Saint Hubert of Brétigny

Following the custom of noble families, young Hubert was instructed in letters in his father's house, but he often went to the church and the monastery of Brétigny, which was not far from their manor. One day, being only twelve years old, he secretly retired there. As he entered, he heard a subdeacon reading the prophecies, and, desiring keenly to understand their meaning, he went to find an old monk and said to him: My venerable father, what do you think is the meaning of what is read in the Scripture? — Fair son, the old man replied, what has just been read is the nourishment of the soul. It is commanded there to lead a chaste life and to flee the charms of this century of vanity. — I pray you, my father, the child replied, little satisfied with this answer, teach me clearly what the nourishment of the soul is. — The fear of God, the old man added, is its most solid support and the vital nourishment of the human heart. The reading and hearing of the Holy Scripture sustain the soul of man and corroborate it. Remember this: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Does not the prophet-king also say: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom?" Then, astonished by the precocity of young Hubert: "I fear much, my fair child, that you who question me with such wisdom, wish to test my ignorance." — Hubert replied to the old man that he had asked these questions, not to test him, but to better grasp his words; that he was but a child, and that his ignorance prevented him from understanding high things. Then the good old man gave him long discourses on the soul, the creation of man, his fall and the dire consequences of that fall, and redemption through Jesus Christ. He showed him that the only way to reach eternal beatitude was to live in accordance with the prescriptions of the faith of Jesus Christ. He told him in closing that in monasteries one found more facilities for performing the good works it recommends and consequently for reaching heaven. "That is why, my dear son," he added, "if you desire to nourish your soul with heavenly food, reflect well on what you will undertake and, if you believe me, you will pray to Jesus Christ with fervor."

When the eloquent old man had ceased speaking, the pious child, falling immediately at his feet, said to him: "Henceforth, O old man, you who speak so well of Christ, who teach so well the excellent works and show the way to heaven, you shall be my father. God, through your organ, has deigned to draw me from this fragile and profane world, to make me enter the holy religion. May He reward you as you deserve. My spirit is inflamed with the desire to don the religious habit in this monastery." — "Courage, virtuous child," the old man replied, amazed, "it is thus that you will reach the heavens! But before making you a monk, think of what the duties and rules of the religious are. The goal you pursue is magnificent, but know that in the monastic state you will have to undergo a thousand privations, spend sleepless nights, sing the psalms at night, suffer contradictions, sometimes reproaches, and experience great pains, but you will emerge victorious; for, if in all these difficulties you remain, for the love of God, faithful and magnanimous, in you will be accomplished, to the letter, this word of Jesus Christ: He that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved. May God be propitious to you!..."

However, Hubert's parents, worried by his prolonged absence, hurried to the monastery. There, having learned that he had become a monk, they went to find the prior to ask for their son back. When they were in his presence, his mother, who loved him tenderly, said to him: — "If I had to speak before the people or before powerful monarchs, I would have to wipe away my tears and stifle my sobs, but, O my sweet child! coming to deposit my sorrow in your heart, why should I fear to speak to you with my cheeks bathed in tears? When I was in the flower of my youth, my womb remained sterile for a long time; married, I was without a child. We obtained you, your father and I, through our prayers, and you saw the light of day by the favor of God. We had the hope that you would continue our lineage and that you would be our heir. I know how beautiful it is to see a young nobleman honor the supreme God, I know that the most excellent nobility consists in serving Him. This is what you would have done every day under my guidance. What are you seeking, my son? What is your undertaking? Your father is in the rank of the most fervent Christians through his spirit of prayer and his alms. Moreover, he shines through his equity, his probity, and his courage. My tender son, if the brilliance of a distinguished spirit has so many attractions for you, you will increase yours as you wish in the paternal home. The estate of Brétigny extends far, we have superb fortresses, rich lands, a considerable income. We are already old, we will leave you all our wealth, we only want to have you as our heir. Must our hopes be deceived? Come, my sweet child, return home, have pity on your mother's tears, have pity on your father's old age!"

After the noble lady had spoken, young Hubert, as if filled with the spirit of God, replied to her gravely: "Your sweet and sad words, and your sobs full of tears, O my mother! pierce me with pain and bring tears to my eyes. However, I cannot change my resolution, for it comes from God. I am not unaware of what the holy books say:

'Honor your father and your mother,' but I also know that Jesus, remaining in the temple, said to his mother: 'Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be occupied with my Father's service?' Now, understand, my dearest mother, this sacred word which is for me an exhortation to embrace piety, to spend all the days of my life in the service of God, to dwell in His temple, and to devote myself to holy things, just as I have resolved! Is it then doing an injury to my mortal mother to serve my Creator? O my glorious heavenly Father, who willed to be born of the most holy Virgin, and who have an eternal kingdom in heaven, be propitious to me! I implore your help, soften the pain of my parents, dispel their sadness and their grief, and nothing will prevent me from consecrating myself to your holy altars! Why lament? Why groan and weep so much, O my mother? Why promise me dignities and earthly goods? I despise the joys, the voluptuousness, and the pomps of a passing world. Earthly goods are fragile and vanish; heavenly goods are solid and eternal. I have preferred God, I will love Him, I will follow Him, I will adore Him, I will be consecrated to Him, I will pray for your salvation, and no human consideration will turn me from my purpose. I pray to you, therefore, my good mother, I beseech you by Jesus and all the Blessed, let me become a monk here; let me apply myself here to divine things; let me contemplate Christ Jesus here. Death presses, old age arrives, it will soon be necessary to pay the debt to nature; allow me, therefore, to begin here what we will do, you and I, after death, my dearest father and mother, in heavenly beatitude. I will thus be a more true consolation for you."

No sooner had he finished these words than the very powerful warrior Pierre de Brétigny, inspired in his turn by the divine Spirit, cried out: "Cease, my son, these long speeches; God has spoken through your mouth, that is enough, we must consent to everything. Your voice is not that of a mortal, it is the organ of the Almighty. It is just that mortal men should obey the divine will; live the life of the angels, become a monk, let all our goods be common between us, pray for me and for your mother!" Immediately, the two spouses embraced their son, and soon they divided their goods, gave a portion to the monastery of Saint-Pierre de Brétigny, another portion to the poor, and kept only a third for themselves.

After these arrangements, Hubert received the monastic habit from the hands of the venerable and good prior, around the year 670. He made incredible progress in religious life and became an accomplished monk. His face was handsome, his language polite, his conversations sweet, his company pleasant, and his piety fervent. Full of respect for the elders, loving everyone with a love full of benevolence, he was cherished by all. His only desire was to please God and to merit the esteem of his brothers. Not only was his whole person imbued with a generous nobility, but one breathed around him the pleasant odor of divinity. Applied to reading and meditation, he learned by heart, in a short time, the Psalter and even the Holy Scriptures. He ate only fruits and fasted, throughout his life, three times a week, giving his portion on those days to the poor. The demon visited him in the midst of his pious exercises. One day, while he was in meditation, he addressed him with astute words. He made him hear that he was an angel descended from heaven, by the order of God, to tell him His will, to him, a wavering young man, that he must therefore consent to the wishes of his family, not to despise an opulent patrimony; that like an imprudent child, he had undertaken a thing above his strength. What is more cruel than to have no pity for the sorrow of one's parents, what is more foolish than to despise riches acquired with so much pain? He must therefore return as soon as possible to the paternal house, under pain of experiencing the effects of divine wrath. At these perfidious insinuations of the spirit of darkness, Hubert wavers, boredom takes hold of him. What is he to do in these cruel doubts? But he discovered the snares of Satan and thwarted them by fervently resuming his pious meditations.

Soon Hubert had another cause for trouble and anxiety. The Count of Vermandois, w Le comte de Vermandois Local lord, godfather to Hubert and later a military opponent of his father. ho held the high domain of Brétigny, having learned that he had taken holy orders and that all his inheritance had been given to the monks, which took away all his power over this domain, resolved, in his anger, to recover by force of arms what had been taken from him. The Count of Vermandois was a powerful man and a valiant warrior, and Pierre was a noble knight; thus, the latter went to ask his son for the help of his person and his prayers before engaging in this fierce duel. Hubert urged his father, who wanted to take him along, to go very quickly to the place of combat. "Depart with boldness, my father," he said to him, "I will pray to God for you and He will be your defender." Pierre, full of confidence, set off immediately; but while everything was being prepared for a bloody battle, Hubert, after having fallen into prayer with tears, suddenly appeared "in the army of Brétigny!" surrounded by a phalanx of heavenly spirits. The Count of Vermandois, frightened by this vision, fled, seized with a cold terror. Suddenly, he threw down his lance, jumped off his horse, and kneeling down, took the hand of Pierre de Brétigny. The two warriors embraced and swore eternal friendship to each other. Hubert disappeared with the heavenly troop. The lord of Brétigny, having returned to his manor, triumphant from this victory which had not cost a drop of blood, went to the church of Saint-Pierre, gave it new gifts, confirmed the old ones, and gave thanks to God and to his son Hubert.

Everything was prodigious in the life of the holy cenobite of Brétigny. Having been ordained a priest at twenty, three Pontiff s—the on Soissons Birthplace and place of death of Geoffrey. e of Soissons, undoubtedly Saint Gaudin, the one of Noyon, and the one of Laon, who may be presumed to be, respectively, Madalgaire and Munarus or Numianus—were warned by an angel to go to Brétigny to attend his first Mass. At the dinner that followed the ceremony, a beggar appeared at the table where the nobles and prelates were seated. Hubert having given him his portion of the meal, he disappeared. All the guests, amazed, believed that it was Jesus Christ in person who, in the form of a poor man, had attended the feast. Hubert also healed, on this occasion, a woman from Noyon afflicted with blindness and obsession, which gave the highest idea of his holiness to the people and the bishops who, before their departure, commended themselves to his prayers. In subsequently healing countless sick people, especially those suffering from rabies, he would say to all: "Go, my dearest brother, but give thanks to God alone, creator of all things, and tell no one that Hubert has healed you, for fear that something worse may happen to you"; or else: "Take care not to swear by the name of God, for it is a great crime." Thus, in the Soissonnais, the Laonnois, and the Noyonnais, the habit was formed of swearing by Saint Hubert. Such was the opinion held of his holiness and his power that where his name was written and where there was something that had touched his relics, it was believed that neither lightning, nor storm, nor madness could have any effect. "The incredible multitude of pilgrims who flock to Brétigny, at the time I am writing," says the legendary of Saint Hubert, "is a proof of the confidence he inspired and which was justified by so many miracles."

Hubert did not survive his noble parents for long. He desired so ardently to be reunited with them that the archangel Saint Michael appeared to him one night, while he was prostrate before the holy altars, to announce to him, on behalf of God, his return to heaven. According to another version, which is no less charming, Hubert was accustomed to going out after the night vigils into the garden, since called the Garden of Saint Hubert, and praying to God there under a thick linden tree, kneeling on a stone; it was there that the heavenly messenger is said to have warned him of his death. This news was a source of immense and ineffable joy for him, but a subject of profound sorrow for his brothers when he announced it to them. They surrounded the bed where the fever was consuming him, their eyes bathed in tears, and they implored heaven not to take him from them. He consoled them with gentle words and asked God for forgiveness for his faults. At the same time that he commended his soul to Him, he beseeched Him to protect the religious, to preserve Brétigny and its surroundings from wicked beasts, hail, lightning, and the illusions of Satan, and to heal of the falling sickness and rabies all those who, being afflicted with them, would come to Brétigny to be relieved. "Grant me finally," he said to God, "what you have granted to my godfather (Saint Hubert of the Ardennes), that those who implore the patronage of my name may be immediately and everywhere healed of rabies."

Having made all these prayers, Hubert received the Sacraments, and, while the monks sang hymns and canticles around him, he fell asleep in death as if in a peaceful slumber. He reached paradise under Dagobert, the very courageous king of the Franks, ten years and three months after his entry into the monastery, that is to say in 713 or 714, on May 24. As soon as he had breathed his last, a scent so sweet spread throughout Brétigny that one would have said the divine power had gathered there all the flowers of spring, an image of the heavenly sweetness that Hubert was tasting in paradise. The news of his death having spread throughout all of Belgium, the people flocked in crowds and by all the roads to touch his body, which was buried at Brétigny, where miracles abounded. A lord named Maranus, paralyzed in one arm, having not obtained his healing after nine days and nine nights spent in prayer at Saint-Hubert-le-Grand in the Ardennes, heard a voice that told him to go to the church of Brétigny; he came there and was healed. A lunatic woman from Vic-sur-Aisne, named Pétronille, also came to pray at the holy tomb and was healed. Three men possessed by the devil and originating, it was said, from a suburb of Soissons formerly called Tour-des-Comtes, were brought to Brétigny eight days after the death of Saint Hubert, and, after a novena, returned home healed. Other miraculous facts, no less interesting for local history, are also recounted. Two famous thieves from the castle of Coucy, condemned to death, having invoked Saint Hubert, were suddenly transported to the doors of the church of Brétigny; they entered, made a novena, and their chains broke. Finally, on the day of the Saint's feast, a stranger to the village of Brétigny, having dug the foundations of a house, was immediately seized by the evil spirit, fell into a deep pit, and the earth collapsed upon him. He was pulled out half-dead, bearing on his forehead a black mark like a livid scar. He was transported to the church, but he was not entirely healed until he had offered a weight of wax equal to that of his body.

This last trait serves as an explanation for the use of the chapel known as the Scales, which could still be seen in the 18th century in the church of Brétigny, which was located to the north of the high altar dedicated to Saint Peter, and where Saint Hubert had first been buried. There, the goods offered by pilgrims to obtain their healing were weighed.

## RELICS AND CULT OF SAINT HUBERT.

The annals of Brétigny end with the account of the miracles performed at the tomb of Saint Hubert. By the 12th century, this abbey was nothing more th an a priory de Ordre de Cluny Network of monasteries centralized under the authority of the Abbot of Cluny. pendent on Libons, of the Order of Cluny, since in 1131, Pope Innocent confirmed a donation of tithes and torrages belonging to the church of Brétigny, made by the prior of Libons to the abbey of Ourscamp.

The Annals of the Diocese of Soissons, by Abbé Pêcheur, from which we have borrowed the translation of the preceding legend, thus conclude the chapter relating to Sai nt Huber Mabillon Benedictine monk and historian, author of the Annales benedictinae. t of Brétigny.

According to Mabillon, who had visited Brétigny, the Chapel of the Scales was so called because those who came to be cured of rabies were weighed there, as in certain pilgrimages, to ascertain, during the days of their prayer, if the illness was in decline. He rightly treats this custom as a superstition; but the very examples he provides, drawn from the translation of Saint Quirin and Saint Arsace, where a man weighs himself against loaves of bread and cheeses which he then distributes to the poor, prove, as well as the miracle of Brétigny, that this learned man is mistaken and that the use of the scales, as we have interpreted it, has nothing superstitious about it.

The Benedictine traveler then depicts for us the sad remains of the monastery of Brétigny, of which nothing remained in his time but a half-ruined church where one could still see this Chapel of the Scales, a neglected altar of Saint Gamon, above which one could see the image of this Saint, and some vestiges of monastic buildings. The priory was inhabited by a secular prior and a treasurer monk to whom he ceded a portion of the offerings coming from the pilgrimage of Saint Hubert. This is approximately the sad state in which we found the same places, during an excursion made to Kierzy in 1855, in the company of M. Peigné-Delacour. Rebuilt in the 12th century, the church of Brétigny has only its nave left with two side chapels, one of which, serving as a sacristy, must be the chapel of Saint Gamon, and the other can only be that of the Scales, although the memory of it is completely lost on the site itself. There remain only faint traces of the castle and the abbey, of which one can still see some walls built of sandstone and in full masonry, with vestiges of ponds, pits, and an enclosure that contains a fountain of Saint Hubert to which is attributed the virtue of curing rabies, fever, etc. The memory of the Saint has therefore alone survived all these ruins. The pilgrimage has its relics, which are considerable and authentic; it is still frequented by about two thousand people during the novena. There is also at Brétigny an ancient road, the Voirie of Saint Hubert, a Stone of Saint Hubert placed in a field near the village, and an enormous sandstone block planted horizontally in the cemetery, near the church door, on which one could see, it is said, the footprint of the Saint.

He is invoked mainly against the bite of rabid dogs, like his namesake Saint Hubert, the patron of the Ardennes.

Acta Sanctorum; Translation by Abbé Pêcheur in the Annals of the Church of Soissons. The substance of the life of this pious cenobite, written by the monk Plaon, is truthful; but it has been embellished with legendary circumstances which, while preserving a lively interest, preach in the most naive and pure colors the monastic life in one of the many small communities then spread throughout the countryside.