Saint Vaise of Saintes

One day, at the foot of the altars he frequented often, the pious young man heard this voice from above: "Do not love the world or the things of the world, because he who makes them the object of his direction does not possess divine charity."

From then on, following step by step the austere laws of the Gospel, he distributed the greater part of his goods to the poor, and supported slaves and captives. Some of his relatives, who already considered themselves his heirs, made representations to him in this regard, to which the Saint replied as he ought to have done.

"I do not contest," he said to them, "your right to dispose as you wish of what belongs to you; why should I not use a similar freedom myself, especially towards the King of Heaven?"

This response exasperated the greedy relatives of Saint Vaise. One of them, named Proculus, having called his son Namantius, represented to him that, through his foolish liberality, Vaise was depriving him of an inheritance to which he had rights. Then, under the inspiration of the most disordered greed, the young man armed himself with a stick and brutally drove the hero of Christian charity from the country house he inhabited. In this painful extremity, the latter had recourse to Alaric, who gave the order to restore the Saint to his patrimony.

"I swear by my God," said the barbarian, "that if Proculus does not return all your property to you, I will in my anger take terrible vengeance for the outrages committed against you."

This prince, although ranked among the conquerors whom history calls the scourges of God, nevertheless had notions of justice and law. He issued several decrees which he classified in a collection partly extracted, it is true, from the Theodosian laws, and which Code Alaric King of the Goths who conquered Touraine. bears the name of the Alaric Code.

Vaise, having returned to Saintes, communicated the king's orders to Proculus. "It remains proven," said the latter, "that you are striving to draw Alaric's wrath upon my head; I shall know well how to prevent him from acting thus in the future." He then ordered his subordinates to load the servant of God with chains, to suspend him from a post, and to overwhelm him with mistreatment. Flaming torches were applied to his sides; but the man of God endured these persecutions with great patience and holy resignation.

"What are we to think," Proculus said to his son, "of a man upon whom torments make such a weak impression?"

"I believe," replied the hypocrite Namantius Namantius Relative and murderer of Saint Vaise. , "that it is fitting to forgive him his wrongs and to restore all his goods to him."

They feigned setting him free and agreed to come together the next day as if to restore him to the enjoyment of his patrimony; but in reality, to put him to death. When, the next day, Saint Vaise saw them coming, he immediately penetrated their dark designs. Kneeling down, he raised his eyes to heaven and said to Namantius:

"Come, procure for me the inheritance that I must possess forever in the heavenly kingdom."

At these words, the unworthy persecutor drew his sword, with which he severed the Saint's head; it was the 15th of May, around the year 490. He then commanded his henchmen to carry the body of the young martyr to a secluded place and thus hide it from the sight of men. But by divine permission, it came to pass that after having laboriously carried the holy body from the ninth hour of the day until the next morning, Proculus's men found themselves back at the very place where they had taken the martyr's body.

Namantius, informed of the prodigy, decided to have the remains of Saint Vaise thrown into the flames, insulting his memory with an impious invocation. In the excess of his foolish joy and amidst his indecent laughter, the wretched murderer was struck by a poignant pain in his bowels, and expired amidst atrocious tortures, spreading an execrable stench on all sides.

A pious Christian of the region, named Francis, wrapped the martyr's bones in a shroud and placed them in a tomb that he had built on the banks of the Charente, and not far from the Roman road from Saintes to Nantes. The numerous miracles that occurred from then on at this tomb decided Saint Pallais, Bish op of Saintes saint Pallais Bishop of Saintes in the 6th century, of Auvergnat nobility. , to build in 589 a chapel and a monastery in the very place where the martyr's relics rested and about two leagues from the city of Saintes. Attracted by the holiness of the place, several Christians hastened to come and lodge in the shadow of the monastery and thus laid, towards the end of the 6th century, the foundations of the village of Saint-Va ise, which Saint-Vaise Town founded around the saint's monastery. can still be seen today between Saintes and Taillebourg, on the right bank of the Charente.

The monastery, raised by Saint Pallais, became, in the 11th century, a priory of canons which was subsequently a nnexed to the ab abbaye de Celles Abbey to which the priory of Saint-Vaise was annexed. bey of Celles, in Poitou. The prior-curate was the temporal lord of the parish. The Huguenots ruined everything towards the end of the 17th century. Nothing remained but the apse of the chapel, isolated in the middle of the fields. It could have been at most thirty paces in length. In the 18th century, the priory buildings were rebuilt, and the chapel was suitably restored. It was put into the state in which one sees it today by one of those Vandals whose names should be stigmatized.

After tearing away the ivy and uprooting the trees that completed the picture offered by this venerable ruin, he set a sacrilegious foot upon the roughest blocks and the best-preserved sculptures, and this to make mortar, as if this stony ground were not already superabundantly provided with it. The current owners of the chapel, after having long preserved this sanctuary, if not for worship, at least for the veneration of the faithful, made it, in 1872, the tomb of their family. One notices a tree there, the only one that grows in this place. It is said to have been planted by the last prior, in 1789, to mark the spot where it is presumed that the remains of Saint Vaise still rest.

Others claim that his relics were profaned and thrown into the river by the Protestants. The question has never been clarified, and this mystery is not one of the least attractions that this sacred place offers.

In addition to the parish of Saint-Vaise, that of Granzay, which was also in the diocese of Saintes, was likewise placed under the same patronage.

A church had also been erected in honor of our holy Martyr on a hill to the southwest of Notre-Dame de Niort, in a place where a colony of Normans settled, who were baptized by a bishop of Saintes. This church was un der the jurisdiction of the A abbaye de Saint-Jean d'Angély Benedictine abbey associated with the saint's cult. bbey of Saint-Jean d'Angély.

We see, through a charter preserved by Dom Fonteneau, that this church, with its dependencies, was enclosed within the walls of the citadel built in 940. It was ceded in 1596 to the Abbey of Charroux. The Counts of Poitou, Dukes of Aquitaine, and, after them, our Kings of France, as seen in titles from 1350, signaled their piety toward Saint Vaise through the endowment of masses. After the ruin of this church, the divine service and the endowments were transferred to that of Saint-Gandens and, lastly, to Notre-Dame de Niort, where masses were still celebrated in 1789.

The memory of Saint Vaise was also honored at the Charterhouse of Utrecht and at the abbey of the canons regular of Bodek, in the diocese of Paderborn. How did the devotion to our holy Martyr reach these distant lands? The origin of this fact, if it were known, would perhaps take us back to the time when Louis the Pious w as required to resi Louis le Débonnaire King of the Franks who made Aldric his advisor and commander of the palace. de periodically, every four years, in the castle of Saint-Jean d'Angély, in Saintonge, not far from Saint-Vaise.

The feast of this Martyr is celebrated today, in the united dioceses of La Rochelle and Saintes, on the 16th of April; it was the same in the past in the monastery of Saint-Jean-d'Angély.

Excerpt from the Biographie saintongeaise, by M. P. D. Rainguet, and from local notes that we owe to the kindness of M. Jubbé P. Th. Graslier, chaplain of the Carmel of Saintes.