St. Servatius, Bishop of Tongeren and Patron of Maastricht

Who was St. Servatius?

St. Servatius, called Sint Servaas in Dutch and Saint Servais in French, was a bishop of Tongeren in the 300s and is the patron saint of Maastricht. He is not a later Dutch saint or a place name: he was a bishop of the late Roman Empire who stood with St. Athanasius when much of the Church was bending toward Arianism, the teaching that the Son of God is less than the Father.

Tongeren was then the chief town of the Tungri, a Roman people in what is now Belgian Limburg. Servatius governed the Church there for many years, and he died at Maastricht, a day's journey away on the Roman road. We keep his feast on May 13, the date the Bollandists and Butler's Lives of the Saints give for his death in 384.

A bishop against the Arians

The most reliable facts about Servatius come from the councils. Butler records that he welcomed Athanasius in his exile, defended his cause and stood for the Catholic faith at the Council of Sardica (343). We have a nearly contemporary witness for the next test. Sulpicius Severus, writing around the year 400, describes the Council of Rimini in 359, where the emperor's men kept the Western bishops shut up in the city until they signed a creed written to suit the Arians. One by one they gave way until about twenty were left, and the most steadfast, Sulpicius says, were "our friend Fœgadius, and Servatio, bishop of the Tungri."

The prefect Taurus pleaded with them in tears. In the end the two drew up their own confessions condemning Arius, and an Arian bishop slipped an ambiguous line into the final text that, Sulpicius says, "escaped the notice of the hearers." Servatius was not a man who won every fight. He was a man who did not bend when most did.

The journey to Rome

Gregory of Tours, writing in the late 500s, tells of a bishop of Tongeren he calls Aravatius, whom most scholars take to be Servatius. Fearing that the Huns would overrun Gaul, the bishop fasted, prayed and went to Rome to beg the help of the apostles at the tomb of St. Peter. There he learned that "it was sanctioned in the council of the Lord that the Huns must come into the Gauls." He returned home, died, and was buried at Maastricht beside the Roman road.

Gregory's dates do not fit: Attila came some seventy years after 384. Butler accepts the story of the pilgrimage and dates it to 382. It is honest to say we cannot be sure how much of Gregory's account is history.

The miracles and legends of St. Servatius

Gregory says that miracles drew many people to the bishop's tomb and that a church was built over it. These healings at the grave are reported in the oldest source we have. Over the centuries, more legends grew around him:

• Traditional: that he was born in Armenia and was a distant kinsman of Jesus. The basilica itself notes that the oldest mention of his Armenian birth dates from the 11th century.
• Traditional: that St. Peter gave him a silver key in Rome, the sign of the power to forgive sins.
• Traditional: many more wonders added by later medieval lives, above all the 12th-century Legend of St. Servatius that Hendrik van Veldeke wrote in the Limburg dialect, one of the first works of Dutch literature. Among them is an eagle that shaded the sleeping bishop with its wings.

Why St. Servatius is patron of Maastricht

His tomb made Maastricht a holy city. The present Basilica of St. Servatius, built in stages over his grave, is considered the oldest standing church in the Netherlands, and the basilica says pilgrims have come to the grave since the 400s. His body was later raised from the ground and placed in the gilded shrine the people call the Noodkist, the "chest of need," because it was carried through the streets in times of danger. The last such procession was in 1991, at the start of the Gulf War.

His place among the Ice Saints comes from the calendar. May 11 to 15 were long the last days when farmers in Germany and the Low Countries feared a killing frost, and his feast falls in the middle, so people called on him against late frost.

Symbols of St. Servatius in art

Servatius is shown as a bishop in miter and vestments with a crozier. Look for these signs to tell him apart:

• A key, the gift of St. Peter in legend. This is his surest mark.
• A dragon under his feet, for the evil he overcame.
• An eagle above or beside him, from the legend of the bird that shaded him.
• In the Low Countries, a reliquary bust or the shrine itself often stands for him.

Strigel's panel on this page shows him simply, as a scholarly bishop. The silver bust in the treasury is the best-known image of him in Maastricht. It has held most of his skull since 1403; Spanish troops damaged it in the sack of 1579, and Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma, paid for new shoulders and a new miter in 1580.

Feast day and the Heiligdomsvaart

Maastricht keeps his feast on May 13. Every seven years the city holds the Heiligdomsvaart, first recorded in 1391, when the relics of Servatius and the other saints of the basilica are carried in procession through the streets. The basilica gives the next date as 2032.

Prayer to St. Servatius

We have found no traditional English prayer to St. Servatius with a clear origin. We ask his help in our own words:

St. Servatius, faithful bishop, you held to the truth about Christ when others gave way. Pray for us and for our bishops, that we may confess the Son of God with courage, and pray for all who live in fear of what is coming. Amen.

See the feast days calendar and the patron saints index for more.