The story of how a refugee from plague-stricken Nice gave voice to Vence’s gratitude in a hymn to its protector, Saint Lambert.
Hundreds of the faithful filled the streets of Vence on an autumn day in 1634. The cathedral bells rang out over the town as a silver reliquary, sheltered beneath a ceremonial canopy, was carried through the ancient, narrow lanes once walked by one of Vence’s two patron saints, Saint Lambert. Inside the beautiful reliquary lay a bone from the saint’s right arm. A delegation of more than 150 people from Bauduen could barely contain their joy. They were bringing home a relic of the saint who had been born in their village. As the slow, reverent procession made its way through the streets, they sang a hymn to Saint Lambert written only a few years earlier by a refugee from Nice.
You can read a more in-depth account of the life of Saint Lambert in this article: Grace, Miracles, and Mercy – Exploring the Life and Legacy of Saint Lambert of Vence.
In 1629, bubonic plague returned to southern France, ravaging villages, towns, and cities across the region. Vence, however, was almost completely spared. The people of the town saw this as a sign of divine protection and attributed their deliverance to their two patron saints, Saint Véran and Saint Lambert. As fear spread through the surrounding countryside, refugees from plague-stricken communities made their way to Vence in search of safety.
Among them was Honoré Léotardi de Saint-Agnès, a learned magistrate from Nice and future senator. In 1631, he took refuge in the small fortress-village of Saint-Laurent-la-Bastide, situated on the Baou des Blancs overlooking Vence. From this place of safety above the town, Léotardi gave thanks in the form he knew best: a Latin hymn honoring Saint Lambert, the saint believed to have helped protect Vence from disaster.
The hymn was printed in Latin a few years later, in 1648, in a book titled Hymnorum lib. II (Book Two of Hymns), Léotardi’s second collection of sacred hymns. The hymn itself is quite brief, occupying only two and a half pages of the volume. It appears as Hymn 30 and bears the title “On Saint Lambert, Bishop of Vence.”
Honoré Léotardi de Saint-Agnès, known in Latin as Honoratus Leotardus, was a prominent seventeenth-century Niçois magistrate, jurist, poet, and later senator. Born in Nice into a family long associated with public office, he rose through a series of important civic and judicial positions, serving as city assessor, first consul, juge-mage, prefect of the city and county of Nice, and finally senator. His career placed him among the educated governing elite of Nice at a time when the city belonged to the House of Savoy and stood at the crossroads of Italian, Provençal, and Catholic culture.
Léotardi was admired not only for his legal learning, especially his later treatise on usury, but also for his literary gifts. In his youth, he wrote Italian and Latin verse, dramatic works, panegyrics, and sacred poetry. His Latin hymns were devoted to saints of the regional church, helping to preserve and celebrate the sacred memory of places such as Nice, Cimiez, and Vence. His hymn to Saint Lambert should be understood as more than a simple devotional song. It was the work of a learned Niçois refugee and public figure giving poetic form to the gratitude of Vence, a town that believed itself protected by one of its beloved patron saints in a time of fear, sickness, and flight.
In the mid 17th-century, a cannon of the Cathedral Chapter of Vence by the name of Jacques Barcillon wrote a biography of Saint Lambert titled La Vie & Les Miracles de Saint Lambert (The Life & Miracles of Saint Lambert). This unpublished, handwritten biography of almost 80 pages has never been published. Attached to the end of the manuscript is the hymn for Saint Lambert written by Léotardi. It seems that Barcillon and he were friends. Barcillon includes a short introduction to the hymn which reads:
“Monsieur Honoré Léotardy, known as the Lord of Sainte-Agnès and a senator in the Senate of Nice, is a man whose devotion equals the learning that made him worthy of that office. Just as he occasionally presents the public with works worthy of his scholarship, he has also produced one worthy of his piety, which he composed in the year 1631 while taking refuge in the countryside during the plague in Nice. It is a book of hymns concerning several saints, among which is one in honour of Saint Lambert, which I have placed here.
“Had I a share in this man’s genius, just as I have a place in his affection, perhaps in translating him I would have made him speak our language as elegantly as he makes him speak in his own. But I could do no better, since neither nature nor learning has endowed me with any greater ability.”
The final sentences are a conventional but apparently personal expression of modesty. Barcillon says that he enjoys a place in Léotardi’s affection, that is, Léotardi regards him as a friend, but does not possess an equal share of his literary genius. He therefore apologizes for being unable to reproduce in French the elegance of Léotardi’s Latin. The passage is especially valuable because it links Léotardi, Barcillon, the plague of 1631, and the hymn to Saint Lambert in a single contemporary or near-contemporary account.
Barcillon then goes on to transcribe Léotardi’s hymn in the original Latin and translate it into French over three pages.
Léotardi’s hymns were not forgotten curiosities. A 1972–1973 scholarly article in Sacris Erudiri notes that the historian Gioffredo cited him as an authority for distinguishing Saint Valerian of Cimiez from Saint Valerius of Nice. The article notes that Léotardi had written separate hymns for the two bishops: one in Book I, hymn 23, and another in Book II, hymn 46. This shows that Léotardi’s hymn collection was used not only devotionally but also as part of local hagiographical argument. His hymns could preserve, reinforce, or clarify the sacred geography of the region: Nice, Cimiez, Vence, and the old episcopal landscape of the Alpes-Maritimes.
A nineteenth-century handwritten parish register from Vence contains a brief entry concerning the hymn. It confirms that the hymn was composed in 1631 and notes that Léotardi was a close friend of Jacques Barcillon, a canon of the Chapter of Vence and the author of manuscripts on the lives of Saint Lambert and Saint Véran. The same entry notes that the hymn was printed and sung on May 26, 1838, the feast day of Saint Lambert.
Below are links to download the three versions of this hymn (as well as a zip file with all three versions):
1. The original Latin from the book.
2. A modern French translation.
3. A modern English translation.
I found a copy of Léotardi’s second book of hymns (Hymnorum lib. II) online. I used ChatGPT’s OCR (optical character recognition) capabilities to examine each page and convert the PDF into actual text. I then compared the original PDF I had downloaded with the text generated by ChatGPT, line by line and word by word, and made any necessary corrections or additions. Finally, I used ChatGPT to translate the Latin into modern French and English.
Download a high-quality PDF reproduction of the original hymn in Latin (2mb)
Download a high-quality PDF translation of the hymn in modern French (400kb)
Download a high-quality PDF translation of the hymn in English (400kb)
Download a zip file of all three versions (3mb)
[click on any image to see sample pages of the different versions]
