| ST. PRETEXTATUS, OR PRAETEXTUS OR PRIX, M.
|
| He was chosen archbishop of Rouen
in 549, and in 557 assisted at the third council of Paris held to abolish
incestuous marriages, and remove other crying abuses: also at the second council
of Tours in 566. By his zeal in reproving Fredegonda for her injustices and
cruelties, he had incurred her indignation. King Clotaire I., in 562, had left
the French monarchy divided among his four sons. Charibert was king of Paris,
Gontran of Orleans and Burgundy, Sigebert I. of Austrasia, and Chilperic I. of
Soissons. Sigebert married Brunehault, younger daughter of Athanagilde, king of
the Visigoths in Spain, and Chilperic her elder sister Galsvinda; but after her
death he took to wife Fredegonda, who had been his mistress, and was strongly
suspected to have contrived the death of the queen by poison. Hence Brunehault
stirred up Sigebert against her and her husband. But Fredegonda contrived the
assassination of king Sigebert in 575, and Chilperic secured Brunehault his
wife, her three daughters, and her son Childebert. This latter soon made his
escape, and fled to Metz, where he was received by his subjects, and crowned
king of Austrasia. The city of Paris, after the death of Charibert in 566, by
the agreement of the three surviving brothers, remained common to them all, till
Chilperic seized it. He sent Meroveus, his son by his first wife, to reduce the
country about Poitiers, which belonged to the young prince Childebert. But
Meroveus, at Rouen, fell in love with his aunt Brunehault, then a prisoner in
that city; and bishop Prix, in order to prevent a grievous scandal, judging
circumstances to be sufficiently cogent to require a dispensation, married them:
for which he was accused of high treason by king Chilperic before a council at
Paris, in 577, in the church of St. Peter, since called St. Genevieve. St.
Gregory of Tours there warmly defended his innocence, and Prix confessed the
marriage, but denied that he had been privy to the prince's revolt; but was
afterwards prevailed upon, through the insidious persuasion of certain
emissaries of Chilperic, to plead guilty, and confess that out of affection he
had been drawn in to favor the young prince, who was his godson. Whereupon he
was condemned by the council, and banished by the king into a small island upon
the coast of Lower Neustria, near Coutances. His sufferings he improved to the
sanctification of his soul by penance and the exercise of all heroic Christian
virtues. The rage and clamor with which his powerful enemies spread their
slanders to beat down his reputation, staggered many of his friends: but St.
Gregory of Tours never forsook him. Meroveus was assassinated near Terouanne, by
an order of his stepmother Fredegonda, who was also suspected to have contrived
the death of her husband Chilperic, who was murdered at Chelles, in 584. She had
three years before procured Clovis, his younger son by a former wife, to be
assassinated, so that the crown of Soissons devolved upon her own son Clotaire
II.: but for his and her own protection, she had recourse to Gontran, the
religious king of Orleans and Burgundy. By his order Prix, after a banishment of
six years, was restored with honor to his see; Ragnemond, the bishop of Paris,
who had been a principal flatterer of Chilperic in the persecution of this
prelate, having assured this prince that the council had not deposed him, but
only enjoined him penance. St. Prix assisted at the council of Macon in 585,
where he harangued several times, and exerted his zeal in framing many wise
regulations for the reformation of discipline. He continued his pastoral labors
in the care of his flock, and by just remonstrances often endeavored to reclaim
the wicked queen Fredegonda, who frequently resided at Rouen, and filled the
kingdom with scandals, tyrannical oppressions, and murders. This Jezabel grew
daily more and more hardened in iniquity, and by her secret order St. Prix was
assassinated while he assisted at matins in his church in the midst of his
clergy on Sunday the 25th of February. Happy should we be if under all
afflictions, with this holy penitent, we considered that sin is the original
fountain from whence all those waters of bitterness flow, and by laboring
effectually to cut off this evil, convert its punishment into its remedy and a
source of benedictions. St. Prix of Rouen is honored in the Roman and Gallican
Martyrologies. Those who with Chatelain, &c; place his death on the 14th of
April, suppose him to have been murdered on Easter-day; but the day of our
Lord's Resurrection in this passage of our historian, means no more than Sunday.
See St. Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc. 1. 5, c. 10, 15. Fleury, 1. 34, n. 52.
Gallia Christiana Nova, t. 11, pp. 11 and 638. Mons. Levesque de la Ravaliere in
his Nouvelle Vie de S. Gregoire, Eveque de Tours, published in the Memoires de
l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, An. 1760, t. 26, pp. 609, 60. F.
Daniel, Hist. de France, t. 1, p. 242.
(Taken from Vol. II of "The Lives or the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints" by the Rev. Alban Butler, the 1864 edition published by D. & J. Sadlier, & Company) |
|
Provided Courtesy of:
|