(ABOUT A.D. 540.)
[Roman, Gallican, Belgian, and other Martyrologies. Double feast
with octave at Arras. In the Salisbury Martyrology, he is inserted
on this day under the name of S. Zawster. In many Kalendars, SS.
Vedast and Amandus are commemorated together. Authorities:--A very
ancient life, published from an imperfect copy by Bollandus. Another
life revised or rewritten by Alcuin, (d. 804). Another erroneously
attributed to the Venerable Bede.]
Clovis, King of the Franks, began his reign in 482, on the decease of
his father, Childeric. He extended his dominions in every quarter by
force of arms, and in the space of thirty years conquered part of
Germany, and nearly the whole of Modern France. In the early part of
his career, the King of the Franks signalized himself by repelling
with success the attacks of Syagius, the Roman general, who had been
ordered to advance and check his progress. This impediment in the path
of victory removed, the five ensuing years were actively employed by
Clovis in the reduction of Soissons and of Rheims; in a successful
expedition against the Thuringians and other neighbouring nations, in
the course of which he extended his territories from the Seine to the
Loire; and lastly in the conquest of the Alemanni, at that time the
possessors of Switzerland. The Alemanni attacked the Franks with the
fury of men actuated by despair, and were irrevocably defeated on the
field of Tolbiac.
The great soul of Clovis had long been agitated by religious
doubts--should he cling to the gods of his family, from whom he
claimed to be lineally descended, or should he submit to the faith of
Christ which his gentle wife, Clothildis, made so attractive to his
better nature? His ancestral gods alarmed him. To their anger he
attributed the death of his first-born; he hesitated to abandon them
for that "new, unarmed God," said he, "who is not of the race of Thor
and Odin." He dreaded also his people, of whose consent he wished to
be assured. The peril of the field of Tolbiac constrained him to
decide. When the scale of success seemed turned against him, he vowed,
if he conquered, to adopt the faith of Christ. The victory remained in
his hands, and he hastened to fulfil his vow. On his return from the
subjugation of the Alemanni, he passed through Toul, and asked for
some priest who might instruct him in the Christian religion. S.
Vedast was presented to him for this purpose. Whilst he accompanied
the king at the passage of the river Aisne, a blind man begging on the
bridge besought the servant of God to restore to him his sight. The
saint, divinely inspired, prayed, and made the sign of the cross on
his eyes, and he immediately recovered it. The miracle confirmed the
king in the faith, and moved several of his courtiers to embrace it.
But Clovis was not a man to yield at once. Nicetius of Trèves, writing
to the grand-daughter of Clovis says, "You have learnt from your
grandmother of happy memory, Clothildis, how she attracted to the
faith her lord and husband, and how he, who was a most shrewd man,
would not yield, till he had been thoroughly convinced of the truth."
Clovis was baptized at Rheims, whither in after times the kings of
France went to be crowned. S. Vedast assisted S. Remigius in
converting the Franks, and was consecrated by that prelate bishop of
Arras, in the year 500. His diocese, together with that of Cambrai,
which was also entrusted to his care, had once been the seat of a
flourishing Christian community, but the ravages of the Vandals and
Alani had eradicated every trace of Christianity, save that here and
there was to be seen a ruined church, overgrown with briars, and
nettles waving where the altar had stood. Vedast wept over these sad
relics, and made earnest supplication to God to enable him faithfully
to accomplish his mission, and once more to plant the seed of life in
this devastated field.
His own Cathedral Church of Arras he found had become the den of a
huge bear, which came shambling towards him, as he knelt weeping over
the broken altar stair. The saint started up and drove the wild beast
forth, and bade it never again enter to pollute by its presence that
holy ground; a type, surely, of that brutality which had invaded and
desolated the Church of God in that land, which he had come to
exorcise.
He ruled the diocese for forty years, and died on Feb. 6th, in, or
near, the year 540. All Martyrologists are agreed as to the day of his
death, but historians differ as to the year.
The name of S. Vedast has gone through strange transformation. He is
called Vaast, Vaat, Wâst, Wât; and in French, Gaston; in English,
Foster, a corruption marked by Foster Lane, (properly S. Vedast's
Lane) in the City of London.
Relics at Arras, of which he is patron, and at S. Waast. In Art he
appears with a child at his feet, or with a wolf, from whose mouth he
saves a goose, a popular tradition being to the effect that he saved
the goose belonging to some poor people from the wolf that was running
away with it; or, with a bear.