The Latin Life of *Medard (bishop of Vermand buried at Soissons, ob. c. 560, S00168), possibly by Venantius Fortunatus, briefly recounts the life of the saint and records miracles during his lifetime, at his funeral and at his grave. Written in northern Gaul, possibly in 595/612.
E06474
Literary - Hagiographical - Lives
The Life of Medard, Bishop of Noyon (Vita sancti Medardi episcopi Noviomensis, BHL 5864, CPL 1049)
Summary:
Chaps. 1. The author praises the ever-spreading fame of Medard, and mentions the crowds that attend the feast of his deposition/burial, and expresses the need to write a worthy account of his life.
Chap. 2. Medard's birth and early years. His father was a Frank ‘not low in liberty’ (non … infimus libertate). His mother was a Roman (mater vero Romana). He was born and grew up in the Vermandois (Veromandensi territurio).
When a youth (adulescens) at school, Medard gave to a blind man a cloak which his mother had made. When watching his parent’s flock, he goes hungry, giving his own food to the needy. Like a prophet (quasi propheta), Medard predicts that another child, Eleutherius, will become a bishop, which indeed happens when the latter becomes bishop of Tournai.
Chap. 3. Enters the priesthood. Growing up, Medard turns his mind and his behaviour towards the priesthood, and is noted by the bishop and by all. He is composed, meek, obedient and compassionate to the poor. He becomes a presbyter and begins to publicly display his sanctity.
Chap. 4. The Miracle of the Grapes. During autumn a thief attempts at night to steal grapes from a vineyard, but having hacked at a vine, is imprisoned by the vines themselves when they grow up as a palisade around him. Medard, prescient, comes and frees the man. Medard’s vengeance was so fierce that he pardoned the thief and gave him grapes himself.
Chap. 5. The Miracle of the Bees. A thief who steals honey from some hives is punished by being pursued and stung by the bees until he returns it to the saint, who pardons him too.
Chap. 6. The Miracle of the Bell. A man steals a cowbell, preventing it from ringing by stopping it up with grass. Despite this, the bell miraculously begins ringing, frightening the thief so much that he repents and returns his plunder to Medard. Only then does the bell stop. Medard forgives him, and lets him take the bell.
Chap. 7. Retrieves plunder. The army of King Chlothar [r. 511-561] passes through the region, from the Somme (Sumina) to the Oise (Isara) [i.e. from north to south] plundering, but then miraculously is unable to move for three days, until Medard is visited at Salency (Silentiacum). Once the plunder has been surrendered, the army is able to proceed,
Chap 8. The Miracle of the Pigs. Certain pigs of Medard, taken out in search of acorns, were stolen by wicked men. They found their way back to him, unguided and from a long way away.
Chap. 9. An exorcism, and Medard becomes bishop. Medard exorcises a demon from a man named Tosio, and on the death of the bishop of Vermand is chosen to succeed him.
Chap. 10. His episcopacy and death. He serves for fifteen years, continually battling the devil, resisting trickery, and maintaining a saintly way of life. He would have been a martyr, 'but there was no-one to strike him down' (nisi quod percussor corporis defuit). Then, worn out by his long life, he exchanges this life for heaven.
Chap. 11. Miracles at his death. The presbyter Wilcharius recounts how, at the moment of his death, the heavens opened, heavenly lights shone around his body for about three hours, and a great rainstorm broke.
Chap. 12. The deaf man is cured at his funeral. Chlothar has his body brought to Soissons. As it is being carried a deaf man kisses the cloth covering the body and is cured.
Chap. 13. Miracles at his grave. A fine tomb is built over his grave, and it would be tedious to enumerate the many miracles that occur there. A paralysed man is wholly cured.
Chap. 14. More miracles. Chained prisoners are freed there, and those who have lost the use of their limbs regain it.
Chap. 15. Conclusion. The blind regain their sight. The author says that it would take too long to recount all the miracles that occur there. He asks the saint to grant King Theudebert [= Theudebert II, r. 595-612] a long and successful reign, and to grant repose to King Sigebert [r. 561-575], who so greatly enlarged his church.
One manuscript then has this closing sentence: 'The presbyter Fortunatus wrote this Life or Deeds of Saint Medard' (FORTVNATVS praesbiter conposuit haec vita vel actus sancti Medardi).
Text: Krusch 1885, 67-73.
Summary: George Langston and Bryan Ward-Perkins
Saint’s feast
Cult PlacesCult building - independent (church)
Burial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Non Liturgical ActivityVisiting graves and shrines
Composing and translating saint-related texts
MiraclesMiracle during lifetime
Miracle after death
Specialised miracle-working
Punishing miracle
Miracle with animals and plants
Healing diseases and disabilities
Freeing prisoners, exiles, captives, slaves
Miraculous protection - of people and their property
Exorcism
RelicsBodily relic - entire body
Contact relic - cloth
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesSoldiers
Prisoners
The socially marginal (beggars, prostitutes, thieves)
Monarchs and their family
Source
The composition of this Life is readily and reliably dated to the reign of Theudebert II (595-612) through the invocation of divine help for this king in its concluding chapter (15), but its authorship is uncertain and disputed: some arguing that it is the work of Venantius Fortunatus, who also wrote a poem describing miracles of Medard (Poem 2.16; E05641); others that it is by an unknown contemporary.Its earliest surviving manuscript (but this manuscript alone) ends with a sentence telling us that the Life was written by Fortunatus (Krusch 1885, 73); it is, however, universally accepted that this statement is an interpolation and not in itself to be trusted.
Krusch, the editor of the Life for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, vehemently rejected an attribution to Fortunatus, rightly pointing out that there is a discrepancy between the Life's account (in Chap. 12) of a deaf man (surdus) being cured at the funeral of Medard and Fortunatus' account in his poem (at lines 65-77) of a blind man (caecus) being cured on this same occasion, and arguing that stylistically Fortunatus could not have sunk so low as to write this work: 'The Life is written in a language so barbarous, that for this reason it cannot be the work of this most elegant poet' (sermone Vita scripta est tam barbaro, ut poetae elegantissimo vel ob eam causam abiudicanda est) (Krusch 1885, pp. xxv-xxvi). Some authoritative voices have agreed with Krusch (e.g. Roberts 2009, p. 181, note 47).
However, other scholars who work on Fortunatus have argued that he wrote his Lives in a different register from his Poems (because the former were aimed at a much wider audience), and have either been uncertain over the authorship of the Life (e.g. Labarre 2012 and Gomez 2017), or have argued that it was written by Fortunatus. The German scholar Richard Collins, in particular, took up cudgels in defence of Fortunatus' authorship, stating in 1981: 'I have prepared a philological and thematic analysis of this text in defence of its authenticity (forthcoming)' (Collins 1981, p. 120, note 26; note 24 of the German text of this article). Sadly, this study never appeared, and the authorship of the Life remains an unresolved question.
Discussion
Unusually, we know something of a written source that probably lay behind the details of many of the miracles outlined in this Life. Gregory of Tours, writing about Medard, probably in the period 587/588 (and so before the writing of our Life), tells us of a 'book written about his miracles' (scriptum de mirabilibus eius librum), perhaps a record of wonders that occurred at Medard's grave, which was kept at the shrine (Gregory, Glory of the Confessors 93; E02751).The Life is somewhat strange to a modern reader, in that it passes over Medard's episcopacy in two short sentences, with no mention of any achievements or notable events. There is, for instance, no reference to the one well-known event of his episcopacy: his reception of Radegund into the monastic life (for which see Venantius Fortunatus' Life of Radegund, chapter 12; E06486). Instead our Life of Medard concentrates almost exclusively on describing the saint's miracles. This fact, however, does not preclude Fortunatus' authorship, indeed it perhaps lends it some support: in other Lives, which were certainly authored by him, Fortunatus tells us almost nothing about the deeds of his protagonists, listing instead their miracles at some length (see, for instance, his Lives of Germanus of Paris, and of Radegund of Poitiers: E06714 and E06486).
Two details in the Life are worth noting. Firstly, the fact that Medard is said to have been a Frank on his father's side, which makes him, we believe, the first saint in Gaul who can reliably be said to have been a Frank; this may perhaps have played some part in his popularity with Frankish kings. Secondly, the unusual string of notably rural and agricultural miracles attributed to Medard before he became a bishop (in Chapters 4-8), the majority involving the exposing and forgiving of a thief. In Chapter 14 our author goes on to record Medard's role after death as a freer of prisoners, and Gregory of Tours in Glory of the Confessors 93 (E02751) mentions the piles of fetters he has seen by the saint's grave - it is possible that Medard was seen as having something of a specialist role in forgiving and redeeming prisoners.
It is not certain where the bishopric Medard presided over was based during his episcopacy: its seat may have been Vermand, but could also have been Saint-Quentin; by 614 it had settled at Noyon (Pietri and Heijmans 2013, 1311-12, 'Medardus 1').
Bibliography
Edition:Krusch, B., Vita sancti Medardi, in:Venanti Honori Clementiani Fortunati presbyteri Italici opera pedestria (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores antiquissimi 4.2; Berlin, 1885), 67-73.
Further reading:
Collins, R., "Observations on the Form, Language, and Public of the Prose Biographies of Venantius Fortunatus in the Hagiography of Merovingian Gaul", in: H.B. Clarke and M. Brennan (eds.), Columbanus and Merovingian Monasticism (British Archaeological Reports : Oxford, 1981), 105-131. (An English translation of an article originally published in German in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 92 (1981), 16-38.)
Gomez, C., ‘L’attribution de la Vita Sancti Medardi à Venance Fortunat: une approche narrative de la question’, in ed. C. Bernard-Valette, Nihil Veritas Erubescit: Mélanges offerts à Paul Mattei par ses élèves, collègues et amis (Turnhout, 2017), 313-24.
Labarre, S., ‘L’écriture du miracle dans la poésie élégiaque de Venance Fortunat’, in ed. O. Biaggini, Miracles d’un autre genre: récritures médiévales en dehors de l’hagiographie (Madrid, 2012), 191-206.
Pietri, L. and Heijmans, M., Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire, 4 Prosopographie de la Gaule chrétienne (314-614), 2 vols. (Paris 2013).
Roberts, M., The Humblest Sparrow: The Poetry of Venantius Fortunatus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009), 180-187.
George Langston, Bryan Ward-Perkins
2/08/2021
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00168 | Medard, bishop of Vermand buried at Soissons, ob. c. 560 | Medardus | Certain |
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