Monégonde of Chartres

Monégonde , holy tourangelle of the 6th century, is known only by one single text, a very stylized Vita which constitutes chapter XIX of the Life of the Fathers of Gregoire de Tours and a summary, very suggestive, which constitutes the chapter 24 of the Gloire of the Confessors . It belongs to this group of characters that Gregoire had to know closely and whose he reports the exemplary existence with an aim of construction as much as history.

Monégonde in Chartres

Monégonde is originating in Chartres. She is married and mother of two girls who die prematurely. Inconsolable into the world but fearing that its persistent sorrow is not an offense with God, it rejects its mourning clotheses and makes install a cell where it is withdrawn in the prayer and the fast. Its only food consists from now on of a made bread of barley flour and ashes frays which it makes cook itself.

A miracle quickly comes to authenticate this Conversion. Its maidservant - at Gregoire de Tours the saints of good birth, even when they give up all, preserve at least a slave or a servant - the free one, wearied of its abstinence. Water lack to knead its bread, Monégonde puts its confidence as a God and, at its prayer, snow starts to fall that it can collect on the edge of its window.

But it is another miracle which will decide its career. Whereas she walks in the garden which is next to its cell, a neighbor who put corn to be dried on the roof of her house looks it with an indiscreet curiosity - and becomes blind at once. Monégonde is desperate: “Misfortune with me so for a tiny offense made with my smallness, others have the closed eyes!” It is thrown in prayers, then, concerning the woman and making the sign of the cross, it returns the sight to him.

The adventure makes noise. It is forced with its body defending to intercede for a deaf person that one brings to him and who pareillement is pareillement cured. Glorifiée by its close relations, fearing to succumb to vanity, it gives up its house, her husband and his family to go to Tours, near the tomb of holy Martin.

The Oats miracle

On its way, it stops with Avoine (Evena) where one is celebrating the vigil of holy Medard whose church has relics. After one night of prayers, during the mass of the following day, she sees coming to her an young girl, “inflated by the venom of a malignant pustule” which is thrown to its feet while saying: “I Helps, because a cruel death endeavors to tear off me the life! ” Has its practice, prostrate Monégonde, begs God, then, being raised, makes a sign of cross. “It resulted the opening from it from the tumor which was split into four, the pus ran out and death gave up this young girl”. It is not useless to notice here the quasi-surgical precision with which Gregoire reports the cure.

Monégonde with Tours

Arrived at Tours, it returns graces to God to be able to contemplate his eyes the sepulchre of Martin saint, then settles in the vicinity “in a small cell” to fast and request. The cures begin again: the girl of a “certain widow” (undoubtedly somebody of notable) is cured diminishes her hands (an evil very running in the hagiographic literature of the Early middle ages).

Here an incident is placed: the husband, having heard of the reputation of his wife, joins together friendly and neighbors to bring back it of force to Chartres. It thus finds its first cell, multiplies there fasts and prayers (they are its weapons of predilection), then, feeling lends, beseeching the help of saint Martin, it takes again the way of Turns. The husband will not insist (they is obvious a miracle to put at the credit of Martin). One has especially the impression that Gregoire makes a point of justifying Monégonde, by calling upon undeniable saints, owing to the fact that it gave up her husband and his family all the same.

Monégonde from now on will be surrounded by an small group of women which carries out, in the shade of the tomb of saint Martin, a way of life monacal whose Gregoire describes us some features: prayer and reception of the patients, food reduced to the bread of barley, the water wine cut feastdays, of the rush mats for any bed linen…

The miracles follow one another: a covered girl of ulcers who “had been generated, like one says sometimes, to make pus” is cured when Monégonde coated her wounds of saliva; an young man who suffers from the bites of poisonous snakes generated in his body after the absorption of a drink “malfaisante” can be purged about it after Monégonde palpated the belly to him to locate the reptiles, posed a vineleaf coated with saliva at the good place and makes the sign of the cross; a blind man is cured cataract by laying on of hands…

When Monégonde is about to die, his/her partners beg it to bless oil and salt which they will be able to give to the patients who would come to request help. It is buried in its cell even. Gregoire reports a whole series of cures obtained on his tomb, often with the assistance of oil and miraculous salt.

Monégonde and hagiography

From the point of view of a typology mérovingienne of the saints, Monégonde takes part (with female) of the model of the saint intercessor. All its miracles require that first of all she request and beseeches God for that which wants to profit from it. And it is its exemplary, very whole life centered on the speech and the abstinence, which gives its effectiveness to its intercession. God and holy Martin (let us not forget that we are in Tours), in regard for its merits, exaucent the prayer that she addresses to them with the profit of third.

Without belonging to the aristocracy, which Gregoire had not failed to underline, Monegonde comes from an easy family. “Called” with holiness after a personal drama, she answers by a true conversion (underlined in the text by a whole series of references scripturaires whose succession has psychological value of analysis and a miracle which constitutes the theological seal so to speak of it). Conversion ideally implies on the one hand the renouncement of the facilities of the fashionable life, on the other hand the rupture with its “natural” family with the profit of this spiritual family which is the Church. Monégonde meets the first condition by being essential the austerity and humility (it drops until working with its hands at least to knead its bread), but without never going to excesses of mortification. The second proved more problematic, because in a world where, unless belonging to the highest layers of the aristocracy, the woman enjoys only one limited freedom, it needs the special support of Martin saint to arrive to his ends.

The miracles of Monégonde, without being of a great originality, fall under a thaumaturgical system rather characteristic of the pilgrimage of Turns. They should be compared, for example, with those which at the same time the taifale Senoch achieves, an extremely different personality however. They continue after its death. Because in the hagiography mérovingienne, more than at any other time, in fact the miracles post-mortem authenticate the holiness of the late one. But in Tours they also take part in the general activity of the Martinien pilgrimage, very holy fall becoming there a kind of relay of the central tomb of Martin saint.

A curious miracle illustrates this complementarity of the saints. A blind man, requesting on the tomb of holy, falls asleep. This one appears to him in dream and says to him: “I judge myself unworthy to be equalized with the saints; however you will recover here the light of an eye; course then with the feet of happy Martin and prostrate owe him in the componction of your heart. He will return the use of the other eye to you. ” The things obviously occur thus. Monégonde testifies at the same time to its personal holiness (even if by humility it is defended some) and to its position, altogether subordinate, in the familia martinienne.

Monégonde in the history

Monegonde had to arrive at Tours shortly after 561 (the presence of relics of Medard saint in Avoine gives a terminus post quem), at one time when the bishop Eufronius vigorously appears to have started again the pilgrimage Martinien and attracted in its city good number of religious vocations.

It is in Luce Pietri, in its thesis on Tours, which returns the merit to have known to specify the historical figure of the holy one.

The reception of the patients and all kinds of disinherited attracted by most important of the thaumaturgical sanctuaries of Gaulle posed certainly many problems with the Church of Turns. It is known that Eufronius and after him Gregoire actively were concerned with the Matricule of the poor.

What happenhappen did patients and disabled person? Luce Pietri could not find trace clarifies in Tours of an establishment especially intended to accommodate them, a “Xenodochium” as there are some in other cities. This role seems to be assured there by monasteries which, like the foundation of Monégonde, that older of Saint Coming or that quasi contemporary from Senoch at some distance from the city, rise around the basilica of Saint Martin's day.

In the optics of Gregoire, any cure - return to the order disturbed by the evil or the sin - is more or less a miracle. Hagiographic stylization is thus by misleading nature, because it puts in the high-speed motorboat instantaneous” and spectacular miracle the “at the detriment of the repeated care which however had to be the rule in these establishments.

The atmosphere charged with virtus Martian, the setting in scene of the intercession, the prayer and the gestural one which accompany it certainly must have their psychosomatic effectiveness. But it there also in these monastery-hospitals a true technicality.

When Monégonde practices palpation, uses of compresses of saliva or of oil bénite, mass the contracted hands, it is well medical activity which it acts. Among the miracles post-mortem which Gregoire reports, that of the blind man to half cured that we quoted lets think that other techniques, inherited Antiquity, like the Incubation in the sanctuary, had their place in the device tourangeau.

It is thus necessary to see in Monégonde a pious woman who, answering the call of the Eufronius bishop, comes to Tours to found and direct in an exemplary way one of these monastery-hospitals essential to the good performance of the pilgrimage. This caritative function integrates it into the ecclesiastical device and in fact, after its death more still of alive sound, an eminent member of the familia martinienne.

It is interesting to also note - useful feature for a sociology of holiness - that, according to Gregoire, the family glorifie of the miracles of Monégonde and that it is its growing reputation which encourages her husband to want to recover it. Would the family think of benefitting itself from her gift of cure? Another question emerges at once. Did Monégonde learn in Tours even the unit from its techniques from cure, or it brought to the Church of Eufronius a knowledge acquired in the laic life? The “professional” miracle very of the Oats church obliges to raise the question. We unfortunately do not have any means of answering it.

The worship of Monégonde

It is generally admitted that Monégonde died before 573, because nothing indicates in the text that Gregoire, at least in his episcopal functions, personally knew it; but the argument is perhaps not decisive.

Though it in is, obscurely and undoubtedly modestly, its foundation survived well a long time the exhaustion of its blessed oil: it appears mentioned for the last time in 1031 in a diploma of Robert the Piles. With an unknown date, its body was transferred to the monastery from Saint-Pierre-the-Puellier where it remained until the profanation of the tomb by the Protestants in 1562.

NOTE: According to J. Old man-Troiekouroff, (passim) , which is based on a note of dom Ruinart in its edition of Gregoire de Tours (1699), the relics of Monégonde which the nuns had had time to hide was again venerated in the monastery in 1657.

Immediately after its death, its tomb become martyrium is covered with a palla to which Gregoire refers, probably surrounded by a chancel, and naturally accessible to the faithful ones. It is probable that Gregoire himself instituted vigils in his honor. In any case, its name appears with dated July 2nd in the additions gallicans with the Martyrologe hiéronymien and this date can be only of tourangelle origin. It is notable that the Roman Martyrologe granted to him (according to Gregoire undoubtedly) the qualifier of confessor , very rare for a femme.
In its diocese of origin, it is mentioned without more in the Chartres-native liturgy, but the parish church of Orphin, today in the Yvelines, is dedicated to him.

Sources and bibliography

Gregoire de Tours, Vitæ Patrum , XIX; In Gloria Confessorum , 24.

the Latin edition of reference is that of the Monumenta Germaniæ Historica: Scriptores/Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum, Volume I/2, pp. 736-741 and 763-764, from now on accessible on line on the site from MGH.

French transl.: H. Lopsider, 1857-1864; modern reprinting (corrected): Gregoire de Tours. - Life of the Fathers and the Confessors . - Clermont-Ferrand, Paléo, 2003. - ISBN 2-84909-031-X

Martyrologium hieronymianum , edict. H. Quentin and H. Delehaye. - Brussels, 1931 (= Acta Sanctorum, November, volume 2);
Martyrologe of Usuard , edict. J. Dubois. - Brussels, 1965. - pp. 45,261;

Old man-Troiekouroff, Jeanne. - religious Monuments of Gaulle according to works of Gregoire de Tours. - Paris, H. Champion, 1976. - pp. 328-329;

Pietri, Luce. - the Town of Turns of IVe to the Life century: birth of a Christian city . - Rome, French School of Rome, 1983. - not. pp. 411-413, 514-518, 726-728… ;

Lelong, Charles. - Evolution of the religious topography of Turns of Ve to the Life S., in: Bulletin of the archaeological Company of Touraine , XXXIV, 1965, pp. 169-185.