Saint Eucharius

Modern legends say that Eucharius directed the schools of Toul, not, no doubt, that in that remote era they were what they later became. However, these writings are too recent and do not belong to the sound tradition of the country. Be that as it may, Julian, going with his army fr om Gau Julien Roman emperor and persecutor of Christians. l to Germany, passed through Toul where he heard of Eucharius as a skillful master and an intrepid defender of the new religion. The apostate, having been unable, neither by caresses nor by threats, to lead him to renounce faith in Jesus Christ, had his head cut off along with Elophe his brother and the virgin Libaire his sister. Thi s last Libaire Sister of Saint Eucaire, martyr near Grand. proposition of the legend should, it seems to us, be understood only in the sense of the death sentence by the same tyrant, and not of the simultaneity of the execution; the acts of Saint Elophe having him succumb near Soulosse, and those of Saint Libaire marking the vicinity of Grand as the burial place of this courageous virgin.

The legend reports of Saint Eucaire that, immediately after his martyrdom on the banks of the Meurthe, he rose, took his severed head in his hands, and carried it, following the Pompey valley, for the distance of a mile; that he stopped on the borders of the fortress of Liverdun, p laced hi Liverdun The saint's primary burial place and site of veneration. s head on a block of rock, and came to a rest; finally, that from this place the Christians transported him into the enclosure of the nearby castrum and buried him there honorably. Thus, he appeared to have established himself as its protector. Indeed, the Vandals and the Huns, having crossed Germany and spread over the Toulois region, brought devastation everywhere with the sword and fire. The inhabitants of Liverdun were preserved from their sinister visit; a privilege they attributed to the intercession of Saint Eucaire, and which Dagobert I , King of Fr Dagobert Ier King of the Franks petitioned by Sulpicius to annul a tax. ance and Austrasia, recorded as a miracle in a charter he intended to give to the Church of Toul. According to the oldest monuments of the church of Liverdun, it was noted that a great number of the deaf, the mute, the blind, the possessed, and persons afflicted with other infirmities had recovered their health. LIVES OF THE SAINTS. — Volume XII.

at the tomb of the blessed martyr. In all times, the bishops of Toul have also shown their veneration for the one they counted as one of their colleagues in the episcopate and who had watered, with his blood, the tree of faith planted on the soil of the Leuci. CULT AND RELICS. Saint Gauslin raised the body of the illustrious martyr from his first tomb and deposited it in the church of Saint-Pierre de Liverdon where, for several centuries, it was the object of the veneration of the faithful. To do him more honor, Pierre de Brixey placed Pierre de Brixey Bishop of Toul who founded a chapter in honor of the saint. it in a reliquary he had prepared, then founded in 1144, at Liverdon, a chapter of canons under the title of Saint-Eucaire. Sixty years later, Bishop Gilles de Sorcy, not finding the reliquary given by Pierre de Brixey to his taste, had another one made, much richer, and transported the precious remains of the holy martyr there, in the presence of the ecclesiastical luminaries of the diocese, Duke Ferry III of Lorraine, Marguerite of Navarre, his wife, and the nobility of the country. This new reliquary and the treasure it contained were piously preserved in the church, where the devotion of zealous prelates had placed them, and maintained until the year 1587. At that disastrous t l'année 1587 Event during which the saint's relics were destroyed. ime, the Protestant army, after having invaded Lorraine, approached Liverdon and seized it by surprise. After sacking this town, the heretics took the reliquary of Saint Eucaire, detached the precious metals that covered and adorned it, and then delivered the sacred remains that were sheltered there to the flames.

The feast of the first martyr of the Toul region is currently celebrated in the diocese of Nancy-Toul and in that of Saint-Dié on the twenty-second day of October.

Rupert, in the passion of Saint Elophe which he composed for the monks of Saint-Martin of Cologne, at the request of their abbot Alban, and based on the writing of an anc ient author, saint Eucaire 4th-century martyr, presumed bishop of Grand or Toul. gives Saint Eucaire the title of bishop. The Toul missals of 1507, 1557, and 1551, and the printed breviaries of the diocese from 1512, 1595, and 1628, ma ke Sa Grand City where the saint took refuge and was martyred. int Eucaire bishop of Grand. It was only after these periods that certain authors refused the brother of Saint Elophe the name of bishop of Grand to make him a bishop of Toul; later, the Toul liturgy left him only his title of martyr; already the same liturgy, in 1684, by removing from Saint Eucaire the qualification of bishop of Grand, had left him only the titles of bishop and martyr, without giving him a determined see. Abb é Guillaume, canon M. l'abbé Guillaume Canon of Nancy and historian, author of the text source. of Nancy, showed in his Dissertation on the beginnings of the Church of Toul that, according to the oldest traditions of this Church, Saint Eucaire could well have exercised episcopal functions among the Leuci in the first half of the fourth century, before the arrival of Saint Mansuy in Toul, and that the city of Grand was important enough, by its population and its monuments, to make it the seat of a bishop. Nothing prevents us, however, from admitting that Saint Eucaire exercised episcopal functions among the Leuci, and that he fixed his residence at Grand, without having been created bishop of that city by a special mission. In this way, Saint Mansuy would still be the first bishop of the Leuci, having had his determined see in the city of Toul. Antiquity has not left us monuments precise enough to allow us to pronounce, in an absolute manner, on what simple tradition has transmitted of the beginnings of the Church of this country; but it is good, it is useful to combine what this tradition teaches, in order to leave it all its authority and value, by reconciling it as much as possible with itself and with the certain data of ecclesiastical history.

Excerpt from the History of the diocese of Toul and that of Nancy, by Abbé Guillaume.