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The Vita Germani is a hagiographic text written by Constantius of Lyon in the 5th century AD. It is one of the first hagiographic texts written in Western Europe, and is an important resource for historians studying the origins of saintly veneration and the "cult of saints." It recounts the life and acts of bishop Germanus of Auxerre, who travelled to Britain c. 429 AD, and is the principal source of details about his life. It is one of the few surviving texts from the 5th century with information about Britain and the Pelagian controversy, and is also one of the first texts to identify and promote the cult of Saint Alban.
Germanus then returns to Gaul and we are told that there he made a trip to Arles in order to successfully negotiate a reduction in taxes ( Vita Germani 19-24). Subsequent to this Germanus made a second voyage to Britain to combat the Pelagian heresy, this time healing the son of Elafius, one of the leading men of the country. After Germanus healed the boy, the whole country was converted to the Catholic faith and gave up the Pelagian heresy completely ( Vita Germani 25-27). Having returned to Gaul the next important episode in the Vita concerns Germanus's attempt to mediate on behalf of the who had revolted against Roman rule ( Vita Germani 28-42). Flavius Aetius, the Roman commander, had enlisted Goar the king of the barbarian Alans to put down the rebellion and Germanus personally confronts this formidable warlord. It is finally while visiting Ravenna to plead on behalf of the Armoricans that Germanus dies.
“When this damnable heresy had thus been stamped out, its authors refuted, and the minds of all re-established in the true faith, the bishops visited the shrine of the blessed martyr Alban, to give thanks to God through him.” (''Vita Germani'' 12)
The martyr Alban is also mentioned, one more time, in the context of Germanus's return journey, by sea:
“Their own merits and the intercession of Alban the Martyr secured for them a calm voyage; and a good ship brought them back in peace to their expectant people.” (''Vita Germani'' 13)
Some more information about Germanus's visit to the tomb of the martyr Alban actually comes from some lines added to the official story of the saint's martyrdom, the Passio Albani. Here we are told that he collected some of the martyr's blood from the ground where he had been killed. One version also says that Alban came to Germanus in a dream and revealed the story of his martyrdom to him. Germanus then had this written down in tituli, either in Britain, or as some have argued, back in Auxerre (the Gaulish town of which Germanus was the bishop). Some scholars Wood, Ian (2009). "Germanus, Alban and Auxerre". Bulletin du centre d’études médiévales d’Auxerre (BUCEMA). 13. [2] Retrieved 19 November 2014; Garcia op.cit have argued that Albanus's name was unknown before it was revealed to Germanus, but this is disputed by others.Higham, Nicholas J (2014) “Constantius, Germanus and fifth century Britain” in 'Early Medieval Europe' 22 (2), pp. 113-37; cf Thornhill, Philip "Saint Alban and the end of Roman Britain" (Revised Version)[3]
It is possible, for instance, to suggest that Germanus's 'Allelieua' victory was simply a story made up in Gaul, based on a biblical parallel and no more than a generalised knowledge of the barbarian incursions that Britain was facing at the time. This might well be an excessively skeptical view but we are not in a position to be certain. Likewise the account of Germanus's confrontation with the Pelagians looks arguably too stereotypical to represent any accurate memory of what actually happened. What we can regard as more or less certain is that he visited Britain with the purpose of extinguishing the Pelagian "heresy" there, that the situation there was at least stable enough to make the visit feasible and that bringing the cult of Saint Alban within the fold of orthodoxy was an important part of the strategy by which he hoped to achieve his goal. A further deduction – based on Gildas's description of Saint Alban as Verolamiensem and the presence of that saint's cult centre there by the eighth century at least, according to Bede – might be that he very likely visited Verulamium, the modern Saint Albans.Gildas, De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae 10; Bede Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum I,7
A recent study by Professor Anthony Barrett Barrett, Anthony A (2009) “Saint Germanus and the British Missions” in 'Britannia' XL, pp. 197-218. has concluded that the complex problems surrounding the dating of the life of Saint Germanus can be most credibly solved on the basis that he made only one visit. Particularly important to his argument are the near-contemporary mentions made by Prosper of Aquitaine. He mentions Germanus's first visit (under the year 429) but not any second one (in later versions of his chronicle up to 455). In another work (his In Collatorem" De Gratia Dei et libero arbitrio; liber contra collatorem" in Migne, Patrologia Latina 51: 213-76; trans. Letter, P de (1963) “On Grace and free Will: against Cassian the Lecturer in Defence of St Augustine” in 'Ancient Christian Writer's 32, Westminster Md., Newman Press, pp. 70-139.) he describes the exile of the Pelagians which Constantius attributes to the second visit. In fact Ian Wood Wood, Ian (1984) op.cit p.17 noted that the harsher treatment of the Pelagians on the second visit as something that differentiated it from the first but it could be that it represents, in fact, a desire to corroborate the success of the first visit while allowing a valid purpose for the second. In any case the point is that Prosper's mention in his In Collatorem was almost certainly written before any second visit could take place.e.g. Thompson (1984)op.cit. pp. 29-30 He refers to a lapse of over 20 years since the start of the Pelagian controversy dated to 413 in his chronicle - which would date his In Collatorem to circa 433. Even more decisively he involves Pope Celestine I in this event and since Pope Celestine died in 432 it must have occurred before that time – which Professor Barret argues would not allow time for a second visit.Barrett, Anthony (2009) op.cit pp. 211-12 - especially since, according to Constantius, that second visit happened after Germanus's visit to Arles to secure tax relief, something that probably occurred in the mid-430s. That the event described by Prosper was indeed the same one as that attributed by Constantius to the second visit is best judged by comparing the two relevant texts.
Prosper's ''In Collatorem'' (21.1): “With as much vigour he [Pope Celestine] delivered the British isles of the same disease, in that he drove from that retreat of the Ocean certain individuals, enemies of Grace, who had taken possession of the land of their beginnings, and by ordaining a bishop for the Irish, while striving to keep the Roman island Catholic he also made the uncivilized island Christian.”
Constantius's ''Vita Germani'' 26-7: “They sought out the perpetrators and when they had found them they condemned them ... and by common agreement the agents of the depravity were driven from the island and handed over to the priests to be taken off to the Mediterranean area, so that the region could benefit from its deliverance and they could benefit from repentance. This was done with such healthy results that even now in those regions the faith persists unharmed.”
If the second visit of Germanus to Britain is, indeed, a 'doublet' of the first it casts something of a shadow over the reliability of, at least the British episodes of Constantius's Vita – and certainly everything that occurs in the second visit. This must represent a version of the story of Germanus's visit that had changed so much in the telling that it had become unrecognisable as the same as a better recorded version and consequently was assumed by Constantius or his source, to represent another, 'second', visit.
It particularly throws into doubt the somewhat mysterious figure of Elafius, who is somewhat anomalous as representing the only named Briton in the whole of Germanus's account (besides saint Alban). Conceivably he might represent, like the expulsion of the Pelagians, a detail originally connected with the (first and only) visit of 429. However he is connected with an episode (the curing of his son by Germanus) that looks more like allegory than historical fact and which duplicates a similarly allegorical episode (the curing of the blind girl by Germanus) in the "first" visit.
English Translation: Hoare, F. R. (1965) "The Western Fathers". New York: Harper Torchbooks
French Translation: ed. & trans. Borius, René, "Constance de Lyon: Vie de Saint Germain d'Auxerre", Sources Chrétiennes 112, Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1965.
English translation of sections describing the British visits: Constantius of Lyons, trans. Robert Vermaat. " Vita Sancti Germani". [5] www.vortigernstudies.org.uk. Retrieved 17 November 2014.
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