Saint Baudilus

At a date therefore that fluctuates between the end of the 2nd and the end of the 3rd century, between 187 and 295, a generous Christian, obeying a divine inspiration, left his native city to go and evangelize the regions that were plunged into error. It was Baudile; he was bound by the ties of marriage, and his wife had associated herself with his pious design. He learned in his apostolic travels that the ancient capital of the Volcae, the city of Augustus and Antoninus, the city of Nîmes, no less important, say the Acts of the Saints, for its commerce and its great wealth than for its population, was still almost entirely pagan, that the inhabitants were deprived of the teaching of priests, and that they were languishing like wandering sheep, far from the vigilant care of shepherds: he resolved to make a supreme effort to tear it away from the idols.

The new apostle arrived in Nîmes on the very day that a public sacrifice was being celebrated in a sacred grove at the gates of the city. Polytheism had deployed all its pomp to attract the crowd. It was on one of the hills overlooking the city, not far from that ancient Tourm agne whic Tourmagne Roman monument in Nîmes near which Baudilus was martyred. h is still standing. The priests of the idols were leading the victims destined for the sacrifice. The quivering multitude pressed around the altar. Suddenly, a stranger appeared and raised his voice in the midst of the crowd. With generous indignation, he attacked those powerless gods to whom criminal incense was being offered; those gods of marble and stone, which have eyes and do not see, which have ears and do not hear, impious and vain simulacra, which must be broken and trampled underfoot. He announced that unknown God who made heaven and earth and who alone has the right to the adoration of mortals. He showed that cross of the Savior, a scandal and folly to the Gentiles, which had become the glorious instrument of the redemption of the human race. At these unknown accents, the multitude stopped in astonishment: they listened with strange surprise to this language new to them. Perhaps some men of the people, some poor slaves, felt moved upon hearing of this redeeming God, who willed to take upon himself the burden of our miseries, who made himself poor and took on the form of a slave to redeem men. Perhaps also, some philosophers, who recognized the deep void of pagan doctrines, would have wished for this stranger to be allowed to freely expound the doctrine of which he had made himself the apostle. But the priests of the idols, listening only to the passion of self-interest, cried out that such language was an insult to their gods, that this man was an impious person, a blasphemer, an obstinate follower of this new superstition which attacked the ancient divinities, and that his crime must not go unpunished. The fickle and light-minded crowd suddenly passed from surprise to anger and let out cries of death against the contemner of these gods. They surrounded him, they seized him, they stifled his voice, and the sacrificers demanded that he be immolated right there where he had dared to attack the cult of the city. The holy apostle, calm and resigned in the midst of this unleashing of popular fury, offered himself to heaven as a victim. He asked the Lord that his blood might become a fertile seed that would cause a flourishing Church to germinate on this unfaithful land, and he consummated his generous sacrifice.

According to popular tradition, the head of the Martyr, struck down by the executioner's axe, bounced three times on the ground, and each of its bounds caused a spring to gush forth.

The three fountains that the blood of Saint Baudile caused to spring forth have remained as witnesses to his glorious martyrdom. They were then like the blessed source from which the life-giving waters of the Gospel flowed over the still-pagan city. They have become for the Christian people the source of many graces, and it is from there that flow the ardent devotion, the generous convictions, and the unwavering fidelity that animate the Catholics of Nîmes.

Let us not doubt it, th e devotion of w Trois-Fontaines Miraculous springs created by the bounds of the martyr's head. hich the Three Fountains are the object has the consecration of the centuries in its favor. Throughout time, the faithful have venerated this place and attributed a miraculous virtue to the spring of Saint Baudile. This pious movement which, in our day, attracts the faithful to this hill, was known to past ages. It may have been slowed and even interrupted in the midst of our civil and religious discords. But by taking it up again today, one is only reconnecting the chain of the past. This small basin, carved into the rock, has been in every century a salutary pool where the faithful have refreshed their souls and where the sick have sometimes found the healing of their ailments. It is therefore an eminently pious thought that led some devoted Christians in our day to restore and enlarge the ancient oratory of the Three Fountains. One no longer sees three distinct springs today as at Saint-Paul-Tre-Fontane, in the plain of Rome. The work that had to be done to level the rock and lay the foundations of the chapel must have disturbed the ground and changed the direction of the three springs, which today reunite through underground filtration in the same basin.

When the crowd had dispersed, the wife of the holy Martyr and the servants who accompanied her stealthily gathered his remains and buried them at the bottom of the nearby valley. "By this glorious death," say the Acts of the Saints, "this illustrious Martyr, formerly a stranger in Nîmes, has won the right of citizenship there and has become its immortal protector."

The blood of the Martyr was piously collected by some courageous Christians. As they were accustomed to doing wherever one of their brothers was immolated, they dipped cloths into the blood that reddened the ground and faithfully kept them as a precious souvenir. It is a fragment of one of these cloths, stained with the blood of the Martyr, that the parish of Saint-Baudile possesses today. This place always remained dear to the piety of the inhabitants of Nîmes. In their fervor, they did not separate the hill consecrated by the martyrdom of the Saint from the valley that guarded his remains. While going to visit his tomb, they would make a station at the place of his execution, and they associated them both in equal veneration.

We must mention a popular tradition which recounts that the holy apostle, before coming to attack pagan superstitions in Nîmes, evangelized the neighboring populations. The memory of this preaching has been perpetuated in the parish of Bouillargues, and it is for this reason, no doubt, that this Church chose Saint Baudile along with Saint Felix, bishop of Nîmes, as its patrons, thus wishing to honor the memory of its first apostle.

The name of the holy Martyr was not forgotten, and a sanctuary was built on the place where his body had been depos ited. Saint Gregory of Saint Grégoire de Tours Historian and bishop, primary source for the narrative. Tours, in the 6th century, in his Treatise on the Glory of the Martyrs, recounts that God was pleased to glorify the tomb of the Saint through numerous miracles and that his cult was spread in the various parts of the Christian world. "One sees," he says, "near Nîmes the glorious tomb of Saint Baudile, where striking wonders are often performed. From this tomb has emerged, through the cracks in the walls, a laurel, which has grown like a tree and which unfolds its salutary foliage. The inhabitants have often experienced its marvelous efficacy which restores health to the sick. In memory of its beneficent virtue, they stripped the tree of its leaves, even of its bark, and the laurel little by little lost its vigor and withered." This miraculous laurel, symbol of the victory of the holy Martyr, has turned green again after having had its stem withered. It continues to sprout vigorous shoots near the place where the tomb of the Saint was. Before the rigors of the last winter, says Father Azais, chaplain of the Nîmes high school, in his notice on Saint Baudile published in 1871, it rose above the other trees of the valley and attracted gazes from afar by its green foliage. It will sprout new stems from its rejuvenated trunk and will remain as the faithful guardian of these ruins.

Already, in the 5th century, if we are to believe the Acts of the Church of Orléans, the relics of Saint Baudile had manifested their marvelous virtue in favor of the city that had given birth to the Sai nt. Saint Aigna Saint Agnan Ier Successor of Saint Euvert to the episcopal see of Orléans. n I, Bishop of Orléans, seeing this city threatened by the hordes of th e fero Attila Leader of the Huns responsible for the destruction of Besançon. cious Attila, did not hesitate, despite his great age, to undertake a long and perilous journey to go and implore the help of General Aetius, who governed Gaul in the name of Emperor Valentinian III, and who had established his residence in Arles. Arriving in this city, he remembered that a subdeacon of his episcopal city had shed his blood for the faith in the neighboring city of Nîmes, and he went to pray before his tomb. A pious inspiration seized him before this tomb. He told himself that if he could take with him some relics of this glorious child of Orléans, they would be a pledge of powerful protection for this city. He obtained from the Bishop of Nîmes some fragments of the body of the holy Martyr, and he joyfully resumed the road to his episcopal city. The populations stirred along his path to salute the precious deposit that had been entrusted to him. Tradition has preserved the memory of some of his stops. He stopped near Valence, at the village of Saint-Bardoux. A colony of religious, sent by the monastery of Ainay, in Lyon, had established itself on this hillside, and it was under their roof that Saint Aignan must have received hospitality. There existed, in the last century, in this place, a chapel dedicated to Saint Baudile, which dated back to high antiquity. It must have been a souvenir of the passage of the Saint's relics.

The body of Saint Aignan was transported, in the year 1029, into a new church of great magnificence, built by the care of the pious King Robert. The relics of Saint Baudile followed those of the holy bishop and became part of the treasure of the same church. They disappeared in the troubles of the 16th century, along with so many other holy relics, in the disastrous devastation that the church of Saint-Aignan underwent.

The tomb of Saint Baudile, like that of Saint Gilles in the vicinity of Nîmes, of Saint Martha in Tarascon, and of Saint Mary Magdalene in Provence, were the most famous in our South and had the privilege of attracting a large gathering of Christians. They soon had their days of mourning and desolation. Around the year 719, the Arabs, crossing the Pyrenees, spread like a torrent over the soil of France.

The monastery of Saint-Baudile then had at its head a pious abbot, Saint Romulus, who made the purest mona saint Romule Abbot of the monastery of Saint-Baudile during the Saracen invasion. stic virtues flourish there through the authority of his word and his examples. Eighty religious, under the guidance of the holy abbot, perfumed this peaceful valley with the fragrance of their piety. Saint Romulus did not want to abandon them to the sword of the enemy. His first care was to hide the relics of Saint Baudile from the outrages of the Muslim hordes. He enclosed them in a lead coffin and had them buried deep in the ground, under one of the walls of the church.

After securing this precious treasure, Saint Romulus set out, at the head of his community, to seek asylum in a distant land. Traveling up along the Rhône and the Saône, the fugitive colony made numerous stops during its migration, and it is in this way that the cult of Saint Baudile spread to various places. The religious carried with them some particles of the body of the holy Martyr and distributed them, along their way, to the populations who welcomed them with kindness. They stopped for some time in Beaune, in Burgundy, and they repaid the hospitality they received with the gift of a relic of Saint Baudile. This precious legacy was faithfully preserved, until the end of the last century, in a church that was placed under the patronage of the Saint, and it disappeared in the revolutionary turmoil.

After a long stay in Beaune, the religious continued their march. They made a station at Plombières-lez-Dijon, in the Côte-d'Or, where the cult of Saint Baudile has been perpetuated to this day, and probably at Parigny-la-Rose, in the Auxerrois, which, in memory of this stop, honors Saint Baudile as its patron.

They then arrived at Sais sy-les-Bois, in Saissi-les-Bois Place of refuge for monks from Nîmes in the diocese of Auxerre. the diocese of Auxerre. This place, which, as its name indicates, was covered in woods, was perfectly suited for a monastic foundation. There was already, in this valley, watered by a stream, a monastery founded by the bishops of Auxerre. It bore the name Monasterium saxiense, because of the stones that cover the ground, and this name is found, altered, in the modern name of Saissy. The monks of Saint-Germain, who possessed it, ceded it to this wandering colony that was fleeing before the Saracen invasion. The establishment grew under the protection of the Frankish kings, who granted it numerous privileges, and the neighboring forests were cleared by the patient labors of the monks. A church was built and it was dedicated to Saint Baudile, in memory of the holy Martyr, whose body rested in Nîmes. It was at once a tribute to this patron saint and a memory of their absent homeland. Saint Romulus died before having completed the church of which he had laid the foundations; it was his two successors, Odo and Walaus, who put the finishing touches to it.

The monastery of Saint-Baudile, at Saissy, later became a simple priory. It still counted eight religious in the 15th century. It was entirely destroyed, in 1569, by the Protestants, like that of Nîmes, and the relics of Saint Baudile, preserved until then, suffered the fate of all those that fell into the hands of the Calvinists. The very names of Saint Baudile and Saint Romulus are today forgotten at Saissy.

As for the monastery of Nîmes, it remained for a long time in a state of sad decadence. Towards the end of the 11th century, the local nobility, afflicted by this deplorable situation, restored it to its former life by ceding i t to the powerful abbey abbaye de la Chaise-Dieu Benedictine abbey that received the territory of Sainte-Gemme. of La Chaise-Dieu.

It was undoubtedly around this time that popular piety gave the valley of Saint-Baudile the name of Valsainte, wishing to honor with this pious appellation the memory of the miracles of which these places had been the scene.

The Reformation came: Nîmes, as we know, was the main theater of the efforts of the religionaries in the south; its cathedral was changed for a time into a Calvinist preaching house, and the monastery of Saint-Baudile was demolished from top to bottom (1563). What became of the body of Saint Baudile in the midst of this devastation? Was it torn from the tomb where it was enclosed, and were its sacred ashes thrown to the wind? Or was it saved by some devoted Catholic? History is silent, and the belief of the inhabitants of Nîmes is that the religious managed to save the holy relics from this profanation by burying them, as in the time of the Saracen invasion, in some hidden retreat. Perhaps the reliquary that contains them is buried in the bowels of the earth, not far from the ancient sanctuary, from which one does not despair of retrieving it one day.

The indifference of men and the action of time have gradually completed the total destruction of everything that remained of the old priory and the two churches. The ruins themselves have disappeared.

For a long time, these half-collapsed walls became like a vast quarry where all the neighbors came to look for stones to form enclosure walls or build new constructions. Today, not a single stone remains standing of the church of Saint-Baudile. The plowshare has passed over its site and broken up the ground to surrender it to cultivation. Two country houses occupy the site of the old enclosure and the priory.

A parish of Nîmes, that is all that perpetuates today, with the same name, the ancient memories. A faithful guardian of the memory of Saint Baudile, it pays, in the name of the city, the tribute of honor and gratitude that Nîmes owes to its apostle.

The characteristic attributes of Saint Baudile in the arts are the palm and the axe: the life of the Saint provides the understanding of these symbols.

Saint Baudile et son culte, by M. l'abbé Azala, honorary canon, chaplain of the Lycée de Nîmes; Nîmes, 1872.