VIRGILIUS

11 GO VIRGILIUS

VIRGILIUS (1), ST., twenty-fourth arch-bishop ot Arles. Ihere is some confusion as tohis earlier life. According to Gregory of Tours,his contemporary, on the death of Licerius, the■twenty-third archbishop, Virgilius, who wasabbat of Autun, was put in his place by theinfluence of Syagrius, bishop of that see, A.D.,588 (Hist. Franc, ix. 23), and this high autho-rity has usually been followed (see Gall. Christ,i. 540 ; Gams, 493). The old catalogue of Arles,however, inserts a Paschasius between the two.■It may be, as has been suggested, that the latter’s•tenure of office being very short escaped Gre-gory’s notice (see Greg. Magn. Epist. i. 47,n., Migue, Pair. Lat. Ixxvii. 509). Again,the life extracted from an ancient MS. of thediocese, by Barralis Salerna, makes him a monkand abbat of Levins, and has no mention of anyabbacy at Autun (Chronologic. Lerinensis, i.•87). As archbishop he was the recipient ofseveral letters from Gregory the Great betweenthe years 590 and 601. The occupant of thesee of Arles was in some sense primate of Franceat this time, and, as such, Virgilius receivedfrom the pope the pallium and the papal vice-gerentship in the kingdom of Childebert. “ Ifany bishop desire to make a long journey, hemust obtain your consent. If there shall ariseany question of faith or other matter of difficulty,you are to assemble twelve bishops to discuss anddecide it,” are the pope’s words (Epist. v. 53;see too 54 and 55). The other letters are mainlyoccupied with the suppression of simony andmatters of discipline, and the mission of St.Augustine and his monks to England (ibid. i. 47,vi. 53, ix. 106, 111, 114, xi. 55, 68 ; cf. Ceillier,xi. 484 sqq.) St. Augustine himself was con-secrated by Virgilius, and not, as incorrectlystated by Bede (H. E. i. 27), by Aetherius, whowas bishop of Lyons, not Arles. Virgilius issaid to have built the cathedral church of St.Stephen in the city, and that of St. Saviour andSt. Honoratus outside the walls. According tothe above-mentioned biography he died in the127th year of his age, which would bring himdown to 640, but we have no record of himafter 601, and it is improbable that he livedlater than 610. According to the same authorityhe was buried in the church of St. Saviour andSt. Honoratus, which he had built himself. Hewas commemorated at Lerins March 5, and atArles Oct. 7 or 10. His successor was Florianus.As to his cult see Boll. Acta SS. Mart. i. 399 sqq.For his life^see Gall. Christ, i. 540, and Trichaud,Hist, de VEglise d’Arles, ii. 125-151; and i. 100for an inscription in the cathedral attributed tohim. [S. A. B.]

VIRGILIUS (2) (Feirghil, Ferghil, Fer-GAl), of Aghavoe and Salzburg, the Geometer.In the stream of missionaries that passed fromBritain and Ireland to the continent in the fifthand following centuries, an honourable placemust be assigned to St. Fergil as a divine,a philosopher, and a man of general learning.His Irish name was Ferghil or Fergal, which,as latinized, became Virgilius, the usual formof his name in connexion with Bavaria. Beyondthe affirmation that he was of noble Irish descent,the Lives tell us nothing of his parentage, and theearliest traces of his history we And in the noticesuf his death in the Anncds of the Four Masters :—

“A.D. 784. Ferghil, i.e. the Geometer, abbat ofAchadh-bo, died in Germany in the thirtieth yearof his episcopate;'* and in the Ann. Ult. :— “a.d.788, Feirgil Ab. Acaid boo mor,” but Lanigan,with others, doubts the identity of the saint ofAghavoe and the bishop of Salzburg.

From Aghaboe, in Queen’s County, Fergil issaid to have gone to France before 746, and tohave been kindly received by Pepin, then mayorof the palace under Childeric III. king of Austra-sia. After being with Pepin for two years at Cari-siacum, near Compiegne on the Oise, he proceededto Bavaria, and was again kindly treated by dukeOtilo, upon the recommendation of Pepin. Therehe became abbat of St. Peter’s monastery inSalzburg. At that time, from motives probablyof humility, he concealed the fact of his ordina-tion for the space of about two years, and had abishop “ proprium episcopum” attached to hismonastery for the performance of holy func-tions. (Messingham, Flor. Insul. Sand. 331,col. 1; and see Todd, St. Patrick , 64—7, discussingthe meaning and purpose of this concealment.)[Dohda.] During his abbacy in Salzburg, thecontroversy seems to have arisen between himand St. Boniface, at first upon a theologicalquestion, and afterwards upon certain conclusionsof science. St. Fergil had acknowledged asvalid the baptisms of a priest who throughignorance had mutilated the words of adminis-tration ; he refused also to re-baptize at thecommand of St. Boniface, in whose provinceSalzburg then lay. When the case was referredto the decision of pope Zachary (a.d. 741—752),the pontiff decided in favour of Fergil, andcautioned St. Boniface about his conduct in thematter. The feeling thus aroused between thetwo ecclesiastics does not appear to have beenallowed to remain inactive, and St. Boniface soonfound or took occasion again to denounce Fergilto the pope, on grounds apparently more or lesspersonal. But that which gave St. Boniface thereadiest and most fatal weapon against his op-ponent was the publication, by the latter, of aphilosophical treatise regarding the rotundity ofthe earth, and thus the fact of there being anti-podes. What gave plausibility to the accusationagainst the teaching of Fergil was the thoughtthat two sides of the earth involved two differentraces of men, one of which, being not descendedfrom Adam, would be free from the stain of originalsin. And his ultimate acquittal was probablybrought about by his being able to show that hisspeculations (based, possibly, on those of Marti-anus Capella of Madaura in Africa, who wrote inthe 5th century) did not encroach in the least onthe doctrine of original sin, or the unity of thehuman race. But at first it was like to go hardwith the philosopher and mathematician, whenZachary issued the decretal, that if it was provedby his own confession that Fergil taught thatthere was another world, and people on theother side of the earth, a council should besummoned, and Fergil degraded from the priest-hood / and expelled the church. Milder counsels,however, prevailed, after St. Boniface’s mar-tyrdom in A.D. 755, and when John, bishop ofSalzburg, died, Fergil was appointed to take hisplace, and consecrated on the 13th of June, A.D.766 or 767 (Todd, St. Patrick , 66, adopting thedate given by Mabillon, Acta SS. tom. iv. 280;but Lanigan, Ecol. Hist. Ir. iii. 184, places it in