and in their tribulation gave vent to their distress in continual lamentations, and waited their end in caverns and thickets, absorbed in grief. Some indeed in terror at the savage cruelty of the barbarians, fled to foreign lands which had hitherto escaped the hostile attacks of the pagans. Some also bore with them the remains of their fathers, whose souls reign with the Lord of Sabaoth, whom they devoutly served while on earth. The fugitives also carried abroad with them the writings which contained the acts of these same fathers in the Lord, and accounts of the possessions of the churches, their nature and extent, and by whom they were given; but great part of these documents was swept away in the storms of the times, and alas! irrecoverably lost amidst such fearful commotions.
This is what the monks of Jumièges and Fontenelles did;[1] overtaken by a terrible disaster they never brought back what they carried away. The monks of Jumièges translated to Haspres[2] the relics of St. Hugh the archbishop and abbot Aicadre, which the inhabitants of Cambray and Arras preserve in precious shrines, and venerate to this day. The monks of Fontenelles carried to Ghent the relics of the holy confessors Wandrille the abbot, and Ansbert and Wulfran, archbishops,[3] which are in the possession of the Flemings
- ↑ Both these abbeys stood in the valley of the Seine, and were therefore particularly exposed to the devastations of the Northmen. For some account of Jumièges, see a note towards the close of the present chapter, under date of the year 1050. The abbey of St. Wandrille, originally Fontenelles, was founded in 648. Its ruins are now seen embosomed by woods in a glen which issues on the road from Rouen to Havre, about three miles from Caudebec. The refectory exhibits the only relics of the Norman structure, and with some pointed arches of the church destroyed at the revolution, is the principal remains of this once stately abbey.
- ↑ Haspres, between Cambray and Valenciennes. It appears that Pepin d'Herinstal, towards the end of the sixth century, founded a priory in this place, which he attached to Jumièges. The remains of St. Aicadre and St. Hugh, archbishop of Rouen, were translated there to secure them from the outrages of the Northmen, but it must have been after their first devastation of Jumièges, which took place the 24th of May, 841.
- ↑ The relics of St. Wandrille and St. Ansbert, after several migrations from Fontenelles to Boulogne-sur-Mer, and from thence to Chartres and back again to Boulogne, between the years 858 and 944, found their final resting place on the 3rd of September of the latter year in the abbey of St. Peter at Blankenberg, near Ghent. The account of the translation of the relics of St. Wulfran is not so clear, but there are formal records
