http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/issue/31st-august-1895/6/68861/a-forgotten-english-saint

The news, so welcome to Catholics and to Irishmen, which has just come to us from the holy city, of the recent examination by the Sacred Congregation of Rites into the claims of Thaddeus McCarthy, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne to the cultus shown him from time immemorial at the place of his death and burial, reminds us of a somewhat similar investigation which took place at Rome not many years since during the Pontificate of Pio Nono. For four long centuries has the Irish bishop and exile lain in his quiet shrine at Ivrea awaiting the authoritative sanction of the Church for that general honour which the piety of those who had been witnesses of his saintly death and the marvels wrought at his tomb had long ago anticipated. Yet our English St. Avertin had yet longer to wait for the solemn and public recognition by the Holy See of his claims to the public veneration of the faithful ; for seven hundred years elapsed between his death and the promulgation of the decision of the Congregation of Rites confirming the cultus which had long been paid him in many parts of France.

The history of our Saint is not so free from difficulty as we could wish ; nay, the difficulty begins with his very name, for there is reason to believe that that by which the saintly

Gilbertine is known and honoured was not the name he bore in life.* The memoir which M. Antony Roullet, member of the Archxological Society of Touraine (Tours, 1881), has devoted to the history of St. Avertin exposes in considerable detail the reasons for this doubt ; nor unfortunately, so far as can be at present ascertained, do our accessible English records give us any assistance in clearing up this initial mystery. Following the short life of St. Avertin given us by the Bollandists, and the information contained in the proper office of the Saint sanctioned for use in the diocese of Tours, we will briefly lay before our readers the few known facts of a holy career which impressed itself so deeply on the minds of the faithful in central France that to this day his memory is held in benediction.

" Born of very noble parents in Great Britain," St. Avertin first comes before us in connection with St. Thomas Becket. At what period he became a personal attendant on the great prelate who was so soon to glorify the Church of Canterbury by his illustrious martyrdom we have no means of knowing. As our Saint is said to have been a Canon Regular of the Order of St. Gilbert of Sempringham, it may very possibly have been during those early days of the Archbishop's flight when, after his secret departure from Northampton, he was in hiding among the Gilbertines in the fens of Lincolnshire. St. Thomas and St. Gilbert were fast friends, and it was one of St. Gilbert's spiritual sons who guided the Primate's steps when he rose at night from his couch in the priory church of St. Andrew at North-ampton to betake himself to Lincoln. Thence with his trusty companion St. Thomas made his way by boat for forty miles to a secluded cell among the swamps, where he abode in safety for three days among the Canons who had made those watery wastes their own. Their priory at Haverolot, near Boston, was his next resting-place, and thence he made his way, travelling by night for fear of recognition, till he reached the Kentish coast and passed unharmed to France. Perhaps the brother of St. Gilbert's Order who bore him company in the early part of his flight was the holy man known afterwards as St. Avertin, who, according to the French tradition, was at the Saint of Canterbury's side at the Council of Tours in 1163. From Tours our Saint was sent by the great Archbishop as his messenger to Rome, whither Pope Alexander III. had retired after the Council, there to watch over the interests of the Church of England, over which St. Thomas ruled, and to frustrate the schemes of the creatures of Henry II. who were untiring in their masters' service.

For seven years St. Avertin shared St. Thomas' exile; and when peace was at last patched up betwixt King and Primate, he returned once more to England. But not for long ; the murder of his friend filled his soul with loathing, and St. Avertin withdrew once more to the hospitable land of Touraine, endeared to him as the resting-place of the great St. Martin of Tours, and now enriched anew by association with the memory of the friend he had so lately lost. Henceforth he would pass his life in solitude ; and he found a quiet resting-place in the woods of Cange in the parish of Vencay, not far from Tours. His holiness could not escape the notice of the hosts of pilgrims ever flocking to the shrine of St. Martin ; and our Saint seeing in this an indication of the Divine Will, gave himself up generously to their service, assisting them in every priestly way for the remaining ten years of his life. He died on the 5th of May, 118o, and was laid to rest in the Church of St. Peter, where he had so long ministered. The popular voice at once proclaimed his sanctity; his aus-terities and the unremitting labours of his declining years, added to the graces which in life and after death had been granted through his intercession, procured him the honours of a popular canonization. Crowds flocked to Vencay, more especially on Easter Tuesday, and on the 5th of May, the anniversary of his death. His name superseded St.

Peter's as titular of the parish church, and by the end of the 14th century the village itself had become known as Saint Avertin. There our English Saint lay in honour, visited by many whom devotion attracted to the world- * The name of Avertin is unknown to Canon Robertson, the learned editor of the Materials for the history of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. M. Roullet thinks it probable that the name was popularly given to the saint of Vencay on account of his frequent cures of those afflicted with vertigo, headache, wrongheadedness, and craziness ; "s'avertiner,pour s'enfeter." But the investigation is profitless and unnecessary. _ _ famous shrine of St. Martin in the great city hard by, till the Huguenots came in their madness and scattered his sacred remains, leaving the village but its name and the tradition of other days to remind them of the Saint who had laid his bones among them. The chapel of the Saint, which had been rebuilt by the Conningham or Connicham family, Seigneurs of Cange in 149o, appears, however, to have been spared.

The cultus of St. Avertin was not confined to Vencay. The Church of Luigny (Maine et Loire) still bears his name ; so does a parochial church at Tours, but it seems possible that in this case the Gilbertine Saint has usurped the honours once paid there to St. Aventin, a holy Bishop of Chartres, who died in the fifth century, and is honoured on the 4th of February. Our English Saint is secondary - patron of the Church and Parish of Bougival (Seine et Oise) near Paris, where the sole remaining relic of the Saint was preserved till it disappeared at the 'French Revolution, and a confraternity in his honour of unknown antiquity maintained itself among the gardeners and labouring men of the locality till about thirty years ago. Chapels in his honour are to be found in the Churches of St. Maurillus at Angers, and of St. Nicholas at Sanmur ; his image may be seen in the choir of St. Peter's in the same town ; he enjoys a particular cultus at Ecoman, in the parish of Vievy (Loir et Cher) ; at Rallai, near Morton, in the diocese of Poitiers, there is a pilgrimage chapel called by his name, which still has its attractions for the devout. The holy wells of St. Avertin at Luigny and Rallai are much frequented, and not in vain, by those afflicted with sore eyes and headache ; and this is probably the reason why the Saint is usually represented in Christian art as holding his hand to his head, or touching the head of the suppliant before him. Perhaps, too, this may explain why parents troubled by noisy or turbulent children were accustomed, " les vouer St. Avertin," to ensure their good behaviour.

The Feast of the Saint was almost everywhere observed on May 5, the day of his decease. We find it on that day in the Angevin Missals of 1523-1533 ; in the Breviary of the great Abbey of Fontevrault, in the Proper of the Diocese of Tours, and in the old Graduals of Versailles and Paris. At Bougival, where the feast was formerly cele-brated on the 1zth, it is now kept, as elsewhere, on May 5.

With the concession by Rome of a proper office of St. Avertin to the See of Tours, in August, 1857, the popular devotion to the Saint was greatly strengthened ; a crowd of four thousand people attended the restoration of his statue to the Parish Church of Luigny, May 8, 1859, and the act of Pope Pius IX., of September 1 in the same year, declaring him patron of the parish, set the final seal of authority to an uninterrupted cultus of nearly seven cen-turies.

With these few lines about a Saint whose name is almost unheard of among his own countrymen, we conclude our brief notes on the life and public veneration of St. Avertin, the Gilbertine. Very possibly some scholarly lovers of our national hagiography may be able to throw more light on a name and a career which has for some years engaged the attention of enthusiastic investigators in the land of the Saint's adoption.