Saint Sigebert (Sigisbert) III, King of Austrasia

He was the son of Dagobert I, Dagobert Ier King of the Franks petitioned by Sulpicius to annul a tax. King of France, and of Ragintrude or Ragnétrude. The king, who for some time had been leading a rather dissolute life, was so touched by the grace that God bestowed upon him in giving him a son that, to acknowledge this favor, he conceived the plan of correcting himself entirely. Resolved to have this son baptized by the holiest prelate of his kingdom, he cast his eyes u saint Amand Missionary bishop and friend of Saint Aubert. pon Saint Amand, Bishop of Maastricht, whom he had previously exiled because of the generous freedom with which he reproved him for his disorders. Having therefore summoned him to Clichy, near Paris, he prostrated himself at his feet, asked his pardon for the injustice he had committed against him, and persuaded him, with the help of Saint Ouen and Saint Eloi, who were still laymen, to confer upon his son the sacrament of regeneration. He gave him as godfather Caribert, King of Aquitaine, his brother, and one could from then on hope that this child of France would be a prince of peace, since his birth reconciled these three great personages so perfectly. God also made manifest what this little prince would be, through a miraculous event that occurred at his baptism:

The crowd of French nobility that was then in Orléans, where this ceremony was taking place, was so great that there was no cleric to be found near Saint Amand, who was baptizing him, to answer amen; the child, who was not yet forty days old, pronounced this word distinctly and appropriately: which caused great admiration among the lords who were witnesses to this wonder. The education of the little prince was entrust ed to the blessed Pepin of bienheureux Pépin de Landen Mayor of the palace and tutor to Sigebert III. Landen, Mayor of the Palace, who, constrained to yield to the envy of the nobility, withdrew with him to the lands of Caribert, where he possessed several estates by right of the blessed Itta, his wife.

Scarcely had he reached his fifth year of age, when the king, desiring to provide for the rest of his kingdom, and to follow in this the examples of his predecessors, divided his states between his two children, na mely: our Sige notre Sigebert King of Austrasia whose body's passage through Lambres serves as a chronological reference point. bert and Clovis II; and by the advice of his council, he gave Austrasia, that is to say, Eastern France, to the one who was the eldest, leaving Neustria to Clovis, the youngest.

Five or six years later, King Dagobert being near to leaving this life with the kingdom, to go to reign more happily in heaven, had an assembly of the greatest lords of his states convened a few days before, where, confirming the division he had made between his two sons, he declared them kings. And these princes kept so religiously the ordinance of the king, their father, touching this division, and always lived in such good understanding, that each, on his side, governed the subjects of his kingdom very peacefully.

As for King Sigebert, he was fortunate in Austrasia to have near his person Saint Pepin, Lord of Brabant, whom he made mayor of saint Pépin, seigneur de Brabant Mayor of the palace and tutor to Sigebert III. his palace, and Saint Cunibert, Arch bishop of Cologne, whom he took as hi saint Cunibert, archevêque de Cologne Contemporary bishop present at court. s principal advisor; both were holy personages, who assisted him powerfully with their wise counsel. It was these two faithful servants who, after the death of his father, persuaded him to ask King Clovis, his brother, for the division of the treasures and furniture of the late king: which they negotiated with such skill and prudence that a new assembly was held for this purpose in the city of Compiègne, where, finally, everything was settled peacefully, and to the entire satisfaction of both parties.

However, Sigebert saw the peace of his reign troubled by the revolt of some restless spirits who urged the Thuringians, his vassals, to take up arms against their prince; being then only twelve years old, he found himself obliged to wage war against them: and, at first, he gained some advantage over them, defeated their troops, and struck down their duke. But, as arms are subject to caprice, the events brought about by their play are very changeable: the poor understanding of his officers gave the Thuringians the means to rally and to have the upper hand in their turn; they defeated the entire royal army. Nevertheless, the king gathered new forces, took on new courage, and, having crossed the Rhine again, he conducted himself with such prudence and wisdom that he finally brought the rebels to reason and forced them to submit.

This virtuous prince, seeing himself then at peace in his kingdom, gave himself entirely to the exercises of piety, and let himself be so drawn to the contemplative life that one would have taken him for a monk raised in a cloister rather than a king raised in purple and in arms. Hence it is that some of our French historians, considering things only according to politics and human prudence, disapprove of his conduct and accuse him of cowardice; but those who have spoken of him with more detachment from temporal things have compared him to the great Solomon, and say that he even surpassed his glory. Indeed, both were endowed by the Lord, from their earliest years, with extraordinary wisdom, and received from Him much wealth and power. This king of Judea, instead of profiting from all these gifts, abused them to the point of employing them for his own ruin and the loss of his soul; on the contrary, King Sigebert used them for his salvation and that of his people. Solomon dissipated the better part of the immense goods that King David, his father, had left him, and that God had given him, in prodigious debauchery, in foolish expenses with his concubines, and in building temples to their idols and their false divinities. But the pious King Sigebert employed much more usefully the treasures he had inherited from King Dagobert, his father, or that he had acquired during the peace of his reign, in giving great alms to the poor, and in building twelve beautiful monasteries, among which are counted the famous abbeys of Stavelot, in the diocese of Liège, and of Malmédy, in the diocese Stavelot Monastery founded by Sigebert III. of Trier; to one of them, of which Saint Remaclus, Bishop of Liège, was abbot, he gave no less than twelve leagues of land, in length and in width; which he later confirmed by his testament.

This prince was worthy of the crown, since he knew so well how to govern himself that, by prudently using the honors and riches of the earth, he acquired the true greatness of immortality; and his life was such that, while his earthly power made him formidable to men, his piety and justice made him pleasing in the eyes of God. If there were some defects in his conduct against the rules of human prudence, his alms and other good deeds sufficiently repaired them, to make him appear spotless before the divine Majesty. He died holily, in the flower of his age, on February 1st, around the middle of the 8th century, two hundred and sixty-three years after the death of Saint Martin, according to the way years were counted in France at that time. As our holy king was very devoted to this great bishop, he wished for his body to be buried near the city of Metz, in a church dedicated in his honor, which is one of the Metz City where the saint received his theological training. twelve he had founded. God made his holiness manifest through a quantity of miracles that took place at his tomb; the monk Sigebert, author of his life, reports a great number of them, and says that he was an eyewi le moine Sigebert, auteur de sa vie Medieval chronicler who recorded the translation of relics to Metz. tness to them.

The holy king of Austrasia is depicted with a church in his hand, in allusion to his pious foundations. He is invoked, in Lorraine, for rain and fair weather.

## RELICS AND CULT OF SAINT SIGEBERT. In the year 1063, four hundred years after his death, the body of Saint Sigebert was found as whole in his sepulcher as if it had been placed there only two hours prior; it was removed to be deposited in a more decent place, as he himself had ordered a religious of this monastery of Saint-Martin-les-Metz named Villan, to whom he had appeared. Seven years later, it was solemnly enclosed in a rich silver reliquary, and placed next to the high altar of the church, but still with miracles that can be seen in the author of the life reported by Surius and Rollandus on the 1st of this month. Finally, in the year 1552, this abbey of Saint-Martin was entirely ruined by the wars between France and Spain; then this precious deposit was transported to Metz in the church of the priory of Notre-Dame, where it remained until 1603, the time at which Charles III, who had obtained from the Pope the erection of a c olleg Nancy Capital of the Duchy of Lorraine where the dukes are buried. iate church in Nancy, had it transported to the provisional church where the canons had begun to perform their offices... The reliquary containing this holy body was of ebony, covered in silver, richly enameled; it had been brought from Milan by the orders and at the expense of Antoine de Lenoncourt, second primate of Lorraine.

In 1740, it was necessary to renew the ornaments covering the sacred relic due to their age. This operation was carried out with great solemnity. It is of interest to read the state in which the remains of the holy king were found: "The head, the torso, the arms, and the thighs hold together, all covered with muscles, integuments, and skin, except for the head, where the bones of the skull are exposed from the eyebrows to the bones of the temples and the occipital...; the face is intact, as is the nose..., the lips are preserved, and the upper one is raised enough to reveal the four incisor teeth of the upper jaw; the other parts of the face are also preserved and without lesion, as are the body, the arms, the thighs...; the left forearm, the wrist, the hand, the fingers with the nails are without lesion; the right hand, from the wrist to the tips of the fingers, is whole; the right leg is whole with the tarsal bones, etc.

After noting the state in which the body of the holy king was found, it was replaced in the reliquary with new and rich ornaments. It was from this reliquary, lastly deposited under the altar, that in 1793, men for whom nothing was respectable or sacred tore it away to consign it to the flames. Some people, however, saved some debris, the best part of which, religiously preserved by M. Simouin, gentleman of the director of the Nancy School of Medicine, was, on January 30, 1883, returned to Mgr Osmond, the diocesan bishop, and exposed once again to the veneration of the faithful. These remains are, as far as it is possible to recognize: two arm bones, another bone and a small rib, a leg bone, a shoulder blade to which muscles and fleshy filaments remain attached, three large ribs, three rib fragments, and a kneecap.

The veneration of the people for the relics of Saint Sigisbert, and the graces obtained from heaven through the intercession of this Blessed one, led to his being chosen as patron of the capital of the former capitale de l'ancien duché de Lorraine Capital of the Duchy of Lorraine where the dukes are buried. Duchy of Lorraine. In times of public calamity, at the request of the city magistrates, acting as the voice of the populace, his reliquary was taken down from the arch where it was enclosed, above the primatial seat, and placed on a special altar where it remained exposed throughout the duration of the supplications ordered by the competent authority. It is from this that the common expression "to take down the relics of Saint Sigisbert" originated, still used today when speaking of their solemn exposition to obtain from God deliverance from some scourge.

The diocese of Metz, in losing this precious treasure, did not cease to honor the holy king of Austrasia. A beautiful stained-glass window was recently dedicated to him in the church of Sainte-Ségolène, built near the site where the former palace of the kings of Austrasia stood, of which some remains can still be seen.

Information provided by Abbé Guillaume, canon of Nancy, chaplain of the ducal chapel. See the "Histoire fidèle de saint Sigisbert, deuxième roi d'Austrasie et troisième du nom, etc.", drawn from the "Antiquités germaniques", by the Reverend Father Vincent, of Nancy, religious of the Third Order of Saint Francis. Nancy, 1762: — The first life of this holy king was written by the monk Sigebert. The monk, in the additions of Umar, says that he had twenty monasteries built instead of the twelve noted by Father Giry; — and for the relics: "La cathédrale de Nancy, notice, etc.", by Abbé Guillaume.