Saint Theodoric

The mother of our holy child, who did not have as wicked a soul as his father, took some care to have him instructed in the primary schools; he made even more progress there in virtue than in reading and writing. When he reached the required age, his parents forced him to marry. He resolved, nevertheless, to preserve inviolably, in this state, his virginity as a treasure to which all the goods of the world are not comparable. He had great difficulties to overcome, for his wife, when he had communicated his design to her, was very irritated by it; she believed that her husband lacked affection for her. Thierry, not knowing how to win her over, went to Reims to find a holy abbess named Suzanne, who, under the guidance and authority of Saint Remi, archbisho saint Remi Bishop of Reims who baptized Clovis. p of the place, governed a community of holy maidens in a famous monastery of the city; he threw himself at her feet, opened the secrets of his heart to her, and begged her to assist him with her wise counsel and prayers in such a thorny situation. The holy lady received him with great kindness, and after doing her utmost to console him in his distress, she advised him to address the holy prelate, who would not fail to point out to him the most just and certain ways to succeed in his pious design. Thierry, who had already received salutary instructions from Saint Remi, and who regarded him as a perfect model of holiness, came to find him immediately and revealed all his intentions to him.

The holy Archbishop, who knew that the marriage he had just contracted took away his freedom to live in celibacy without the consent of his wife, ordered him to go back to her, to represent to her the immortal crown that the King of heaven and earth promises to those who have enough courage to preserve their purity in the midst of the corruption of the century, and to make her understand that the vow of virginity is the most glorious homage of the Christian to God and the virtue most pleasing to the angels. Thierry obeyed the orders of his pastor and returned to his wife: as much as she had appeared invincible and indignant at the first words he had brought to her regarding his design, so much did she show sweetness and condescension at this second visit; her mind began to be convinced and her heart to soften upon seeing the zeal of her spouse; and, finally yielding to his touching persuasions, she assured him that, in imitation of him, she no longer wished to have any love but for Jesus Christ; so that, from that moment, she also consecrated her virginity to Him forever. Her generous spouse expressed to her the joy he felt at such an unexpected change; and after giving her the kiss of peace, he withdrew from her, to avoid any occasion of weakness or inconstancy.

It only remained for our Saint to find a solitary place to spend the rest of his days in the contemplation of heavenly things. He therefore returned to Reims, where, first, he again addressed himself to the holy abbess Suzanne, who, by the tangible examples of her high piety and her edifying discourses, encouraged him once more in the study of perfection and in the fulfillment of the great desire he had to separate himself entirely from the world. He also came to find Saint Remi, who, seeing the good dispositions of his heart, besides the salutary instructions he gave him for the conduct of his inner life, also wished to have him study, and then to honor him with the august dignity of the priesthood: Thierry responded to this with such strength that, in a short time, he made considerable progress in science and in the virtues most conformable to this character. Thus the holy archbishop, who thought only of making Christianity flourish in his diocese, cast his eyes upon this great servant of God to entrust to him the care of a monastery of religious that he intended to establish in a small forest, on a mountain named Mont-d'Or, quite clo Mont-d'Or Monastery founded by the saint on a mountain near Reims. se to Reims. One day when he sent him to this place, with the holy abbess Suzanne, to recognize the most propitious spot for this edifice, an eagle descended miraculously from the sky, and, stopping in a small space in the forest, it hovered around for a quite considerable time, without ever moving away from it, to make it known that God, who had inspired the holy Prelate with the design of this establishment, also wished to determine the place of its situation and as it were to mark out its plan. And so that this miracle would not pass for a chimerical vision, nor for an effect of chance, for the four following years one saw, on the day of the Nativity of Our Lord, a similar bird hover all around and over the entire extent of the monastery, which the holy archbishop later dedicated in honor of Saint Bartholomew.

Saint Thierry had no sooner taken possession of this nascent abbey, of which he was the first religious, than he manifested the fruits of his zeal and his eminent holiness. For, following the movements of the charity of Jesus Christ which pressed upon him, he went into all the surrounding places to preach the Gospel and to instruct the people in the most important maxims of Christianity; in this way, he won many souls to God. It is true that many of the penitents were content to return to the true path of virtue, from which they had strayed; but others, animated by the desire for a higher perfection and great austerity, resolved to leave their homes and their families, to renounce riches and all the grandeurs of the earth, to follow such a generous captain and spend the rest of their days fighting the flesh and the devil under his glorious banners. One notes, among others, Saint Theodulph, otherwise Thion, of very illustrious birth, wh o, after having imitated his virt saint Théodulphe, autrement Thion Abbot of Mont-d'Hor in the 6th century. ues and spent several years in perfect mortification, was found worthy to be his second successor in the government of his abbey. But the most famous conquest of our holy Abbot was that of his own father. He touched his heart so vividly with his prayers, his tears, and the strength of his remonstrances, that he won him entirely to God, and even gave him, at his request, the holy habit of a religious in his monastery, so that, in the little time he had left to live, he could do something for the expiation of his crimes. Thus this old man, already frail, from the thief he was before became a perfect penitent, from a debauched man a holy religious, and from a slave of the devil a true disciple of Jesus Christ.

The report of this rare holiness of Theodoric soon spread throughout the kingdom and even reached the ears of the king, who also bore the name Theodoric and was one of the four sons of Clovis. This monarch was then afflicted with a great malady of the eyes: he was threatened with losing his sight entirely, without any remedy being found; this caused him great sadness and also compelled him, seeing no relief to be hoped for from men, to place all his hope in the goodness of God and the help of the Saints. With this thought, he resolved to send two of his officers to the holy abbot, to beg him on his behalf to come immediately to the court. Theodoric, who had always preferred the sweetness of his solitude to all the grandeurs of the world, nevertheless believed that it was his duty to leave it in this encounter to obey his sovereign. He therefore departed immediately from his monastery and went to the king; the latter received him with great honors and told him of the pitiful state to which he was reduced; he declared to him that he had no hope left but in his prayers and merits, and conjured him not to abandon him in an extremity where all medicine had remained powerless and from which no human industry was capable of withdrawing him. At these words, our Saint, who was filled with charity, but who knew moreover that miracles are the works of the almighty hand of God, and not of the weakness of men, prostrated himself face to the ground; and, raising his spirit to heaven, he prayed for a considerable time. His prayer finished, he rose and dipped the tip of his thumb into a little consecrated oil; then, invoking the name of the august Trinity, he applied it in the form of a cross to the eyes of the king, who received at the same moment a perfect healing and entirely recovered his sight.

Thus he was not ungrateful for such an extraordinary benefit; he rendered a thousand thanks to God, and then warmly thanked the one who had obtained for him such a considerable favor. The whole court showed the same gratitude, and the people shouted acclamations of joy. These marks of veneration only increased the humility of the holy Abbot. For, believing that it was a thing too far above him to bear the same name as his sovereign, he changed it to take the diminutive, and would no longer in the future be called Theodoric, but Theodorion. He still had much difficulty in suffering that this monarch kissed his hands and asked for his blessing befo re his dep Théodorion First abbot of Mont-d'Hor and spiritual master of Theodulf. arture. Finally, after all these ceremonies, he was escorted back to his monastery; he was no sooner returned there than he saw an extraordinary concourse of all kinds of sick people attracted from all parts of Christendom by the reputation of the famous miracle he had just performed. And, admirable thing, most of these unfortunates were well paid for the fatigues of their journey by the relief they received for their ailments. He restored sight to the blind; he made the mute speak; he restored the paralytics to the free use of their limbs; he compelled the demons to leave the bodies of the possessed; in a word, there was no kind of disease that was proof against the miraculous power he had received from heaven.

The historian of his life further reports a great miracle that he performed at court. The king held the piety and merits of Saint Remi in particularly high esteem, because it was he who had drawn his father, Clovis, from the abyss of idolatry and brought him into the bosom of the Church through the power of his prayers and his instructions. Seeing one day the princess, his daughter, reduced to such an extremity that she was abandoned by the physicians, he sent to Reims to beg this holy prelate to come and visit her, in the hope that, if he would only touch her with his garments, he would restore her health and life. But this great bishop was himself detained by an illness; he therefore ordered Thierry, whose virtue and merits he knew perfectly, to go in his place. The holy abbot, relying not on his own merits but on the power of God, obeyed his prelate blindly and set out on his journey. Scarcely was he halfway there when he met a courier who told him that the princess had just died, and that, as she was no longer in a state to receive any help, he could spare himself the fatigue of the rest of the journey. This sad news was not enough to stop the zeal of Thierry; wishing to fulfill the command of Saint Remi, he did not cease to go further, to continue his route to Metz, where the court was at that time. Having arrived, he went first to the palac e, w Metz City where the saint received his theological training. here he found the king and queen weeping bitterly over the loss of a daughter for whom they had always had much tenderness. Having done his best to console them in their affliction, he went to the chamber of the deceased, from which he had everyone removed, with the exception of two or three people whom he ordered to remain with him. Having approached the corpse, he raised his hands to heaven and addressed his prayers there with all the fervor of his soul; having finished them, he took some holy oil, a small vial of which he always carried with him; and, scarcely had he touched the principal organs of the deceased, than she regained movement, opened her eyes, recovered her speech, and cried out aloud that she was resurrected by the merits of Saint Thierry. The news of such a signal miracle spread immediately throughout the palace; the king and queen ran to know the truth of it; they threw themselves at the feet of the blessed abbot and rendered him their thanks: the whole court remained suspended between admiration and joy, and the people showed theirs through the applause and honors that they came in crowds to render to this great Saint. But the king, who wished to give both the holy archbishop and his blessed disciple marks of his gratitude and royal magnificence, donated to the church of Reims the village of Vandières, situated on the Marne; and to the abbey of Saint-Thierry, that of Gaugy, located in the vicinity of Reims, on the sole condition that they would both join their prayers to obtain the blessings of heaven upon his person and his kingdom. Moreover, it is very likely that this miraculous resurrection of the king's daughter preceded the healing of this prince of which we have spoken; but we follow here the history of Flodoard, who reports them in this order.

Moreover, this great Servant of God persevered until death in monastic perfection, and his heart, perfectly detached from the riches and grandeurs of the earth, aspired only to the goods of heaven and the possession of his God. There is no virtue in the Gospel of which he did not show the example before preaching them to others; his charity was so ardent that, wherever he went, he did good to everyone; thus, the wonders he performed in the healing of the sick and the conversion of sinners were so frequent that they had become, as it were, familiar to him. Finally, the time arrived at which he was to receive the reward that the justice of his Judge reserved for his labors and his merits. He departed from this world on the first day of July, in the year 533, and, if we are to believe the first who wrote his history, his beautiful soul was carried into heaven by the ministry of angels. The king, having received the news of his death, was deeply moved by it; he immediately set out with the principal nobility of his court to come and honor the funeral procession with his royal presence; and to give the final marks of his respect and gratitude toward this illustrious abbot, he wished to carry him to the tomb himself, being assisted by three prelates of eminent holiness: Saint Nicet, Archbishop of Trier; Saint Hespert, Bishop of Metz; and Saint Loup, Bishop of Soissons, without allowing anyone else to touch his coffin. After the ceremony, he asked God that his holy remains should never be raised from the earth except in the presence and by the ministry of a king; which God granted him.

## CULT AND RELICS.

Archbishop Adalberon, wishing to remove the relics of Saint Thierry from the sepulcher around the year 976 to place them in a more prominent location and in a silver reliquary, found it impossible to move them until a monk of the place, having given notice of the request that King Thierry had once made to God and of which it seemed one was seeing the fulfillment, this prelate went to beg Ki ng Lothair t roi Lothaire King of Italy and first husband of Adelaide. o be present at this translation. This prince accepted this prayer; and, to make the ceremony even more august, he wished for Queen Emma, his wife and daughter of Lothair II, King of Italy, to attend with him. Thus, the king and queen, full of humility and faith, laid their hands upon the sepulcher of the Saint, which they lifted without any difficulty to place it in the spot destined for it.

The tomb of Saint Thierry has always been a source of miracles. The faithful visit it with great devotion, in imitation of our most Christian kings, who do not fail to go there, as we have said, after they have received the sacred anointing in the cathedral of Reims. Flodoard recounts that a poor woman, having had the temerity to work on a Saturday evening, at which time the solemnity of Sunday began in those days, found the tool she was holding attached so strongly to her hand that it was impossible to separate it. Regret for her fault and the shame of her punishment made her have recourse to Saint Denis, whose relics had been transported to Reims for fear of the Barbarians; but, during her prayer, this great Saint appeared to her with a very joyful face and commanded her to go to the tomb of Saint Thierry, where he assured her she would be delivered from this affliction. Indeed, after she had spent the night there in prayer, the wood that was attached to her hand fell off by itself and left her free; which was seen by several people who were present.

In 1632, the Bishop of Châlons performed the translation of the body of Saint Thierry in Reims into a new gilded silver reliquary, in the presence of the Queen of Austria, wh o was lodged in reine d'Autriche Queen of France who attended the missions of Jean Eudes. the abbatial house of Saint-Thierry. This abbey was united to the archbishopric of Reims in 1696 and suppressed in 1776. As for the relics, they were enclosed in a gilded copper reliquary in 1777 and transferred to the church of Saint-Thierry, where they are still found.

Billy, councilor and member of the king and abbot of Saint-Thierry, wrote the life of this holy Abbot, which he dedicated to Queen Anne of Austria; Flodoard also wrote it.