Saint Germer of Vardes

Called to the side of Dagobert I (604-638), even more by his merits than by the nobility of his birth, Germer soon gained the trust and friendship of this prince. In council, he made his wisdom and prudence admired; in the midst of the perils of war, he showed courage that was proof against anything. His stay at court and in the camps did not in any way cool his piety: it was further strengthened by the close friendship he formed at the palace with Saint Oue saint Ouen Author of the eulogy and life of Saint Aurea. n an d Saint El saint Éloi Founder of the monastery and spiritual advisor to Saint Aurea. igius. These three virtuous figures, united in the same sentiments of fidelity to God and to their sovereign, worked by common accord for the good of religion and the kingdom. As the king feared that Germer's piety might lead him to leave the world and retire to a monastery, he resolved to engage him in an alliance worthy of his virtues and his rank. Supported by the Saint's close relatives, he succeeded in persuading him to marry Domane or Domaine, a native of La Roche-Guyon, a small town in the Seine-et-Oise department, located three leagues from Mantes.

The death of Dagobert changed nothing in the high position of Germer, who also gained the trust of the new king Clovis II (638- Clovis II King of the Franks under whom Aquilin served in the army. 656). The credit he enjoyed with this prince was not, however, enough to fix him irrevocably at court: the example of Saint Ouen and Saint Eligius, who had consecrated themselves to God, reawakened the desire he had long harbored to leave the world. The three children born of his holy union with Domane were not an obstacle to his design: one of his daughters, already ripe for heaven and worthy of the Spouse of Virgins, died at the moment she was about to receive a mortal spouse; the other consecrated herself to God in a cloister; his young son, Amalbert, led a pure Amalbert Son of Germer and Domane, who died prematurely. and angelic life; his wife herself sighed for the moment when she could, free from all

earthly care, to occupy himself only with the interests of his soul. But his desires met with strong opposition at court: Clovis II did not consent to deprive himself of his counsel. Unable yet to devote himself to the religious state, Germer wished at least to participate in the merits of those who had embraced it, by the foundation of a monastery on his estate of L'Isle, not far from the castle of Vardes. He added a church in honor of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, endowed it with landed property, enriched it with precious relics, and gave it as head a pious abbot named Porchaire. When his soul was weary from the care of temporal affairs, he would come to this asylum to restore its freshness and strength. From Vardes, he sometimes visited the Beauvaisis, where his presence was always marked by generous largesse.

Germer's repeated stays at the monastery of Vardes increased his aversion to the world and his desire for a solitary and hidden life. Soon the king felt a scruple about thwarting the holy vocation of the servant of God any longer. He finally allowed him to leave the court, and Germer went to rejoin his old friend Saint Ouen in Rouen, while Domane, his wife, retired to Gasny, near the tomb of Saint Nicaise.

In order to work more freely toward the acquisition of heavenly treasures, Germer transferred the ownership of his property to his son Amalbert, left his secular attire, and entered th e monas Pentale Place where Germer made his religious profession and became abbot. tery of Pentale or Pentalion (Pantalum, Pentale). As his virtues and the generous sacrifice he had just made could serve as his novitiate, Saint Ouen admitted him immediately to religious profession. By the way in which the Blessed one fulfilled his new duties, one would have said that he had been trained for several years in the life of the cloister. Dead to his own will and to his passions, he obeyed with punctuality the slightest prescriptions of the Rule, and exercised sovereign control over his senses. Thus, when the abbot of the monastery had rendered his soul to God, the religious of Pentale hastened to place themselves under his guidance, hoping to find in him, along with the wisdom of an enlightened and prudent guide, the tender solicitude of a father. Their expectation was not disappointed. Germer had at heart, above all, to lead them to perfection by the strength of his examples more than by that of his discourses. He walked first in the path he exhorted them to follow; he did not urge them to practice anything other than what he practiced himself, and imposed upon them no burden of which he did not carry the heaviest part. His abstinence was very rigorous; a single meal, in the evening, with ship's biscuit and a few vegetables, sufficed to restore his strength; salted water served as his drink.

Unfortunately, as tares are too often found mixed with the wheat, some false brothers, who wished to taste the delights of the world within the cloister, came to bring trouble and desolation to the heart of the community of Pentale. These wretches, seeing in the humble and mortified life of Germer the condemnation of their laxity, added to the forgetting of the spirit of their state the crime of an infamous attempt against the life of the Saint. They hid a knife under the covers of his bed, point upward, so that Germer could not, upon lying down, avoid inflicting a mortal wound upon himself. But the pious abbot, contrary to his custom and undoubtedly inspired by the Spirit of God, probed his bed before getting into it and discovered the treacherous trap that had been set for him. Immediately, gratitude led him to go to the church, where he thanked God, shedding tears, for having extended His protective hand over him. That very day, he gathered his religious, and, without speaking of the danger he had just escaped, he made known to them the resolution he had taken to leave his duties. It was in vain that the community threw themselves at his feet, imploring him to reconsider his resolution: he laid down his authority and retired to a nearby cave that the prayers of Samson had once delivered from an enormous serpent. There, he gave himself over to an austere and mortified life, offering the divine sacrifice every day, which he never finished without shedding an abundance of tears. For five years and three months, he led the penitent life of the first anchorites in his cave, working for the expiation of his faults, praying for sinners, and calling the many pilgrims who came to visit him to the contempt of the world and the fear of the judgments of God. The illustrious solitary intended to leave his narrow dwelling only when God would call him to receive the crown of the elect, but a very bitter trial was reserved for him. One day, a messenger came to bring him the news that his son Amalbert had died. This holy young man, while returning from Gascony with the king, had been suddenly struck by a serious illness; he soon expired, to the great regret of the sovereign, the princes, and the nobles, but to the great joy of the angels who opened their holy ranks to receive him. At this news, the faith of the Christian overcame the tenderness of the father in Germer; he cried out: "O my God, You have been merciful to me in deigning to receive my son into Your glory"; then he went to meet the funeral procession of Amalbert, which the king and the nobles of the court were attending. He met the funeral cortege in the territory of the diocese of Beauvais, led his son's body to the monastery of L'Isle, and remained near this dear and precious deposit.

Having become master of his fortune again upon the death of Amalbert, Germer resolved to dedicate it to the God who would return it to him in eternal and incorruptible treasures. In order to give it the most useful destination for the glory of religion and the salvation of souls, he sought the counsel of Saint Ouen. This prelate came to find the Blessed one at the monastery of L'Isle, where together they settled on the project of building a vast abbey. As, after three days devoted to prayer and fasting, they were searching for a location in the woods and heaths of the Bray, a p lace Flay Principal monastery founded by Germer in the Pays de Bray. bearing the name of Flay caught their eyes. "A cloud," says an ancient legend, "hovered above this solitude, and covered it with a mysterious veil. Having taken a few steps, they heard distinctly a voice which, from the bosom of the cloud, said: 'This ground has been blessed and sanctified for forty years in favor of Germer, who must populate it with a multitude of religious; his community will be prosperous, as long as the holy rules are observed there.' They were still listening when the cloud dissipated. At the same time, a dew fell from it which moistened the contours of this plain, and described around it a geometric line. Saint Ouen took a rod, measured the surface of the land, exhorted his friend to pursue the execution of a work so visibly pleasing to God, and took the road back to his diocese.

Henceforth settled on the choice of the place where he was to build his monastery, Germer set to work immediately. He first laid the foundations of a church in honor of the Holy Trinity, the Blessed Virgin, Saint John, and Saint Peter, and abandoned to it all the goods he possessed. Around this church, he successively raised the buildings of the abbey and other edifices intended for the trades that were to be practiced within the interior of this establishment: he thus wished to free the religious from the necessity of spreading themselves outside, and to remove them from the dangers inseparable from the commerce of the world. The works were executed with great rapidity, and, in a short time, the desert of Flay found itself transformed into a flourishing abbey. Germer, who was its first abbot, gave his community th Règle de Saint-Benoît Monastic rule adopted by Germer for the Abbey of Flay. e Rule of Saint Benedict, under which, each day, new disciples came to strive to imitate the virtues of their blessed founder.

After having devoted three and a half years to the consolidation of the work he had just founded, Germer was taken from the veneration and love of his religious. He died on September 24, around the year 658, in his fiftieth year, and was buried in the church of his monastery. The Saint left a memory in these regions that is still blessed. The Beauvaisis has forgotten neither his virtues nor his good deeds. If Germer moved away from it for some time, he wished to give it his last breath and his final blessings. The mourning that his death caused the religious of Flay was softened by the miracles that followed it: if they had lost a father, they had gained a powerful protector in heaven. Saint Germer is depicted in the company of Saint Domane, his wife, and Saint Amalbert, their son.

## CULT AND RELICS. — ABBEY OF FLAY.

The relics of Saint Germer remained for about two hundred years in the church of the monastery of Flay, which they graced with several miracles. Near the tomb that contained them, the blind, the lame, the deaf, and other sick people received their healing. They disappeared from there at the time of th e Norman invasion. Th invasion des Normands Military threat in 887 that prompted the transfer of relics to Dijon. e canons, who had then succeeded the religious, took them with them when they retreated to Beauvais and placed them in one of the highest towers of the city. However, the community of Flay was not dissolved: it gathered around the blessed remains of its illustrious Founder and continued to celebrate the divine office in that place, according to the prescriptions of its Rule. After the death of the religious, the priests charged with the same duty performed it with culpable negligence; the body of Saint Germer was, by order of the cathedral clergy, transported to the church of Saint-Pierre and deposited in a reliquary more worthy of the blessed Confessor.

From the heights of heaven, Saint Germer watched over the city that had welcomed his relics with such pious veneration. Often, he brought down beneficial rains upon its fields desolate from drought and restored its sick to health. The inhabitants of Beauvais also attributed to him the favor of having escaped the scourge known as the mal des ardents or ho ly fire: they w mal des ardents Epidemic from which the inhabitants of Beauvais were preserved through the saint's intercession. ere spared, while the peoples of Gaul, decimated by this formidable plague, went from sanctuary to sanctuary to ask for help against its attacks. They owed this, no doubt, to the fact that, upon the approach of the scourge, they had addressed fervent supplications to the Saint and carried his relics solemnly around the city, both inside and outside its walls.

This visible protection determined some of the bishops of Beauvais to render new honors to the Blessed one. In addition to his feast day on September 24, they began to celebrate another on May 20, for which Jean de Nointel, legate of the Holy See, instituted prayers of thanksgiving. In the year 1132, Pierre de Dammartin, Bishop of Beauvais, deposited the relics of the Saint in an elegant and rich reliquary, built with gifts granted by the pious liberality of Christians. Régnier, a canon of the cathedral, sold a portion of his tableware and consecrated the proceeds to the construction of this reliquary. This translation took place, along with that of several other Saints, in the presence of Gosselin de Vierzi, Bishop of Soissons, Eudes, Abbot of Saint-Germer, and a large number of abbots and ecclesiastics from the diocese of Beauvais and neighboring regions. On that day, Eudes obtained a relic of Saint Germer and transported it solemnly to his monastery, accompanied by his religious and a multitude of the faithful. This translation was marked by several miraculous healings.

The precious relics of Saint Germer were destroyed, along with many other monuments of the respect and piety of our fathers, by the Vandals of 1793. But, if impiety was able to make them disappear, it has not annihilated the devotion and confidence of the people of Beauvais toward their powerful and glorious Patron.

As for the Abbey of Flay, it experienced great disasters under Charles Martel (714-741), and, in the middle of the 9th century, at the hands of the Normans. The government of the religious was succeeded by that of military leaders and canons (831). Its total ruin was consummated in 906; at that time, a new band of Normans, led by Rollo, destroyed it from top to bottom. The revenues of its properties, which had been granted to the Bishopric of Beauvais since the first invasion of the barbarians, remained united there until the 14th century. In 1036, Drogon, one of the most illustrious pontiffs of Beauvais, finally raised it from its ruins, gave it the name of Saint-Germer, and established there religious from Saint-Maur-des-Fossés. The re-establishment of the abbey caused great joy to the inhabitants of this region. "They believed they were seeing again," says M. Delettre, "the beautiful days of religion; and the example, so new to them, of a life exclusively devoted to God inspired them with the courage to better fulfill their duties as Christians. Striking conversions did not take long to occur, and persons accustomed until then to the delights of the world renounced everything and solicited as a grace the permission to build themselves a cell outside the walls of the monastery, to devote themselves to the service of the community, contenting themselves with a coarse habit and food that came to them from inside the convent. The mother of Guibert, Abbot of Nogent; the sister of Suger, Abbot of Saint-Denis; the wife of Guillaume, Lord of Hénouville; that of Gérard, Lord of Hanxole, and a great number of other ladies of quality renounced the world, and donned the habit of lay sisters, to live in retreat, in the shadow of the walls of the new abbey. In the 16th century, the English first, then the Burgundians, dealt it new blows. To all these evils succeeded the commendam, followed closely by the heresy of Calvin. Finally, in 1643, Augustin Potier restored its ancient reputation for virtue and science by incorporating it into the Congregation of Saint-Maur. This reform took place under the famous Abbot François Tiercelin de Bresse, protonotary of the Holy See. This same abbot organized there, in 1686, a college for the free education of poor gentlemen. He placed his own apartments at their disposal. Other children were also admitted there.

We have borrowed this biography from the Life of the Saints of the Diocese of Beauvais, by Abbé Sabatier.