Saint Honoratus of Amiens

It pleased Our Lord to further honor his episcopate with the miraculous invention of the bodies of the holy marty rs Fusc Fuscien Martyr whose body was discovered by Saint Honoré. ian, Victoricus, and Gentian, which had remained hidden from the faithful for more than three hundred years.

A holy priest of Amiens, named Lupicin, having been warned by an angel to remove these three holy bodies from a certain place, went there, and, after digging deep enough, he finally found what he was seeking; then, unable to contain the joy of his heart, he sang an antiphon in their honor. It is said that Saint Honoré heard him, even though he was two leagues away; he immediately went to that place, assisted by his clergy and followed by all the people: these holy relics attracted everyone by the pleasant fragrance they emitted.

They were the object of a second wonder: King Childebert II Childebert II King of Austrasia, spiritual son and protector of the church of Verdun. having sent commissioners to Amiens to remove this treasure and bring it to Paris, they were prevented from doing so by a divine power, which rendered the holy bodies immovable; they were therefore obliged to leave to the city of Amiens its martyrs, its apostles, who were its glory and its consolation. The King, being informed of this,

-regretted the plan he had formed, and ordered that these holy relics be left in the cathedral of Amiens, to which he made very beautiful gifts, whether in furnishings and ornaments for divine service, or in money and land endowments for the service of the clergy.

One day, as our pious Pontiff was saying Mass in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin at Sai nt-Acheul, a Saint-Acheul Former church and catacomb serving as a burial place for the bishops of Amiens. ttended by the priest who would later become his successor, Our Lord appeared to him visibly at the consecration. When it was time to consume the holy species, He took them Himself and gave him Communion with His own hands, thus granting him the same grace He had bestowed upon the Apostles on the evening of His Passion.

This was not the only trait of resemblance Honoré shared with the Apostles: he imitated their zeal for the conversion of souls, their charity in the practice of works of piety and mercy, and, finally, their mortification by crucifying his flesh with its passions, through the fasts and vigils he continued throughout his life. His historian tells us nothing more, except that he happily ended his life while visiting his diocese, in the very place where he had received it from God in his father's house. Thus, the village of Port, in Ponthieu, was the cradle and the tomb of this illustrious prelate.

His body was buried there with honor, and, since then, a very beautiful church was built for him; his precious relics rested there under the high altar until the irruptions of the Danes and the Normans: they were then transferred to Amiens, into his episcopal church.

As this ceremony was being performed, this marvel occurred: the body had been placed in the church of the apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul, otherwise known as that of Saint Firmin the Confessor; when it was removed to be carried to the cathedral, the crucifix visibly turned its head toward the door through which the holy body was exiting, as if following it with its eyes; those present, filled with admiration, glorified God for thus honoring his servant. This crucifix can still be seen today in the cathedral of Amiens.

The holy bishop performed several other wonders during his life and after his death; but no authentic details of them remain to us. We only know what he did several centuries later, to provide for the needs of the people during a very great drought: Bishop Guy, son of Gauthier, Count of Amiens, ordered a general procession, in which the reliquary of Saint Honoré was carried around the walls of the city; the rain that was requested on this occasion was obtained.

Several other miracles also took place: paralytics were healed, the deaf recovered the use of their hearing, the mute that of speech, the lame were able to walk, and prisoners saw their irons fall and the doors of their dungeon open. This great event is marked in the year 1060, which is the year in which Philip I began to reign.

Since then, devotion to Saint Honoré spread marvelously; for not only the city of Amiens and the entire diocese, but also all of France, and principally the city of Paris , wished to ha ville de Paris Place of birth, ministry, and death of the saint. ve a share in it. Indeed, in the year 1204, one of the wealthy inhabitants of this capital of the kingdom, named Renold Chérins, and his wife, named Sibille, had a church built in honor of the holy Prelate, in the street that bears his name, and founded several canonries there; and Richard de Gerberoi, then Bishop of Amiens, enriched it with a portion of the relics of the same holy bishop; they were kept there with respect, before '93, in a silver reliquary of a very ancient form.

In the year 1301, Guillaume de Mâcon, forty-ninth Bishop of Amiens, having fo unded the Charterhouse chartreuse d'Abbeville Monastery founded by Guillaume de Mâcon, which received the head of the saint. of Abbeville, assigned to it revenues from the town and village of Port, an ancient domain of Saint Honoré, and placed it under the protection of this Saint, to whom he gave his head. A finger of the same Saint was also offered with other relics, by a bishop of Amiens, to the abbey of Saint-Riquier in Ponthieu.

Saint Honoré, as we know, is almost everywhere the patron saint of bakers, and by extension of pastry chefs, wafer-makers, florists, flour merchants, and various other professions that have some connection to the making of bread: this is why he is depicted with an oven peel loaded with thre e loaves, wh pelle à four Bakery tool that became the saint's iconographic attribute. ich he holds in his left hand. This peel is so inseparable from the figure that Santeul gave it a place in his famous and irreverent quatrain:

Saint Honoré In his chapel With his peel, Is honored.

There is no consensus on the origin of this liturgical patronage, and on the motive that led to the professional instruments of baking being attributed to Saint Honoré. However, one would believe to be in the right by adopting the opinion of the highly competent M. Corblet, canon and historiographer of the diocese of Amiens.

"What determined popular choices for patronages," says this writer, "were not forced connections or subtle comparisons, but the extraordinary facts that vividly struck the imagination. Now, we find in the legend of Saint Honoré an event of this nature, which seems to us to have determined the choice of the bakers. When it was learned at Port that Honoré was promoted to the episcopate, his nurse, who was then busy baking bread at the paternal castle, greeted this news with complete disbelief, and exclaimed that she would more readily believe that the burning oven rake she held in her hands would take root and turn into a tree. fourgon ardent Bakery tool that became the saint's iconographic attribute. Joining action to words, she planted her glowing peel, fitted with a long handle, in the courtyard where she was, which suddenly metamorphosed into a mulberry tree, and which soon after produced flowers and fruits, which were considered a prophetic emblem of the fruits of salvation that Honoré's episcopate was to bear. In the 16th century, this mulberry tree was still shown in the former paternal home of the holy bishop. The memory of the miraculous oven rake was so well preserved at Port that, every year, on the eve of Saint Honoré's day, a bonfire was lit to perpetuate the memory of this event.

Is it not more than probable that it is this oven rake, this baking instrument serving as the subject of such an extraordinary prodigy, that determined the bakers to take Saint Honoré as their patron? On the occasion of his elevation to the episcopate, their professional peel had been glorified; they in turn wished to glorify through a special cult the one to whom they attributed this prodigy. Such is, we believe, the origin of this patronage, spread today throughout almost all of France and which, precisely because it had taken root in Picardy, remained more famous there than anywhere else. The bakers of Amiens considered themselves the first brotherhood of the city, because they had the privilege of carrying the reliquary of their patron in general processions.

See the office of Saint Honoré in the Breviaries of Amiens and Paris; the Antiquities of Amiens, by la Mortière: Richard de Gerberet, etc.; Origin of the liturgical patronage of bakers, by M. l'abbé J. Corblet, honorary canon and historiographer of the diocese of Amiens.