Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/542

 GERMAINE

474

GERMAN

hands. Germain wrote to Bruneliaut (his letter is preserved) asking her to use her influence to prevent further war. Sigebcrt was obdurate. Despite Ger- main's warning he set out to attack Chilperic at Tour- nai, whither he had fled, but Fredegunde caused him to be assassinated on the way at Vitri in 575. Ger- main himself died the following year before peace was restored. His remains were interred in St. Sympho- rien's chapel in the vestibule of St. Vincent's church, but in 754 his relics were solemnly removed into the body of the church, in the presence of Pepin and his son, Charlemagne, then a child of seven. From that time the church became known as that of St. Germain- des-Pres. In addition to the letter mentioned above we have a treatise on the ancient Galilean liturgy, attributed to Germain, which has been published by Martene in his "Thesauruis Novus Anecdotonun". St. Germain's feast is kept on 28 May.

Butler, Lives of the Saints, II, 296-S; Bennett in Did. Christ. Biog., s. v. (18); Gukrin, Vie des Saints (Paris, 1880); VI, 2fi4-71; Acta SS.. May, VI, 774-8; Mabillon, Ada SS. O.S.B. (1668-72), I, 234^5; Duplessy, Histoire de St. Ger- main (Paris, 1831); Fraicinet, Not. hiog. sur Si. Gertnain-des- Prcs (Agen, 1881); Anal. Bolland. (1883), II, 69; Bouillart, Hist, de I'abbaye de St. Germain (Paris, 1724).

A. A. MacErlean.

Germaine Cousin, Saint, b. in 1579 of humble parents at Pibrac, a village about ten miles from Tou- louse; d. in her native place in 1601. From her birth she seemed marked out for suffering ; she came into the world with a deformed hand and the disease of scrof- ula, and, while yet an infant, lost her mother. Her father soon married again, but his second wife treated Germaine with much cruelty, lender pretence of saving the other children from the contagion of scrof- ula she persuaded the father to keep Germaine away from the homestead, and thus the child was employed almost from infancy as a shepherdess. When she returned at night, her bed was in the stable or on a litter of vine branches in a garret. In this hard school Germaine learned early to practise humility and patience. She was gifted with a marvellous sense of the presence of God and of spiritual things, so that her lonely life became to her a source of Ught and blessing. To poverty, bodily infirmity, the rigours of the seasons, the lack of affection from those in her own home, she added voluntary mortifications and austerities, mak- ing bread and water her daily food. Her love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and for His Virgin Mother presaged the saint. She assisted daily at the Holy Sacrifice ; when the bell rang, she fixed her sheep- hook or distaff in the ground, and left her flocks to the care of Providence while she heard Mass. Although the pasture was on the border of a forest infested with wolves, no harm ever came to her flocks.

She is said to have practised many austerities as a reparation for the sacrileges perpetrated by heretics in the neighbouring churches. She frequented the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist, and it was observed that her piety increased on the approach of every feast of Our Lady. The Rosary was her only book, and her devotion to the Angelus was so great that she used to fall on her knees at the first sound of the bell, even though she heard it when crossing a stream. Whenever she could do so, she assembled the children of the village around her and sought to instil into their minds the love of Jesus and Mary. The villagers w-ere inclined at first to treat her piety with mild derision, until certain signs of God's signal favour made her an object of reverence and awe. In re- pairing to the village church she had to cross a stream. The ford in winter, after heavy rains or the melting of snow, was at times impassable. On several occa- sions the swollen waters were seen to open and afford her a passage without wetting her garments. Not- withstanding her povert y she found means to help the poor by sharing with tliem her allowance of bread. Her father at last came to a sense of his duty, forbade

her stepmother henceforth to treat her harshly, and wished to give her a place in the home with the other children, but she begged to be allowed to remain in the humbler position. At this point, when men were be- ginning to realize the beauty of her life, God called her to Himself. One morning in the early summer of 1601, her father finding that she had not risen at the usual hour went to call her; he found her dead on her pallet of vine-twigs. She was then twenty-two years of age. Her remains were buried in the" parish church of Pibrac in front of the pulpit. In 1644, when the grave was opened to receive one of her relatives, the body of Germaine was discovered fresh and perfectly preserved, and miraculously raised almost to the level of the floor of the church. It was exposed for public view near the pulpit, until a noble lady, the wife of rranf;ois de Beauregard, presented as a thanks-offer- ing a casket of lead to hold the remains. She had been cured of a malignant and incurable ulcer in the breast, and her infant son whose life was despaired of was restored to health on her seeking the intercession of Germaine. This was the first of a long series of won- derful cures wrought at her relics. The leaden casket was placed in the sacristy, and in 1661 and 1700 the remains were viewed and found fresh and intact by the vicars-general of Toulouse, who have left testamen- tary depositions of the fact. Expert medical evi- dence deposed that the body had not been embalmed, and experimental tests showed that the preservation was not due to any property inherent in the soil. In 1700 a movement was begun to procure the beatifica- tion of Germaine, but it fell through owing to acciden- tal causes. In 1793 the casket was desecrated by a revolutionary tinsmith, named Toulza, who with three accomplices took out the remains and buried them in the sacristy, throwing quick-lime and water on them. After the Revolution, her body was found to be still intact save where the quick-lime had done its work. The private veneration of Germaine had continued from the original finding of the body in 1644, supported and encouraged by numerous cures and miracles. The cause of beatification was resumed in 1850. Tlie documents attested more than 400 miracles or extraordinary graces, and thirty postulatory letters from archbishops and bishops in France besought the beatification from the Holy See. The miracles at- tested were cures of every kind (of blindness, con- genital and resulting from disease, of hip and spinal disease), besides the multiplication of fooil for the dis- tressed community of the Good Sheiilu-rd at Bourges in 1845. On 7 May, 1854, Pius IX pioclaiiued her beatification, and on 29 June, 1867, placed her on the canon of virgin saints. Her feast is kept in the Diocese of Toulouse on 1 5 June. She is represented in art with a shepherd's crook or with a distaff; with a watchdog, or a sheep ; or with flowers in her apron.

Gukrin in Petits Bultajtdistes, 15 June; Veuillot, Vie de la bienheureuse Germaine (2d ed., Paris, 1904).

C. MULCAHY.

German Gardiner, Blessed, last martyr under Henry VIII ; date of birth unknown; d. at Tyburn, 7 March, 1544; secretary to, and probably a kinsman of Stephen Gardiner, and an able defender of the old Faith, as his tract against John Frith (dated 1 August, 1534) shows. During the years of fiery trial, which followed, we hear no more of him than that "he was stirred up to courage" by the examples of the martyrs, and especially by More, a layman like him.self. His witness was given eight years later, under remarkable circumstances. Henry VIII was becoming more severe upon the fast-multiplying heretics. Cranmer fell under suspicion, and Gardiner was (or was thought to have been) employed in drawing up a list of that heresiarch's errors in the Faith. Then the whim of the religious despot changed again, and the Catholic was sacrificed in the heretic's place. Still he was the last victim, and Henry afterwards became even more