Jacques Barcillon’s handwritten, unpublished 17th-century manuscript was later printed in the “Bulletin of the Société d’Études Scientifiques et Archéologiques de la Ville de Draguignan” in five parts in 1860 and 1861.
The historical Saint Véran of Vence remains an elusive figure. He was a real person. He served as bishop of Vence, likely sometime in the late 5th century — roughly the time when the Western Roman Empire was collapsing, and new kingdoms were forming across Europe. Unfortunately, there is very little historical evidence about his life and work.
The earliest surviving account of Véran’s life is a handwritten, unpublished 17th-century biography titled Vie de Saint Véran (Life of Saint Véran) by Canon Jacques Barcillon. It was written twelve hundred years after Véran’s lifetime. Barcillon cites few sources and appears to draw heavily on general hagiographic (idealized or overly flattering, especially about a saint or holy person) conventions and oral traditions.
Barcillon was a canon of the Cathedral Chapter of Vence in the first half of the seventeenth century and one of the most learned clerics of his diocese. He composed at least one other known work, La Vie de Saint Lambert (The Life of Saint Lambert), probably written sometime around 1630. Both of Barcillon’s texts are part of a broader trend of post-Tridentine devotion in Provence, in which the lives of local saints were rewritten to inspire reform and spiritual renewal among the clergy and faithful.
While we cannot treat much of what Barcillon records as verifiable history, we can read his work as an honest, attentive reflection of the long-standing local traditions that shaped Vence’s understanding of Saint Véran. His narrative preserves the beliefs, stories, and devotional habits that had taken root over centuries. Even when the details cannot be historically confirmed, they reveal how the people of Vence saw their patron saint and how his presence continued to inform the city’s identity, memory, and religious life.
In Volume III of the “Bulletin de la Société d’Études Scientifiques et Archéologiques de la Ville de Draguignan,” compiling works from 1860 and 1861, a lawyer by the name of Raymond Poulle wrote a review of the recently published history of Vence by Abbé François-Alexandre Tisserand titled Histoire de Vence (History of Vence). Tisserand sent a copy of Barcillon’s Life of Saint Véran to the Society, which published it in five parts as a “supporting document” for the review of Tisserand’s book. This “Bulletin” version omitted a handful of pages that were found in the original manuscript.
The Life of Saint Véran is broken into 18 chapters:
I. The life of Saint Véran, Bishop of Vence — Excellent qualities of Saint Véran’s parents.
II. Continuation and conclusion of the same subject and the birth of Saint Véran.
III. On Saint Eucher’s care in the upbringing of his children.
IV. On the Island of Lérins, where Véran and his brother were brought to advance in learning and virtue.
V. On the progress and happy success that Véran and his brother achieved in a short time at Lérins.
VI. Véran and his brother embrace the monastic life at Lérins.
VII. Saint Véran is elected and ordained Bishop of Vence.
VIII. On the arrival of Saint Véran in Vence and the pitiful state in which he found his diocese.
IX. On the beginning and the progress of Saint Véran in the governance of his bishopric.
X. The reputation of Saint Véran spreads everywhere, he is known and esteemed by all.
XI. Afflictions suffered by Christians because of their impiety, and the help our saint gave to his people.
XII. Troubles stirred up in the Church because of various new heresies, and how Saint Véran conducted himself in these matters.
XIII. There was a dispute over the primacy of the churches of Gaul, claimed by the metropolitan bishops of Arles and Vienne, which was settled by Saint Véran.
XIV. Saint Véran is made mediator in a dispute between Ingénue, metropolitan bishop of Embrun and the Alpes-Maritimes, and Auxane, Bishop of Cimiez and of Nice.
Unnumbered chapter. Continuation of the same subject,
XV. The Passing of Saint Véran.
XVI. Concerning the Church of Saint Véran in the territory of Caigne, Diocese of Vence.
XVII. Continuation of the same.
XVIII. Concerning four Saints Véran, bishops, who lived almost at the same time in France.
Below are links to download six versions of this manuscript (as well as zip files with multiple versions):
1. The original, handwritten old-French manuscript.
2. A modern french translation of the manuscript.
3. A modern English translation of the manuscript.
4. The original version printed in the “Bulletin de la Société d’Études.”
5. A modern French translation of the “Bulletin” version.
6. A modern English translation of the “Bulletin” version.
I visited the Catholic Archives in Nice and photographed each page of the original manuscript. I used OCR (optical character recognition) to convert a PDF of the “Bulletin” version of the manuscript into actual text. I then compared the photographs of each page of the original manuscript I had taken with the text from the “Bulletin” version, line by line and word by word, and made any necessary corrections or additions. Finally, I used ChatGPT to translate the “old French” into modern French and English.
Original 17th century handwritten manuscript
Download a high-quality PDF reproduction of the original manuscript in old French (27mb)
Download a high-quality PDF translation of the manuscript in modern French (4mb)
Download a high-quality PDF translation of the manuscript in English (4mb)
Download a zip file of all three versions (34mb)
1861 publication in Bulletin de la Société d’Études
Download a high-quality PDF reproduction of the original publication in old French (3mb)
Download a high-quality PDF translation of the publication in modern French (950kb)
Download a high-quality PDF translation of the publication in English (954kb)
Download a zip file of all three versions (5mb)
[click on any image to see sample pages of the different versions]
