Saint Achard of Jumièges

Our Saint therefore entered the abbey of Ansion or Saint-Jou abbaye d'Ansion ou de Saint-Jouin The first monastery where Achard lived for 35 years. in, which was then flourishing on the borders of Poitou, between Moncontour and Thouars. He was then eighteen years old; he remained in this holy retreat for about thirty-five years. Already learned in sacred doctrine and even more so in virtue, he soon arrived at a degree of perfection that shone forth through miracles: he restored health to all the sick who, by divine inspiration, came to find him to commend themselves to his prayers.

Towards the last years he spent at Saint-Jouin, an unknown voice that rang in his ears very distinctly, like that of an angel, spoke to him frequently, awakening in him aspirations for some work that he could not quite determine, and for which God seemed to have need of him.

It was in 677, at the time when S aint Philibert, saint Philibert Founder of Jumièges and Noirmoutiers, mentor of Saint Achard. abbot of Jumièges, had just founded the famous house of Noirmoutiers in Poitou. The reputation of this Saint had spread to the confines of the country, and the mysterious voice that pursued Achard persuaded him that he would find near him what his heart sought without being able to explain it. But Philibert, after his establishment at Noirmoutiers, was occupied with the abbey of Saint-Benoît near Poitiers, where Bishop Ansoald, who had become his friend, had entrusted him with the care of a reform, or perhaps a perfection that it still lacked. For either this house, begun under the auspices of Saint Hilary by Saint Vivence, had been until then only a simple aggregation of solitaries; or else the monastery, destroyed up to three or four times by the Barbarians who flooded the country in that space of nearly three centuries, still lay in its latest ruin; and it was to restoring it that Saint Philibert applied himself. In his experienced hands, the work was bound to prosper, and Achard found it in such a state that, persuaded that it was in favor of this work that God had spoken to his heart, he felt seized by the desire to dedicate himself to it and to place himself under the discipline of this second founder. The latter, for his part, took care not to fail to admit among his disciples a man whose capacity and virtue indicated to him a master consummate in the spiritual life. Achard was then sixty-four years old. His parents, who had lived so long without him, must have felt all the more consoled by his return to the region inhabited by them, as they must have been very advanced in age at the time and probably nonagenarians. Joyful to see their son contribute to the rebirth of a house already sanctified by such pious memories, they wished to second his generous efforts with noble largesse, and abandoned to the monastery of Saint-Benoît a patrimonial land they possessed at Quin çay. Th Quinçay Monastery founded on an ancestral estate of Achard. e name of this land passed to the abbey.

Saint Philibert had barely observed Achard's habits when he understood his high capacity. He gave him the conduct of the abbey of Quinçay; our Saint acquitted himself admirably of this charge, and the odor of his piety attracted to him a great number of people who, joined to fifteen monks who had come from Jumièges to form the nucleus of the community and to give birth there to the spirit of the Rule, became a useful neighborhood for Poitiers and made the whole region feel the happy influence of a truly angelic life.

Saint Philibert, upon the death of Ebroin, his persecutor, returned to Jumièges: he could have ended his days there among his dear religious, but the love of solitude and the fear of governing others led him to resolve to abandon the leadership of this great abbey to Saint Achard; for this purpose, he came to Poitou and begged Bishop Ansoald to help him realize this project. They agreed to go together to propose the matter to the Saint. And yet, Saint Achard had a vision: Ansoald and Philibert appeared to him in his sleep. The former showed him a pastoral staff, the latter the Rule of Saint Benedict, and both said to him: "Arise, my brother, and receive, through obedience, the yoke that is imposed upon you; take this pastoral staff to lead the religious of Jumièges to the perfection of regular discipline, and read this Rule to make them practice all that it contains." The next day, both arrived at his monastery, and, having explained their deliberation to him, they convinced him to go to Jumièges.

He immediately went to Rouen to receive the blessing of Saint Ouen, who was its archbishop; then he went to Jumièges, where he found the religious plunged in to the b Jumièges Place of exile for Sturmi in Normandy. itterness of the loss of their holy abbot; Achard governed this monastery, composed of nine hundred religious and fifteen hundred servants and domestics, with truly pastoral vigilance, and he sanctified it by the power of his words, by the virtue of his examples, and by the brilliance of his miracles. One day, as he was in prayer in his cell, he perceived the demon who, holding a fiery axe, was cutting a great tree under which the brothers were working at that moment, in order to crush some of them with its fall; but, transporting himself at that very hour to the place, he drove him away with the sign of the cross, and showed the religious the tree already burned at the base, emitting an unbearable smell of sulfur, and the apples with which it was laden turned black as coal. They also reduced to ashes when touched. They asked him if he wanted them to fell it, so that the enemy would no longer use it to harm them. "No, my brothers," said the holy Abbot, "it must not be removed; let us leave it standing in memory of the grace that God has granted you in preserving you from the malice of the demon, and so that, seeing it in this state, it may warn us to always be on our guard against the artifices of the evil spirit."

It was his custom, when the religious had retired to their cells, to visit the dormitories with the cross and holy water to drive away the demon, whom he often found hidden in these holy places, where he sought the opportunity to tempt the religious during their night's rest. He had several other visions which he used very usefully to inspire the love of virtue and obedience, and to imprint a horror of the slightest sins, and particularly of cowardice in the service of God: the most memorable, as much for the moral lessons it contains as for the event that followed it, is the one he had shortly before his death. He feared that his children, raised with such care in perfection and in the contempt of all earthly things, might slacken after his death; he asked God to take them from this world rather than allow them to fall into such misfortune; and, furthermore, that He might make known to him what he should do for the accomplishment of their sanctification. The following night, at the hour of the divine psalmody, he saw, on one side, an angel with a kind and charming gaze, clothed in a garment of light, holding a wand in his hand; and, on the other, a demon of frightful blackness, casting fire and flames from his eyes. As he considered them attentively, he heard the angel making great reproaches to the demon for daring to appear in these sacred places, seeing that there was nothing to claim over the servants of God who dwelt there, and that his snares were useless there, because obedience was in force; that humility was practiced there in rivalry, that charity reigned there in all hearts, and that regularity was admirably well kept. "Seek elsewhere," he added, "to make conquests; Babylon is the place of your triumphs, and not Jerusalem, from which the word of God and the blood of Jesus Christ have banished you." The demon maintained on his side that he would not waste his time there and that he would take his measures so well that he would do good business there, having a thousand artifices to achieve his designs. After this dispute, the angel, approaching Achard, told him not to be astonished at what he had seen and heard, to remain always constant; he assured him that his prayer had been answered; that his religious would be called to the glory of God; that those he touched with his wand would pass first; that, some time later, they would return full of glory, to assist at his passing and take him with them into heaven; that those he did not touch would not follow them immediately after, that he would be left on earth a while longer, so that he might finish strengthening them in virtue to make them worthy to appear before the majesty of God; and that he should not fail to warn those who had been touched to prepare themselves incessantly for death by a general confession of all their sins, by the reception of the holy Eucharist, and by exercises of penance, until they were called to the feast of the Lamb.

After this, the angel seemed to go away; but the Saint, noticing that the demon still remained, cried out: "You abandon us, O angel of the Lord! and you suffer this exterminating spirit to remain here to destroy the servants of God!" — "Fear nothing," replied the angel, "I do not leave this holy monastery, which has always been under my guard since it was founded, and the demon, despite himself, will only do good to the religious who are soon to die. God has only permitted him to show himself visibly to them, when their souls are ready to separate from their bodies, so that such a terrible vision, imprinting fear upon them, may make them have more sorrow for their sins, and thus be able to expiate, from this life, what would delay them from enjoying the happiness of the Saints."

Early the next morning, the holy Abbot gathered all the religious, and, after having told them of the mysterious vision he had had, he powerfully exhorted those who were to depart first to be ready when the Lord called them; and those who were to remain, to work with fervor to merit the same grace as the others. They all profited from this warning; but one cannot describe the tears of penance shed by those who had only four days left to prepare for death. One saw them, bodies prostrate against the earth, imploring the mercy of God, tearing their flesh with whips, striking their breasts rudely, asking in a lamentable voice for pardon for their sins, sighing, sobbing, and giving all the signs of perfect contrition. After having spent three days in fasting, without taking any food, on the fourth, as soon as the dawn began to appear, they all went to the church, where they received the holy Viaticum and the last blessing of their abbot. Having fortified their souls with the divine Sacraments, they all embraced and gave each other a kiss of peace, then they retired to the Chapter to await the happy moment of their deliverance. Meanwhile, the Saint had the other religious sing psalms to recommend their brethren to the divine clemency. During this pious ceremony, their faces became all luminous, as if they had already enjoyed the presence of Jesus Christ. Around three o'clock, a portion of them died with as much tranquility as if they had been asleep. At six o'clock, another, lifting their hands to heaven and recommending themselves to God, rendered their souls with inconceivable sweetness. At nine o'clock, the others continued to depart from this life of misery to possess one infinitely happy. Finally, in the evening, those who remained expired in the fervor of their prayers. It took eight whole days to bury all these holy religious. How happy is this monastery! how rich is this land! how precious is this field, to possess within its enclosure this inestimable treasure! Those who survived them were inconsolable, not for the death of their brothers, which was too precious to regret, but because they still remained on earth after such a beautiful example of the reward that God gives to his elect. The old men, who had spent so many years in penance, and the infirm, who saw themselves on the edge of their graves, had a holy jealousy of them, and the uncertainty of their fate, in which they still lived, caused them an affliction that cannot be expressed. The holy Abbot tried to comfort them, by inspiring in them an entire conformity to the will of God, whose conduct one must always adore and whose orders one must await with patience.

Some time later, he had a revelation of the death of Saint Philibert; he learned that he himself would soon be delivered from the labors of this world. The seven days that preceded his passing, he occupied himself with exhorting his religious to a perfect concord among themselves and to a continuous vigilance over all their steps, for fear of giving the demon an opportunity to tempt them. He also taught them remedies to heal the maladies of the soul; he recommended above all that they not allow themselves to be deceived under a specious pretext of virtue, which was the most dangerous temptation the enemy used to seduce religious persons. On the day of his death, being extraordinarily tormented by an acute fever that he had hidden until then, he said these last words to them: "I conjure you, my brothers, never to give entry into your heart to the slightest aversion that might break the fraternal peace that I have so recommended to you. Aversion for one's neighbor, as you know, my dear children, separates us from God and renders us unworthy of heaven, where the Saints are so well united among themselves. It cannot be expiated by the rigors of penance; and even martyrdom nor the shedding of blood cannot erase it if one does not banish it from one's heart. The grace that I will ask of God will be that He preserves you from this plague, which ruins the best-established communities." Upon finishing these words, he raised his eyes to heaven and rendered his soul to Jesus Christ, on September 45, 687.

His body was buried in the abbey church, where his cult did not take long to be established, and in the 9th century a church was built in his honor within the abbey grounds. The fear of the Normans led to his relics being transpo rted to Haspres Site of the translation of relics near Valenciennes. Haspres, in the Cambrésis, where they were preserved. Some portions were given to the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Benoît de Quincay (Vienne), where they were kept before the revolution of 1789. A suburb of Poitiers still bears the name of Saint Achard.

He is depicted with an angel touching various religious members of the abbey with a wand.

His life is recorded in Surius. It was written by a monk of Rouen, named Fulbert. It is very elegant and worthy of being read in its entirety in its original language. We have completed and corrected, for this biography, Father Giry on several points, especially regarding the chronology. — Cf. Vies des Saints de l'Église de Poitiers, by Abbé Auber; Vies des Saints du Poitou, by Ch. de Chargé.