The Blessing of Saint Germanus

The Vita Genovefae opens Genevieve’s story with St. Germanus of Auxerre, who — travelling with Lupus of Troyes to Britain against the Pelagian heresy in 429 — halted at Nanterre, picked the small girl out of the welcoming crowd, foretold her greatness, and consecrated her to God with a coin marked by a cross. The episode is the theological foundation of her cult, and also its first source-critical problem, for Constantius’ near-contemporary Life of Germanus records the journey but not the child.

Tradition: Western (pre-Schism, Gallo-Roman Gaul)

The Episode as the Vita Tells It

The Vita Genovefae makes the decisive event of Genevieve’s childhood a meeting with one of the towering bishops of the Gallic Church. As Germanus of Auxerre and Lupus of Troyes passed through Nanterre on their way to Britain, the townspeople came out to meet the holy bishops; and Germanus, moving through the crowd, singled out the little girl Genevieve — about seven years old — recognized that she was already vowed to God, kissed her head, and told her parents that she would be great in the sight of the Lord and that many would be saved through her example (Vita Genovefae 2–4, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 3, 1896; trans. McNamara, Halborg, and Whatley, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, 1992, “Genovefa,” §§2–4). He asked her whether she desired to be consecrated to Christ as His bride; when she answered that this was her whole wish, he blessed her, and — the detail the tradition remembers — found on the ground or was given a small coin (a nummus) marked with a cross, which he pierced and hung about her neck as a token, bidding her wear it in memory of her betrothal to Christ and wear no other ornament of gold or pearl (Vita Genovefae 4–5; trans. McNamara et al., “Genovefa,” §§4–5).

The journey itself is firmly historical. Germanus of Auxerre made a mission to Britain to combat Pelagianism, and the date of 429 is fixed by the independent testimony of Prosper of Aquitaine’s Chronicle, which records that in that year Pope Celestine sent Germanus to Britain at the urging of the deacon Palladius (Prosper of Aquitaine, Epitoma Chronicon, s.a. 429, ed. Mommsen, MGH AA 9, 1892; on the mission, R. A. Markus, “Pelagianism: Britain and the Continent,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 37, 1986). It is the meeting with Genevieve, not the journey, that is uncertain.

The Attestation Problem

Here the two sources part company. The primary source for the life of Germanus is the Vita Germani written about 480 by Constantius of Lyon — a text roughly a generation before the Vita Genovefae and one of the more reliable Gallic saints’ lives of the period. Constantius describes the British mission of 429 in detail, including the celebrated “Alleluia victory,” but he says nothing of any child at Nanterre and nothing of Genevieve (Constantius of Lyon, Vita Germani, ed. René Borius, Sources Chrétiennes 112, 1965; on the two missions to Britain, E. A. Thompson, Saint Germanus of Auxerre and the End of Roman Britain, Boydell, 1984). The blessing of Genevieve is therefore attested by the Vita Genovefae alone — and by a text of debated date at that.

[Disputed: whether the meeting of Germanus and the child Genevieve at Nanterre in 429 is a historical event or a hagiographical construction. (a) The episode is narrated only in the Vita Genovefae; the near-contemporary Vita Germani of Constantius of Lyon (c. 480), the principal and generally reliable source for Germanus, records the 429 British mission but not the child (Constantius, Vita Germani, SC 112; Thompson, Saint Germanus of Auxerre, 1984). (b) Defenders of the Vita Genovefae’s early date hold that it was composed within living memory of Genevieve and drew on genuine Parisian tradition, so that the Germanus meeting, while unconfirmed, need not be invented (Heinzelmann and Poulin, Les vies anciennes de sainte Geneviève de Paris, 1986). (c) Skeptics note that associating a saint with the great Germanus is exactly the kind of prestige-conferring link hagiography routinely supplies, and that its absence from Constantius is telling (Krusch, “Die Fälschung der Vita Genovefae,” Neues Archiv 18, 1893). This compendium reports the episode as the Vita’s and does not assert it as documented fact (METHODOLOGY §3.5).]

Why the Episode Matters

Whatever its historicity, the Germanus episode does specific work, and seeing that work is part of reading it honestly. First, it authenticates Genevieve’s vocation by the hand of an impeccable authority: to be marked out as a child by Germanus of Auxerre — a bishop already venerated across Gaul, an aristocrat-turned-ascetic, the hammer of the Pelagians — is to have one’s holiness certified from the highest available source (Van Dam, Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul, University of California Press, 1985, on the transmission of holy authority; McNamara et al., “Genovefa,” introduction). Second, it founds her consecration: the whole of her later life as a virgin dedicated to God is presented as the flowering of this childhood betrothal, so that the veil she later receives (see The Veil and the Ascetic Life) is the keeping of a promise made under Germanus’ blessing. Third, the Vita has Germanus return to Nanterre on his second journey years later and again single her out, publicly confirming that she had kept her vow — a narrative device that binds her fidelity to the same authority (Vita Genovefae 6–7; trans. McNamara et al., “Genovefa,” §§6–7).

The coin about her neck became one of the durable emblems of her iconography: Genevieve is often shown as a shepherdess or young woman with a médaille at her throat, sometimes with a candle that a demon tries to extinguish and an angel relights — a later motif — the coin recalling this first consecration (Sluhovsky, Patroness of Paris, Brill, 1998, on the iconography and the cult). For the Orthodox reader, the episode belongs to the same pattern as the childhood marking of many saints of the undivided Church: the recognition, by a holy elder, of a holiness already given — reported here as the tradition delivers it, and honoured as such, without the pretence of an archive it does not have.

See Also

References

  • Vita Genovefae, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 3 (1896), §§2–7 (the Germanus meeting; the coin; the second visit).
  • McNamara, Jo Ann, John E. Halborg, and E. Gordon Whatley, trans. Sainted Women of the Dark Ages. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992. “Genovefa, Virgin of Paris,” §§2–7.
  • Constantius of Lyon. Vita Germani. Ed. René Borius. Sources Chrétiennes 112. Paris: Cerf, 1965. (The primary Life of Germanus; the 429 mission without mention of Genevieve.)
  • Prosper of Aquitaine. Epitoma Chronicon, s.a. 429. Ed. Theodor Mommsen. MGH Auctores antiquissimi 9. Berlin, 1892. (The dating of Germanus’ British mission.)
  • Thompson, E. A. Saint Germanus of Auxerre and the End of Roman Britain. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1984. (The missions to Britain.)
  • Heinzelmann, Martin, and Joseph-Claude Poulin. Les vies anciennes de sainte Geneviève de Paris: études critiques. Paris: Champion, 1986. (Defence of the early date and the Parisian tradition.)
  • Krusch, Bruno. “Die Fälschung der Vita Genovefae.” Neues Archiv 18 (1893): 8–50. (The skeptical thesis.)
  • Sluhovsky, Moshe. Patroness of Paris: Rituals of Devotion in Early Modern France. Leiden: Brill, 1998. (Iconography and cult.)