Roman Catholic Diocese of Limoges - History

History

Saint Gregory of Tours names St. Martial, who founded the Church of Limoges, as one of the seven bishops sent from Rome to Gaul in the middle of the 3rd century. An anonymous life of St. Martial (Vita primitiva), discovered and published by Abbé Arbellot, represents him as sent to Gaul by St. Peter. Controversy has arisen over the date of this biography. The discovery in the library at Karlsruhe of a manuscript copy written at Reichenau by Regimbertus, a monk who died in 846, places the original before that date. As it is in rhythmical prose, Mgr Bellet thinks it belongs to the 7th century while Charles De Smedt and Louis Duchesne maintain that the "Vita primitiva" is much later than Gregory of Tours. M. de Lasteyrie gives 800 as the date of its origin.

In addition to the manuscript already cited, the Abbey of St. Martial at the beginning of the 11th century possessed a circumstantial life of its patron saint, according to which, and to the cycle of later legends derived from it, St. Martial was one of the seventy-two disciples who witnessed the Passion and Ascension of Christ, was present on the first Pentecost and at the martyrdom of St. Stephen. followed St. Peter to Antioch and to Rome, and was sent to Gaul by the Prince of the Apostles, who assigned Austriclinium and Alpinian to accompany him. The three were welcomed at Tulle and turned away from Ahun. They set out towards Limoges, where St. Martial erected on the site of the present cathedral a shrine in honour of St. Stephen. A pagan priest, Aurelian, wished to throw St. Martial into prison, but was struck dead, then brought to life, baptized, ordained and later consecrated bishop by the saint. Aurelian is the patron of the guild of butchers in Limoges. Forty years after the Ascension, Christ appeared to Martial, and announced to him the approach of death. The churches of Limoges celebrate this event on 16 June. After labouring for twenty-eight years as a missionary in Gaul, the saint died at the age of fifty-nine, surrounded by his converts of Poitou, Berry, Auvergne and Aquitaine.

The writer of this "Life" pretends to be Aurelian, St. Martial's disciple and successor in the See of Limoges. Louis Duchesne thinks it not unlikely that the real authorship of this "apocryphal and lying" work should be attributed to the chronicler Adhémar de Chabannes, noted for his fabrications; but M. de Lasteyrie is of opinion that it was written about 955, before the birth of Adhémar. Be that as it may, this "Vita Aureliana" played an important part at the beginning of the 11th century, when the Abbot Hugh (1019–1025) brought before several councils the question of the Apostolic date of St. Martial's mission. Before the Carolingian period there is no trace of the story that St. Martial was sent to Gaul by St. Peter. It did not spread until the 11th century and was revived in the seventeenth by the Carmelite Bonaventure de Saint-Amable, in his voluminous "Histoire de St. Martial". Duchesne and M. de Lasteyrie assert that it cannot be maintained against the direct testimony of St. Gregory of Tours, who places the origin of the Church of Limoges about the year 250.