How great and how furious a madness of the Calvinists raged against the first founders of the Gallican Church is taught by their impiety against the apostles of their own nation: Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, Saint Hilary of Poitiers, Saint Martin Bishop of Tours, and Dionysius the Areopagite, earlier than all these. The sacred bones of those three, torn from precious reliquaries and dragged through filth, they consumed in groaning flames; and what remained of the ashes they scattered into the flowing waves of the Rhone and the Loire.
Their intention was to show the same reverence to the sacred relics of Blessed Dionysius in the reign of Charles IX. But Louis of Bourbon, Prince of Conde, who had occupied the shrine of Dionysius, restrained all the violence and plundering of the eager Calvinists, not so much from reverence for the relics as for the kings his ancestors, whose magnificent mausoleums are seen there. In recent years Henry III of Valois and Henry IV of Bourbon did the same. For the kings of France always had a special care for the honor of Dionysius.
Run through their three stocks. Of the Merovingians, Dagobert alone, famous for piety toward Blessed Dionysius, built a magnificent monastery and endowed it with very ample estates; yet by the beneficence of the martyr he was more illustrious and happier, being transferred from an earthly kingdom to the heavenly one, as Louis the Pious, Emperor, records in his letter to Hilduin. In that letter, with most effective words, he commends to his successors the kings, by his own example and that of his ancestors, devotion to and veneration of the most holy Areopagite, in these words:
“How great a gift and protection not only to us and to our predecessors or progenitors, but also to the peoples of our whole empire, the Lord has very often, indeed continually, bestowed through the most blessed Dionysius in great abundances of graces, all the generations of Gaul through all past times have felt; they took up the rudiments of faith by his distinguished apostleship. Our predecessors did not vainly cultivate the glory of this excellent witness and friend of God. For while they honored his sacred remains on earth, for the honor and love of God our Lord Jesus Christ, with the resources with which they could, by his most worthy prayers they deserved to obtain the privilege of honor both in earthly and heavenly things. Thus, namely, one of the ancient kings of the Franks, Dagobert, who had venerated the same most precious martyr of Christ not in any ordinary way, was both exalted in mortal life and, by his aid, as a divine and celebrated manifestation testifies, was freed from punishments and desirably established in eternal life.”
See how contrary the Calvinists are to their best kings. The kings attend the relics of the blessed martyr with singular munificence and honors; the Calvinists do not even deem them worthy of an ass’s burial, and because they could not burn and scatter them, they turned their anger against his books. Louis the Emperor testifies that the kingdom of France stood and flourished by the prayers of Blessed Dionysius; those fighters against the saints mock all prayers of the saints.
If you roll through the past time in memory, you will find that from the time when the arm of the golden crucifix was removed from his shrine under the appearance of a loan, dire heresies, emerging from Lake Geneva as though from hell, began to afflict France and brought it almost to final ruin.
The pious Emperor then goes on to commemorate the religion of the Carolingians, writing thus:
“Our progenitors also embraced the honey-flowing name of Lord Dionysius - for so, in their words and writings, they were accustomed to call him - not unfittingly, with pious love and most beloved piety.”
And he adds that Charles Martel, his great-grandfather, was raised to the height of rule by the prayers of Blessed Dionysius; that Pepin came to the throne of the Franks and deserved to leave it to Charlemagne his son. “But we also,” he says, “have experienced his benefits in many and frequent largesses, especially in the event of human vicissitude, in which, by the just judgment of God, as must always be confessed, we were visited with the rod of his instruction and with the staff of his beautiful mercy. Before the aforesaid altar, through the merits and consolation of our lord and most pious father Dionysius, we were restored and reestablished by divine power, and by episcopal judgment and authority we resumed the military belt, and down to the present time we are sustained by his gracious assistance.”
He desired to put forward some sign of a grateful mind. His ancestors had already taken up the other things. God suggested to him that a trophy more excellent than buildings and gold could be erected to Saint Dionysius the Martyr, one that would truly be “a monument more lasting than bronze, and higher than the royal structure of the pyramids, which neither devouring rain nor unrestrained north wind can destroy, nor the countless series of years and flight of times”; a literary monument, I mean.
For this reason Louis ordered Abbot Hilduin to write the life of Dionysius the Areopagite and to bring to light all his little works, diligently translated from Greek into Latin. For Louis mentions the little works in express words, saying:
“We wish to remind you that whatever concerning knowledge of him has been taken by interpretation from the histories of the Greeks, or whatever from the books written by him, Dionysius, in his native language, and, by the command of our authority, by his own sagacious study and by the sweat of translators, explained into our language, has been suitable to insert into this business, and whatever also you have already found in Latin codices,” and so forth.
Louis, Emperor of the West, had received from Michael, Emperor of the East, the Greek works of Dionysius the Areopagite. The one had received them as works of our Dionysius; the other had sent them as such and as genuine. Nor should it be believed that two Emperors believed this rashly, or wished to mock each other, but that they came to that opinion maturely, after an inquiry had been made by the most learned men of their age.
Indeed, for that reason Michael sent with his envoys Constantine, steward and philosopher, who could refute those who contradicted. The West then had few men skilled in the Greek language; for that reason Louis applied two who then flourished in France, John Scotus and Hilduin. Thus also Charles the Bald, successor of Louis after his brothers, followed the judgment of Hincmar and Anastasius the Librarian.
What else had to be done by these kings in this sort of business? Were they, plainly, to wait until brands were burned in at Noyon, or the Bezian heart was roasted by the torches of Candida, or Joseph Scaliger was born as approver? But no prophets had foretold that you would exist and would dissent: not the Dodonian doves, not the lowing of the cave of Trophonius, not the mad Delphic ventriloquist. For the French Gauls, concerning the Apostle of the Gauls, the testimonies of their kings and bishops are greater than any exception.
Let those Calvinistic doubters doubt, so long as they believe nothing. Catholics know that in recent memory, in the martyr’s basilica, a most valiant king returned to the bosom of the Catholic faith. By whose benefaction? Was it not that of God, the Best and Greatest, whom the prayers and merits of Saint Dionysius moved, whose monastery, church, and relics that king had preserved from violation? This one led him back into the way; the same one led him from the place of his tomb to the place of his martyrdom and the seat of his episcopate, Paris.
What is more equitable, better, or more becoming to royal majesty than to imitate one’s ancestors, the Louises, the Henrys, the Charleses, whose royal constancy in honoring Blessed Dionysius is deservedly celebrated? For the progeny of Capet was not inferior to the Carolingians or Merovingians in this rivalry of piety. They honored the relics and asserted the books for their author. Let posterity do both, and let them decree that he whom they invoke as patron in wars should flourish and live in the walls and minds of Catholics. The sacred monuments of the mind should not be valued less than the sacred ossuaries of the body. These are relics of remains that will rise again; those are relics of the soul, which neither perished nor could perish.
Nor did these sacred relics of divine genius lack their own miracles. For on the day on which the books were brought to the monastery of Saint Dionysius, where Louis the Pious had sent them to Hilduin to be preserved, Hilduin himself, an eyewitness, writes in his letter to the same Louis: “This gift,” namely the writings of Blessed Dionysius, “as though brought from heaven to our devotion,” and so forth; you have these words cited above at the beginning of chapter 29. This is indeed a very clear confirmation, and unless it had been most true, Hilduin the Abbot would never have written it so affirmatively to the Emperor at a time when he could have been convicted and condemned for imposture by rivals who were setting out to strip these books of credit.
Dionysius the Carthusian mentions the same miracles in his preface to Dionysius, but by a slip of memory says that seventeen sick persons were cured instead of nineteen; among them, he says, were the blind, the deaf, and the paralytic. I have placed this proof of Emperors and Kings, supported by a divine miracle, in the last place as the chief proof. To me it is the greatest, because I am Catholic. To you, Joseph, I know well, it will seem nothing; because, since miracles are lacking to you, you have grown accustomed to spit upon proofs drawn from them and to mock them, if you consider the soul, with a Sardonic laugh; if you consider the face, with an ugly one, such as Minerva’s was when she was blowing the flute.