Sulpicius the Pious

Saint Sulpicius the Pious, also called Sulpicius II, was bishop of Bourges in Frankish Gaul in the seventh century and departed to the Lord on 17 January 646 (according to some sources 647). He was chaplain to King Clothar II, a protector of the poor and a shepherd who restored order in his Church. The Church remembers him on 17 January.

Early life According to his Vita, Sulpicius was born at Vatan, in Berry, near Bourges, of noble parents, about the year 576. From his youth he devoted himself to good works and the study of Scripture and gave his great inheritance to the Church and the poor. Some sources say he studied at the royal palace school under the chaplain of King Guntram until the age of sixteen. Austregisilus, bishop of Bourges, who knew him, ordained him cleric, then deacon, and entrusted to him the direction of the episcopal school; another account has him named archdeacon in 612 and priest in 618. King Clothar II, hearing of his merits, called him to court and made him almoner and chaplain of his armies.

As bishop After the death of Austregisilus, about 624, Sulpicius was recalled to Bourges to succeed him. He laboured with great zeal and fruit to renew ecclesiastical discipline and to relieve the poor, living himself in poverty, prayer and strictness. In 627 he attended the Council of Clichy and held other councils with the bishops of his province. Saint Desiderius of Cahors, treasurer to Clothar, was his friend, and three letters of Desiderius to him survive.

His Vita tells that he once received at table the noble Theudogisilus from the king's palace, and the great fire in the middle of the hall, built too high, threatened to get out of control, but Sulpicius put it out with the sign of the Cross. The same Vita says that he allowed no one, heretic, pagan or Jew, to live in Bourges without the grace of Baptism, and that many Jews were converted. King Dagobert sent the unyielding general Lollo to reside at Bourges to bring the city closer under royal authority, and the people were burdened with too heavy a tax. Sulpicius decreed three days of fasting for clergy and laity and sent the cleric Ebargisilus to the king, and the tax was remitted.

His end and veneration Towards the end of his life Sulpicius took a coadjutor, Vulfoleudus, and retired to a monastery he had founded near Bourges, where he fell asleep on 17 January 646. Another source says that his successor was his coadjutor Florentius. Miracles at his tomb, in the basilica he had built, began soon after his death and the place became a centre of pilgrimage. The Vita describes the place, called Navis, as a lovely spot between two rivers, with pastures, woods and vineyards, so that the inhabitants seemed to possess an image of paradise. It also contains the life of his saintly contemporary Eustadiola.

In his honour the church of Saint-⁠Sulpice in Paris was built, from which the Society of Saint-⁠Sulpice takes its name, known for the training of clergy. More than three hundred parishes in France, Belgium and Switzerland bear his name, and at Vatan a chapel was dedicated to him from the fifteenth century, with a pilgrimage each year on 27 August, the day of the translation of the relics to Paris.