Saint Andeolus

Although it is impossible to fix the date of his departure, it seems more certain that Andéol did not prolong his stay in Lyon for very long. He received the mission to carry the Gospel to Carpentras and to the southern regions fertilized by the Rhône (166).

God left Saint Polycarp on earth for more than eighty years to bear witness to the truths he had learned from the Apostles. This long life, entirely spent in the service of the Church and to the glory of God, was crowned by a glorious martyrdom in the sixth year of the empire of Marcus Aurelius, which is the one hundred and sixty-sixth after Jesus Christ.

This date is very important for us. First, it fixes, in a certain manner, the time of Saint Andéol's arrival in Gaul. Indeed, let one follow the martyrdom of the Bishop of Smyrna as closely as one wishes with the sending of the four missionaries, one cannot place this sending later than the year 166. By comparing this date with that of the death of Saint Andéol (208), by the difference, one obtains, in a precise manner, the minimum duration of his stay in Gaul, that is to say, forty-two years. If one limits to a few months, as is probable, the time he spent in Lyon, there will remain about forty years for the apostolic life of our Saint. This calculation has received the highest sanction in the Roman and Viennese liturgies, where it is read each year in the divine office on the day of the feast of Saint Andéol.

We have seen that Saint Andéol, upon leaving Lyon, headed toward Carpentras.

Indeed, in the canton of Carpentras, one finds places where the memory of his preaching has survived, despite all obstacles, in the grateful memory of the people. We wish to speak of the town of Mazan. In this commune, there is a district called Saint Andéol, where there existed, before the revolution of '89, a very ancient chapel dedicated to our Saint. It was built on a hill at the foot of which one could see remains of ancient monuments. An immemorial tradition in this country holds that Saint Andéol stopped there to evangelize it.

A little higher up, not far from Orange, at Camaret, one finds the same traditions and the same tributes. It is even asserted that the Apostle of Jesus Christ was scourged there, and the place where this cruel execution was accomplished is still shown. Saint Andéol possesses in this parish an ancient sanctuary built by Louis the Pious.

In the accomplishment of the work of the salvation of souls, the courageous subdeacon, like another Saint John the Baptist, fulfilled the role of precursor. Everywhere he went, he invited people to do penance and announced the coming of the kingdom of God. When those who had eyes to see and ears to hear had formed the desire to embrace the new life, he catechized them and conferred baptism upon them. Then, content to have accomplished his mission in that place, he would withdraw, yielding the place, no doubt, to the true Pastors of souls, to those whom Jesus Christ has invested with the more extended powers of the priesthood. Following all probabilities, he traveled in this manner a part of Provence, the Dauphiné, and the Franche-Comté, which were being evangelized at the same time by the disciples of Saint Irenaeus, Saint Ferréol and Saint Ferrution, apostles of Besançon; and Saint Felix, apostle of Valence.

The tradition seems quite explicit on this point: it reports that Saint Felix and his companions also evangelized the Vivarais Vivarais Mountainous region evangelized by the saint. ; on the other hand, the numerous parishes or chapels of the diocese of Valence that still preserve the name of Saint Andéol suggest that he had preceded the disciples of Saint Irenaeus in these regions: his path naturally led him toward these lands. But it is time to follow him into the Vivarais, the Helvia of Caesar, the current department of Ardèche.

Those who have studied the origins of Christianity know that the first missionaries of the faith had a well-known predilection for large population centers.

It seems natural to see Saint Andéol remain faithful to this discipline, and come, while undertaking the conversion of the Helvii, to establish his residence in Aps, their principal city.

However, he preferred to it a town, certainly less populous, but which was nonetheless considerable, Bergoiate, called today Bourg-Saint-Andéol. In this latter town, Bourg-Saint-Andéol Definitive seat of the Congregation from 1819. the most southerly of the Vivarais, he found himself closer to the lands he had traveled through first. God, moreover, whose Providence disposes all things for the good of souls and for the glory of the Saints, wished, by leading his servant into this city, to provide as a theater for his final labors and his supreme struggles a place more durable than Aps, which the Vandals destroyed entirely two centuries after the era of which we speak.

Before pushing our narrative further, it is necessary, for the understanding of the facts, to take exact knowledge of the city, the object of Saint Andéol's predilections.

The city consisted of two distinct agglomerations, separated by the river, but bearing the same name and governed by the same urban administration: Bergoiate on the right bank and Bergoiate on the left bank, which were designated by these words: Upper or Lower Bergoiate. Lower Bergoiate or Gentibe occupied the site of the current town of Bourg-Saint-Andéol.

Of these two agglomerations, Upper Bergoiate appears to us to have been the more considerable at the beginning: it was the center of activity, commerce, and industry, the city of the workers and the common people, a circumstance which explains to us the predilections of the Apostle, who had made it his residence and the seat of his preaching. The other, on the contrary, placed by its situation a little outside the tumult and movement of business, less populated, always calm and silent, was the preferred residence of the Gallo-Roman nobles whose sumptuous villas spread out on the front of the surrounding hills, and of the priests devoted to the service of the gods of paganism. The former retained until the middle of the Middle Ages the preponderance it enjoyed under the Roman emperors; the latter owed to the discovery of the tomb of our holy Martyr its sudden emergence from obscurity, and the conquest in a short time of the celebrity and preeminence that its gods had once been unable to ensure for it; from the twelfth century, the successive growth of this simple little town soon gave it the appearance and proportions of an important city, while the Bergoiate of the left bank, devastated by the ravages of wars and floods, moved with equal rapidity toward its decline and ruin. Abandoned each day by some of its inhabitants, who went to seek refuge in the town of Saint Andéol, it was no longer, at the end of the thirteenth century, anything but a completely deserted place: the daughter had devoured the mother.

It was therefore at Bergoiate-le-Haut that Andeol had stayed upon his arrival; it was there that he preached the gospel of Jesus with marvelous success. In the mea ntime, Emperor Se l'empereur Sévère Roman emperor under whose reign Clement was ordained a priest and persecuted. verus, who was crossing Gaul to go to Britain, where he was going to subdue the wild tribes of Caledonia, also came to Bergoiate, while heading toward Valence, and camped there with a portion of his troops. Now, at the moment of this prince's arrival, there was an extraordinary gathering of people in that place. The crowd pressed around a personage who was speaking in public: entirely under the spell of this unknown speech, it barely cast a distracted glance at the imposing spectacle of the Roman legions marching, ensigns displayed, under the orders of their emperor. Piqued in his curiosity and perhaps also in his pride, Severus asked the cause of the gathering. Terrible was the anger of the Caesar upon learning that the personage who was thus attracting the attention and sympathies of the people was none other than a leader of Christians, propagating in broad daylight the errors of his sect. He ordered that Andeol be seized immediately and brought before him. A tribunal was hastily set up; nearby were displayed all the ordinary instruments of torture, and in the midst of this funereal apparatus, Severus sat in person. It was he himself who, in a threatening tone, questioned Andeol about his name, his country, and the object of the mission he had set for himself. 'The Orient is my homeland,' the Apostle replied calmly, 'and I come from Smyrna, sent by the bishop of that city with several others who are my fathers and my masters, to announce the Savior Jesus Christ and to preach his doctrine to the peoples who do not know it: if you wish to know my name, Caesar, I am called Andeol.' 'You have therefore come,' the tyrant exclaimed, 'to dishonor our gods and trample underfoot the edicts of the emperors! Do you truly consider the severity of the punishments that await you, you and the wretched Helvians whom you seduce?' Taking then an air and a tone of affected sweetness, he exhorted the Apostle to renounce his chimerical ideas rather than expose his person to the rigor of torments: let him abandon an impious sect, let him consent to offer incense to the gods, and he would be able to live happily in the midst of a sweet rest, gratified with one of the most honorable functions of the palace, showered with distinctions and riches, which the munificence of the emperors would assure him. 'Lend then an ear to my advice,' he added, 'leave aside this religion that you profess, which was invented a short time ago by a certain Christ whom I do not know and who was crucified, it is said, while preaching it. Curse this Christ, and pay homage to the immortal gods.' 'I adore only one God,' Andeol replied, 'the unique and true God, who created heaven and earth. As for your stupid divinities, Caesar, I despise them; they are only deaf and mute idols, manufactured by the hand of men, which the demon persuades you to adore.'

Irritated by the holy boldness of this language, the Emperor Severus ordered that Andeol be delivered to torture. Then was renewed one of the customary scenes of the bloody tragedy that the pagan world had not ceased to witness since the birth of Christianity. When words of seduction, promises, and threats had failed before the firm and generous faith of the Christian, the polytheistic tyrant called his executioners to his aid: it was then necessary to exhaust upon children, delicate virgins, and weak old men all the resources of cruelty and all the science of torture, without being able to shake their constancy. Thus, at the signal given to begin the torment, Andeol was laid on the ground, bound by his feet and hands to ropes that were tightened and then loosened with violent jerks by means of bows and pulleys: and, in the midst of this frightful tension, which made all the nerves of the human body like the strings of a musical instrument, the holy Confessor was harshly beaten with rods armed with thorns and iron spikes; then his flesh was torn with nails reddened in the fire; then this bruised and bloody body was attached to a wheel raised above a brazier into which oil was poured in torrents to activate the heat of the flames!

From the top of this burning wheel, as if on a bed of rest, Andeol, tranquil, his face radiant and serene, lifted his eyes to heaven and prayed: "Be blessed, my God," he said, "I give you thanks, Lord Jesus, who grant me to suffer for your name. Do not abandon me in this supreme combat; grant, on the contrary, that by persevering in it with unshakable constancy, I may merit to present myself before your majesty with the palm of the victor." He was also heard making this beautiful and touching invocation: "O Saint Polycarp, my blessed master, you friend of Christ, who shine in heaven like a precious stone , pray for your s Ô saint Polycarpe Bishop of Smyrna and spiritual mentor to Irenaeus. ervant, so that he may be endowed with patience and courage, and that you may triumph with joy in your doctrine and my victory in the Lord." Indeed, the courage of the holy Martyr seemed to be reborn as his torments were multiplied. The executioners were weary, the fury of Severus, desperate, but not defeated: wishing to reserve Andeol for new tortures for the next day, he ordered that he be led to prison. Then Gericius, a tribune of one of the legions of the army, proposed to the emperor to lock the Christian in a vault of the temple dedicated to the god Mars, on the other bank of the Rhone: to bring thus, loaded with chains, the enemy of the gods into their sanctuary was a kind of reparation that would touch the heart of the immortals and make them propitious. The superstitious Caesar applauded this idea; the river also seemed to him an excellent barrier to interpose between the Apostle, whose influence he feared, and this people, guilty of too much sympathy for the Christian. Andeol was therefore locked in the underground vault of the temple of Mars.

Now, towards the middle of the night, the guards of Andeol suddenly saw rays of light shining through the doors of his prison: the whole interior of the underground was illuminated by it. Then voices of ravishing sweetness were heard; a mysterious colloquy was established between Andeol and invisible personages; they spoke of the combats of the holy Martyr and of the glory that awaited him: "Take courage, dear brother," said these voices, "tomorrow you will receive the crown of martyrdom. Travel to the end the bloody career, and Christ will receive you himself in triumph, decorated with the palm of martyrdom, in the glory of paradise." Andeol, for his part, expressed to his celestial visitors all the joy that flooded his soul; he thanked them for the balm they had spread over his sufferings, and prayed to them that the example of his patience in the supreme struggle might complete the conversion of the Gentiles to the faith. — A concert of delicious harmony succeeded these speeches: the voices seemed to rise into the air, to weaken gradually, and to be lost in the distance. Silence and darkness returned to the prison; the celestial vision had disappeared.

When they came, by the order of Severus, to take the Apostle from the prison, all the wounds that, the day before, covered his body were scarred and entirely healed: Andeol seemed to have recovered the strength and energy of his youth. The fierce emperor, having learned from one of the guards the details of the nocturnal vision, swore, by the god Mars and by his victories, that he would know how to prevent the magician from seducing the peoples any longer and from ruining the power of his gods. He hastened to pronounce the death sentence, and ordered that it be executed in his presence. At that instant, a soldier armed himself with one of those swords of very hard wood, which the gladiators used for fencing, and, while Andeol addressed a last prayer to heaven in a final look, the executioner of Severus split his head in the shape of a cross.

Thus was his martyrdom consummated, on May 1st of the year 208, according to the most common opinion, by the blessed Andéol, first apostle of the Helvii. Severus, whose fanatical hatred still found ways to exercise itself even upon the inanimate limbs of the holy Martyr, had the body bound with an iron chain to which an enormous stone was suspended, and had this heavy burden thrown into the Rhône, so that, buried beneath the waves, the venerated remains of Andéol might escape the honors that the piety of the faithful reserved for them. But Providence, which watches over the bones of its Saints, pushed the precious remains toward the western bank of the river. It is said that the Apostle, before leaving his prison, had prayed to the Lord to allow him to rest, after his death, in this place where the glory of God and His Angels had visited him. And God, to grant this last wish of His servant, seemed to have taken pleasure in multiplying wonders. Thus the heavy chain wrapped around the mutilated body of the Martyr, which was supposed by its weight to drag him to the bottom of the river, broke of its own accord, like one of those fragile bonds that a child's hand breaks in play, and disappeared alone beneath the waters. The holy body, on the contrary, supported and guided by an invisible arm, made its way through the rapid waves, cutting across the river's current in a straight line: upon reaching the edge, it was lifted by a wave and carried gently to a distance of about two toises onto the shore. For five days, it had been there exposed to the insults of the air, without showing the slightest trace of corruption, protected by a mysterious virtue that commanded respect from beasts and birds of prey. Each night, it was asserted, songs and sounds, sweet and harmonious like those of a celestial melody, had been heard, and a light had been seen shining that surrounded the holy body with a brilliant halo. The account of these wonders, carried far and wide from mouth to mouth, rea ched t Tullie Christian noblewoman who secretly buried the martyr's body. he ears of a rich lady of noble condition, named Tullie. She was traveling, that very day, to one of her villas located in the vicinity of Bergolate. Following the Roman road, she encountered, near the place where the body of Saint Andéol lay, a large group of pagans whom the novelty of the spectacle had attracted there. Having her chariot stopped, she questioned some of those present and gathered from their mouths all the details that we have just recounted: details very consoling to her faith and her piety, for she was a Christian. She immediately resolved to give an honorable burial to the venerated remains of the holy Martyr. But, not daring to entrust the execution of her pious design to anyone, she came herself, accompanied by her most faithful and trusted slaves, and, taking advantage of the silence and darkness of the night, she removed the body secretly, and placed it in a pagan sarcophagus which she had buried in the same place, at a great depth, in order to hide the precious remains from the sacrilegious fury of the persecutors. Saint Andéol is represented standing, in the costume of a subdeacon, holding in his hand a palm and a book, the catechism no doubt. A wooden knife is driven horizontally into the top of the head of the holy martyr.

[APPENDIX: CULT AND RELICS OF SAINT ANDEOL.]

The relics of the blessed Andeol thus remained hidden for six hundred years, until the day of their first invention, which took place in 858 under the reign of Charles the Bald and the episcopate of Bernoin, Bishop of Viviers.

While leaving the sarcophagus in the same place and at the same depth where she had placed it, Tullia had a small crypt built over it which has kept her name. This precious monument still exists, under the church of Saint-Polycarpe, just as it was rebuilt in the 9th century. It has always been known by the name of the crypt of the blessed Tull crypte de la bienheureuse Tullie Christian noblewoman who secretly buried the martyr's body. ia. The people called it the grotto or crypt of the Roman saint. The name of Sainte Roumelle, which is found in some documents, is obviously a corruption of Sainte Roumaine or Sainte Romaine.

It was in this modest sanctuary that the first Christians of Bergolate came to kneel, near the venerated tomb of their Apostle.

However venerable the crypt of the blessed Tullia might have been, newly brought to light with the holy deposit it had so faithfully preserved, it was a place too narrow and too poor to leave the tomb of Saint Andeol there any longer. The church of Saint-Polycarpe itself was henceforth insufficient. An edifice was needed that was at once more vast and more magnificent, worthy of the glory of the holy Martyr and the influx of the faithful. According to notices made in the 18th and 19th centuries, Charles the Bald contributed through his generosity to the erection of this edifice. It is from the construction of this church that Bergolate took the name of Bourg-Saint-Andéol. Despite the restorations of the 12th century and some mutilations of a later date, the work of Bernoin has reached us. Although it remained empty since the translation of the relics of Saint Andeol, the crypt of the blessed Tullia was preserved with the greatest care and surrounded by deep respect. Until the end of the last century, people came there to pray and offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass as in a very holy place. Abbé Paradis, a former student of the École des Chartes, bought the church of Saint-Polycarpe and the crypt to restore them to worship.

When the victory and the edict of the great Constantine had ensured the peace of the Church and allowed the Christian cult to take its place in the sun, the faithful hastened to perpetuate by monuments the memory of the scenes we have just described. On the ruins of the temple of Mars, above the underground crypt that had served as a prison for Andeol, they built a church dedicated to the holy Savior and another above the tomb of Saint Andeol, placed under the invocation of Saint Polycarpe; this Christian antiquity, which possessed to the highest degree the sentiment of religious things, thus consecrated, by associating them one with the other, the glory of the disciple through the venerated memory of the master. On the very site of the martyrdom, they did nothing but set up a section of an ancient column, and this monument, so simple, surrounded for all ornament by rustic vegetation, has crossed the centuries, known until these last times by the name of Saint Pilon. Each year, on the day of the feast of Saint Andeol, one saw entire populations flocking who came to revive their faith in contact with this earth watered by the blood of the first apostle of the region. The upper part of the Pilon was covered, in the spring, with a reddish effervescence, which the people, in their simple and naive faith, took for the very stains of the blood of Saint Andeol, which reappeared at each anniversary of his martyrdom. This precious monument had disappeared following the great Revolution. It was believed destroyed. It had, in fact, been sawn into several pieces, and its debris had entered as vile materials into the construction of the buildings of a farm. But we have had the good fortune to find one of the most considerable fragments.

The name under which this monument was designated, the veneration of which it was the object, lead one to think that the choice was not left to the arbitrary or to chance; but that this Pilon was a horse or a mooring post, which the executioners encountered on the site of the torture, and which they took advantage of for the bloody execution. Popular belief holds that it was so.

At the beginning of the 13th century, the church of Saint-Andéol found itself, due to feudal wars, reduced to a state of extreme distress. To restore it, Léger, Bishop of Viviers, ceded it to the canons of Saint-Ruf, who served it until 1774, the time of their suppression. Léger did not content himself with repairing the spiritual ruins of the sanctuary: the church of Saint-Andéol was threatening to collapse, he had it repaired and embellished while scrupulously respecting the plan of Bernoin: then he obtained that Pope Callixt le pape Calixte II Archbishop of Vienne who became pope, present at the Pleas of God in 1116. us II come in person to consecrate it (February 27, 1119). The memory of this consecration was celebrated by a special feast until the Revolution.

In 1562, the all-too-fam ous Baron des Ad baron des Adrets Warlord whose siege of Apt caused the spoliation of the reliquary. rets, after having sown murder and fire in the Dauphiné, came to attack Bourg-Saint-Andéol, which could not hold out against forces far superior in number. Scarcely had the Protestant bands entered when they ran to the churches. The doors of the church of Saint-Andéol were smashed, the altars overturned, and the tomb of the holy Martyr opened: everything was horribly ransacked and profaned. The fierce baron delivered the city to pillage. The councils were forced to hand over the church silverware. The reliquary of Saint Andéol, the other reliquaries, and the sacred vessels were melted down and used to pay the wages of the fanatics. Upon withdrawing, the Baron des Adrets left a garrison under the orders of the Lord of Saint-Bénézé.

In these times of devastation and relentlessness against the relics of the Saints, what became of those of Saint Andéol? They were fortunately saved from the fury of the Protestants. When the silver reliquary was entrusted to the care of the councils, the head of the le chef du Martyr Principal relic that survived the Wars of Religion. Martyr had been removed beforehand and placed in a small wooden box, with a few other fragments. After the troubles subsided, the head of Saint Andéol was removed from the wooden box to be placed in a new reliquary of a magnificence in keeping with its destination. It was made of silver, like the old one, and similarly surmounted by a silver bust, in the likeness of the glorious Martyr. Protestantism passed through the city of Bourg like a devastating torrent; it could not take root there. Thanks to its trust in Saint Andéol, this city became, on the contrary, until the end of the religious troubles, the bulwark of Catholicism in Vivarais.

The coat of arms of the city of Bourg-Saint-Andéol provides us with the perfect symbol of this trust of its inhabitants toward their holy Patron. It is gules with three silver bumblebees, with a chief sewn of azure charged with a silver falchion vairé of gold. In the knife, one easily recognizes the traditional sign of the manner of death that ended the martyrdom of Saint Andéol. The bumblebees represent the influx of pilgrims to his tomb and the devotion toward him. There are three of them, perhaps because of the three quarters of the city, which formed as many parishes. The motto completes the clarification of this symbolism: "His fulta manebit unitas, Supported by these things, unity will remain for us," that is to say, as long as devotion toward our illustrious and holy Patron flourishes within our walls, we are assured that he will extend his protection over us and that he will not allow error to break the unity of the faith among us. This remarkable character of the protection of Saint Andéol over the city that is particularly consecrated to him has been recognized and accepted by the most competent authority. It is, in fact, recorded in the legend of the office of the holy Martyr. It attributes to his powerful patronage the privilege that the city of Bourg-Saint-Andéol possesses, alone among the surrounding cities, of having remained always virgin in its faith.

The few old people who saw the end of the 18th century and who still survive remember the unequivocal marks of veneration with which they then surrounded not only the sacred bones of the holy Martyr, but all the monuments illustrated and sanctified by his memory. They recount that on the day of the feast of Saint Andéol, one saw entire populations come to pay homage to the Saint who had evangelized their fathers. People flocked not only from the surrounding places, but from Grenoble, Carpentras, Vaison, Orange, and from the depths of Provence. One of these old men affirmed to Abbé Mirabel, author of a life of Saint Andéol, that Spain itself had sent depositions, and that several had come from Catalonia. This state of things persisted until the dire days of the great Revolution.

Like so many other cults that the centuries had surrounded with their respect, that of Saint Andéol sank, for a time, into the immense cataclysm that came to descend upon France after 1789. In 1791, the parish priest and the vicars of Saint-Andéol having taken the oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the religious service suffered greatly. The offices were deserted by the most educated and fervent parishioners. From February 1, 1794, the doors of Saint-Andéol were closed. Fifty citizens had the courage to ask the municipality for the faculty to reopen this church and to maintain ministers of worship there at their own expense; but their complaints were not heeded. The venerated sanctuary opened only before the government commissioners. In the name of popular sovereignty, the latter came to remove the silverware and deliver the monument to devastation. The high altar, remarkable for its beauty, was destroyed. The tomb of Saint Andéol was profaned and thrown into the street. The statues of the Saints, the banners, and the wooden reliquaries were broken into pieces and thrown into the flames of a bonfire lit in the public square. Justice must be done to the unfortunate priest who had given the example of defection to his parishioners: in these circumstances, he made every effort to save the bones of Saint Andéol from destruction. He asked that they be deposited in the archives of the commune, with the annexed documents, to be kept there as antiquities. It is also said that he had tried to hide them. But all his efforts were useless; the holy body was thrown into the flames before his eyes. The revolutionaries of Paris, convinced that the people need a cult, had given them that of the goddess Reason. The new divinity was established in the sanctuary of Saint-Andéol, on the frontispiece of which was placed this inscription: *Temple of Reason*. In 1806, work began to repair the parish church, dedicated to Saint Andéol, which was threatening to collapse. The interior and exterior restoration of the building was soon complete. But this sanctuary, whose youth had just been renewed, was missing something; it was missing at least some portion of the venerable remains of its illustrious Patron. For a long time, people liked to believe that a part of the holy body, hidden by pious hands in 1793, had escaped the flames. In this hope, numerous searches had been made, but uselessly, the sacrilegious vandalism of the revolutionaries having spared nothing. However, God did not wish to remain deaf to desires so consistent with his designs. Indeed, no sooner were the restoration works completed than relics arrived from two sides at once. The first were taken from two wooden reliquaries kept at the hospice of Bourg-Saint-Andéol and provided with the letters and the seal of Mgr de Savines, Bishop of Viviers. One of these reliquaries, sent to Rome through the care of the Archpriest of Bourg-Saint-Andéol, was presented for the examination of the Congregation of Sacred Relics, which, finding it provided with all the desirable marks of authenticity, permitted, by letters signed by the Cardinal-Vicar, its public exposure to the veneration of the faithful. The other reliquary, in every way similar to the previous one, was recognized and declared authentic by Mgr Delcasy, Bishop of Viviers. A portion of these relics was placed in the new altar of Saint Andéol; another, in a separate reliquary, to be more easily presented to the veneration of the faithful. More considerable relics were kept in Valence, in the former priory of Saint-Félix, which long belonged to the Order of Saint-Ruf, and where there are currently sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul. They were enclosed in a small chest, which was found in 1850 in the high altar of the priory chapel while some repairs were being made. Thanks to the initiative of M. Paradis, the church of Bourg-Saint-Andéol has just recovered this distinguished relic in its entirety. To complete his good work, the donor enclosed these venerable remains in a beautiful reliquary. The translation of these fragments of the head of the illustrious Martyr took place on Sunday, May 3, 1868.

Cf. Histoire de l'Église de Viviers, by Abbé Roushier, and Vie de saint Andéol, by Abbé Mirabel.