the viatic.u.m. He repeated with great fervor: "My heart and my flesh rejoice in the living G.o.d; I will sing the mercies of the Lord to all eternity. When shall I appear before his face? Show me, my beloved, where thou feedest, where thou restest at noonday. O my G.o.d, my desire is before thee, and my sighs are not hidden from thee. My G.o.d and my all! my desire is that of the hills eternal."
While the physicians applied blistering plasters, and hot irons behind his neck, and a caustic to the crown of his head, which burned him to the bone, he shed abundance of tears under excess of pain, repeating: "_Wash me, O Lord, from my iniquities, and cleanse me from my sin. Still cleanse me more and more_. What do I here, my G.o.d, distant from thee, separated from thee?" And to those about him: "Weep not, my children; must not the will of G.o.d be done?" One suggesting to him the prayer of St. Martin, "If I am still necessary for thy people, I refuse not to labor:" he seemed troubled at being compared to so great a saint, and said, he was an unprofitable servant, whom neither G.o.d nor his people needed. His apoplexy increasing, though slowly, he seemed at last to lose his senses, and happily expired on the feast of Holy Innocents, the 28th of December, at eight o"clock at night, in the year 1622, the fifty-sixth of his age, and the twentieth of his episcopacy. His corpse was embalmed, and carried with the greatest pomp to Annecy, where he had directed by will it should be interred. It was laid in a magnificent tomb near the high altar in the church of the first monastery of the Visitation. After his beatification by Alexander VII., in 1661, it was placed upon the altar in a rich silver shrine. He was canonized in 1665 by the same pope, and his feast fixed to the 29th of January, on which day his body was conveyed to Annecy. His heart was kept in a leaden case, in the church of the Visitation at Lyons: it was afterwards exposed in a silver one, and lastly in one of gold, given by king Louis XIII. Many miracles, as the raising to life two persons who were drowned, the curing of the blind, paralytic, and others, were authentically attested to have been wrought by his relics and intercession; not to mention those he had performed in his lifetime, especially during his missions. Pope Alexander VII., then cardinal Chigi, and plenipotentiary in Germany, Louis XIII., XIV., and others, attributed their cures in sickness to this saint"s patronage.
Among his ordinary remarkable sayings, we read that he often repeated to bishop Camus, "That truth must be always charitable; for bitter zeal does harm instead of good. Reprehensions are a food of hard digestion, and ought to be dressed on a fire of burning charity so well, that all harshness be taken off; otherwise, like unripe fruit, they will only produce gripings. Charity seeks not itself nor its own interests, but purely the honor and interest of G.o.d: pride, vanity, and pa.s.sion cause bitterness and harshness: a remedy injudiciously applied may be a poison. A judicious silence is always better than a truth spoken without charity." St. Francis, seeing a scandalous priest thrown into prison, fell at his feet, and with tears conjured him to have compa.s.sion on him, his pastor, on his religion, which he scandalized, and on his own soul; which sweetness converted the other, so that he became an example of virtue. By his patience and meekness under all injuries, he overcame the most obstinate, and ever after treated them with singular affection, calling them dearer friends, because regained. A great prelate observes, from his example, that the meek are kings of other hearts, which they powerfully attract, and can turn as they please; and in {302} an express and excellent treatise, proposes him as an accomplished model of all the qualifications requisite in a superior to govern well.
Meekness was the favorite virtue of St. Francis de Sales. He once was heard to say, that he had employed three years in studying it in the school of Jesus Christ, and that his heart was still far from being satisfied with the progress he had made. If he, who was meekness itself, imagined, nevertheless, that he had possessed so little of it; what shall we say of those, who, upon every trifling occasion, betray the bitterness of their hearts in angry words and actions of impatience and outrage? Our saint was often tried in the practice of this virtue, especially when the hurry of business and the crowds that thronged on him for relief in their various necessities, scarce allowed him a moment to breathe. He has left us his thoughts upon this situation, which his extreme affability rendered very frequent to him. "G.o.d," says he, "makes use of this occasion to try whether our hearts are sufficiently strengthened to bear every attack. I have myself been sometimes in this situation: but I have made a covenant with my heart and with my tongue, in order to confine them within the bounds of duty. I considered those persons who crowd in one upon the other, as children who run into the embraces of their father: as the hen refuseth not protection to her little ones when they gather around her, but, on the contrary, extendeth her wings so as to cover them all; my heart, I thought, was in like manner expanded, in proportion as the numbers of these poor people increased. The most powerful remedy against sudden starts of impatience is a sweet and amiable silence; however little one speaks, self-love will have a share in it, and some word will escape that may sour the heart, and disturb its peace for a considerable time. When nothing is said, and cheerfulness preserved, the storm subsides, anger and indiscretion are put to flight, and nothing remains but a joy, pure and lasting. The person who possesses Christian meekness, is affectionate and tender towards every one; he is disposed to forgive and excuse the frailties of others; the goodness of his heart appears in a sweet affability that influences his words and actions, and presents every object to his view in the most charitable and pleasing light; he never admits in his discourse any harsh expression, much less any term that is haughty or rude. An amiable serenity is always painted on his countenance, which remarkably distinguishes him from those violent characters, who, with looks full of fury, know only how to refuse; or who, when they grant, do it with so bad a grace, that they lose all the merit of the favor they bestow."
Some persons thinking him too indulgent towards sinners, expressed their thoughts one day with freedom to him on this head. He immediately replied: "If there was any thing more excellent than meekness, G.o.d would have certainly taught it us; and yet there is nothing to which he so earnestly exhorts us, as to be _meek and humble of heart_. Why would you hinder me to obey the command of my Lord, and follow him in the exercise of that virtue which he so eminently practised and so highly esteems?
Are we then better informed in these matters than G.o.d himself?" But his tenderness was particularly displayed in the reception of apostates and other abandoned sinners; when these prodigals returned to him, he said, with all the sensibility of a father: "Come, my dear children, come, let me embrace you; ah, let me hide you in the bottom of my heart! G.o.d and I will a.s.sist you: all I require of you is not to despair: I shall take on myself the labor of the rest." Looks full of compa.s.sion and love expressed the sincerity of his feelings: his affectionate and charitable care of them extended even to their bodily wants and his purse was open to them as well as his heart; {303} he justified this proceeding to some, who, disedified at his extreme indulgence, told him it served only to encourage the sinner, and harden him still more in his crimes, by observing, "Are they not a part of my flock? Has not our blessed Lord given them his blood, and shall I refuse them my tears? These wolves will be changed into lambs: a day will come when, cleansed from their sins, they will be more precious in the sight of G.o.d than we are: if Saul had been cast off, we would never have had a St. Paul."
Footnotes: 1. It is a problem in nature, discussed without success by several great physicians, why children born in their seventh month more frequently live than those that are brought forth in their eighth month.
2. Aug. Sales de Vit. l. {} p. 123.
3. The saint being on his return to Savoy, was informed that a convent of religious women, of the order of Fontevrault, received superfluous pensions. He wrote about it to those religious, and after giving testimony to their virtue, in order to gain their confidence, he conjured them, in the strongest and most pathetic terms, to banish such an abuse from their monastery; persuaded that such pensions were not exempt from sin, were an obstacle to monastic perfection, and opposite to their essential vow of poverty; lamenting that after doing so much they should, for the sake of one small reserve, destroy the merit of their whole sacrifice. This letter is extremely useful and beautiful. L. 1, ep. 41, t. 1, p.
136.
4. Aug. Sales in Vit.
5. Aug. Sales in Vit.
6. Quel est le meilleur Gouvernment, &c. ch. 8, p. 298.
SAINT SULPICIUS SEVERUS[1]
DISCIPLE OF ST. MARTIN.
HE was born in Aquitaine, not at Agen, as Scaliger, Vossius, Baillet, &c., have falsely inferred from a pa.s.sage of his history,[2] but near Toulouse. That he was of a very rich and ill.u.s.trious Roman family, we are a.s.sured by the two Paulinus"s, and Gennadius.[3] His youth he spent in studying the best Roman authors of the Augustan age, upon whom he formed his style, not upon the writers of his own time: he also applied himself to the study of the laws, and surpa.s.sed all his contemporaries in eloquence at the bar. His wife was a lady of a consular family, whom he lost soon after their marriage, but he continued to enjoy a very great estate which he had inherited by her. His mother-in-law, Ba.s.sula, loved him constantly, as if he had been her own son: they continued to live several years in the same house, and had in all things the same mind.[4] The death of his beloved consort contributed to wean his heart from the world: in which resolution he seems to have been confirmed by the example and exhortations of his pious mother-in-law. His conversion from the world happened in the same year with that of St. Paulinus of Nola,[5] though probably somewhat later: and St. Paulinus mentions that Sulpicius was younger than himself, and at that time (that is, about the year 392) in the flower of his age. De Prato imagines Sulpicius to have been ten years younger than St. Paulinus, consequently that he was converted in the thirty-second year of his age. Whereas St. Paulinus distributed his whole fortune among the poor at once; Sulpicius reserved his estates to himself and his heirs, employing the yearly revenue on the poor, and in other pious uses, so that he was no more than a servant of the church and the poor, to keep accounts for them.[6] But he sold so much of them as was necessary to discharge him of all obligations to others. Gennadius tells us that he was promoted to the priesthood; but from the silence of St. Paulinus, St. Jerom, and others, Tillemont and De Prato doubt of this circ.u.mstance. Sulpicius suffered much from the censures of friends, who condemned his retreat, having chosen for his solitude a cottage at Primuliacus, a village now utterly unknown in Aquitaine, probably in Languedoc. In his kitchen nothing was ever dressed but pulse and herbs, boiled without any seasoning, except a little vinegar: he ate also coa.r.s.e bread. He and his few disciples had no other beds but straw of sackcloth spread on the ground. He set at liberty several of his slaves, and admitted them, and some of his old servants, to familiar intercourse and {304} conversation. About the year 394, not long after his retreat, he made a visit to St. Martin at Tours, and was so much taken with his saintly comportment, and edified by his pious discourses and counsels, that he became from that time his greatest admirer, and regulated his conduct by his direction. Ever after he visited that great saint once or twice almost every summer as long as he lived, and pa.s.sed some time with him, that he might study more perfectly to imitate his virtues. He built and adorned several churches.
For two which he founded at Primuliacus, he begged some relics of St.
Paulinus, who sent him a piece of the cross on which our Saviour was crucified, with the history of its miraculous discovery by St.
Helena.[7] This account Sulpicius inserted in his ecclesiastical history. These two saints sent frequent presents to each other, of poor garments or the like things, suitable to a penitential life, upon which they make in their letters beautiful pious reflections, that show how much they were accustomed to raise their thoughts to G.o.d from every object.[8] Our saint recommending to St. Paulinus a cook, facetiously tells him that he was utterly a stranger to the art of making sauces, and to the use of pepper, or any such incentives of gluttony, his skill consisting only in gathering and boiling herbs in such a manner that monks, who only eat after having fasted long, would find delicious. He prays his friend to treat him as he would his own son, and wishes he could himself have served him and his family in that quality.[9] In the year 399 St. Paulinus wrote to our saint that he hoped to have met him at Rome, whither he went to keep the feast of the prince of the apostles, and where he had stayed ten days, but without seeing any thing but the tombs of the apostles, before which he pa.s.sed the mornings, and the evenings were taken up by friends who called to see him.[10]
Sulpicius answered, that an indisposition had hindered him from undertaking that journey. Of the several letters mentioned by Gennadius, which Sulpicius Severus wrote to the devout virgin Claudia, his sister, two are published by Baluze.[11] Both are strong exhortations to fervor and perseverance. In the first, our saint a.s.sures her that he shed tears of joy in reading her letter, by which he was a.s.sured of her sincere desire of serving G.o.d. In a letter to Aurelius the deacon, he relates that one night in a dream he saw St. Martin ascend to heaven in great glory, and attended by the holy priest Clarus, his disciple, who was lately dead: soon after, two monks arriving from Tours, brought news of the death of St. Martin. He adds, that his greatest comfort in the loss of so good a master, was a confidence that he should obtain the divine blessings by the prayers of St. Martin in heaven. St. Paulinus mentions this vision in an inscription in verse, which he made and sent to be engraved on the marble altar of the church of Primuliacus.[12] St.
Sulpicius wrote the life of the incomparable St. Martin, according to Tillemont and most others, before the death of that saint: but De Prato thinks, that though it was begun before, it was neither finished nor published till after his death. The style of this piece is plainer and more simple than that of his other writings. An account of the death of St. Martin, which is placed by De Prato in the year 400, is accurately given by St. Sulpicius in a letter to Ba.s.sula, his mother-ill-law, who then lived at Triers. The three dialogues of our saint are the most florid of all his writings. In the first Posthumian, a friend who had spent three years in the deserts of Egypt and the East, and was then returned, relates to him and Gallus, a disciple of St. Martin, (with whom our saint then lived under the same roof,) the wonderful examples of virtue he had seen abroad. In the second dialogue, Gallus recounts {305} many circ.u.mstances of the life of St. Martin, which St. Sulpicius had omitted in his history of that saint. In the third, under the name of the same Gallus, several miracles wrought by St. Martin are proved by authentic testimonies.[13] The most important work of our saint is his abridgment of sacred history from the beginning of the world down to his own time, in the year 400. The elegance, conciseness, and perspicuity with which this work is compiled, have procured the author the name of the Christian Sall.u.s.t; some even prefer it to the histories of the Roman Sall.u.s.t, and look upon it as the most finished model extant of abridgments.[14] His style is the most pure of any of the Latin fathers, though also Lactantius, Minutius Felix, we may almost add St. Jerom, and Salvian of Ma.r.s.eilles, deserve to be read among the Latin cla.s.sics. The heroic sanct.i.ty of Sulpicius Severus is highly extolled by St. Paulinus of Nola, Paulinus of Perigueux, about the year 460.[15] Venantius Fortunatus, and many others, down to the present {306} age. Gennadius tells us, that he was particularly remarkable for his extraordinary love of poverty and humility. After the death of St. Martin, in 400, St.
Sulpicius Severus pa.s.sed five years in that ill.u.s.trious saint"s cell at Marmoutier. F. Jerom de Prato thinks that he at length retired to a monastery at Ma.r.s.eilles, or in that neighborhood; because in a very ancient ma.n.u.script copy of his works, transcribed in the seventh century, kept in the library of the chapter of Verona, he is twice called a monk of Ma.r.s.eilles. From the testimony of this ma.n.u.script, the Benedictin authors of the new treatise On the Diplomatique,[16] and the continuators of the Literary History of France,[17] regard it as undoubted that Sulpicius Severus was a monk at Ma.r.s.eilles before his death. While the Alans, Sueves, and Vandals from Germany and other barbarous nations, laid waste most provinces in Gaul in 406, Ma.r.s.eilles enjoyed a secure peace under the government of Constantine, who, having a.s.sumed the purple, fixed the seat of his empire at Arles from the year 407 to 410. After the death of St. Chrysostom in 407, Ca.s.sian came from Constantinople to Ma.r.s.eilles, and founded there two monasteries, one for men, the other for women. Most place the death of St. Sulpicius Severus about the year 420, Baronius after the year 432; but F. Jerom de Prato about 410, when he supposes him to have been near fifty years old, saying that Gennadius, who tells us that he lived to a very great age, is inconsistent with himself. Neither St. Paulinus nor any other writer mentions him as living later than the year 407, which seems to prove that he did not survive that epoch very many years. Guibert, abbot of Gemblours, who died in 1208, in his Apology for Sulpicius Severus,[18]
testifies that his festival was kept at Marmoutier with great solemnity on the 29th of January. Several editors of the Roman Martyrology, who took Sulpicius Severus, who is named in the calendars on this day, to have been this saint, added in his eulogium, Disciple of St. Martin, famous for his learning and merits. Many have proved that this addition was made by the mistake of private editors, and that the saint originally meant here in the Roman Martyrology was Sulpicius Severus, bishop of Bourges;[19] and Benedict XIV. proves and declares[20] that Sulpicius Severus, the disciple of St. Martin, is not commemorated in the Roman Martyrology. Nevertheless, he has been ranked among the saints at Tours from time immemorial, and is honored with a particular office on this day in the new breviary used in all that diocese. See his works correctly printed, with various readings, notes, dissertations, and the life of this saint, at Verona in 1741, in two volumes folio, by F. Jerom de Prato, an Italian Oratorian of Verona: also Gallia Christiana tum Vetus tum Nova: Tillemont, t. 12. Ceillier, t. 10, p. 635. Rivet, Hist.
Litter. de la France, t. 2, p. 95.
Footnotes: 1. Severus was his own proper name, Sulpicius that of his family, as is testified by Gennadius and all antiquity. Vossius, Dupin, and some others, on this account, will have him called Severus Sulpicius, with Eugippius and St. Gregory of Tours. But other learned men agree, that after the close of the republic of Rome, under the emperors, the family name was usually placed first, though still called Cognomen, and the other Praenomen, because the proper name went anciently before the other. Thus we say Caecilius Cypria.n.u.s, Eusebius Hieronymus, Aurelius Agustinus, &c. See Sirmond, Ep.
praefixe Op. Serva. Lapi, and Hier. De Prato in vita Sulpicii Severi, p. 56, &c.
2. Sulp. Sev. Hist. l. 2, c. 44.
3. {Footnote not in text} Ib. c. 48, and Ep. ad Ba.s.sulam. de Prato, p.
57.
4. S. Paulinus, Ep. 5 & 35.
5. Ib. Ep. 11, n. 6.
6. S. Paulinus, Ep. 1 & 24.
7. Ib. Ep. 52.
8. Sulpic. Sev. Ep. ad Paulin. ed a D"Achery in Spicileg. t. 52, p.
532, et inter opera S. Paulini, p. 119.
9. Ibid.
10. S. Paulin. Ep. ad Sulpic. Sev. p. 96.
11. Baluze, t. 1, Miscellan. p. 329.
12. S. Paulinus, Ep. 32, p. 204.
13. Many, upon the authority of St. Jerom, rank Sulpicius Severus among the Millenarians, though all allow that he never defended any error so as to be out of the communion of the church. But that he could not be properly a Millenarian, seems clear from several parts of his writings. For, Ep. 2 and 3, he affirms, that the souls of St. Martin and St. Clarus pa.s.sed from this world to the immediate beatific vision of G.o.d. He establishes the same principles, Ep. 1, ad Claudiam Soror., c. 5. And in his Sacred History, l. 2, c. 3, explaining the dream of Nabachodonosor, he teaches that the destruction of the kingdoms of this world will be immediately succeeded by the eternal reign of Christ with his saints in heaven.
In the pa.s.sage, Dial. 2, c. 14, upon which the charge is founded, Sulpicius relates, in the discourse of Gallus, that St. Martin, on a certain occasion, said, that the reign of Nero in the West, and his persecution, were immediate forerunners of the last day: as is the reign of Antichrist in the East, who will rebuild Jerusalem and its temple, reside in the same, restore circ.u.mcision, kill Nero, and subject the whole world to his empire. Where he advances certain false conjectures about the reign of Nero, and the near approach of the last judgment at that time: likewise the restoration of Jerusalem by Antichrist; though this last is maintained probable by cardinal Bellarmin, l. 3, de Rom. Pontif. c. 13. But the Millenarian error is not so much as insinuated. Nor could it have been inserted by the author in that pa.s.sage and omitted by copiers, as De Prato proves, against that conjecture of Tillemont. St. Jerom, indeed, l.
11, in Ezech. c. 36, represents certain Christian writers who imitated some later Jews in their Deuteroseis in a carnal manner of expounding certain scripture prophecies, expecting a second Jerusalem of gold and precious stones, a restoration of b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices, circ.u.mcision, and a Sabbath. Among these he names Tertullian, in his book De Spe Fidelium, (now lost,) Lactantius, Victorious Petabionensis, and Severus, (Sulpicius,) in his dialogue ent.i.tled, Gallus, then just published: and among the Greeks, Irenaeus and Apollinarius. De Prato thinks he only speaks of Sulpicius Severus by hearsay, because he mentions only one dialogue called Gallus, whereas two bear that t.i.tle. At least St. Jerom never meant to ascribe all these errors to each of those he names; for none of them maintained them all except Apollinarius. His intention was only to ascribe one point or other of such carnal interpretations to each, and to Sulpicius the opinion that Jerusalem, with the temple and sacrifices, will be restored by Antichrist, &c., which cannot be called erroneous; though St. Jerom justly rejects that interpretation, because the desolation foretold by Daniel is to endure to the end. In the decree of Gelasius this dialogue of Gallus is called Apocryphal, but in the same sense in which it was rejected by St. Jerom. Nor is this exposition advanced otherwise than as a quotation from St. Martin"s answer on that subject. See the justification of Sulpicius Severus, in a dissertation printed at Venice in 1738, in Racolta di Opuscoli Scientifici, t. 18, and more amply by F. Jerom de Prato, Disser. 5, in Opera Sulpicii Severi, t.
1, p. 259, commended in the Acta Eruditor. Lipsiae, ad an. 1760.
Gennadius, who wrote about the year 494, tells us, (Cat. n. 19.) that Sulpicius was deceived in his old age by the Pelagians, but soon opening his eyes, condemned himself to five years" rigorous silence to expiate this fault. From the silence of other authors, and the great commendations which the warmest enemies of the Pelagians bestow on our saint, especially Paulinus of Milan, in his life of St. Ambrose, (written at latest in 423,) and St. Paulinus of Nola, and Paulinus of Perigueux, (who in 461 wrote in verse the life of St. Martin,) l. 5, v, 193, &c., some look upon this circ.u.mstance as a slander, which depends wholly on the testimony of so inaccurate a writer, who is inconsistent with himself in other matters relating to Sulpicius Severus, whose five years" silence might have other motives. If the fact be true, it can only be understood of the semi-Pelagian error, which had then many advocates at Ma.r.s.eilles, and was not distinguished in its name from Pelagianism till some years after our saint"s death, nor condemned by the church before the second council of Orange in 529. Pelagius was condemned by the councils of Carthage and Milevis in 416, and by pope Innocent I. in 412. If Sulpicius Severus fell into any error, especially before it had been clearly anathematized by the church, at least he cannot be charged with obstinacy, having so soon renounced it. We must add, that even wilful offences are blotted out by sincere repentance. See F. Jerom de Pram in vita Sulp. Sev., --12, pp. 69 and 74, t. 1, Op.
Veronae, 1741.
14. The sacred history of Sulpicius Severus is a most useful cla.s.sic for Christian schools; but not to be studied in the chosen fragments mangled by Chompre, and prescribed for the schools in Portugal. True improvement of the mind is impossible without the beauties of method and the advantages of taste, which are nowhere met with but by seeing good compositions entire, and by considering the art with which the whole is wound up. A small edition of Sulpicius"s history, made from that correctly published by De Prato, would be of great service. Nevertheless, Sulpicius, though he has so well imitated the style of the purest ages, declares that he neglects elegance; and he takes the liberty to use certain terms and phrases which are not of the Augustan standard, sometimes because they were so familiar in his time that he otherwise would not have seemed to write with ease, and sometimes because they are necessary to express the mysteries of our faith. How shocking is the delicacy of Bembo; who, for fear of not being Ciceronian, conjures the Venetians, _per Deos immortales_, and uses the words _Dea Lauretana!_ or that of Justus Lipsius, who used _Fatum_ or destiny, for Providence, because this latter word is not in Cicero, who with the Pagans, usually speaks according to the notion of an overruling destiny in events which they by believed ordained by heaven. For this term some of Lipsius"s works were censured, and by him recalled.
15. Vit. St. Martin, versu expressa, l. 5, v. 193, &c.
16. Tr. de Diplomatique, t. 3.
17. Hist. Litter. t. 11, Advertiss.e.m.e.nt preliminaire, p. 5.
18. Published by Bollandus ad 29 Jan. p. 968.
19. See Annalus, Theolog. positivae, l. 4, c. 26, and Dominic Georgi in Notis ad Martyrol. Adonis, ad {} Jan.
20. Benedict. XIV. in litteris apost. praefixis novae suae editioni Romani Martyrologii, (Romae, 1749,), --47, p. 34.
ST. GILDAS THE WISE, OR BADONICUS, ABBOT.
HE was son to a British lord, who, to procure him a virtuous education, placed him in his infancy in the monastery of St. Iltutus in Glamorganshire. The surname of Badonicus was given him, because, as we learn from his writings, he was born in the year in which the Britons under Aurelius Ambrosius, or, according to others, under king Arthur, gained the famous victory over the Saxons at Mount Badon, now Bannesdown, near Bath, in Somersetshire. This Bede places in the forty-fourth year after the first {307} coming of the Saxons into Britain, which was in 451. Our saint, therefore, seems to have been born in 494; he was consequently younger than St. Paul, St. Samson, and his other ill.u.s.trious school-fellows in Wales: but by his prudence and seriousness in his youth he seemed to have attained to the maturity of judgment and gravity of an advanced age. The author of the life of St.
Paul of Leon, calls him the brightest genius of the school of St. Iltut.
His application to sacred studies was uninterrupted, and if he arrived not at greater perfection in polite literature, this was owing to the want of masters of that branch in the confusion of those times. As to improve himself in the knowledge of G.o.d and himself was the end of all his studies, and all his reading was reduced to the study of the science of the saints, the greater progress he made in learning, the more perfect he became in all virtues. Studies which are to many a source of dissipation, made him more and more recollected, because in all books he found and relished only G.o.d, whom alone he sought. Hence sprang that love for holy solitude, which, to his death, was the constant ruling inclination of his heart. Some time after his monastic profession, with the consent, and perhaps by the order of his abbot, St. Iltut, he pa.s.sed over into Ireland, there to receive the lessons of the admirable masters of a religious life, who had been instructed in the most sublime maxims of an interior life, and formed to the practice of perfect virtue, by the great St. Patrick. The author of his Acts compares this excursion, which he made in the spring of his life, to that of the bees in the season of flowers, to gather the juices which they convert into honey.
In like manner St. Gildas learned, from the instructions and examples of the most eminent servants of G.o.d, to copy in his own life whatever seemed most perfect. So severe were his continual fasts, that the motto of St. John Baptist might in some degree be applied to him, that he scarce seemed to eat or drink at all. A rough hair-cloth, concealed under a coa.r.s.e cloak, was his garment, and the bare floor his bed, with a stone for his bolster. By the constant mortification of his natural appet.i.tes, and crucifixion of his flesh, his life was a prolongation of his martyrdom, or a perpetual sacrifice which he made of himself to G.o.d in union with that which he daily offered to him on his altars. If it be true that he preached in Ireland in the reign of king Ammeric, he must have made a visit to that island from Armorica, that prince only beginning to reign in 560: this cannot be ascribed to St. Gildas the Albanian, who died before that time. It was about the year 527, in the thirty-fourth of his age, that St. Gildas sailed to Armorica, or Brittany, in France:[1] for he wrote his invective ten years {308} after his arrival there, and in the forty-fourth year of his age, as is gathered from his life and writings. Here he chose for the place of his retirement the little isle of Houac, or Houat, between the coast of Rhuis and the island of Bellisle, four leagues from the latter. Houat exceeds not a league in length; the isle of Hoedre is still smaller, not far distant: both are so barren as to yield nothing but a small quant.i.ty of corn. Such a solitude, which appeared hideous to others, offered the greatest charms to the saint, who desired to fly, as much as this mortal state would permit, whatever could interrupt his commerce with G.o.d. Here he often wanted the common necessaries and conveniences of life; but the greater the privation of earthly comforts was in which he lived, the more abundant were those of the Holy Ghost which he enjoyed, in proportion as the purity of his affections and his love of heavenly things were more perfect. The saint promised himself that he should live here always unknown to men: but it was in vain for him to endeavor to hide the light of divine grace under a bushel, which shone forth to the world, notwithstanding all the precautions which his humility took to conceal it. Certain fishermen who discovered him were charmed with his heavenly deportment and conversation, and made known on the continent the treasure they had found. The inhabitants flocked from the coast to hear the lessons of divine wisdom which the holy anch.o.r.et gave with a heavenly unction which penetrated their hearts. To satisfy their importunities, St. Gildas at length consented to live among them on the continent, and built a monastery at Rhuis, in a peninsula of that name, which Guerech, the first lord of the Britons about Vannes, is said to have bestowed upon him. This monastery was soon filled with excellent disciples and holy monks. St. Gildas settled them in good order; then, sighing after closer solitude, he withdrew, and pa.s.sing beyond the gulf of Vannes, and the promontory of Quiberon, chose for his habitation a grot in a rock, upon the bank of the river Blavet, where he found a cavern formed by nature extended from the east to the west, which on that account he converted into a chapel. However, he often visited this abbey of Rhuis, and by his counsels directed many in the paths of true virtue. Among these was St. Trifina, daughter of Guerech, first British count of Vannes. She was married to count Conomor, lieutenant of king Childebert, a brutish and impious man, who afterwards murdered her, and the young son which he had by her, who at his baptism received the name of Gildas, and was G.o.dson to our saint: but he is usually known by the surname of Treuchmeur, or Tremeur, in Latin Trichmorus. SS. Trifina and Treuchmeur are invoked in the English Litany of the seventh century, in Mabillon. The great collegiate church of Carhaix bears the name of St.
Treuchmeur: the church of Quimper keeps his feast on the 8th of November, on which day he is commemorated in several churches in Brittany, and at St. Magloire"s at Paris. A church situated between Corlai and the abbey of Coetmaloen in Brittany, is dedicated to G.o.d tinder the invocation of St. Trifina.[2]
St. Gildas wrote eight canons of discipline, and a severe invective against the crimes of the Britons, called De Excidio Britanniae, that he might confound {309} those whom he was not able to convert, and whom G.o.d in punishment delivered first to the plunders of the Picts and Scots, and afterwards to the perfidious Saxons, the fiercest of all nations. He reproaches their kings, Constantine, (king of the Danmonians, in Devonshire and Cornwall,) Vortipor, (of the Dimetians, in South Wales,) Conon, Cuneglas, and Maglocune, princes in other parts of Britain, with horrible crimes: but Constantine was soon after sincerely converted, as Gale informs us from an ancient Welsh chronicle.[3] According to John Fordun[4] he resigned his crown, became a monk, preached the faith to the Scots and Picts, and died a martyr in Kintyre: but the apostle of the Scots seems to have been a little more ancient than the former.[5]
Our saint also wrote an invective against the British clergy, whom he accuses of sloth, of seldom sacrificing at the altar, &c. In his retirement he ceased not with tears to recommend to G.o.d his own cause, or that of his honor and glory, and the souls of blind sinners, and died in his beloved solitude in the island of Horac, (in Latin Horata,) according to Usher, in 570, but according to Ralph of Disse, in 581.[6]
St. Gildas is patron of the city of Vannes. The abbey which bears his name in the peninsula of Rhuis, between three and four leagues from Vannes, is of the reformed congregation of St. Maur since the year 1649.
The relics of St. Gildas were carried thence for fear of the Normans into Berry, about the year 919, and an abbey was erected there on the banks of the river Indre, which was secularized and united to the collegiate church of Chateauroux in 1623. St. Gildas is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on the 29th of January. A second commemoration of him is made in some places on the 11th of May, on account of the translation of his relics. His life, compiled from the ancient archives of Rhuis by a monk of that house, in the eleventh century, is the best account we have of him, though the author confounds him sometimes with St. Gildas the Albanian. It is published in the library of Fleury, in Bollandus, p. 954, and most correctly in Mabillon, Act. SS. Ord. Saint Belled. t. 1, p. 138. See also Dom Lobineau, Vies des Saints de Bretagne, (fol. an. 1725,) p. 72, and Hist. de la {310} Bretagne, (2 vol. fol. an. 1707,) and the most accurate Dom Morice, Memoires Sur l"Histoire de Bretagne, 3 vol. fol. in 1745, and Hist. de la Bretagne, 2 vol. fol. an. 1750.
Footnotes: 1. Armorica, which word in the old Celtic language signified a maritime country, comprised that part of Celtic Gaul which is now divided into Brittany, Lower Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and Touraine. Tours was the capital, and still maintains the metropolitical dignity. By St.
Gatian, about the middle of the third century, the faith was first planted in those parts: but the entire extirpation of idolatry was reserved to the zeal of British monks. Dom Morice distinguishes three princ.i.p.al transmigrations of inhabitants from Great Britain into Armorica: the first, when many fled from the arms of Carausius and Allectus, who successively a.s.sumed the purple in Great Britain: Constance made these fugitives welcome in Gaul, and allowed them to settle on the coast of Armorica about the year 293. A second and much larger colony of Britons was planted here under Conan, a British prince by Maximus, whom all the British youth followed into Gaul in 383. After the defeat of Maximus, these Armorican Britons chose this Conan, surnamed Meriedec, king, formed themselves into an independent state, and maintained their liberty against several Roman generals in the decline of that empire, and against the Alans, Vandals, Goths, and other barbarians. Des Fontaines, (Diss. p. 118,) and after him Dom Morice. demonstrates that Brittany was an independent state before the year 421. The third transmigration of Britons. .h.i.ther was completed at several intervals while the Saxons invaded and conquered Britain, where Hengist first landed in 470.
Brittany was subjected to the Romans during four centuries: an independent state successively under the t.i.tle of a kingdom, county, and duchy, for the s.p.a.ce of about eleven hundred and fifty years, and has been united to the kingdom of France ever since the year 1532, by virtue of the marriage of king Charles VIII. with Anne, sole heiress of Brittany, daughter of duke Francis, celebrated in 1491. This province was subdued by Clovis I., who seems to have treacherously slain Budic, king of Brittany. This prince left six sons, Howel I., Ismael, bishop of Menevia, St. Tifel, honored as a martyr at Pennalun, St. Oudecee, bishop of Landaff, Urbian or Concur, and Dinot, father of St. Kineda. Brittany remained subject to the sons of Clovis, and it was by the authority of Childobert that St. Paul was made bishop of Leon in 512. But Howel, returning from the court of king Arthur in 513, recovered the greater part of these dominions. See Dom Morice, Hist. t. 1, p. 14. Howel I., often called Rioval, that is, king Rowel, was a valiant prince, and liberal to churches and monasteries. Among many sons whom he left behind him, Howel II. succeeded him, and two are honored among the saints, viz. St. Leonor or Lunaire, and St. Tudgual or Pabutual, first Bishop of Treguier. See Morice. t. 1, pp. 14. and 729. Howel III., alias Juthael, recovered all Brittany. King Pepin again conquered this country, and Charlemagne and Louis le Debonnaire quelled it when it thrice rebelled. The latter established the Benedictin rule at Llandevenec. which probably was soon imitated in others: for the monastic rule which first prevailed here was that of the Britons in Wales, borrowed from the Orientals. After the straggles made by this province for its liberty, Charles the Bald yielded it up in 858, and some time after treated Solomon III. as king of Brittany. See Morice, Des Fontaines, &c.
2. In this churchyard stands an ancient pyramid, on which are engraved letters of an unknown alphabet, supposed to be that of the Britons and Gauls before the Roman alphabet was introduced among them.
Letters of the same alphabet are found upon some other monuments of Brittany. See Lobineau, Vies des Saints de la Bretagne. in St.
Treuchmeur, p. 8. Dom Morice endeavors to prove that the Welsh, the old British, and the Celtic, are the same language. (Hist. t. 1, p.
867.) That they are so in part is unquestionable.
3. Mr. Vaughan, in his British Antiquities revived, printed at Oxford in 1662, shows that there were at this time many princes or chieftains among the Britons in North Wales, but that they all held their lands of one sovereign, though each in his own district was often honored with the t.i.tle of king. The chief prince at this time was Maelgun Gwynedth, the lineal heir and eldest descendant of Cuneda, who flourished in the end of the fourth, or beginning of the fifth century, and from one or other of whose eight sons all the princes of North Wales, also those of Cardigan, Dimetia, Glamorgan, and others in South Wales, derived their descent. The ancient author, published at the end of Nenbius, says Maelgun began his reign one hundred and forty-six years after Cuaedha, who was his Atavus, or great-grandfather"s grandfather. Maelgun was prince only of Venedotia for twenty-five years before he was acknowledged in 564, after the death of Arthur, chief king of the Britons in Wales, while St. David was primate, Arthur king of the Britons in general, Gurthmyll king, and St. Kentigern bishop of the c.u.mbrian Britons.
"He had received a good education under the elegant instructor of almost all Britain," says Gildas, pointing out probably St. Iltutus.
Yet he fell into enormous vices. Touched with remorse, he retired into a monastery in 552; but being soon tired of that state, rea.s.sumed his crown, and relapsed into his former impieties. He died in 565. Gildas, who wrote his epistle De Excidio Britanniae, between the years 564 and 570, that of his death, hints that Veralam was then fallen into the hands of the Saxons: which is certain of London, &c. The other princes reprehended by Gildas were lesser toparchs, as Aurelius Canon, Vortipor, Cuneglas, and Constantine.
These were chieftains, Vortipor in Pembrokeshire, the rest in some quarter or other of Britain, all living when Gildas wrote.
Constantine, whom Gildas represents as a native of Cornwall, and as he is commonly understood, also as prince of that country, did penance. The chief crime imputed to him is the murder of two royal youths in a church, and of two n.o.blemen who had the charge of their education. Those Carte imagines to have been the sons of Caradoc Ureich Uras, who was chief prince of the Cornish Britons in the latter end of king Arthur"s reign, as is attested by the author of the Triades. The prelates whom Gildas reproves, were such as Maelgun had promoted: for the sees of South-Wales were at that time filled with excellent prelates, whose virtues Gildas desired to copy.
Carte, t. 1, p. 214.