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figures are attested in charters, or are mentioned in other narrative sources, we know of Praejectus’s career only through the Passio Praejecti. Nevertheless, we can be sure that he really did exist, because we do have the information that his body was removed from the Auvergne in the mid eighth century. 2 There may be a basic explanation (apart from chance) for the relative silence concerning Praejectus: most of our
This book provides a collection of documents in translation which brings together the seminal sources for the late Merovingian Frankish kingdom. The collection of documents in translation includes Liber Historiae Francorum, Vita Domnae Balthidis, Vita Audoini Episcopi Rotomagensis, Acta Aunemundi, Passio Leudegarii, Passio Praejecti, and Vita Sanctae Geretrudis and the Additamentum Nivialense de Fuilano. The Liber Historiae Francorum was written while a Merovingian king still ruled over the Franks and by someone geographically very close to the political centre of that realm. Late Merovingian hagiography tends to emphasise miracles which heal and eliminate the maladies of the life, and the Vita Audoini follows the pattern. The Vita Sanctae Geretrudis makes no mention at all of Columbanus and his mission among the Franks, a strange omission if the Irish were all one group. The Passio Praejecti provides information on the relationship between the politics of the locality and the politics of the centre, for a land dispute between Praejectus and Hector, the ruler of Marseilles, was heard at the royal court at Autun at Easter 675. The Passio Leudegarii has an overt peace-making element, although the issue of who was on which side is much clouded by the complexity of the political narrative.
’s biographer, for instance, drew analogies between his subject and St Lawrence and the prophet Elijah, and compared him above all with Christ himself. In fact the very language of these works places their subjects at the end of a hallowed tradition. Sometimes that tradition is explicitly stressed, as in the prologue to the Passio Praejecti. The message throughout, at all levels, is that the new saints were
from Autun at Easter 675. 43 These events the author discussed as if they and the local people in them were well known to his audience. The impression that the events were controversial is confirmed by another of the sources translated here, the Passio Praejecti ( The Suffering of St Praejectus ), for Praejectus, bishop of Clermont, was also involved in them. 44 According
began to plot against him …’. Again, by analogy with the development of the Passio Leudegarii , and also with the Passio Praejecti , it seems likely that a theme of local hostility to the saint would be a feature of early composition, at a time when the active memory of the intended audience would have forced any author to include their common view of events. 17 Thus the outline of the story of the
applied by the author of the Passio Praejecti (ch. 29) to a certain Agricius who acted as the devil’s agent. See below, p. 292. 71 honorem . 72 714. 73 … in principatum
’. 201 ‘in Christ’ is Pauline language for ‘spiritually’. 202 eulogiae , gifts presented in token of friendship or honour. See Passio Praejecti , ch. 18, below, p. 285. 203 I Timothy 3:7. An example of using Scripture to