Saint Rheticius of Autun

Constantius Chlorus, having restored Autun, had caused the study of eloquence to flourish there once more, charging the famous Eumenius to give lessons to the youth, and had encouraged the principal nobility of Gaul to settle in this city. Rhétice Bishop of Autun and predecessor of Cassian. Rheticius was descended from one of these illustrious families.

The young patrician, destined by Providence to be a great bishop, was raised with care from the tenderest age by pious parents, even more distinguished by their faith than by their nobility, in Christian doctrine and in all the evangelical virtues. He received at the same time a liberal education, consistent with his birth and rank; and his natural talents, cultivated by work and protected by the innocence of his heart, soon attracted all eyes. But the noble and brilliant student never separated the study of the Holy Scriptures from the study of profane letters, and his progress in piety surpassed even his progress in the sciences. Equally remarkable for the qualities of the heart and those of the mind, which were harmoniously united in him to form a perfect whole, embellished and supernaturalized by faith, he was the joy of his parents, the edification of the faithful, and the admiration of all.

However, the time came when his family, of whom he was the hope, wished to settle him. A young man so accomplished and distinguished by his personal merit as much as by his social position could not fail to have to choose between many attractive and advantageous matches according to the world; but he took great care not to let himself be dazzled by vain splendor. Calling upon divine assistance through prayer, so necessary in such a circumstance; seeking virtue above all, he deserved to find a companion truly worthy of him, and he found her. His choice, directed by Providence, fell upon a young person disposed to be less a wife than a sister capable of understanding him, of associating herself with his piety, of sharing his tastes, of living his life. Thus a pure and celestial love presided over their nuptials: it was like the marriage of two angels, for their hearts united to love God more and to support one another, leaning on each other during the journey of this life. The two young spouses spent long vigils in prayer together; together they planned, together they accomplished works of charity, visiting the sick, consoling the afflicted, and pouring abundant alms into the bosom of the poor. The pious couple thus spent several full and happy years doing good in a modest calm, blessed by God and men. But the position and virtues of a simple private individual were not at the height of the soul of Rheticus. Providence, which destined him for greater things and wished to give him, for the good of the Church, a theater worthy of his merit, seems to want to begin by clearing the way. The sweetnesses of domestic life are suddenly snatched from him. Ties as close, as sweet as they are sacred, are broken unexpectedly; and the same blow that breaks them, while striking him in the heart, prepares his entry into the new career toward which the divine will pushes him. His wife, the confidante of his thoughts, the associate of his virtues, the sweet companion of his life, the pious sister of his soul, is taken from him. As he was leaning at the final hour over the bed of his cherished sick one, weeping and keeping a sad but resigned gaze fixed now on her, now on the image of Jesus on the cross, he heard her say to him in a dying voice full of tears: "Good and beloved brother, I am going to die. We are therefore going to part for a moment; but when you have also finished your course, take care that we are then reunited in the sepulcher, as we have been on earth, as we will be in heaven. A chaste love had brought us together; let not death separate us. We have lived in the same bed, like two lilies on the same stem; let us rest together again in our final dwelling. I beg you, promise to come and join me there." These were almost her last words, and Rheticus was happy to make a promise that his heart already inspired in him. Soon after, the wife who had been an angel in a mortal body went to reunite with the angels, awaiting in the sleep of the tomb the material part, and in the abode of glory, the soul of him who had been her husband and whom, even more justly, she called her brother.

The pious Christian had barely dried his tears when the universal esteem and veneration, which had long been directed toward him, came to tear him away from his grief and his solitary widowhood to place him at the head of the Church of Autun. His eminent merit had betrayed him, unbeknownst to him, in his private life. Obliged to yield and to ascend higher; recognizing the voice of God in the unanimous and spontaneous acclamation of the faithful people, he generously renounced the calm and tranquil days he might have spent, in order to take upon himself the labors of the episcopate. He sacrificed his rest, sacrificed himself, and gave himself entirely; and soon one saw what a bishop can do when piety and zeal are joined in him by that high influence which birth, talents, and a long-recognized and proclaimed virtue provide. Indeed, after the loss of his virtuous wife, was there any other who was worthy of him, save the Church herself? The choice could not have been better: the elevation of Rheticius to the episcopate even appeared entirely providential in the circumstances in which the Church then found itself. Constantine had just succeeded Constantius Chlorus. This prince, it is true, followed in his father's footsteps and showed even greater benevolence toward the Aeduan city and the Christians. But idolatry still counted zealous defenders in Autun, among whom Eumenius was especially distinguished. The rhetorician let no occasion of splendor pass without displaying, in pompous speeches, amidst his official declamations and his flat flatteries for the Caesars, all the luxury of his mythological erudition. It was therefore necessary that the Christians be able to oppose him with a man of high value; esteemed and considered by everyone, distinguished by his social position, his merit, and his oratorical talents, who could counterbalance the influence of the director of the Maenian schools among his fellow citizen s and the prince. Rheticius wa directeur des écoles Méniennes Pagan rhetorician from Autun, director of the Maenian schools. s that man.

Called by the vows of the Aedui transmitted to him by Eumenius, Constantine came to Autun in 311. He received a deputation of the principal citizens with tenderness and kindly accepted their homage. Deeply moved by the account of their hardships, he shed tears and hastened to console them by granting them great favors, remitting arrears in taxes, reducing levies, and granting new aid for the restoration of public buildings and the embellishment of the city, thus continuing the work already begun by his father. Thus, Augustodunum, a vast Gallo-Roman construction begun probably under Augustus, continued under Vespasian, and restored under Alexander Severus, was almost entirely re-established under Constantius Chlorus and Constantine. But this prince, although he had been met with the images of the gods, did not appear at the temples and concerned himself very little with raising them from their ruins.

Constantine, after leaving Autun, had gone to Trier. There, having placed himself at the head of his army, he returned with it to Chalon where he had it refreshed and took the road to Italy. The emperor was therefore following the imperial road, heading toward the Alps to go and deliver Rome and the world from the infamous and cruel Maxentius, when suddenly, after having addressed a fervent prayer to the God who was still for him the unknown God, a luminous cross appeared in the sky, a little below the sun, with these words in characters of fire: By this sign you shall conquer. It is done: soon the prince declares himself a Christian. He even wants the cross and the monogram of Christ to henceforth adorn his helmet and his crown, to shine on the shields of his soldiers, and to serve as a standard for his army. Thus was inaugurated the fourth century, this great era that rose over the world with the most beautiful generation of geniuses that the earth had yet seen.

After three centuries of battles and victories, Christianity thus finally had its day of solemn triumph. It sat with Constantine on that same throne of the Caesars from which so many bloody edicts had departed; and Rheticus, for the good of the Catholic Church, for the eternal honor of the Aeduan Church, was involved in this great work, in this prodigy of providential transformation: Hæc mutatio dexteræ Excelsi. After having undoubtedly prepared, at Autun, the prince's mind for his conversion, he was also chosen to instruct him in the truths of the fait h, and deserved to be called the premier catéchiste de Constantin Bishop of Autun and predecessor of Cassian. first catechist of Constantine, protocatechista Constantini. Miraculously converted by the apparition of the cross, not far, in all probability, from our country, and immediately surrounding himself with the lights of the episcopate, Constantine certainly wanted to have by his side the one who then figured in the first rank among the pontiffs of the Gauls, the prelate so learned, so distinguished, whose superior merit he had been able to appreciate during his stay in Autun. Such a prince had to be initiated by such a master into the knowledge of our dogmas and our holy mysteries. These two men seemed made for each other: they knew how to understand one another as soon as they met; and from then on the great bishop of Autun always enjoyed the highest consideration with the great emperor. Eumenius no longer appears: he fades and pales like his rhetoric. It is now the eloquent voice of Rheticus that dominates. It makes itself heard in the councils, and all the words it pronounces are gathered with respectful care. The eminent prelate used the credit he had with the prince to exercise the most salutary influence over him. The law by which Constantine forbade the branding of criminals on the forehead, for fear of defiling the image of God, having been issued at Chalon around this time, one must think that the bishop of Autun was not a stranger to the publication of this wise edict, inspired by Christianity and already announcing a whole revolution. The emperor showed his esteem for Rheticus by a special mention he made of him, according to Eusebius, in one of his letters by which, shortly after his conversion, that is to say on October 2, 313, he hastened to call him to the Council of Rome. The illustrious prelate, preceded in this city by his reputation for science and virtue, received the signal honor of pape saint Melchiade Pope who presided over the Council of Rome in 313. being placed alongside Pope Saint Melchiades, in this august assembly gathered to judge the cause of the Donatists.

It is known that during the last persecution, Christians, especially in Africa, were forced to surrender the Holy Scriptures; now, many yielding to fear or the violence of torments had the criminal cowardice to submit to the demand of the persecutors. Caecilian, bishop of Carthage, was accused of having been ordained by traditor bishops. This is what those who had surrendered the Holy Scriptures were called. Discontented, proud, and meddlesome spirits, at the head of whom was Donatus, put forward this pretext, as false as it was frivolous, exploited it with all the relentlessness inspired by hateful jealousy joined to a guilty ambition, and managed to form a powerful party against Caecilian. They separated from his communion, placed Majorinus in his stead on the see of Carthage, and thus threw the whole Church of Africa into turmoil. The schismatics, having refused to yield to the peaceful exhortations made to them on behalf of the emperor by Anulinus, proconsul of the province, wished to address Constantine himself and wrote him a letter conceived in these terms: "Most powerful prince, you who are of a just race, you whose father took no part in the persecution, we pray you, since Gaul is a stranger to our affairs, to give us Gallic bishops as judges..." The emperor, in the hope of ending the schism, thought he should yield to their request. He wrote about it to Pope Saint Miltiades; and it was then that, in concert with him, he convened this council of Rome, where he did not fail to call by name and in the first rank Rheticius of Autun, then Maternus of Cologne and Marinus of Arles, the three holiest and most learned prelates of the Gauls, to whom were added fifteen bishops from Italy and twenty from Africa, ten from each party. (Regarding the appearance of the Labarum to Constantine at the gates of Rome, this question remains a historical problem that has never been perfectly resolved. But what seems certain is the high esteem of Constantine for Saint Rheticius, the happy influence that this illustrious bishop exercised over this prince, and the part he had in his conversion and instruction. (Annal. de philosoph. christ., vol. xx; Mgr Devouroux, Hist. inéd. de l'église d'Autun.) — Other authors place the appearance of the Labarum at Arles.)

The august assembly met in the palace of the Empress Fausta, called the house of the Lateran, examined in three sessions the cause submitted to it, and pronounced against the Donatists a sentence dictated by admirable wisdom. The latter, then showing all that depth of pride and bad faith found in all sectarians, refused to submit to the decision of the council, even slandered their judges, and demanded new ones, although they had been given those they had requested. Constantine, desirous of pacifying the Church of Africa and pushing condescension further than the obstinate and perfidious schismatics deserved, assembled for the same cause, the following year 314, a council at Arles. The new assembly was composed of thirty-three bishops, thirteen of whom were from the G concile à Arles Second council against the Donatist schism. auls. The eloquent bishop of Autun was among the number. He went there accompanied by the priest Amandus and the deacon Philomathius. Invited among the first to bring there, as at Rome the previous year, the weight of his wisdom, his science, and his universally recognized authority, he displayed again in this important and solemn circumstance, says one of our historians, a profound doctrine, united with the force of eloquence, leaving great admiration for his merit in the minds of all the assistants. The assembled bishops maintained and confirmed the judgment previously rendered against the Donatists and furthermore made twenty-two disciplinary canons.

Rheticus, the most illustrious of the pontiffs assembled at Arles, says a historian, governed the Church of Autun with the reputation and authority that his birth, his talents, and his virtue had acquired for him. Great by the importance of his see—for Autun was under Constantine one of the first, if not the first city of the Gauls;—great by the esteem of the Pope and the emperor; great in the synods of bishops of which he was the light; great by his eloquence, his merit, and his almost universal celebrity like the Church, he seems to grow even more in our eyes through the praises lavished upon him by two of the most illustrious doctors of his century, Saint Augustine and Saint Jerome. The former calls him a man of God.

The glorious and holy prelate, who was the light no less than the admiration of his century, was also that of posterity through the eloquent writings he published and left behind him, nam ely, accordi saint Jérôme Father of the Church and biographical source for Amand. ng to Saint Jerome, a considerable treatise against the Novatians and commentaries on the Song of Songs. Of the first work, there remains to us only a passage relating to original sin and baptism, a precious fragment that makes one keenly regret the loss of such a treasure. Saint Augustine cites it twice with admiration, with confidence, and as a preponderant authority.

As for the commentaries of Saint Rheticus on the sublime epithalamium called the Song of Songs, they are likewise lost. All that has been preserved of them is reduced to a single passage relating to the Eucharist, mentioned by Sirmond and subsequently by Dom Ceillier and Dom Rivet. The works of Saint Rheticus still existed in the 11th century, and it is quite possible that they bear today the name of another author.

Rheticus, who through his remarkable writings and his even more remarkable life, had displayed such zeal for the spread of the Gospel and the conversion of his people, for the instruction of the first Christian emperor and the interests of the universal Church, for the defense of the truth and the holy hierarchy, for the maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline and for the explanation of the divine Scriptures with which he nourished his soul and subsequently his flock, showed no less zeal for worship and the sacraments, those mysterious channels through which faith, piety, and grace are spread into hearts. He was not content with having spoken admirably about baptism; he wished to make this great act of Christian initiation and divine adoption even more venerable in the eyes of the faithful by having water brought from the Jordan to be mixed with that of the baptistery of his church, which stood in the midst of the tombs of the Via strat Via strata Initial burial place of Rheticius in Autun. a. It was a holy and useful thought. For what lively faith the sight and contact of this water, taken from the river where the Savior himself had wished to be baptized to set an example for men, must have inspired in the catechumens! How striking the exhortations addressed to them by the holy bishop at the moment of their immersion in the doubly sacred baptismal font must have been! Did these new-borns in Jesus Christ not believe themselves to be on that very bank that the God-Man had sanctified by his presence? To see, they too, the heavens open, the Holy Spirit descend upon them as it once descended upon Our Lord, and to hear these words: "These are my beloved children"? This same water, taken from the bed of the Jordan by order of Rheticus for the baptistery of Autun, did not only produce the invisible miracle of justification; it also served to perform striking miracles. It was seen later in the hands of Saint Amator, bishop of Auxerre, healing three lepers.

Finally, after having rendered the greatest services to the Church of Autun, which he illustrated and already raised very high, to the Church of the Gauls, and to the Catholic Church, which he enlightened by his doctrine and edified by the eminent holiness of his life; after having shown himself the tireless promoter of piety, the avenger of the faith, and the hammer of heresies; after having shone like a star in the Christian world, practiced all virtues with a perfection equal to the height of his episcopal dignity, and traversed a long career of holiness and good works, full of days and merits, he rendered his soul to God, around the year 334, and went to receive from the Prince of Pastors the eternal reward, leaving on earth a blessed memory, a name surrounded by public veneration, boundless celebrity, and universally recognized authority.

At the time of the funeral, Heaven itself took charge of canonizing through a miracle the great bishop and she who had once been the companion of his life and the associate of his virtues. The body had been washed and adorned by pious hands, and it had just been placed on the funeral bier. When everything was ready, the bearers set about transporting it to the holy place intended for the celebration of the funeral and the burial. But all their efforts were useless: it was impossible to impart the slightest movement to it. All those present, struck with stupor, looked at each other in silence, mute with fear and respect, not knowing what to do or think, when an old man recalled the promise that Rheticius had made to his dying wife to go and join her in the tomb. Immediately, they prepared to fulfill this sacred commitment, and only then did the Saint allow his body to be carried away. When he was near the cherished tomb, he revived and these words were heard: "Remember, tender wife, the request you made to me on your deathbed: I come at this moment to fulfill your wishes and my promise. Make room for a brother you have long awaited. As I once rested beside you, so I shall rest again. For us, the marriage bed, you remember, was no less virginal than the bed of the tomb is today." The crowd, distraught and trembling, fell to its knees; and while it adored the power and goodness of God toward His Saints, and the striking favor with which He rewards angelic virtue even on earth, a new prodigy increased the religious terror that had seized them. The tomb was opened; and behold, the wife of Rheticius, reviving her limbs long since frozen by death, and breaking the bands that held her hands along her body, made a gesture of approval, a sign of affectionate invitation to him who was her husband, her friend, her brother. They hastened to obey this marvelous call, bringing together the chaste spouses who had been waiting for each other; and at the moment of contact, the common tomb stirred: it seemed to join in a shudder of joy at the happiness of the promised and long-desired reunion. Now that this vow of pure love was fulfilled, everything immediately returned to the mysterious calm and solemn immobility of the tomb: the two Saints had only to resume, side by side, their sweet sleep, interrupted for a moment, while awaiting in the peace of the Lord the awakening of the resurrection.

Then the miraculous sepulcher was closed with pious respect and has ever since been surrounded by religious veneration. The dear and blessed memory of a man of God, and the memory of a miracle, remained attached to it throughout the centuries. It is this same field, a place already so holy, already consecrated by very precious relics and neighboring the tomb of Saint Symphorian, it is the cemetery of the Via Strata that had the honor of receiving the marble tomb where were deposited, in the shadow of the church of Saint-Étienne, the remains of him who had been one of the greatest figures of his century and one of the most brilliant glories of the Church of Autun. There the pious and naive historian Gregory of Tours came to pray and collect this marvelous account. There, in the last century, one could still see the tomb of our great bishop, raised from the ground under an arch hollowed out in the southern wall of the church of Saint-Pierre-l'Évêque where it had been transported and where a relatively recent inscription could be read.

A Spanish poet, Juvencus, who flourished in the same century, inspired by the wonders of the life and death of Saint Rheticius, immediately dedicated to him the beginning of a poem where, after having sung of our great bishop, he celebrates the glory of Jesus Christ and ends with the praise of Constantine.

Cf. Saint Symphorien et son culte, by Abbé Dinot.