Saint Severinus of Bordeaux

As for the basilica of Saint-Seurin of Bordeaux, it succeeded (around 725) the church of Saint-Étienne and the Oratory of the Trinity. The crypts first possessed the body of the Saint: it was enclosed in a raw marble sarcophagus. Later, it was removed from the underground church and placed in the Confession. It rose against the wall of the apse of the upper church and consisted of a small vault supported by flying buttresses joining a rose window, and, after rounding into columns, resting on foundations lost in the ground. One entered under this vault through two lowered doors with thick arches. Above the Confession, an altar of the Holy Trinity was later erected. These two monuments (confession and altar) are destroyed today; the choir organ has replaced the confession; a new altar has been built. It is under this high altar of recent date (1855) that the tomb of Saint Seurin rests, removed from the Confession. As for his precious bones, they enrich a reliquary placed at the sides of the tabernacle; it faces the reliquary of Saint Amand, and both, with the tabernacle whose for m they imit saint Amand Spiritual advisor to Gertrude. ate, complete the altarpiece of the altar.

Numerous churches in the dioceses of Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Périgueux, Angoulême, Poitiers, Limoges, etc., are placed under the patronage of Saint Seurin.

As the facts we have set forth in the Biography proper of Saint Seurin are not recognized as authentic by the vast majority of hagiographers, the new Bollandists in the lead, we must now discuss them. These facts are drawn from two versions of the Life of Saint Seurin, forming part of a 13th-century manuscript codicil preserved in the archives of the Church of Bordeaux.

The dominant fact, the basis of the discussion, is the identity of Seurin, Bishop of Cologne, and Seur in, Bishop of Bordeaux. F Seurin, évêque de Cologne Bishop who held the see successively in Cologne and then in Bordeaux. ollowing the Gallia Christiana, the continuators o f the learned col Gallia Christiana Encyclopedic work on the history of the Church in France. lection of the Bollandists have rejected this identity. In support of their opinion, they argue:

1° The age of Saint Seurin. Succeeding Euphrates in Cologne and Saint Amand in Borde aux, it is saint Amand Spiritual advisor to Gertrude. argued that, according to their calculations, he could only have occupied the latter see after forty or fifty years of episcopate in Cologne, and at an age of decrepitude. — But this argument is flawed at its base, because there is no certain data regarding the end of the two episcopates of Euphrates and Saint Delphin, predecessors of Saint Amand. Moreover, do not the learned Belgian hagiographers refer to it themselves by admitting that one cannot doubt that Seurin of Cologne came to and died in Bordeaux? If he was not too decrepit to come to Bordeaux, why would he be too decrepit to exercise the episcopate there?

2° The canons that forbade translations from one see to another, which two bishops as holy as Seurin and Amand could not have violated. — But these canons, as the very text o f the Council of Sa concile de Sardique Council held in 347 for the defense of the orthodox faith. rdica cited by our opponents proves, were only enacted to repress the ambition of those who sought to move from a small bishopric to a more important one. Thus, the Fourth Council of Carthage, while continuing to proscribe translations, admits them when they are motivated by the utility of the Church. Obviously, the censures of the councils do not reach Saint Seurin and Saint Amand, who were moved by zeal and humility, and who obeyed (as we have seen in the preceding pages) only the will of God, miraculously manifested.

3° The implausibility of the fact of Saint Seurin abandoning his flock in Cologne at the moment when the Arian barbarians threatened to descend upon it like devouring wolves. — But it is very likely, and this is the opinion of Dom Calmet, that Saint Seurin was, against his will, driven from Cologne by the storm: God would have shown him, in Bordeaux, a new field opened to his zeal. This hypothesis, very plausible, in no way invalidates the spiritual character of his mission.

If the general argumentation of the Bollandists cannot, in our opinion, be sustained, it weakens even further in the presence of the particular traditions of the Churches of Cologne and Bordeaux. Indeed, all the martyrologies, the Roman one in the lead, are favorable to the regimental mission of Saint Seurin. We would be too long if we wished to enter into details: the impartial reader will easily fill these gaps.

We therefore admit, contrary to the opinion of the Bollandists and their adherents, the identity of the two figures. We recognize only one and the same Seurin who, after having occupied the see of Cologne after Euphrates, occupied that of Bordeaux after Saint Amand.

This short work on Saint Seurin is only a succinct summary of the monumental work composed on this subject by a learned professor of the faculty of theology of Bordeaux, M. l'abbé Cir et de la Ville: *Origines c M. l'abbé Ciret de la Ville Professor of theology and author of a study on the Christian origins of Bordeaux. hrét iennes de Bordeaux*, a quarto vo Origines chrétiennes de Bordeaux Reference work published in 1867 on the history of the Church of Bordeaux. lume, Bordeaux, 1867. — We have adopted the opinion of this illustrious author all the more willingly, as he sent his work to the new Bollandists, his contradictors, and they promised him to take it into account in their subsequent works.