Of the secular history of Chartres under the succeeding Merovingian
Kings there is nothing worth relating. Whatever there was of sweetness
and light in this barbarous epoch survived in the cloister, not the
court. One turns with relief from the records of the quarrels and crimes
of Clother and his sons to the story of some saintly life like that of
S. Lubin, shepherd, monk, hermit, Abbé of Brou, and lastly, Bishop of
Chartres in succession to S. Ethère. S. Lubin was a typical and charming
saint, whose name and fame still live in the hearts of the people.
His charity to the poor, his compassion for the sick and infirm was
without limit. Thus, when Malledegonde, sister of the young Calétric,
who lay at death’s door, asked the holy Bishop of Chartres for some
drops of oil blessed by his hands, he did at once that which she had not
dared to ask. He came in person to the bedside of her dear invalid,
bathed his forehead, and prayed that he might be restored to health.
Then the young man opened his eyes, and seizing the aged bishop’s hand
declared that he was healed. A bas-relief on the south porch of the
Cathedral portrays this incident in stone. In glass, a bishop and
enthroned, you may see the saint in the second window of the northern
clerestory of the nave. From that moment S. Lubin continued to take a
paternal interest in the lad, and on his death Calétric succeeded him as
Bishop of Chartres. S. Calétric,[19] according to his panegyrist,
combined every virtue with every accomplishment, and was, in fact, the
personification of that Roman urbanity which the rude manners of the
French had almost banished from the Gallic world. His tomb, as we have
already seen, is now in the Cathedral crypt, whither it was removed from
the Chapel of S. Nicholas, when that building, which was formerly
adjacent to the apse of the Cathedral, was destroyed in 1702 to make
room for the present bishop’s palace.[20] S. Lubin, like most of the
bishops of the sixth and seventh centuries, was still less fortunate in
the place of his burial. He was interred in the crypt of
S. MARTIN-AU-VAL,
which probably marks the site of the chief extra-mural cemetery of the
Chartres of those days. This asylum of the dead was more than once
profaned by the ravages of the Northmen and the excesses committed
during the civil and religious wars. The nave and aisles were seriously
damaged in the fourteenth century by the bands of English soldiers and
marauders who overran the country at that time. The Huguenots, also,
under Condé (1568) utterly devastated the church crypt, violating the
tombs of the bishops and wantonly burning the building. The tomb of S.
Lubin, indeed, was flung out of the church and was long used for
domestic purposes, until at last it was cracked by the frost. Even then
it was not safe from the utilitarian spirit of the day. It was turned to
account when the foundations of the cemetery wall were being
constructed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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