ON ST. SIMILINUS, OR SIMILIANUS, BISHOP OF NANTES IN GAUL
4TH CENTURY.
HISTORICAL COLLECTION
From St. Gregory of Tours, on his ancient cult; and the conjectures of more recent writers.
Similinus or Similianus, Bishop of Nantes, in Gaul (S.)
G. H.
Known are the people of Nantes, and their ancient city, in that part of old Gaul, In Gregory of Tours, [his Memory] which is called with Britain the Lesser, or Armorica, on the river Loire, of which we treated on the 24th of May at the Acts of Saints Donatian and Rogatian, crowned under Diocletian. Of these together and of St. Similinus there is illustrious mention in St. Gregory Bishop of Tours, in the book On the Glory of the Martyrs, chapter 60, in these words: "At the city of Nantes two Martyrs are there, slaughtered for the name of Christ: of whom one was called Rogatian, the other Donatian. There is held there also St. Similinus the great Confessor. Therefore when the aforesaid city in the time of King Clovis was hemmed in by a barbarian siege, the besieged City freed through him and other saints. and already sixty days had passed in this distress; about the middle of the night there appeared to the peoples men with white garments, with radiant wax candles, going out from the basilica of the blessed Martyrs; and behold another choir similar to this proceeding from the basilica of the Bishop Similinus. And when, joining themselves, a greeting given, they had bent to prayer; each one withdrew to the place whence he had come forth: and immediately the whole hostile phalanx, terrified with immense fear, so suddenly departed from the place with an onset, that, when day came, none of them could be found. The aforesaid vision appeared to a certain Chillo, who then was in command of this army, who was not yet reborn of water and the Holy Spirit: who, immediately pricked in heart, converted to the Lord, begotten by a repeated nativity, testified with a clear voice that Christ is the son of the living God." These things St. Gregory of Tours says in the sixth century of Christ, from which we know that under Clovis the first about the year five hundred, The name in ancient Martyrologies on this day: St. Similinus the Bishop of Nantes had already a basilica erected before that time, and we have confirmed his ancient veneration, which is also established from ancient Martyrologies. And first in the Lucca transcript of the Hieronymian Martyrology on this 16th of June toward the end these adjoined things are read: "In the city of Nantes the birthday of St. Similinus, or Similianus"; as it is written in the Epternach and Corbie transcripts. Then followed Usuard, Ado, Bellinus, and other more recent writers everywhere with these words: "In the city of Nantes the feast of St. Similianus, Bishop and Confessor." He has there a church and a suburb of his name, commonly Saint-Sembein. In the Roman Martyrology it is added, that Nantes is in Britain the lesser. In the Cathedral Church there is venerated on this 16th of June the feast of Saints Quiricus and Julitta the Martyrs with a double rite, and the feast of St. Similianus is transferred to the following day, the 17th of June, now he is venerated on the 17th. and then these things about him are recited in the second Nocturn at Matins.
[2] "Similianus, Bishop of Nantes, shining with every kind of virtue, when he had faithfully ruled his Church with Pastoral vigilance, migrated to heaven. But his body the Christians buried in that place, where afterward a basilica was built in his name. in the church of his name, Which, overthrown by the long devastation of the Northmen, in the time of Bishop Walter was granted to the Canons of Nantes by hereditary right, that they might restore it. But in that basilica there exists a well, into which the head of the holy Pontiff Similianus is said to have been cast by the Pagans: of whose water the sick gladly drinking, received the desired health. A certain woman, while she once gazed into this well, was immediately stricken in her eyes. where there is a well, salutary to the sick from the touch of the sacred head. But brought to the church on the feast day of St. Similianus the year having come round, when through the whole night she had entreated his help, the solemnities of the Masses completed, with full faith drinking of this water, and washing her eyes, she received the sight, which by her rashness she had lost, by the merits of the holy Pontiff. He also freed the city of Nantes, besieged by the Pagans, by his patronage." These things there. The rest are taken from the eulogy of Gregory of Tours, and reported by us above. And these are the more certain things about St. Similianus.
[3] Andrew Saussay Andrew Saussay in his Gallican Martyrology, indulging much in youthful eloquence and a propensity to conjectures, on this 16th of June wove this eulogy, asserting many things, worthy to be proven by a weightier Author. Read and judge: "On the very day, at Nantes in Armorica, the feast of St. Similianus Bishop and Confessor, who under the most savage principate of Diocletian and Maximian bearing intrepidly the helm of the mystical ship, shaken by most grievous waves and horrid blasts, into serene airs by a happy rowing directed the bark entrusted to him. For the storms being overcome, the first in this city of the Bishops [he] beheld the splendid noon of the Christian religion, empurpled by the bloods of so many martyrs: whose peace too by pious sweats he merited. For not once, while the ferocity of the impious burned more hotly, did the good Shepherd, to cover and protect his sheep, cast himself before the rabid wolves: whose dire wraths against himself he often endured, [yet] by God's help always overcame or escaped. The glorious champions of Christ, falling in these struggles, Donatian and Rogatian, the most holy Bishop buried with his own hands, and with fitting honor performed their funeral. At last, having discharged his glorious labors, the Church brought into tranquility, and illustrated by the wondrous merits of his sanctity, the holy man, a candidate of eternal peace, rested in the Lord. The Church of Nantes venerates his venerable bones with a cult the more lavish, the closer the bond of devout remembrance by which it confesses itself bound to him: for by his and the aforesaid Martyrs' protections it perennially recalls that this very city was long ago freed from the fury of the besieging barbarians."
[4] Albert le Grand in the Lives of the Saints of Brittany Armorica, published in French, also inserted the Acts of St. Similianus, in which, using a similar liberty, first he asserts that St. Donatian was converted by him, and baptized; that his brother Rogatian too, and Albert le Grand add other things, was likewise converted by him, and also initiated with holy baptism. We published the Acts of these Martyrs on the 24th of May without any mention of St. Similianus; on the mere congruity of the time, in which he is thought to have lived, rests the whole Office, which the holy Bishop is presumed, without a witness, to have expended on them. Secondly the same Albert asserts that the Body of St. Similianus, soon after his death, buried outside the city in an Oratory erected there, shone with several miracles, and not long after a church was built there over the sepulcher and dedicated by Eumelius, his successor in the Bishopric; likewise that the Sacred body was elevated, and from it the head separated and laid up within a chest excellently adorned in the treasury of the Church, but the rest of the bones enclosed in a stone sepulcher: and there visited even by pilgrims coming from afar.
D. P.
[5] There is need of a long chain of conjectures, and as it were of many grappling-hooks, that from St. Gregory of Tours, who alone hitherto is set forth as author, all these things may be drawn out or elicited, and others which I pass over, which both these Writers set forth with such assurance, from mere conjectures. as if they had found them most plainly written in most certain monuments. But this being rather often observed, the faith of each cannot but greatly waver with sensible readers; upon whom by examples of this kind a certain necessity is imposed of fearing, lest many other Lives of the Saints have been patched together by a similar license of conjecturing: but as it is not the part of a prudent man to believe anything whatever; so neither to accuse anything of fiction before a serious examination led through the several parts of the proposed narration. But doing this in the present work, we do not fear, lest we prejudge all the Acts of the Saints universally, as some think; but we believe we deserve well of each, by distinguishing the degrees of certitude or probability, in which each is to be placed. But as regards conjectures, we are so far from rejecting them, that we judge they should often usefully and sometimes necessarily be employed, while the truth is sought, not otherwise to be found than through investigation: but conjectures we wish to be proposed as conjectures, and to be distinguished from truth ascertained as certain: which if the aforesaid two Authors had always done, they would have consulted better both for themselves and for the Saints.
[6] Albert therefore, of whom we treat, could, as a conjecture, propose that St. Similianus died in the year 310; and expound the foundations of the conjecture, Meanwhile the cult remains certain. if he had any, to the judgment of the Reader; but he could not absolutely define anything. Further, while we do not see a suitable argument for founding a conjecture for such a year, we are content to define the century, in which it must be that the holy Bishop departed, who is not said to have died a Martyr, and yet in the 6th century had a church of his name celebrated for miracles; in which this Prayer about him, at his very feast, is recited every year: "Almighty everlasting God, who hast taught us to venerate the solemnities of Blessed Similianus, thy Confessor and Bishop; grant propitiously, that by his merits and prayers we may merit to come to the eternal joys." How the same St. Similianus, Bishop of Nantes, was inscribed in the monastic Martyrology of Arnold Wion, we say among the Passed-Over saints, and we detect his and others' errors.