Saint Gundelbert

Having reached the Vosges mountains, he stopped and resolved to settle in a place bristling with forests, completely uninhabited and watered by a small river which, due to the rapidity of its current, was named the Rabode. Informed that this place was in the domain of Childeric II, King of Austrasia, he went to ask this prince for permission to build a dwelling there, which he obtained along with the complete cession of an area of land to which Dom Calmet assigns a circumference of fifteen leagues (60 kilometers). The diploma that secures this royal concession for Gundelbert dates from the year 661. Soon the new solitaries, following their leader, had felled centuries-old trees, brought into cultivation a space of land which they made fertile, and built a monastery to which the holy archbishop gave the name of the city he had inhabited: Sens, in Latin Senonae, from which Senones Monastery founded by the saint in the Vosges. Senones was derived in French.

In his 19th opuscule, entitled: *On the Abdication of the Episcopate*, addressed to Pope Nicholas II, Saint Peter Da saint Pierre Damien Bishop and Doctor of the Church who provided details on the life of Fridolin. mian expresses himself thus regarding our

Saint: What shall I say of Gundelbert, that illustrious archbishop of Sens? Burning with a celestial desire, he left the Church that had been entrusted to him, in order to build, in a place named Grandiacium, the monastery of Senones, which he named thus after the name of the diocese he had previously administered.

The time and place of Saint Gundelbert's passing remained undetermined for a long time; even today, they are known only by approximation. Richer limits himself to saying: "But because nothing certain is found regarding his burial, I have preferred to write nothing about it rather than to raise a doubtful matter for posterity, notwithstanding that some maintain he rests with others of his holy companions a t the pl Moyenvic Presumed place of death and burial of the saint. ace of Moyenvic." Jean Ruyr repeats the same thing, in almost the same terms, in Book IV (Part II) of the Saintes Antiquités de la Vosge; but in Chapter VII of Part 3, "according to what the Authors or Manuscripts" have provided him, he assigns approximately the year 720 for the death of the holy founder of Senones. Finally, Dom Calmet reports, following Richer, that it is held that "this holy prelate, having gone on a pilgrimage to Moyenvic to visit the relics of Saints Pient, Agent, and Colombe, died there and was buried there. But," he continues, "we have no certain monument of this fact." It seems very extraordinary that a personage of this merit, archbishop of a great see, founder of a famous monastery, father of a great number of religious, should have remained unknown to the point that one is ignorant of where he died and the place of his burial. This proves much better the great retreat, the extreme selflessness, the lack of curiosity and vanity of these holy solitaries, than their indifference toward their father and founder.

We owe this notice to M. l'abbé Guillaume, honorary canon, chaplain of the ducal chapel, in Nancy.