(7TH CENT.)
[Gallican and German Martyrologies. S. Frodobert died on Jan. 1st,
but his body was translated on Jan. 8th, and on that day,
accordingly, his festival is observed at Troyes, and by the
Benedictine Order. His life was written by his disciple, Lupellus,
and used in the compilation of a later life, by a monk of Moutier
la Celle, near Troyes, about 872.]
S. Frodobert, the son of parents of the middle class, from the earliest
age was inspired with the love of God, and a wondrous gentleness and
child-like simplicity. He is said, as a little boy, to have healed his
mother of blindness, as, in a paroxysm of love and compassion for her
affliction, he kissed her darkened eyes, and signed them with the cross.
At an early age he entered the abbey of Luxeuil, where his singleness of
soul and guilelessness exposed him to become the butt of the more
frivolous monks. During the time that he was there, a certain Teudolin,
abbot of S. Seguanus, was staying at Luxeuil for the purpose of study,
and Frodobert was much with him, being ordered to attend on the wants of
the visitor, and obey him implicitly. This Teudolin diversified his
labours with playing practical jokes on his gentle assistant; but
Frodobert never resented any jest. One day the abbot Teudolin sent
Frodobert to another monk, who was also fond of practising jokes on
Frodobert, for a pair of compasses, saying that he wanted them for
writing. The lay brother took the message without in the least knowing
what compasses were. The monk, suspecting that the abbot had sent
Frodobert on a fool's errand, put a pair of stones off a hand-mill round
his neck, and told him to take them to Teudolin. Frodobert obeyed, but
was scarcely able to stagger along the cloister under the weight. On his
way, the abbot of Luxeuil, his own superior, met him, and amazed to see
the poor brother bowed to earth under this burden, bade him throw down
the mill-stones, and tell him whither he was taking them. Frodobert
obeyed, and said that the abbot Teudolin had sent him for them, as he
wanted them for literary purposes. The superior burst into tears,
grieved that the good, simple-minded lay brother should have been thus
imposed upon, and hastening to the visitor, and then to the monk who had
put the "compasses" about Frodobert's neck, he administered to them such
a sharp rebuke, that from that day forward no more practical jokes were
played upon him.
As years passed, his virtue became more generally known, and the Bishop
of Troyes summoned him to be in attendance on himself. The humble monk
in vain entreated to be allowed to return to his monastery; the bishop
retained him about his person in his palace.
As he was unable to return to the quiet of his cloister, Frodobert
withdrew as much as possible from the world in which he moved, into the
calm of his own heart, and practised great abstinence in the midst of
the abundance wherewith the bishop's table was supplied. Living outside
his cloister, he kept its rules, and in Lent he never ate anything till
after sunset. Those who were less strict in their living, sneered at his
self-denial, and told the bishop that Frodobert kept a supply of
victuals in his bedroom, and ate privily. To prove him, the prelate gave
him a chamber in the church tower, and burst in upon him at all
unseasonable moments, but was never able to detect the slightest proof
of the charge being well founded. He, therefore, regretted his mistrust,
and restored the monk to his room in the palace.
Frodobert was given at last, by Clovis II., some marshy land near
Troyes, and on this he built a monastery, which he called La Celle,
which was soon filled with numerous monks, and became famous for the
learned men it educated. Here S. Frodobert spent many years. He passed
his declining years in building a church to S. Peter, and when the
church was completed, his strength failed, and he knew that he had not
many days to live. His great desire was to see it consecrated on the
feast of the Nativity, and he sent two of his monks to the bishop to
beseech him to dedicate his new church that day. But the duties of
Christmas, in his Cathedral, rendered it impossible for the prelate to
grant this request. Frodobert received the refusal with many tears, but
lifting his eyes and hands to heaven, he prayed, and God prolonged his
days, so that he survived to see his church consecrated on the Octave of
the Nativity, Jan. 1st; and when the ceremony was over, he resigned his
soul into the hands of God. The body was translated, some years after,
on the 8th January. The weather had been wet, and the marshes were under
water, so that the abbot and monks were in trouble, because their house
was surrounded with the flood, and it would be difficult for the bishop
and clergy of Troyes to attend the ceremony of the translation. "Grant,"
said the abbot, "that the blessed Frodobert may obtain for us a sharp
frost, or we shall have no one here tomorrow." This was said on the eve
of the projected translation. That night, so hard a frost set in, that
by morning the whole surface of the water was frozen like a stone, and
the bishop, clergy, and faithful of Troyes, came to the monastery over
the ice.