Saint Bond

For a long time his parents engaged in fruitless searches to discover the country where he had retired. Finally, after a rather long absence, he returned to visit his family and the places that had seen his birth, and after spending some time with them, he returned to Spain to rejoin his wife.

Deprived thereafter for some time of news of their son, his parents learned from pilgrims returning from Santiago de Compostela that a man named Baud, from the surroundings of Sens, lived in Spain in a country they indicated, and that he was rich and happy there. Then, despite the length of the journey, they decided to undertake it, in order to see their son perhaps for the last time.

They arrived and found him out hunting, but were well received by his wife, who, after offering them refreshments, encouraged them to go to bed to rest while she went to notify her husband of their arrival. She left, and unfortunately did not meet her husband, who returned to the house by another path.

The continuator of Ribadeneira and a manuscript from Sens state that in the form of a vision, the demon appeared to Saint Baud as he was returning from the hunt and informed him that his wife was in bed with a man he did not know. Upon this false report, Baud entered his house like a madman, and not seeing his wife, ran straight to the bed, where he indeed found two people lying together. In his confusion and pain, he did not hesitate to pierce the two alleged adulterers with his sword.

Hardly had he committed his double parricide, which certainly was not in his will, than his wife returned and hastened to announce the arrival of his parents. He remained then motionless and stunned, recognized the misfortune that had just befallen him, lamented it bitterly, and immediately took the resolution to go on a pilgrimage to the holy places, in order to obtain at the tomb of Jesus Christ, who is mercy itself, the forgiveness for his double murder.

Although in a half-barbaric time, when one always had a sword at one's side, this precipitation, which cost our Saint such stinging regrets, undoubtedly deserves severe blame; but in our century, where manners are more polished, would it not, in a similar occurrence, unfortunately be imitated by many people?

Our Saint, after spending some time at the Savior's sepulcher, where he shed abundant tears, traveled to Rome to the tomb of the holy Apostles, threw himself at the feet of the Sovereign Pontiff, who must have been Saint Gregory the Great at the time, or Pelagius II, his predecessor, and made a humble confession of his faults. The supreme head of the Church received him with kindness, and after remitting his sins, consoled him and the n directed hi saint Arthème Archbishop of Sens who imposed penance on Saint Baud. m to Saint Artemius, Archbishop of Sens, his pastor, who would indicate the penance he was to perform.

Saint Baud, after leaving Rome, crossed Italy and the Alps, and arrived at Sens. There, he prostrated himself at the feet of the venerable Artemius, who with paternal kindness raised his spirits, and whose counsel subsequently elevated him to a high state of holiness, as attested by all the martyrologies that make mention of our Saint. The Archbishop of Sens was then holding in his hand a staff that had long been withered; he handed it to him, and gave him as a penance to go and plant it on a neighboring mountain which he indicated to him, and to water it every day with water that he would draw from the river flowing at the foot of the mountain until it turned green again and produced flowers and fruit, at which point his penance would be finished.

Our Saint accepted, full of faith and hope, the penance imposed upon him, and accomplished it with courage and perseverance for several years, despite all that the demon, jealous of the fidelity with which he executed it, made him endure. Often, upon his return from the river, he would overturn or even break the vessel he used to draw water, which obliged our Saint to replace it with a basket, likely of the type used for fires.

One day, as he was returning from the river laden with his supply of water, he met some women who were carrying a nearly dead child to the bishop. The holy penitent took him in his arms, flew to Sens, and begged Saint Artemius to lay his hands upon this innocent. After obtaining this favor and the child's health, he brought him back to his solitude, adopted him as his son with the consent of his parents, and shared with him his simple and coarse food.

It is to be presumed that this child benefited from the pious education that our solitary did not fail to give him; thus, the lectionary of Saint-Éloi of Paris, where the feast of Saint Baud was celebrated with great solemnity from time immemorial, reflects that this child owed to our Saint the life of his soul and that of his body, and it adds, regarding the long penance of Saint Baud, that the Almighty, who could have shortened it, wished on the contrary to prolong it, in order to give him a richer crown in heaven.

God finally rewarded the faith, courage, and perseverance of Saint Baud, and one day, to his great satisfaction, he saw the dry staff, which he had planted, turn green again and sprout flowers and fruits. He then understood that his penance was finished and his sin forgiven. Full of gratitude, he thanked the Lord, and, thinking that he had nothing more to do on earth, he prayed to Him to call him to Himself; which happened shortly after. He died with a reputation for great holiness, around the year 600 or 604, and God glorified his tomb with striking miracles.

Saint Antoninus of Florence reports a similar misfortune that happened quite involuntarily, also regarding his paren ts, to Saint Julian the Ho saint Julien l'Hospitalier Saint cited for his similar involuntary parricide. spitaller, who performed a long and severe penance for it.

The Church, our mother, among the Saints she offers for our veneration, proposes to us those who fell during their lives, but who washed away their sins in their tears and obtained mercy, in order to encourage us and give us hope for forgiveness ourselves, if we have sinned. It is even noted that these Saints distinguished themselves after their return to God by a fervor greater than if they had had nothing to reproach themselves for: such as Saint Peter, Saint Mary Magdalene, Saint Augustine; and the Church then seems to say to us, as Saint Ambrose once said to Emperor Theodosius: "You have imitated David in his sin, imitate him in his penance."

One sometimes finds, in the lives of the Saints, extraordinary facts that some people hesitate to believe. But did Our Lord not announce to us in the Gospel that those who believed in him would perform even greater wonders than those he had performed himself? Thus, in the lives of several Saints, we find facts similar to those reported in the life of Saint Baud.

To test the obedience of Saint John the Dwarf, he was commanded to plant his staff in very dry ground and to water it every day until it bore fruit. He obeyed with simplicity, although the river that provided him with water was at a great distance, and after three years the staff took root and produced fruit. Sulpicius Severus reports that Posthumius, in 402, saw this tree covered with leaves.

A river, through its flooding, was causing great damage; Saint Gregory the Wonderworker planted his staff on its banks and commanded the waters, in the name of God, not to exceed this boundary henceforth. They obeyed, and the staff itself took root and became a great tree. Saint Peter of Alcantara, so venerated by Saint Teresa, also planted his staff in the ground, which soon became a verdant fig tree. The solitaries of Egypt, and in our own day the venerable Curé of Ars, are there to attest to how much the demon delights in exercising the patience of the friends of God.

[APPENDIX: CULT AND RELICS.]

The body of Saint Baud was buried on the mountain where he had performed his penance, and the piety of the people raised a chapel over his tomb, to which cities hastened to flock in times of public necessity, and a crowd of pilgrims in their personal needs.

At that same time, Dagobert appointed Saint Eligius admi nistrator saint Éloi Founder of the monastery and spiritual advisor to Saint Aurea. of the monastery of Sainte-Colombe, recently founded by his father Clotaire II, and charged him with crafting at his own expense a reliquary and various art objects in honor of this young martyr of Sens. Saint Eligius then conceived the project of founding a church in Paris in honor of Saint Colombe, which he executed around the year 630, and deposited there the relics of this Saint that he had brought from Sens for this intention, along with some precious remains of Saint Baud, who had died a short time before and whose miracles had struck him. He was thus the first propagator of the cult of our penitent saint.

This church, founded by Saint Eligius, was destroyed by the Normans, as were almost all the churches in the vicinity of the capital. Care had been taken to place the relics of Saint Colombe and Saint Baud in safety at the priory of Saint-Éloi, in the city, upon which this church depended. When the fear of the Normans had ceased through the conversion of Rollo, their leader, and the destroyed churches could be rebuilt, the monks of Saint-Éloi also had a new church rebuilt on the site of the old church of Sainte-Colombe; but as they believed they should keep the relics of the holy Martyr at the monastery, they brought back to the new one only the relics of Saint Baud; the latter then took its name, and the relics of the new patron, encased in a silver arm, were preserved there until the great Revolution. Never, as some hagiographers have erroneously claimed, did the church of Saint-Baud in Paris possess relics of Saint Baud of Clermont.

In the ancient calendars and legendaries of Saint Eligius, from the 13th century and the following, Saint Colombe and Saint Baud were inscribed in red characters as patrons of churches dependent on the monastery, and until the Revolution of '93, the office of these two Saints was celebrated with solemnity on the same day as in Sens. Only, for reasons that would be too long to enumerate here, and due to an error that became almost general, Saint Baud of Sens was confused with Saint Baud of Clermont, and the church of Saint-Baud, in the first half of the 18th century, abandoned the penitent saint of Sens to adopt as its patron Saint Baud or Bonnet of Clermont; but Saint-Éloi, until its destruction, preserved the cult of the ancient patron.

The first chapel of Saint-Baud, on the mountain, had been destroyed during the incursions of the Saracens and the Normans; Richer, Archbishop of Sens, thought around 1690 to replace it with a new one, and it was while digging the foundations that the body of Saint Baud was discovered, about 486 years after his death. Since the invention of his body, his cult spread to a greater number of regions. Several parishes, in France and Savoy, chose him as their patron: we find in Champenort, in the diocese of Langres, founded in 1202 in honor of Saint Baud, a priory that depended on the abbey of Montier-en-Der.

But Pavant, near Châtea u-Thie Pavant Parish where the cult of Saint Baud (Baid) is very flourishing. rry, in the diocese of Soissons, was the parish where his cult was most flourishing, under the name of Saint Baid. This name proves that the cult of Saint Baud was established in this parish before our penitent saint was given—which hardly occurred until the 19th century—the common name of Saint Baud. This new name caused him to be confused with the Bishop of Clermont, and in several places the cult of the penitent saint of Sens was abandoned to adopt that of the Bishop of Clermont.

One notices in the windows of the apse of the church of Pavant four beautiful medallions from the 13th or 14th century, which relate to the life of Saint Baud. This parish possessed relics of its patron, which it had undoubtedly obtained after the invention of his body; for only Saint Eligius is known to have obtained any from the beginning. It preserved them preciously until '93, the time at which they were profaned by a wretch, whose death later was atrocious and whose name is held in shame. The parish had the good fortune to obtain new ones in 1566.

The feast of Saint Baid was repeated there on September 15, undoubtedly the anniversary day of the reception of the ancient relics, and since the adoption of the Roman liturgy in Soissons, his memory is celebrated on the same day throughout the diocese; formerly this feast was celebrated for eight days in Pavant; devotion to our Saint was very widespread in the parishes of the diocese of Soissons watered by the Marne and in several parishes of the neighboring dioceses, from where numerous processions arrived in times of epidemic and public calamities. Several people, until '93, also came every year to visit the tomb of Saint Baud in Sens; it was like a deputation that the region sent to present its wishes and homages.

The chapel of Saint Baud, built on the mountain, formerly served as a parish for the inhabitants of the surroundings; but for the greater convenience of the parishioners, a larger church was built in Paron, at the foot of the Paron Place where undistributed relics are deposited. mountain, where the undistributed relics of Saint Baud are now deposited, after having been recognized by the Archbishop of Sens. His head is in the treasury of the cathedral of Sens.

Saint Baud is invoked above all to reunite divided families, to calm colic and toothaches, and to heal animals.

We dedicate this notice to the kindness of Abbé Robin, honorary canon at Saint-Maurice-Charenton.