Saint Exuperius of Toulouse

Very little is known of his early life. The Catholic Encyclopedia says plainly that his place and date of birth are "unascertained". ¹ Butler is more confident and gives Aquitaine, "according to the most received opinion". ²

He may first appear in Rome. In 394 Jerome wrote to Furia, a widow there, and commended her to a priest: "In that reverend man Exuperius you have a man of tried years and faith ready to give you constant support with his advice." ⁵ The translators' note on the letter identifies that priest as the future bishop of Toulouse. ⁵ The encyclopedia is more careful. It thinks it probable, from that letter and from a letter of Paulinus of Nola in 397, that Exuperius was a priest at Rome and then at Bordeaux before he was made a bishop, but allows that both letters may refer to someone else. ¹

One older theory is dismissed. Cardinal Baronius held that the bishop was the same man as Exuperius the rhetor, but the encyclopedia says the identification is "quite generally rejected": the rhetor taught the nephews of Constantine the Great more than half a century before the bishop's time. ¹

He succeeded Saint Silvius as bishop of Toulouse. ¹² Nobody knows exactly when; the encyclopedia says only that he certainly held the see by February 405. ¹

His name is tied to the church of Saint Saturninus. The encyclopedia says he completed the basilica of Saint Saturninus that Silvius had begun. ¹ The Roman Martyrology says he dedicated a basilica in Saturninus's honor. ⁷

What is known of him as a man comes almost entirely from Jerome, who praised him, Butler says, "in many places of his works". ² The fullest passage is in a letter of 411 to Rusticus, a young monk of Toulouse whom Jerome was urging toward life in a community. ³ "Exuperius the reverend bishop of Toulouse," he wrote, "imitating the widow of Zarephath, feeds others though hungry himself. His face is pale with fasting, yet it is the cravings of others that torment him most. In fact he has bestowed his whole substance to meet the needs of Christ's poor." ³

Then comes the line for which he is best remembered: "Yet none is richer than he, for his wicker basket contains the body of the Lord, and his plain glass-cup the precious blood." ³ The encyclopedia explains how it came to that. In its account he sold the altar vessels for the sake of the poor and was then obliged to carry the Sacred Host in an osier basket and the Precious Blood in a vessel of glass. ¹ Jerome himself describes the basket and the cup without mentioning a sale. ³

Jerome went on to compare him with Christ clearing the Temple. Like his Master, he wrote, Exuperius "has banished greed out of the temple", and "without either scourge of cords or words of chiding he has overthrown the chairs of them that sell doves, that is, the gifts of the Holy Spirit." ³ He told Rusticus to follow closely in the bishop's steps. ³

The charity reached well beyond his diocese. The encyclopedia says Jerome praised his generosity to the monks of Palestine, Egypt and Libya, and Butler quotes him on how it "sought for objects in the most distant parts". ¹² In gratitude, both say, Jerome dedicated to him his Commentary on Zechariah. ¹²

His years as bishop were the years the frontier gave way. Writing in 409 to Ageruchia, a widow in Gaul, Jerome listed the peoples who had overrun the country, Vandals and Alans among them, and the cities that had fallen, from Mainz and Reims to Strasbourg. ⁴ Aquitaine, he said, was with few exceptions "one universal scene of desolation". ⁴ Then: "I cannot speak without tears of Toulouse which has been kept from falling hitherto by the merits of its reverend bishop Exuperius." ⁴

The encyclopedia says his charity went to the people of his own diocese, suffering from the raids of the Vandals, Alans and Suevi. ¹ The Roman Martyrology remembers him as a determined defender of his city when the barbarians came. ⁷ Butler says the tenderness with which he hurried to the help of the sufferers drew tears of joy from Jerome, and that Exuperius did not live to see Toulouse taken by the barbarians, God having spared him that grief. ²

The encyclopedia says Exuperius is best known today for his part in the history of the canon of Scripture. ¹ He had written to Pope Innocent I asking for instruction on which books were canonical and on several points of Church discipline. ¹ The pope answered in February 405 with the letter known as Consulenti tibi. ¹ Butler calls it a decretal "so famous in Church history", divided into articles on Church discipline. ²

Its list of the canonical Scriptures, the encyclopedia says, is the canon "as we have them today", including the deuterocanonical books. ¹ Its article on the canon of the Old Testament calls the letter "the Canon of Innocent I, sent in 405 to a Gallican bishop in answer to an inquiry", and says that it and the earlier list associated with Pope Damasus "contain all the deuterocanonicals, without any distinction, and are identical with the catalogue of Trent." ⁶ The encyclopedia rejects the claim of some non-Catholic writers that Innocent excluded the deuterocanonical books. ¹

The sources disagree about how long he can be traced. Butler says he was still alive in 409, because Paulinus of Nola, writing that year, counted him among the distinguished bishops of the Church in Gaul. ² The encyclopedia says Jerome's letter to Rusticus makes it certain he was still living in 411. ¹³ Neither the place nor the year of his death is known. ¹²

One story about him is probably about someone else. It is sometimes said, the encyclopedia notes, that Jerome rebuked him in a letter to Riparius for tolerating the heretic Vigilantius; but Vigilantius did not belong to the diocese of Toulouse, and the encyclopedia thinks Jerome was probably speaking of another bishop. ¹

He was venerated as a saint early. By the time of Gregory of Tours he was held in equal veneration with Saint Saturninus himself. ¹

None of the sources used for this page names a patronage for Saint Exuperius, so none is given here. ¹²⁷ The encyclopedia records only that in Gregory of Tours's day he was honored equally with Saint Saturninus. ¹

The feast of Saint Exuperius is September 28. ¹⁷ The encyclopedia says Usuard, writing toward the end of the ninth century, was the first martyrologist to assign him to that date. ¹ Butler keeps him on September 28, and the Roman Martyrology enters him that day as the bishop of Toulouse whose frugality toward himself and generosity toward others Saint Jerome describes. ²⁷

The picture Jerome left is of a bishop who went hungry so others could eat, with a face pale from fasting, troubled more by other people's hunger than by his own. ³ It is a short portrait, and nearly all there is. Jerome wrote it to a young monk as something to imitate. ³

The wicker basket and the glass cup are the detail people keep. ¹³ On the encyclopedia's reading they mean that the altar vessels of Toulouse had been sold for the poor, and that the bishop held the Body and Blood of Christ in the cheapest vessels there were. ¹³ Jerome saw no loss of honor in it: none, he said, was richer. ³

He was bishop while Gaul was being overrun. Jerome credited Toulouse's survival to his merits, and Butler says he did not live to see it fall. ²⁴ Charity did not stop the invasions, and none of the sources pretends it did. What they record is a bishop who gave away what he had while his world was coming apart around him. ¹²⁴

He also asked a question. He wrote to Rome to ask which books belonged in Scripture, and the answer he received lists the same books the Council of Trent would name more than a thousand years later. ¹⁶ The sources do not suggest he thought the question beneath a bishop who had so much else to do.