Saint Vulgis

The author of his life notes that it was around that time, that is to say about the year 500, that the great Clovis converted, and that he came to Reims to receive baptism at the hands of S aint Remi. saint Remi Bishop of Reims who baptized Clovis. There is no doubt that Saint Vulgis, his faithful disciple, had a great part in this action, since it was not a question then only of the conversion of Clovis, but also of that of his entire army and the great men of the kingdom, who, as history teaches us, embraced, following the example of their monarch, the Christian religion that Saint Remi presented to them. Indeed, this harvest appeared so abundant that a great number of laborers were needed, and several famous bishops and holy priests, among others Saint Vaast, who was made bishop of Arras, w saint Vaast Bishop of Arras and contemporary of Vulgis. ere called to announce the truths of the Gospel to such a numerous army; thus, although Saint Vulgis is not named, any more than so many others who worked on this task, there is no doubt that having the talent for preaching, being animated by zeal for the glory of God as he was, and currently residing with Saint Remi, who had associated him in the cares and labors of his office as pastor, he consequently contributed in many ways to the conversion of King Clovis and so many other Franks who followed him and embraced the faith as he did. Indeed, the memoirs of his life teach us that, the holiness of his life having been recognized by the principal lords of the court, they were so charmed by his virtue and his conduct that, unable to deprive themselves of his conversation, they obliged him to remain at court, against all his inclinations, which tended only toward silence and retreat.

Saint Vulgis endured this situation for a time, which one could call violent toward him; but, although his instruction and example produced marvelous fruit among that great number of lords, and he was of extraordinary help to the holy prelate who had chosen him, and upon whom he relied for an infinity of cares attached to his pastoral charge, he could not resist the voice and the interior attraction of grace which seemed to call him to solitude, and solicited him to leave the noises and embarrassments of the court, to go and enjoy in silence the sweetness of contemplation in the desert. What determined him entirely to take this path and to execute it as soon as possible was a certain rumor that reached his ears, and made him aware that the people, whom he believed too biased in his favor, planned to raise him to the episcopal throne after the death of Saint Remi, already broken by old age: and indeed, this holy prelate, who also judged him more worthy than any other to fill his place, named him shortly after his coadjutor, with the consent of the people and the entire court. The dignity to which Vulgis saw himself raised only confirmed him in his design; his humility on one hand, the thought of his salvation and his perfection on the other, and the extreme repugnance he had for greatness and for the multiplicity of affairs, made him seek the means to slip away from his friends and to absent himself from the court. Saint Remi was warned of this; deeply pained, he spoke of it to his dear disciple and did everything he could to retain such an excellent subject, whom he had formed with such care and for so long; but, after many trials and conversations on this matter, having recognized the designs of God for this holy priest, he could not refuse him the permission to retire as he wished; having then embraced him, his face bathed in tears, he gave him his blessing, and our Saint left with incredible joy his friends, the court, and all the dignities that were presented to him.

Now free from all kinds of shackles, the young priest went to settle in the Orceois, in a wild place in the forest of Retz, on the slope of a hill at the foot of which flows the Ourcq river, and called Troësnes, becau se of th Troësnes Site of the hermitage and the first burial place of the saint. e plant of that name which grew there in abundance. One can still see the vestiges of a small cell that is said to have been built by his own hands, and one even notices a form of altar upon which it is believed he celebrated the sacrifice of the Mass. It must be admitted here that the excess of humility of this holy solitary deprives us of very great goods, by taking from us the knowledge of what he practiced during the forty years he remained hidden in the bosom of this desert. God alone and the angels could have been witnesses to his mortifications, his vigils, his fasts, and his continual prayer. What could his food have been in a place that was not cultivated, and whose lands were then entirely sterile? It was, without a doubt, some wild herbs that he found in the forest, and his bed could only be the bare earth. Vulgis thus retraced the way of life of the holiest hermits who had preceded him, and whom he took as models of the perfection to which he aspired.

It was apparently the design of the pious solitary to persevere thus until death, unknown to men and in a continual practice of the most severe and exact penance, if God, who did not want such a brilliant light to be admired only by the angels, had not permitted that men should also have some knowledge of it, at least toward the end of the life of this incomparable penitent. Here is the occasion that caused him to be discovered. A poor peasant from the surrounding areas, who had only two cows for all his wealth, led them to graze in a meadow not far from the mountain where the cell of our Saint was situated; the river Ourcq, of which we have spoken, was then very high, and even so flooded that one could not distinguish the ordinary bed from the parts of the plain that were inundated: which caused the two cows, believing they were still walking on firm ground in the waters that were on the surface of the meadow, and finally arriving at the edge of the river, in a very deep place, to fall in suddenly and drown there, not having been able to perceive the banks where they could have saved themselves. No one having been able to give them sufficiently prompt help, the poor peasant to whom they belonged, and who drew from these animals his subsistence and that of several children for whom he was responsible, seeing this misfortune, began to lament, to enter into a kind of despair, and to utter such loud cries that his voice resounded as far as the hermitage of Saint Vulgis who, learning of the desolation in which this poor man was, and moved by his charity to want to help him on the spot, approached him, consoled him, disposed him to have a perfect confidence in God, and then, having raised his eyes to heaven to make his prayer, made the sign of the cross over the river, and commanded the two animals to come out of it. A surprising thing! The poor man and those who were present saw them appear and swim above the water at the same moment. They approached the place where they perceived people, and finally came to leap with effort onto the edge of the bank, then they returned safe and sound to their master.

Our holy solitary had no sooner performed this wonder, than the fear of receiving praise for it made him return very quickly to his dear solitude; but He who had inspired him to accomplish this miraculous action of charity, wanting by this means to make his merit known, did not permit that he should be hidden any longer. The rumor of such a public miracle soon spread throughout the province: the poor peasant in whose favor it had been done, published and recounted the truth of the prodigy on all sides; the inhabitants of the place confirmed, as eyewitnesses, what he asserted; people ran from all parts to recognize the man of God. The mountain where the cell of the solitary was ceased to be a desert: some came there out of curiosity, to see a man to whom God had communicated the power to perform miracles, others to implore his help in their illnesses, some to consult him in their doubts, others to ask him for advice in the matter of their salvation; and all finally to obtain from this divine man assistance in the needs and pressing necessities in which they found themselves.

Saint Vulgis, whose charity had no bounds, and who saw himself discovered by an order of Providence, could no longer henceforth either hide himself or refuse his neighbor help that he knew he could grant him. He therefore answered with an admirable sweetness everything that was desired of him; he knew well that the Spirit of God, which had led him to the desert to keep him hidden there from the eyes of men for a time, inspired him, in the situation in which he found himself, to come forward and let himself be known by the same men to relieve them in their necessities and bodily illnesses, and to give them at the same time instructions and salutary advice to convert them and make them leave their bad spiritual dispositions. Indeed, it would be difficult to recount all the miraculous cures he performed on bodies, as well as the infinite number of conversions he made with regard to souls; and one could say, as we learn from the history of his life, that it was enough for the sick to have only touched his clothes to be healed; likewise, it was enough for sinners to have been witnesses of his preachings, to return all penetrated with contrition and perfectly disposed to quit their disorders and their bad spiritual habits.

But the country, which had begun to profit abundantly from the fruits of the rich treasure that belonged to it and which had been hidden from it for so long, was not long in the joy of having finally discovered and possessed it, since scarcely had this beautiful light been removed from under the bushel, in order to appear on the mountain where it had been exposed, than divine wisdom deemed it appropriate to remove it from there to make it shine in a much more honorable place, the abode of the blessed in heaven.

Our holy solitary, being therefore ripe for the heavenly homeland, where he was soon to go to receive the crown of glory prepared for his merit, was favored with a revelation in which he learned the day of his passing; he even indicated it to several of his friends who had come to see him; and although he had prepared himself throughout the course of his life for death, by the mortification of all his senses and a perfect detachment from all earthly things, nevertheless the happy and final day he awaited having arrived, he offered, according to his custom, the sacrifice of the Mass, where he still had the happiness of receiving the holy Eucharist in the form of Viaticum; and, having presented himself to his God, in this final action, as a victim who was about to be consumed for His glory, he peacefully rendered his spirit to the Creator, on the 4th of October, around the year 550, being eighty years of age, forty of which he had spent in solitude.

Saint Vulgis is the patron sai nt of La Ferté La Ferté-Milon Town of which Saint Vulgis is the patron and where his relics rest. -Milon: he is invoked especially against diseases of livestock.

## CULT AND RELICS.

The news of his death having spread throughout the country, an immense crowd flocked to attend his funeral: it was believed that no more honorable place could be chosen for his burial than the spot he had chosen himself with the intention of hiding and burying himself, so to speak, while still alive, in the shadows of the wilderness and in the tomb of deep humility; he was therefore laid to rest near his cell, and it was there that it pleased Him who knows how to exalt the humility of His servants to perform an infinity of miracles for all those who came to implore the help of our Saint. Shortly after, a church was built on this site which was dedicated to the apostle Saint Peter, because it was found that the oratory of Saint Vulgis was consecrated to that Apostle.

Subsequently, M ilon, Milon Bishop of Troyes who discovered the saint's body in 992. who was the most powerful lord of the province, judging that the precious relics of the Saint were not in sufficient safety, nor in a sufficiently honorable place, had them removed from Troësnes (728), and placed them in the chapel of his castle, dedicated to Saint Sebastian. This castle had been given the name La Ferté-Milon (Firmitas Milonis), because of the lord to whom it belonged: it was then one of the rarest and most magnificent edifices in the country. This powerful lord had the body of Saint Vulgis placed in a silver reliquary, which can still be seen châsse d'argent Reliquary containing the entire body of the saint, examined in 1643. in the church of La Ferté-Milon, along with a bust also of silver that he had made to deposit the head of the Saint. It was also at this same time that Milon, wishing to compensate in some way the region of Troësnes, and to preserve in perpetuity the memory of the place where the holy hermit had practiced such long and harsh penance and where he had performed such great wonders, had a stone tomb erected there supported by four pillars, which can be seen in the church of this village. The figure of the holy hermit is in high relief on this tomb. He appears there vested in his priestly garments, with a chalice in his hands; and, as a testimony to the first miracle he performed in favor of the peasant of whom we have spoken, the figure of the two animals to which he restored life has been placed above his feet. Several gentlemen of singular piety have made it a devotion to succeed one another in this place for a period of more than five hundred years, striving to imitate the extraordinary virtues of the Saint who had formerly established his dwelling there, and for whom they had conceived a particular esteem and veneration.

It has happened on several occasions that a very sweet odor exhaled from the tomb of our Saint, as if to mark what the good odor of the virtues that this pious hermit once spread in the country had been; and it is also claimed that God made it known through several events that He did not approve of the design of those who wished, albeit with good intentions, to remove his stone tomb which is at Troësnes, to give it another place in this church; it is added that it even cost the lives of those who attempted to do so, as well as the workmen who were employed for this purpose. A report, which was drawn up in due form in 1611, mentions, among others, two masons who, working in this church, near the tomb of Saint Vulgis, had the curiosity, despite the prohibition that had been given to them, to dig under the figure of the Saint, which is in relief on this small mausoleum; despite the pleasant odor that immediately came out of this place, and which was smelled by a large number of people, the two workmen, either in punishment for their temerity, or because of the extreme fright with which they were seized, died in the same year, after a few months of a very languid life.

Something similar happened in 1691: two masons, as well as the one who had employed them, died that year, after having transported the tomb of our Saint from the place where it was to another in the same church. It is added that two other workmen, having again worked to make an opening near the same tomb of Saint Vulgis, to bury there the one who was the author of the transport of which we have spoken, because he was a man of distinguished merit, also died the same year; and that the one who had applied them to this work, although for a praiseworthy motive, nevertheless remained, for the space of four months, in a languor to which the doctors could bring no remedy, not knowing the cause. A holy man, very experienced, having explained to him that his illness could well have happened for having brought the burial of the personage he had buried in this church too close to the tomb of Saint Vulgis, the patient, profiting from the reflection, and regarding what he had done as a fault, immediately had recourse to Saint Vulgis, asking him for deliverance from his infirmity, and recovered his former health by this means.

We leave, however, to the liberty of the judicious reader to pass whatever judgment he wishes on these facts. What we have as more certain is the report that Mgr Le Gras, Bishop of Soissons, had drawn up in 1643, at La Ferté-Milon, and by which it appears that, having traveled to this place with his officers, to open the shrine of Saint Vulgis, in the presence of an infinity of distinguished persons who had come there to be witnesses to this ceremony, and of several doctors, called to do what was of their art, the entire body of our Saint was found in this shrine. The doctors, in scrupulously examining all the parts, judged, by the bones, that Saint Vulgis had been a strong, tall, and powerful man of body, and that he appeared to have lived to a great old age. We also had the satisfaction and joy of finding in this shrine a roll of vellum, where the following words are written in Gothic and perfectly well-formed letters, which is assured to be a testimony of their antiquity: Corpus sancti Vulgisii, filioli et discipuli sancti Remigii, Rhemenris archiepiscopi: "Here is the body of Saint Vulgis, godson and disciple of Saint Remi, Archbishop of Reims".

There was also found, in the same shrine, a report Corpus sancti Vulgisii Priest and confessor, disciple of Saint Remi, hermit at Troësnes. from the year 1543, con cerning the tr sancti Remigii Bishop of Reims who baptized Clovis. anslation of this shrine to the city of Soissons, because of some repairs that had to be done there. Mgr of Soissons, who was performing this ceremony with a very tender devotion, not even being able to stop the tears that flowed from his eyes, dre w, with Soissons Birthplace and place of death of Geoffrey. the consent of the interested parties, the two jaws of the Saint's body, one of his ribs, and a bone of Saint Sebastian, former patron of the castle chapel. He left this bone of Saint Sebastian and a jaw of Saint Vulgis to the church of La Ferté-Milon, and they were since enshrined in a silver reliquary, representing the figure of an angel who carries them on his head. As for the second jaw and the rib of Saint Vulgis, he took them to Soissons, where he had no sooner arrived than he had a general procession made, in the middle of which he carried these two relics uncovered, in a rich silver basin. Then, he gave one to the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Soissons, and reserved the other for himself. Mgr de Bourlon, his successor, has since had it enshrined in a precious reliquary. A single tooth had remained at the church of Troismes, which formerly possessed the whole body; but, in 1652, it was taken from them by the Lorrainers, who wanted to have the satisfaction of possessing in their country some pieces of the relics of such a great Saint.

The city of La Ferté-Milon attributed to the protection of Saint Vulgis, its patron, not having been pillaged and destroyed by the army of the Lorrainers, who were all prepared to assault this place, if the prayers that were addressed to heaven through the intercession of the protector of this city had not made them change their design. Let us conclude by reporting what happened in 1714, regarding the cattle that were dying on all sides, which caused extreme affliction to all the people. The whole province and even the neighboring countries had recourse to the power of Saint Vulgis; an infinity of processions arrived incessantly from all parts to his church, to offer their prayers and celebrate solemn masses there. One received on this occasion such powerful help from this holy advocate, that one does not make any difficulty in asserting that the two places that have Saint Vulgis as patron did not lose, in the disaster that was felt elsewhere, any of their beasts, during the time of the diseases that reigned everywhere.

Cf. Acta Sanctorum, October 1st.