HE was chosen archbishop of Rouen in 549, and in 557 assisted at the
third council of Paris held to abolish incestuous marriages, and remove
other crying abuses: also at the second council of Tours in 566. By his
zeal in reproving Fredegonda for her injustices and cruelties, he had
incurred her indignation. King Clotaire I., in 562, had left the French
monarchy {461} divided among his four sons. Charibert was king of Paris,
Gontran of Orleans and Burgundy, Sigebert I. of Austrasia, and Chilperic
I. of Soissons. Sigebert married Brunehault, younger daughter of
Athanagilde, king of the Visigoths in Spain, and Chilperic her elder
sister Galsvinda; but after her death he took to wife Fredegonda, who
had been his mistress, and was strongly suspected to have contrived the
death of the queen by poison. Hence Brunehault stirred up Sigebert
against her and her husband. But Fredegonda contrived the assassination
of king Sigebert in 575, and Chilperic secured Brunehault his wife, her
three daughters, and her son Childebert. This latter soon made his
escape, and fled to Metz, where he was received by his subjects, and
crowned king of Austrasia. The city of Paris, after the death of
Charibert in 566, by the agreement of the three surviving brothers,
remained common to them all, till Chilperic seized it. He sent Meroveus,
his son by his first wife, to reduce the country about Poitiers, which
belonged to the young prince Childebert. But Meroveus, at Ronen, fell in
love with his aunt Brunehault, then a prisoner in that city; and bishop
Prix, in order to prevent a grievous scandal, judging circumstances to
be sufficiently cogent to require a dispensation, married them: for
which he was accused of high treason by king Chilperic before a council
at Paris, in 577, in the church of St. Peter, since called St.
Genevieve. St. Gregory of Tours there warmly defended his innocence, and
Prix confessed the marriage, but denied that he had been privy to the
prince's revolt; but was afterwards prevailed upon, through the
insidious persuasion of certain emissaries of Chilperic, to plead
guilty, and confess that out of affection he had been drawn in to favor
the young prince, who was his godson. Whereupon he was condemned by the
council, and banished by the king into a small island upon the coast of
Lower Neustria, near Coutances. His sufferings he improved to the
sanctification of his soul by penance and the exercise of all heroic
Christian virtues. The rage and clamor with which his powerful enemies
spread their slanders to beat down his reputation, staggered many of his
friends: but St. Gregory of Tours never forsook him. Meroveus was
assassinated near Terouanne, by an order of his stepmother Fredegonda,
who was also suspected to have contrived the death of her husband
Chilperic, who was murdered at Chelles, in 584. She had three years
before procured Clovis, his younger son by a former wife, to be
assassinated, so that the crown of Soissons devolved upon her own son
Clotaire II.: but for his and her own protection, she had recourse to
Gontran, the religious king of Orleans and Burgundy. By his order Prix,
after a banishment of six years, was restored with honor to his see;
Ragnemond, the bishop of Paris, who had been a principal flatterer of
Chilperic in the persecution of this prelate, having assured this prince
that the council had not deposed him, but only enjoined him penance. St.
Prix assisted at the council of Macon in 585, where he harangued several
times, and exerted his zeal in framing many wise regulations for the
reformation of discipline. He continued his pastoral labors in the care
of his flock, and by just remonstrances often endeavored to reclaim the
wicked queen Fredegonda, who frequently resided at Rouen, and filled the
kingdom with scandals, tyrannical oppressions, and murders. This Jezabel
grew daily more and more hardened in iniquity, and by her secret order
St. Prix was assassinated while he assisted at matins in his church in
the midst of his clergy on Sunday the 25th of February. Happy should we
be if under all afflictions, with this holy penitent, we considered that
sin is the original fountain from whence all those waters of bitterness
flow, and by laboring effectually to cut off this evil, convert its
punishment into its remedy and a source of benedictions. St. Prix of
Rouen to honored in the Roman and Gallican Martyrologies. Those who with
{462} Chatelain, &c. place his death on the 14th of April, suppose him
to have been murdered on Easter-day, but the day of our Lord's
Resurrection in this passage of our historian, means no more than
Sunday. See St. Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc. l. 5, c. 10, 15. Fleury,
l. 34, n. 52. Gallia Christiana Nova, t. 11, pp. 11 and 638. Mons.
Levesque de la Ravaliere in his Nouvelle Vie de S. Gregoire, Eveque de
Tours, published in the Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions et
Belles Lettres, An. 1760, t. 26, pp. 699, 60. F. Daniel, Hist. de
France, t. 1, p. 242.