ON SS. ELENARA AND SPONSARIA VIRGINS AND MARTYRS IN GAUL.
UNDER DIOCLETIAN.
CommentaryElenara, Virgin and Martyr in Gaul (St.) Sponsaria, Virgin and Martyr in Gaul (St.)
G. H.
Centula, the most celebrated monastery among the men of Ponthieu in Picardy, is now commonly from its founder St. Richerius called, as has been largely said on his Life April XXVI. Of this monastery we have some MS. Chronicles, which are called abbreviated, in respect of the greater Chronicle printed in volume 4 of the Acherian Spicilegium, but which with the Acts of St. Gervinus ends. After whom there presided over the said monastery Gervinus II, made afterward Bishop of Amiens. To him is subrogated Ancherus, as in the said abbreviated Chronicles is read, elected in the year MXCVII, while Louis the Fat reigned King of the Franks, The finding of the bodies, and Guido was Count of Ponthieu. This Ancherus in the XVI year of his rule renewed all the caskets and biers of all the Saints and relics here existing. He himself wished to see and know really all things, which were contained in the said caskets, and in one he found … the bodies of the Saints and Martyrs Elenara and Sponsaria, who suffered martyrdom for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ under Rictiovarus, on the sixth Nones of May. So far there. Rictiovarus under Diocletian and Maximian the Emperors very many Christians afflicted with martyrdom in the Gauls. In the greater Chronicle of Centula, by Ariulfus the monk in the eleventh century finished and edited in volume 4 of the Acherian Spicilegium book 3 chapter 29 these are read: Among the merits of so great Blessed and Holy Angilbertus we are fortified by Relics, and by the patronages of the blessed Martyrs of Christ and Virgins Elenara, martyrdom under Rictiovarus. Sponsara we are fostered. But these most blessed Virgins, as much as from earlier ones we have received, were companions and fellow-virgins of B. Macra the Martyr, and together with her by the persecutor Rictiovarus for Christ's name were martyred. The Acts of the martyrdom of St. Macra we gave on January VI: but without any mention of Companions; without whom she also was buried, and found by a certain cowherd Landulphus, whose Teutonic name indicates the time of the finding to be deferred even to the times of the Kings of the Franks, namely of the first stock: for that in place of the old little church of St. Macra a more ample new one was made in the time of Charlemagne, Flodoardus hands down. Which therefore I here note, that by example it may be made likely, that also the bodies of these Saints, by a similar reason were found and translated of old: and by the tradition of elders rather than by the faith of writers it seems received, that under Rictiovarus those women suffered at the same time, at which St. Macra at Soissons contended. Ignatius Joseph de Jesu Maria, in the Ecclesiastical History of the city of Abbeville chapter 82, under Ancherus the XXV Abbot of Centula, makes mention of the said finding, which also Jacobus Malbrancus inserted in book 2 de Morinis chapter 14, and at length Arturus du Monstier on this II of May in the Sacred Gynaeceum reported the same.