ST SIGEBERT III., KING AND CONFESSOR

ST SIGEBERT III., KING AND CONFESSOR - 1 FEBRUARY

SAINT SIGEBERT III., KING AND CONFESSOR

(Saint Sigebert III, French King of Austrasia.) Dagobert I, king of France, led for some time a very dissolute life, but was touched by an extraordinary grace upon the birth of his son Sigebert, and from that time was entirely converted to God. Bagnetrude, our saint’s mother, is only styled the concubine of Dagobert, though he was publicly married to her.

HE RECALLED ST AMAND

The father desiring to have his son baptised by the most holy prelate of his dominions, recalled St Amand, bishop of Maestricht, whom he had banished for his zeal in reproving his vices, fell at his feet at Clichi, near Paris, to ask his pardon, promised amendment, and by the advice of St Owen and St Eligius, then laymen in his court, engaged him to initiate his son in the sacrament of regeneration.

HIS BAPTISM

The ceremony was performed with great pomp at Orleans, Charibert, king of part of Aquitaine, and brother to Dagobert, being god-father. The young prince’s education was entrusted by the father to the blessed Pepin of Landen, mayor of his palace, who being forced by the envy of the nobility to withdraw for some time, carried Sigebert into the dominions of Charibert in Aquitaine, where he enjoyed a considerable estate, the paternal patrimony of his wife the blessed Itta.

KING OF AUSTRASIA

Pepin remained there about three years; after which term he was recalled to the court of Dagobert, who declared his son Sigebert, though only three years old, in 633, king of Austrasia, and gave him for his ministers, St Cunibert, archbishop of Cologne, and duke Adelgise, and committed the administration of the whole kingdom to Pepin, whom he always kept near his own person.

CLOVIS II

Dagobert’s second son, Clovis II, was born in the following year, 634, and to him the father allotted for his inheritance all the western part of France, containing all Neustria and part of Burgundy. Austrasia, or Eastern France, (in which sense Austria retains a like name in Germany,) at that time comprised Provence and Switzerland, (dismembered from the ancient kingdom of Burgundy,) the Albigeois, Auvergne, Quercy, the Cevennes, Champagne, Lorraine, Upper Picardy, the archbishopric of Triers, and other states reaching to the borders of Friesland; Alsace, the Palatinate, Thuringia, Franconia, Bavaria, Suabia, and the country which lay betwixt the Lower Rhine and Old Saxony.

HE FORMED HIM TO ALL HEROIC CHRISTIAN VIRTUES

Dagobert died in 638, and was buried at the abbey of St Denis, of which he was the munificent founder. According to the settlement which he had made, he was succeeded in Austrasia by St Sigebert, and in the rest of France by his youngest son Clovis II.

Pepin of Landen, who had been mayor of the palace to the father, discharged the same office to his death under St Sigebert, and not content to approve himself a faithful minister, and true father to the prince, he formed him from the cradle to all heroic Christian virtues.

By his prudence, virtue, and valour, St Sigebert in his youth was beloved and respected by his subjects, and feared by all his enemies.

PEPIN'S DEATH

Pepin dying in 640, the virtuous king appointed his son Grimoald mayor of his palace. He reigned in perfect intelligence with his brother, of which we have few examples among the Merovingian kings whenever the French monarchy was divided.

The Thuringians revolting, he reduced them to their duty; and this is the only war in which he was engaged.

LOVE OF PEACE

The love of peace disposed his heart to be a fit temple of the Holy Ghost, whom he invited into his soul by assiduous prayer, and the exercise of all Christian virtues. His patrimony he employed in relieving the necessitous, and in building or endowing monasteries, churches, and hospitals. He founded twelve monasteries, the four principal of which were Cougnon, now a priory, not far from Bouillon; Stavelot and Malmedi, two miles from each other, and St Martin’s, near Metz.

HE FOUNDED TWELVE MONASTERIES

St Remaclus brought from Solignac the rule of St Columban, which king Sigebert in his charter to Cougnon calls the rule of the ancient fathers. This that holy abbot established first at Cougnon, and afterwards at Malmedi and Stavelot.

A life filled with good works, and devoted all to God, can never be called short. God was pleased to call this good king from the miseries of this world to the recompense of his labours on February 1, 656, the eighteenth of his reign, and the twenty-fifth of his age.

HE WAS INTERRED IN THE ABBEY OF ST MARTIN

He was interred in the abbey of St Martin, near Metz, which he had built. His body was found incorrupt in 1063, and placed in a monument on the side of the high altar: and in 1170 it was enshrined in a silver case.

The monastery of St Martin’s, and all others in the suburbs, were demolished by Francis of Lorraine, duke of Guise, in 1552, when Charles V laid siege to Metz. The relics of St Sigebert are now deposited in the collegiate church of our Lady at Nancy. He is honoured among the saints in a great part of the dominions which he governed, and in the monasteries and churches which he founded.

From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints

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