SAINT FEAST DAY 26 APRIL: ST PASCHASIUS RADBERTUS

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN APRIL

Saints celebrated on the 26th of April

WELCOME!

SAINT PASCHASIUS RADBERTUS, ABBOT AND CONFESSOR

Radbert, pronounced Rabert, was born in the territory of Soissons. The death of his mother having left him an orphan in his infancy, the nuns of our Lady’s at Soissons, took care of his education, which they committed to the monks of St Peter’s, in the same town. 

EDUCATED BY NUNS

Having made some progress in his studies and in piety, he received the clerical tonsure; but soon after returned into the world, and led some years a secular life, till, powerfully touched by divine grace, he retired to the monastery of Corbie, and made his monastic profession under St Adalhard, the founder and first abbot of that house. 

TOUCHED BY DIVINE GRACE

This state he looked upon as the school of perfect virtue, and all its exercises as the means by which he was to attain to it: he therefore dreaded the least sloth or remissness in any of the regular observances of his vocation. By the fervour and exactitude with which he acquitted himself of them, he made his whole life in every action and every moment a continued holocaust to the divine glory and love. 

Having in his youth made a considerable progress in his studies, particularly by reading Terence and Cicero, in the monastery he applied himself, with wonderful success, to sacred studies. St Adalhard and Wala, his brother and successor in the abbacy, made him their companion in their journeys, and their counsellor in all affairs of importance. In 822, they took him with them into Saxony, when they finished the establishment of Corvey, or New Corbie, there. 

The Emperor, Lewis Debonnaire, employed him in several public affairs; and he discharged all these commissions with honour. In his own monastery he preached to the monks on Sundays and holidays, and gave every day public lectures on the sacred sciences. Under his direction the schools of Corbie became very famous. Amongst his scholars were Adalhard the Younger, (who governed the abbey in quality of vicar during the absence of St Adalhard the Elder,) St Anscharius, Hildeman, and Odo, successively bishops of Beauvais, and Warn, abbot of New Corbie, in Saxony. 

HE KEPT ALL THE OBSERVANCES

These occupations and studies never seemed to him a sufficient reason to exempt him from assisting at the public office in the choir, and all other general observances of the rule. In subscribing the council of Paris, in 846, he took only his own name, Radbert; but in the works which he composed after that time, he always prefixed to it that of Paschasius. 

This he took according to the custom which then prevailed among men of letters in France, for every one to adopt some Roman or scriptural name. Thus in his epitaph or panegyric on his abbot, Wala, he styles him Arsenius.   

RADBERT WAS CHOSEN ABBOT

St Adalhard died in 826, and Wala, the second abbot, in 836. Isaac succeeded him, and upon his demise, in 844, Radbert was chosen the fourth abbot. The distractions of this station made him earnestly endeavour to resign his dignity: which however he could not effect till seven years after, in 851. 

Being restored to his liberty, he retired to the abbey of St Riquier to finish some of his works; but after some time he returned to Corbie. 

HIS WRITINGS

In all his writings he takes those of the fathers, in which he was extremely well versed, for his guide. His long commentary on St Matthew’s gospel, a learned and useful work, he began before he was chosen abbot, as appears from his dedication of the four first books to Gontland, a monk of St Riquier’s; but in the latter he speaks of himself as very old, so that Mabillon thinks he only finished his twelfth or last book about the year 858. 

Radbert dedicated to Emma, abbess of our Lady’s at Soissons, about the year 856, his prolix commentary on the forty-fourth psalm. To stir himself up to compunction, he wrote an exposition of the Lamentations of Jeremy, which he applies both to the two destructions of Jerusalem, by Nabuchodonosor and Titus, and to the fall of a soul into sin. The mention he here makes of the sacking of Paris, shows that he wrote this book after the plunder of that city by the Normans, in 857. 

ON THE SACRAMENT OF THE ALTAR

The most famous work of Radbert was his book, On the Sacrament of the Altar, or On the Body and Blood of Christ, which he dedicated to Warin, abbot of New Corbie; to which dignity he was only raised in 826. He mentions in it the banishment of Arsenius, that is, of the abbot Wala, which happened in 831, not of St Adalhard, as some mistake, who thence imagine that he first published this book in 818. Fifteen or twenty years after this first edition, the author, when he was abbot, consequently after the year 844, gave a second more ample than the former, and dedicated it to King Charles the Bald, who had desired to see it. 

He wrote the life of St Adalhard soon after his death: also that of the abbot Wala, under the title of his epitaph, and the acts of the martyrs Rufinus and Valerius, who suffered in the territory of Soissons. The foregoing works of St Radbert were published in one volume by F. Sirmond, in 1618, and in the Library of the Fathers. His treatise to defend the perpetual virginity of Mary, in bringing forth the Son of God, was printed by the care of D’Achery. 

REMARKABLE HUMILITY

St Paschasius Radbertus has given us several remarkable instances of his modesty and humility, styling himself frequently in his writings, The Outcast of the Monastic Order. He died at Corbie on April 26, about the year 865. He was buried in St John’s chapel, but his body was translated into the great church, in 1073, by the authority of the holy see, under the pontificate of Gregory VII, the ceremony being performed by Wido, bishop of Amiens; from which time he is honoured at Corbie, and in the Gallican and Benedictine Martyrologies among the saints. 

From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints