Saint Sulpice the Pious

Unable to confine himself to a cloister, the young Sulpicius had at least withdrawn into a domestic retreat, where he practiced the mortification of the most austere hermits; he only left it to feed the poor, build churches, furnish hospitals, adorn monasteries, deliver prisoners, or finally to catechize the idolaters still found in the countryside. As soon as Saint Austregisilus, appointed to the archbishopric of Bourges after the death of Apollinaris, had taken possession of his Church, he heard of the holiness of Sulpicius and the power that God had given him over demons and diseases. He was so amazed that, without asking for his consent, he addressed King Theuderic, so that he might permit him to grant the holy young man the clerical state and attach him to the ministry of his church. Under the Merovingian kings, Franks of noble birth could not dedicate themselves to the service of the altars without the king's permission; their birth destined them for the profession of arms. The prince, who knew the virtue of Sulpicius, willingly joined his authority to that of Austregisilus, who compelled our Saint, despite the protests of his humility, to receive, in a few years, the tonsure, the minor orders, and finally the diaconate and the priesthood. Soon the city of Bourges, enlightened by his teachings and animated to virtue by his examples, began to know what a treasure it possessed. He was placed in charge of the episcopal school which, under a skillful director, became very numerous.

But King Clo taire II, w Clotaire II King of Neustria and later sole King of the Franks, protector of Columbanus after his exile. ho had reigned alone in France since the year 613, hearing constantly of the miracles and the holiness of Sulpice, requested him from Saint Austregisilus to make him chaplain of his court, or rather abbot of the king's chapel, that is to say, superior of a community of clerics or monks whom the kings maintained in their own palace to sing the divine office there, and whom they took in their train on their expeditions and journeys. Sulpice appeared on this continually agitated sea of the world, firm in his piety, uniform in his life, immovable in his virtue, like a rock in the midst of the waves. He retained for his subsistence and for that of his small community only a third of the stipend he received from the king, and gave the rest to the poor. He did so much by his words and his actions that he introduced into the court virtues foreign to that environment: humility, abstinence, charity, and the forgetting of injuries. At that time, the king fell so dangerously ill that everyone despaired of his health. The queen was the only one who had not lost courage: she implored the holy priest to set himself to prayer for the salvation of her husband. He did so and spent five days without eating, without sleeping, and without interrupting his orison. As the king's illness continued to increase, Sulpice was urged to take at least some nourishment; it was represented to him that he was killing himself uselessly, because the king was about to expire. He declared without hesitation that he who was thought to be dead would be in a state to eat on the seventh day, and that he would then eat with him: which was accomplished to universal admiration.

Shortly thereafter (624), Saint Austregisilus having died, great intrigues formed for the archbishopric of Bourges. But the pious persons who were in the city secretly sent deputies to Queen Sichilde, to pray her to e reine Sichilde Queen of the Franks who supported the election of Sulpicius. xclude the ambitious and the simoniacs and to give them the holy man Sulpicius as their pastor. The Queen employed all her influence, and the King agreed to this request from the Church of Bourges. And immediately God, the sovereign master of hearts, reunited those who were divided, so that the election of Sulpicius was unanimous.

The Saint, seeing himself raised to this eminent dignity, took it much more as a burden than as an honor; that is why, relaxing nothing of his ordinary practices, he increased, on the contrary, his fasts and his alms; and in order to spend less time in sleep, he took his rest only on a simple straw mattress covered with a hairshirt.

God blessed the works he undertook to worthily discharge the functions of his office; he absolutely extirpated Judaism from the city of Bourges by converting and baptizing almost all the Jews who were established there. Through his fervent preaching, he also caused many among the Christians to renounce the vanities of the world, in order to place themselves under the banner of the cross and embrace a penitent life.

In 625, he was present at the great Council of Reims, where he occupied one of the first places among several other metropolitans who attended. In his province, he also held several: none of the regulations that were drawn up there remain to us.

God increased the power he already had to perform miracles; he restored sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, the free use of arms and legs to the paralyzed, speech to the mute, and even life to two dead men, one of whom had succumbed to the pangs of hunger, and the other had been submerged in the Auron river, which falls into the Cher and from there into the Loire. I pass over in silence several other wonders that God wrought through the merits of our Saint, such as having extinguished three fires by the mere sign of the cross, and having supported a tree of prodigious size that was about to crush a young man in its fall. But I cannot remain silent about the one that, of all, was the most useful: King Dagobert, at the solicitatio n of one of roi Dagobert King of the Franks petitioned by Sulpicius to annul a tax. his courtiers, having placed too heavy a tax on the people of Bourges, Sulpice did so much through his prayers that the king revoked his edict, and as this courtier still persisted in his malice against the intention of the king, God punished him with a sudden death.

There existed in the Yèvre river, near Vierzon, a formidabl e abyss Vierzon Abbey founded by Raoul in Berry. to which the most mournful memories were attached. It was recounted with terror that the pagans had once considered it sacred, that after the fall of the false gods the devil had established himself there in hatred of the Christians, to lie in wait for passersby and drag them into the abyss. Sulpice came in great pomp to the banks of the river, threw a little holy oil and chrism into the waters which he blessed, and, from that moment, one could cross this place, and even fish there without peril.

"However," adds a modern historian, "the abyss, or, as it is called in popular language, the Gour de l'Yèvre, has continued to this day to be the object of marvelous traditions. It is claimed that no one has ever been able to find the bottom, that the waters bubbled there on all the feasts of the Virgin; that on those days one could hear bells ringing in the river itself; that the fish, in passing through, would stop and turn back in such a way as to describe a cross. It is also said that a bold diver, named Perlas, saw at the bottom of the water a beautiful church full of great riches, and that he brought back a small bell and an image of the Virgin, both placed, in Vierzon, in a chapel that was built on purpose. Finally, it is in the same place that in 1828, during the work on the Berri canal, the skeletons of a horseman and a horse, some parts of armor, and, at the height of the belt, numerous English coins of Edward III were discovered buried in the sand. It was probably a horseman of the Black Prince's army, who had perished in this place."

However, Sulpice, after seventeen years of episcopacy, felt pressed by the frailty of age and by the desire to occupy himself with his sanctification in a more special way; he begged the king to allow him to take a coadjutor: this was a holy ecclesiastic named Ulfolend, upon whom he unloaded a part of his burden, in order to have more leisure to attend to the affairs of his salvation. There was nothing so humble as he, nor, following the etymology of his name, so gentle and so ready to forgive offenses. A wicked man having come to rob him, fell into a very deep pit, where he found himself overwhelmed under ruins; he was held for dead; but finally he was pulled out and asked the Saint for forgiveness; this admirable man not only forgave his offense, but, moreover, gave him enough to provide for his needs, so that he would no longer let himself go to such extremes. One of his clerics, having gone out without leave, was held all night by a divine force and thus compelled to come and prostrate himself at the feet of his bishop; the holy prelate easily granted him the pardon he requested.

Although he was primate of all Aquitaine, nevertheless, he cherished poverty so much that he always used wooden and earthenware dishes at his table; which did not, however, prevent him from showing himself magnificent in the foundation of churches and monasteries.

Among the religious foundations owed to Sulpice the Pious, one must first cite the monastery of the Ne monastère de la Nef Monastery founded by Sulpicius in Bourges. f, built in a suburb of the city of Bourges, between the Yèvre and the Auron, near a boat station, from which it received its first name of Nef or ship, later exchanged for that of its founder.

It was in this peaceful retreat, consecrated to the Virgin, that the illustrious bishop came to rest from his labors and the weight of the years that were beginning to overtake him, in the company of the brothers of whom he was the friend as well as the leader. Later, towards the middle of the 9th century, under the direction of Abbot Ébrard, the ferry service having been replaced by bridges thrown over the Yèvre and the Auron by the hands of the monks themselves, a diploma attributed to one of the sons of Louis the Pious, Pepin II or Charles the Bald, granted the convent not only the toll rights collected on the new routes, but also at all the gates of the city.

Tradition also attributes to the ardent charity of Sulpice the Pious the establishment of the hospice that bore his name, and which existed until the 16th century below the cathedral church, almost opposite that of Saint-Ursin. On the entrance door of this Maison-Dieu one could read this beautiful inscription, which seems a final sigh escaped from the tender soul of its founder:

| DEUM TIME. | Fear God. | | PAUPERES SUSTINE. | Feed the poor. | | MEMENTO FINIS. | Remember your end. |

Finally, after so many miracles and good works, and when he had consumed his whole body through vigils, fasts, prayer, and other austerities, he departed from this world, even more laden with merits than with years, although extremely old, on January 17, in the year of Our Lord 644 or at the latest in 647.

4° In his capacity as a military chaplain in the armies of Clotaire II, he has been depicted in the midst of men of war and could be adopted as a patron, either by chaplains or by soldiers; 2° beside the bed of Clotaire whom he healed, or soliciting from Dagobert I the repeal of an unjust tax; 3° preaching and holding in his hand a placard containing these words of Saint Paul: "When we have the necessary for our food and our clothing, let us consider that it is quite enough"; he loved to repeat this text of Scripture and applied it, moreover, in his conduct.

## RELICS OF SAINT SULPICE.

The body of Saint Sulpice was carried solemnly into the church he had caused to be built outside the city, where there had previously been a chapel called Notre-Dame de la Nef, or of the Ship, because of its location in a place suitable for the mooring of ships, to the north of the city, between the Yèvre and Auron rivers.

As a symbol of the ardent devotion attached to the memory of Sulpice the Pious, a beautiful lamp, carefully maintained, burned day and night above his tomb. However, one evening, while Vespers were being sung, the flame of this lamp suddenly went out as if it had run out of fuel. Immediately, a brilliant flash of light, penetrating through the windows, relit it, to the great astonishment of those present, and from that time on, the drops of oil that flowed from it onto the marble retained a miraculous virtue from which the sick of all kinds and from all countries hastened to benefit. Without mentioning the daily wonders that restored sight to the blind, speech to the mute, hearing to the deaf, movement to the paralyzed, and peace to the possessed, let us note a few facts more particularly highlighted by legend.

The fame of the lamp of Saint Sulpice spread far and wide.

An illustrious lady from Upper Germany, blind from birth, had traveled at great expense and through a thousand dangers to the monastery of the Nef, with the hope of obtaining her healing there. However, despite her prayers and tears, she remained for several days lying on the pavement before the tomb of the holy confessor, without her eyes opening to the light. In her pain and impatience, she began to cry out loudly for some relic that she might be allowed to take away and that might perhaps heal her in time. Annoyed by her clamor, a mason working inside the church said to her in derision:

— Why so much noise? Hold out your apron, I will give you some of the relics we have.

Then, taking some mortar with his trowel, he threw it into the apron of the poor lady who, full of faith, rubbed it on her eyes and immediately regained her sight. After praising God and Saint Sulpice, the noble German lady wished to take away the miraculous mortar as a true relic, and, upon returning to her country, had a monastery built, which she named Saint-Sulpice-du-Mortier, and which in turn became famous and fruitful in wonders.

The church of the Nef no longer exists today; the relics it possessed were burned in 1793. The parish church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, in which an arm bone of our Saint was once venerated, also lost it during the French Revolution and now has only a few fragments of its patron's bones. The town of Vatan, in Berry, possesses a small bone of Saint Sulpice ten centimeters in length, which was given to the chapter of Vatan on January 27, 1757, by the religious of Saint-Sulpice of Bourges.

In the Nivernais and Auxerrois regions, the feast of this Saint is generally celebrated on August 27, because of a translation of his relics that took place at that time, according to the editor of the Fastes de l'église d'Auxerre.

"A large part of the head of Saint Sulpice, Bishop of Bourges, is today preserved in the parish church of Montreuil-sur-Mer with a silver plaque bearing this Gothic inscription: *Hic facit recondi caput sancti Supplici: archiepi Bituricensis Duo Margorita Descofen abbissa huf. Ecole anno Dai millesimo quinquentesimo vicemimo sexio*. Marguerite d'Escouflan, twenty-ninth abbess of Sainte-Austreberte, had obtained this relic from Mathilde, Countess of Boulogne, who herself had received it from her son, Robert of Geneva, Bishop of Thérouanne and later Pope under the name Clement VII. The reliquary dates from the year 1426. The church of Villefranche-de-Conflent (Pyrénées-Orientales) claimed to possess the skull of Sa int Sulpice Clément VII Pope mentioned as having possessed a relic of the saint. ."

Mr. Badie, parish priest of Villefranche, whom we had asked if his church still possessed the precious relic of Saint Sulpice, gave us the following reply on August 23, 1871:

"It would be very sweet and pleasant for me to be able to answer your letter in a satisfactory manner. But, alas! I am without data and information on what is the subject of your requests. Here is only what I can tell you. The great relic that the church of Villefranche possessed until a few years ago was lost under my predecessor, or one does not know how, and all my searches have been useless so far. According to a copy of an inquiry that I possess in the church archives, it had been recognized as authentic by Mgr de Laporte, Bishop of Carcassonne and Perpignan. It was a considerable bone, and what makes me believe this is that the same copy of the inquiry, or rather of the bishop's ordinance that follows the inquiry, bears the permission given to the parish priest to detach a fragment of the great relic to place it, or better yet to embed it, in the head of the statue of Saint Sulpice, a fragment which still exists and which can be seen to be a bone.

"How did the great relic reach the church of Villefranche? I do not know. The parish church archives keep the deepest silence on this. What I can only tell you is that, until the Revolution, Villefranche enjoyed an importance that it does not have now. Thus, it now has only one priest, whereas it once had a collegiate church. Everything leads me to believe that the relic in question is that of Saint Sulpice the Pious."

We wished to report this letter in its entirety so that our readers might deduce with us the state of a pastor charged with the care of a church, who carried negligence to the point of letting a distinguished relic disappear without anyone knowing what became of it.

This life is taken from an almost contemporary author, reproduced by Surius and Bollandus, and from notes kindly communicated to us by Mr. Callian, Vicar General of Bourges.