Saint Antonin of Pamiers

Saint Antonin was born in Frédélas (city of cold lakes), in the second half of the first century. He was the son of the king of that country, or at least of royal lineage, and he was raised in the principles of the Christian religion which was already beginning to appear in Gaul. After spending a few years in solitude to practice virtue, he came to Rome to venerate the tombs of the holy Apostles and to see the successor of Peter. Saint Clement then occupied the apostolic see; no sooner had he met this stranger than he granted him great affection, and, inwardly warned that this young man was a vessel of election, he laid his hands upon him and ordained him priest despite his resistance. Antonin, invested with the priestly character, began to preach the Gospel in several cities of Italy, and his preaching was supported by miracles. He did not delay in returning to Gaul, and we find him in the group of missionaries who departed from Rome with Saint Denis the Areopagite. Aquitaine was to be the theater of his labors; but the place where his apostolate bore the most fruit was the valley of Noble-Val, the extreme front ier of Rouergue, to vallée de Noble-Val Principal site of the apostolate and the preservation of relics. day Saint-Antonin. There he converted Prince Festus, to whom he gave baptism, and after him prince Festus Prince converted by Antoninus at Noble-Val. he baptized a great multitude of people; his word had such success that he always loved Noble-Val with a love of predilection.

God gave him the virtue of miracles. One day, when the inhabitants of that land lacked water and were suffering the horrible torments of thirst, he struck the earth with his staff and opened a spring that quenched their thirst and whose waters retained the property of healing the sick.

However, the apostolate of Saint Antonin was destined to manifest elsewhere. The Saint knew through a vision that he was to carry the evangelical word further, and he parted from his people, announcing to them prophetically that he would not return alive, but only after his death. He immediately left Noble-Val and came to Toulouse. Here the legend offers great interest, but historians transport our Saint to a few centuries later; it would be difficult, however, to call into doubt the following facts which relate to his apostolate and which were painted in the 14th century in the chapel that bears his name, at the Jacobins of Toulouse. (This chapel, built in 1342 by the Dominican Grenier, Bishop of Pamiers, is a true poem in honor of the holy martyr.)

Arriving in Toulouse, An tonin fr Toulouse Episcopal see of Erembert. eely announced the word of God, but he was soon arrested and thrown into a prison, where angels came to visit him; his apostolate continued even behind bars: he converted and baptized his jailers. Later, he was plunged into a cauldron of boiling water, from which he emerged without having felt any harm. He continued his preaching, converted a multitude of pagans, and restored life to a child suffocated in the crowd. The persecutors seized him again, and they threw him into the Garonne with a millstone around his neck; but the millstone floated and supported him above the water; a chapel in his honor was built later at this spot, and the name of the martyr, although disfigured, has not yet disappeared (it is the Quai Tounis).

But Toulouse was not to keep Saint Antoninus for long. He soon returned to the city of Frédélas, where he was born, and he announced to his compatriots the truth of the holy Gospel. Immediately, the priests of the idols flew into a rage against him; they seized his person and dragged him to the banks of the Ariège. There, a soldier raised his sword against him and cut the martyr in two starting from the shoulder, such that the head and the right arm fell on one side, and the body and the left arm fell on the other; finally, his remains were thrown into the middle of the river. The faithful did not delay in gathering his body to keep it honorably. The waters, says the legend, retreated before them and left them the space to pass into the riverbed. This martyrdom took place probably during the reign of the Emp eror Antoninus Pius (138-16 l'empereur Antonin le Pieux Roman emperor during whose reign the martyrdom is said to have occurred. 1).

Angels and eagles, such are the fairly common attributes of Saint Antoninus: we shall say why shortly. He is also depicted causing a spring to gush forth with his staff. Some images paint him with a club or sticks: it seems more probable, however, as we have written, that the holy martyr perished by the sword.

## CULT AND RELICS.

The tomb of Saint Antonin soon became famous; but not all the relics remained in Pamiers.

The angels set aside the head and the left arm; a small boat presented itself of its own accord to receive them, and two eagles as white as snow came to push it with their wings. The boat went down the Ariège, entered the Garonne, passed through Toulouse, and came to the mouth of the Tarn. Here it went up the current of the Tarn, then that of the Aveyron, and finally arrived at Noble-Val, where the population received the relics of its apostle with enthusiasm. Festus took this precious deposit and placed it in his house, which became a church in honor of the Saint. The memory of this miraculous translation is found in a multitude of monuments, in Pamiers, in Toulouse, and in Saint-Antonin.

The shoulder and the right arm of the martyr were ta ken to P Palencia City in Spain that preserves a portion of the saint's relics. alencia, in Spain, though it is not known at what time; the rest of the body remained in Pamiers. In the 16th centur protestants Group that burned relics in the 16th century. y, the Protestants burned the relics of Pamiers and of Saint-Antonin; in the latter city, the fire burned the man who had pushed them with his foot into the pyre, in the square that has retained the name of *Place du feu* (Fire Square). Palencia has preserved those it has possessed for many long centuries.

On October 1, 1872, Mgr Legain, Bishop of Montauban, assisted by Mgr Bourret, Bishop of Rodez, consecrated in Saint-Antonin a new church built in honor of the patron saint of the city, on the very site of the old one. On the evening of the same day, a relic, *come from Palencia*, was carried solemnly in an immense procession of the entire city. A magnificent pavilion had been erected on the Place du feu; the relic, carried by priests, stopped there, and the clergy, in reparation for the injury committed three centuries ago, sang the antiphon and the prayer of the Saint.

We owe this notice to the kindness of the Rev. Fr. Carlos, missionary of Calvary, in Toulouse. — Cf. *Saint Antonin, martyr à Pamiers*, by the Abbé Valacière. Montauban, 1872.