Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman and Benedictine Martyrologies; that of Usuardus, and that attributed to Bede. Authority:—A life by a contemporary, a monk of Condate, "Ego adhuc puerulus," he says. This life is very curious from its barbarous Latin, teeming as it does with words and phrases adopted from the Burgundian language. Also a life of SS. Romanus and Lupicinus by S. Gregory of Tours, written in the 5th cent., see Feb. 28th.
Lupicinus and his younger brother Romanus, seeking solitude, climbed the rocks among the pines of the Jura, and established themselves in the wilderness of Joux, living on wild fruits and plants. They were both young; and they soon found that it was impossible for them to maintain life on the scanty food yielded by the mountains. They therefore descended to the plains, and entered the cottage of a poor woman, and told her how they had tried to serve God in the midst of the rocks, but had found such a life insupportable. The woman sharply rebuked them for having put their hand to the plough, and then turned back, and they filled with shame, turned their faces once more to the mountains, and penetrated its recesses. And then many came to them from all quarters, and the grain and herbs they had sown and planted sprang up, and they cut down trees, and built the monastery of Condate. But soon the place was too strait for them, and a colony went forth, and founded Lauconne, also in the Jura, and another was established at Romainmoutier. Lupicinus was abbot, and all obeyed him. He is said by S. Gregory of Tours [bishop and historian of the Franks (d. 594)] to have been very austere and stern in the maintenance of discipline, so that from his harshness some brethren fled, but the contemporary writer gives a very different picture of him. A story of his severity, with which the mildness of his brother contrasts pleasingly, has been related in the life of S. Romanus (Feb. 28th).
But if he could be harsh at times, at others he overflowed with gentleness.
He wore a rough garment made of the skins of beasts stitched together, and wooden shoes, or rather sandals. When others retired to rest after singing vespers, he retreated to his oratory, however cold the weather, meditating and dozing till the midnight office; in the quaint Latin of his biographer it is said that he entered the oratory "mæditaturus potius quam repausaturus" (to meditate rather than to repose.)
A pretty story is told of the tender care of the abbot Lupicinus for a monk whose exaggerated fasting had brought him to such a pass that it was thought he could not live many days. This man, who was younger than Lupicinus, not content with the strict rule of the house, refused to eat and drink till after vespers, and then he would touch nothing but the crumbs which the brethren had let fall on the floor, which he collected in his palm, and moistened with a little water. The result was that he was struck down as with paralysis, and lay unable to move on his pallet, ghastly, and scarce breathing. This monk was so set on maintaining his self-imposed rule that the abbot doubted for some while how to treat him. At last when all the brethren were at work one bright spring day, he remained behind, and going to the monk's side, said, "Come, my brother, and let me carry you on my back into the little garden; you have long been shut in here in this dull cell, unable to set foot on the ground, and glad your eyes with the fresh green grass." So he set him on his back, and carried him into the garden, and spread some sheepskins on the herb, and lay the emaciated brother on it, and then lay down beside him as though he were also suffering from exhaustion and rheumatism. After a while he began to rub his arms and legs, and say, "Good God! how comforted I am by this. Brother, come, let me rub your back and legs and arms also, it makes them feel so much better." And when he had done this for a while, the brother, who lay half torpid, began to stretch himself a bit, and spread out his legs in the sun.
Seeing this, the abbot ran to the kitchen, and got some bits of broken bread, and then went into the cellar and sopped them in the best wine, and after that poured a little oil upon them, and came back into the garden, holding out what he had got, exclaiming, "Look! sweetest brother, away with your self-imposed severity, and doubt not it has been too hard for you, follow my example, and obey my advice," and then he gave him half of what he had prepared, eating the rest himself, to encourage the monk. So having rubbed him a little more, and sung a hymn, and said a prayer, he took him up on his back once more, and carried him back to his cell again. Next day he did precisely the same, and so on till the monk was able to totter into the garden, leaning upon him, and then he amused him and occupied him by making him pick berries. And thus, by degrees, he restored to his vigour a man who was thought to be on the brink of the grave. He lived many years longer.
There were two monks who, tired of the discipline, or offended at being set to work that displeased them, resolved to go away. They met in the oratory at night, going thither under pretence of keeping vigil, and one said to the other, "You take spade and axe, and I will carry off the coverlets, and so we shall do well where we are going." Now in a dark corner was the abbot praying, and he heard them, and he cried out, "How, my children, is this! Will ye, going away, and disturb our peace?" Then the two monks fell down dismayed at his feet, but he extending his hands, put one under each of their chins, and stooping gently, kissed them, said no one word of reproach, but betook himself to the arms of prayer to God. Then the two monks stole back, penitent and humbled, to their beds, and one remained at Condate till he died, twenty years after; but the second after a while ran away, but returned again to Lupicinus, sorrowful for what he had done, and resolved to continue with him through the rest of his life.
When Lupicinus was old, he sought king Chilperic who governed Burgundy, and who was then in Geneva.
He went to him to plead the cause of some poor natives of the Sequanaise, who had been reduced into slavery by a subordinate potentate. This petty tyrant was one of those degenerate Romans, courtiers and oppressors, who, by flattering the new-born authority of the barbarian kings, found means of trampling on and spoiling their inferiors. He was perhaps one of those senators of Gaul [roughly modern France and Belgium] whom the Burgundians had admitted in 456 to a share of the conquered soil, and Lupicinus, although of Gallo-Roman origin, seems to have been less favourably disposed towards the Roman government than that of the Barbarians. Gregory of Tours has recorded a tradition which well depicts the impression made on the popular imagination by this apparition of the monks confronted with the triumphant Barbarians. He relates that when Lupicinus crossed the threshold of the palace of Chilperic, the throne upon which the king was seated trembled, as if there had been an earthquake. Reassured at the sight of the old man clothed in skins, the Burgundian prince listened to the curious debate which arose between the oppressor and the advocate of the oppressed. "It is then thou," said the courtier to the abbot, "it is thou, old impostor, who hast already insulted the Roman power for ten years, by announcing that all this region, and its chiefs, were hastening to their ruin." "Yes, truly," answered the monk, pointing to the king, who listened, "Yes, perverse traitor, the ruin which I predicted to thee and to thy fellows, there it is. Seest thou not, degenerate man, that thy rights are destroyed by thy sins, and that the prayers of the innocent are granted? Seest thou not that the fasces and the Roman purple are compelled to bow before a foreign judge? Take heed that some unexpected guest does not come before a new tribunal to claim thy lands and thy domains." The king of the Burgundians not only justified the abbot by restoring his clients to liberty, but overwhelmed him with presents, and offered him fields, and vineyards for his abbey. Lupicinus would only accept a portion of the produce of these fields and vineyards, fearing that the sentiment of too vast a property might make his monks proud. Then the king decreed that they should be allowed every year three hundred measures of corn, three hundred measures of wine, and a hundred gold pieces for vestments; and the treasury of the Merovingian kings continued to pay these dues long after the fall of the kingdom of the Burgundians.
The old abbot was true to his profession of self-mortification to the last. As he lay a dying he asked for a drink of water. One of the brethren sweetened it, by pouring in a spoonful of honey. But the dying man, when he tasted the sweetness, turned his head away, and refused to drink.