1107 Saint
Prochorus of the Caves native of Smolensk entered the Kiev Caves
miracles of bread and salt for the poormonastery under the igumen John (1089-1103). He was a great ascetic of strict temperance. In place of bread he ate pigweed (or orach), and so he was called "pigweed-eater." Every summer, he gathered pigweed and made enough bread from it to last him for a whole year. He also ate prosphora from church now and then, and his only drink was water. Seeing the patience of St Prochorus, God transformed the usual bitterness of the pigweed into sweetness.
During the saint's lifetime, a famine threatened Russia. Prochorus began to gather the pigweed even more zealously and to prepare his "bread". Certain people followed his example, but they were not able to eat this weed because of its bitterness. Prochorus distributed his pigweed bread to the needy, and it tasted like it was made from fine wheat. Only the bread given with the blessing of St Prochorus was edible, and even pure and light in appearance. If anyone tried to prepare this bread himself, or take it without the saint's blessing, it was not fit for consumption. This became known to the igumen and the brethren, and the fame of Prochorus spread far and wide.
After a certain while there was no salt at Kiev, and the people suffered because of this. Then the saint gathered ashes from all the cells, and began to distribute it to the needy. Through his prayers, the ashes became pure salt. The merchants, who hoped to take advantage of this shortage of salt for their own profit, became angry with St Prochorus for distributing free salt to the people.
Prince Svyatopolk confiscated the salt from Prochorus. When they transported it to the prince's court, everyone saw that it was just ordinary ashes. After three days, Svyatopolk gave orders to discard it. St Prochorus blessed the people to take the discarded ashes, and they were again changed into salt. This miracle reformed the fierce prince. He began to pray zealously, made peace with the igumen of the monastery of the Caves, and highly esteemed St Prochorus. When the last hour of the saint approached, the prince left his army and hastened to him, even though he was at war.
He received his blessing and with his own hands, carried the body of the saint to the cave and buried him. Returning to his army, Svyatopolk easily gained victory over the Polvetsians, turning them to flight and capturing their supply carts. Such was the great power of the prayer of St Prochorus.
A native of Kiev, Ukraine, he became a monk in the Monastery of the Caves, but then embraced the life of a hermit. According to custom, Nicetas was much plagued by demonic torments and returned to the monastery. Named in 1095 to the office of bishop of Novgorod, he acquired a reputation for performing miracles.
1107
ST NICETAS, BISHOP OF Novgorod
Nicetas (Nikita), a native of Kiev, while still a young man became a monk in the monastery of the Caves there and conceived the ambition of becoming a solitary. In spite of the contrary advice of the abbot and other experienced monks he insisted on shutting himself away. Whereupon he was subjected to a remarkable temptation. An evil spirit of angelic appearance suggested that he should give himself to reading instead of prayer. The first book to which Nicetas devoted himself was the Old Testament: he learned much of it by heart and received preternatural insight, so that people came to the monastery to consult him. The older monks warned him of what would come of studying only Jewish books: he came to dislike the New Testament, and would neither read it nor hear it read. But the prayers of his brethren at last brought him to his senses, he lost his deceptive wisdom, and humbly began his monastic life all over again, becoming a model for the whole community.
Nicetas (Nikita), a native of Kiev, while still a young man became a monk in the monastery of the Caves there and conceived the ambition of becoming a solitary. In spite of the contrary advice of the abbot and other experienced monks he insisted on shutting himself away. Whereupon he was subjected to a remarkable temptation. An evil spirit of angelic appearance suggested that he should give himself to reading instead of prayer. The first book to which Nicetas devoted himself was the Old Testament: he learned much of it by heart and received preternatural insight, so that people came to the monastery to consult him. The older monks warned him of what would come of studying only Jewish books: he came to dislike the New Testament, and would neither read it nor hear it read. But the prayers of his brethren at last brought him to his senses, he lost his deceptive wisdom, and humbly began his monastic life all over again, becoming a model for the whole community.
In
1095 Nicetas was made
bishop of Novgorod, and in that charge his
holiness was manifested by miracles: he was said to have put out a
great fire
by his prayers and to have obtained rain in time of drought. He was
bishop for
twelve years before he died, and about four hundred and fifty years
later his
relics were translated to the cathedral of the Holy Wisdom at Kiev. In
the
Russian use of the Byzantine Mass, St Nicetas of Novgorod is
commemorated at
the preparation of the holy things.
Nicetas of Novgorod B (RM) Left to his own devices and preferences, Nicetas gave in to the temptation to read rather than pray. This is a danger to many who would abuse a good thing (learning, good works) and omit a better one (prayer, contemplation), for the one tends to serve the creature, rather than God. Learning tempered by prayer and charity leads to wisdom; by itself, it tends to hubris. So intense was his study of the Old Testament that Nicetas came to despise the New. It was only the prayers of his abandoned brothers in the monastery that saved poor Nicetas.
Finally he overcame the dangers of misapplied study, rejoined his community, and, in 1095, was made bishop of Novgorod (Attwater2, Coulson).
1109 Saint Nikita
former Recluse of the Kiev Caves healing of many peopleFell asleep in the Lord in 1109, after serving as Bishop of Novgorod for thirteen years.
Bishop Nikita was glorified as a saint during the reign of Tsar Ivan Vasilievich, and his holy relics, dressed in full vestments, were uncovered on April 30, 1558. That day was marked by the healing of many people. His relics now rest in the cathedral of the holy Apostle Philip in Novgorod.
St Nikita of
Novgorod is also
commemorated on January 31, the day of his repose, and on May 14.
Suessíone, in Gálliis, sancti Godefrídi, Ambianénsis Epíscopi, magnæ sanctitátis viri.
At Soissons in France, St. Godfrey, bishop of Amiens, a man of great sanctity.
(also known as Geoffrey, Gottfried) Born near Soissons, France, c. 1066; died near Soissons.
When he was 5 years old, Godfrey was placed in the care of the abbot of Mont-Saint-Quentin. He became a monk and was eventually ordained a priest.
In 1096 he became the abbot of the decayed Nogent-sous-Coucy in Champagne, where the brethren had dwindled to six and the buildings and discipline were similarly dilapidated. Under his rule the monastery prospered, and as a result, he came to the notice of the archbishop of Rheims who asked him to take over the famous Abbey of Saint-Remi at Rheims. Godfrey refused. He made a disturbance and vehemently added during an assembly, "God forbid I should ever desert a poor bride by preferring a rich one!"
Despite his strong feelings, he was appointed bishop of Amiens in 1104, but he insisted upon continuing to live very simply. When he thought the cook was treating him too well, he took the best food from the kitchen and gave it away to the poor and the sick.
He was a zealous reformer, unrelentingly fought simony enforcing celibacy, and supported the organization of communes. But, because he was an excessively stern ruler, his life was threatened more than once, including by a disgruntled woman.
His scrupulousness caused great resentment among the laxer clergy. He became disheartened by their behavior and withdrew to the Carthusian monastery at Grande-Chartreuse. A council ordered him to return to his diocese--his people refused to allow him to retire. But on his way to visit his metropolitan, he died the following year at Saint Crispin's abbey in Soissons, where he was buried. His name was not found in calendars before the 16th century (Attwater, Benedictines, Delaney, Encyclopedia, Walsh, White).
In art Saint Gottfried is a bishop with a dead hound at his feet. Sometimes he is shown serving the sick or embracing a leper (Roeder).
SAINT GODFREY or GEOFFROY Bishop of Amiens (ca. 1066-1115)
Saint Godfrey was born about 1066 at Molincourt in France of a distinguished Christian family. He arrived late in the lives of his parents, who had begged the prayers of the holy abbot of Mount Saint Quentin, desiring to have a child they could consecrate to God. Their prayers and those of the religious of the monastery of Mount Saint Quentin were answered in the same year. The child was baptized by the Abbot and later confided to him to be educated. Eventually Godfrey’s father entered a monastery of Our Lady which he had enriched by his alms; and his mother spent her declining years in various good works.
Godfrey was given the charge of taking care of the sick, and exercised it with such great charity that he was also named hospitaller, to receive the poor at the gate. For assistance in that second duty he had his older brother Odon, who after many years in the military career had come to join him in the religious life. His brother would later die a holy death in the same abbey of Mount Saint Quentin.
When Saint Godfrey was 25 years old his abbot told him to prepare for the priesthood. He received the Sacrament of Holy Orders from the bishop of Noyon, in which diocese the abbey of Mount Saint Quentin is situated. Not long afterwards, the abbey of Our Lady of Nogent, whose abbot was incapacitated by illness, voted to obtain Godfrey in that office, and the abbot of Mount Saint Quentin consented to the sacrifice of his dear spiritual son for that purpose. The pleas of the disciple based on his youth and inexperience were not heeded, and in 1095 he became Abbot of Nogent, where the buildings were crumbling and only six monks and two young novices remained. He renovated the edifices and built a hostelry for pilgrims and the sick poor; and in this hostelry he himself continued to labor on their behalf. Soon the monastery filled up with vocations, drawing even two illustrious abbots from elsewhere, who desired to serve under this master.
When a severe drought was devastating the fields and flocks of the region, the bishop of Soissons, Hugh de Pierrefonds, went to Godfrey to ask his counsel; the holy abbot prescribed a fast in the manner of Ninevah — even the animals were to participate. On the first day of the fast, when the abbot rose to preach in the vast Church of Saint Steven, before the assembled people, the sky suddenly darkened, and so heavy a rain fell that the people were not a little inconvenienced on returning home.
When the aged bishop of Amiens died soon afterwards, its residents chose Godfrey to be their bishop, and went to a legate of the Holy See to ask him to intercede with the abbot to obtain his consent. When this decision was related to Godfrey he would have fled, but the order of the legate prevented his flight. Moreover, he had already had a vision of Saint Firmin, first Bishop of Amiens and martyr, advising him of this forthcoming new responsibility. He therefore submitted to the clear designs of Providence. After Saint Godfrey obtained a beautiful new reliquary for the relics of Amiens’ first bishop, the confidence of the people in their patron Saint, Saint Firmin, redoubled. A prayer to him by Saint Godfrey, asking for sunshine on the day of the translation of the relics, was the occasion; a fog so heavy one could scarcely see, lifted, and the sun at once shone brilliantly in the sanctuary.
As bishop he did not cease to take care of the poor and the sick. When some lepers came to him he commanded his cook to prepare food for them; four hours later nothing had yet been done, and he himself went to the kitchen and found a large, prepared salmon which he took to the famished lepers. The cook remonstrated with him, and the Saint told him that it was injustice to allow the poor to die of hunger while unworthy bishops enjoyed food that was too succulent.
When troubles occasioned by the contemporary quarrel over investitures devastated the city of Amiens, the holy bishop thought it well to resign his office and retire to the Grand Chartreuse, and did so. The archbishop of Rheims, however, could not approve such an action, and reproached the residents of Amiens when they brought up the question of a successor. The affair was referred to a Council to be held at Soissons in January of 1115. A letter was sent by the Council to the religious of Saint Bruno, begging them not to retain the bishop of Amiens, but to send him back to his see; and Godfrey with tears resigned himself to obeying the orders of the king and the Council. His declining years were not exempt from sufferings; the city of Amiens was decimated by a fire which spared only the church of Saint Firmin, the episcopal palace and a few houses of the poor. The people had not listened to the exhortations of their bishop when their prevarications enkindled the wrath of God. He died on November 8, 1115, in perfect serenity, having given his farewell blessing to the religious of the monastery of Soissons, where he had been taken, after falling ill during a journey there.
His tomb was illustrated by
many miracles.
Source: Les Petits
Bollandistes: Vies des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin (Bloud et
Barral: Paris, 1882), Vol. 13.
He was known originally as Raymond Gayrard. After the death of his wife, he became a canon of St. Sernin, Toulouse, helping to rebuild the church which became a popular place for pilgrims. After his death on July 3, many miracles were reported at his tomb.
Erminold
was given to Hirschau Monastery, in Wurzburg Germany, as a
small child. In 1110, he became the abbot of Lorsch, resigning and
returning to Hirschau when his election was disputed. In 1117, Erminold
became abbot of Pruffening There he was assaulted by a lay brother and
slain on January 7.
THE medieval Life of St Erminold represents a. rather unsatisfactory type of spiritual biography. The writer seems to have been intent only on glorifying his hero, and we cannot be quite satisfied as to his facts. Erminold, brought to the monastery of Hirschau as a child, spent all his life in the cloister. Being conspicuous for his strict observance of rule, he was chosen abbot of Lorsch, but a dispute about his election caused him to resign within a year. In 1114, at the instance of St Otto of Bamberg, he was sent to the newly founded monastery of Prufening, and there he exercised authority, first as prior, and from 1117 onwards as abbot. He is described in local calendars and martyrologies as a martyr, but his death, which took place on January 6, 1121, resulted from the conspiracy of an unruly faction of his own subjects who resented the strictness of his government. One of them struck him on the head with a heavy piece of timber, and Erminold, lingering for a few days, died on the Epiphany at the hour he had foretold. He was famed both for his spirit of prayer and for his charity to the poor. A large number of miracles are recorded at his tomb after death.
See Acta Sanctorum, January 6 and also the MCH., Scriptores, vol. xii, pp. 481—500.
(also known as Caradog) Born at Brycheiniog, Wales; feast day formerly April 13.
Caradoc, the son of moderately wealthy parents, had been employed as a musician (chiefly playing the harp) at the court of Prince Rhys ap Tewdr (Tudor) of southern Wales. He also looked after the prince's greyhounds. One day these escaped, through no fault of Caradoc's. The ill-tempered prince was so angry that he threatened to mutilate Caradoc. The saint replied, "If you so lightly regard my long and laborious service, I shall from now on serve a prince who rewards a small service bountifully and who does not prefer greyhounds to men." He broke of the head of his lance and used the shaft as a walking stick to travel to the bishop of Llandaff, who received him as a monk.
After some time in a monastery at Saint Teilo, Caradoc built himself a little hut close to abandoned church of Saint Kyned (Llangenydd) in Gower on Barry Island. There he could spend more time in solitude and prayer. His reputation for holiness caused him to be called to holy orders by the archbishop of Menevia, and he was ordained to the priesthood before retiring to Ary island off the Pembrokeshire coast with companions.
He still loved animals, and could quieten the wildest beasts. But he also suffered much from his fellow human beings: during the English invasion under Henry I and once being carried off by Norwegian pirates. They, fearing the wrath of God, set them back on land the following day. The archbishop of Menevia moved him again, this time to the cell of Saint Ismael (St. Isell's in Haroldston), Pembrokeshire. At another time a ruthless marauder named Richard Thanehard stole his cattle. Thereafter Thanehard became dangerously ill, sought Caradoc's healing touch, and was restored to health. Through all these dangers and trials, Caradoc never despaired, and died peacefully.
He was buried with honor in the cathedral of Saint David's, where part of his shrine survives. His body was claimed to be incorrupt. William of Malmesbury tried unsuccessfully to take a finger as a relic. Gerald of Wales attempted to have Caradoc canonized; Innocent III opened an inquiry into his life and miracle. Although Caradog was never formally canonized, he has been venerated since the early 13th century. The church of Lawrenny is dedicated to him (Benedictines, Bentley, Encyclopedia, Farmer, Gill, Husenbeth).
In art, Saint Caradoc is portrayed dressed in chain mail with a church in one hand and a lance in the other. He may sometimes be shown with a harp (Roeder). Today he is venerated at Llandaff (Roeder) .
1124 Stephen (Etienne)
of Grandmont (of Muret) God give Stephen the ability to read hearts
deacon austere life, with little food or sleep for 46 years conversions
of many obstinate sinners, OSB, Abbot (RM)
Born in Thiers, Auvergne, France,
1046; died 1124; canonized by Pope Clement III in 1189 at the request
of King Henry II of England.
Saint Stephen was the son of the virtuous
viscount of Thiers.
His life
from infancy presaged uncommon sanctity. Father Milo, then the dean of
the church of Paris, was appointed his tutor. At age 12, Stephen
accompanied his father, lord of the district, to the tomb of Saint Nicholas of Bari. He fell ill
at Benevento and remained there to continue his education under Milo,
who had become Benevento's archbishop.
At the appropriate time,
he
ordained Stephen a deacon. Following Milo's death, Stephen pursued his
studies in Rome for four years. In the meantime his parents died. In
1076, on his return to France, Stephen renounced
inheritance to
become a hermit in the mountains of Ambazac at Muret (northeast of
Limoges). He led an austere life, with little food or sleep for 46
years. He wore a metal breastplate (one of his attributes in
art) instead of the usual hairshirt.
When he was not employed in
manual
labor, he lay prostrate on the ground in profound adoration of the
majesty of God. The sweetness which he
felt in divine contemplation
made him often forget to take any refreshment for two or three days
together. Stephen remained deacon throughout life, never seeking
presbyterial ordination.
As with many of the holiest
hermits, disciples gathered about him.
There on the
mountain-top he founded a congregation of
Benedictine
hermit-monks using the model he observed in Calabria; thus, its rules
was based on his sayings. Although he was strict with himself, he was
mild to those under his direction, and proportioned their
mortifications to their strength. But he allowed no indulgence with
regard to the essential points of a solitary life, silence, poverty,
and the denial of self-will. He behaved himself among his disciples as
the last of them, always taking the lowest place, never suffering any
one to rise up to him; and while they were at table, he would seat
himself on the ground in the midst of them, and read to them the lives
of the saints. He ruled but never seems to have become a monk himself.
The order is conspicuous for its intransigent insistence on total renunciation. Stephen compared monastic life to life in a prison. "If you come here, you will be fixed to the cross and you will lose your own power over your eyes, your mouth, and your other members. . . . If you go to a large monastery with fine buildings, you will find animals and vast estates; here, only poverty and the cross." To those wishing to join his community, he would say: "This is a prison without either door or hole whereby to return into the world, unless a person makes for himself a breach. And should this misfortune befall you, I could not send after you, none here having any commerce with the world any more than myself."
God give Stephen the ability to read hearts. The author of his now lost vita, the fourth prior Stephen de Liciaco, gives a long history of miracles which he wrought. But the conversions of many obstinate sinners were still more miraculous; it seemed as if no heart could resist the grace which accompanied his words. Saint Stephen died at Muret. In his last hours he was carried into the chapel, where he heard mass, received extreme unction and the viaticum.
His disciples buried
him privately, but news of his death drew many to his tomb, which was
honored by innumerable miracles.The order is conspicuous for its intransigent insistence on total renunciation. Stephen compared monastic life to life in a prison. "If you come here, you will be fixed to the cross and you will lose your own power over your eyes, your mouth, and your other members. . . . If you go to a large monastery with fine buildings, you will find animals and vast estates; here, only poverty and the cross." To those wishing to join his community, he would say: "This is a prison without either door or hole whereby to return into the world, unless a person makes for himself a breach. And should this misfortune befall you, I could not send after you, none here having any commerce with the world any more than myself."
God give Stephen the ability to read hearts. The author of his now lost vita, the fourth prior Stephen de Liciaco, gives a long history of miracles which he wrought. But the conversions of many obstinate sinners were still more miraculous; it seemed as if no heart could resist the grace which accompanied his words. Saint Stephen died at Muret. In his last hours he was carried into the chapel, where he heard mass, received extreme unction and the viaticum.
Four
months after his death, the priory of Ambazac,
dependent on the
great Benedictine abbey of St. Austin, in Limoges, put in a claim to
the land of Muret. The disciples of the holy man immediately gave up
the ground without any contention, and retired to Grandmont, taking
Stephen's remains with them. It is from this site that the congregation
received the name Grandmontines.
With its austere rule it never became widespread; however, the successors to Stephen's spirit gained the admiration of many. Abbot Peter of Celles, calls them angels, and testifies that he placed an extraordinary confidence in their prayers (Epistle 8). John of Salisbury, a contemporary author, represents them as men who, being raised above the necessities of life, had conquered not only sensuality and avarice, but even nature itself (Poly. l. 7, c. 23).
With its austere rule it never became widespread; however, the successors to Stephen's spirit gained the admiration of many. Abbot Peter of Celles, calls them angels, and testifies that he placed an extraordinary confidence in their prayers (Epistle 8). John of Salisbury, a contemporary author, represents them as men who, being raised above the necessities of life, had conquered not only sensuality and avarice, but even nature itself (Poly. l. 7, c. 23).
The rule of
the Grandmontines consists of seventy-five
chapters. The
prologue reminds its members that the rule of rules, and the origin of
all monastic rules, is the gospel: they are but streams derived from
this source, and in it are all the means of arriving at Christian
perfection pointed out. It recommends strict poverty and obedience, as
the foundation of a religious life; forbids compensation for their
Masses or to open their oratory to outsiders on Sundays or holy days,
because on these days each should attend his parish church. Its
religious are forbidden to engage in any lawsuit or to eat meat even in
time of sickness. The rule prescribes rigorous fasts, with only one
meal a day for a great part of the year.
The rule abounds with great sentiments of virtue, especially concerning temptations, the sweetness of God's service and his holy commandments, the boundless obligation each has to love God and the incomprehensible advantages of praising Him, and the necessity of continually advancing in fervor. It speaks of good works as the flowers of the garland of which our lives should be composed.
King Saint Henry II was one of the admirers of the order. He founded several monasteries for the Grandmontines in France and England, and petitioned the Vatican for Stephen's canonization.
austerity of Saint Stephen
inspired Armand de Rancé &Charles de Foucauld (Benedictines
Encyclopedia Farmer Husenbeth).The rule abounds with great sentiments of virtue, especially concerning temptations, the sweetness of God's service and his holy commandments, the boundless obligation each has to love God and the incomprehensible advantages of praising Him, and the necessity of continually advancing in fervor. It speaks of good works as the flowers of the garland of which our lives should be composed.
King Saint Henry II was one of the admirers of the order. He founded several monasteries for the Grandmontines in France and England, and petitioned the Vatican for Stephen's canonization.
island off the coast of Northumbria, England. He lived under the director of the monks of Tynemouth.
Born in Denmark; died 1127. The Danish Henry went abroad because he wanted to live as a hermit. If he had remained at home, he would have been duty-bound to marry. He settled on Cocket Island, off the coast of Northumberland, under the obedience of the monks of Tynemouth, daughter-house of Saint Alban's, to whom the island belonged. On this same island Saint Cuthbert used to meet Saint Elfleda, abbess of Whitby.
Henry lived the typical life of a hermit: gardening to provide his own food and practicing austerities. After many years on the island, a party of Danes tried to persuade him to return to Denmark. There were many suitable places in his homeland where he could practice his eremitical life. But after a night of prayer in which Henry experienced a locution from the corpus on the cross, he decided to stay where he was.
Word of his holiness spread. More and more visitors flocked to the island, attracted by his special gifts of prophecy, telekinesis, and reading souls. One interesting example of the last: He reproved and punished a man who had refused his wife sexual intercourse during Lent, although the man had not confessed it.
When Henry fell ill and his state continued to deteriorate due to lack of care, he became increasingly cheerful and endured his suffering alone. Finally, he rang his hermit's bell for help. By the time help arrived, Henry was dead, holding the bellrope in one hand and a candle in the other. In spite of strong resistance from the islanders, who wanted to keep their saint, the monks of Tynemouth took his body back to the monastery and buried him in the sanctuary, near their patron Saint Oswin. There is no early reference to his cultus, but his name can be found in later martyrologies (Benedict)
1130 Saint
Isidore
the Farmer celestial
visions angels
sometimes helped him appeared in a vision to King Alphonsus of Castile
in 1211 show him an unknown path used to surprise and defeat the
Moors patron of farmers his master saw angels and oxen helping himSaint Isidore was born at Madrid, Spain, in the latter half of the twelfth century. For the greater part of his life, he was employed as a laborer on a farm outside the city. Many marvelous happenings accompanied his lifelong work in the fields and continued long after his holy death. He was favored with celestial visions and, it is said, the angels sometimes helped him in his work in the fields. Saint Isidore was canonized in 1622. In 1947, he was proclaimed the patron of the National Rural Life Conference in the United States.
Prayer : God, through the intercession of Saint Isidore, the holy Farmer, grant that we may overcome all feelings of pride. May we always serve You with that humility which pleases You, through his merits and example.
Saint Isidore Patron of National Rural Conference in the United States
Saint Isidore was born at Madrid, Spain, in the latter half of the 12th century. For the greater part of his life he was employed as a laborer on a farm outside the city. Many marvelous happenings accompanied his lifelong work in the fields and continued long after his holy death. He was favored with celestial visions and, it is said, the angels sometimes helped him in his work in the fields. Saint Isidore was canonized in 1622. In 1947, he was proclaimed the patron of the National Rural Conference in the United States.
Isidore the
Farmer
(RM) (also known as Isidoro, Isidro) Born in Madrid,
Spain, 1070; died there in 1130; canonized in 1622; feast day formerly
on May 10 and March 22, and October 25 in the U.S.A.Saint Isidore's feast is celebrated in Madrid, Spain, with ringing church bells and streets decorated for a procession in his honor. The saint was poor into a peasant family and baptized Isidore in honor of the famous archbishop of Seville. His unreliable biography was written about 150 years after his death and many concern the miracles associated with his name.
Isidore was a day laborer, working on the farm of the wealthy John de Vergas at Torrelaguna just outside Madrid. He married a poor girl, Maria de la Cabeza (Torriba), and had a son who died while still a baby. Thereafter, the couple took a vow of continence to serve God.
Isidore's life is a model of simple Christian charity and faith. He prayed while at work, and he visited many churches in Madrid and the area while on holidays. He shared what he had--even his meals--with the poor, often giving them the more liberal portions.
He was steady and hard-working, but a complaint was made against him to his employer that he arrived late to work because he attended early morning Mass each day. When charged with his offense, he did not deny it and explained to his employer: "Sir, it may be true that I am later at my work than some of the other laborers, but I do my utmost to make up for the few minutes snatched for prayer; I pray you compare my work with theirs, and if you find I have defrauded you in the least, gladly will I make amends by paying you out of my private store."
His employer said nothing,
but remained suspicious, and, being
determined to find out the truth, rose one morning at daybreak and
concealed himself outside the church. In due course, Isidore appeared
and entered the building, and afterwards, when the service was over,
went to his work. Still following him, his employer saw him take the
plough into a field, and was about to confront him when, in the pale,
misty light of dawn, he saw, as he thought, a second plough drawn by
white oxen moving up and down the furrows. Greatly astonished, he ran
towards it, but even as he ran it disappeared and he saw only Isidore
and his single-plough.
Saint Isidore
When he spoke to
Isidore and enquired about the second plough he had
seen, Isidore replied in surprise: "Sir, I work alone and know of none
save God to whom I look for strength." Thus the story grew that so
great was his sanctity that the angels helped him even in his plowing.
It was characteristic of Isidore's whole life. He was a simple
ploughman, his speech clear and direct, his conduct honest as the day,
his faith pure and steadfast. He was a poor man, but gave away what he
could, with a good and generous heart, and with such sympathy and
goodwill that his gifts seemed doubly blessed. Indeed, he could never
neglect doing a kindness to man or beast.
Saint Isidore
When he spoke to
Isidore and enquired about the second plough he had
seen, Isidore replied in surprise: "Sir, I work alone and know of none
save God to whom I look for strength." Thus the story grew that so
great was his sanctity that the angels helped him even in his plowing.
It was characteristic of Isidore's whole life. He was a simple
ploughman, his speech clear and direct, his conduct honest as the day,
his faith pure and steadfast. He was a poor man, but gave away what he
could, with a good and generous heart, and with such sympathy and
goodwill that his gifts seemed doubly blessed. Indeed, he could never
neglect doing a kindness to man or beast. One snowy day, when
going to the mill with corn to be ground
which his
wife had gleaned, he passed a flock of wood-pigeons scratching vainly
for food on the hard surface of the frosty ground. Taking pity on the
poor animals, he poured half of his sack of precious corn upon the
ground for the birds, despite the mocking of witnesses. When he reached
the mill, however, the bag was full, and the corn, when it was ground,
produced double the expected amount of flour.
In such simple tales we find reflected the spirit of Saint Isidore, who never ruled a diocese or was martyred for his faith, but who as truly served God in the fields and on the farm as those in higher places and who bore more famous names.
St. Isidore Folk image of Saint Isidore courtesy of Saint Charles Borromeo Church
His saintly wife survived Isidore for several years. Forty years after his death, his body was transferred to a shrine, and his cultus grew as a result of miracles attributed to his intercession. He is said to have appeared in a vision to King Alphonsus of Castile in 1211, and to have shown him an unknown path, which he used to surprise and defeat the Moors. His canonization occurred at the insistence of King Philip III, who attributed his recovery from a serious illness to Isidore's intercession (Attwater, Benedictines, Bentley, Delaney, Gill, Tabor, White) .
In such simple tales we find reflected the spirit of Saint Isidore, who never ruled a diocese or was martyred for his faith, but who as truly served God in the fields and on the farm as those in higher places and who bore more famous names.
St. Isidore Folk image of Saint Isidore courtesy of Saint Charles Borromeo Church
His saintly wife survived Isidore for several years. Forty years after his death, his body was transferred to a shrine, and his cultus grew as a result of miracles attributed to his intercession. He is said to have appeared in a vision to King Alphonsus of Castile in 1211, and to have shown him an unknown path, which he used to surprise and defeat the Moors. His canonization occurred at the insistence of King Philip III, who attributed his recovery from a serious illness to Isidore's intercession (Attwater, Benedictines, Bentley, Delaney, Gill, Tabor, White) .
In art, Saint Isidore is
portrayed as a peasant holding a sickle and a
sheaf of corn. He might also be shown (1) with a sickle and staff, (2)
as an angel ploughs for him, (3) giving a rosary to children by a well,
mattock on his feet, water springing from the well, (4) striking water
from dry earth with an angel plowing in the background (Roeder), (5)
before a cross, or (6) with an angel and white oxen near him (White).
In Spanish art his emblems are a spade or a plough (Tabor). He is the patron of Madrid, Spain (Roeder), farmers and farm laborers, and the U.S. National Catholic Rural Conference (White).
In Spanish art his emblems are a spade or a plough (Tabor). He is the patron of Madrid, Spain (Roeder), farmers and farm laborers, and the U.S. National Catholic Rural Conference (White).
ALLUCIO, patron of
Pescia in Tuscany, was a shepherd and herdman, who on account of the
great
interest he took in the almshouse of Vat di Nievole was appointed
master of it. He became in effect its
second
founder,
and further devoted himself to the establishment of shelters at fords,
mountain-passes, and so on, and to similar public works, such as the
building
of a bridge over the Arno. He staffed
the hospices with young men, who were afterwards known as the Brothers
of St
Allucio. A number of remarkable
miracles were recorded of the saint and he was credited with bringing
about reconciliation
between the warring cities of Ravenna and Faenza. In 1182, forty-eight
years
after his death, the relics of St Allucio were enshrined and the
almshouse was
given his name. Pope Pius IX confirmed the cultus by the
granting of a
new proper Mass for the saint.
The
cult of St
Allucio seems to be adequately attested by documents, one of which
takes the form
of a public instrument summarizing the principal episodes of his life.
They are
given in the Acta Sanctorum,
October, vol. x. See also DHG., vol. ii, c. 617, and a popular account by D. Biagioti (1934).
Allucio of Pescia (AC); cultus confirmed by Pius IX. Born in the diocese of Pescia in Tuscany, Italy, Allucio began life as a herdsman. Eventually his fellow citizens entrusted him with the direction of an almshouse at Val di Nievole and he became, in fact, the second founder of that charity, as well as a hospice at Campugliano. He had some followers who were named the Brethren of St. Allucio. (Benedictines, Encyclopedia).
Aug 18 - Coronation of Our Lady of Liesse (France, 1857)
In 1134, three
brothers, knights from the French region of Laon, left
on a voyage. The sultan of Egypt captured them and took them prisoner.
Hoping at all costs to make them apostatize, he went so far as to send
his remarkably beautiful daughter to seduce them. But while discussing
the Gospel with the prisoners, believing she would defeat them, Ismenia
was defeated. She asked the knights to carve the image of Mary for her.
The knights
prayed to the Blessed Virgin so that she would guide their
hands.
During the
night, the Virgin sent angels bearing her radiant image of
piety. The next day, when Ismenia returned the dungeon was filled with
dazzling light and a delicious perfume exuded from the statue. The
princess believed immediately and took the statue to her apartments,
never taking her eyes off the statue while the knights cried out: Our
Lady of Liesse!
The following night, Ismenia heard the statue say: "Trust me, Ismenia! I have prayed to my Son for you. You will be his faithful servant. You will free my three beloved knights. You will be baptized and through you, France will be enriched by countless graces. Through you my name will become famous and later, I will receive you forever in paradise."
Ismenia helped the prisoners escape and fled with them. All four of them were overtaken by a deep sleep, and during their sleep angels transported them to France. When they awoke, the three knights were in their country, near their castle in Marchais. Ismenia was baptized and they all agreed to have a chapel built at the site where they had woken up, in honor of Our Lady of Liesse.
Since then miracles have been countless.
Louis VII came as a pilgrim in 1146 and Our Lady of Liesse became a favorite pilgrimage destination of the kings of France.
The following night, Ismenia heard the statue say: "Trust me, Ismenia! I have prayed to my Son for you. You will be his faithful servant. You will free my three beloved knights. You will be baptized and through you, France will be enriched by countless graces. Through you my name will become famous and later, I will receive you forever in paradise."
Ismenia helped the prisoners escape and fled with them. All four of them were overtaken by a deep sleep, and during their sleep angels transported them to France. When they awoke, the three knights were in their country, near their castle in Marchais. Ismenia was baptized and they all agreed to have a chapel built at the site where they had woken up, in honor of Our Lady of Liesse.
Since then miracles have been countless.
Louis VII came as a pilgrim in 1146 and Our Lady of Liesse became a favorite pilgrimage destination of the kings of France.
Later, he was named confessor and chaplain to the nuns of Juilly les Nonnais who were under the care of St. Humbeline, sister of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Peter also possessed a reputation for being a brilliant preacher and a miracle worker
Bd Jutta was sister to
Count
Meginhard of Spanheim, and she led the life of a recluse in a small
house next to the monastery founded by St Disibod on the Diessenberg.
She was the “noble woman” to whom was confided the care of St
Hildegard, when she was a child, and it was Jutta who first taught her
Latin, to read and to sing. Other disciples came to her, and
these
were formed into a community over which she presided as prioress for
some twenty years. “This woman”, says St Hildegard, “overflowed with
the grace of God like a river fed by many streams. Watching, fasting,
and other works of penance gave no rest to her body till the day that a
happy death set her free from this mortal life. God has given testimony
to her holiness by many startling miracles.” The relics of Bd Jutta
drew crowds of pilgrims to the Diessenberg, and their forthcoming
removal was one of the grounds of the opposition of the monks to St
Hildegard’s transference of her community to Bingen.
No life
of Bd Jutta seems to have been printed,
but a manuscript account is in existence copied from the great legendarium of the Augustinian canons of
Bödeken. See the Analecta Bollandiana, vol.
xxvii (1908), p. 341; and also J. May, Die
hl. Hildegard (1911).
Also John of Matera, a hermit and monk. Born in Matera in the Kingdom of Naples, he entered the Benedictines near Taranto, but was disliked because of his austerities. He then joined the community of St. William of Vercelli for a time, leaving to preach at Ban. John spent time as a hermit in Sicily and was imprisoned. He escaped and went to Capua. In his later years, John founded a monastery at Pulsano. He was famous for preaching, prophecy, and miracles.
Cultus confirmed in 1927. Stilla, daughter of Count Wolfgang II of Abenberg and sister to Archbishop Conrad I of Salzburg, found Saint Peter's Church in Abenberg (near Nuremburg). She was buried therein and venerated as a saint (Benedictines).
Blessed Stilla was born at Abenberg, near Nuremberg, towards the end of the eleventh century, of the family of the counts of Abenberg, which gave many priests, bishops and holy men to the Church. Stilla had built at her own expense, on a hill adjoining her home, a church which was consecrated and dedicated in honour of St Peter in 1136; she visited this church every day, and therein, in the presence of St Otto, Bishop of Bamberg, she took a vow of virginity. She lived the life of a nun within her father's household, engaging herself in the relief of all unfortunates, and she hoped in time to build a monastery wherein she might end her days. But death overtook her first. Her brothers wanted to bury her at Heilsbronn, but the two horses drawing the funeral car could not pull it in that direction, turning always towards the church
of St Peter, where therefore they buried her. The tomb became a place of pilgrimage, and in 1897 the bishop of Eichstatt was able to establish that the veneration of Stilla had gone on since before 1534. This cultus was confinned in 1927.
A short account of Bd
Stilla, with reports of a number of
miracles, will be found in the Acta
Sanctorum, July, vol. iv. The decree confirming the cultus
and containing a summary of her life is printed in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. xix (1927),
pp. 140-142 .
This last hierarch made St. Martin retire because of his age. But the old man did not want to leave the monastery (the bishops lived at the monastery of Sts Boris and Gleb), and so he accepted monasticism.
In his former work he had
often overexerted himself and therefore often
fell ill.
One time St. Martin lay motionless and in moaning with
sickness. He
fervently called on Sts Boris and Gleb for help, and on the third day
the saints appeared to him, gave him a sip of water, and healed him of
his illness. After this miraculous healing, St. Martin survived for
another year .THE identity of this holy bishop is involved in much confusion and obscurity. His cultus was confirmed in 1863, and in the decree published on that occasion a summary of his life is given.
If we may credit
this account, he was a son of William II, Count of
Burgundy. Of his three brothers, one was elected pope under the name of
Callistus II; another, Raymond, became king of Castile; and the third,
Henry, count of Portugal. Ayrald himself, however, according to the
same summary, entered the Carthusian Order at Portes, and was made
prior. From this life of seclusion he was called away to rule the see
of Maurienne, but we are told that he still paid long visits to his old
monastery to renew his spirit of fervour, and that he died at a
comparatively early age. While one Carthusian chronicler, Dom-Le
Vasseur, is in substantial agreement with this account, assigning
January 2, 1146, as the date of Ayrald’s death, another, Dom Le
Couteulx, contradicts it at almost every point. The fact seems to be
that in the twelfth century there were three different bishops of
Maurienne named Ayrald or Ayrard. One of these, either the first or the
third, but not the second, had been a Carthusian monk at Portes.
In honour of the bishop who was beatified and with whom we are here concerned, the following epitaph was engraved of old upon his tomb in the cathedral of
Maurienne:In honour of the bishop who was beatified and with whom we are here concerned, the following epitaph was engraved of old upon his tomb in the cathedral of
Hic jacet Airaldus,
claro de sanguine natus, Portarum monachus, Pontificumque decus;
Ecclesiae lumen, miserorum atque columen, Virtute et signis splendidus innumeris.
Ecclesiae lumen, miserorum atque columen, Virtute et signis splendidus innumeris.
“Here lies Ayrald, a
man of noble blood, monk of Portes, glory of
pontiffs, a light of the Church,
stay of the unfortunate, shining with goodness and unnumbered miracles.”
stay of the unfortunate, shining with goodness and unnumbered miracles.”
A lively
controversy, of which a full
bibliography may be found in U. Chevalier’s Repertoire—Bio-bibliographie,
has been carried on regarding the identity of Bd Ayrald. See
especially C.
F. Bellet, Un problème d’hagiographie (1901), and Truchet, Le B. Ayrald (1891);
also Le Vasseur, Ephemerides, vol. i, pp. 3—6; Le
Couteulx, Annales Ord. Carth., vols. i, 382 seq., and ii, 43 seq. cf. Historisches
Jahrbuch, 1903, p. 142, and 1904, p. 279.
Died July 11, 1149. Cistercian abbot of Grandselve for 20 years. He was often favored with heavenly visions (Benedictines).
1150
Saint Igor, Great Prince of Kiev The Transfer of Relics of The
Kievan
Great Prince Igor Ol'govich The Lord glorified the sufferer with
miracles.In holy Baptism George (September 19), in the year 1146 suffered defeat and was taken captive by prince Izyaslav, who imprisoned him in one of the monasteries of Russian or Southern Pereyaslavl' (now
Pereyaslavl'-Khmel'nitsk). Far removed from the vanities of this world,
and grievously ill, he began to repent of his sins and asked permission
to be tonsured a monk. On January 5, 1147 Bishop Euthymius of
Pereyaslavl' tonsured him into monasticism with the name Gabriel. Soon
he recovered his health and transferred to the Kiev Theodorov
monastery, where he became a schemamonk with the name Ignatius, and
devoted himself entirely to monastic efforts.But a storm of fratricidal hatred raged over Kiev. The Chernigov princes, cousins of Igor, plotted to entice Izyaslav of Kiev into a joint campaign with the aim of capturing, or even killing him. The plot was uncovered when the prince was already on the way to Chernigov. The Kievans were in an uproar in learning of the ruse of the Chernigovichi, and they stormed into the place where the innocent St Igor was. St Igor was brutally murdered on September 19, 1147.
The Lord glorified the
sufferer with miracles. With the blessing of
Metropolitan Clement Smolyatich, Igumen Ananias of the Theodorov
monastery buried the passion-bearer in the church of the Kiev Simonov
monastery. On June 5, 1150, when the Kiev throne had become occupied by
Yuri Dolgoruky, his confederate and the murdered Igor's brother, the
Chernigov prince Svyatoslav Ol'govich, solemnly transferred the holy
relics of St Igor to Chernigov his native region, where they were
placed into a reliquary in the Savior cathedral church. Then also the
Feastday in memory of the saint was established.
PEREYASLAVL, a town of Russia, in the government of Poltava, 26 m. S.E. of the city of Kiev, at the confluence of the Trubezh and the Alta, which reach the Dnieper 5 m. lower down at the town's port, the village of Andrushi. Pop. 14,609. Besides the town proper there are three considerable suburbs. Though founded in 993 by Vladimir the Great of Moscow in memory of his signal success over the Turkish Pechenegs, Pereyaslavl has now few remains of antiquity. The town has a trade in grain, salt, cattle and horses, and some manufactures - tallow, wax, tobacco, candles and shoes.
From 1054 Pereyaslavl was the chief town of a separate principality. As a southern outpost it often figures in the 11th, 2th and 13th centuries, and was plundered by the Mongols in 123 9. In later times it was one of the centres of the Cossack movement; and in 1628 the neighbourhood of the town was the scene of the extermination of the Polish forces known as "Tara's Night." It was by the Treaty of Pereyaslavl that in 1654 the Cossack chieftain Bogdan Chmielnicki acknowledged the supremacy of Tsar Alexis of Russia.
PEREYASLAVL, a town of Russia, in the government of Poltava, 26 m. S.E. of the city of Kiev, at the confluence of the Trubezh and the Alta, which reach the Dnieper 5 m. lower down at the town's port, the village of Andrushi. Pop. 14,609. Besides the town proper there are three considerable suburbs. Though founded in 993 by Vladimir the Great of Moscow in memory of his signal success over the Turkish Pechenegs, Pereyaslavl has now few remains of antiquity. The town has a trade in grain, salt, cattle and horses, and some manufactures - tallow, wax, tobacco, candles and shoes.
From 1054 Pereyaslavl was the chief town of a separate principality. As a southern outpost it often figures in the 11th, 2th and 13th centuries, and was plundered by the Mongols in 123 9. In later times it was one of the centres of the Cossack movement; and in 1628 the neighbourhood of the town was the scene of the extermination of the Polish forces known as "Tara's Night." It was by the Treaty of Pereyaslavl that in 1654 the Cossack chieftain Bogdan Chmielnicki acknowledged the supremacy of Tsar Alexis of Russia.
died on August 20, 1153 his feast day. St Bernard, Abbot Of Clairvaux, Doctor Of The Church
St Bernard third son of
Tescelin Sorrel, a Burgundian noble, and Aleth,
daughter of Bernard, lord of Montbard. He was born in 1090 at
Fontaines, a castle near Dijon, a lordship belonging to his
father.
His parents had seven children, namely, Bd Guy, Bd Gerard, St Bernard,
Bd Humbeline, Andrew, Bartholomew and Bd Nivard. They were all
well
educated, and learned Latin and verse-making before the sons were
applied to military exercise and feats of arms ; but Bernard was sent
to Châtillon on the Seine, to pursue a complete course of studies
in a
college of secular canons. He even then loved to be
alone, largely
at first because of shyness; his progress in learning was far greater
than could be expected from one of his age; and he was soon alert to
listen to what God by His holy inspirations spoke to his
heart. One
Christmas-eve, while waiting with his mother to set out for Matins, he
fell asleep and seemed to see the infant Jesus newly born in the stable
at Bethlehem; from that day he ever had a most tender devotion towards
that great mystery of love and mercy, the manhood of
Christ. When he
was seventeen his mother died. Bernard was greatly attached to
Aleth
and her loss was a heavy blow; he was in danger of becoming
morbidly despondent, till he was rallied out of his brooding
and inertia by his lively sister Humbeline. Bernard made his
appearance in the world with all the advantages and talents which can
make it attractive to a young man, or which could make him loved by
it.
His personal attractiveness and wit, his affability and sweetness of temper, endeared him to everybody; in these very advantages lay his chief danger, and for a time there was serious risk of his becoming lukewarm and indifferent. But he began to think of forsaking the world and the pursuit of letters, which greatly attracted him, and of going to CIteaux, where only a few years before SS. Robert, Alberic and Stephen Harding had established the first monastery of that strict interpretation of the Benedictine rule, called after it "Cistercian". He wavered for some time in his mind, and one day in great anxiety he went into a church by the road and prayed that God would direct him to discover and follow His will. He arose steadily fixed in the resolution of following the severe Cistercian life. His friends endeavoured to dissuade him from it; but he not only remained firm-he enlisted four of his brothers as well, and an uncle. Hugh of Macon (who afterward founded the monastery of Pontigny, and died bishop of Auxerre), an intimate friend, wept bitterly at the thought of separation, but by two interviews was induced to become his companion. Nor were these the only ones who, with apparently no previous thought of the religious life, suddenly decided to leave the world for the austere life of Citeaux. Bernard induced in all thirty-one men to follow him-he who himself had been uncertain of his call only a few weeks before.
It is a happening unparalleled in Christian history. Bernard's eloquent appeals were irresistible; mothers feared for their sons, wives for their husbands, lest they came under the sway of that compelling voice and look. They assembled at Châtillon, and on the day appointed for their meeting Bernard and his brothers went to Fontaines to take farewell of their father and beg his blessing. They left Nivard, the youngest brother, to be a comfort to him in his old age. Going out they saw him at play with other children, and Guy said to him, "Adieu, my little Nivard! You will have all the estates and lands to yourself." The boy answered, "What! you then take Heaven, and leave me only the earth. The division is too unequal." They went away; but soon after Nivard followed them, so that of the whole family there only remained in the world the old father and his daughter, Humbeline.
His personal attractiveness and wit, his affability and sweetness of temper, endeared him to everybody; in these very advantages lay his chief danger, and for a time there was serious risk of his becoming lukewarm and indifferent. But he began to think of forsaking the world and the pursuit of letters, which greatly attracted him, and of going to CIteaux, where only a few years before SS. Robert, Alberic and Stephen Harding had established the first monastery of that strict interpretation of the Benedictine rule, called after it "Cistercian". He wavered for some time in his mind, and one day in great anxiety he went into a church by the road and prayed that God would direct him to discover and follow His will. He arose steadily fixed in the resolution of following the severe Cistercian life. His friends endeavoured to dissuade him from it; but he not only remained firm-he enlisted four of his brothers as well, and an uncle. Hugh of Macon (who afterward founded the monastery of Pontigny, and died bishop of Auxerre), an intimate friend, wept bitterly at the thought of separation, but by two interviews was induced to become his companion. Nor were these the only ones who, with apparently no previous thought of the religious life, suddenly decided to leave the world for the austere life of Citeaux. Bernard induced in all thirty-one men to follow him-he who himself had been uncertain of his call only a few weeks before.
It is a happening unparalleled in Christian history. Bernard's eloquent appeals were irresistible; mothers feared for their sons, wives for their husbands, lest they came under the sway of that compelling voice and look. They assembled at Châtillon, and on the day appointed for their meeting Bernard and his brothers went to Fontaines to take farewell of their father and beg his blessing. They left Nivard, the youngest brother, to be a comfort to him in his old age. Going out they saw him at play with other children, and Guy said to him, "Adieu, my little Nivard! You will have all the estates and lands to yourself." The boy answered, "What! you then take Heaven, and leave me only the earth. The division is too unequal." They went away; but soon after Nivard followed them, so that of the whole family there only remained in the world the old father and his daughter, Humbeline.
The company arrived
at Citeaux about Easter in 1112 and the
abbot,
the English St Stephen, who had not had a novice for several years,
received them with open arms. St Bernard was then twenty-two years
old. He entered this house with the desire to die to the
remembrance
of men, to live hidden and be forgotten, that he might be occupied only
with God. After three years the abbot, seeing the great progress
which
Bernard had made and his extraordinary abilities, ordered him to go
with twelve monks to found a new house in the diocese of Langres in
Champagne. They walked in procession, singing psalms, with their
new
abbot at their head, and settled in a place called the Valley of
Wormwood, surrounded by a forest. These thirteen monks grubbed up
a
sufficient area and, with the assistance of the bishop and the people
of the country, built themselves a house. This young colony lived
through a period of extreme and grinding hardship. The land was
poor
and their bread was of coarse barley; boiled beech leaves were
sometimes served up instead of vegetables. Bernard at first was
so
severe in his discipline, coming down upon the smallest distractions
and least transgressions of his brethren, whether in confession or in
chapter, that although his monks behaved with the utmost humility and
obedience they began to be discouraged, which made the abbot sensible
of his fault. He condemned himself for it to a long
silence. At
length he resumed his preaching, and provided that meals should be more
regular, though the food was still of the coarsest. The
reputation of
the house and of the holiness of its abbot soon became so great that
the number of monks had risen to a hundred and thirty and the name of
the valley was changed to Clairvaux, because it was situated right in
the eye of the sun.
Bernard's aged father Tescelin and the young Nivard followed him in 1117, and received the habit at his hands. The first four daughter-houses of Citeaux became each a mother-house to others, and Clairvaux had the most numerous offspring, including Rievaulx and, in a sense, Fountains in England.
In 1121 Bernard wrought his first miracle, restoring, while he sang Mass, power of speech to a certain lord that he might confess his sins before he died, three days after, having made restitution for numerous acts of injustice. It is related that other sick persons were cured instantaneously by his making the sign of the cross upon them; and we are also told that the church of Foigny was infested with flies till, by Bernard saying he "excommunicated" them, they all died. The malediction of the flies of Foigny became a proverb in France. The contemporaryWilliam of Saint-Thierry gives a most unpleasant account of the weakness of Bernard's stomach (which was aggravated by insufficient and unsuitable food), and in consideration of his ill-health the general chapter dispensed him from work in the fields and ordered him to undertake extra preaching instead. This led to his writing a treatise on the Degrees of Humility and Pride, the first of his published works. It includes a study of character which, says the Abbé Vacandard, "the most expert psychologist would not disavow".
<> Bernard's aged father Tescelin and the young Nivard followed him in 1117, and received the habit at his hands. The first four daughter-houses of Citeaux became each a mother-house to others, and Clairvaux had the most numerous offspring, including Rievaulx and, in a sense, Fountains in England.
In 1121 Bernard wrought his first miracle, restoring, while he sang Mass, power of speech to a certain lord that he might confess his sins before he died, three days after, having made restitution for numerous acts of injustice. It is related that other sick persons were cured instantaneously by his making the sign of the cross upon them; and we are also told that the church of Foigny was infested with flies till, by Bernard saying he "excommunicated" them, they all died. The malediction of the flies of Foigny became a proverb in France. The contemporaryWilliam of Saint-Thierry gives a most unpleasant account of the weakness of Bernard's stomach (which was aggravated by insufficient and unsuitable food), and in consideration of his ill-health the general chapter dispensed him from work in the fields and ordered him to undertake extra preaching instead. This led to his writing a treatise on the Degrees of Humility and Pride, the first of his published works. It includes a study of character which, says the Abbé Vacandard, "the most expert psychologist would not disavow".
Notwithstanding St Bernard's love of retirement, obedience and the Church's needs frequently drew him from his cell.
Like several other great saints who had in a supreme degree the gift of contemplation and wished only to live alone with God in the retirement of a monastery, he had for years on end to be about his Father's business in active and public, even political, affairs. In 1137 he wrote that his life was "over-run in all quarters with anxieties, suspicions, cares, and there is scarcely an hour that is left free from the crowd of discordant applicants, from the trouble and care of business. I have no power to stop their coming and cannot refuse to see them, and they do not leave me even the time to pray."
So great was the reputation of his character and powers that princes desired to have their differences determined by him and bishops regarded him decisions with the greatest respect, referring to him important affairs of their churches. The popes looked upon his advice as the greatest support of the Holy See, and all people had a profound respect and veneration for his person and opinion. It was said of him that he was "the oracle of Christendom".
For Bernard was not only a great monastic founder, theologian and preacher, he was also a reformer and "crusader" he never refused what presented itself to him as a challenge, whether it came from the abbey of Cluny or from an antipope, from the philosopher Abelard or the call to the Second Crusade. And he was a hard hitter; to an ecclesiastic in Languedoc he wrote:
"You may imagine
that what belongs to the Church belongs to you while you officiate
there. But you are mistaken: for though it be reasonable that one
who
serves the altar should live by the altar, yet it must not be to
promote either his luxury or his pride. Whatever goes beyond bare
nourishment and simple plain clothing is sacrilege and theft."
After the disputed papal election of 1130 the cause of Pope Innocent II took St Bernard up and down France, Germany and Italy. On one of his returns to Clairvaux he took with him a new postulant, a canon of Pisa, Peter Bernard Paganelli, who was to become a beatified pope as Eugenius III; for the present he was put to stoke the fire in the monastery calefactory.
After the general acknowledgement of Innocent II Bernard was present at the tenth general council in Rome, the second of the Lateran, and it was at this period that he first met St Malachy of Armagh; the ensuing friendship between the two lasted until Malachy's death in Bemard's arms nine years later. All this time Bernard had continued diligently to preach to his monks whenever he was able, notably those famous discourses on the Song of Songs. In 1140 he preached for the first time in a public pulpit, primarily to the students of Paris. They are the two most powerful and trenchant of his discourses preserved to us, in which he says much of "things hellish and horrible"; they effected some good and a number of conversions among the students, who were at first superior to their fervent "evangelicalism". But no sooner was the trouble of the papal schism over than he was involved in the controversy with Abelard.
If St Bernard was the most eloquent and influential man of his age, the next was the brilliant and unhappy Peter Abelard, who was moreover, of far wider learning. The two were bound to come into collision, for they represented two currents of thought which, not necessarily opposed, were not yet properly fused:
on the one hand,
the
weight of
traditional authority and "faith not as an opinion but a certitude";
on the other, the new rationalism and exaltation of human reason.
St
Bernard himself has since been grievously criticized for his
unrelenting pursuit of Abelard: but it seemed to him he had detected
in Abelard vanity and arrogance masquerading as science, and
rationalism masquerading as the use of reason, and his ability and
learning made him the more dangerous. St Bernard wrote to the
pope:on the other, the new rationalism and exaltation of human reason.
"Peter
Abelard is trying to make void the merit of Christian faith,
when he deems himself able by human reason to comprehend God entirely - the man is great in his own eyes."
when he deems himself able by human reason to comprehend God entirely - the man is great in his own eyes."
<>Probably about the
beginning of the year 1142 the
first Cistercian
foundation was made in Ireland, from Clairvaux, where St Malachy had
put some young Irishmen with St Bernard to be trained. The abbey
was
called Mellifont, in county Louth, and within ten years of its
foundation six daughter-houses had been planted out.
At the same
time Bernard was busied in the affair of the disputed succession to the
see of York, set out in the account of St William of York (June 8),
in
the course of which Pope Innocent II died. His third successor, within
eighteen months, was the Cistercian abbot of Tre Fontane, that Peter
Bernard of Pisa to whom reference has been made, known to history as Bd Eugenius III.
St Bernard wrote a charming letter of encouragement to his former
subject, addressed:
"To
his most dearly loved father and
master,
Eugenius, by the grace of God Sovereign Pontiff,
Bernard, styled Abbot of Clairvaux, presents his humble service."
But Bernard was
also
rather frightened, for Eugenius was shy and retiring, not accustomed to
public life; and so he wrote also to the college of cardinals, a letter
beginning:Bernard, styled Abbot of Clairvaux, presents his humble service."
"May
God forgive you what you have done. You have put
back
among the living a man who was dead and buried.
You have again surrounded with cares and crowds one who had fled from cares and crowds.
You have made the last first, and behold! the last state of that man is more perilous than the first."
You have again surrounded with cares and crowds one who had fled from cares and crowds.
You have made the last first, and behold! the last state of that man is more perilous than the first."
Later he
wrote
for
Pope
Eugenius's guidance the longest and most important of his treatises, De consideratione,
impressing upon him the various duties of his office, and strongly
recommending him always to reserve time for self-examination and daily
contemplation, applying himself to this still more than to
business.
He proves to him that "consideration" serves to form and to employ in
the heart all virtues. He reminds the pope that he is in
danger of
falling, by the multiplicity of affairs, into a forgetfulness of God
and hardness of heart: the thought of which made the saint
tremble for
him, and tell him that his heart was already hardened and made
insensible if he did not continually tremble for himself; for if the
Pope falls, the whole Church of God is involved.
In the
meantime the Albigensian heresy and its
social and moral
implications had been making alarming progress in the south of France.
St Bernard had already been called on to deal with a similar sect in
Cologne, and in 1145 the papal legate, Cardinal Alberic, asked him to
go to Languedoc. Bernard was ill, weak and hardly able to make
the
journey, but he obeyed, preaching on the way. Geoffrey, the
saint's
secretary, accompanied him, and relates many miracles to which he was
an eye-witness. He tells us that at Sarlat in Périgord,
Bernard,
blessing with the sign of the cross some loaves of bread which were
brought, said, "
Bernard preached against the heresy throughout Languedoc; its supporters were stubborn and violent, especially at Toulouse and Albi, but in a very short time he had restored the country to orthodoxy and returned to Clairvaux. But he left too soon, the restoration was more apparent than real, and twenty-five years later Albigensianism had a stronger hold than ever.
Then came St Dominic.
On Christmas-day, 1144, the SeIjuk Turks had captured Edessa, centre of one of the four principalities of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, and appeals for help were at once sent to Europe, for the whole position was in danger. Pope Eugenius commissioned St Bernard to preach a crusade. He began at Vezelay Palm Sunday 1146, when Queen Eleanor and many nobles were the first to take the cross, and were followed by such large numbers of people, moved by the monk's burning words, that the supply of badges was exhausted and he had, to tear strips off his habit to make others. When he had roused France, he wrote letters to the rulers and peoples of western and central Europe, and then went in person into Germany. First he had to deal with a half-crazy monk, called Rudolf, who in his name was inciting the people to massacre the Jews, and then made a triumphant journey through the Rhineland, confirming his appeals by an amazing succession of miracles, vouched for by his companions.
The Emperor Conrad III took the cross from him, and set out with an army in the May of 1147, followed by Louis of France. But this, the second, crusade was a miserable failure; Conrad's forces were cut to pieces in Asia Minor and Louis did not get beyond laying siege to Damascus. Its ill success was in no small measure due to the crusaders themselves, of whom a great part were led by no other motive than the prospect of plunder, were lawless, and committed every kind of disorder in their march. To those who were led by motives of sincere penance and religion, these afflictions were trials for the exercise of their virtue, but the ascetical exercise was dearly bought. This unfortunate expedition raised a storm against St Bernard, because he had seemed to promise success. His answer was that he confided in the divine mercy for a blessing on an enterprise undertaken for honour of the divine name, but that the sins of the army were the cause of its misfortunes further, who could judge the extent of its success or failure, and "how is it that the rashness of mortals dares reprove what they cannot understand".
By this shall you know the
truth of our doctrine,
and
the falsehood of that which is taught by the heretics, if such as are
sick among you recover their health by eating of these loaves".
The
bishop of Chartres, who stood by, being fearful of the result, said,
"That is, if they eat with a right faith, they shall be cured".
But
the abbot replied, "I say not so; but
assuredly they that taste shall
be cured, that you may know by this that we are sent by authority
derived from God, and preach His truth ".
And a
number of sick
persons were cured by eating that bread.Bernard preached against the heresy throughout Languedoc; its supporters were stubborn and violent, especially at Toulouse and Albi, but in a very short time he had restored the country to orthodoxy and returned to Clairvaux. But he left too soon, the restoration was more apparent than real, and twenty-five years later Albigensianism had a stronger hold than ever.
Then came St Dominic.
On Christmas-day, 1144, the SeIjuk Turks had captured Edessa, centre of one of the four principalities of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, and appeals for help were at once sent to Europe, for the whole position was in danger. Pope Eugenius commissioned St Bernard to preach a crusade. He began at Vezelay Palm Sunday 1146, when Queen Eleanor and many nobles were the first to take the cross, and were followed by such large numbers of people, moved by the monk's burning words, that the supply of badges was exhausted and he had, to tear strips off his habit to make others. When he had roused France, he wrote letters to the rulers and peoples of western and central Europe, and then went in person into Germany. First he had to deal with a half-crazy monk, called Rudolf, who in his name was inciting the people to massacre the Jews, and then made a triumphant journey through the Rhineland, confirming his appeals by an amazing succession of miracles, vouched for by his companions.
The Emperor Conrad III took the cross from him, and set out with an army in the May of 1147, followed by Louis of France. But this, the second, crusade was a miserable failure; Conrad's forces were cut to pieces in Asia Minor and Louis did not get beyond laying siege to Damascus. Its ill success was in no small measure due to the crusaders themselves, of whom a great part were led by no other motive than the prospect of plunder, were lawless, and committed every kind of disorder in their march. To those who were led by motives of sincere penance and religion, these afflictions were trials for the exercise of their virtue, but the ascetical exercise was dearly bought. This unfortunate expedition raised a storm against St Bernard, because he had seemed to promise success. His answer was that he confided in the divine mercy for a blessing on an enterprise undertaken for honour of the divine name, but that the sins of the army were the cause of its misfortunes further, who could judge the extent of its success or failure, and "how is it that the rashness of mortals dares reprove what they cannot understand".
Early in the year
1153 St Bernard entered on his last
illness.
He had long dwelt in Heaven in desire, though this desire he by humility ascribed to weakness: "The saints", said he, "were moved to pray for death out of a desire of seeing Christ; but I am forced hence by scandals and evil. I confess myself overcome by the violence of the storm for want of courage."
For a time he mended a little in the spring, and was called on for the last time to leave Clairvaux to succour his neighbour. The inhabitants of Metz having been attacked by the duke of Lorraine, were vehemently bent on revenge. To prevent the shedding of more blood the archbishop of Trier went to Clairvaux, and implored Bernard to journey to Metz in order to reconcile the parties that were at variance. At this call of charity he forgot his infirmity and made his way into Lorraine, where he prevailed on both ides to lay aside their arms and accept a treaty which he drew up. Back at Clairvaux, his illness returned with more grievous symptoms. When he received the last sacraments and his spiritual children assembled about him in tears, he comforted and encouraged them, saying that the unprofitable servant ought not to occupy a place uselessly, that the barren tree ought to be rooted up. His love for them inclined him to remain till they should be gathered with him to God; but his desire to enjoy Christ made him long for death. "I am straitened between two", he cried, "and what to choose I know not. I leave it to the Lord; let Him decide."
And God took him to Himself, on August 20, 1153; he was sixty-three years old, had been abbot for thirty-eight, and sixty-eight monasteries had been founded from Clairvaux-Bernard may indeed be counted among the founders of the Cistercian Order, who brought it out of obscurity into the centre of western Christendom. He was canonized in 1174, and in 1830 formally declared a doctor of the Church : Doctor mellifluus, the Honey-sweet Doctor, as he is now universally called.
St Bernard "carried the twelfth century on his shoulders, and he did not carry it without suffering"; he was during his life the oracle of the Church, the light of prelates, and the reformer of discipline; since his death he continues to comfort and instruct by his writings. The great French lay scholar of the seventeenth century, Henry Valois, did not hesitate to say they are the most useful for piety among all the works of the fathers of the Church, though he is the youngest of them in time, and Sixtus of Siena, the convered Jew, said, "His discourse is everywhere sweet and ardent: it so delights and warms that from his tongue honey and milk seem to flow in his words, and a fire of burning love to glow from his breast". "To Erasmus he was cheerful, pleasant, and vehement in moving the passions", and in another place, "He is Christianly learned, holily eloquent, and devoutly cheerful and pleasing".
From Pope Innocent II to Cardinal Manning, from Luther to Frederic Harrison, Catholics and Protestants of eminence have recognized the sanctity of St Bernard and greatness of his writings, in which he is equally gentle and vigorous; his charity appears in his reproaches, he reproves to correct, never to insult. He had so meditated on the Holy Scriptures that in almost every sentence he borrows something from their language, and diffuses the marrow of the sacred text with which his own heart was filled.
He was well read in the writings of the fathers of the Church, especially SS. Ambrose and Augustine, and often takes his thoughts from their writings and by a new turn makes them his own. Though he lived after St Anselm, the first of the scholastics, and though his contemporaries are ranked in that class, yet he treats theological subjects after the manner of the ancients. On this account, and for the great excellence of his writings, he is himself reckoned among the fathers. And though he is the last among them in time, he is one of the greatest to those who desire to study and to improve their hearts in sincere religion.
He had long dwelt in Heaven in desire, though this desire he by humility ascribed to weakness: "The saints", said he, "were moved to pray for death out of a desire of seeing Christ; but I am forced hence by scandals and evil. I confess myself overcome by the violence of the storm for want of courage."
For a time he mended a little in the spring, and was called on for the last time to leave Clairvaux to succour his neighbour. The inhabitants of Metz having been attacked by the duke of Lorraine, were vehemently bent on revenge. To prevent the shedding of more blood the archbishop of Trier went to Clairvaux, and implored Bernard to journey to Metz in order to reconcile the parties that were at variance. At this call of charity he forgot his infirmity and made his way into Lorraine, where he prevailed on both ides to lay aside their arms and accept a treaty which he drew up. Back at Clairvaux, his illness returned with more grievous symptoms. When he received the last sacraments and his spiritual children assembled about him in tears, he comforted and encouraged them, saying that the unprofitable servant ought not to occupy a place uselessly, that the barren tree ought to be rooted up. His love for them inclined him to remain till they should be gathered with him to God; but his desire to enjoy Christ made him long for death. "I am straitened between two", he cried, "and what to choose I know not. I leave it to the Lord; let Him decide."
And God took him to Himself, on August 20, 1153; he was sixty-three years old, had been abbot for thirty-eight, and sixty-eight monasteries had been founded from Clairvaux-Bernard may indeed be counted among the founders of the Cistercian Order, who brought it out of obscurity into the centre of western Christendom. He was canonized in 1174, and in 1830 formally declared a doctor of the Church : Doctor mellifluus, the Honey-sweet Doctor, as he is now universally called.
St Bernard "carried the twelfth century on his shoulders, and he did not carry it without suffering"; he was during his life the oracle of the Church, the light of prelates, and the reformer of discipline; since his death he continues to comfort and instruct by his writings. The great French lay scholar of the seventeenth century, Henry Valois, did not hesitate to say they are the most useful for piety among all the works of the fathers of the Church, though he is the youngest of them in time, and Sixtus of Siena, the convered Jew, said, "His discourse is everywhere sweet and ardent: it so delights and warms that from his tongue honey and milk seem to flow in his words, and a fire of burning love to glow from his breast". "To Erasmus he was cheerful, pleasant, and vehement in moving the passions", and in another place, "He is Christianly learned, holily eloquent, and devoutly cheerful and pleasing".
From Pope Innocent II to Cardinal Manning, from Luther to Frederic Harrison, Catholics and Protestants of eminence have recognized the sanctity of St Bernard and greatness of his writings, in which he is equally gentle and vigorous; his charity appears in his reproaches, he reproves to correct, never to insult. He had so meditated on the Holy Scriptures that in almost every sentence he borrows something from their language, and diffuses the marrow of the sacred text with which his own heart was filled.
He was well read in the writings of the fathers of the Church, especially SS. Ambrose and Augustine, and often takes his thoughts from their writings and by a new turn makes them his own. Though he lived after St Anselm, the first of the scholastics, and though his contemporaries are ranked in that class, yet he treats theological subjects after the manner of the ancients. On this account, and for the great excellence of his writings, he is himself reckoned among the fathers. And though he is the last among them in time, he is one of the greatest to those who desire to study and to improve their hearts in sincere religion.
Almost all the
principal materials for the life of St Bernard
have been printed in the Latin
Patrology of Migne, vol. 185. The most important source,
known as the Vita prima -the
best text is that of Waitz in MGH., Scriptores,
vol. xxvi-is made up of five sections by different authors, his
contemporaries, i.e. William of Saint-Thierry, Arnold of Bonneval and
Geoffrey of Auxerre, supplemented by a collection of the
miracles. There are other accounts of his life by Alan of Auxerre, John
the
Hermit, etc., and a good deal of more or less legendary matter in later
compilations, notably the Exordium
magnum of Conrad of Eberbach, and the Liber miraculorum of Herbert. All
these sources as well as the saint's correspondence have been very
carefully discussed by G. Buffer in his Vorstudien (1886) and in the first
chapter of E. Vacandard's Vie de
Saint Bernard
(1910), which last book still remains the most authoritative
biography. More popular lives such as those by G. Goyau (1927),
F.
Hover (1927), and A. Luddy, Life and
Teaching of St Bernard
(1927), are numerous but the accuracy of the rather bulky work last
named cannot always be relied upon. Many non-Catholic biographies
or
histories, notably those of J. Cotter Morison (1877), R. S. Storrs
(1893), Watkin Williams (1935), and G. G. Coulton (Five Centuries of Religion, vol. i)
aluo pay tribute to St Eernard'u greatnen. E. Gilson's Mystical Theology of St Bernard
appeared in English in 1940. J. Leclercq's St Bernard mystique (1948)
includes 200 pp. of passages from his writings. Dom
Leclercq is
working on a critical edition of the saint's works. See also the recueil of the Assoc.
Bourguignonne des Societes Savantea, St
Bernard et son temps (2 vols., 1928); and cf D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England
(1949). An English translation of the saint's letters by the Rev.
B. Scott James, and a valuable volume of biographical material in
French, Bernard de Clairvaux,
ed. by Dom Jean Bouton, were published in 1953, among other relevant
works.
St. Bernard, St. Bernard was born of noble parentage
in Burgundy, France, in the
castle of
Fontaines near Dijon. Under the care of his pious parents he was sent
at an early age to a college at Chatillon, where he was conspicuous for
his remarkable piety and spirit of recollection. At the same place he
entered upon the studies of theology and Holy Scripture. After the
death of his mother, fearing the snares and temptations of the world,
he resolved to embrace the newly established and very austere institute
of the Cistercian Order,
of which he was destined to become the greatest ornament. He also
persuaded his brothers and several of his friends to follow his
example. In 1113, St. Bernard, with thirty young noblemen, presented
himself to the holy Abbot, St. Stephen, at Citeaux. After a novitiate
spent in great fervor, he made his profession in the following year.
His superior soon after, seeing the great progress he had made in the
spiritual life, sent him with twelve monks to found a new monastery,
which afterward became known as the celebrated Abbey of Clairvaux. St.
Bernard was at once appointed Abbot and began that active life which
has rendered him the most conspicuous figure in the history of the 12th
century. He founded numerous other monasteries, composed a number of
works and undertook many journeys for the honor of God. Several
Bishoprics were offered him, but he refused them all. The reputation of
St. Bernard spread far and wide; even the Popes were governed by his
advice. He was commissioned by Pope
Eugene III to preach the second Crusade. In obedience to the
Sovereign Pontiff he traveled through France and Germany, and aroused
the greatest enthusiasm for the holy war among the masses of the
population. The failure of the expedition raised a great storm against
the saint, but he attributed it to the sins of the Crusaders. St. Bernard was eminently endowed with the
gift of miracles. He died on August 20, 1153.ST LAMBERT was born at Bauduen, in the diocese of Riez, and became a monk in the abbey of Lérins, where he had lived from his childhood. Though kindly to all and popular with his brethren, he was so great a lover of solitude and study that he never left his cell except when obedience required him to do so. Much against his will he was made bishop of Vence in 1114. For forty years he ruled his diocese, instructing the people and healing many sick persons by prayer and the laying-on of hands. He was famous for his learning and for his miracles. Beloved of all, he died in the year 1154, and was buried in his cathedral church.
The life
printed in the Acta Sanctorum, May, vol. vi, seems to
have been written within ten
years of St Lambert’s death, but its dullness is only relieved by the
narration
of some very dubious miracles. A copy of his epitaph has been published
in the Revue des Sociétés savantes, vol.
iv
(1876), p. 196.
1154 + St. Wulfric hermit Many miracles
were attributed to his intercession, both in this life and after his
death numerous between 1185 to 1235
Born at Compton Martin, near Bristol, England, he became a priest and was excessively materialistic and worldly. After meeting with a beggar, he underwent a personal conversion and became a hermit at Haselbury; Somerset, England. For his remaining years, he devoted himself to rigorous austerities and was known for his miracles and prophecies. While he was never formally canonized, Wulfric was a very popular saint during the Middle Ages, and his tomb was visited by many pilgrims.
Wulfric of Haselbury, Hermit (AC) (also known as Ulfrick, Ulric) Born at Compton Martin (near Bristol), England; died at Haselbury, Somerset, England, in February 20, 1154. Saint Wulfric was an ordained priest, but not because he felt a religious vocation. He like to hunt and eat and party with the lords of the manors near Deverill, Wiltshire, England. He performed all the functions of a priest, but he did not have his heart in them.
Legend reports that, one day in the early 1120's while he was a priest at Deverill, near Warminster, he was suddenly touched by divine grace. Some say that he had underwent a metanoia during a chance encounter with a beggar. Other say that Wulfric was converted to a life of penance one day upon recitation of the
Born at Compton Martin, near Bristol, England, he became a priest and was excessively materialistic and worldly. After meeting with a beggar, he underwent a personal conversion and became a hermit at Haselbury; Somerset, England. For his remaining years, he devoted himself to rigorous austerities and was known for his miracles and prophecies. While he was never formally canonized, Wulfric was a very popular saint during the Middle Ages, and his tomb was visited by many pilgrims.
Wulfric of Haselbury, Hermit (AC) (also known as Ulfrick, Ulric) Born at Compton Martin (near Bristol), England; died at Haselbury, Somerset, England, in February 20, 1154. Saint Wulfric was an ordained priest, but not because he felt a religious vocation. He like to hunt and eat and party with the lords of the manors near Deverill, Wiltshire, England. He performed all the functions of a priest, but he did not have his heart in them.
Legend reports that, one day in the early 1120's while he was a priest at Deverill, near Warminster, he was suddenly touched by divine grace. Some say that he had underwent a metanoia during a chance encounter with a beggar. Other say that Wulfric was converted to a life of penance one day upon recitation of the
Lavabo verse: "I will wash my
hands among the innocent."
It was as if all the easy
ways of his past
rose up at once to torment him, and he fled immediately to a place in
search of solitude.
We don't know how long he
remained a hermit, but there are seemingly
endless reports of his austerities and arduous mortifications: going
down in the icy waters to recite the Psalms, flagellations,
prostrations, mail-shirts. When Wulfric finally returned to his flock,
he was a new man. He ministered to his flock until 1125.
A knight offered him a cell adjoining a church at Haselbury- Plunkett (Plucknett) near Exeter in Somerset. He had no official episcopal authorization, but was supported by the neighboring Cluniac monks of Montacute. There he lived the remainder of his life, starving himself until his body was skin and bones. He was famous for his gift of prophecy and for his priestly care of all who sought his counsel, including Kings Henry I and Stephen. In 1130, Henry and Queen Adela obtained through his intercession the healing of the knight Drogo de Munci from paralysis. In 1133, Wulfric prophesied the death of the king which occurred in 1135. Stephen visited him with his brother, Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, when Wulfric greeted him as king even before his disputed accession. On another occasion, Wulfric reproached him for misgovernment.
A curious story is recounted in detail that he cut the iron links of his mail-shirt with ordinary scissors as if they were only linen in order to shorten it to permit the numerous prostrations that were a part of the penitential exercises of that era. He said Mass daily with the assistance of a boy named Osbern, who later became a priest and who recorded Wulfric's vita. The near- contemporary life of Wulfric by Abbot John of Ford is accurate and informative.
The saint employed himself primarily in copying books, which he bound himself.
He also made elements for the celebration of Mass.
Many miracles were attributed to his intercession, both in this life and after his death. (Although the first miracle at his tomb is not recorded to have occurred until 1169; they were numerous between 1185 to 1235.) The Cistercians lay claim to Wulfric, as did the monks of Montacute, but he was unaffiliated with an religious order.
Wulfric's cultus was slow to develop. He was mentioned favorably by Henry of Huntingdon, Roger of Wendover, and Matthew Paris. William Worcestre and John Leland also mention his tomb. In 1633, John Gerard recorded that his cell was still standing as was his memory. A 16th-century martyrology and a French menology include Saint Wulfric. He is venerated at Haselbury, where he is buried in the cell in which he lived, which is now the site of the church's vestry (Attwater, Benedictines, Encyclopedia, Farmer, Husenbeth, Walsh).
A knight offered him a cell adjoining a church at Haselbury- Plunkett (Plucknett) near Exeter in Somerset. He had no official episcopal authorization, but was supported by the neighboring Cluniac monks of Montacute. There he lived the remainder of his life, starving himself until his body was skin and bones. He was famous for his gift of prophecy and for his priestly care of all who sought his counsel, including Kings Henry I and Stephen. In 1130, Henry and Queen Adela obtained through his intercession the healing of the knight Drogo de Munci from paralysis. In 1133, Wulfric prophesied the death of the king which occurred in 1135. Stephen visited him with his brother, Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, when Wulfric greeted him as king even before his disputed accession. On another occasion, Wulfric reproached him for misgovernment.
A curious story is recounted in detail that he cut the iron links of his mail-shirt with ordinary scissors as if they were only linen in order to shorten it to permit the numerous prostrations that were a part of the penitential exercises of that era. He said Mass daily with the assistance of a boy named Osbern, who later became a priest and who recorded Wulfric's vita. The near- contemporary life of Wulfric by Abbot John of Ford is accurate and informative.
The saint employed himself primarily in copying books, which he bound himself.
He also made elements for the celebration of Mass.
Many miracles were attributed to his intercession, both in this life and after his death. (Although the first miracle at his tomb is not recorded to have occurred until 1169; they were numerous between 1185 to 1235.) The Cistercians lay claim to Wulfric, as did the monks of Montacute, but he was unaffiliated with an religious order.
Wulfric's cultus was slow to develop. He was mentioned favorably by Henry of Huntingdon, Roger of Wendover, and Matthew Paris. William Worcestre and John Leland also mention his tomb. In 1633, John Gerard recorded that his cell was still standing as was his memory. A 16th-century martyrology and a French menology include Saint Wulfric. He is venerated at Haselbury, where he is buried in the cell in which he lived, which is now the site of the church's vestry (Attwater, Benedictines, Encyclopedia, Farmer, Husenbeth, Walsh).
1154
St.
William of
York,
Bishop austere life of a
monk, practicing much prayer and mortification; Following his death,
many miracles were attributed to him.Eboráci, in Anglia, sancti Willhélmi, Epíscopi et Confessóris, qui, inter cétera ad ejus sepúlcrum patráta mirácula, tres mórtuos suscitávit, atque ab Honório Papa Tértio in Sanctórum cánonem relátus est.
At York in England, St. William, archbishop and confessor, who, among other miracles wrought at his tomb, raised three persons from the dead. He was placed in the calendar of the saints by Pope Honorius III.
William of York was the son of Count Herbert, treasurer to Henry I. His mother Emma, was the half-sister of King William. Young William became treasurer of the church of York at an early age and was elected archbishop of York in 1140. William's election was challenged on the grounds of simony and unchastity. He was cleared by Rome, but later, a new Pope, the Cistercian Eugene III, suspended William, and in 1147, he was deposed as archbishop of York.
William then retired to Winchester where he led the austere life of a monk, practicing much prayer and mortification. Upon the death of his accusers and Eugene III, Pope Anastastius IV restored William his See and made him archbishop. However, after one month back in York, the saintly prelate died in the year 1154. Some claim he was poisoned by the archdeacon of York, but no record of any resolution in the case remains extant. Pope Honorius III canonized William in 1227.
The archbishop of Canterbury was reluctant to consecrate William under such a cloud of accusation. For a time even Pope Innocent III hesitated, before finally agreeing to support William. Henry of Blois, who was both bishop of Winchester and King Stephen's brother accordingly consecrated William and he took up his duties as archbishop in 1143.
But the dispute did not end; matters soon became difficult again. William failed to receive the official 'pallium,' symbol of the pope's authority, before the pope who sent it had died. The papal legate took the pallium back to Rome.
The new pope, Eugenius III, was a Cistercian and sided with the archbishop's opponents, including Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. William visited Rome to persuade the pope of his credentials. But the pope suspended him. To make things worse, a group of his followers now violently attacked some of the monks of Fountains Abbey, itself a Cistercian foundation, and set fire to the monastery farms. The abbot of Fountains, Henry Murdac, had been William's rival for the see of York in the first place.
A council held at Rheims in 1147 now deposed William. He went to stay with Henry of Blois, and spent six chastened years living as a monk at Winchester. Only when both the pope and the abbot of Fountains were dead was he able to make a successful appeal to Pope Anastasius IV and return in triumph to York. Enormous crowds gathered on a bridge over the River Ouse as William arrived. The bridge collapsed. Fortunately no one was injured, and this was taken as a sign of good things to come. William, however, had reached the end of his life.
William was mild and conciliatory towards his enemies, but within a few months he was dead, perhaps, it was rumored, from poison at the hands of Osbert, the new archdeacon of York. He was well liked by the people, and the rumored murder doubtless contributed to a popular demand for his canonization (Attwater, Benedictines, Bentley, Delaney, Encyclopedia).
Saint William is depicted in the episcopal insignia on many windows in York, England. He might be shown (1) on a shield with eight lozenges near him; (2) crossing the Ouse Bridge; (3) on horseback, received by the Mayor at Mickelgate Bar; (4) kneeling to kiss the cross at the entrance to York Minster; or (5) as a tonsured monk praying in the wilderness with a holy dove nearby (Roeder) .
June 8, 2010 St. William of York (d. 1154)
A disputed election as archbishop of York and a mysterious death. Those are the headlines from the tragic life of today's saint.
Born into a powerful family in 12th-century England, William seemed destined for great things. His uncle was next in line for the English throne—though a nasty dynastic struggle complicated things. William himself faced an internal Church feud. Despite these roadblocks, he was nominated as archbishop of York in 1140. Local clergymen were less enthusiastic, however, and the archbishop of Canterbury refused to consecrate William. Three years later a neighboring bishop performed the consecration, but it lacked the approval of Pope Innocent II, whose successors likewise withheld approval. William was deposed and a new election was ordered.
It was not until 1154—14 years after he was first nominated—that William became archbishop of York. When he entered the city that spring after years of exile, he received an enthusiastic welcome. Within two months he was dead, probably from poisoning. His administrative assistant was a suspect, though no formal ruling was ever made. Despite all that happened to him, William did not show resentment toward his opponents. Following his death, many miracles were attributed to him. He was canonized 73 years later.
1154 St William, Archbishop of York
St WILLIAM FITZHERBERT, also known as William of Thwayt, is stated to have been the son of King Stephen’s half-sister Emma and of Count Herbert, treasurer to Henry I, and while yet young William himself was appointed treasurer of the church of York. He appears to have been somewhat indolent, but he was personally popular and, on the death of Archbishop Thurston of York in 1140, he was chosen to fill the vacancy. The validity of the election, however, was contested by Archdeacon Walter of York, together with a number of Cistercian abbots and Augustinian priors, who alleged unchastity and simony on the part of William and undue influence on the part of the king. Stephen invested him with the temporalities of the see, but the archbishop of Canterbury, Theobald, hesitated to consecrate him, and the parties carried their case to Rome; where the objectors relied chiefly on the charge of intrusion into the see. Pope Innocent decided that the election might be regarded as valid provided the dean of York, also called William, should appear before a court to be held by Henry of Blois, who was bishop of Winchester and papal legate, and there swear that the chapter had received no mandate from the king.
Dean William, who just at this time was made bishop of Durham, did not take that oath—it is possible that he could not without committing perjury. But in consequence of another papal letter, whose origins are uncertain and not altogether above suspicion, William Fitzherbert was able to satisfy Henry of Winchester, who duly consecrated him, and the clergy and people of York warmly welcomed him. He governed his diocese well; promoting peace so far as in him lay. But his opponents had abated none of their energy; and William, through, says a chronicler, his easy-goingness and tendency to procrastination, made a mistake that played into their hands. He failed to make arrangements for receiving the pallium that Pope Lucius II had sent by the hands of his legate, Cardinal Imar of Tusculum. Lucius died while the pallium was yet unconferred, and Imar took it back to Rome. To sue for it William was obliged to go again to Rome, selling or pledging some of the treasures of York to pay his expenses.
But the new pope, Eugenius III, was a Cistercian and completely under the influence of St Bernard of Clairvaux, who had all along vigorously supported the cause of William’s opponents. Though the majority of the cardinals were in his favour, William was suspended on the ground that the bishop of Durham had not taken the oath prescribed by Innocent II. Thereupon the archbishop retired to the hospitality of his relative King Roger of Sicily. But his supporters in England, directly the news of the papal decision reached York, made an attack on Fountains Abbey, of which Henry Murdac, formerly a monk with Pope Eugenius, was abbot, and burnt its farms; they also seized and mutilated Archdeacon Walter. This criminality still further prejudiced William’s cause, and in 1147 the pope deposed him. Soon after Henry Murdac was nominated to be archbishop of York in his stead.
Upon his return to England William took refuge with his uncle, Henry of Winchester, who treated him with honour but the deposed prelate was chastened by his misfortunes; he now shunned the luxury to which he had been accustomed, and elected to lead a penitential and austere life in the cathedral monastery. He remained thus in Winchester for six years, when in 1153 Pope Eugenius, St Bernard and Murdac all died within three months of one another: whereupon William went to Rome to plead for the restoration of his see with Pope Anastasius IV. The new pontiff granted his petition, and conferred the pallium on him before he returned home.
St William re-entered York in May 1154 amid popular demonstrations of joy. Under the weight of the crowds gathered to welcome him, the wooden bridge over the Ouse broke down, throwing many into the river. The rescue of these unfortunates, not one of whom sustained injury, was attributed by the citizens to the prayers of their restored archbishop. William showed no resentment towards his adversaries and almost at once visited Fountains Abbey, to which he promised restitution for the damage it had received from his violent relatives. But he did not live to carry out his projects for the benefit of his province. A month after his return to York he was taken with violent pain after celebrating a solemn Mass, and within a few days, on June 8, he was dead. The new archdeacon of York, Osbert, was haled before the king’s court on a charge of having poisoned the archbishop. The case was removed to the Holy See, but there is no record of any judgement having been given: the guilt or innocence of Osbert remains uncertain.
St William’s body was in 1284 translated from a chapel of the cathedral to the nave, in the presence of King Edward I and Queen Eleanor; but though the relics escaped destruction at the time of the Reformation and appear to have been preserved until the eighteenth century, they have now disappeared. His chief memorial in his cathedral is the great window which was put up in 1421 and is one of York’s three celebrated “walls of glass”; in its many lights there are depicted scenes from William’s life and miracles, supplemented by a few which properly belong to St John of Beverley and St John of Bridlington. Pope Honorius III canonized St William in 1227, after inquiry into the many wonders reported to have taken place at his tomb, and his feast is still observed in the dioceses of the north of England.
See John of Hexham’s continuation of Symeon of Durham’s Historic Regum and William of Newburgh’s Historia Regum (both in the Rolls Series) the “Narratio fundationis” in Memorials of Fountains, vol. i (ed. J. Walbran, 1863) Walter Daniel’s Life of St Aelred (ed. F. M. Powicke, 1950) and St Bernard’s letters in Migne, PL, vols. clxxxii—clxxxv. An anonymous Life of St William, jejune and mostly untrustworthy, is printed in J. Raine’s Historians of the Church of York, vol. ii. Among modern accounts, see that of T. F. Tout in DNB., vol. xix ; more recent are those of R. L. Poole in the English Historical Review, 1930, pp. 273—281, and D. Knowles in the Cambridge Historical Journal,1936, pp. 162—177 and 212—214 (bibliography and notes). It is curious that a thirteenth-century calendar painted on the wails of the church of Quattro Coronati at Rome the name of St William of York occurs on February 4.
(also known as Balto)
Walto, abbot of Wessobrünn in Bavaria, attracted many friends and benefactors to the abbey because of his goodness and ability to work miracles (Benedictines, Encyclopedia).
Ireland
