1300 BD MATTHIA
OF MATELICA, VIRGIN Miracles incorrupt in 1756;
Miracles became so frequent at her grave that the body
was soon moved to a tomb beside the high altar of the
chapel, where her veneration was continued without interruption.
In 1756 the tomb had to be moved on account of repairs, and
the Bishop of Camerino took the opportunity to examine the relics;
the body was found to be incorrupt and giving off a pleasant smell.
It was re-enshrined under the altar of St Cecilia, and since then
miracles have again been reported there.
AT the town of
Matelica in the March of Ancona there is a monastery
of Poor Clare nuns whose origin is said to go back
to about the year 1233, when St Clare was
still living; this ancient convent was dedicated in honour
of St Mary Magdalene, but since 1758
has been known as Bd Matthia’s. This beata
was born in Matelica about the same time as the
convent was founded, the only child of Count Gentile Nazzarei,
who naturally wished his daughter to marry and perpetuate
his house. She, however, was called to be a nun and offered herself
to the abbess of Santa Maria Maddalena, who was related to Count
Gentile and refused to receive her without her father’s consent.
According to an old tradition Matthia thereupon went into the
convent chapel, changed her secular clothes for a religious habit,
cut off her hair, and there offered herself to Christ before a
crucifix. Count Gentile found her thus, and was reluctantly persuaded
to give his permission. Nothing is known of the life in religion
of Bd Matthia except vague generalities. She filled the office
of abbess for forty years, and died on December 28, 1300. Miracles became so frequent at her grave that
the body was soon moved to a tomb beside the high altar of the chapel,
where her veneration was continued without interruption. In 1756 the tomb had to be moved on account
of repairs, and the Bishop of Camerino took the opportunity to
examine the relics; the body was found to be incorrupt and
giving off a pleasant smell. It was re-enshrined under the altar
of St Cecilia, and since then miracles have again been reported there.
In particular, the body is said to have exuded from time to time a
sweet-smelling, blood-like liquid, especially when a member of the
community is going to die. The cultus of Bd Matthia was
confirmed in 1765. It must be added that it is said by some that the
Matelica convent was founded for Benedictine nuns and became Franciscan
only after the lifetime of Bd Matthia, which is put earlier.
Full accounts
of the beata are available in nearly
all the Franciscan chroniclers. Mazzara commemorates
her in June; see the Leggendario Francescano,
pt I (1676), pp. 875—876. There
are Italian lives by G. Baldassini (1852), and by Vincent
de Porto San Giorgio (1877). See also Léon, Auréole Séraphique
(Eng. trans.), vol. i, pp. 332—338; and cf. A. M. Zimmermann, Kalendarium
Benedictinum, vol. iii (1937).
|
1301 Bd James Of Bevagna
St Dominic appeared to him and said, "Do it! According
to God's will I choose you, and will be ever with you
".
Mevania, now called Bevagna, is a small town in Umbria,
and here this James was born in the year 1220, of the family
of the Bianconi. His future holiness was foreshadowed
in his childhood, and a reconciliation of the Bianconi
to the Alberti, with whom they had quarrelled, was attributed
to his youthful prayers. When he was sixteen, two Dominicans
came to Bevagna to preach during Lent, and the boy was attracted
by what he heard of the life of the preachers and by their
discourses; he considered the matter over and over and when,
after his communion on Maundy Thursday, he was saying Psalm
118, the appositeness of the thirty-third verse struck him, "Set
before me for a law the way of thy justifications, 0 Lord, and
I will always seek after it." He went to one of the friars
and opened his mind, and was recommended to watch all that night
before the Blessed Sacrament in the Easter sepulchre, asking
for light, and to await the will of God. This he did,
and as he slept on the eve of Holy Saturday St Dominic appeared
to him and said, "Do it! According to God's will I choose
you, and will be ever with you".
When
the friars returned to their house at Spoleto James
went with them. In due course he was given permission
to establish a house of his order at Bevagna, of which he
became prior. The neighbourhood gave ample scope for
the labours of the friars, and after the town had been sacked
by the Emperor Frederick II in 1248 Bd James more than ever
endeared himself to the people by his solicitude for them in
their misfortunes. This was a time of recrudescence of Manichean
errors, and a particularly pestilential sect of antinomians
was active in Umbria; James set out to combat it with great
energy, and succeeded in inducing one of its leaders to make a public
repudiation of his heresy at Orte. Bd James was very strict
in his observance of his vow of poverty, and when his mother gave
him some money to buy a new habit, which he badly needed, he got
permission from his superior to buy a crucifix for his cell instead.
When his mother saw the worn-out habit again, she remonstrated with
him, but he answered with a smile, "I have done as you wished.
St Paul tells us to 'put on the Lord Jesus`, and that is the habit
I have bought." But that crucifix was to clothe him in a way
he never thought of, for praying before it one day in great dryness
and fear of spirit, almost despairing of his salvation, it is said
that a spurt of blood miraculously sprang from the image over his face,
and he heard a voice saying, "Behold the sign of your salvation".
Another marvel, reported at his death, is recounted in the notice of
Bd Joan of Orvieto, under July 23. Pope Boniface IX approved the
cultus of Bd James of Bevagna.
The Bollandists in giving an account
of this beatus (August, vol. iv) deplore, and not
without reason, the lack of any early biography.
The narrative of Father Taigi is certainly full of legendary
matter neither can one feel any more confidence in the
Vita del B. Giacomo Bianconi
by Father Piergili (1729) or in that compiled by F. Becchetti or
in the summary given in Procter, Lives of Dominican Saints.
For a fuller bibliography see Taurisano, pp. 23-24.
|
14th v. Silvanus (Silouan)
of the Kiev CavesThe Holy Schemamonk, zealously
preserved purity of both soul and body; subdued his flesh
with fasting and vigils, and he cleansed his soul with
prayer and meditation on God: Lord granted him an abundance
of spiritual gifts: a prayerful boldness towards God, constant
joy in the Lord, clairvoyance and wonderworking
The monk
lived at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of
the fourteenth centuries. His relics rest in the Caves |
1302 BD ANDREW OF ANAGNI
was held in great veneration both in life and after death for the miracles
he was believed to work
IN the Franciscan supplement to the Roman Martyrology this
servant of God is described as “Beatus Andreas de Comitibus”; but
it would seem that the more accurate form of his name is Andrea dei
Conti di Segni (Andrew of the Counts of Segni). In Mazzara he is called
Andrea d’Anagni, from his birthplace. As we learn from these designations
he was of noble family, nephew of the Roland Conti who became Pope
Alexander IV and a near kinsman of another native of Anagni, Benedict
Gaetani, Pope Boniface VIII.
Laying aside all thought of worldly advancement he gave himself
to the Order of Friars Minor, in which he remained a simple brother,
not even aspiring to the priesthood.
His
reputation for holiness was great, and it is probably true that a
cardinalate was at some time offered him, and that he definitely declined
to be so honoured. Our sources of information, however, do not seem very
trustworthy. One is consequently a little disposed to be sceptical about
some incidents recounted in the legend of Bd Andrew. For example “Wadding
relates that one day when he was ill and unable to take his ordinary
food, a friend brought him some roasted birds. The saint, touched with
pity at the sight of the innocent creatures, would not eat, but, making
the sign of the cross over them, commanded them to resume their feathers
and fly away. He was instantly obeyed, and the little birds, restored to
life, took flight with chirps of joy” (Leon, i, 134). There is no doubt
that Andrew was held in great veneration both in life and after death for
the miracles he was believed to work. He breathed his last on February 1,
1302, and his cult us was formally approved
in 1724.
See Léon, L’Auréole
Séraphique (Eng. trans.), vol. i Mazzara, Leggendario Francescano
(1676), vol. i, pp. 155-156.
|
1300
Blesseds Dominic & Gregory Dominican preachers
died in cavein cave surrounded by lights and angelic
music Miracles surrounded burials and tombs at Besians
diocese of Barbastro OP (AC)
cultus approved by
Pope Pius IX in 1854. Very little is known about these
two Dominican preachers. Their legend tells us that they
evangelized the mountainous Somontano region of Moorish
Spain near Barbastro, Aragon. One day they were caught in a
storm as they travelled from one village to another. The storm
loosed the rocks of the cave in which they had sought shelter
and they were buried in a landslide. The bells of Perarúa
rang out of their own accord, indicating that something remarkable
was afoot, and villagers, who ventured out after the storm, found
the cave surrounded by lights and angelic music. Digging into
the rubble, they found the two Dominicans crushed to death. Miracles
surrounded their burials and their tombs at Besians in the diocese
of Barbastro, where pilgrims came to pray, especially against the
danger from storms. Formerly on Rogation days, and in times of drought,
their relics were carried in procession (Benedictines, Dorcy). |
1304 Blessed
Benedict XI, OP Pope he had "a vast store of knowledge, a prodigious
memory, a penetrating genius, and (that) everything about him endeared
him to all." In 1295, he received the degree of master
of theology As papal legate Nicholas travelled to Hungary
to try to settle a civil war there He worked to reconcile
warring parties in Europe and the Church and to increase spirituality.
His reign, short though it was, was noted for its leniency and
kindness Many miracles were performed at his tomb, and there were
several cures even before his burial (RM)
Bd Benedict XI, Pope Nicholas
Boccasini was born at Treviso in the year 1240.
He was educated there and at Venice, where at seventeen
years of age he took the habit of St Dominic. In 1268 he
was appointed professor and preacher at Venice and Bologna,
where he fruitfully communicated to others those spiritual riches
which he had treasured up in silence and retirement, while always
advancing in the way of perfection himself. He composed
a volume of sermons, and wrote commentaries on the Holy Scriptures,
which are still extant. He was chosen prior provincial
of his order for Lombardy and, in 1296, elected ninth master general
of the whole Order of Preachers. Two years later
Brother Nicholas was created cardinal and soon after bishop of Ostia,
and he went as legate a
latere to Hungary to endeavour to compose the differences
which divided that nation; he had some temporary success, for his
learning, prudence and selflessness everywhere gained respect:
but his services were urgently required in Rome.
Trouble had long been brewing
between the Holy See and King Philip of France,
who had been heavily taxing ecclesiastical persons and
property to help carry on his war with England; the king
entered into an alliance with the Colonna cardinals against Pope
Boniface VIII who, the French king having circulated a forged
document in the place of his statement of the pope's prerogatives,
in 1302 issued the famous bull "Unam sanctam", in which, inter alia, the relationship between
the spiritual and temporal powers were set out.
In
the following year Philip appealed to a general council
to judge the pope on a number of astounding charges, as infamous
as they were false, preferred by the royal councillor William
of Nogaret and a knight, William du Plessis.* [* These gentlemen were experts
in such work, and later played a similar part in the arraignment
of the Knights Templars on terrifying charges.]
A storm was raised against Boniface, who withdrew to Anagni,
deserted by all who should have supported him, excepting
only the cardinal-bishop of Sabina and the cardinal-bishop
of Ostia, Nicholas Boccasini. With their advice and assistance
Boniface acted with vigour and promptness, and prepared a bull
of excommunication against Philip. But the very day before
its promulgation Nogaret and the Ghibelline leader, Sciarra
Colonna, broke into the papal residence with a rabble of hired troopers
and seized the person of the pontiff, on September 7. Three
days later he was released by the citizens of Anagni, returned to Rome,
and on October 11 he died.
To such a troubled heritage
did Cardinal Nicholas Boccasini succeed, for within
a fortnight he was elected to the apostolic chair, and
took the name of Benedict. He set himself straightway
to deal with the situation, with the confidence engendered
by trust and submission to God and unimpeachable personal upright-
ness : but his pontificate was too short for him to do more
than take the first steps towards restoring peace; Bd Benedict's
policy was one of conciliation without compromising the
memory of his predecessor. He favoured the mendicant
friars, and all three cardinals created by him were Dominicans;
two, moreover, were Englishmen: William Makiesfield of Canterbury,
who died at Louvain before he heard of his elevation, and Walter
Winterburn of Salisbury.
In
his private life Benedict continued the mortifications
and penances of a friar, and abated none of his humility
and moderation; when his mother came to see him at the papal
court and dressed herself up for the occasion, he refused to
see her until she had changed into the simple clothes which she
ordinarily wore. But he only ruled for eight months and
a few days, in which short space, as the Roman Martyrology says,
he "wonderfully promoted the peace of the Church, the restoration
of discipline, and the increase of religion"; he died suddenly
at Perugia on July 7, 1304. His cultus was confirmed in 1736.
Various short lives of Blessed
Benedict are mentioned in BHL., nn. 1090-1094, including
a notice by Bernard Guy incorporated in the Liber Pontificalis, vol. ii, pp.
471-472. See also Mortier, Maître, Généraux OP., vol. ii; H. Finke, Aus, den Tagen Bonifax VIII (1902); the Regesta of Benedict,
edited by C. Grandjean; and A. Ferrero, B. Benedetto XI (1934).
Born in
Treviso, Italy, 1240; died in Perugia, Italy, April
25, 1304; beatified by Pope Clement XII in 1736. Nicholas
Boccasini was born into a poor family of which we know little
else, though there are several different traditions concerning
it. One claims that his father was a poor shepherd. Another that
he was an impoverished nobleman. Whichever he was, he died
when Nicholas was very small, and the little boy was put in the
care of an uncle, a priest at Treviso.
The child
proved to be very intelligent, so his uncle had him
trained in Latin and other clerical subjects. When Nicholas
was ten, his uncle got him a position as tutor to some noble
children. He followed this vocation until he was old enough
to enter the Dominican community at Venice in 1254. Here, and
in various parts of Italy, Nicholas spent the next 14 years,
completing his education. It is quite probable that he had Saint
Thomas Aquinas for one of his teachers.
Nicholas
was pre-eminently a teacher at Venice and Bologna.
He did his work well according to several sources, including
a testimonial from Saint Antoninus, who said that he had
"a vast store of knowledge, a prodigious memory, a penetrating
genius, and (that) everything about him endeared him to all."
In 1295, he received the degree of master of theology.
The administrative
career of Nicholas Boccasini began with his election
as prior general of Lombardy and then as the ninth master
general of the Order of Preachers in 1296. His work in this
office came to the notice of the pope, who, after Nicholas had
completed a delicate piece of diplomacy in Flanders, appointed
him cardinal in 1298.
The Dominicans hurried
to Rome to protest that he should not be given the
dignity of a cardinal, only to receive from the pope the mystifying
prophecy that God had reserved an even heavier burden for Nicholas.
As papal legate Nicholas travelled to Hungary to try to settle
a civil war there.
Boniface VIII did not
always agree with the man he had appointed cardinal-bishop
of Ostia and dean of the sacred college. But they respected
one another, and in the tragic affair that was shaping
up with Philip the Fair of France, Cardinal Boccasini was to
be one of only two cardinals who defended the Holy Father, even
to the point of offering his life.
Philip the Fair, like several
other monarchs, discovered that his interests clashed
with those of the papacy.
His action
was particularly odious in an age when the papal power
had not yet been separated completely from temporal concerns.
The French monarch, who bitterly
hated Boniface, besieged the pope in the Castle
of Anagni, where he had taken refuge, and demanded that
he resign the papacy. His soldiers even broke into the house
and were met by the pope, dressed in full pontifical vestments
and attended by two cardinals, one of whom was Cardinal Boccasini.
For a short time it looked as though the soldiers, led by Philip's
councilor William Nogaret, might kill all three of them, but they
refrained from such a terrible crime and finally withdrew after
Nicholas rallied the papal forces and rescued Boniface from Anagni.
Cardinal
Boccasini set about the difficult task of swinging
public opinion to the favor of the pope. Successful at
this, he stood sorrowfully by when the pontiff died, broken-hearted
by his treatment at the hands of the French soldiers. On
October 22, 1303, at the conclave following the death of Boniface,
the prophesied burden fell upon the shoulders of the cardinal-bishop
of Ostia, who took the name Benedict XI.
The reign
of Benedict XI was too short to give him time to work
out any of his excellent plans for settling the troubles
of the Church. Most of his reign was taken up with undoing
the damage done by Philip the Fair. He lifted the interdict
on the French people that had been laid down by his predecessor and
made an uneasy peace with Philip.
He worked
to reconcile warring parties in Europe and the Church
and to increase spirituality. His reign, short though
it was, was noted for its leniency and kindness.
There are few personal anecdotes
regarding Benedict, but at least one worth telling.
Once, during his pontificate, his mother came to the
papal court to see him. The court attendants decided that
she was too poorly dressed to appear in the presence of the Holy
Father, so they dressed her up in unaccustomed finery before
allowing her to see her son. Benedict, sensing what had happened,
told them he did not recognize this wealthy woman, and he asked them
where was the little widow, pious and poorly dressed, whom he loved
so dearly.
Benedict
XI died suddenly in 1304. He had continued to the end
with his religious observances and penances. Some people
believed that he had been poisoned, but there has never
been any evidence that this was the case. Many miracles were performed
at his tomb, and there were several cures even before his burial
(Benedictines, Delaney, Dorcy).
In art, Pope Benedict wears a
Dominican habit and papal tiara, while holding
the keys. He is venerated in Perugia (Roeder).
|
1304 BD PETER OF TREIA
After a long life of labour, adorned by miracles and the gift of prophecy.
THIS Peter was one of the early Franciscans and received
the habit from St Francis himself.
He was born at Montecchio, near Treia, of poor parents, and
he entered the order when still quite young. He received holy orders,
after which he was most devoted in carrying out the duties of the sacred
ministry. He preached boldly against licentiousness and converted many
sinners. It is related that once, when he was praying in the church
of the convent of Ancona, his superiors saw him rapt in ecstasy and lifted
from the ground; our Lady, St John the Evangelist and St Francis all
manifested themselves to him in visions. He had a particular veneration
for the Archangel St Michael, who appeared to him on the last day of
the special Lent which he used to keep in his honour and talked with him
a long time, promising him the remission of his sins.
He was united by a great bond
of friendship to Bd Conrad of Offida, who lived with him for some years
in the convent of Torano which St Francis had founded. They worked and
preached together and roused each other in noble emulation to higher
and higher stages of sanctity, until the fame of their holiness shed a
glow of distinction over their simple little community on the feast of
the Purification one year Peter had a wonderful vision in which he saw
our Lady place her Son in the arms of Bd Conrad. After a long life of
labour, adorned by miracles and the gift of prophecy, Bd Peter died at
the convent of Sirolo in the Marches. Popular devotion, which had gathered
about him from the hour of his death, was sanctioned in the year 1793.
There is a
pronounced atmosphere of legend in the accounts given of Bd Peter by
Mazzara, Leggendario Francescano, vol. i, pp.
245—246, and the Léon, L’Auréole
Séraphique of Fr Léon (Eng. trans.),
vol. i. They all derive from Wadding, and Wadding used, without discrimination,
almost any materials that came to hand. Cf. also A.
Canaletti Gaudenti, Il b. Pietro da Treja (1937).
|
1304 BD RAINERIUS OF AREZZO town had an altar set up in his honour and record kept
of attributed
Miracles.
INFORMATION is lacking about
the details of the life of this early Franciscan
beatus. He was born at Arezzo,
of the Mariani family, and gave up a secular career
to join the Friars Minor. He was a companion of Bd Benedict
of Arezzo, who had been received into
the order by St Francis himself. Miracles were attributed to Bd
Rainerius during his life, and immediately after
his death, at Borgo San Sepoicro on November
I, 1304, the municipality of the town had an altar set up in
his honour and record kept of his miracles. His cultus
was confirmed in 1802.
Bd Rainerius is dealt with by the
Bollandists on November 1. They found no record of his life beyond
such brief notices as were supplied by Wadding and other annalists, but they
print from manuscript sources a record of miracles worked at his tomb.
See further Mazzara, Leggendario
Francescano (1680), vol. iii, pp. 295-296 and Léon Aureole Séraphique (Eng.
trans.), vol. iv, pp. 34-35.
|
September 10 1305 Saint
Nicholas of Tolentino; Patron of Holy Souls in Purgatory,
and, with St. Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church
hundreds of miracles. Born, 1245
Italian Augustinian
monk with visions of Purgatory, miracle-worker, resurrected
over 100 children, Patron of Holy Souls in Purgatory, and,
with St. Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church. The two arms
incorrupt.
His middle-aged
parents, were childless until a prayerful visit
to a shrine of the original Saint Nicholas at Bari, Italy.
In gratitude, they named their son Nicholas
1305
Saint Nicholas of Tolentino Patron of Holy Souls in Purgatory,
and, with St. Joseph,
Patron of the Universal Church hundreds
of miracles
Tolentíni,
in Picéno, deposítio sancti Nicolái Confessóris,
ex Ordine Eremitárum sancti Augustíni.
At Tolentino in Piceno, the departure from this life of St.
Nicholas, confessor, of the order of the Hermits of St. Augustine.
B, 1245
Italian Augustinian monk with
visions of Purgatory, miracle-worker, resurrected over 100
children, Patron of Holy Souls in Purgatory, and, with St. Joseph,
Patron of the Universal Church. The two arms incorrupt.
His middle-aged parents, were
childless until a prayerful visit to a shrine of the original
Saint Nicholas at Bari, Italy. In gratitude, they named their
son Nicholas.
1305 ST NICHOLAS OF
TOLENTINO
THIS saint received
his surname from the town which was his residence for the most
considerable part of his life, and in which he died. He was
a native of Sant’ Angelo, a town near Fermo in the March of Ancona,
and was born in the year 1245. His father lived many years in happiness
with his wife, but when both had reached middle age they were still
childless. Nicholas was the fruit of their prayers and a pilgrimage
to the shrine of St Nicholas at Ban, in which his mother especially
had earnestly begged of God a son who should faithfully serve Him. At
his baptism he received the name of his patron. In his childhood he
would go to a little cave near the town and pray there in imitation of
the hermits who then lived among the Apennines. People now go to pray there
in honour of St Nicholas of Tolentino. While still a boy he received
minor orders, and was presented to a canonry in the collegiate church
of St Saviour at Sant’ Angelo; and there were not wanting those who
were willing to use their influence for his promotion within
the ranks of the secular clergy. Nicholas, however, aspired to a state
which would allow him to consecrate his whole time and thoughts directly
to God, and it happened that he one day went into the Augustinian church
and heard a friar preaching on the text: “Love not the world nor the things
which are in the world...The world passeth away...” This sermon finally determined
him absolutely to join the order of that preacher. This he did
so soon as his age would allow, and he was accepted by the Augustinian
friars at Sant’ Angelo. He went through his novitiate under the direction
of the preacher himself, Father Reginald, and made his profession before
he had completed his eighteenth year.
Friar Nicholas was sent to
San Ginesio for his theology, and he was entrusted with the
daily distribution of food to the poor at the monastery gate.
He made so free with the resources of the house that the procurator
complained and reported him to the prior. It was while discharging
this labour of love that his first miracle was recorded of St Nicholas,
when he put his hand on the head of a diseased child, saying, “The
good God will heal you”, and the boy was there and then cured. About 1270 he was ordained
priest at Cingoli, and in that place he became famous among the people,
particularly on account of his healing of a blind woman, with the same
words which he had used to the child above. But he did not stay there
long, for during four years he was continually moving from one to another
of the friaries and missions of his order. For a short time he was novice-master
at Sant’ Elpidio, where there was a large community which included two
friars who are venerated as beati among the
Augustinians today, Angelo of Furcio and Angelo of Foligno. While visiting
a relative who was prior of a monastery near Fermo, Nicholas was tempted
by an invitation to make a long stay in the monastery, which was comfortable
and well off compared with the hard poverty of the friaries to which he
was accustomed. But while praying in the church he seemed to hear a voice
directing him: “To Tolentino, to Tolentino. Persevere there.” Shortly after
to Tolentino he was sent, and stopped there for the remaining thirty years
of his life.
This town had suffered much
in the strife of Guelf and Ghibelline, and civil discord had
had its usual effects of wild fanaticism, schism and reckless
wickedness. A campaign of street-preaching was necessary, and
to this new work St Nicholas was put. He was an immediate success.
“He spoke of the things of Heaven”, says St Antoninus. “Sweetly he
preached the divine word, and the words that came from his lips, fell
like burning flame. When his superiors ordered him to take up the
public ministry of the gospel, he did not try to display his knowledge
or show off his ability, but simply to glorify God. Amongst his audience
could be seen the tears and heard the sighs of people detesting their
sins and repenting of their past lives.”
His preaching aroused opposition
among those who were unmoved by it, and a certain man of notoriously
evil life did all he could to shout down the friar and break up his audiences. Nicholas refused to
be intimidated, and his perseverance began to make an impression on his persecutor.
One day when the man had been trying to drown his voice and
scatter the people by fencing with his friends in the street,
he sheathed his sword and stood by to listen. Afterwards he
came and apologized to St Nicholas, admitted that his heart had
been touched, and began to reform his ways. This conversion made
a strong impression, and soon Nicholas had to be spending nearly whole
days in hearing confessions. He went about the slums of Tolentino,
comforting the dying, waiting on (and sometimes miraculously curing)
the sick and bed-ridden, watching over the children, appealing
to the criminals, composing quarrels and estrangements: one woman
gave evidence in the cause of his canonization that he had entirely
won over and reformed her husband who for long had treated her with
shameful cruelty. Another witness gave evidence of three miracles due
to the saint in his family. “Say nothing of this” was his usual comment after these happenings (and they were numerous),
“give thanks to God, not to me. I am only an earthen vessel,
a poor sinner.”
Jordan of Saxony (not the Dominican
beatus, but an Austin friar) in his Life of St Nicholas,
written about 1380, relates a happening which has the distinction of being
referred to by the Bollandists as the most extraordinary miracle which they
find attributed to the saint. A man was waylaid by his enemies at a lonely
spot on Mont’ Ortona, near Padua, and, disregarding his entreaties in the
name of God and St Nicholas [of Ban] for mercy, or at least a priest to shrive
him, they killed him and threw his body into a lake. A week later his body
was recovered by one wearing the habit of an Austin friar, who led him back
alive and well to his family. He asked for a priest, received the last sacraments,
and then, declaring that he had been brought back to make a good end in response
to his desperate appeal to St Nicholas, he again died. His flesh at once
shrivelled up and dropped off, leaving only his bare bones for Christian
burial. Many of the marvels attributed to the intercession of St Nicholas
are in connexion with the bread blessed on his feast by the friars of his
order. In his later years when he was ill and weak his superiors wished him
to take meat and other strengthening food, and St Nicholas was troubled between
the obligation of obedience and his desire not to give in to his body. One
night it appeared to him that our Lady was present and that she told him
to ask for a small piece of bread, to dip it in water and eat it, and he
would recover. So it fell out, and Nicholas in grateful memory would afterwards
bless pieces of bread and give them to the sick, thus originating the Augustinians’
custom.*[ * The spirit in which the Church desires her children
to make use of such things, is illustrated by the prayer to be said by those
who use St Nicholas’s bread: “Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that
thy Church, which is made illustrious by the glory of the marvels and miracles
of blessed Nicholas, thy confessor, may by his merits and intercession enjoy
perpetual peace and unity, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”]
The final illness
of St Nicholas lasted nearly a year, and in the last months
he got up from bed only once, to absolve a penitent who he knew
intended to conceal a grievous sin from any priest but himself. The
end came quietly on September 10, 1305.
His last words to the community gathered round his bed were: “My
dearest brethren, my conscience does not reproach me with anything—but
I am not justified by that.”
A commission was appointed which at once
began to collect evidence for his heroic virtues and miracles,
but the transfer of the papacy
to Avignon intervened and canonization was not achieved till
1446.
There is a
life of St Nicholas by a contemporary, Peter of Monte Rubiano.
This is accessible in the Acta Sanctorum, September,
vol. iii. Of the later lives none seem to have treated this work
and the other materials there provided in a very critical spirit.
The most copious biography is that of Philip Giorgi, Vita del taumaturgo S. Niccolô da Tolentino
(1856—1859, in 3 vols.). The others are for the most part of
a popular character: for example, two in French, by A. Tonna-Barthet
(1896), and by “H.P.” (1899). At Tolentino itself, in view of the centenary
kept in 1905, a sort of periodical was brought out, beginning in 1899,
under the title of Sesto Centenario di San Nicolâ da
Tolentino. This includes copies of certain documents preserved
in the archives of the city, but it is mainly interesting for the
information it provides concerning the later cultus
of the saint. It must be remembered that the accounts of miracles
and wonders belong for the most part to a very uncritical age. Several
little booklets, notably one by N. G. Cappi (1725), were published in
Italy concerning the alleged bleeding of St Nicholas’s severed arms.
A short English biography by E. A. Foran was issued in 1920. See also
a life in Italian by N. Concetti (1932).
Augustinian Friar at age 18,
and a student with Blessed Angelus de Scarpetti. Monk at Recanati
and Macerata. Ordained at age 25. Canon of Saint Saviour's.
Had visions of angels reciting "to Tolentino"; he took this as
a sign to move to that city in 1274, where he lived the rest of his
life.
Worked as a peacemaker
in Tolentino, a city torn by civil war. Preached every day, wonder-worker
and healer, and visited prisoners. He always told those he helped,
"Say nothing of this." Received visions, including images of Purgatory,
which friends ascribed to his lengthy fasts. Had a great devotion
to the recently dead, praying for the souls in Purgatory as he traveled
around his parish, and often late into the night.
The "Seven Tolentine Masses"
come after an apparition of Virgin Mary who told him to offer
them for the Souls of Purgatory. In the first Mass he had a vision
of thousands of people in Purgatory suffering horrible torments.
In the the seventh Mass he had the same vision but the thousands
of people were in Heaven, very joyful singing the glories of God
Once, when severely ill, he
had a vision of Mary, Augustine and Monica. They told him
to eat a certain type of roll that had been dipped in water. Cured,
he began healing others by administering bread over which he recited
Marian prayers. The rolls became known as Saint Nicholas Bread, and
are still distributed at his shrine.
Holy Mass and Purgatory
Reported to have resurrected
over one hundred dead children, including several who had drowned
together.
Legend says that the devil once
beat Nicholas with a stick; the stick was displayed for years
in the his church.
A vegetarian, Nicholas was once
served a roasted fowl; he made the sign of the cross over
it, and it flew out a window.
Nine passengers on ship going
down at sea once asked Nicholas' aid; he appeared in the sky,
wearing the black Augustinian habit, radiating golden light,
holding a lily in his left hand; with his right hand he quelled
the storm.
An apparition of the saint once
saved the burning palace of the Doge of Venice by throwing
a piece of blessed bread on the flames.
Three hundred and one miracles
were recognized during the process.
His tomb has become renowned
by many more, despite the fact that his relics have been lost,
save for the two arms from which blood still exudes when the
Church is menaced by a great danger. This occurred, for example,
when the island of Cyprus was taken over by infidels in 1570.
Like Saint Joseph, virginal
father of Jesus, has been declared a Patron of the Universal
Church.
Born 1245 at Sant'Angelo, March
of Ancona, diocese of Fermo, Italy Died 10 September 1305
at Tolentino, Italy following a long illness; relics rediscovered
at Tolentino in 1926; in previous times they were known exude
blood when the Church was in danger Canonized 5 June (Pentecost)
1446 by Pope Eugene IV; over 300 miracles were recognized by the
Congregation.
Augustinian Friar at age 18,
and a student with Blessed Angelus de Scarpetti.
Monk at Recanati and Macerata. Ordained at age 25. Canon
of Saint Saviour's. Had visions of angels reciting "to
Tolentino"; he took this as a sign to move to that city in 1274,
where he lived the rest of his life.
Worked as a peacemaker
in Tolentino, a city torn by civil war. Preached
every day, wonder-worker and healer, and visited prisoners.
He always told those he helped, "Say nothing of this."
Received visions, including images of Purgatory, which
friends ascribed to his lengthy fasts. Had a great devotion to
the recently dead, praying for the souls in Purgatory as he traveled
around his parish, and often late into the night.
The "Seven
Tolentine Masses" come after an apparition of Virgin
Mary who told him to offer them for the Souls of Purgatory.
In the first Mass he had a vision of thousands of people in
Purgatory suffering horrible torments. In the the seventh
Mass he had the same vision but the thousands of people were in
Heaven, very joyful singing the glories of God
Once, when
severely ill, he had a vision of Mary, Augustine and
Monica. They told him to eat a certain type of roll that had been
dipped in water. Cured, he began healing others by administering
bread over which he recited Marian prayers. The rolls became
known as Saint Nicholas Bread, and are still distributed at his
shrine.
Holy Mass
and Purgatory
Reported
to have resurrected over one hundred dead children,
including several who had drowned together. Legend
says that the devil once beat Nicholas with a stick; the
stick was displayed for years in the his church.
A vegetarian, Nicholas was once served a roasted
fowl; he made the sign of the cross over it, and it flew out
a window. Nine passengers on ship going
down at sea once asked Nicholas' aid; he appeared in the sky,
wearing the black Augustinian habit, radiating golden light, holding
a lily in his left hand; with his right hand he quelled the
storm. An apparition of the saint once
saved the burning palace of the Doge of Venice by throwing a piece
of blessed bread on the flames.
Three hundred
and one miracles were recognized during the process.
His tomb
has become renowned by many more, despite the fact
that his relics have been lost, save for the two arms from
which blood still exudes when the Church is menaced by a great
danger. This occurred, for example, when the island of Cyprus
was taken over by infidels in 1570.
Like Saint Joseph, virginal father of Jesus,
has been declared a Patron of the Universal Church.
|
1306 BD CONRAD OF OFFIDA;
is said to have had the same guardian angel as St
Francis, and to have often conversed with him about the
seraphic founder; the chief companion of his life was Bd
Peter of Treja, who accompanied him in his preaching journeys
and was present in the woods on that Candlemas-day when our Lady
appeared to Conrad and laid the Child Jesus in his arms;
“marvellous zealot
of gospel poverty and of the Rule of St Francis, of so religious
a life and so deserving before God that Christ, the Blessed
One, honoured him in life and in death with many miracles”.
CONRAD became
a friar minor when he was fourteen years old, and was
afterwards associated both with the friary founded by St
Francis himself at Forano in the Apennines and with the great
convent of Alvernia. Before he was ordained priest and became
a preacher he was employed for years as cook and questor, and
several remarkable stories are told of him.
He is said to have had
the same guardian angel as St Francis, and to have often
conversed with him about the seraphic founder.
Throughout his life
Conrad had only one religious habit, he always went
barefoot, and his love of poverty impelled him to that party
in his order which at first was known
as the Spirituals or Zelanti. He was closely
associated with Peter John Olivi, and in sympathy with Angelo
Clareno and Fra Liberato, the leaders of the “Celestine” hermits;
Bd Conrad’s own ideas were more moderate, though he gave credence
and circulation to the legend that St Francis had risen from the
dead to encourage the Spirituals, having, it was said, been told it
by Brother Leo.
But the chief companion of
his life was Bd Peter of Treja, who accompanied him
in his preaching journeys and was present in the woods
on that Candlemas-day when our Lady appeared to Conrad and
laid the Child Jesus in his arms. It was said of these two that
they were “ two shining stars in the province of the Marches, like
dwellers in Heaven; for between them there was such love as seemed
to spring from one and the same heart and soul, so that they bound
themselves, each to the other, by an agreement that every consolation
that the mercy of God might vouchsafe them they would lovingly
reveal the one unto the other”. The author of the Fioretti further calls Brother Conrad a “marvellous
zealot of gospel poverty and of the Rule of St Francis, of so religious
a life and so deserving before God that Christ, the Blessed One,
honoured him in life and in death with many miracles”.
When he was sixty-five years
old Bd Conrad died while preaching at Bastia, near
Assisi, and was buried there. Some years later his relics
were carried off to Perugia, and they now rest in the cathedral
of that city beside those of Brother Giles. His cultus was confirmed in 1817.
The main outlines of his life
are sketched by Bartholomew (Albizzi) of Pisa and other
Franciscan chroniclers. See, for example, Mazzara, Leggendario Francescano (1680), vol. ii,
Pt 2, pp. 678—681. The biography
compiled by B. Bartolomasi as far back as 1807 was published
by M. Faloci-Pulignani in the Miscellanea Francescana,
vol. xv—xvii, but it tells us very little of Bd Conrad’s
relations with the Zelanti, the
great point of interest. See, however, the Historisches
Jahrbuch for 1882, pp. 648—659, and for 1929, pp.
77—81, as also the Archivum Franciscanum historicum,
vol. xi (1918), pp. 366—373. There is an account
of Bd Conrad in Léon, Aureole Séraphique
(Eng. trans.), vol. iv, pp. 174—177.
|
1306 Blessed Jane
of Orvieto a Dominican tertiary her life was one of unwearied
devotion to God, attention to the poor; it was known that she bore
particular good will towards those who were unkind to her, doing
penance for their sins; miracles would happen
after her death
Also
known as Giovanna, Vanna) Born at Carnajola, near Orvieto, Italy;
cultus approved in 1754. Blessed Jane was a Dominican tertiary (Benedictines)
OP Tert. V (AC)
Joan was a peasant girl of Carnaiola,
and was, and is at Orvieto, commonly called Vanna. She was left an orphan at
the age of five, and her companions tried to frighten her by telling
her that now she would have no one to look after her and she would starve.
This did not disturb her and she retorted on them that " I've got a better
father than you have!" When asked what she meant she led them to the
church and pointed triumphantly to an image of a guardian angel: "He will
look after me!" Her trust was justified, for she was adopted
by a family in Orvieto, who brought her up and arranged a marriage for her.
But Joan had different ideas. She ran away to the house of a
friend and joined the third order of St Dominic. Henceforward her life was
one of unwearied devotion to God and attention to the poor; it was known
that she bore particular good will towards those who were unkind to her,
doing penance for their sins, and it became a byword in Orvieto that anyone
who wanted Sister Joan's prayers should do her a bad turn.
Numerous ecstasies and other unusual
occurrences were reported of her.
For some years she was under the spiritual direction
of Bd James of Mevania,
stationed at the Dominican priory in Orvieto;
there is a remarkable story told of Joan confessing
to him at Orvieto, when he was in fact lying dead at Bevagna.
Joan predicted among other things some
of the miracles that would happen after her own death, but made
every effort to conceal the supernatural favours that were accorded
her; her detachment from the world, her humility and her sweetness
she could not hide. She always maintained great devotion to
the holy angels, and died in their care on July 23, 1306. Her
cultus was approved
in 1754.
Bd Joan is lmown to us primarily
by a Latin life that was written by James Scaiza this was edited
in 1853, and other editions in Italian were issued by L. Furni
and by L.mPassarini. See also Procter, Dominican Saints, and M. C. Ganay,
Les bienheureuses Dominicaines
(1913).
Blessed Jane of Orvieto, OP Tert. V
(AC) (also known as Giovanna, Vanna) Born at Carnajola, near Orvieto,
Italy; cultus approved in 1754. Blessed Jane was a Dominican tertiary
(Benedictines).
|
1307 St. Albert of Trapani miracles; Carmelite hermit and missionary entered
a monastic hermitage near Messina where he successfully
devoted himself to the conversion of the Jews
Messanæ, in Sicília,
sancti Alberti Confessóris, ex Ordine Carmelitárum,
miráculis clari.
At Messina in Sicily, St. Albert, confessor of the
Carmelite Order, renowned for miracles.
He was
born in Trapani, Sicily, joined the Carmelite Order.
After ordination, he was sent to nearby Messina, where he
gathered thousands with his preaching and miracles. After serving as
a missionary, Albert entered a monastic hermitage near Messina
where he successfully devoted himself to the conversion of
the Jews (Benedictines).
He remained there until
his death.
Albert of Trapani,
OC (RM) Born in Trapani, Sicily; died 1306; cultus
confirmed in 1454. At a very young age, Saint Albert enter
the Carmelite monastery of his hometown. After his priestly
ordination, he was transferred to the house at Messina,
where he successfully devoted himself to the conversion
of the Jews (Benedictines). |
1307 JANE of
Segna Shepherdess in her youth. Tertiary solitary
40 years; Her reputation for miracles was great,
and people came from all the surrounding country to consult
her and bring their sick and afflicted. Immediately after her
death on November 9, 1307, a cultus sprang up, which was greatly
enhanced in 1348 by the attribution of a sudden cessation of
an epidemic to her intercession.
1307 Bd Joan Of Signa, Virgin
A Number of miracles
are related of this Franciscan tertiary, but very
few particulars of her life are available. Signa is a
village on the Arno, near Florence, and Joan was born there
about the year 1245. Her parents were very poor peasants,
and at an early age she was sent out to look after sheep and goats.
She would collect other herdsfolk round her and talk to them of
the truths of faith, and urge them to live a Christian life, to which
her own example was an even better inducement than her simple heart-felt
words. Her ability to keep dry in wet weather was much talked of, but
this seems to have been due to the simple expedient of sheltering
under a large and thick tree when it rained. At the age of twenty-three
Bd Joan, possibly inspired by the tales she had heard of St Verdiana
of Castelfiorentino, who died about the time Joan was born, became
a solitary in a cell on the banks of the Arno, not far from her native
place. Here she lived for forty years.
Her reputation for miracles was great,
and people came from all the surrounding country
to consult her and bring their sick and afflicted. Immediately
after her death on November 9, 1307, a cultus
sprang up, which was greatly enhanced in 1348 by
the attribution of a sudden cessation
of an epidemic to her intercession. This cultus
was confirmed in 1798.
An anonymous Latin life is in existence that must have been
written about the year 1390. It has
been printed by Fr Mencherini in the Archivum
Franciscanum Historicum, vol. x (1917), pp.
367—386, and also in the Acta Sanctorum,
November, vol. iv. Two other accounts of later date
in Italian verse add nothing to our knowledge. Not only the Franciscans,
but also Vallombrosan monks, the Carmelites and the Augustinians
have claimed that the recluse was attached to their respective
orders. On the Vallombrosan case see F. Soldani, Ragguaglio istorico della B. Giovanna do Signa (1741).
The Franciscan claim can be gathered from Mencherini as above,
who supplies a bibliography. In the opinion of the Bollandists
evidence is lacking that the recluse had a definite connection with
any order. An account of Bd Joan is given by Fr Léon, Aureole Séraphique
(Eng. trans.), vol. iv, pp. 160—164.
Profile Shepherdess in
her youth. Tertiary, though records disagree if
Franciscan or Vallumbrosan. Born at Segna,
Italy Beatified 1798 (cultus confirmed)
|
1310 St. Alexis Falconieri
Founder mystic 1233 on the Feast of the Assumption group experienced
a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Floréntiæ natális sancti Aléxii
Falconérii Confessóris, e septem Fundatóribus
Ordinis Servórum beátæ Maríæ Vírginis;
qui, décimo supra centésimum vitæ suæ anno,
Christi Jesu et Angelórum præséntia recreátus,
beáto fine quiévit. Ipsíus tamen ac Sociórum
festum prídie Idus Februárii celebrátur.
In Florence, the birthday
of St. Alexis Falconieri, confessor, one of the seven founders of the
Order of the Servites of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the one
hundred and tenth year of his age, he ended his blessed career in the
consoling presence of Christ Jesus and the angels. His feast, with
that of his companions, is kept on the 12th of February.
One of the first Servants of Mary
or Servites. The son of a wealthy merchant in Florence, Italy, Alexis
and six companions joined the Confraternity of the Blessed Virgin
in Florence in 1225.
Gathered together on the Feast of the Assumption in 1233,
the group experienced a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary which inspired
them to found a new religious community dedicated to prayer. They founded
such a group at La Camarzia, near Florence, moving eventually to Monte
Senario, on the outskirts of the city.
Another vision inspired Alexis and his companions to form
the Servites, or the Servants of Mary. All in the group were ordained
priests, except for Alexis, who believed he was not worthy of such an
honor. He helped build the Servite church at Cafaggio, and he managed
the day-to-day temporal affairs of the congregation. The Servites received
papal approval from Pope Benedict XI in 1304. Alexis was the only
founding member still alive. He died at Monte Senario on February 17,
1310, recorded as 110 years old. Alexis and his companions are called
the Seven Holy Founders. They were canonized by Pope Leo XIII in 1888.
1310 7 Gründer,
Alexius Falconieri Gründer des Servitenordens 1888 wurden die
sieben Servitengründer, Bonfilius, Bonajuncta, Manettus, Amideus,
Hugo, Sosteneus und Alexius, "als ob sie eine Person wären", von
Leo XIII. heiliggesprochen
Katholische Kirche: 17. Februar
Sieben befreundete Kaufleute in Florenz, die einer marianischen
Bruderschaft angehörten, beschlossen 1233 ein gemeinsames Leben
im Dienst der Armen und Kranken zu führen. Sie versorgten ihre Familien,
verschenkten ihre Habe und lebten in einem einfachen Haus am Rande
der Stadt Florenz. Sie wurden allgemein Diener Mariens - Servi Mariae
- genannt.
1241 gründeten die sieben ein Kloster auf dem Monte
Senario nahe Florenz. Sie beschlossen, hier nach der Regel Augustins
zu leben und ein schwarzes Ordensgewand zu tragen. Der Orden fand großen
Zulauf. 1299 gab es in Deutschland bereits vier Klöster. 1304 wurde
der Orden von Papst Benedikt XI. bestätigt. Im Bestätigungsschreiben
heißt es: "Ihr pflegt eine besondere Hingabe an die glorreiche
und selige Jungfrau Maria; von ihr nahmt ihr euren Namen, indem ihr euch
demütig ihre Diener nanntet."
Bei der Anerkennung des Ordens lebte nur noch einer der sieben
Gründer, Alexius Falconieri, der am 17. Februar 1310 im Alter
von 110 Jahren starb. 1888 wurden die sieben Servitengründer,
Bonfilius, Bonajuncta, Manettus, Amideus, Hugo, Sosteneus und Alexius,
"als ob sie eine Person wären", von Leo XIII. heiliggesprochen.
Diese Heiligsprechung ist ein - bisher - einmaliger Vorgang in der Kirchengeschichte.
|
1309 Bl. Angela of Foligno Franciscan
tertiary and mystic Many miracles.
Born in
Foligno, Italy, in 1248, Angela married and had several
children. Wealthy, she took part in the social events
of the city until 1285, when she had a vision. Following that
mystical experience, Angela became a member of the Franciscan
Third Order. When her husband died, she gave away her possessions
and started a community of tertiaries devoted to the care of
the needy. Her visions, which were recorded by her confessor,
demonstrated a mature mystical union with Christ and the gift of revelation.
She is sometimes called "the Mistress of Theologians."
Her tomb is in the church of St.
Francis in Foligno. Many miracles have been recorded there.
|
1312 BD CHRISTINA. OF STOMMELN,
VIRGIN; dying at the age of seventy, in 1312, with
a great reputation of sanctity. Thirty years after her
relics were translated to Niedeggen in the Eifel,
and again in 1569 to Jülich, where they still repose and
receive the veneration of the people. Nor does anything which has
been said above reflect on the credit of Bd Christina or suggest
that that veneration is misplaced; for heroic virtue, which is
the condition of holiness, is entirely independent of abnormal
physical phenomena or extraordinary divine favours, and the
first of these are not inconsistent with a life far from holy.
The Holy See has recognized that the evidence touching the personal
virtue of Bd Christina justifies the continuation of her age-long
local cultus.
DURING her life and from the
time of her death until to-day Christina Bruso was
venerated as a saint in her native village of Stommeln,
near Cologne, and at Jülich, where she was eventually
buried; and on account of this uninterrupted local veneration
Pope Pius X confirmed the cultus in
1908, just on 600 years after her death. Were it not for the large
amount of contemporary, eyewitnesses’, and personal testimony
to the phenomena which make her one of the most extraordinary
cases in all hagiology, she would have to be dismissed as a devout
but mentally diseased young woman who suffered from hallucinations
on a very large scale indeed or whose biographers were either hopelessly
deceived or unscrupulous liars.
Even as
it is, some of the Catholic scholars who have studied
the documents are of the opinion that many statements of
experiences were made by her when she was not mistress of
herself; and, as one of them has put it, “it is easier to believe
that the whole
story was a romance concocted, letters and all, by Peter of Dacia
and that no such person as Christina ever existed” than to believe
the extravagances recorded in her letters written by the hand of
the village schoolmaster.
Christina’s father
was a prosperous peasant, and the girl had some
soft of schooling, for she learned to read the
psalter, but not to write. In the short account of her
early life that she dictated to her parish priest, John, she says
that she affianced herself to our Lord when He appeared to
her in vision at the age of ten. When she was thirteen she ran
away from home and became a beguine at
Cologne. She lived with such austerity and extravagance of devotion
that the beguines thought her mad,
and already she thought herself singled out for attention by supernatural
powers, both divine and diabolical: Satan, for example, disguised
as St Bartholomew, tempted her to suicide. After some time she left
the beguinage, where she had been treated with
scant sympathy as a hysterical subject, and returned home. When she
was twenty-five Christina made the acquaintance of Father Peter of
Dacia (i.e. Scandinavia and Denmark), a pious
and capable young Dominican, and at their first meeting she was,
in the presence of others as well, thrown about the room and pierced
with wounds in her feet by invisible agency. For the next two years
or so Father Peter kept a record of what he saw in connection with
Christina, between whom and the Swedish friar there was a warm personal
friendship. The numerous remarkable happenings, which he narrates,
include long ecstasies and temporary stigmata that bled copiously
during Holy Week. On one occasion Christina was found up to her neck
in mud in a pit without knowing how she got there, and on another Satan
tormented her by fixing to her body hot stones, which the bystanders
could see and touch. But the manifestation of which Father Peter gives
the most careful and detailed account was of so repulsive a nature that
no particulars of it can be given here. It is sufficient to say that
on numerous occasions for weeks on end Christina and those who visited
her, Father Peter himself and other Dominicans, other clergy, and lay
people of both sexes, were covered with showers of filth that came apparently
from nowhere.
After Father Peter left Cologne
in 1269 Christina corresponded with him through
the parish priest, John, who sometimes added to her dictation
comments of his own. From these letters it appears that
the visitations, which Christina attributes to the malice
of the Evil One, continued unabated, though in ever-varying
forms. These violent happenings were not confined to Christina
herself. Her father was hit with stones on the head and arms,
her friend the Benedictine prior of Brauweiler was badly bitten by
invisible teeth, and a skull, after moving about in the air, tied
itself about the neck of the Brusos’ servant.
A Dominican wrote
to Father Peter from Cologne that’ “[The devil]
gnaws her [Christina’s] flesh like a dog, and bites
out great pieces; he burns her clothes next her skin while
she is wearing them, and shows himself to her in horrible forms.”
Thrice, says John the Priest, she was dragged from her bed, once
on to the roof of her house and twice to a tree in the garden to
which she was left bound. John himself untied her, in the presence
of her mother and others. In 1277 John the Priest died and Master
John, a young schoolmaster at Stommeln, took his place as amanuensis.
He filled this office over a period of eight years, and the contents
of the letters exceed anything previously reported by or of Christina.
“The accounts of Christina’s experiences between 1279 and 1287”,
says the writer quoted at the beginning of this article, “which
reached her Dominican friend through the intermediary of Magister
Johannes are so preposterous that, if they really emanated from herself,
one can only regard them as the
hallucinations of a brain which, for the time being at least,
was completely unhinged.” All the paraphernalia used by the medieval
artist in depicting Hell and its denizens is brought into play,
and Christina over and over again is physically tormented in corresponding
ways. Sometimes the powers of Heaven come to her aid, our Lord or
His Mother or angels, and restore her from the harms that she has
suffered. For what is related in these letters there is no shred
of corroborative evidence, and from two very significant passages therein
it is argued that their incredible extravagances were communicated
by Christina (if Master John did not deliberately invent, which in
all the circumstances he seems unlikely to have done) when in trance
or other abnormal states, and were filled out and rounded off by the
schoolmaster.
Father Peter of Dacia died about 1288 and Christina’s known history
ends at that time, but she lived for another twenty-four
years, dying at the age of seventy, in 1312, with a great reputation of sanctity.
Thirty years after her relics were translated to Niedeggen in the Eifel, and again in 1569 to Jülich,
where they still repose and receive the veneration of the
people. Nor does anything which has been said above reflect
on the credit of Bd Christina or suggest that that veneration is
misplaced; for heroic virtue, which is the condition of holiness,
is entirely independent of abnormal physical phenomena or extraordinary
divine favours, and the first of these are not inconsistent with
a life far from holy. The Holy See has recognized that the evidence
touching the personal virtue of Bd Christina justifies the continuation
of her age-long local cultus.
The material
collected by Peter of Dacia for his projected
book on “The Virtues of the Bride of Christ Christina”
were printed for the first time in the Acta
Sanctorum, June, vol. iv; but Father Papebroch
had to use a copy which was in places becoming illegible. A better
text, which, however, does not include all the documents, is provided
in the Scriptores latini medii aevi Suecani,
vol. i, Pt 2, pp.
1-257, by J. Paulson. See also Th. Wollersheim,
Das Leben der ekstatischen und stigmatisirten
Jungfrau Christina von Stommeln (1859); E. Renan, Nouvelles etudes d’histoire religieuse (Eng.
trans.), pp. 353—396; H. Thurston in The Month,
October and November, 1928, pp. 289—301
and 425—437; Douleur et stigmatisation (1936),
pp. 44-49, in the series “Études Carmélitaines”;
and Analecta Bollandiana, vol. lvii (1939), pp. 187—189.
|
1313 St. Notburga Patroness of poor peasants
servants in Tyrol; famous for her miracles and concern for the poor.
1313 ST NOTBURGA, VIRGIN
SOME fourteen years before the death of St Zita at Lucca there was born
at Rattenberg in Tirol a girl who was to become as well known as a
patron of domestic servants in her own neighbourhood as is St Zita in a
more extended area. This girl, Notburga by name, was the daughter of a peasant,
and at the age of eighteen entered the service of Count Henry of Rattenberg
and was employed in the kitchen. There was a good deal of food left over
from the tables of this feudal establishment, and Notburga used to take it
to one of the side doors of the castle and give it away to the poor people
who daily waited there. Not content with this, she would even stint her own
meals to increase the portion of the poor. When Count Henry’s mother died,
his wife, the Countess Ottilia, looked less favourably on the charity of
the kitchen-maid, and gave orders that the broken food was to go into the
pigbuckets as heretofore, and be fed to the swine. For a time Notburga did
as she was told, and gave to the poor only what she could save from her own
food and drink, but she soon began secretly to continue her old practice,
till one day her mistress caught her at it and she was dismissed. The Countess
Ottilia died shortly after, and the victims of her parsimony, with that whimsical
realism with which the poor watch the antics of the rich, said that her ghost
haunted the pigsties of Rattenberg castle, and that the count had had to
have the place exorcized.
Notburga now hired herself
to a farmer at Eben, and a legendary incident during her time with him is
familiar to all good Tirolese children. One Saturday afternoon in the
harvest-time Notburga was reaping, when the church bell rang for Vespers,
indicating that Sunday was begun. Notburga stopped work and was preparing
to go to church, when her employer came along and told her to go on working.
She refused: Sunday begins with Saturday Vespers, and good Christians do
not reap on Sundays in fine weather. The farmer argued; the weather might
change. “Very well”, replied St Notburga, “let this decide it.” Picking up
the sickle, she threw it into the air—and there it remained suspended, looking
like the first quarter of the harvest moon against the evening sky.
Count Henry in the meantime
had been suffering considerably in the strife between the count of Tirol
and the duke of Bavaria, and St Notburga’s biographer, who wrote in the seventeenth
century and had a lively and credulous imagination, says that Henry attributed
all his misfortunes to the meanness of his late wife and the consequent
dismissal of Notburga. So, when he married a second time and somebody was
required to manage the household, she was installed as housekeeper and lived
a happy and holy life at Rattenberg for the rest of her days.
Before she died she particularly recommended
her beloved poor to her master, and asked him to lay her body on a farm-wagon
and bury it wherever the oxen should finally rest. This was done, and after
a journey of which the usual miraculous accompaniments are recorded, the
oxen brought the burden to a halt before the door of the church of St Rupert
at Eben. Here accordingly St Notburga was buried. In 1862. Pope Pius IX confirmed her local cultus as
patroness of poor peasants and hired servants.
Although
we are dependent almost entirely upon the life originally published in German
in 1646 by H. Guarinoni, still there seem, as we learn from Rader’s Bavaria Sancta and other sources, to have been materials of
earlier date. In the Acta Sanctorum, September, vol. iv,
Guarinoni’a narrative is translated into Latin, and accompanied with full
prolegomena and a number of curious engravings of the cultus
of St Notburga.
Born in Rattenberg, in the Tyrol, daughter of peasants. At
eighteen she became a servant in the household of Count Henry of Rattenberg
When Notburga repeatedly gave food to the poor, she was dismissed by Count
Henry’s wife, Ottilia, and took up a position as a servant to a humble farmer.
Meanwhile, Henry suffering a run of misfortune and setbacks, wasted no time
restoring Notburga to her post after his wife died. Notburga remained his
housekeeper for the rest of her life, and was famous for her miracles and
concern for the poor.
St. Notburga
Patroness of servants and peasants, b. c. 1265 at Rattenberg on the Inn;
d. c. 16 September, 1313. She was cook in the family of Count Henry of Rothenburg,
and used to give food to the poor. But Ottilia, her mistress, ordered her
to feed the swine with whatever food was left. She, therefore, saved some
of her own food, especially on Fridays, and brought it to the poor. One
day, according to legend, her master met her, and commanded her to show
him what she was carrying. She obeyed, but instead of the food he saw only
shavings, and the wine he found to be vinegar. Hereupon Ottilia dismissed
her, but soon fell dangerously ill, and Notburga remained to nurse her and
prepared her for death.
Notburga then entered the service of a peasant in the town of Eben, on
condition that she be permitted to go to church evenings before Sundays and
festivals. One evening her master urged her to continue working in the field.
Throwing her sickle into the air she said: "Let my sickle be judge between
me and you," and the sickle remained suspended in the air. Meantime Count
Henry of Rothenburg was visited with great reverses which he ascribed to the
dismissal of Notburga. He engaged her again and thenceforth all went well
in his household. Shortly before her death she told her master to place her
corpse on a wagon drawn by two oxen, and to bury her wherever the oxen would
stand still. The oxen drew the wagon to the chapel of St. Rupert near Eben,
where she was buried. Her ancient cult was ratified on 27 March, 1862, and
her feast is celebrated on 14 September. She is generally represented with
an ear of corn, or flowers and a sickle in her hand; sometimes with a sickle
suspended in the air.
1313 Notburga of Tyrol
peasant kitchen servant constantly caring for poor several miracles after
death buried at Saint Rupert's church - Eben V (AC)
Born Rattenburg; Tyrol, Germany, 1265; cultus confirmed in 1862.
Some saints are high-born nobles, prelates of the Church, or exceptional
scholars; Saint Notburga was none of these. This peasant fulfilled God's
plan for her life as a kitchen servant in the household of Count Henry of
Rattenburg. Each day she would give the abundant food left from her master's
table to the poor who waited at the side door of the castle. Not content
with this, she would even stint her own meals to increase the portion available
for the poor.
All was well as long as the count's mother was alive. When his wife, Countess
Ottila became mistress of the household, she disapproved of this charity.
Ottila gave orders that the broken food was to go into the buckets to feed
the pigs. For a time Notburga followed the orders of her mistress and gave
to the poor only what she could save from her own food and drink. But soon
she again began her old practice secretly until her mistress caught her
and dismissed Notburga. The saint then worked for a time for a farmer at
Eben, and continued her benefactions.
Notburga's biographer tells us that soon thereafter the count was caught
up in the strife between the count of Tyrol and the duke of Bavaria, and
attributed his troubles to the meanness of Ottila, who had died shortly after
firing Notburga. Henry remarried and Notburga was again hired, this time
as housekeeper. She maintained that position until her death, at which point
she recommended her beloved poor to her master. She asked Count Henry to
lay her body on a farm-wagon and bury her wherever the oxen should finally
rest. When this was accomplished, after several miracles en route, the oxen
stopped at the doors of Saint Rupert's church at Eben, where she was buried.
By the time her biography was written in 1646, Notburga's story was considerably
embellished. There is a charming legend that does not make sense in context
that a sickle suspended itself in the air in confirmation of her refusal
to reap corn on a Sunday. In art, her emblem is a sickle. Notburga is the
patron of hired hands in the Tyrol and Bavaria (Attwater, Benedictines, Walsh)
|
1314 Blessed Emily
of Vercelli; Bicchieri frequent ecstasies visions miracles
Born at
Vercelli in 1238, and having lost her mother at an
early age, put herself under the special protection of the
all-holy Mother of God. She refused her father's plans for her
to marry and convinced him to build a convent, the first of Dominican
regular tertiaries, of which she became abbess when twenty. Having
been elected prioress against her will, Blessed Emily governed
with tact and ability, and was careful to tell no one to do what
she would not do herself. She was noted for her frequent communions
(uncommon in those days), her ecstasies and visions, and the miracles
attributed to her. She died on her birthday, May 3, at the age of
seventy-six, and her cult was approved in 1769
|
1315 Blessed Ubald
Adimari converted by Saint Philip Benizi, who admitted him to the Servite
institute model to penitent souls OSM (AC)
1315 BD UBALD OF FLORENCE He had the gift of miracles
ONE of the most prominent leaders of the Ghibelline party in
Florence in the year 1276 was the young Ubald Adimari. Well favoured
by nature and fortune and belonging to a distinguished family, he had
up to the age of thirty led a turbulent life with dissipated companions.
One day, however, as he was listening to the preaching of St Philip Benizi,
he was struck to the heart with shame for the past, and, with one of those
sudden impulses to which generous souls are prone, he then and there vowed
that he would never again bear arms. Attaching himself to St Philip, who
admitted him into the Servite Order, he undertook severe penances to atone
for his sins and to tame his proud and haughty spirit.
In after years those about him noted that he had grown so gentle
that when he appeared in the garden of the monastery of Monte Senario
the birds would perch upon his head and hands and shoulders. He had the
gift of miracles, and it is recorded that once, when it was his turn to
fetch water from the spring to serve to the brethren in the refectory and
accidentally broke the pitcher, he filled his scapular with water and
carried it safely home. There was enough, we are told, to satisfy the
thirst of all.
St Philip dearly loved his devoted disciple. Not only did he
make him for several years the companion of his journeys, but he chose
him for his confessor. As Philip lay sick at Todi, Ubald was warned by
a supernatural premonition that his master was dying and hastened to
his bedside. When the saint asked for his “book”, eager hands offered
the Bible, the Breviary and the rosary; but Ubald knew better, and gave
him the book from which he had learnt all his wisdom—the crucifix and on
that “book” he fixed his failing eyes until they finally closed in death.
Ubald survived him for thirty years at Monte Senario. His cultus was confirmed
in 1821.
See Gianni-Garbi,
Annales Ordinis Servorum B.V.M., vol. i, pp.
228—229 Spörr, Lebensbilder aus dem Servitenorden,
pp. 437 seq. Most of the lives of St Philip
Benizi (e.g. that of P. Soulier) also contain some
mention of Bd Ubald.
Born in Florence, Italy, in 1246; cultus confirmed
in 1821. Born into Ghebelline nobility, Ubald was notorious for his
wild and dissolute life. In 1276, he was converted by Saint Philip Benizi,
who admitted him to the Servite institute. Ubald spent the rest of his
life on Mount Senario, a model to penitent souls (Benedictines).
|
1315
Bd Bonaventure Buonaccorsi; a leader of the Ghibellines and notorious
as a desperate character. This Bonaventure was so moved
by St Philip’s exhortations to peace and concord that he went
to him and accused himself of being a prominent fomenter of
disorder and a cause of much misery and injustice. So penitent
was he that he asked to be admitted among the Servite friars;
even in his lifetime he was
known as il Beato, and miracles were reported both before
and after his death
In the year 1276 St Philip Benizi came to Pistoia to preside
at a general chapter of the Servite Order, and took the opportunity
to preach to the people of the place, which was torn by factions.
Among his hearers was a man, some thirty-six years old, belonging
to the noble Buonaccorsi family, who was a leader of the Ghibellines
and notorious as a desperate character. This Bonaventure was
so moved by St Philip’s exhortations to peace and concord that
he went to him and accused himself of being a prominent fomenter
of disorder and a cause of much misery and injustice. So penitent
was he that he asked to be admitted among the Servite friars.
St Philip
was naturally a little doubtful about so sudden and complete
a change, and tested the aspirant by imposing a public penance:
Bonaventure had openly to make reparation for his misdeeds
and personally ask the pardon of all whom he had wronged
or caused to oppose him. This he did with such thoroughness
and goodwill that St Philip took him from Pistoia to Monte
Senario to make his novitiate at the headquarters of the order.
Bonaventure persevered in his good resolutions, and after
his profession was joined to St Philip as socius and admitted
to the priesthood. For the next few years he was constantly
with the prior general, who with the papal legate Cardinal
Latino was trying to bring peace to Bologna, Florence and other
distracted cities. The spectacle of the reformed Ghibelline going about
in the habit of a mendicant friar and preaching brotherly love made
a deep impression.
In 1282 Bd
Bonaventure was made prior at Orvieto, but on the
death of St Philip was called to the side of his successor,
Father Lottaringo, and was eventually made preacher apostolic,
with a commission to preach missions throughout Italy, which
he did with great effect. In 1303 he was made prior at Montepulciano for the second
time, and there assisted St Agnes in the foundation of her
community of Dominican nuns, whose director he was. From thence
he was moved to his native Pistoia, where civil war had again
broken out and the Florentines threatened the enfeebled city.
By the diffusion of confraternities and of the Servite third order,
called Mantellate, Bd Bartholomew endeavoured to bring back the
people to a sense of their responsibilities as Christians, and was
tireless in his preaching on behalf of peace and civic unity. He
died at Orvieto on December 14,
1315, and was buried in the Servite church in the chapel
of our Lady of Sorrows as a testimony of the respect in which his
brethren held him. This was also testified by the fact that even in
his lifetime he was known as il Beato, and
miracles were reported both before and after his death. The
cultus of Bd Bonaventure Buonaccorsi
was confirmed in 1822.
There seems to be no mention
of any separate medieval life of Bd Bonaventure, but Poccianti
in his Chronicon (1567)
provides the outlines of a biography, which is developed
by A. Giani, Annales Ordinis Servorum,
vol. i, pp. 118 seq. and passim. See also Sporr, Lebensbilder
aus dem Servitenorden (1892), p. 621. Further
reference should be made to the early volumes of the
Monumenta Ordinis Servorum B.M. V., which
began to be published in 1892.
|
1315 St. Andrew
Dotti mystic granted visions Servite missionary.
1315 Bd Andrew of Borgo
San Sepolcro
Andrew Dotti was born at Borgo
San Sepolcro in Tuscany about the year 1250. His
family was distinguished (Andrew's brother was a captain
in the bodyguard of King Philip the Fair), and the young
man was brought up accordingly, with no thought of the religious
life. When he was seventeen he became a secular tertiary
of the Servites, and when, a few years afterwards, a general
chapter of that order was held at Borgo San Sepolcro, Andrew naturally
went to hear the prior genetal, St Philip Benizi, preach. His text
was, "Every one of you that doth not renounce all that he possesseth
cannot be my disciple", and his eloquence and fire touched Andrew's
heart; he offered himself to St Philip, was accepted, and became
a Servite friar. After he was ordained he was attached to a monastery
governed by St Gerard Sostegni, one of seven founders of the order,
and from thence he preached with success throughout the surrounding
country and accompanied St Philip Benizi on several of his missionary
journeys. Bd Andrew prepared a number of hermits who were living
a rather go-as-you-please life at Vallucola to affiliate themselves
to the Servites and submit to their discipline, and over these he was
appointed superior, until his services were again required for preaching
and as prior of various houses. In 1310 he was present at the death
of St Alexis Falconieri, the principal founder of the Servites,
at Monte Senario, and so great was the impression made on him that he
asked permission to retire to a hermitage and prepare for his own
end, though he was barely sixty.
Bd Andrew lived with great penance and was the recipient
of many visions, including a forewarning of his own death;
when the day came he was apparently in good health, and
he went out to a certain rock where he was wont to give conferences
to his brethren. When they assembled there they found
their beloved father kneeling motionless on the rock apparently
in ecstasy; but he was dead. He was buried in
the church at Borgo San Sepolcro, where the popular veneration
for his holiness was confirmed by miracles, and in 1806 Pope Pius
VII approved the ancient cultus.
A full account is given in A. Giani,
Annales Ordinis Servorum B.V.M.,
vol. i, especially pp. 230-231; see also DHG., vol. ii, c. 1663; and P.
Battini, Vita del b. Andrea Dotti
(1808).
Companion
of St. Philip Benizi He was born in San Sepolcro,
Tuscany, Italy,
to a noble family, becoming a Servite religious at the age
of seventeen and later one of the Seven Founders of the
congregation of St. Gerard Sostengi Monastery. He also accompanied
St. Philip Benizi on his monastery journeys. Andrew served as
a superior of several Servite monasteries but retired in 1310
to a hermitage at Montevecchio. He was a mystic and was granted
visions .
|
1315 Bd Henry
of Treviso; 276 miracles, wrought by his relics, recorded
within days of death by notaries appointed by the magistrates:
they occupy thirty-two closely printed columns of the Acta Sanctorum
Henry
of Treviso, or San Rigo as he is often called in Italy, was
born at Bolzano in the Trentino. His parents were very poor,
and he never learnt to read or write. He went as a young man
to Treviso, where he supported himself as a day labourer, secretly
giving away to the poor whatever he could save from his scanty
wages. Throughout his whole life his one object was the service
of God. He heard Mass daily, frequently making his communion, and
every day he went to confession—not from scrupulosity, but to preserve
the utmost purity of conscience. All the time that was not employed
in labour and in necessary duties he spent in devotion, either at
church or in private; the penitential instruments he used for the
discipline of his body were preserved after his death in the cathedral.
Men marvelled at his extraordinary equanimity, which nothing could
ever ruffle. Foolish people and children sometimes mocked or molested
the shabby, thick-set little man, with his sunken eyes, long nose,
and crooked mouth, but he never resented their treatment or replied
to it, except to pray for them.
When
he could no longer work, a citizen called James Castagnolis
gave him a room in his house and, when necessary, food. Usually,
however, Bd Henry subsisted on the alms of the charitable,
which he shared with beggars, never holding anything over from
one day to the next. Even extreme bodily weakness in advancing
age could not keep him from God’s house and from visiting all
the churches within walking distance of Treviso. He died on June
10, 1315. His little room was immediately thronged with visitors
eager to venerate him and to secure some fragment of his possessions,
which consisted of a hair-shirt, a wooden log which had been his
pillow, and some cords and straw that had served as his bed. Extraordinary
scenes were witnessed after his body had been removed to the cathedral.
The people broke into the basilica at night, and the bishop and
the podestà, roused from their
sleep, were obliged to go and protect the body by putting a wooden
palisade round it. No fewer than 276 miracles, said to have been
wrought by his relics, were recorded within a few days of Bd Henry’s
death by the notaries appointed by the magistrates: they occupy thirty-two
closely printed columns of the Acta Sanctorum.
The cultus of Bd Henry was
confirmed by Pope Benedict XIV.
A life of Bd
Henry, by his contemporary Bishop Pierdomenico de Baone, has been printed
by the Bollandists, June, vol. ii. See also R. degli Azzoni
Avogaro, Memorie del Beato Enrico
(2 vols., 1760); A. Tschöll (1887); Austria Sancta, Die Heiligen und Seligen Tirols,
vol. ii (1910), pp. 41 seq.
; and Il B. Enrico .
. . (Treviso, 1915).
|
1317 St. Agnes of Montepulciano
Nun foundress in Tuscany noted for her visions
(of Christ the Blessed Virgin and angels) levitations
performed miracles for the faithful (1435 - incorrupt)
In
Monte Politiáno, in Túscia, sanctæ
Agnétis Vírginis, ex Ordine sancti
Domínici, miráculis claræ. At Monte
Pulciano, St. Agnes, a virgin of the Order of St. Dominic,
celebrated for her miracles.
1317 St. Agnes
of Montepulciano Nun foundress in Tuscany noted for her visions
(of Christ the Blessed Virgin and angels) levitations performed
miracles for the faithful (1435 - incorrupt)
In Monte Politiáno,
in Túscia, sanctæ Agnétis Vírginis, ex
Ordine sancti Domínici, miráculis claræ.
At Monte Pulciano, St. Agnes, a virgin of the Order of St.
Dominic, celebrated for her miracles.
1317 ST AGNES
OF MONTEPULCIANO, VIRGIN
IN the little Tuscan village of Gracchiano-Vecchio,
some three miles from Montepulciano, there was born
about the year 1268 to a well-to-do couple a little girl
who was destined to become one of the great women saints of
the Order of Preachers. When she was nine years old she induced
her parents to place her in a convent at Montepulciano, occupied
by a community of austere nuns who were popularly nicknamed Sacchine,
from the coarse material of their habits. Her religious formation
was entrusted to an experienced old sister called Margaret, and
she soon edified the whole house by her exceptional progress.
Moreover she was wise beyond her years and was made housekeeper
when she was only fourteen.
One
day there arrived at the convent a request from Procena
that a nun might be sent to take charge of a new convent in
their town. Sister Margaret, who was selected for the purpose,
stipulated that she should have Agnes as her assistant, and
as soon as it became known that Agnes was at Procena, a number
of girls offered themselves to the new foundation, and before
long she was elected abbess. A special dispensation had to be
obtained from Pope Nicholas IV to authorize the appointment of a
girl of fifteen to such a post. From that moment Agnes redoubled her
austerities. For fifteen years she lived on bread and water, sleeping
on the ground with a stone for a pillow. It was only when she was
overtaken by a very severe illness which she bore, with exemplary patience
that she consented to mitigate her penances.
Numerous
were the extraordinary graces conferred upon Mother
Agnes. Once, in a vision, she was allowed to hold the Infant
Saviour in her arms, on several occasions it was reported
she received holy communion from an angel, and her nuns declared
that they had many times seen her in ecstasy uplifted from the
ground. They also bore testimony to the miracles she had wrought,
notably the supernatural provision of bread and oil for the convent
when food ran short. One of the most curious manifestations recorded
of her was that on certain occasions after her raptures her cloak
and the place where she was kneeling were covered with white “manna”.
She looked, we are told, as if she had been out of doors in a heavy
snow-storm.
In the meantime
the inhabitants of Montepulciano were becoming anxious
to bring back to their town a fellow citizen whose fame had
by now become widespread. It was ascertained that Agnes was favourably
disposed towards a proposal to build a convent for her; and
as she had by this time realized the lack of permanence inherent
in communities like her own attached to no great order though practising
the Rule of St Augustine, it was decided at her suggestion that
the new convent should be placed wider Dominican patronage. The
building was erected on the site previously occupied by several
houses of ill fame which had been a disgrace to the town, and as soon
as it was completed Agnes bade farewell to Procena.
Upon
her arrival at Montepulciano Agnes was installed as prioress,
a post she continued to fill until her death. Several remarkable
prophecies and cures attributed to the saint belong to this
period of her life, and the priory at Montepulciano flourished
greatly under her rule. A painful illness afflicted her later
days, but she never allowed it to interfere with her usual occupations.
It had been preceded by a vision in which an angel had led her
under an olive tree and had offered her a cup, saying, “Drink this
chalice, spouse of Christ: the Lord Jesus drank it for you”.
In compliance with the entreaties of her anxious daughters she
resorted to some medicinal springs in the neighbourhood—the
convent was not enclosed—but she derived no benefit from them
and returned to Montepulciano to die. To the weeping nuns who
surrounded her death-bed she said with a sweet smile, “If you
loved me, you would be glad because I am about to enter the glory
of my Spouse. Do not grieve over much at my departure: I shall
not lose sight of you. You will find that I have not abandoned you
and you will possess me for ever.” She had reached the age of forty-nine.
Amongst the countless
pilgrims who visited the tomb of St Agnes may be mentioned
the Emperor Charles IV and St Catherine of Siena, who held
her in great veneration. When St Catherine visited the shrine
it is recorded that as she stooped to kiss the foot of the
incorrupt body, the foot lifted itself to meet her lips:
the incident has been made famous by several painters.
St Agnes was canonized in 1726.
Owing to the
comparatively late date at which St Agnes was canonized,
the main documents of the process are accessible in
printed form. The principal item is a biography by Bd Raymund
of Capua, who some fifty years after her death was confessor
to the convent. This is also printed in the Acta
Sanctorum, April, vol. ii. There are some lives,
mostly Italian, of later date, e.g. that
by G. Bartoli, Istoria di S. Agnese di Montepulciano
(1779), and one in German by A. Walz (1922). See also
Künstle, Ikonographie, vol.
ii, pp. 42—43 and Procter, Lives of Dominican
Saints, pp. 100—103.
She was born circa
1268 and at the age of nine entered the monastery of
Montepulciano, near her home in Gracchiano-Vecchio. Four years
later she was commissioned by Pope Nicholas IV to assist in
the foundation of a new convent in Procena. At fifteen she became
the head of the nuns there. About 1300, the people of Montepulciano
built a new convent in order to lure Agnes back to them. She established
a convent under the Dominican rule and governed there until her
death in 1317.
Agnes was
noted for her visions. She held the infant Christ
in her arms and received Holy Communion from an angel. She
experienced levitations and she performed miracles for the
faithful of the region. She is still revered in Tuscany.
Agnes of Montepulciano, OP V
(RM) Born in Gracchiano-Vecchio, Tuscany, Italy, in 1268; died at Montepulciano,
Tuscany, on April 20, 1317; canonized by Benedict
XIII in 1726.
Agnes was
not a child martyr like her Roman patroness but she
exhibited the same simplicity, and some of her best-known
legends concern her childhood. Her birth into the wealthy
de Segni family was announced by great lights surrounding
the house where she was born. From her infancy she was especially
marked for dedication to God: she would spend hours reciting Pater
Nosters and Ave Marias on her knees in the corner of some room.
By the time Agnes was six, she was already urging her parents to let
her enter the convent. When they assured her that she was much too
young, she begged them to move to nearby Montepulciano, so she could
make frequent visits to the convent.
Because of the local political
instability, her father was unwilling to move
from his safe haven but did allow his little girl to
visit with the sisters occasionally.
On one of
these visits an event occurred that all the chroniclers
record as being prophetic. Little Agnes was traveling
in Montepulciano with her mother and the women of the household,
and, as they passed a hill on which stood a bordello, a flock
of crows swooped down and attacked the girl. Screaming and plunging,
they managed to scratch and frighten her badly before the women
drove them away. Upset by the incident, but devoutly sure of themselves,
the women said that the birds must have been devils, and that they
resented the purity and goodness of little Agnes, who would one day
drive them from that hilltop.
Agnes did, in fact, build a convent
there in later years.
When she was nine, Agnes
insisted that the time had come to enter the convent del
Sacco. She was allowed to go to a group of Franciscans in Montepulciano,
whose dress was the ultimate in primitive simplicity: they were
known, from the cut of the garment, as the Sacchine or 'sisters
of the sack.' The high-born daughter of the Segni was not at
all appalled at the crude simplicity with which they followed their
Father Francis; she rejoiced in it. Her religious formation was entrusted
to an experienced older sister named Margaret, and Agnes soon
edified the whole house by her exceptional progress. For five
years she enjoyed the only complete peace she would ever have;
she was appointed bursar at the age of 14, and she never again
was without some responsibility to others.
During this
time Agnes reached a high degree of contemplative
prayer and was favored with many visions. One of the loveliest
is the one for which her legend is best known: the occasion
of a visit from the Blessed Virgin. Our Lady came with the
Holy Infant in her arms, and allowed Agnes to hold Him and caress
Him. Unwilling to let Him go, Agnes hung on when Our Lady reached
to take Him back. When she awakened from the ecstasy, Our Lady
and her Holy Child were gone, but Agnes was still clutching tightly
the little gold cross He had worn on a chain about His neck. She
kept it as a precious treasure.
Another
time, Our Lady gave her three small stones and told
her that she should use them to build a convent some day.
Agnes was not at the moment even thinking about going elsewhere,
and said so, but Our Lady told her to keep the stones--three,
in honor of the Blessed Trinity--and one day she would need
them.
Some time after this, a new Franciscan
convent opened in Procena, near Orvieto, and the sisters there asked the
ones of Montepulciano to send them a mother superior. Sister Margaret was
selected, but stipulated that Agnes must be allowed to come to help her in
the foundation of the new community. There Agnes served as housekeeper --
a highly responsible position for a 14-year-old! Soon many other girls joined
the convent at Procena simply became they knew that Agnes was there.
To the distress
of young Agnes, she was elected abbess. Since she
was only 15, a special dispensation was needed--and provided
by Pope Nicholas IV--to allow her to take the office. On the
day when she was consecrated abbess, great showers of tiny
white crosses fluttered down on the chapel and the people in
it. It seemed to show the favor of heaven on this somewhat extraordinary
situation.
For 20 years,
Agnes lived in Procena, happy in her retreat and
privileged to penetrate the secrets of God in her prayer.
She was a careful superior, as well as a mystic; several
times she worked miracles to increase the house food supply
when it was low. The nun's self-discipline was legendary.
She lived on bread and water for fifteen years. She slept
on the floor with a stone for a pillow. It is said that in
her visions angels gave her Holy Communion.
Once
her visions of Christ, the Blessed Virgin, and angels
had become known, the citizens of Montepulciano called
her back for a short stay. She went willingly enough, though
she hated leaving the peace of her cloister for the confusion
of travelling. She had just settled down, on her return,
with the hope that she had made her last move and could now
stay where she was, when obedience again called her back to Montepulciano--this
time to build a new convent. A revelation had told her that
she was to leave the Franciscans, among whom she had been very
happy, and that she and her future sisters should become Dominicans.
In 1306,
Agnes returned to Montepulciano to put the Lord's request
into action: she was to build a convent on the former site
of the brothels. All she had for the building of the convent
were the three little stones given her by the Blessed Virgin,
and Agnes--who had been bursar and knew something about money--realized
that she was going to have to rely heavily on the support
of heaven in her building project.
After a
long quarrel with the inhabitants of the hilltop she
wanted for her foundation, the land was finally secured,
and the Servite prior laid the first stone, leaving her to
worry about from where the rest of the stones would come. Agnes
saw the project to its completion. The church and convent of
Santa Maria Novella were ready for dedication in record time,
and a growing collection of aspirants pleaded for admittance
to the new convent.
Agnes had become convinced that
the community must be anchored in an established
Rule in order to attain permanence. She explained that
the rule was to be Dominican, not Franciscan. All the
necessary arrangements were made, she was established as prioress,
the Dominicans agreed to provide chaplains and direction,
and the new community settled down. They had barely established
the regular life when one of the walls of the new building collapsed.
It was discovered that the builders had cheated, and that the
whole convent was in danger of falling on top of them. Agnes met
the new problem with poise. She had many friends in Montepulciano
by this time, and they rallied to rebuild the house.
When the
convent was once again completed, and had become,
as hoped, a dynamo of prayer and penance, Agnes decided to
go to Rome on pilgrimage. It is interesting to note that Second
Order convents of the 14th century were so flexible in the matter
of enclosure. She made the trip to Rome and visited the shrines
of the martyrs. The pope was at Avignon, so she did not have the
happiness of talking to him. But she returned to Montepulciano full
of happiness for having seen the holy places of Rome.
At the age
of 49, Agnes's health began to fail rapidly. She was
taken for treatment to the baths at Chianciano--accompanied,
as it says in the rule, by 'two or three sisters'--but the
baths did her no good. She did perform a miracle while there,
restoring to life a child who had fallen into the baths and
drowned.
Agnes returned
to Montepulciano to die in the night. When she knew
she was dying after a long and painful illness, Agnes told
her grieving nuns that they should rejoice, for, she said, "You
will discover that I have not abandoned you. You will possess me
for ever." The children of the city wakened and cried out, "Holy
Sister Agnes is dead!" She was buried in Montepulciano, where her
tomb soon became a place of pilgrimage.
One
of the most famous pilgrims to visit her tomb was
Saint Catherine of Siena,
who went to venerate the saint and also, probably,
to visit her niece, Eugenia, who was a nun in the convent
there. As she bent over the body of Saint Agnes to kiss the
foot, she was amazed to see Agnes raise her foot so that Catherine
did not have to stoop so far!
In 1435,
her incorrupt body was translated to the Dominican
church at Orvieto, where it remains today. Clement VIII approved
her office for the use of the order of St. Dominic, and inserted
her name in the Roman Martyrology (Attwater, Benedictines, Bentley,
Dorcy, Encyclopedia, Farmer, Husenbeth, Walsh).
In art,
Saint Agnes is a Dominican abbess (white habit, black
mantle) with a lamb, lily, and book. She might also be
portrayed (1) gazing at the Cross, a lily at her feet, (2)
with the Virgin and Child appearing to her; (3) with the
sick healed at her tomb (Roeder); (4) with Saint Catherine
of Siena; or (5) as patroness of Montepulciano, of which she
holds a model in her hand. Tiepolo presents Agnes as one of the
saints surrounding the Blessed Virgin in the Jesuit church at
Venice, Italy (Farmer). She is venerated at Montepulciano (Roeder).
|
1319 Blessed Simon
Ballachi Dominican lay-brother at age 27
visitors came to him in the silence of the night: Saint
Catherine of Alexandria, to whom he had a special devotion,
Saint Dominic and Saint Peter Martyr, and sometimes the Blessed
Virgin herself. His little cell was radiant with heavenly lights,
and sometimes angelic voices could be heard within OP
(AC)
1319 BD SIMON OF RIMINI
SIMON BALLACHI at the age of
twenty-seven offered himself to God as a lay-brother in the Dominican friary
of Rimini, his native place. Not content with this humble position he still
further mortified himself by volunteering to do all the lowliest tasks,
and he disciplined his body with an iron chain, offering his pain for the
conversion of sinners. He is said to have suffered greatly from diabolical
visitations. Simon was principally employed in
the garden, but he was also entrusted with the cultivation
of young human plants, and would go through the streets with
a cross in his hand calling the children to catechism. When
he was fifty-seven he was stricken with blindness, and so lived
for twelve years, during the last few of which he had to keep to
his bed entirely. Bd Simon bore these afflictions with courage
and cheerfulness, and was rewarded with the gift of miracles, so that from the day of his death he was venerated as
a saint. This cultus was confirmed in 1821.
See the Acta Sanctorum, November, vol ii, where a brief account has
been compiled from the very slender materials available
and cf. Procter, Liver of Dominican Saints, pp.
306-309.
Born at Sant'Arcangelo near
Rimini, Italy, 1250; died November 3, 1319; declared
blessed in 1817 (cultus confirmed in 1821?).
The son of Count Ballachi,
nephew of two archbishops of Rimini, and brother
of a priest, Simon Ballachi became a Dominican lay-brother
at age 27. His family was none too happy about this decision
because he was supposed to administer the family property
and had been trained as a soldier. They couldn't understand
why he would abandon the many opportunities life had provided
for him. Not only was he throwing away a prestigious position
in society, he was not even becoming a priest, which would provide
him with a chance for ecclesiastical preferences.
Oblivious to the criticism
of his family, Simon readily undertook the life
of a lay brother. His principal work, to his great delight,
was tending the garden. Having been preoccupied with military
training, Simon may never have seen a garden prior to entering
the Dominicans. He probably had to learn all the details of
the art by trial and error.
But while he tended
the friary garden, he continued to plant prayers for
his soul. He was adept at seeing God in everything. It is
written that he meditated on every act, "so that, while his
hands cultivated the herbs and flowers of the earth, his heart
might be a paradise of sweet-smelling flowers in the sight
of God." He tried to find in everything he handled in the garden
some lesson it could teach him about the spiritual life. When
the weather was too bad for him to work outside, he swept and cleaned
the monastery. Wherever his work took him, he tried to do it
well and to efface himself completely, so that no one would even
notice that he was there.
Under the placid exterior of
a gardener, Simon concealed a spiritual life of
extraordinary austerity and prayer. He worked hard
during the day yet he never excused himself from rising
for the night office, nor from severe penance. For 20 years
he wore an iron chain around his waist. In Lent, he lived on bread
and water. He found extra time for prayer by foregoing sleep. Like
Saint Dominic, he scourged himself every night. Of course, all
this growth in holiness attracted the devil, who would attempt
to distract Simon.
Other visitors came
to him in the silence of the night: Saint Catherine
of Alexandria, to whom he had a special devotion, Saint Dominic
and Saint Peter Martyr, and sometimes the Blessed Virgin herself.
His little cell was radiant with heavenly lights, and sometimes
angelic voices could be heard within.
Simon was
blinded at age 57 and became helpless for the last
years of his life, yet he never despaired (Benedictines,
Dorcy).
|
1319 Blessed Justina
Bezzoli Diseases and sufferings of many kinds
were cured through the prayers of Bd Justina, and still
more wonderful miracles of healing were wrought after her
death
(also known as Blessed Francuccia)
Born at Arezzo, Italy; cultus confirmed in 1890.
At the age of 13, Francuccia entered the Benedictine monastery
of Saint Mark in her hometown and took the name Justina.
After a time she moved to All Saints Convent. For a time she
lived as a recluse at Civitella before returning to the community at
All Saints (Benedictines, Encyclopedia).
1319 BD JUSTINA OF
AREZZO, VIRGIN Diseases and sufferings of many kinds
were cured through the prayers of Bd Justina, and still more
wonderful miracles of healing were wrought after her death.
JUSTINA OF Arezzo,
whose name in the world appears to have been Francuccia
Bizzoli, was only thirteen years old when she entered the
Benedictine convent of St Mark in Arezzo. When the nuns overflowed
into the convent of All Saints she accompanied them and continued
to live there for many years, ever advancing in the paths of holiness.
Then she left the convent with the permission of her superiors
and made her way to a cell near Civitella, where she joined a holy
anchoress called Lucia. This cell was so narrow and low that they
could not both stand upright in it. When Lucia fell ill, Justina nursed
her day and night for over a year without giving up any of her devotions
and austerities. After Lucia’s death Justina remained all alone in
the cell, in spite of the wolves that howled around and leaped on to
the roof, until she developed a painful affection of the eyes which
ended in total blindness. She was then taken from the hermitage back
to Arezzo, where she and several other sisters lived in great self-abnegation
and from midnight to midday served God in unbroken prayer. Diseases
and sufferings of many kinds were cured through the prayers of Bd
Justina, and still more wonderful miracles of healing were wrought
after her death. She died in 1319 and her cultus was approved in 1890.
All that we know of Bd Justina
is contained in the short life printed in the Acta Sanctorum, March, vol. ii.
|
1320 Blessed
Margaret of Città di Castello born blind abandoned
then adopted very holy favored with heavenly visions many miracles
V (AC)
also known as Margaret
of Metola) Born in at Meldola (or Metola, diocese
of S. Angelo), Umbria, Italy, in 1287; cultus approved
in 1609.
Margaret was born blind into
a poor, mountain family, who were embittered by
her affliction. When she was five years old, they made
a pilgrimage to the tomb of a holy Franciscan at Castello
to pray for a cure. The miracle failing, they abandoned their
daughter in the church of Città-di-Castello and returned
to their home.
Margaret
was passed from family to family until she was adopted
by a kindly peasant woman named Grigia, who had a large family
of her own.
Margaret's natural sweetness
and goodness soon made themselves felt, and she
more than repaid the family for their kindness to her.
She was an influence for good in any group of children. She
stopped their quarrels, heard their catechism, told them stories,
taught them Psalms and prayers. Busy neighbors were soon borrowing
her to soothe a sick child or to establish peace in the house.
Her reputation
for holiness was so great that a community of sisters
in the town asked for her to become one of them. Margaret went
happily to join them, but, unfortunately, there was little
fervor in the house. The little girl who was so prayerful and
penitential was a reproach to their lax lives, so Margaret returned
to Grigia, who gladly welcomed her home.
Later, Margaret
was received as a Dominican Tertiary and clothed
with the religious habit. Grigia's home became the rendezvous
site of troubled souls seeking Margaret's prayers. She said
the Office of the Blessed Virgin and the entire Psalter by heart,
and her prayers had the effect of restoring peace of mind to
the troubled.
Denied earthly
sight, Margaret was favored with heavenly visions.
"Oh, if you only knew what I have in my heart!" she often said.
The mysteries of the rosary, particularly the joyful mysteries,
were so vivid to her that her whole person would light up
when she described the scene. She was often in ecstasy, and, despite
great joys and favors in prayer, she was often called upon to suffer
desolation and interior trials of frightening sorts. The devil tormented
her severely at times, but she triumphed over these sufferings.
A number
of miracles were performed by Blessed Margaret. On
one occasion, while she was praying in an upper room, Grigia's
house caught fire, and she called to Margaret to come down.
The blessed, however, called to her to throw her cloak on
the flames. This she did, and the blaze died out. At another
time, she cured a sister who was losing her eyesight.
Beloved
by her adopted family and by her neighbors and friends,
Margaret died at the early age of 33. From the time of
her death, her tomb in the Dominican church was a place of pilgrimage.
Her body, even to this day, is incorrupt.
After her
death, the fathers received permission to have her
heart opened. In it were three pearls, having holy figures
carved upon them. They recalled the saying so often on the lips
of Margaret: "If you only knew what I have in my heart!" (Attwater2,
Benedictines, Dorcy).
In art,
Margaret is pictured as Dominican tertiary holding
a cross, lily, heart with 2 flames offered to the crucifix (Roeder). |
1322
Bd John Of Alvernia; frequent ecstasies and visions of our Lord
and saints; on All Souls' day while offering Mass he saw numberless
souls released from Purgatory; for 3 months he was conscious of his
guardian angel, who conversed with him
This John is sometimes
called “of Fermo” in the Marches, where he was born in 1259, but
usually “of Alvernia” because he lived for many years and died on
the mountain of La Verna. In 1272 desire for a life of greater perfection
caused him to join the Friars Minor, and after his profession he was
sent to La Verna, where St Francis had received the stigmata. Here
he lived in a cell formed in a cave in the mountain-side, sleeping
only a few hours, and then on the bare ground with a stone for pillow.
In this solitude of penance and contemplation he spent some years,
and frequent ecstasies and visions of our Lord and of the saints are
recorded of him; one All Souls’ day while offering Mass he saw numberless
souls released from Purgatory, and for a space of three months he was
conscious of the habitual presence of his guardian angel, who conversed
with him.
After a time his austerities became
excessive and St Francis himself in vision ordered him to moderate
them lest he unfit himself for the active service of his neighbour
to which he was soon to be called. This took the form of preaching
and pastoral work, first in the towns and villages around La Verna
and then throughout central and northern Italy. He had the gifts of
infused knowledge and of reading souls, and his exhortations brought
back many who were sinners to Christ and excited the admiration of
good and learned men. He never wrote out his sermons, and when it was
pointed out to him that this had its disadvantages he replied, “When
I go into the pulpit I just remind myself that it is not I, a poor
sinner, who is to preach, but God Himself who will teach divine truth
through my mouth. Do you suppose, dear brethren, that God can ever
fail in His words?”
Bd John was a close friend of
the poet Bd Giacopone da Todi and gave him the last sacraments
as he lay dying on Christmas day 1306; and John himself is alleged
to be the author of the proper preface sung by the Friars Minor in
the Mass of St Francis. He was at the friary of Cortona when he felt
death approaching he therefore hurried to La Verna, and there died
on August 10 1322.
To the brothers who were present he said, as
his last message, If you would have a good conscience, wish to
know Jesus Christ only, for He is the way. If you would have wisdom,
wish to know Jesus Christ only, for He is the truth. If you wish to
have glory, wish to know Jesus Christ only, for He is the life.”
The cultus of Bd John of Alvernia was approved in
1880. The Friars Minor keep his feast with Bd Novellone~ (above),
and join with it that of BD VINCENT OF AQUILA, a lay-brother who died
at San Giuliano in 1504: “a man of great humility, of prayer, temperance
and patience, adorned with the spirit of prophecy.” His cultus was
confirmed in 1785.
There is more than one sketch of the life of Bd John
printed in the Acta Sanctorum,
August, vol. ii, and there is another early account which has been
edited in the Analecta Franciscana,
vol. iii (1879), pp. 439—447. See also Léon,
Aureole Séraphique
(Eng. trans.), vol. ii, pp. 553 seq., and more especially L. Oliger,
Il b. Giovanni della Verna
(1913). For Bd Vincent, see the Acta Sanctorum, August, vol.
ii; and G. Rivera, Il b. Vincenzo
dall’ Aquila (1904).
|
1322 Blessed Simon Rinalducci
famous preacher; Bd Simon died
at Bologna and many cures took place at his tomb. OSA (AC)
1322 BD SIMON OF TODI
SIMON RINALDUCCI of Todi joined
the Hermits of St Augustine in the year 1280. He was a
distinguished preacher and became prior of several houses
of his order besides being at one time provincial of Umbria. In a
general chapter grave accusations were made against him in his
absence by some of his brethren. Although he could have cleared
himself, he chose rather to suffer in silence than to court an inquiry
which would certainly have caused scandal and might have led to dissensions
in the order. Bd Simon died at Bologna and many cures took place at
his tomb.
See the notice
in the Acta Sanctorum, April, vol. ii,
where an account is printed of the miracles alleged to
have been worked at his intercession. The confirmatio cultus was accorded in 1833.
Born in Todi, Italy;
cultus confirmed in 1833. The Augustinian friar Simon
Rinalducci became a famous preacher. For a time he was provincial
in Umbria. He kept silence under an unjust accusation rather
than cause scandal among his brothers (Benedictines).
|
1323 Blessed
Augustine Gazotich of Lucera fought the Manichæen heresy;
in Sicily, Islam; in Hungary both Several charming miracles
are related OP B (AC)
BD AUGUSTINE, BISHOP
OF LUCERA (A.D. 1323)
AUGUSTINE GAZOTICH was born at
Trogir in Dalmatia about the year 1260 and before he was twenty received the
habit of the Friars Preachers. After profession he was sent to Paris, to
study at the university, and on his way thither nearly came to an untimely
end: while passing through the district of Pavia
with a fellow Dominican, Brother James, they were set
on by footpads; James was killed and Brother Augustine
recovered only after some weeks' nursing in a near-by country-house.
He preached
fruitfully in his own country and established several
new houses of his order, to which he gave as their motto
the words of his patron, St Augustine of Hippo: "Since I
began to serve God, as I have hardly ever seen better men than
those who live a holy life in monasteries, so I have never seen
worse than those in monasteries who live not as they should."
After missions in Italy and Bosnia,
missions wherein he confirmed his reputation for great charity and prudence,
Bd Augustine was sent to Hungary, where the people had been reduced to a
bad state of misery and irreligion by continual civil wars. Here he met Cardinal
Nicholas Boccasini, the papal legate, who was to become Bd Benedict XI, and
attracted his favourable notice, and when Cardinal Boccasini became pope
in 1303 he sent for Bd Augustine and consecrated him bishop of Zagreb in
Croatia.
His clergy, and in consequence
the whole diocese, was badly in need of reform,
and he held disciplinary synods whose canons he enforced
and supported in frequent visitations, and he encouraged
learning and the study of the Bible by establishing a Dominican
priory in his cathedral city. He was present at the general
council at Vienne in 1311-12; and on his return he suffered persecution
at the hands of Miladin, governor of Dalmatia, against whose
tyranny and exactions he had protested. Bd Augustine had in a
marked degree the gift of healing (he had cured of rheumatism the
hands that gave him episcopal anointing) and there is a pleasant
story told of how he rebuked those who flocked to him for this reason:
he planted a lime tree, and suggested that its leaves would be more
efficacious than his hands.
God and the people took him at
his word, and even the invading Turks respected
the wonder-working tree.
After ruling the diocese of Zagreb
for fourteen years Bd Augustine was translated to the see of Lucera in the
province of Benevento. Here his great task was to eradicate the religious
and moral corruption which the Saracens had left
behind them; the remainder of the Moslems had been more
or less converted in a body in 1300. King Robert of Naples
gave him the fullest support and endowed a monastery of Dominicans
who zealously assisted their bishop, and within five years
the face of the country was changed. Bd Augustine was venerated
by all, from the royal family downwards, and when he died on
August 3, 1323, a cultus began which was formally confirmed in 1702.
The principal source seems to be
a Latin life written as late as the seventeenth century by Thomas Marnavich,
Bishop of Bosnia; in this the family name, figures
as Gozottus. It is printed in the Acta Sanctorum, August,
vol. i. See also Taurisano, Calalogus
Hagiographicus a.p., pp. 27-28, in which inter
alia a reference is given to Mortier, Maîtres Generaux O.P.,
vol. iv, pp. 461-467: the pages in question, however, have nothing
to do with this Bd Augustine, but with another Augustine of Zagreb,
who lived a century later.
Born in Trau, Dalmatia, c. 1260-1262;
cultus reconfirmed by Pope Clement XI in 1702. Augustine
was born into a wealthy family who provided him with
an excellent education. At 18, he and an Italian friend
headed to the Dominican novitiate in France. Near Pavia, Italy,
they were attacked by enemies of his family, who left the bodies
of the two boys in the snow by the side of the road. Augustine
was badly injured; his friend died. When he recovered from his injuries,
Augustine continued to the novitiate. Augustine spent most of
his life battling heresy: In his native Dalmatia, he fought the Manichæen
heresy; in Sicily, Islam; in Hungary both.
In
every situation in which he found himself, Augustine
gave proof of his virtue and good judgment. When Cardinal
Boccasini came to Hungary as legate, he noted the wisdom and
tact of his brother Dominican, and when he himself ascended the
papal throne as Benedict XI, he appointed Augustine bishop of
Zagreb in Croatia in
1303.
This diocese
was in chaos when Augustine assumed the cathedra.
His three predecessors had all tried, but failed, to repair
the ravages of heresy, plague, and schism. The new bishop began
by reforming the clergy. He finished building the cathedral
and made a complete visitation of his diocese. His work was
to bring him into violent conflict with the government, but,
spiritually, he restored the entire see during his episcopacy.
Several
charming miracles are related about Augustine. The
river water of Zagreb was unfit to drink, so the Dominican
fathers asked Augustine to pray for a new supply. At his
prayer a fountain sprang up in the yard of the convent, abundantly
supplying their needs. Another time he planted a tree in
a little village and the leaves turned out to have healing properties.
On one occasion, when Bishop Augustine was dining with Benedict
XI, the pope, feeling that a missionary bishop must eat well
to preach well, had a dish of partridge set before Augustine,
who never ate meat. Because he did not want to offend the pope, he prayed
for a resolution to the situation. The legend says that God turned
the partridges into fish!
Augustine
was transferred from Zagreb to Lucera (Nocera), Sicily.
Here he continued his holy government, using his characteristic
gentleness and his gift of healing. He promoted devotion
to Saints Dominic, Thomas Aquinas, and Peter Martyr--all
brother Dominicans. Feeling that he was near death, he returned
to the Dominican convent in Nocera to die among his brethren.
Under his statue in the cathedral of Nocera is the legend, "Sanctus
Augustine Episcopus Lucerinus Ordinis Praedicatorum," an indication
of the veneration in which he is held (Benedictines, Dorcy)
.
|
1325 Sainted
Nikodim, Archbishop of Serbia, was hegumen of the Khilendaria
monastery elevated to the dignity of bishop in 1316 translated
into the Slavonic language and ordered into use in Serbia the
Typikon (Ustav) of Saint Sava the Sanctified, of Jerusalem
wonderworking relics
Especially noteworthy
is this, that in the year 1319 he translated into the
Slavonic language and ordered into use in Serbia the Typikon
(Ustav) of Saint Sava the Sanctified, of Jerusalem. Sainted
Nikodim died in the year 1325.
St Nicodemus, Archbishop of Pec
(May 11) SerbianOrthodoxChurch.net
This great
hierarch was a Serb by birth. He lived in asceticism
on the Holy Mountain, and was abbot of Hilandar. After the
death of Sava the Third, he was chosen as archbishop of
`all the Serbian lands and those bordering the sea', in 1317.
He crowned King Milutin in 1321. He also translated the Jerusalem
Typikon* into Serbian. In the Preface of this book he says: `Almighty
God, who knows our weak-nesses, will give us spiritual strength,
but only if we first make an effort.' He sincerely loved the ascetic
life, and laboured to deepen it in the land of Serbia. He laboured
tirelessly to uproot the Bogomil heresy and confirm the Orthodox faith.
He entered into rest in the Lord in 1325 and his wonderworking relics
are preserved in the monastery at Pec.
*A Typikon
is a book of rubrics for the ordering of church services
and of monastic life -Translator.
SerbianOrthodoxChurch.net
* From "The
Prologue from Ochrid", by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic
- Lazarica Press - Birmingham 1985 Four Book Edition - Translated
by Mother Maria - Dates based on old church calendar
|
1331 BD ODORIC OF PORDENONE IT would not be easy
to find in secular literature a more adventurous
career than that of the Franciscan Friar Odoric of Pordenone.
Miracle worker
IT
would not be easy to find in secular literature
a more adventurous career than that of the Franciscan
Friar Odoric of Pordenone. He was a native of Friuli,
and his family name is said to have been Mattiussi. About the
year 1300, when he was fifteen, he received the habit of St
Francis at Udine, and his later biographers expatiate upon the extreme
fervour with which he gave himself to prayer, poverty and penance.
After a while he felt called to serve God in solitude, and he
obtained the permission to lead the life of a hermit in a remote
cell. We are not told how long he spent in this close communion
with God, but he seems to have been guided to return to Udine and
to take up apostolic work in the surrounding districts. Great
success followed his preaching, and crowds gathered from afar to
hear him. But about 1317, when he was a little over thirty, there
came to him an inspiration of a somewhat different kind, and it
is difficult from the documents before us to decide how far
he was influenced in his subsequent career by a simple spirit of
adventure and how far by the burning desire of the missionary
to extend God’s kingdom and to save souls. We shall probably not be
wrong in assuming that there was a mixture of both.
It is not easy to give precise dates, but according
to Yule and Cordier he was in western India soon after 1322, he must have
spent three of the years between 1322 and 1328 in northern China, and he
certainly died at home among his brethren at Udine in January 1331.
With regard to the route he followed in his
wanderings we are better informed. His first objective
was Constantinople, and from thence he passed on to
Trebizond, Erzerum, Tabriz and Soltania. There were houses
of the order in most of these cities, and he probably made
a considerable stay in each, so that this part of his journey
may well have occupied three years. From Soltania he seems
to have wandered about very irregularly, but eventually he came
south through Baghdad to Hormuz at the entrance of the Persian
Gulf, where he took ship and sailed to Salsette. At Tana, or possibly
Surat, he gathered up the bones of his four brethren who had
been martyred there shortly before, in 1321, and carried them with
him on his voyage eastward. He went on to Malabar and Ceylon, and
then probably rested for a while at the shrine of St Thomas at Mailapur,
by the modern Madras. Here he again took ship for Sumatra and Java,
possibly also visiting southern and eastern Borneo.
China was his next goal. Starting from Canton,
he travelled to the great ports of Fo-kien, and
from Fu-chau he proceeded across the mountains
to Hang-chau, then famous under the name of Quinsai as
the greatest city of the world, and Nan-king. Taking to the water
again upon the great canal at Yang-chau, he made his way to
Khanbaliq, or Peking, and there remained for three years, attached
apparently to one of the churches founded by Archbishop John
of Montecorvino, another heroic Franciscan missionary,
now in extreme old age. There Odoric turned his face homewards,
passing through Shen-si to Tibet and its capital, Lhasa, but we
have no further record of the course by which he ultimately reached
his native province in safety. It is interesting to note that during
the latter part at least of these long journeys Odoric had for his
companion an Irish friar of the same order, one Brother James. The
fact is known to us from a record preserved in the archives of Udine,
which tells us that after Odoric’s death a present of two marks was
made “for the love of God and the blessed Brother Odoric” to Brother
James, the Irishman, who had been his companion on his journey.
The account
which has been left us of Odoric’s travels, which
unfortunately was not written down by himself at the
time but dictated to one of his brethren after his return,
says practically nothing of any missionary labours on his part.
It is, therefore, not certain how far we may credit the wonderful
stories which were current in later times regarding the success
which attended his preaching. Luke Wadding, the annalist, declares
that he converted and baptized 2o,ooo Saracens, but he gives
us no idea of the source of his information. It is also stated
that Odoric’s purpose in leaving China and returning to Europe
was to obtain fresh supplies of missionaries and to conduct them
himself to the Far East. At Pisa, however, St Francis appeared
to him and bade him return to Udine, declaring that he himself would
look after those distant missions about which Odoric was anxious.
On his deathbed the worn-out apostle said that God had made known
to him that his sins were pardoned, but that he wished, like a humble
child, to submit himself to the keys of the Church and to receive
the last sacraments.
He died on
January 14, 1331. Many miracles are said to have
been wrought after his death, and in one of these we
hear again of Brother James the Irishman, for a certain
Franciscan who was a preacher and doctor of theology at Venice,
and had suffered cruelly from a painful malady of the throat,
asked Brother James to recommend him to his late fellow traveller,
and was immediately cured. The cultus
long paid to him was approved in 1755.
The narrative
of his journeys, as dictated in Latin by Bd Odoric,
will be found printed in the Acta Sanctorum
for January 14, but the fullest account, with
translation and notes, will be found in Yule-Cordier,
Cathay and the Way Thither (1913),
vol. ii. See also Wadding, Annales,
sa. 1331 ; M. Komroff, Contemporaries
of Marco Polo (1928) ; and H. Matrod, L’itinéraire . . . du b.
Odoric de Pordenone (1936). There is a fifteenth-century
Welsh version of the voyages, ed. S. J. Williams, Ffordd
y Brawd Odrig (1929). Fuller bibliographies
in Yule and in U. Chevalier, Bio-Bibliographie.
|
1333 Blessed Imelda
Lambertini patron of first communicants died of love on her
first Communion day Saint Agnes came in a vision she saw a brilliant
light shining above Imelda's head, and a Host suspended in the
light OP V (AC)
1333 BD IMELDA,
VIRGIN
THE patroness of fervent first communion, Bd Imelda, came of one
of the oldest families in Bologna: her father was Count Egano
Lambertini, and her mother was Castora Galuzzi. Even as a tiny
child she showed unusual piety, taking delight in prayer and slipping
off to a quiet corner of the house, which she adorned with flowers
and pictures to make it into a little oratory. When she was nine
she was placed, at her own wish, in the Dominican convent in Val di
Pietra, to be trained there by the nuns. Her disposition soon endeared
her to all, whilst the zeal with which she entered into all the religious
life of the house greatly edified the sisters. Her special devotion
was to the eucharistic presence of our Lord at Mass and in the tabernacle.
To receive our Lord in holy communion became the consuming desire of
her heart, but the custom of the place and time had fixed twelve as the
earliest age for a first communion. She would sometimes exclaim: “Tell
me, can anyone receive Jesus into his heart and not die?”
When she was eleven years old
she was present with the rest of the community at the Ascension-day Mass.
All the others had received their communion: only Imelda was
left unsatisfied. The nuns were preparing to leave the church
when some of them were startled to see what appeared to be a Sacred
Host hovering in the air above Imelda, as she knelt before the
closed tabernacle absorbed in prayer. Quickly they attracted the attention
of the priest, who hurried forward with a paten on which to receive
it. In the face of such a miracle he could not do otherwise than give
to Imelda her first communion, which was also her last. For the rapture
with which she received her Lord was so great that it broke her heart:
she sank unconscious to the ground, and when loving hands upraised
her, it was found that she was dead.
The Bollandists
in the Acta Sanctorum, May, vol. iii, inserted
a notice of Bd Imelda on the
ground of a long-established cultus, though the
formal papal confirmation did not occur until 1826. Many devotional
booklets—notably those by Lataste (1889), Corsini (1892), Wilms
(1925), and T. Alfonsi (1927)—have been published concerning her;
but see more especially M. C. de Ganay, Les Bienheureuses
Dominicaines (1913), pp. 145—152. There is also a short
account in Procter, Lives of Dominican Saints,
pp. 259—262, and a devotional sketch, R. Zeller, Imelda Lambertini (1930).
Blessed Imelda, came from one
of the oldest families in Bologna; her father was Count Igano
Lambertini and her mother was Castora Galuzzi. Even as a tiny
child she showed unusual piety, taking delight in prayer and slipping
off to a quiet corner of the house, which she adorned with flowers
and pictures to make it a little oratory. When she was nine, she
was placed, at her own wish, in the Dominican convent in Val di Pietra,
to be trained there by the nuns.
Her disposition soon endeared
her to all, while the zeal with which she entered all the religious
life of the house greatly edified the nuns. Her special devotion
was to the Eucharistic presence of Our Lord at Mass and in the
tabernacle.
To receive Our Lord in Holy Communion
became the consuming desire of her heart, but the custom of
the place and time had fixed twelve as the earliest age for a
first communion. She would sometimes exclaim: "Tell me, can anyone
receive Jesus into his heart and not die? " When she was eleven years
old she was present with the rest of the community at the Ascension
Day Mass. All the others had received their communion: only Imelda
was left unsatisfied. The nuns were preparing to leave the church when
some of them were startled to see what appeared to be a Sacred Host
hovering in the air above Imelda, as she knelt before the closed tabernacle
absorbed in prayer.
Quickly they attracted the attention
of the priest who hurried forward with a paten on which to receive
It. In the face of such a miracle he could not do otherwise
than give to Imelda her first communion, which was also her last
For the rapture with which she
received her Lord was so great that it broke her heart: she sank
unconscious to the ground, and when loving hands upraised her,
she was dead.
|
1336 St.
Elizabeth of Portugal exercises of piety, including daily Mass,
but also through her exercise of charity, by which she was able
to befriend and help pilgrims, strangers, the sick, the poor—in
a word, all those whose need came to her notice
Stremótii, in Lusitánia,
natális sanctæ Elísabeth Víduæ,
Lusitanórum Regínæ, quam, virtútibus
et miráculis claram, Urbánus Octávus,
Póntifex Máximus, in Sanctórum númerum
rétulit. Ejus tamen celébritas octávo
Idus mensis hujus recólitur, ex dispositióne Innocéntii
Papæ Duodécimi.
At Estremos
in Portugal, the birthday of St. Elizabeth the Widow, queen
of Portugal, whom Pope Urban VIII, mindful of her virtues and
miracles, placed among the number of the saints. Pope Innocent
XII ordered her feast to be kept on the 8th of July.
ST
ELIZABETH OF PORTUGAL, WIDOW (A.D. 1336)
THIS Elizabeth was daughter
of Peter III, King of Aragon. She was born in 1271, and received at the font
the name of Elizabeth, from her great-aunt, St Elizabeth
of Hungary, but she is known in her own country by the Spanish
form of that name; Isabella. Her birth was an omen of that title
of "the Peacemaker" which she was to earn in after-life, for by
it was established a good understanding between her grandfather
James, who was then on the throne, and her father, whose quarrelling
had divided the whole kingdom. The young princess was of a sweet
disposition, and from her early years had relish for anything that
was conducive to devotion and goodness. She desired to emulate every
virtue which she saw practised by others, for she had been already taught
that mortification of the will is to be joined with prayer to obtain
the grace which restrains our tendency to sin. This is often insufficiently
considered by those parents who excite the wilfulness and self-indulgence
of their children by teaching them a love of worthless things and
giving in to every whim and want. Certainly, fasting is not good for
them; but submission of the will, obedience, and consideration for others
are never more indispensable than at this time; nor is any abstinence
more fruitful than that by which children are taught not to drink or
eat between meals, to bear little denials without impatience, and never
to make a fuss about things. The victory of Elizabeth over herself was
owing to this early training.
At twelve years of age she was
married to Denis, King of Portugal. That prince admired
her birth, beauty, riches and personality more than her virtue;
yet he allowed her an entire liberty in her devotion, and
esteemed her piety without feeling called on to imitate it.
Elizabeth therefore planned for herself a regular distribution
of her time, which she never interrupted unless extraordinary occasions
of duty or charity obliged her. She rose early every morning,
and recited Matins, Lauds and Prime before Mass; in the afternoon
she had other regular devotions after Vespers. Certain hours were
allotted to her domestic affairs, public business, or what she owed
to others. She was abstemious in her food, modest in her dress, humble
and affable in conversation, and wholly bent upon the service of God.
Frequent attempts were made to induce her to modify her life, but without
success. Charity to the poor was a distinguishing part of her character.
She gave orders to have pilgrims and poor strangers provided with lodging
and necessaries, and made it her business to seek out and relieve persons
who were reduced to necessity. She provided marriage dowries for girls,
and founded in different parts of the kingdom charitable establishments,
particularly a hospital at Coimbra, a house for penitent women at
Torres Novas, and a refuge for foundlings. Nor with it all did Elizabeth
neglect any of her immediate duties, especially those of respect,
love and obedience to her husband, whose neglect and infidelity she
bore with much patience.
For Denis, though a good ruler, was
a bad subject: just, brave, generous and compassionate
in public life, devoted to his realm, but in his private relations
selfish and sinful. The queen used all her endeavours to reclaim
him, grieving deeply for the offence to God and the scandal given
to the people; she never ceased to pray for his conversion. She
strove to gain him by courtesy and constant sweetness, and cheerfully
cherished his natural children and took care of their education.
St Elizabeth had two children, Alfonso,
who afterwards succeeded his father, and a daughter, Constance.
This son when he grew up showed a very rebellious spirit,
partly due to the favour in which his father held his illegitimate
sons. Twice he rose in arms and twice his mother brought about
a reconciliation, riding out between the opposing forces. But
evil tongues suggested to the king that she secretly favoured her
son and for a time she was banished from the court. Her love for
concord and qualities as a peacemaker were indeed very notable; she
stopped or averted war between Ferdinand IV of Castile, and his cousin,
and between that prince and her own brother, James II of Aragon.
Her husband Denis became seriously
ill in 1324, and Elizabeth gave all her attention to him,
scarcely ever leaving his room unless to go to the church. During
his long and tedious illness the king gave marks of sincere sorrow
for the disorders of his life, and he died at Santarem on January
6, 1325. After his burial the queen made a pilgrimage to Compostela,
after which she wished to retire to a convent of Poor Clares
which she had founded at Coimbra. However, she was dissuaded, and
instead she was professed in the third order of St Francis, and
lived in a house which she built near to her convent, leading a life
of great simplicity.
The cause of peace that had been so
dear to her all her life was the occasion of Elizabeth's
death, which came about on July 4, 1336 at Estremoz, whither
she had gone on an errand of reconciliation in spite of her age
and the great heat. She was buried in the church of her monastery
of Poor Clares at Coimbra, and honoured by miracles; and eventually
in 1626 her cultus was
crowned by canonization.
The Bollandists in the Acta Sanctorum, July, vol. ii, have printed
a life of the queen which seems to be of almost contemporary
date, and a good deal of information may also be found in
the chronicles of the period. See also P; de Moucheron, Ste Elisabeth d'Aragon (1896);
and a short sketch by Fr V. McNabb (1937). The story (told
by Butler in company with many others) of the innocent page saved
miraculously from death in a lime-kiln is a mere fiction which
can be traced back to the folk-lore of ancient India. See Cosquin
in the Revue des Questions
historiques, vol. lxxiii (1903), pp, 3-12, with vol.
lxxiv, pp, 207-217; and Formichi in Archivio delle tradizioni popolari,
vol. xxii (1903), pp. 9-30. It is only in 1562 that we find
it christianized and told in connection with St Elizabeth.
Elizabeth is usually depicted
in royal garb with a dove or an olive branch. At her birth
in 1271, her father, Pedro III, future king of Aragon, was reconciled
with his father, James, the reigning monarch. This proved to
be a portent of things to come. Under the healthful influences
surrounding her early years, she quickly learned self-discipline and
acquired a taste for spirituality. Thus fortunately prepared, she
was able to meet the challenge when, at the age of 12, she was given
in marriage to Denis, king of Portugal. She was able to establish
for herself a pattern of life conducive to growth in God’s love,
not merely through her exercises of piety, including daily Mass, but
also through her exercise of charity, by which she was able to befriend
and help pilgrims, strangers, the sick, the poor—in a word, all those
whose need came to her notice. At the same time she remained devoted
to her husband, whose infidelity to her was a scandal to the kingdom.
He too was the object of
many of her peace endeavors. She long sought peace for him
with God, and was finally rewarded when he gave up his life
of sin. She repeatedly sought and effected peace between the king
and their rebellious son, Alfonso, who thought that he was passed
over to favor the king’s illegitimate children. She acted as peacemaker
in the struggle between Ferdinand, king of Aragon, and his cousin
James, who claimed the crown. And finally from Coimbra, where
she had retired as a Franciscan tertiary to the monastery of the
Poor Clares after the death of her husband, she set out and was
able to bring about a lasting peace between her son Alfonso, now king
of Portugal, and his son-in-law, the king of Castile.
Third Order of St. Francis.
Elizabeth was a Spanish
princess who was given in marriage to King Denis of Portugal
at the age of twelve. She was very beautiful and very lovable.
She was also very devout, and went to Mass every day. Elizabeth was
a holy wife, but although her husband was fond of her at first, he
soon began to cause her great suffering. Though a good ruler, he
did not imitate his wife's love of prayer and other virtues. In
fact, his sins of impurity gave great scandle to the people.
Later, to make matters
worse, the King believed a lie told about Elizabeth and
one of her pages by another page, who was jealous of his companion.
In great anger the King ordered the one he believed guilty, to
be sent to a lime-burner. The lime-burner was commanded to throw
into his furnace the first page who came. The good page set out
obediently, not knowing death was waiting for him. On his way he stopped
for Mass, since he had the habit of going daily. The first Mass had
begun, so he stayed for a second one. In the meantime, the King sent
the wicked page to the lime-burner to find out if the other had been
killed. And so it was this page who was thrown into the furnace! When
the King learned what had happened, he realized that God had saved
the good page, punished the liar, and proven Queen Elizabeth to be innocent.
This amazing event helped
greatly to make the King live better. He apologized to his
wife in front of everyone and began to have a great respect
for her. In his last sickness, she never left his side, except
for Mass, until he died a holy death. St. Elizabeth lived for eleven
more years, doing even greater charity and penance. She was a wonderful
model of kindness toward the poor and a successful peacemaker between
members of her own family and between nations.
Because St. Elizabeth was
faithful to daily Mass, she found strength to carry her many
great crosses. And because her page was faithful to daily Mass,
he escaped death. We should try our best to make it a habit to
go to Mass daily.
Comment: The work
of promoting peace is anything but a calm and quiet endeavor.
It takes a clear mind, a steady spirit and a brave soul to intervene
between people whose emotions are so aroused that they are ready
to destroy one another. This is all the more true of a woman in
the early 14th century. But Elizabeth had a deep and sincere love
and sympathy for humankind, almost a total lack of concern for herself
and an abiding confidence in God. These were the tools of her success.
Elisabeth von Portugal Katholische
Kirche: 4. Juli
Elisabeth, Tochter des
Königs Pedro von Aragon, wurde um 1270 geboren. In
der Taufe erhielt sie nach ihrer Großtante den Namen
Elisabeth. Sie wird auch Isabella von Aragon genannt. 1282 heiratete
sie König Dionysius von Portugal. Ihr Sohn Alfons lag laufend
mit seinem Vater und anderen Königen im Streit und Elisabeth
konnte mehrmals erfolgreich vermitteln. Bei ihrer letzten Mission
starb sie am 4.7.1336 in Estremoz. Elisabeth unterstütze zahlreiche
kirchloche Einrichtungen. Nach dem Tod ihres Mannes 1325 zog sie sich
in ein von ihr errichtetes Kloster zurück und wurde später
Franziskaner-Tertiarin. Elisabeth ist Patronin von Portugal, Coimbra,
Estremoz und Saragossa.
|
1336 Blessed
Maurice Csaky earnest, pious priest gift of prophecy
miracles of healing were reported at his grave OP (PC)
(also known as Blessed
Maurice of Hungary)
Maurice, Prince of Hungary, was
persecuted by his father-in-law for his desire to remain in the Dominican
Order. He was born into the royal house of Hungary.
There had been many heavenly signs before his birth that
he was to be an unusual favorite of God, but for the first
few years of his life he was so sickly that no one believed he
would survive. By the time he was five, he was a delicate, dreamy
child who played at saying Mass and leading family prayers. The
little chapel in his father's castle was his favorite haunt, and
he was always to be found there between sessions in the schoolroom.
When he
was still quite small, an old Dominican came one day
to visit his parents, and took a great fancy to the handsome
little boy. He told the child the story of Saint Alexis, which greatly
impressed him. When Maurice knelt to ask the old priest's blessing,
the Dominican said prophetically, "This child will one day
enter our holy Order and will be one of its joys."
In spite
of the several indications that God had designs on
Maurice, circumstances conspired against him. His parents
died when he was still quite young, leaving him immensely
wealthy and solely in charge of his father's estates. A brother,
who had entered the Dominican novitiate, died very young.
Relatives prevailed upon Maurice to marry. Against all his
wishes, he did so.
However, he and his young wife,
the daughter of the Count of Palatine, made a vow
of continence, and both resolved to became Dominicans
as soon as it was possible to dispose of the estates. When
his wife fled to the Isle of Margaret in the Danube, and took
the veil in Saint Margaret's convent, her father was furious.
He went in search of the young husband and found that he, too,
had gone to the Dominicans. He settled the matter in the forthright
fashion of the times by kidnapping Maurice and locking him in
a tower. Here, like another Thomas
Aquinas, the young novice settled down to wait until someone
tired of the arrangement.
After three
months of unfruitful punishment, Maurice was released
as incorrigible, and his relatives devoted their attention
to getting hold of his estates instead. He went happily
off to Bologna to complete his studies, where he remained
for three years.
For 32 years,
Maurice ignored the throne and the luxuries of the
world to live in obscurity and poverty. The picture of him
left us by the chroniclers is an engaging one: an earnest,
pious priest who made no effort to capitalize on his birth
or social graces; a zealous addict of poverty, who managed, by
a series of sagacious trades, to have the oldest habit in the
house and the dreariest cell. He is said to have said the whole
Psalter daily, plus the Penitential Psalms, and the Litany of
the Saints.
A number
of curious stories are told about him. Once, when he
was staying with a Benedictine friend, the friend noticed
that he went in and out of locked doors with no trouble
at all, and that the rooms lighted up by themselves when
he entered. Maurice is supposed to have had the gift of prophecy.
A relative of his had cheated the sisters out of some property
that Maurice had left them. Maurice told him that the goods
would be taken away from him, and that another man, more generous,
would give it back to the sisters. The man died shortly thereafter,
and the prophecy was fulfilled.
After Maurice's
death at least two miracles of healing were reported
at his grave: one was a cure from fever, another from blindness.
Butler's Lives of the Saints lists him as "Blessed Maurice"
and he is still venerated in Hungary, although his cultus
has never been formally approved (Attwater2, Benedictines,
Dorcy).
|
1338 Saint Daniel
of Serbia gift of wonderworking and healing built
Ascension of the Lord at Dechani the finest Christian monuments
in Serbia
The only son of rich and renowned
parents, was a close associate of the Serbian king
Stephan Urosh Milutin. Having renounced a secular career,
he received monastic tonsure from the igumen of the St
Nicholas monastery at Konchul near the River Ibar. St Daniel's
ascetic life was an example for all the brethren.
Archbishop Eustathius
of Serbia ordained him presbyter and took him into
his cell. When it was time to choose the igumen for the
Hilandar monastery on Mount Athos, St Daniel received the
appointment. The saint was igumen at a most difficult time
for the Holy Mountain. After the Crusaders were expelled from Palestine,
they joined with the Arabs to plunder and loot the Athonite
monasteries, "not sparing anything sacred."
St Daniel
remained at the Hilandar monastery, enduring siege
and hunger. When peace came to the Holy Mountain, the saint
resigned as igumen and withdrew into complete silence in the
cell of St Sava of Serbia (at Karyes). During the internecine
war of Kings Milutin and Dragutin and Stephen of Dechani (November
11), the ascetic was summoned to Serbia, where he reconciled the
adversaries.
In his native land Daniel was made Bishop
of Banja and head of the renowned monastery of St Stephen,
a royal treasury. After completing the construction of a
cathedral church at Banja in honor of the holy Protomartyr and
Archdeacon Stephen, St Daniel returned to his monastic labors
on the Holy Mountain.
The saint was summoned
from Athos again in 1325, when he was elected Archbishop
of Serbia. He was consecrated on the Feast of the Elevation
of the Cross of the Lord. The Protos ["head"] of the Holy Mountain,
Garbasios, and other Athonite Elders took part in the solemnities.
Archbishop
Daniel was a model of piety, and a wise archpastor.
His tenure as archbishop was marked by complete non-covetousness,
concern and toil for the needs of the Church and the flock,
and the building of churches. In 1335 the saint built a church
at Dechani in honor of the Ascension of the Lord, one of
the finest Christian monuments in Serbia. He collected accounts
about the Serbian past, and compiled the "Rodoslov" [Account
about the homeland], writing about the lives of Serbian rulers and
Serbian archpastors.
Even
during his lifetime St Daniel was granted the gift
of wonderworking and healing. After 14 years archbishop,
St Daniel departed to the Lord on December 19, 1338.
|
1338 Blessed James
Benfatti a master in theology and a holy priest;
Nearly 150 years after his
death, when repairs were being made in the church where
he was buried, an accident opened his tomb, and people were startled
to find that his body was completely incorrupt. Again in
1604, the same phenomenon was noted; worked
many miracles among his flock. At his death in 1338, many remarkable
miracles occurred
OP B (AC)
(also known as James of
Mantua) Born in Mantua, Italy; died there; cultus
confirmed 1859 by Pope Pius IX. James Benefatti,
bishop of Mantua, was a famous man in his time; it is unfortunate
that he is so little known in ours.
James entered the Dominican
convent in his home town about 1290. He was both a
master in theology and a holy priest. These qualities brought
him to the attention of his brother Dominican, Nicholas Boccasino, the future Pope
Benedict XI. As cardinal, Nicholas chose the young Dominican
from Mantua for his companion. He employed him in various offices
in Rome and recommended him to other high-ranking prelates. Consequently,
James found himself kept busy in diplomatic offices by several popes--Benedict
XI and John XXII among them.
For 18 years after being
consecrated (1303) bishop of Mantua by Pope John XXII
in 1320, James occupied the see and accomplished great good
among the people, meriting his title of "Father of the Poor."
He rebuilt and refurnished the cathedral and worked many miracles
among his flock. At his death in 1338, many remarkable miracles
occurred, and he was called "Blessed James" by people who were
grateful for his intercession. Nearly 150 years after his death,
when repairs were being made in the church where he was buried, an
accident opened his tomb, and people were startled to find that
his body was completely incorrupt. Again in 1604, the same phenomenon
was noted (Attwater 2, Benedictines, Dorcy).
|
1338 Anna of Kashin The Holy Right-believing Princess; withdrew into Tver's Sophia monastery and accepted
tonsure with the name Euphrosyne. Later, she transferred
to the Kashin Dormition monastery, and became a schemanun
with the name Anna; Miracles at St Anna's grave began in
1611
Daughter
of the Rostov prince Demetrius Borisovich, in 1294
became the wife of the holy Great Prince Michael Yaroslavich
of Tver, who was murdered by the Mongol-Tatars of the Horde
in 1318, (November 22). After the death of her husband, Anna
withdrew into Tver's Sophia monastery and accepted tonsure
with the name Euphrosyne. Later, she transferred to the Kashin
Dormition monastery, and became a schemanun with the name Anna.
She fell asleep in the Lord on October 2, 1338.
St Anna's sons also
imitated their father's steadfast confession of faith
in Christ. Demetrius Mikhailovich ("Dread Eyes") was murdered
at the Horde on September 15, 1325; and later, Alexander
Mikhailovich, Prince of Tver, was murdered together with
his son Theodore on October 29, 1339.
Miracles at St Anna's
grave began in 1611, during the siege of Kashin by
Polish and Lithuanian forces. There was also a great fire in
the city which died down without doing much damage. The saint,
dressed in the monastic schema, appeared to Gerasimus, a
gravely ill warden of the Dormition cathedral. She promised that
he would recover, but complained, "People show no respect for
my tomb. They ignore it and my memory! Do you not know that I am supplicating
the Lord and His Mother to deliver the city from the foe, and that
you be spared many hardships and evils?" She ordered him to tell
the clergy to look after her tomb, and to light a candle there before
the icon of Christ Not-Made-By-Hands.
At the Council of 1649
it was decided to uncover her relics for general
veneration and to glorify the holy Princess Anna as a saint.
But in 1677 Patriarch Joachim proposed to the Moscow Council
that her veneration throughout Russia should be discontinued
because of the Old Believers Schism, which made use of the
name of St Anna of Kashin for its own purposes. When she was buried
her hand had been positioned to make the Sign of the Cross with two
fingers, rather than three. However, the memory of St Anna, who had
received a crown of glory from Christ, could not be erased by decree.
People continued to love and venerate her, and many miracles took place
at her tomb.
On June 12, 1909 her
second glorification took place, and her universally
observed Feast day was established. Her Life describes
her as a model of spiritual beauty and chastity, and an
example to future generations.
|
1340 Juliana
Falconieri birth answer to prayers of old childless couple they
built magnificent church Annunciation at Florence founded Third Order
of Servites; Austere. zealous. charitable. sympathetic to all, OSM
V (RM)
Floréntiæ
sanctæ Juliánæ Falconériæ Vírginis,
quæ Sorórum Ordinis Servórum beátæ
Maríæ Vírginis fuit Institútrix, et
a Cleménte Duodécimo, Pontífice Máximo,
in sanctárum Vírginum númerum reláta
est.
At Florence, St. Juliana Falconieri, virgin, foundress of the
Sisters of the Order of the Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
who was placed among the holy virgins by the Sovereign Pontiff,
Clement XII.
1341 ST JULIANA
FALCONIERI, VIRGIN, FOUNDRESS OF THE SERVITE NUNS
ST JULIANA was one of the two glories of the
noble family of the Falconieri, the other being her uncle, St
Alexis, one of the Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order.
Her father, Chiarissimo, and her mother, Riguardata, were a devout
couple of great wealth who had built at their own cost the magnificent
church of the Annunziata in Florence. They were childless and already
well advanced in age when, in 1270, Juliana was born-the answer to prayer.
After the death of her father, which occurred while she was still
quite young, her uncle Alexis shared with Riguardata the direction
of her upbringing. She never cared for the amusements and occupations
which interested other girls, but loved to spend her time in prayer and
in church. Sometimes, indeed, her mother would tell her that if she continually
neglected her needle and spinning-wheel she would never find a husband.
The threat, however, had no terror for Juliana, and when she found that
her relations were trying to arrange a suitable match for her she expressed
her determination to consecrate herself to God and to renounce the
world. She was then fifteen. After being carefully instructed by her
uncle Alexis, she was invested with the Servite habit by St Philip
Benizi in the church of the Annunziata, and a year later she was professed
a tertiary of the order.
The ritual employed on this occasion appears
to have been identical with that used in the profession of a
Servite brother. Juliana continued to live at home, and Riguardata,
who had originally opposed her profession, ended by placing herself
under her daughter's direction. Bereft of her mother in 1304,
when she was thirty-four, Juliana moved to another house, where
she led a community life with a number of women who devoted themselves
to prayer and works of mercy. Their habit resembled that of the men
of the Servite Order, but to facilitate their work they wore short
sleeves, which caused them to be nicknamed "Mantellate", a term subsequently
applied to women tertiaries in general. With great reluctance Juliana
accepted the post of superior at the urgent desire of her companions.
For them she drew up a code of regulations which was formally confirmed
120 years later for their successors by Pope Martin V. Just as the Order
of the Servants of Mary is commonly ascribed to St Philip Benizi because
he framed their constitutions, so also for the same reason St Juliana is
honoured as a foundress by all the women religious of the Servite Order,
although she was not the first to be admitted into its ranks.
Those who were her contemporaries and were
privileged to live under her guidance testified that she outstripped
them all in her zeal, her charity and her austerities. Her sympathies
extended to all with whom she came into contact, nor did she ever
let slip an opportunity of helping others, especially when it was
a question of reconciling enemies, of reclaiming sinners and of relieving
the sick. Her mortifications seriously impaired her health, and towards
the close of her life she suffered much from gastric derangement.
She had been in the habit of making her communion three times a week,
and it was a source of deep sorrow to her in her last illness that
her frequent attacks of sickness precluded her from receiving the sacrament
of the altar. Juliana died in 1341, in her seventy-first year, and
she was canonized in 1737.
In the collect appointed for St Juliana's
feast reference is made to the eucharistic miracle by which
she is said to have been comforted in her last moments. In memory
of this also the members of her order wear upon the left breast
of their habit the device of a Host surrounded with rays. It is
stated that a document is still in existence which claims to have
been drawn up and witnessed eighteen days later by those who were present
at her death-bed. The original is in Latin, but it may be translated
as follows:
"He hath made
a memorial of His wonderful works" [ps. cx 4]. Let it be placed
on record how eighteen days ago our Sister Juliana died and
flew to heaven with her spouse Jesus; and it was in this manner.
Being more than seventy years
old her stomach had become so weakened from her voluntary sharp penances,
from fasts, from chains, from an iron girdle, disciplines, nightly vigils
and spare diet, that she was no longer able to take or retain food. When
she knew that because of this she must be deprived of the viaticum of the
most sacred Body of Christ, no one could believe how much she grieved and
wept, so much so that they were afraid she would die from the vehemence of
her sorrow.
She, therefore, most humbly begged
Father James de Campo Reggio that at least he would bring
the most holy sacrament in a pyx and set it before her, and this
was done. But when the priest appeared carrying the Body of our
Lord, she straightway prostrated herself upon the ground in the
form of a cross and adored her Master.
Then her face became like the
face of an angel. She desired, since she was not allowed to unite herself
to Jesus, at least to kiss Him, but this the priest refused. She then begged
piteously that over the burning furnace of her breast they would spread a
veil upon which they might put the Host. This was granted her. But-O wonderful
prodigy!-scarcely had the Host touched this loving heart than it was lost
to sight and never more was found. Then Juliana, when the Host had disappeared,
with a tender and joyous face, as if she were rapt in ecstasy, died in the
kiss of her Lord, to the amazement and admiration of those who were present-to
wit, of Sister Joanna, Sister Mary, Sister Elizabeth, Father James and others
of the house.
The Sister Joanna whose name is
appended to this is the Bd Joan Soderini (September
I) who succeeded the foundress in her office of superior general.
What strikes one as curious is the fact that no mention is made of
the discovery on St Juliana's left breast of a mark resembling the impression
upon the Host, as was averred later. No earlier authority has been
adduced for this prodigy than a sentence occurring in a manuscript entitled
Giornale e Ricordi, written by the Servite Nicholas Mati about the year
1384. In this volume, when he has occasion to refer to Joan Soderini,
he remarks: "She was the happy disciple who, sooner than Sister Elizabeth
or the others, discovered upon the breast of St Juliana that astounding
marvel of the figure of Christ nailed to the cross impressed upon her
flesh within a circle like a Host." It must be admitted, however, that
Father Mati speaks of the prodigy as a thing which was in his time generally
known.
The information obtainable about
the life of St Juliana is very scanty. The promoters of the
cause of her beatification seem to have contented themselves with
producing proof of an immemorial cultus and of miracles
worked by her relics. The Bollandists had to be satisfied with printing
in the Acta Sanctorum,
June, vol. iv, a short life translated from the Italian of Father Archangelo
Giani. There is an English life (1898) translated from the French
of Fr Soulier, another in French by Cardinal Lépicier, and
in Italian by Poletti (1903), Barbagallo (1912), and Panichelli (1928);
a popular life in English was published in 1951, by M. Conrayville.
A copy of the Latin original of the statement above is printed by Father
V. de Buck in the Acta Sanctorum,
October, vol. xii, pp. 403-404, in a notice he compiled of the
life of Bd Joan Soderini.
Born at Florence, Italy, 1270;
died there in 1340; canonized in 1737. Saint Juliana was born
into the noble Falconieri family and niece of Saint Alexis (the only one of the
Seven Founders of the Servites to remain a lay brother). She seems
destined for Christian glory. Her father, Chiarissimo, and her mother,
Riguardata, were both devout. At their own expense they built the
magnificent church of the Annunciation at Florence, Italy. Juliana's
birth was an answer to the prayers of this older, childless couple.
After her father's death while
she was still very young, her uncle Alexis shared in her upbringing.
She never cared for the amusements that interested other girls,
and when she learned, at age 15, that her relatives were trying
to arrange her marriage, she told them that she wanted to consecrate
her life to God. After being carefully instructed by her uncle, Juliana
was given the Servite habit by Saint
Philip Benizi in the Church of the Annunciation. A year later
she was professed as a tertiary, which permitted her to continue to
live at home for the next 18 years.
Although Riguardata originally
opposed Juliana's chosen vocation, she eventually placed herself
under her daughter's direction. When Riguardata died in 1304,
Juliana moved to another house, where she founded the Third Order
of Servites. At that house a number of women lived in community and
devoted themselves to a life of prayer and ministry to the sick.
Their habit resembled that of the male Servites, but to facilitate
that work, they wore short sleeves, which caused them to be nicknamed
"Mantellate," a term later used for women tertiaries in general.
Reluctantly, Juliana acquiesced
to her community's request for her to become their general.
She drew up a code of regulations that were formally confirmed 120
years later for their successors by Pope Martin V. Juliana is
considered the founder of the order because she framed their constitutions,
although she was not the first to be admitted into its ranks.
The rest of her life
was spent in Florence where, like her spiritual benefactor,
Philip Benizi, she was particularly active in reconciling enemies--this
was a time when the quarrels between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines
were sowing discord in almost every town in Italy. Austere and zealous,
she was also charitable and sympathetic to all.
Her mortifications seriously impaired
her health, and towards the end of her life she suffered from
gastric problems. She had been in the habit of receiving Communion
three times weekly, which made these stomach ailments all the more
sorrowful. When she was dying and could not receive Communion, the
corporal and host were laid on her breast. Almost as soon as It touched
her, the Host disappeared, miraculously incorporated into her body.
A mark of the host was found on her breast after death. This image of
a host emanating rays of light is now worn on the left breast of Servite
nuns (Attwater, Benedictines, Delaney, Encyclopedia, Farmer, Martindale,
Walsh) .
|
1342 Antony (Kukley)
Eustace (Nizilon) and John (Milhey) martyred for their
faith relics were found to be incorrupt MM (AC)
The Holy Martyrs Anthony, John,
and Eustathius were brothers who suffered for Christ
under the Lithuanian Great Prince Olgerd (1345-1377).
The prince was married to the Orthodox princess Maria
Yaroslavna (+ 1346). He was baptized and during his wife's
lifetime he allowed the preaching of Christianity. Two brothers,
Nezhilo and Kumets, received holy Baptism from the priest
Nestor, and they received the names Anthony and John. And at the
request of Maria Yaroslavna an Orthodox church was built at Vilnius
(Vilna). After the death of his spouse, Prince Olgerd
began to support the pagan priests of the fire-worshippers, who
started a persecution against Christians. Sts John and Anthony
endeavored not to flaunt their Christianity, but they did not
observe pagan customs. They did not cut their hair as the pagans
did, and on fastdays they did not eat forbidden foods.
The prince
soon became suspicious of the brothers, so he interrogated
them and they confessed themselves Christians. Then he demanded
that they eat meat (it was a fast day). The holy brothers
refused, and the prince locked them up in prison. The brothers
spent an entire year behind bars. John took fright at the impending
tortures and declared that he would obey all the demands of the
Great Prince. The delighted Olgerd released the brothers and brought
them to himself.
But Anthony
did not betray Christ. When he refused to eat meat
on a fast day, the prince again locked him up in prison and
subjected him to brutal tortures. The other brother remained
free, but both Christians and pagans regarded him as a traitor
and would not associate with him. Repenting of his sin, John
went to the priest Nestor and entreated him to ask his brother to
forgive him. "When he openly confesses Christ, we will be reconciled,"
Anthony replied. Once, while serving the prince at the bath, St
John spoke privately with him about his reconciliation with the
Church. Olgerd did not display any anger and said that he could believe
in Christ, but must conduct himself like all the pagans. Then St
John confessed himself a Christian in the presence of numerous courtiers.
They beat him fiercely with rods and sent him to his brother in
prison. The martyrs met with joy, and received the Holy Mysteries
that same day.
Many people went to the prison
to see the new confessor. The brothers converted
many to Christ by their preaching. The prison was transformed
into a Christian school. The frightened pagan priests
demanded the execution of the brothers, but they did not fear
death.
On the morning
of April 14, 1347 the Martyr Anthony was hanged on
a tree after receiving the Holy Mysteries. This oak, which the
pagans considered sacred, became truly sacred for Orthodox
Christians. The pagan priests who hoped that Christian preaching
would stop with the death of St Anthony, were disappointed. A multitude
of the people gathered before the walls of the prison where
St John was being held. On April 24, 1347 they strangled him and hanged
his dead body upon the same oak. The venerable bodies of both martyrs
were buried by Christians in the church of St Nicholas the Wonderworker.
A third
sufferer for Christ was their relative Kruglets.
At Baptism
the priest Nestor named him Eustathius. Kruglets stood
out because of his comeliness, valor and bravery, but even
more because of his mind and virtue of soul. A favorite of
Olgerd, he could count on a very promising future. However,
he also refused to eat meat at the festal table. St Eustathius
openly declared that he was a Christian and would not eat meat because
of the Nativity Fast. They began to beat him with iron rods,
but the youth did not make a sound. The prince tried refining the
torture. Olgerd gave orders to strip the martyr naked, take him
out on the street and to pour icy water in his mouth. But this did
not break his spirit. Then they broke his ankle bones, and ripped
the hair and skin from his head, and cut off his ears and nose. St Eustathius
endured the torments with such gladness and courage, that the very
torturers themselves were astounded by the divine power which strengthened
him.
The
martyr Eustathius was sentenced to death and hanged
on the same oak where Sts John and Anthony received a martyr's
death (December 13, 1347).
For three days no one was permitted
to take down the body of the martyr, and a column
of cloud protected it from birds and beasts of prey.
A church was later built on the hill where the holy martyrs
suffered. The trinity of venerable passion bearers glorified
the true God worshipped in the Holy Trinity, Father and Son and
Holy Spirit. The church was dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity. The
altar table was built on the stump of the sacred oak on which the
martyrs died.
Soon their
relics were found to be incorrupt. In 1364 Patriarch
Philotheus of Constantinople (1354-1355, 1364-1376) sent
a cross with the relics of the holy martyrs to St Sergius of Radonezh
(September 25). The Church established the celebration of
all three martyrs on April 14. The holy martyrs were
of immense significance for all the Western frontier. Vilnius's
monastery of the Holy Trinity, where the holy relics are kept,
became a stronghold of Orthodoxy on this frontier. In 1915 during
the invasion of the Germans, these relics were taken to Moscow.
The relics
of the holy passion-bearers were returned to the Vilnius
Holy Spirit monastery in 1946. The commemoration of their
return (July 13) is solemnly observed at the monastery each
year.
Died at
Vilna, Lithuania This trio was comprised of young
Lithuanian noblemen who were chamberlains at the court of
the grand Duke Olgierd, the father of Jagello.
John and
Antony were brothers, heathen worshippers of fire,
whom a travelling missionary priest, named Nestorius, converted
to the Christian faith. They refused to eat meat on an day
of abstinence.
Since their
new ways conflicted with the customs of the court,
they were hung from an oak tree in Vilna. John, the eldest,
was martyred on April 24 and his brother Antony on June 14. Upon
witnessing their heroic fortitude, Eustace converted and martyred
for the faith on December 13.
These patrons
of Vilna were buried in Holy Trinity Russian- Greek
Church, which is now united with the Roman Catholic Church
and served by Basilian monks. Their heads were translated
to the cathedral of Vilna. The tree on which they were executed
had long been used for that purpose; however, the Christians obtained
a grant of it from the prince and built a church on the spot. Their
feast on April 14 was established by Patriarch Alexius of Kiow
(Benedictines, Coulson, Encyclopedia, Husenbeth).
|
1343 Blessed Gregory Celli
monk received by the Franciscans of Monte Carnerio, near Rieti, OSA
(AC)
(also known as Gregory of Verucchio) Born
in Verucchio, diocese of Rimini, Italy; died 1343; cultus confirmed
in 1769.
1343 BD GREGORY OF VERUCCHIO
THE father of Bd Gregory dei Celli of Verucchio died before his son
was four years old, and the child was brought up by a mother whose one
object was to train him and St Monica: Gregory received the habit of the
Hermits of St Augustine, whilst his mother spent their fortune in founding
as well as endowing a house for the order at Verucchio. For ten years Gregory
lived in the monastery, leading an exemplary life and converting many
sinners who had been led away into heresy. But after his mother’s death,
the brethren, instigated by jealousy at his success, or perhaps by resentment
at his strictness, ungratefully drove him out of the house which had been
built from the proceeds of his patrimony. Homeless and destitute, he made
his way to the Franciscans of Monte Carnerio, near Reati, by whom he was
so kindly received that he settled down permanently amongst them. He lived
to extreme old age, dying, it is alleged, at the age of 118. It is averred
that the mule which was bearing his coffin to the burial ground at Reati
suddenly broke away and as though driven by an unseen force, carried its
load back to Verucchio, where its arrival was announced by the spontaneous
ringing of all the church bells. By local custom Bd Gregory is invoked as
a patron when rain is needed.
The account
of this beatus printed in the Acta Sanctorum,
May, vol. i, depends mainly upon a document, attested by a notary
public of the Celli family, which was forwarded to the Bollandists
by Father H. Torelli, the historiographer of the Hermits of St Augustine.
It must be confessed that there are suspicious features about this notarial
instrument, but there can be no doubt that the cultus of
Bd Gregory, alleged to have been signalized by many miraculous cures, was
formally confirmed by Pope Clement XIV in 1769.
Gregory's mother founded a monastery for the Augustinians
in Verucchio, where Gregory later became a monk. After a time he was dismissed
for some unjust reason, but was charitably received by the Franciscans of
Monte Carnerio, near Rieti, where he died (Benedictines). In art, Gregory
is an Augustinian hermit with an iron ring around his body. He is venerated
at Urbino and invoked in times of drought (Roeder)
|
1343 Blessed Thomas Corsini
a Servite lay-brother, who spent his live collecting
alms for the abbey. He was favored by many visions (Benedictines),
OSM (AC)
Born at Orvieto, Italy;
beatified in 1768. Thomas Corsini was a Servite lay-brother,
who spent his live collecting alms for the abbey. He was
favored by many visions (Benedictines). |
1345 Peregrine
Laziosi received a vision of Our Lady who told him to
go to Siena, Italy, and there to join the Servites healed
by Jesus incorrupt fervant preacher, excellent orator, and
gentle confessor
Also
known as Peregrinus
Born wealthy,
he spent a worldly youth, and became involved in
politics. Peregrine was initially strongly anti-Catholic.
During a popular revolt, he struck the papal peace negotiator,
Saint Philip Benizi, across the face. Saint Philip calmly
turned the other cheek, prayed for the youth, and Peregine converted.
He received
a vision of Our Lady who told him to go to Siena,
Italy, and there to join the Servites. After training and
ordination, they assigned him to his home town. He lived and
worked, as much as possible, in complete silence, in solitude,
and without sitting down for 30 years in an attempt to do penance
for his early life. When he did speak, he was known as a fervant
preacher, excellent orator, and gentle confessor. Founded a Servite
house at Forli.
A victim
of a spreading cancer in his foot, Peregrine was scheduled
for an amputation. The night before the operation, he
spent in prayer; that night received a vision of Christ
who healed him with a touch. The next morning, Peregrine
found his cancer completely healed.
Born 1260 at Forli, Italy Died
1345 at Forli, Italy of natural causes; body incorrupt
St. Peregrine Laziosi 1345
Peregrine Laziosi was born of a wealthy family at
Forli, Italy, in 1260. As a youth he was active in politics
as a member of the anti-papal party. During one uprising,
which the Pope sent St. Philip Benizi to mediate, Philip was
struck in the face by Peregrine. When Philip offered the other
cheek, Peregrine was so overcome that he repented and converted
to Catholicism. Following the instructions of the Virgin Mary received
in a vision, Peregrine went to Siena and joined the Servites. It
is believed that he never allowed himself to sit down for thirty
years, while as far as possible, observing silence and solitude.
Sometime later, Peregrine was sent to Forli to found a new house
of the Servite Order. An ideal priest, he had a reputation for fervent
preaching and being a good confessor. When he was afflicted with cancer
of the foot and amputation had been decided upon, he spent the night
before the operation, in prayer. The following morning he was completely
cured. This miracle caused his reputation to become widespread. He died
in 1345 at the age of eighty-five, and he was canonized by Pope
Benedict XIII in 1726. St. Peregrine, like St. Paul, was in open defiance
of the Church as a youth. Once given the grace of conversion he became
one of the great saints of his time. His great fervor and qualities
as a confessor brought many back to the true Faith. Afflicted with
cancer, Peregrine turned to God and was richly rewarded for his Faith,
enabling him over many years to lead others to the truth. He is the
patron of cancer patients.
|
1345 BD GERARD CAGNOLI cult to
this follower of St Francis confirmed 1908; simplicity and devotion admiration of all; many
miracles of healing before a little shrine of his patron
St Louis; assisted cooking by
angel; ecstasy levitating
The cult which from time immemorial has been paid at
Palermo and elsewhere to this follower of St Francis was
confirmed in 1908. Gerard, born about 1270, was the only son of
noble parents in the north of Italy. He lost his father at the
age of ten, and his mother not many years afterwards.
Resisting
the persuasions of his relatives to marry, he distributed
his goods to the poor and led, until he was forty, the life
of a pilgrim and hermit, spending most of his time in the wilder
parts of Sicily. In the early years of the fourteenth century,
the holiness and miracles of St Louis of Anjou, who though heir
to a throne had become a Franciscan, were much talked about.
Gerard took him for his patron, and about the year 1310 ended
by joining the same order.
While he discharged duties
of a lay-brother, his simplicity and devotion were
the admiration of all. On one great feast-day, when
he was acting as cook, being absorbed in prayer, he seemed
to have forgotten all about the dinner; when, late in the morning,
the father guardian, apprised that even the fire had not yet
been lighted, remonstrated with the brother on his neglect.
Gerard,
quite unperturbed, took to the kitchen, where, assisted,
it is said, by an unknown youth of radiant beauty, he produced,
punctually to the moment, a more delicious meal than the
community had ever before eaten.
Many miracles were attributed to the intercession of
the holy brother. For example, it was said that, finding
a child crying because it had dropped and broken the glass
beaker it was carrying home to its mother, he collected the fragments,
blessed them and restored the vessel to the child as sound
as it had been before. His miracles of healing were commonly
performed by anointing the sick with the oil which burned in
a lamp before a little shrine of his patron St Louis. His diet
was bread and water, he slept upon a plank, he scourged himself
to blood, and there were many stories told of ecstasies in which
he was seen surrounded with light and raised from the ground. He
died on December 30, 1345.
See the decree
of the Congregation of Rites in Analecta Ecclesiastica (1908),
vol. xvi, pp. 293—295 B. Mazzara, Leggendario Francescano (1680),
vol. iii, pp. 767—773; and Analecta
Franciscana (1897), vol. ii, pp. 489-497.
|
1347 St. Flora
Patron abandoned converts single laywomen betrayal victims
many miracles worked & at tomb.
ST FLORA OF BEAULIEU, VIRGIN (A.D. 1347)
THE “Hospitalières”,
nuns of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, had a flourishing
priory known as Beaulieu, between Figeac and the shrine
of Rocamadour. Here about the year 1324 entered a very devout
novice of good family, who is now venerated as St Flora. If we
can trust the biography in the form we have it, she had passed
a most innocent childhood, had resisted all her parents’ attempts
to find her a husband, but on dedicating herself to God at Beaulieu
she was over-whelmed by every species of spiritual trial. At one
time she was beset with misgivings that the life she was leading
was too easy and comfortable, at another she had to struggle against
endless temptations to go back to the world and enjoy its pleasures.
She seems, in consequence, to have fallen into a state of intense depression
which showed itself in her countenance and behaviour to a degree which
the other sisters found intensely irritating. They gave her
in consequence a very bad time. They declared that she was either
a hypocrite or out of her mind. They not only treated her themselves
as an object of ridicule, but they brought in outsiders to look
at her and encouraged them to mimic and make fun of her as though
she were crazy.
In all this time, obtaining help occasionally from
some visiting confessor who seemed to understand her
state, she was growing dearer to God and in the end was privileged
to enjoy many unusual mystical favours. It is alleged that
one year on the feast of All Saints she fell into an ecstasy in
which she continued without taking any nourishment at all until
St Cecilia’s day, three weeks later. Again, we hear of a fragment
of the Blessed Sacrament being brought to her by an angel from a
church eight miles away. The priest who was celebrating there thought
that through some carelessness of his this portion of the Host which
he had broken off had slipped off the corporal and been lost. In great
distress he came to ask Sister Flora about it, since her gift of spiritual
discernment was widely known. But she smiled and comforted him, leaving
him with the conviction that she herself had received what had disappeared
from the altar. It must be confessed that this story bears a suspicious
resemblance to a similar incident which occurs in the Life of St Catherine
of Siena. Again, when meditating on the Holy Ghost, one Whit Sunday
at Mass, Flora is said to have been raised four feet from the ground
and to have hung suspended in the air for some time while all were looking
on. But perhaps the most curious of her mystical experiences was her
feeling that a rigid cross to which our Saviour’s body was attached
was inside her. The arms of the cross seemed to pierce her ribs and
caused a copious flow of blood which sometimes flowed from
her mouth, sometimes escaped through a wound in her side. Many instances
were apparently reported of her inexplicable or prophetic knowledge
of matters of which she could not naturally have learnt anything. She
died in 1347 at the age of thirty-eight, and many miracles are believed
to have been worked at her tomb.
The Bollandists were at first unable to procure any
detailed information regarding St Flora, but eventually
a Latin version was sent them, made in 1709, of a life
which existed at Beaulieu in Old French. It is printed as
an appendix in the Acta Sanctorum, June,
vol. ii. The Old French text was printed in Analecta Bollandiana,
vol. lxiv (1946), pp. 5—49. It was made before 1482 from a
lost Latin original, said to have been written by the saint’s
confessor. See also C. Lacarrière, Vie de Ste
Flore ou Fleur (1866); and Analecta jurispontificii.
vol. xviii (1879), pp. 1—27. The cult of St Flora has received
a sort of indirect confirmation in the fact that the Holy See
has approved an office in her honour, used in the diocese of Cahors.
St. Flora, Virgin,
Patron of the abandoned, of converts, single laywomen,
and victims of betrayal.
Flora was born in France about the year 1309.
She was a devout child and later resisted all attempts on the part
of her parents to find a husband for her.
In 1324, she entered
the Priory of Beaulieu of the Hospitaller nuns of
St. John of Jerusalem. Here she was beset with many and diverse
trials, fell into a depressed state, and was made sport
of by some of her religious sisters. However, she never
ceased to find favor with God and was granted many unusual and mystical
favors.
One year on the feast
of All Saints, she fell into an ecstasy and took no
nourishment until three weeks later on the feast of St.
Cecelia.
On another occasion,
while meditating on the Holy Spirit, she was raised four feet from the ground and
hung in the air in full view of many onlookers.
She also seemed to
be pierced with the arms of Our Lord's cross, causing
blood to flow freely at times from her side and at others,
from her mouth.
Other instances of
God's favoring of his servant were also reported,
concerning prophetic knowledge of matters of which she could
not naturally know.
Through it all,
St. Flora remained humble and in complete communion
with her Divine Master, rendering wise counsel to all who
flocked to her because of her holiness and spiritual discernment.
In 1347, she was called to her eternal reward and many miracles were worked at her tomb.
|
1348 Blessed Silvester
Ventura age of 40 he joined the Camaldolese at Santa Maria
degli Angeli at Florence as a lay brother cook favored with ecstasies
heavenly visions, angels were wont to come and cook for him spiritual
advice was in great demand, OSB Cam. (AC)
1348 BD SILVESTER
OF VALDISEVE
A CARDER and bleacher of wool by trade, Bd
Silvester (whose baptismal name was Ventura) was born near Florence.
In middle life he came under the influence of a certain Brother
Jordan, and at the age of forty he entered the Camaldolese monastery
of St Mary in Florence as a lay-brother. There he was cook. Although
he was totally uneducated, he was so liberally endowed with infused
wisdom that he was often consulted by learned men, notably by
Bd Simon of Cascia, who stated that he had been enlightened
by him on at least one hundred abstruse theological points. The prior
would frequently seek his advice, as did also the monks, who treasured
up many of his wise sayings.
He used to dissuade them from undertaking extraordinary
and prolonged penitential exercises as tending to pride; the
discipline, he declared, should be taken with moderation, humility
and devotion. When a monk told him that he was troubled with carnal
thoughts, the holy man made light of it and remarked that it was
only what was to be expected; but when another brother acknowledged
that he had been murmuring, Silvester took the matter very seriously.
He asked how he, a servant of Almighty God, could do such a thing
and entreated him to cure himself of that vice in this life, that he
might not have to atone for it in eternity.
He never learnt to read; but Silvester had
so great a devotion to the Divine Office-which he could hear-that
he expressed wonder that the hearts of men could remain unbroken
at the sound of words so sweet and so sublime. In accordance with
his own prediction, the good lay-brother passed away on the day that
a beloved sister of the name of Paula died in the neighbouring convent
of St Margaret. He was seventy years of age.
In the Acta Sanctorum, June, vol. ii, will be
found a short life of Bd Silvester, translated from the Italian
of Fr Zenobius, and also an interesting poem in the original
Italian, recounting the more striking features of Bd Silvester's
character and history.
Born in Florence, Italy; Silvester
was a carder and bleacher of wool by trade. At the age of 40
he joined the Camaldolese at Santa Maria degli Angeli at Florence
as a lay brother and served the community as cook. He was favored
with ecstasies and heavenly visions, and the angels were wont
to come and cook for him. His spiritual advice was in great demand
(Benedictines)
|
1350 BD ANTONY OF AMANDOLA commended for his patience and for his charity towards the poor,
and a great number of miracles are reported to have been wrought
at his intercession
Bd ANTONY seems to have
been born not far from Ascoli Piceno, about the year 1300. Rejoined
the Augustinians in 1306, the year that St Nicholas of Tolentino went
to his reward, and he is said to have tried to copy the example of
that great luminary of the order during the whole of his religious life.
He is especially commended for his patience and for his charity towards
the poor, and a great number of miracles are reported to have been wrought
at his intercession. He died in 1350, and is said to have been ninety
years old. His body lies at Amandola, and his feast is kept not only
by the Augustinian friars but at Ancona and throughout the neighbouring
district.
See J. F. Stadler,
Heiligen-Lexikon (1861).
|
1350 Bd John Of Rieti
joined the Hermits of St Augustine (Austin friars)
at Rieti. He was ever at the service of his neighbour,
especially the sick and strangers, and delighted to
wait on guests who came to the monastery; he spent
long hours in contemplation and especially valued the opportunities
provided by serving Mass in the friary church for loving converse
with God. He had the gift of tears, not only
for his own faults but for those of others; when walking in
the garden he would say, "How can one not weep? his holy life and
the miracles taking place at his tomb were the cause of a cultus
which persisted
John Bufalari
was born about the beginning of the fourteenth century
at Castel Porziano in Umbria, brother to Bd Lucy of Amelia. Little is known
of his life, except that it was uneventful, but none the less significant
in that he grew daily in grace and virtue. He early determined
to leave the world and joined the Hermits of St Augustine (Austin
friars) at Rieti. He was ever at the service of his
neighbour, especially the sick and strangers, and delighted
to wait on guests who came to the monastery; he spent
long hours in contemplation and especially valued the opportunities
provided by serving Mass in the friary church for loving converse
with God. He had the gift of tears, not only for his own
faults but for those of others; when walking in the garden he
would say, "How can one not weep? For we see all
around us trees and grass and flowers and plants germinating,
growing, producing their fruit, and dying back again into the earth
in accordance with the laws of their Creator: while men, to whom
God has given a reasoning intelligence and the promise of a transcendent
reward, continually oppose His will." A simple reflection
whose force, if rightly understood, is not lessened by the consideration
that the vegetable creation could not do otherwise if it would.
The exact date of the death of Bd John is not known, but his holy
life and the miracles taking place at his tomb were the cause of a cultus
which persisted and was formally confirmed in 1832.
See Torelli, Secoli Agostiniani, vol. ii, and P. Seeböck,
Die Herrlichkeit
day Katholischen Kirche (1900), pp. 299-300.
|
1350 Chukhloma
Icon of the Mother of God of Galich appeared in the year 1350 to
St Abraham of Galich, who came there from the north for ascetical labors
with the blessing of St Sergius of Radonezh.
The icon is also commemorated
on May 28, July 4, and August 15.
On the wild shores of the Galich
lake near the large mountain, hidden in the dense
forest, he turned with prayer to the Mother of God, asking
Her blessing for his endeavors. After completing his
prayer the saint sat down to rest, and suddenly a bright light
appeared on the nearby mountainside and he heard a voice:
"Abraham, come up the mountain, where there is an icon of My Mother."
The monk
went up the mountain where the light shone, and indeed
found an icon of the Mother of God with the Infant on a tree.
With tenderness and in gratitude to God, the holy ascetic
took the revealed icon and, strengthened by prayers to the
Most Holy Theotokos, he built a chapel at that place, in which
he put the icon.
After a
certain time the Galich prince Demetrius Feodorovich,
learned about the Elder's trip, and asked him to bring
the icon. St Abraham rowed across the Galich lake in
a boat and, accompanied by clergy and a throng of people,
he took the wonderworking icon to the cathedral church of the
city of Galich.
On this
day a large number of the sick were healed by this
icon. When St Abraham told about the appearance of the icon,
the Prince offered money to build a monastery. Soon a church
was built in honor of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos,
around which a monastery grew. St Abraham founded several
more monasteries, the last being founded was the Chukhloma,
not far from the city of Chukhloma, from the name of this monastery
the ascetic was named "of Chukhloma," and the wonderworking
icon became known as the Chukhloma Icon of Galich.
|
1350 St. Francis of Pesaro miracle worker known
for his holiness. He founded the Confraternity of
Mercy, a hospice Franciscan tertiary of Pesaro,
Italy.
He lived
in a community and was known for his holiness. He
founded the Confraternity of Mercy, a hospice, and was a
miracle worker. Pope Pius IX confirmed his cult. |
1358 BD GERTRUDE OF DELFT,
VIRGIN stigmata knowledge of people’s thoughts, distant and future events.
MUCH interest attaches
to the life of this mystic, who was first a servant-maid
and afterwards a béguine
at Delft
in Holland. Béguines are not, strictly speaking,
members of a religious order, though they dwell in a settlement
apart, perform their religious exercises in common, and
make profession of chastity and obedience. But they are not
vowed to poverty, and they live in little separate houses,
each with one or two companions, occupied for the most part in
active good works in her early days Gertrude had been engaged to
be married to a man who left her for another girl, causing great
anguish of mind to the betrothed he had forsaken. Seeing the providence
of God in this disappointment, she turned her thoughts to other
things, and afterwards generously befriended the rival who had
somewhat treacherously stolen her lover.
As the crown of a life now spent in contemplation
and austerity, our Lord was pleased to honour her,
on Good Friday 1340,
with the marks of His sacred wounds. We read that
a holy friend named Lielta had already foretold this privileged
state to her, and also that she had experienced a very
curious bodily manifestation in the Christmas season of the
previous year. When the stigmata were thus given her, apparently
as a permanent mark of God’s favour, they used to bleed seven
times every day. She confided to her fellow béguine Diewerdis
the news of this strange wonder.
Naturally the tidings spread,
and very soon crowds came, not only from Delft, but from all the country
round to behold the marvel. This destroyed all privacy and recollection,
and so Gertrude implored our Lord to come to her
aid. The stigmata consequently ceased to bleed, but
the marks persisted. For the eighteen years she remained
on earth she led a very suffering life, but she seems, like
other mystics who have been similarly favoured with these outward
manifestations, to have possessed a strange knowledge of people’s
thoughts and of distant and future events, of which her biographer
gives instances. The name “van Oosten”, by which
she is known in the place of a surname, is stated
to have come to her from her fond repetition of an old
Dutch hymn beginning, Het daghet in den
Oosten (“The day is breaking
in the east”). There seems a curious appropriateness
in the fact that she died (1358) on the feast of the Epiphany
when the wise men came from the east to greet their infant
Saviour. “I am longing”, she said a few minutes before her
death, “I am longing to go home.”
See the life in the Acta Sanctorum, January 6. A short Dutch text was
published at Amsterdam in 1879 by Alberdingk Thijm in
Verspreide Verhalen
in Prosa, vol. i, pp. 54—60.
The hymn, Het daqhet in den
Oosten, has been printed
by Hoffmann von Fallersieben in his Horae Belgicae.
|
1367 Blessed
John (Giovanni) Colombini, Founded Gesuati lay brothers approved in 1367;
rich Sienese merchant held position of 1st magistrate (gonfalionere); ambitious,
avaricious, ill-tempered man converted while reading conversion story of
Saint Mary of Egypt in the The Lives of the Saints (RM)
Senis, in Túscia, natális beáti Joánnis
Columbíni, qui fuit Institútor Ordinis Jesuatórum,
et sanctitáte ac miráculis cláruit.
At Siena in Tuscany, the birthday of blessed John
Colombini, founder of the Order of Gesuati, renowned for sanctity and miracles.
Born in Siena, Italy, c. 1300; beatified by
Pope Gregory XIII. If John Colombini can win God's favor, there is hope for
all of us. By all accounts, this rich Sienese merchant who held the position
of first magistrate (gonfalionere) was an ambitious, avaricious, and ill-tempered
man. He himself was converted while reading the story of the conversion
of Saint Mary of Egypt in the The Lives
of the Saints. Thereafter, he devoted himself to works of charity
and founded a society of lay brothers called the Gesuati, which were approved
in 1367--just 37 days before his death (Benedictines, Encyclopedia).
In art, Blessed John has a short
beard, white habit, dark leather belt, and bare feet. Generally, he has
IHS on his breast (Roeder). He is venerated in Siena (Roeder).
More than two-thirds of this saint's years on earth had passed
before he began to live other than a worldly life; he inclined to avarice,
was ambitious, and gave way to a bad temper without scruple. He was born
about 1304 in Siena, and as a successful merchant married Biagia Cerretani,
by whom he had two children. One day, after being taken up the whole morning
with business he came home, much fatigued, and not finding dinner ready,
flew into a rage. His wife (perhaps from a human point of view a little
tactlessly) put a book of saints' lives into his hands; but he threw it
on the ground. The next moment, being ashamed of his temper, he took it
up again, and sitting down to read, fell on the life of St Mary of Egypt.
He read it with so much interest that he forgot his dinner, and his wife
in her turn was kept waiting, but she had the sense not to draw attention
to the fact. The reading did its work and made a way for the grace of God,
and he found his heart pierced with remorse for his past sins and unthinking
conduct.
Being sensible that the first sacrifice which God requires
of a sinner is that of a contrite and humble heart, he spent much time
in prayer and penitential exercises. He sold his rich clothes and
furniture, giving the money to the poor; he slept on a bench, and his house
seemed converted into a hospital, so great was the number of the poor and
sick that he caused to be brought thither and attended. In defiance
of the iron laws of economics and the general custom of traders, he even
bought goods for more than was asked and sold them for less than market
price. Naturally, every one was astonished at so great a change. One
day seeing a leper lying at the door of the church, the saint carried him
to his own home, attending him till he had overcome the abhorrence which
naturally besets man at the sight of so loathsome a disease, and continued
his care of this patient till he was able to be removed. It was said
by some that the leper disappeared miraculously, leaving only a heavenly
fragrance.
But
John's good wife was by no means pleased at the excess of his conversion,
and would often remonstrate with him to be more prudent. And
when he answered, "You prayed to God that I might become charitable and
good, and now you are annoyed because I make a little amends for my avarice
and other sins", she would reply, "I prayed for rain, but this is a flood".
After some years, their son having died and their daughter become
a nun, Biagia agreed to let him go his ways without hindrance. He thereupon
divided his fortune between a convent, a hospital and a confraternity of
women, the gifts being first charged with the proper maintenance of his wife,
and having thus reduced himself to poverty he gave himself up to serve the
poor in the hospitals, and to the exercises of devotion and penance.
Bd John was joined in this renunciation by Francis
Vincenti, who had been his partner in good works, and several others became
his faithful imitators and companions. There seems to have been a strong
element of "fools for Christ's sake" in their earlier practices. They exhorted
to repentance and fervour in the divine service; and the charity and disinterestedness
with which they ministered corporal relief and comfort gave great force
to their instructions. When members of respectable families threw in their
lot with them, the Sienese authorities became alarmed and John was banished.
He therefore left the city with some followers and visited Arezzo, Città
di Castello, Viterbo and other places: in the last-named they were given
the nickname Gesuati, "Jesuats",
because of their devotion to the Holy Name and frequent ejaculation of "Praise
be to Jesus Christ". They converted many to a Christian life (including
an episcopal notary, who joined the band), brought about the restitution
of goods and reputations, and composed long-standing quarrels.
Bd John had been recommended to obtain
ecclesiastical sanction for his activities, but on being assured by the bishop
of Città di Castello that they were doing nothing irregular, the
matter was let drop: "they were poor, simple, and right-minded men, with
no material cares, and so they might well leave all in God's hands".
In 1367, however, Pope Urban V came to Viterbo on his way back from Avignon,
and John and his followers, crowned with garlands and carrying
olive branches, but dressed in rags, went to meet him, soliciting an audience.
This was granted and the pope was greatly impressed, but considered it advisable
to order Cardinal William Sudre and others to examine John and the life of
the brothers, as they were now accused by some of holding the errors of the
Fraticelli. Of this they
were acquitted, and Pope Urban approved the Jesuats as a new
congregation under the formal title of Apostolic
Clerics of St Jerome, because of their particular veneration for
that saint. In spite of this name they were to be an institute of lay-brothers,
whose life was to be one of great physical austerity and devoted to the care
of the sick and burial of the dead, and they were to be dispersed among the
towns and villages. Only a few days later, when the brothers were gathered
together by the Lake of Bolsena, their founder was taken ill; he was taken
to Acquapendente, where he received the last sacraments, and then they tried
to remove him to Siena, but he died on the way. In the presence of his wife
and his spiritual children he was buried at the convent of SS. Abundio and
Abundanzio ("Santa Bonda"), wherein his daughter had died and
which by his influence had been brought back to the observance of common
life. His friend and companion, Francis Vincenti, died a fortnight later.
John Colombini's name was inserted in the Roman Martyrology
by Pope Gregory XIII. His congregation
flourished for a time, and then began to languish; in 1606 an attempt was
made to revive it by allowing members to be in priest's orders, but sixty-two
years later it was entirely suppressed by Pope Clement IX, it being no
longer useful to the Church because of the fewness of its members.
Some of Bd John's letters are still extant, and in his life
of the saint, written in 1449, Feo Belcari, a Florentine citizen, has reported
some of his exhortations. They are full of evangelical fervour and show
strongly the influence of the earlier Franciscans.
A short life by Bd John Tossignano (see above, July
24), has been printed by Mansi among the Miscellanea of Baluzius (vol. iv,
pp. 566-571). In the Acta Sanctorum,
July, vol. vii, is a seventeenth -century biography compiled by Fr J. B.
Rossi, together with much other illustrative matter. The Florentine poet
Feo Belcari in 1449 also wrote a life of Bd John in Italian prose of great
literary merit-see R. Chiarini, who in 1904 brought out a new edition-which
is not without some historical value. It is possible even that Belcari had
previously translated Tossignano's Compendio, though L. Albertazzi thinks
otherwise. P. Misciatelli has published 114 letters written by John Colombini,
many of them previously unknown; they appeared as vol. viii in the series
of Libri della Fede issued at Florence
under the direction of G. Papini. There are some modern popular lives, notably
that by the Countess de Rambutesu in French (1893). Father Delehaye in his
Legendes Hagiographiques
has called attention to the curious coincidence that July 31 is the heavenly
birthday both of St Ignatius Loyola and
Bd John Colombini, the one the founder of the Jesuitae, the other of the Jesusate. Both were converted from a
worldly career by reading the lives of the saints, both established a religious
order, and while the earlier order was suppressed by Clement IX that of St
Ignatius was suppressed by Clement XIV, though it was subsequently restored
by Pius VII .
|
1361
BD PETER PETRONI he is said to have
been favoured by God with marvellous graces and with preternatural knowledge;
wonders reported at his tomb threatened to disrupt the peace
of the monastery so they ceased.
IN the Carthusian Order Peter Petroni of Siena is held in great veneration.
Born of a distinguished family in that city, he seems to have manifested
from his earliest childhood an extraordinary attraction for the things of
God. He loved to go apart and pray, and sought out little ragamuffins in
the streets to teach them and relieve their needs, spoiling his rich clothes,
so his parents complained, by living in such company. When the Carthusian
monastery of Maggiano was built near by through the munificence of one of
his relatives, he was eager to enter there, and in spite of opposition he
accomplished his purpose at the age of seventeen. His superiors wished him
later to be ordained priest, but he so shrank from the responsibilities entailed
that, after all his remonstrances had proved fruitless, he chopped off the
index finger of his left hand to render himself for ever disqualified for
ordination. His life was marked by what might seem an almost fanatical determination
to have nothing to do with his own family; on the other hand he is said
to have been favoured by God with marvellous graces and with preternatural
knowledge. Shortly before his death he commissioned a devoted protégé
of his, Gioacchino Ciani, to warn the famous humanist, Boccaccio, that unless
he gave up his wanton literary work and mended his life, God would very
soon summon him to juggernaut. The message was delivered; Boccaccio demurred,
but when Ciani proceeded to remind him of secrets in his past, which were
known to no human being, but which he had learnt from Pd Peter’s disclosures,
the scholar was converted. Peter died on May 29, 1361, and the wonders reported
at his tomb threatened to disrupt the peace of the monastery so they ceased.
There is an
Italian life of Bd Peter, written at least in part by his disciple, Bd John
Colombini, which has been translated into Latin in the Acta
Sanctorum, May, vol. vii. See also the Annales Ordinis
Cartusiensis, by Dom Le Couteulx, vols. v, vi and vii. the conversion
of Boccaccio is confirmed by his correspondence with Petrarch.
|
1365 BD HENRY SUSO
have preached for thirty-seven years, converting many sinners
and working miracles.
The
fourteenth century was a period of remarkable spiritual
activity in Germany, where the religious revival took the
form of a pronounced mysticism. Most of its chief exponents came,
either directly or indirectly, under the influence of the Dominican,
Meister Eckhart, and were to be found, sometimes in convents,
sometimes as itinerant prophets, and sometimes as the heads
of small societies of people calling themselves friends of God,
who lived more or less in the world without being of it and who devoted
much time to religion and to good works. The teaching of these leaders
was propagated through their writings, through their preaching,
and also through table-talks which seem rather to have corresponded
to modern retreat-addresses. Of all Eckhart’s pupils perhaps
the most famous was Henry Suso.
His
real name was Von Berg, but he preferred to be known
by the surname, Seuse, of his mother, a very holy woman
who suffered much at the hands of her dissolute husband.
The date of his birth is uncertain and all we know of his early
years is derived from a paragraph in his autobiography (but cf. below) where, writing of himself as he
always does in the third person, he says: “In his childhood it had
been his custom when the beautiful summer came and the tender flowrets
first began to spring up, never to pluck or touch a flower until
he had greeted, with the gift of his first flowers, his spiritual
love, the sweet blooming rosy maid, God’s mother.” At the age of
thirteen he entered the Dominican priory at Constance, which town,
as Bihlmeyer has shown, was also his birthplace. The building, which
was beautifully situated on a small island at the point where the Rhine
flows out of the lake, is still in existence, but now serves as a factory.
Here he remained until he had been professed, when he was transferred
to Cologne that he might study at the studium generale
in that city. For several years he appears to have lived a
somewhat careless life, satisfied with the avoidance of any gross
or serious sin, but in his eighteenth year he received what he describes
as “a secret illumination and drawing sent by God” which “speedily
wrought in him a turning away from creatures”. “Forsake all” were
the words that rang in his ears, and he determined to obey at
once, making no reservations. In vain did the Devil seek to deter him
by maxims of worldly wisdom, suggesting that his conversion was too
rapid, that he could not count upon corresponding to grace, that perseverance
was impossible, and that moderation was the secret of success.
Heavenly wisdom taught him how to meet these suggestions and how to
overcome them.
Bd
Henry was wonderfully moved to make himself “the
servant of the Eternal Wisdom”, whom he beheld afar off
in vision (one thinks of Solovyev half a millennium
later); his veneration for the Holy Name caused him to cut its
letters in his flesh; his deep love for the Mother of God, his whole
highly-charged religious outlook, expressed themselves in ways
that are loosely called “mystical”, sometimes touching, sometimes
perhaps rather extravagant. In the same spirit he inflicted on
himself bodily penances of the greatest severity, exercising upon
them an ingenuity that in later times would seem somewhat morbid.
Besides these physical mortifications, Henry Suso was tormented
by inner sufferings in the shape of imaginations against faith, intense
sadness or nervous depression and a haunting fear that he was doomed
to lose his soul whatever he might do. He says of himself: “After
the terrible suffering had lasted about ten years, during which
period he never looked upon himself in any other light than as one
damned, he went to the holy Master Eckhart and made known to him his
suffering. The holy man delivered him from it and thus set him free
from the hell in which he had so long dwelt.!” The time also came—when
Bd Henry was about forty years old—when he gave up his outward mortifications,
for God showed him that these practices were but a beginning and that
he must now press on in quite another direction if he wished to reach
perfection. Instead of remaining at home and cultivating his own soul
only, he must now go forth to save his neighbour. It was also revealed
to him that, though he was freed from the crosses he had borne in the
past, there were others in store for him. Whereas he had afflicted himself
at will, he would he afflicted and persecuted by others, meeting with
ingratitude and losing his good name and his friends.
Suso
had distinguished himself when a student at Cologne,
and now that he began to go forth preaching his learning
and eloquence brought him many disciples of both sexes.
He is said to have preached for thirty-seven years, converting
many sinners and working miracles. On one occasion, when he
was speaking at Cologne, the congregation were amazed to see
his face shining like the sun. Nevertheless trouble followed him
wherever he went. Upon the flimsy accusation of a child he was
charged with theft and sacrilege, at another time he was suspected
of poisoning, and elsewhere he was accused of faking a miracle
and was obliged to fly for his life. In the Netherlands he was
reprimanded for writing heretical books, and although he was afterwards
exculpated his distress at the charge brought on a serious illness.
His sister, a nun, fell into grievous sin and ran away from her
convent; he never rested until he had found her, and after bringing
her to repentance placed her in another community where she died
a holy death. Another of his efforts to reclaim an erring woman
did not turn out so well. A sinner who had placed herself under
his direction had professed to be leading a better life, but when
he discovered that she was continuing her evil ways he refused to continue
to assist her with alms. In revenge she accused him of being the
father of her child, and the charge seems to have been believed. Perhaps
his own charitable action may have seemed to substantiate it, for when
someone took to him the baby whom its mother had abandoned he
received it lovingly and adopted it until he could find it a suitable
home. In view of the scandal, the master general of the order caused
an inquiry to be made into the matter, and the truth being established
his character was vindicated.
At a time when his monastery
was burdened with debt, Suso was elected prior. Instead
of seeking to raise money by begging or borrowing, he ordered
a special Mass to be said in honour of St Dominic, trusting
to the saint’s dying promise never to abandon his children. The
other friars murmured: “The prior must be crazy. Does he think
God will send food and drink from heaven?” As Bd Henry was still
standing in choir, deep in thought, he was called out to receive a
gift of twenty pounds of Constance money from a canon who had been
admonished by God to come to
his assistance. Not only did the monastery wipe off its debt, but
it never lacked provisions during his term of office.
Bd
Henry died at Ulm, on January 25, 1365, and was buried
in the Dominican convent. It has been maintained that
two hundred and forty years later his body was accidentally
disinterred by workmen and was found incorrupt, wearing the
Dominican habit. There is, however, no serious evidence for this
identification. The burgomaster ordered the body to be covered
up again) and all traces of it have been lost. The cultist of Bd Henry was confirmed in 1831.
Suso
left several devotional books of great beauty, one
of which, The Book of Eternal
Wisdom, was extraordinarily popular during
the latter part of the middle ages. His so-called “autobiography”
is said to have been preserved to us by his spiritual daughter,
Elizabeth Stagel, of the Dominican convent of Toss, near
Winterthur. Consisting mainly of materials supplied by him,
it shows evident marks of having been edited by someone other
than himself—so much so that of late years the authenticity
of the whole has been called in question. His books record some of
the many occasions when the veil between this world and the next
was lifted for him. Not only had he visions of our Lord, the Blessed
Virgin and the saints, but many of those whom he had known appeared
to him after death—notably his parents, Elizabeth Stagel and his
beloved teacher Eckhart, whom he beheld in glory. In reply to
his question asking how he might attain to eternal happiness, the
master replied in words which might serve as an epitome of the life
of Suso himself: “To die to self in
perfect detachment, to receive everything as from God, and to maintain
unruffled patience with all men, however brutal or churlish they may
be.”
Both the life
and the writings of Bd Henry Suso have of late years
given rise to much discussion. Those interested may be
referred for fuller information to the third part of Xavier
de Hornstein’s very painstaking volume Let grands
mystiques allemandes du XIVe
siècle (1922). It
contains a clear statement of conflicting views with
a good bibliography. See also Wilms, Der s. Heinrich Seuse R. Zeller, Le bx Henri Suso (1922) and J. Ancelet-Hustache,
Le bx Henri Suso (1943). Several editions
of Suso’s works have appeared since Father Denifle in a 1880
brought out the first critical text of Die deutschen
Schriften. That of K. Bihlmeyer (1907) may be specially
recommended both for the writings themselves and for the introduction
thereto. There is an excellent French translation of the OEuvres mystiques by Father Thiriot; and
see B. Lavaud, L’oeuvre mystique de Henri Suso
(3 vols., 1946). In English, the translation of the “Autobiography”
made many years ago by Father T. F. Knox, after falling out of
copyright, was reprinted by other publishers with an introduction
by Dean Inge “S.M.C.” in Henry Suso Mystic, Saint and
Poet, brings out his relevance to our times. There is
an English translation by R Raby of the Horologium
Sapientiae (1868), and of its shorter original
form, The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, with
The Little Book of Truth
(1952), by J. M Clark, who has also translated
The Life of the Servant
(1951), that is, Suso’s autobiography. See also J.
A. Bizet, Henri Suso et le déclin de La
scolastique (1947).
|
1367 Blessed James of
Cerqueto Many miracles occurred at his tomb OSA (AC)
Born in Cerqueto (near Perugia), Italy; cultus
approved in 1895. James joined the Augustinian friar hermits in Perugia.
Many miracles occurred at his tomb (Attwater2, Benedictines).
1367
BD JAMES OF CERQUETO
HISTORY has little to tell concerning Bd James of Cerqueto, who
entered the order of the Hermits of St Augustine at Perugia when still
very young and lived until extreme old age a life almost entirely devoted
to prayer. It was to his prayers that his brethren attributed the permission
they received sometimes to wear white habits in honour of the Blessed Virgin.
Like many other saints who have led the eremitic life he had great power
over animals. During his open-air preaching it was noticed that the very
frogs ceased their croaking at his bidding, to allow his words to be heard
by those for whom they were intended. He died in the church of St Augustine
at Perugia on April 17, 1367. Owing to the number of miracles reported as
having taken place at his tomb, Horatius, bishop of Perugia, caused his body
to be enshrined in 1754 and carried in solemn procession through the city.
The cultus of Bd James was confirmed in 1895. The decree, giving
a brief sketch of his life, may be found in the Analecta
Ecclesiastica for 1895, pp. 253—254. A short account of the
beato was printed in the same year by A.
Rotelli, Ii beato Giacomo da Cerqueto.
|
1367 Blessed Sibyllina
Biscossi blind (at 12) but saw Saint Dominic in ecstasy worked MANY GOOD
miracles as an anchorite for 67 years OP Tert. (AC)
(also known as Sybillina)
Born in Pavia, Italy, in 1287; cultus approved
in 1853; beatified in 1854.
"All things work for the good
of those who love the Lord and are called according
to His purpose" (Romans 8:28). How many of us would have the
faith to trust in God's providence as did this holy woman? As
Mother Angelica has witnessed, true faith is knowing that when
the Lord asks you to walk into the void, He will place a rock beneath
your feet. True faith is to be able to praise God in all things;
to say with Job, "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be
the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21).
Sybillina's parents died when
she was tiny and as soon as she was old enough to be
of use to anyone, the neighbors, who had taken her in at the
time she was orphaned, put her out to work. She must have been
very young when she started to work, because at the age of 12,
when she became blind and could not work any more, she already
had several years of work behind her.
The cause of her blindness
is unknown, but the child was left doubly destitute with
the loss of her sight. The local chapter of the Dominican
tertiary sisters took compassion on the child and brought her
home to live with them. After a little while of experiencing
their kind help, she wanted to join them. They accepted her, young
though she was, more out of pity than in any hope of her being able
to carry on their busy and varied apostolate.
They were soon agreeably surprised
to find out how much she could do. She learned to chant
the Office quickly and sweetly, and to absorb their teaching
about mental prayer as though she had been born for it. She imposed
great obligations of prayer on herself, since she could not
help them in other ways. Her greatest devotion was to Saint Dominic, and it was to him
she addressed herself when she finally became convinced that she
simply must have her sight back so that she could help the sisters
with their work.
Praying earnestly for this
intention, Sybillina waited for his feast day. Then,
she was certain, he would cure her. Matins came and went with
no miracle; little hours, Vespers--and she was still blind.
With a sinking heart, Sybillina knelt before Saint Dominic's
statue and begged him to help her. Kneeling there, she was rapt
in ecstasy, and she saw him come out of the darkness and take her
by the hand.
He took her to a dark tunnel
entrance, and she went into the blackness at his word.
Terrified, but still clinging to his hand, she advanced past
invisible horrors, still guided and protected by his presence.
Dawn came gradually, and then light, then a blaze of glory. "In
eternity, dear child," he said. "Here, you must suffer darkness
so that you may one day behold eternal light."
Sybillina, the eager child,
was replaced by a mature and thoughtful Sybillina who
knew that there would be no cure for her, that she must work
her way to heaven through the darkness. She decided to become a
anchorite, and obtained the necessary permission. In 1302,
at the age of 15, she was sealed into a tiny cell next to the Dominican
church at Pavia. At first she had a companion, but her fellow recluse
soon gave up the life. Sybillina remained, now alone, as well
as blind.
The first seven years were
the worst, she later admitted. The cold was intense,
and she never permitted herself a fire. The church, of course,
was not heated, and she wore the same clothes winter and summer.
In the winter there was only one way to keep from freezing--keep
moving--so she genuflected, and gave herself the discipline. She
slept on a board and ate practically nothing. To the tiny window,
that was her only communication with the outside world, came the
troubled and the sinful and the sick, all begging for her help. She
prayed for all of them, and worked many miracles in the lives of the
people of Pavia.
One of the more amusing requests
came from a woman who was terrified of the dark. Sybillina
was praying for her when she saw her in a vision, and observed
that the woman--who thought she was hearing things--put on a
fur hood to shut out the noise. The next day the woman came to
see her, and Sybillina laughed gaily. "You were really scared
last night, weren't you?" she asked. "I laughed when I saw you pull
that hood over your ears." The legend reports that the woman was
never frightened again.
Sybillina had a lively sense
of the Real Presence and a deep devotion to the Blessed
Sacrament. One day a priest was going past her window with
Viaticum for the sick; she knew that the host was not consecrated,
and told him so. He investigated, and found he had indeed taken a
host from the wrong container.
Sybillina lived as a recluse
for 67 years. She followed all the Masses and Offices
in the church, spending what few spare minutes she had working
with her hands to earn a few alms for the poor (Attwater2,
Benedictines, Dorcy).
1367 BD SIBYLLINA OF PAVIA, VIRGIN
SIBYLLINA Biscossi,
left an orphan in early childhood, constrained to earn
her bread as a servant-maid before she was ten years old,
unable to read or write, and afflicted with total blindness
at the age of twelve, can have known little of comfort or joy
in the sense which the world attaches to these terms. When her
blindness rendered her incapable of doing any useful work, some
kind Dominican tertiaries of Pavia, in which city she was born and
died, took her to live with them. Intensely devout and full of faith,
the child was at first convinced that if she prayed hard enough
St Dominic would restore her sight. The days slipped by and nothing
happened, but at last, when all hope of cure seemed to have left her,
she had a dream, or perhaps a vision. She thought that St Dominic
took her by the hand and led her through a long, long passage in pitchy
darkness where the felt presence of evil beings would have caused her to
faint with terror had it not been for the hand-clasp of her guide. But
a glimmer of light showed itself beyond, which became more intense as
they struggled forwards, and in the end they emerged into glorious sunshine
in a home of ineffable peace. When she awoke
Sibyllina was at no loss for an interpretation. God
meant her to remain blind; and so she determined to second
the divine purposes which had already made her so pointedly
an exile in this world. She made arrangements to become a recluse
and was enclosed in an anchorage beside the Dominican church.
At first she had a companion living with her, who died after three
years and no one took her place. Sibyllina as a solitary led a life
of incredible austerity, but she lived until the age of eighty.
People of all classes came to consult her in their troubles and conversed with her through the window
of her cell, while many miracles were ascribed to her intercession.
It is recorded of her that she was specially devout to the Holy
Ghost and that she regarded Whitsunday as the greatest feast of
the year. When she died in 1367 she had been a recluse for sixty-five
years. Her body was still incorrupt in 1853 when her cult was
confirmed.
See G. M.
Pio, Delle vile degli huomini illustri di S. Domenico (1607),
cc. 467—469; Procter, Lives of the Dominican
Saints, pp. 72—74 M. C. de Ganay, Leg Bienheureuses Dominicaines, pp.
179—195.
|
1366 Hemming of Finland
canon of Abo cathedral in Helsinki bring peace to
the Hundred Years War between England and France and
to end the Avignon papacy; miracles were reported at his
tomb BM
Born at Balinge near
Uppsala, Sweden, in 1290; died May 22, 1366. After
studying theology in Paris, France, Hemming became a canon
of Abo cathedral in Helsinki, Finland, and, in 1339, its bishop.
Hemming was involved in the border disputes with Uppsala, from
where Saint Henry of Finland
evangelized Finland. He is also associated with Saint Bridget of Sweden, whom
he accompanied to France. Saint Bridget and Hemming worked
together to bring peace to the Hundred Years War between England
and France and to end the Avignon papacy.
In 1352, Hemming convened
a diocesan synod in which he demonstrated his zeal
for proper celebrations of the feasts of the Church and the
local saints of Scandinavia. He was also concerned with the
custody of the Eucharist, the administration of Church property,
and releasing poor people from the payment of stipends for
dispensations or for funerals.
Saint Hemming was buried
in his cathedral, where miracles were reported at
his tomb. In 1514, his relics were translated and enshrined.
A surviving, embroidered altar frontal survives which depicts
Saints Hemming and Bridget together as an angel holds the
mitre over the bishop's head (Farmer) . |
1367 Bd Roger Le Fort, Archbishop
Of Bourges immediately after death
tomb a place of pilgrimage many miracles worked.
Roger Le
For finds recognition in the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum
on this day, though his cult has never been formally approved.
He is said to have owed his elevation to the bishopric of
Orleans to a jest. On the day of the election he had been criticizing
the unseemly eagerness of the canons in pushing their claims without
any thought of the responsibilities and difficulties involved in
such a dignity. In mock earnest he said to one of those who were entering
the chapter-house, " I hope the electors will think of me on the
present occasion, for I too should like to be a bishop!" The canon,
taking the words seriously, informed the rest, and the whole gathering
acclaimed the name of the new candidate. The presiding prelate
then rose and said, " Brethren, Heaven and earth are witnesses that
you have made choice of Messire Roger for your bishop. Concurring
as I do with your judgement, I declare that he upon whom your
votes have fallen is the preordained pontiff of this city, for he
is a man of eminent sanctity and wisdom. Assuredly this is the decision
of the Holy Spirit, whom we cannot resist without guilt." Thereupon
Roger was unanimously elected. It was in vain that he protested that
he had only spoken in jest and that he had neither the desire nor the
ability to undertake such a charge: the voice of the people came to
ratify the choice of the clergy, and he was compelled to submit. On
his entry into Orleans at his consecration an ancient custom was revived
and all the prisoners in the city prison were released.
Roger was
afterwards translated to Limoges, and in 1343 he became
archbishop of Bourges. He is perhaps best remembered in connection
with the feast of the Conception of our Lady, which he established
in his diocese and which he did much to popularize. When he
died, at the age of ninety, it was found that he had left all his
possessions to enable poor boys to receive a good education. The
archbishop's unsullied reputation and piety had caused him to be
greatly venerated during his life, and immediately after his death
his tomb became a place of pilgrimage where many miracles were
said to be worked.
See
the Acta Sanctorum,
March, vol.
i, and Cochard, Saints de l'É
glise d'Orléans, pp. 487-495.
|
1373 BD HUGOLINO MAGALOTTI:
orphan whose life was entirely given
to manual work, contemplation and penance, and the fame of his holiness
drew many to his lonely cell. God glorified him with the gift of miracles,
and numbers of the sick were healed at his intercession.
FEW particulars
are known of the life of this holy man, whose feast is kept by the Friars
Minor. He was born near Camerino in the early part of the fourteenth century,
and was left an orphan while a young man. Thereupon he gave his patrimony
away to the poor, put on the Franciscan tertiary habit, and became a hermit.
His life was entirely given to manual work, contemplation and penance, and
the fame of his holiness drew many to his lonely cell. God glorified him
with the gift of miracles, and numbers of the sick were healed at his intercession.
He died on December 11 1373, and was buried at the
parish church of Fiegni. Pope Pius IX confirmed his cultus in 1856.
See Léon,
L’Auréole Séraphique (Eng. trans.), vol. iv, pp. 177—178, where it is stated that an old manuscript life was in existence
at the time of the beatification. We are also told that he is mentioned by
Jacobilli in his Santi e beati dell Umbria, and by
other writers of that district.
|
1373 St. Andrew
Corsini regarded as a prophet
and a thaumaturgus miracles were so multiplied
at his death that Eugenius IV permitted a public
cult immediately His feast is kept on 4
February.
Floréntiæ
natális sancti Andréæ Corsíni,
civis Florentíni, ex Ordine Carmelitárum,
Epíscopi Fæsuláni et Confessóris;
quem, miráculis clarum, Urbánus Papa Octávus
in Sanctórum númerum rétulit.
Ejus autem festívitas recólitur prídie
nonas Februárii.
At Florence, St. Andrew Corsini, a Florentine Carmelite
and bishop of Fiesole. Being celebrated for miracles,
he was ranked among the saints by Urban VIII. His
festival is kept on the 4th of February.
He was born in Florence on November 30, 1302, a
member of the powerful Corsini family. Wild in his youth,
Andrew was converted to a holy life by his mother and became
a Carmelite monk. He studied in Paris and Avignon, France,
returning to his birthplace. There he became known as the
Apostle of Florence. He was called a prophet and miracle
worker. Named as the bishop of Fiesole in 1349, Andrew fled
the honor but was forced to accept the office, which he held for
twelve years. He was sent by Pope Urban V to Bologna to settle
disputes between the nobles and commoners, a mission he performed
well. Andrew died in Fiesole on January 6, 1373. So many miracles
took place at his death that Pope Eugenius IV permitted the immediate
opening of his cause.
1373 ST ANDREW CORSINI,
BISHOP OF FIESOLE
THIS saint was called
Andrew after the apostle of that name, upon whose festival
he was born in Florence in 1302. He came of the distinguished
family of the Corsini, and we are told that his parents
dedicated him to God before his birth; but in spite of all
their care the first part of his youth was spent in vice and
extravagance, amongst bad companions.
His mother
never ceased praying for his conversion, and one day
in the bitterness of her grief she said, “I see you are
indeed the wolf I saw in my sleep,” and explained that before
he was born she dreamt she had given birth to a wolf which ran
into a church and was changed into a lamb. She added that she and
his father had devoted him to the service of God under the protection
of the Blessed Virgin, and that they expected of him a very different
sort of life from that which he was leading.
These rebukes
made a very deep impression. Overwhelmed with shame,
Andrew next day went to the church of the Carmelite
friars, and after having prayed fervently before the altar
of our Lady he was so touched by God’s grace that he resolved
to embrace the religious life in that convent. All the artifices
of his former companions, and the solicitations of an uncle who
tried to draw him back into the world, were powerless to change his
purpose: he never fell away from the first fervour of his conversion.
In the year 1328 Andrew
was ordained; but to escape the feasting and music
which his family had prepared according to custom for
the day on which he should celebrate his first Mass, he withdrew
to a little convent seven miles out of the town, and there,
unknown and with wonderful devotion, he offered to Almighty
God the first fruits of his priesthood.
After some time employed
in preaching in Florence he was sent to Paris, where
he attended the schools for three years. He continued his
studies for a while at Avignon with his uncle, Cardinal Corsini,
and in 1332, when he returned to Florence, he was chosen prior
of his convent.
God honoured his virtue
with the gift of prophecy, and miracles of healing
were also ascribed to him. Amongst miracles in the moral
order and conquests of hardened souls, the conversion of
his cousin John Corsini, a confirmed gambler, was especially
remarkable.
When the bishop of Fiesole
died in 1349 the chapter unanimously chose Andrew Corsini
to fill the vacant see. As soon, however, as he was informed
of what was going on, he hid himself with the Carthusians
at Enna: the canons, despairing of finding him, were about
to proceed to a second election when his hiding-place was revealed
by a child.
After his consecration
as bishop he redoubled his former austerities. Daily
he gave himself a severe discipline whilst he recited the
litany, and his bed was of vine branches strewed on the
floor. Meditation and reading the Holy Scriptures he called
recreation from his labours. He avoided talking with women
as much as possible, and refused to listen to flatterers or informers.
His tenderness and care for the poor were extreme, and he was
particularly solicitous in seeking out those who were ashamed
to make known their distress: these he helped with all possible
secrecy. St Andrew had, too, a talent for appeasing
quarrels, and he was often successful in restoring
order where popular disturbances had broken out. For
this reason Bd Urban V sent him to Bologna, where the nobility
and the people were miserably divided. He pacified them after
suffering much humiliation, and they remained at peace during the
rest of his life. Every Thursday he used to wash the feet of the
poor, and never turned any beggar away without alms.
St Andrew was
taken ill whilst singing Mass on Christmas night
in 1373 and died on the following
Epiphany at the age of seventy-one. He was immediately proclaimed
a saint by the voice of the people, and Pope Urban VIII formally
canonized him in 1629. Andrew was buried in the Carmelite church
at Florence; and Pope Clement XII, who belonged to the Corsini family,
built and endowed a chapel in honour of his kinsman in the Lateran
basilica. The architect of this chapel, in which Clement
himself was buried, was Alexander Galilei, who lived for some
years in England. The same pope added St Andrew Corsini to
the general calendar of the Western church, in 1737.
The two principal
Latin lives of St Andrew are printed in the Acta Sanctorum, January, vol. ii. See
also S. Mattei, Vita di S. Andrea Corsini (1872),
and the biography by P. Caioli (1929), who makes use of certain unpublished Florentine
documents.
|
1377 Bl. Villana hideous
demon in mirror wonderful visions olloquies our
Lady and saints gift of prophecy.
Blessed Villana was the daughter
of Andrew de'Botti, a Florentine merchant, and was
born in 1332. When she was thirteen she ran away from
home to enter a convent but her attempts were unsuccessful
and she was forced to return. To prevent any repetition of her
flight, her father shortly afterwards gave her in marriage to
Rosso di Piero. After her marriage she appeared completely
changed; she gave herself up to pleasure and dissipation and lived
a wholly idle and worldly life. One day, as she was about to
start for an entertainment clad in a gorgeous dress adorned with
pearls and precious stones, she looked at herself in a mirror. To her
dismay, the reflection that met her eyes was that of a hideous demon.
A second and a third mirror showed the same ugly form. Thoroughly
alarmed and recognizing in the reflection the image of herself sin-stained
soul, she tore off her fine attire and, clad in the simplest clothes
she could find, she betook herself weeping to the Dominican Fathers
at Santa Maria Novella to make a full confession and to ask absolution
and help. This proved the turning point of her life, and she never again
fell away.
Before long
Villana was admitted to the Third Order of St. Dominic,
and after this she advanced rapidly in the spiritual life.
Fulfilling all her duties as
a married woman, she spent all her available time
in prayer and reading. She particularly loved to read
St. Paul's Epistles and the lives of the saints. At one time,
in a self-abasement and in her love for the poor, she would
have gone begging for them from door to door had not her husband
and parents interposed. So completely did she give herself up
to God that she was often rapt in ecstacy, particularly during
Mass or at spiritual conferences; but she had to pass through
a period of persecution when she was cruelly calumniated and her
honor was assailed.
Her soul was also purified by
strong pains and by great bodily weakness.
However,
she passed unscathed through all these trials and
was rewarded by wonderful visions and olloquies with our Lady
and other saints. Occasionally the room in which she dwelt was
filled with supernatural light, and she was also endowed with
the gift of prophecy.
As she lay on her deathbed, she
asked that the Passion should be read to her, and at the words "He bowed His
head and gave up the ghost", she crossed her hands on her breast and passed
away. Her body was taken to Santa Maria Novella, where it became such an
object of veneration that for over a month it was impossible to proceed with
the funeral. People struggled to obtain shreds of her clothing, and she was
honored as a saint from the day of her death. Her bereaved husband use to
say that, when he felt discouraged and depressed, he found strength by visiting
the room in which his beloved wife had died. Blessed Villana's cultus
was confirmed in 1824.
1367 Blessed Sibyllina Biscossi
blind (at 12) but saw Saint Dominic in ecstasy worked MANY GOOD miracles
as an anchorite for 67 years OP Tert. (AC)
(also known
as Sybillina) Born in Pavia, Italy, in 1287; cultus
approved in 1853; beatified in 1854.
"All things work for the good of those
who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose"
(Romans 8:28).
How many of us would have the faith to trust in
God's providence as did this holy woman? As Mother Angelica
has witnessed, true faith is knowing that when the Lord asks
you to walk into the void, He will place a rock beneath your
feet. True faith is to be able to praise God in all things;
to say with Job, "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed
be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21).
Sybillina's
parents died when she was tiny and as soon as she
was old enough to be of use to anyone, the neighbors, who
had taken her in at the time she was orphaned, put her out to
work. She must have been very young when she started to work,
because at the age of 12, when she became blind and could not
work any more, she already had several years of work behind her.
The cause
of her blindness is unknown, but the child was left
doubly destitute with the loss of her sight. The local chapter
of the Dominican tertiary sisters took compassion on the child
and brought her home to live with them. After a little while
of experiencing their kind help, she wanted to join them. They
accepted her, young though she was, more out of pity than in any
hope of her being able to carry on their busy and varied apostolate.
They were
soon agreeably surprised to find out how much she
could do. She learned to chant the Office quickly and sweetly,
and to absorb their teaching about mental prayer as though
she had been born for it. She imposed great obligations of
prayer on herself, since she could not help them in other ways.
Her greatest devotion was to Saint Dominic, and it was to him
she addressed herself when she finally became convinced
that she simply must have her sight back so that she could help
the sisters with their work.
Praying earnestly for this intention,
Sybillina waited for his feast day. Then, she was
certain, he would cure her. Matins came and went with
no miracle; little hours, Vespers--and she was still blind.
With a sinking heart, Sybillina knelt before Saint Dominic's
statue and begged him to help her. Kneeling there, she was
rapt in ecstasy, and she saw him come out of the darkness and take
her by the hand.
He took
her to a dark tunnel entrance, and she went into the
blackness at his word. Terrified, but still clinging to
his hand, she advanced past invisible horrors, still guided
and protected by his presence. Dawn came gradually, and then
light, then a blaze of glory. "In eternity, dear child," he
said. "Here, you must suffer darkness so that you may one day
behold eternal light."
Sybillina,
the eager child, was replaced by a mature and thoughtful
Sybillina who knew that there would be no cure for her,
that she must work her way to heaven through the darkness.
She decided to become a anchorite, and obtained the necessary
permission. In 1302, at the age of 15, she was sealed into
a tiny cell next to the Dominican church at Pavia. At first she
had a companion, but her fellow recluse soon gave up the life.
Sybillina remained, now alone, as well as blind.
The first seven years were the
worst, she later admitted. The cold was intense,
and she never permitted herself a fire. The church, of
course, was not heated, and she wore the same clothes winter
and summer. In the winter there was only one way to keep from
freezing--keep moving--so she genuflected, and gave herself
the discipline. She slept on a board and ate practically nothing.
To the tiny window, that was her only communication with the outside
world, came the troubled and the sinful and the sick, all begging
for her help. She prayed for all of them, and worked many miracles in
the lives of the people of Pavia.
One of the
more amusing requests came from a woman who was terrified
of the dark. Sybillina was praying for her when she saw
her in a vision, and observed that the woman--who thought
she was hearing things--put on a fur hood to shut out the
noise. The next day the woman came to see her, and Sybillina
laughed gaily. "You were really scared last night, weren't
you?" she asked. "I laughed when I saw you pull that hood over your
ears." The legend reports that the woman was never frightened again.
Sybillina
had a lively sense of the Real Presence and a deep
devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. One day a priest was going
past her window with Viaticum for the sick; she knew that the host
was not consecrated, and told him so. He investigated, and found
he had indeed taken a host from the wrong container.
Sybillina lived as a recluse
for 67 years. She followed all the Masses and Offices
in the church, spending what few spare minutes she had
working with her hands to earn a few alms for the poor (Attwater2,
Benedictines, Dorcy).
|
1374 Blessed Antony of Pavoni
consistent poverty of Antony's life & example of Christian virtue combatting
heresies of Lombards OP M (AC) His tomb was
the scene of miracles
1374 BD ANTONY PAVONI, MARTYR
ANTONY Pavoni was born at Savigliano in Piedmont and entered,
while still young, the Dominican priory there. His reputation for fervour
and learning caused him to be appointed inquisitor general over Piedmont
and Liguria: as such he was called upon to refute and pass judgement
on the opponents of the faith, notably the Vaudois. In the zealous performance
of his office he made many enemies, as he himself knew full well. At Easter
1374, in the little town of Bricherasio he prophesied his own approaching
death. He bade the barber who was shaving him give him a fine tonsure because
he was invited to a marriage feast. The man who, like all those of his
trade, was well up in the local news, exclaimed in surprise that no wedding
was about to take place in the neighbourhood. “All the same I can assure
you that I am telling you the truth”, was Antony’s reply. A few days later,
on Low Sunday, as he left the church in which he had just offered Mass
and preached, he was set upon by seven armed men, who killed him. His tomb
was the scene of miracles (one of the beneficiaries being Bd Haymo Taparelli);
and the cultus was authorized in 1856.
See the Acta Sanctorum, April, vol. i, and Archivio storico italiano, 3rd series,
vol. xii, pp. 29 seq. A fuller bibliography in Taurisano,
Catalogus hagiographicus OP. There is a short English
account in Procter, Lives of the Dominican Saints, pp. 85—87.
Born in Savigliano, Italy, in 1326; died in Turino, Italy, in
1374; beatified in 1868. Antony was obviously martyred for the faith,
yet it took more than 500 years before he was even beatified. He is
still not canonized. Antony grew up to be a pious, intelligent youth.
At 15, he was received into the monastery of Savigliano, was ordained
in 1351, and almost immediately was engaged in combatting the heresies
of the Lombards.
Pope Urban V,
in 1360, appointed him inquisitor-general of Lombardy and Genoa, making
him one of the youngest men ever to hold that office. It was a difficult
and dangerous job for a young priest of 34. Besides being practically
a death sentence to any man who held the office, it carried with it the
necessity of arguing with the men most learned in a twisted and subtle
heresy. Antony worked untiringly in his native city, and his apostolate
lasted 14 years. During this time, he accomplished a great deal by his preaching,
and even more by his example of Christian virtue. He was elected prior of
Savigliano, in 1368, and given the task of building a new abbey. This he
accomplished without any criticism of its luxury--a charge that heretics
were always anxious to make against any Catholic builders.
The consistent poverty of Antony's life was a reproach
to the heretics, who had always been able to gain ground with the poor
by pointing out the wealth of religious houses. He went among the poor
and let them see that he was one of them. This so discomfited the heretics
that they decided they must kill him. He was preaching in a little village
near Turin when they caught him.
The martyrdom occurred in the Easter octave. On the
Saturday after Easter, he asked the barber to do a good job on his tonsure
because he was going to a wedding. Puzzled, the barber complied. On
the Sunday after Easter, as he finished preaching a vigorous sermon against
heresy at Brichera, seven heretics fell upon him with their daggers, and
he hurried off to the promised "wedding." He was buried in the Dominican
church at Savigliano, where his tomb was a place of pilgrimage until 1827.
At that time the relics were transferred to the Dominican church of Racconigi
(Benedictines, Dorcy).
Oddly enough, this Dominican Antony takes after his
Franciscan namesake. He is also invoked to find lost articles (Dorcy).
|
1370 Blessed
Pope Urban V deeply spiritual Benedictine monk canon lawyer
reformer
Avenióne beáti
Urbáni Papæ Quinti, qui, Sede Apostólica
Romæ restitúta, Græcórum cum Latínis
conjunctióne perfécta, infidélibus
coércitis, de Ecclésia óptime
méritus est. Ejus cultum pervetústum
Pius Nonus, Póntifex Máximus, ratum hábuit
et confirmávit.
At Avignon, blessed Urban V, who deserved well of
the Church by restoring the Apostolic See to Rome, by bringing
about a reunion of the Latins and the Greeks, and by suppressing
heretics. Pius IX approved and confirmed the veneration
which had long been paid to him.
1370 BD URBAN V, POPE
WILLIAM DE GRIMOARD was born at Grisac in Languedoc
in 1310, his father being a local nobleman
and his mother a sister of St Elzear de Sabran. He was
educated in the universities of Montpellier and Toulouse and
became a Benedictine after his ordination he returned to
his old universities and then went on to Paris and Avignon
to study for his doctor’s degree. He taught in those places, and was
appointed abbot of St Germain’s at Auxerre in 1352. At this time the popes were residing at Avignon
and for the next ten years Abbot William was constantly called
on to undertake diplomatic missions for Pope Innocent VI, who in
1361 made him abbot of St Victor’s at Marseilles and sent him to
Naples as legate to Queen Joanna. While he was there he heard that
Innocent was dead and that he had been elected in his place. He returned
at once to Avignon, where he was consecrated and crowned, and took the
name of Urban because “all the popes called Urban had been saints”.
He was the best of the Avignon popes, though like most of them he was
too much of a “nationalist” (as we should say now) to be a really satisfactory
pontiff of the Universal Church, and the abuses by which he was surrounded
were beyond his strength to eradicate.
The great event of his pontificate
was his attempt, abortive though it was, to restore
the papacy to Rome. In 1366, ignoring the opposition
of the French king and the French cardinals, he informed
the emperor of his intention to return to the City, and in April
of the following year he set out. At Carneto he was met by a host
of envoys, ecclesiastical and lay, by a Roman embassy bearing the
keys of Sant’ Angelo, and by Bd John Columbini and his Gesuati waving palms
and singing hymns. Four months later he entered Rome in state,
the first pope it had seen for over half a century, and when he
looked upon the state of the City he wept.
The great churches, even the Lateran,
St Peter’s and St Paul’s, were almost in ruins,
and he at once set to work to restore them and to make
the papal residences habitable. Immediate steps were taken
to revive the discipline of the clergy and the fervour of
the people, work was soon found for all, and food was distributed
freely to the destitute.
In the following year Urban met the
Emperor Charles IV, a new alliance was made between
the empire and the Church, and Charles entered Rome leading
the mule on which the pope rode. Twelve months later the
emperor of the East, John V Palaeologus, also came, disclaiming
schism and seeking help against the Turks. Urban received
him on the steps of St Peter’s, but he could give him no help:
it was more than he could do to maintain his own position. He
had failed to crush the condottieri,
Perugia had revolted, France was at war with England, his
French court was restless and discontented, his health was failing:
Urban prepared to go back to France. The Romans implored him
to stay; Petrarch made himself the mouthpiece of Italy to keep him
in Rome, St Bridget of Sweden rode out to Montefiascone on her white
mule to warn him that if he left Italy his death would swiftly follow.
But it was all to no purpose. In June 1370 he declared to the Romans
that he was leaving them for the good of the Church and to help France;
on September 5, “sorrowful, suffering
and deeply moved”, he embarked at Carneto; and on December 19 he
was dead. Petrarch wrote, “Urban would have been reckoned among
the most glorious of men if he had caused his dying bed to be laid
before the altar of St Peter’s and had there fallen asleep with a
good conscience, calling God and the world to witness that if ever
the pope had left this spot it was not his fault but that of the originators
of so shameful a flight.” But this one weakness was forgiven him,
and a chronicler of Mainz sums up contemporary opinion: “He was
a light of the world and a way of truth; a lover of righteousness,
flying from wickedness and fearing.”
Urban V was entirely free from the
prevailing vices of his age and worked hard for
the reform of the clergy, beginning with his own court,
where the venality of the officials was notorious.* * Among the cardinals he made was Simon
Langham, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was promptly turned
out of his see by King Edward III because he had not asked the
king’s leave to accept the honour.
He maintained many poor students and encouraged learning
by his support of universities, e.g. Oxford,
and his encouragement of the foundation of new ones,
e.g. at Cracow and Vienna. He awarded
the custody of the relics of St Thomas Aquinas to the Dominicans
of Toulouse, and instructed the university of that city that:
“We will and enjoin on you that you follow the teaching of
the blessed Thomas as true and Catholic teaching, and promote
it to the utmost of your power.” Pilgrims came to Urban’s tomb in
the abbey church of St Victor at Marseilles, his canonization was
asked for and Pope Gregory XI promised the King of Denmark that it
should be undertaken. The times were too troubled; but the cultus continued, and in 1870 it was confirmed
by Pope Pius IX, the feast of Bd Urban being added to the calendar
of Rome and of several French dioceses.
From the point of
view of this pontiff’s personal holiness the most important sources will be
found collected in the volume of J. H. Albanes and U. Chevalier, Actes ancient et documents concernant le B. Urbain V (1897).
This includes the ancient lives, of which there
are several, and the evidence, reports of miracles, etc.,
presented in view of his canonization as early as 1390. There is besides this a very considerable
literature, of which an excellent bibliography is provided
in G. Mollat, Las popes d’Avignon (1912),
pp. 102-103. See further
G. Schmidt in Sdralek’s Kirchengeschichtliche
Abhandlungen, vol. iii, pp. 157—173,
and E. Hocedez in the Analecta
Bollandiana, vol. xxvi (1907), PP. 305—316. There is a life by L. Chaillan
(1911) in the series “Les Saints”,
but the best account is that of G. Mollat in his work mentioned
above.
In 1362,
the man elected pope declined the office. When the
cardinals could not find another person among them for that
important office, they turned to a relative stranger: the
holy person we honor today.
The new
Pope Urban V proved a wise choice.
A Benedictine
monk and canon lawyer, he was deeply spiritual and
brilliant. He lived simply and modestly, which did not always
earn him friends among clergymen who had become used to comfort
and privilege. Still, he pressed for reform and saw to the
restoration of churches and monasteries.
Except for
a brief period he spent most of his eight years as
pope living away from Rome at Avignon, seat of the papacy
from 1309 until shortly after his death.
He came
close but was not able to achieve one of his biggest
goals—reuniting the Eastern and Western churches.
As pope,
Urban continued to follow the Benedictine Rule. Shortly
before his death in 1370 he asked to be moved from the papal
palace to the nearby home of his brother so he could say goodbye
to the ordinary people he had so often helped.
Blessed
Urban V OSB, Pope (RM) Born in Grisac, Languedoc, France,
1310; died in Avignon, France, December 19, 1370; cultus confirmed
by Pope Pius IX on March 10, 1870.
William
(Guillaume) de Grimoard, later Pope Urban V, was born
in a chateau and given his name by his godfather Elzear
de Sabran. His mother, Amphelise de Montferrand, remarked:
"My son, I don't understand you!...But God does."
William
had a most distinguished academic career, both studying
philosophy, letters and law at Montpellier and Toulouse,
and teaching canon law at four universities: Montpellier,
Toulouse, Avignon, and Paris. The Benedictines pleased him. He
entered the Chirac abbey and followed his vocation, which included
ordination as a priest. His serious smile won all hearts; his
diplomas opened doors. He was vicar general at Clermont and Uzés.
Pope Clement VI appointed him abbot of St. Germain, Auxerre, in
1352, and nine years later Pope Innocent VI appointed him abbot
of St. Victor, Marseilles, and legate to Queen Joanna of Naples.
He retained such fond memories of St. Victor's that he asked
to be buried there.
Popes Clement
VI and Innocent VI used his services as a diplomat.
The latter sent him all over as papal legate to obtain the
submission of the Italian cities and the little republics that
had so clamorously broken loose and, in the disorder of temporal
authority, more and more contested the authority of the Holy
See.
William succeeded, not by the
ruses of diplomats or severity, but by negotiations
and candor. He had no enemies. On September 28, 1362,
he was on a papal mission to Naples when he learned that Innocent
VI had died and that he himself had been elected pope, though
he was not a cardinal. Together with his new name Urban, he took
on his new mission without any pomp for he had a horror of all display.
He prayed the way everyone prayed. He ate and died as the common
folk.
He immediately
began to reform the Church. Because his studies had
served him well, he came to the aid of students with all
his might, creating thousands of scholarships, reforming or
creating new universities. He said, "The first sin of Christians
is their ignorance." He restored churches and monasteries
that had fallen into disorder. He made peace with Barnabo Visconti
in 1364, though he was unsuccessful in his attempts to suppress
the marauding condottieri in France and Italy. Through Peter
de Lusignan, Urban temporarily occupied Alexandria in 1365, but his
crusade against the Turks did not succeed.
For 50 years
the papacy had been based at Avignon but in 1366 Urban
decided to bring back the papacy to Rome. Unfortunately,
the French court and cardinals opposed this move. Once in Rome,
he set about restoring the dilapidated city, tightening clerical
discipline, and reviving religion. The Emperor Charles IV
was won over to a new treaty with the papacy. After Urban crowned
Charles' consort German Empress, Charles agreed to respect
the rights of the Church in Germany.
Because
the split church seemed to him a permanent injury
to Jesus Christ, he made advances to the Christians of the
East. Even the Greek emperor, John V Palaeologus, was reconciled
to Rome, in an attempt to heal the deep rift between the
Eastern and Western Church. It is sad that the emperor was
unable to win over the hearts of his people to reconcile with
Rome.
But many
princes remained hostile. Because he knew how to live
modestly, Urban demanded the same of his entourage. Because
he did not value money, he made no economies and condemned
the clergy who made profit and business from their positions.
If the goodness of Pope Urban has any defect, it is that he
didn't hide it under his hat. He did everything in all innocence.
Though he was pope, he remained a monk and continued to follow
the Benedictine Rule.
The condottieri,
led by Barnabo Visconti, were once again his implacable
enemies. The Perugians rose against him. The leaders of
France threatened the stability of the Church. Sadly,
Urban left Rome on September 5, 1370, and returned to Avignon,
despite the prediction of Saint Bridget that he would die
an early death if he left Rome. He died less than four months
later.
On Tuesday
Urban had a premonition that he would not finish his
mission and that he was not the man to reconcile the French
and the British. He made them remove him from the Papal Palace
at Avignon to his brother's house at the foot of the hill. He
did not want to die in fine sheets. He had all the door to the
street opened, for many of the people whom he used to help wanted
to say goodbye to him (Benedictines, Bentley, Delaney, Encyclopedia).
Blessed
Pope Urban V (1310-1370)
In 1362, the man elected
pope declined the office. When the cardinals could
not find another person among them for that important office,
they turned to a relative stranger: the holy person we honor
today.
The new Pope Urban
V proved a wise choice. A Benedictine monk and canon
lawyer, he was deeply spiritual and brilliant. He lived simply
and modestly, which did not always earn him friends among
clergymen who had become used to comfort and privilege.
Still, he pressed for reform and saw to the restoration of
churches and monasteries. Except for a brief period he spent
most of his eight years as pope living away from Rome at Avignon,
seat of the papacy from 1309 until shortly after his death.
He came close but was not able
to achieve one of his biggest goals—reuniting the
Eastern and Western churches.
As pope,
Urban continued to follow the Benedictine Rule. Shortly
before his death in 1370 he asked to be moved from the papal
palace to the nearby home of his brother so he could say goodbye
to the ordinary people he had so often helped. |
1378 St Rocks born at Montpellier;
nursed the sick during a plague in Italy; performed
as many miracles when dead as when alive.
We find this servant of God venerated
in France and Jtaly during the early fifteenth century, not very long after
his death, but we have no authentic history of his life. No doubt he
was born at Montpellier and nursed the sick during a plague in Italy, but
that is almost all that can be affirmed about him. His
" lives " are chiefly made up of popular legends, which may have a basis
in fact but cannot now be checked.
According to the one written by a Venetian, Francis
Diedo, in 1478, Rock was son of the governor of Montpellier,
and upon being left an orphan at the age of twenty he went on
a pilgrimage to Rome. Finding Italy plague-stricken he visited
numerous centres of population, Acquapendente, Cesena, Rome, Rimini,
Novara, where he not only devoted himself to care of the sick but
cured large numbers simply by making the sign of the cross on them.
At Piacenza he was infected himself, and not wishing to be a burden
on any hospital he dragged himself out into the woods to die.
Here he was miraculously fed by a dog, whose master soon found
Rock and looked after him.
When he was convalescent he returned to Piacetza and miraculously
cured many more folk, as well as their sick cattle.
At length he got back to Montpellier, where his surviving
uncle failed to recognize him; he was there imprisoned, and
so he remained five years, till he died. When they came
to examine his body it was recognized who he really was, the son
of their former governor, by a cross-shaped birth-mark on his breast.
He was therefore given a public funeral, and he performed as many
miracles when dead as he had done when alive. Another biography,
shorter, simpler and perhaps older, says that St Rock was arrested
as a spy and died in captivity at Angera in Lombardy.
The
popularity and rapid extension of the cultus of St Rock, a veneration
by no means extinct today, was remarkable, and he soon
became the saint par excellence to be invoked against pestilence.
St Rock is named in the Roman Martyrology, and his feast
is kept in many places there is no evidence that he was
a Franciscan tertiary, but the Franciscans venerate him as
such.
See the Acta Sanctorum, August, vol. iii, and
"Le probleme de S. Roch", by A. Fiche, in Analecta Bollandiana, vol. lxviii (1950),
pp. 343-361. The saint is very popular, as
anyone may learn who consults the long list of books
and articles noted in the Bio-bibliographie
of Chevalier. A good modern work of general
interest is that of C. Ceroni, San Rocco nella vita,... (1927);
see also M. Bessodes, San Rocco, storia
e leggende (1937); and A. Maurino, San Rocco, confronti storici
(1936) (cf. Analecta Bolandiana,
vol. lv (1937), p. 193). It is curious that St
Rock seems even to have left traces of cultus in England.
The present St Roche's Hill in Sussex was St Rokeshill in 1579
and it is said that the Glasgow parliamentary division of Saint
Rollox had its name from him. A short popular account of
the saint may be found in Léon L’Auréole Séraphique
(Eng. trans.), vol. iii, pp. 11-21
.
|
1379 ST JOHN OF BRIDLINGTON
Many miracles wrought through his intercession.
THOUGH it has been
often said that St Thomas of Hereford was the last
English saint of the middle ages to be formally canonized
(Osmund, in 1457, was a Norman), there is a bull of Pope
Boniface IX that canonized John of Bridlington in
1401 his feast is now celebrated in the diocese of Middlesbrough
and by the Canons Regular of the Lateran (on October 10).
He was surnamed Thwing, from the place of his birth near Bridlington,
on the coast of Yorkshire, and the little which is known of his
life presents nothing of unusual interest. At about the age of seventeen
he went for two years to study at Oxford. When he returned from
the university he took the religious habit in the monastery of
regular canons of St Augustine at Bridlington. In this solitude he
advanced daily in victory over himself and in the experimental
knowledge of spiritual things. John was successively precentor, cellarer,
and prior of his monastery. This last charge he had averted by his
protests the first time he was chosen; but upon a second vacancy his
brethren obliged him to take up the office. His application to prayer
showed how much his conduct was regulated by the spirit of God, and
a great spiritual prudence, peace of mind and meekness of temper were
the fruits of his virtue. When he had been seventeen years prior and had
earned a universal esteem and reverence he was called to God on October
10, 1379.
Many miracles wrought through his intercession are
mentioned by the author of his vita and by Thomas of Walsingham,
who testifies that by order of Pope Boniface IX, Richard Scrope,
the greatly venerated archbishop of York, assisted by the bishops
of Lincoln and Carlisle, translated his relics to a more worthy
shrine. This took place on March II, 1404. The shrine attracted
many pilgrims, among them King Henry V, who attributed his victory
at Agincourt to the intercession in Heaven of two English Johns,
of Bridlington and of Beverley. The nave of the priory church in which
St John Thwing presided is now the Anglican parish church of Bridlington.
See the Acta Sanctorum, October, vol. v, where
a life by one Hugh, himself a canon regular, is
printed. There is also a shorter summary by Capgrave
in his Nova Legenda Angliae. But most important of all is the article
of Fr. Paul Grosjean in the Analecta Bollandiana,
vol. liii (1935), pp. 101—129. He has gathered up much new material,
while expressing his indebtedness to the book, St John of Bridlington (1924), and other papers
by J. S. Purvis. Mr Purvis published the text of the canonization
document from the Lateran Regesta.
|
1380 Blessed John
of Vallumbrosa monk; Saint Catherine of Siena, often appeared
to him, OSB Vall. (AC).
Born in Florence, Italy; Saint John's story reminds us that
religious face many temptations, not all of them of the flesh. Like
many monks, John of the Holy Trinity spent hours pouring over books. Unlike
most, he became addicted to forbidden books and was drawn into the secret
practice of necromancy and the Black Arts. When discovered, he was called
before the Vallumbrosan abbot-general.
At first he denied this sin against humility and God's goodness,
but finally he confessed, found guilty, and imprisoned. His internment
proved to be his salvation: he came to true repentance and undertook
voluntary penance, fasting to the point of emaciation. Eventually, his
brothers implored him to return to the community. He, however, preferred
to remain in prison as an anchorite until his death at a very old age.
In his solitude, he attained great sanctity. John was an elegant writer
and a friend of Saint Catherine of
Siena, who often appeared to him and died the same year (Benedictines).
1380 BD JOHN OF VALLOMBROSA
JOHN OF VALLOMBROSA was a Florentine who entered the monastery
of the Holy Trinity in his native city. He was a clever man and spent
hours of the day and night poring over books. In the course of his studies
he became interested in necromancy and began to practise the black arts
in secret. He had become thoroughly vicious and depraved when reports
of his proceedings reached the ears of the abbot of Vallombrosa, who
summoned him before a commission of monks and formally accused him. At
first John lied and denied that he had had any dealings with magic, but
when incontrovertible evidence was brought against him he acknowledged
his guilt. His punishment was a lengthy imprisonment in a pestilential
prison where he lost his health and was reduced to a skeleton.
When at last he was liberated
John could scarcely walk, but he was sincerely penitent. Although the
abbot and the monks would fain have restored him to their fellowship
he asked to be allowed to continue voluntarily the life he had been compelled
to lead. “I have learnt”, he said, “in this dark and long imprisonment,
that there is nothing better, nothing more holy, than solitude in solitude
I intend to go on learning divine things and to try to rise higher. Now that
I am free from temporal fetters I am resolved, with the help of Christ,
to waste no more time.” With the consent of the abbot he embraced the
life of a hermit and soon became known as the foremost amongst the solitaries
of the countryside for his sanctity and great learning. His letters and
treatises, some written in Latin and some in the vernacular, were handed
about from one to another and were prized for their subject-matter as well
as for the elegance of their diction. He seemed as though divinely inspired
to touch the hardest hearts and to expound the most abstruse points of
Holy Scripture.
The “hermit of the cells”,
as he came to be called, lived to extreme old age and enjoyed the friendship
and esteem of St Catherine of Siena. Writing to Barduccio of Florence
after her death, John says that whilst he was mourning over her loss
she came to him in a vision, and gave him the consolation of witnessing
her celestial glory.
There is a
short life printed in the Acta Sanctorum under Andrew
of Strumi, March, vol. ii, 3rd ed., pp. 49—50. Cf. Zambrini,
Opera volgari a stampa dei sec. 13 e 14, pp. 238, 263—264, etc.
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1387 BD PETER OF LUXEMBURG,
BISHOP OF METZ AND CARDINAL "Contempt of the world, contempt of yourself:
rejoice in your own contempt, but despise no other person."
tomb soon became a place of pilgrimage, miracles were reported
there, and he was eventually beatified, by the true Pope Clement
VII, in 1527. Bd Peter was only eighteen at his death.
PETER was son to Guy of Luxemburg,
Count of Ligny, and his wife Mahaut de Châtillon, and
was born in 1369. He was left an orphan when only four years old;
his piety and intelligence attracted notice, and at ten he was sent
to Paris to pursue his studies, where he was made a canon of Notre
Dame, in accordance with an abuse all too common in those days. In 1380-81
he spent some months at Calais as hostage for the payment of the ransom
of his elder brother, who was a prisoner in English hands.
Peter strove to advance in humility and Christian
perfection: this was the point which he had in view in all
his actions and undertakings, and he was far from seeking ecclesiastical
dignity. But a consideration of his powerful relatives, which
the troubles of the times made it prudent to take into account,
moved Clement VII at Avignon, who in the “great schism" was acknowledged
by France for true pope, to nominate him in 1384 bishop of Metz and,
two months later, cardinal. To take possession of his see against
the supporters of Urban VI, Peter had to rely on the armed help of his
brother Valeran, to his deep distress. But even his sanctity could not
make up for lack of orders (he was a deacon), and a Dominican was given
him for his assistant and consecrated bishop. With him Peter performed
the visitation of his diocese, in which he everywhere corrected abuses
and gave proofs of his zeal and prudence. But political disturbances
soon drove him from Metz, and in the autumn of 1386 Clement VII called
him to Avignon).
Here Peter continued all his former austerities,
till Clement commanded him to mitigate them for the sake of his
health. His answer was, "Holy Father, I shall always be an unprofitable
servant, but I can at least obey." He compensated for what he lost
in the practices of penance by redoubling his alms-deeds. By his
charities his purse was always empty; his table was frugal, his household
small, his furniture simple, and his clothes poor. It seemed that
he could not increase his alms, yet he found means to do it by distributing
his little furniture and selling the episcopal ring which he wore.
Everything about him breathed a spirit of poverty and showed his affection
for the poor. An ancient picture of the saint was kept in the collegiate
church of our Lady at Autun, in which he is painted in an ecstasy and
on which are written these words, which he was accustomed frequently
to repeat: "Contempt of the world, contempt of yourself: rejoice in
your own contempt, but despise no other person."
Early in 1387 increasing ill-health made Bd
Peter seek better air, at Villeneuve on the other side of the
Rhone, where he lodged at a Carthusian monastery. Here he died
on July 2, after writing a last letter to his beloved sister,
Joan. His tomb soon became a place of pilgrimage, miracles were reported
there, and he was eventually beatified, by the true Pope Clement VII,
in 1527. Bd Peter was only eighteen at his death.
The principal source of information is the process
of beatification, the greater part of which is printed in the
Acta Sanctorum (July,
vol. i). This is of exceptional interest because very few such
documents containing the depositions of the witnesses are preserved
to us from the middle ages. Strange to say most of these are concerned
with youthful saints belonging to royal or very noble families, e.g.
this Peter of Luxemburg, St Louis of Anjou who was consecrated archbishop
of Toulouse and died at the age of twenty-three, and St Margaret of
Hungary who was not twenty-nine. A brief account of Bd Peter, based
upon the process, was published by H. Frantyois in 1927, Vie du B. Pierre de Luxembourg.
|
1392 Saint Demetrius
of Priluki, Wonderworker combined prayer and strict asceticism
with kindliness fed the poor and hungry took in strangers conversed
with those in need of consolation gave counsel loved to
pray in solitude Miracles from the relics began in 1409
Born into
a rich merchant's family in Pereyaslavl-Zalessk. From
his youth the saint was uncommonly handsome. Receiving monastic
tonsure at one of the Pereyaslavl monasteries, the saint
later founded the St Nicholas cenobitic monastery on the
Sts Boris and Gleb Hill at the shore of Lake Plescheevo near
the city, and became its igumen.
In 1534
St Demetrius first met with St Sergius of Radonezh,
who had come to Pereyaslavl to see Metropolitan Athanasius.
From that time, he frequently conversed with St Sergius
and became close with him. The fame of the Pereyaslavl igumen
was so widespread that he became godfather to the children of
Great Prince Demetrius Ioannovich. Under the influence of
the Radonezh wonderworker, St Demetrius decided to withdraw
to a remote place, and went north with his disciple Pachomius.
In the Vologda
forests, at the River Velika, near the Avnezh settlement,
they built a church of the Resurrection of Christ and they
prepared to lay the foundations for a monastery. The local
inhabitants were fearful that if a monastery were built there,
their village would become monastery property. They demanded
that the monks leave their territory, and wishing to be a burden
to no one, they moved farther away.
Not far
from Vologda, at the bend of a river in an isolated
spot, St Demetrius decided to form the first of the cenobitic
monasteries of the Russian North. The people of Vologda
and the surrounding gladly consented to help the saint. The
owners of the land intended for the monastery, Elias and Isidore,
even trampled down a grain field, so that a temple might be
built immediately. In 1371 the wooden Savior cathedral was built,
and brethren began to gather.
Many disciples of the monk came
there from Pereyaslavl. St Demetrius combined prayer
and strict asceticism with kindliness. He fed the poor
and hungry, he took in strangers, he conversed with those
in need of consolation, and he gave counsel. He loved to pray
in solitude. His Lenten food consisted of prosphora with warm
water. Even on feastdays, he would not partake of the wine and
fish permitted by the Rule. Both winter and summer he wore an old
sheepskin coat, and even in his old age he went with the brethren
on common tasks. The saint accepted contributions to the monastery
cautiously, so that the welfare of the monastery would not be detrimental
to those living nearby.
The Lord
granted His servant the gift of clairvoyance, and
he attained a high degree of spiritual perfection. St Demetrius
died at an advanced age on February 11, 1392. The brethren
approaching found him as though asleep, and his cell was filled
with a wondrous fragrance.
Miracles
from the relics of St Demetrius began in the year 1409,
and during the fifteenth century his veneration spread throughout
all Rus. And no later than the year 1440, the Priluki monk
Macarius recorded his Life (Great Reading Menaion, February
11) based on the narratives of St Demetrius's disciple Igumen
Pachomius.
|
1380 St. Aventanus;
Carmelite, mystic lay brother, gift of ecstasies, miracles,
and visions.
A native of Limoges, France, he joined the Carmelites
as a lay brother. With another Carmelite, Romaeus, Aventanus
started on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Crossing the Alps they
encountered many difficulties, including an outbreak of plague.
Aventanus, who had a gift of ecstasies, miracles, and visions,
succumbed to the plague near Lucca, Italy. His cult was approved
by Pope Gregory XVI.
1380 BB. AVERTANUS AND ROMAEUS
LIMOGES was the
birthplace of Avertanus, a holy lay-brother of the Carmelite Order.
As soon as he could speak he would prattle about God and talk to Him.
He was never naughty, nor did he want to play like other children,
but he would pray and often appeared rapt in contemplation. Very early
he began to long to join a religious order, and one night he had a vision
of an angel, who enjoined him to enter the Carmelite Order. Overjoyed,
he laid the matter before his parents. Although they were pious
people, they were greatly distressed at the idea of losing the hope
and prop of their old age; but Avertanus persuaded them that it was
the will of God and that in his cell he would not be so far away, so
that in the end they yielded and dismissed him with their blessing.
The prior of the Carmelite monastery of Limoges admitted him, and the
brethren seem soon to have realized that the newcomer was a youth of
singular holiness. They recorded that, when he received the habit, angelic
voices mingled with their own chants and that the Blessed Virgin herself
was seen with her hand extended in blessing above the head of the humble
lay-brother. When not at prayer, it was his delight to perform
the most menial tasks in the convent; he was often found in his cell
entirely rapt in ecstasy, and it was with the greatest difficulty
that he could be recalled to ordinary life. At night he was wont to
get up from his bed and creep on hands and knees to the top of one
of the rocky hills near the monastery, where with his arms outstretched,
he would pray till daybreak. He had such a horror of money that he would
not touch it or speak of it or even see a coin if he could help it.
At length Avertanus was
inspired with a great wish to visit the Holy Places and, with
the prior’s consent, he started off for Rome with a companion
called Romaeus. As his biographer remarks, theirs was not the
sort of pilgrimage which combines pleasure and comfort with religion.
They made their way painfully over the Alps in winter, and when
they reached Italy they found that the plague was raging and that
the gates of the cities were closed against all strangers and tramps
who might spread the disease. It was in the cities that pilgrims
were usually accommodated, but the two men made their way as best they
could till they reached, in the suburbs of Lucca, the hospital of St
Peter, where they were taken in. The next morning Avertanus attempted
to enter the city, but the gatekeepers refused to admit the gaunt and
ragged pair. No doubt they were justified, for by the time Avertanus
had returned to the hospital he was in a high fever, having apparently
contracted the dread disease. He grew rapidly worse and, warned that
his last hour was approaching, he uttered three prophecies, viz, that
a great schism would be healed through the intercession of the Blessed
Virgin, that the city of Lucca which had rejected him in life would honour
him after his death, and that the hospital of St Peter would pass into
the care of the Carmelites. He received the last sacraments and died happily in the midst of a vision of Christ and
the angels. Romaeus did not long survive him. Stricken with the complaint
and sad at the loss of his friend, he hourly grew weaker until the eighth
day, when he passed away to rejoin Avertanus whom his dying eyes had
beheld in glory. The cultus of Bd Romaeus was confirmed
by Pope Gregory XVI.
See Acta Sanctorum, February, vol. iii. The biography given in
Grossi, Viridarium Carmelitanum, from which the above
account is mainly derived, cannot be considered a very reliable source.
Avertanus is called Saint in his order. The very jejune second-nocturn lessons
in the Carmelite Breviary supplement on March 4 are an indication of the
slender information we possess regarding the life of Bd Romaeus.
|
1380 St. Catherine of Siena
illiterate one of the most brilliant theological
minds of her day mystical experiences when only 6 visions
of Christ Mary and the saints gift of healing Stigmata visible
only after her death Doctor of the Church
Romæ natális sanctæ
Catharínæ Senénsis Vírginis,
ex tértio Ordine sancti Domínici, vita et miráculis
claræ, quam Pius Secúndus, Póntifex
Máximus, sanctárum Vírginum número
adscrípsit. Ipsíus tamen festum sequénti
die celebrátur.
At Rome, the birthday of
St. Catherine of Siena, virgin of the Third Order of St. Dominic,
renowned for her holy life and her miracles. She was inscribed
among the canonized virgins by Pope Pius II. Her feast, however,
is celebrated on the following day.
Patron Fire prevention
1347 - 1380
St. Catherine of Siena
The 25th child of a
wool dyer in northern Italy, St. Catherine started
having mystical experiences when she was only 6, seeing guardian
angels as clearly as the people they protected. She became
a Dominican tertiary when she was 16, and continued to have
visions of Christ, Mary, and the saints.
St. Catherine was one of the
most brilliant theological minds of her day, although
she never had any formal education. She persuaded the
Pope to go back to Rome from Avignon, in 1377, and when she
died she was endeavoring to heal the Great Western Schism.
In 1375
Our Lord give her the Stigmata, which was visible
only after her death. Her spiritual director was Blessed
Raymond of Capua. St, Catherine's letters, and a treatise
called "a dialogue" are considered.Saint Catherine of
Siena, Doctor (Memorial) April 29
Born in
Siena, Italy, March 25, 1347, in Florence, Italy;
died there on April 29, 1380; canonized in 1461; declared
a Doctor of the Church in 1970.
Saint Catherine cutting
off her hair to convince her mother (seated) that
she did not want any earthly spouse.
Image by
Boeri Boeri © 1997
"Those in union with God when aware of the sins of
others live in this gentle light...Therefore they are always
peaceful and calm, and nothing can scandalize them because
they have done away with what causes them to take scandal,
their self-will. . . . They find joy in everything.
"They do not sit in judgement on my servants or anyone
else, but rejoice in every situation and every way of living
they see. . . . Even when they see something that is clearly
sinful, they do not pass judgement, but rather feel a holy and
genuine compassion, praying for the sinner."
--Saint Catherine of Siena.
"Whenever
you think God has shown you other people's faults,
take care: your own judgment may well be at fault. Say
nothing. And if you do attribute any vice to another person,
immediately and humbly look for it in yourself also. Should
the other person really possess that vice, he will correct
himself so much the better when he sees how gently you understand
him, and he will say to himself whatever you would have told
him." --Saint Catherine.
Fourteenth century Italy was
desolated by plague, schism, and political turmoil.
When we are tempted to think
that we live in the worst of times, we should remember
the life of Saint Catherine. Those days were so black
that many saints and scholars believed it heralded the end
of the world. The popes deserted Rome for Avignon in 1305. Rome
itself was in anarchy. Yet in the midst of confusion and dissent
within the Church, God raised up Catherine, one of many saints who
prove that our hope in the Lord is never in vain.among the most brilliant
writings in the history of the Catholic Church. She died when she
was only 33, and her body was found incorrupt in 1430. Siena had
established itself as a military power by conquering Florence
in 1260. The city, which possessed a university with a school
of medicine and superb cathedral, was governed by the Governo
dei Nove (Government of Nine). Art was closely bound to life in
Siena. Sienese artists were the most faithful interpreters of
the sentiments and ideas of its great mystics. Legend says that Siena
was founded by Romulus and Remus or by Remus's sons Ascius and Senius,
who created its black and white flag.
Giacomo
di Benincasa had a thriving cloth dying business on
the Vicolo del Tiratoio (Street of the Dyers) with three
of his sons: Bartolommeo, Orlando, and Stefano, plus two
journeymen and two apprentices. The family lived upstairs.
The also had a family farm.
When Benincasa's
domineering and shrewish wife Lapa, daughter of a
now forgotten poet, gave birth to twin daughters, Catherine
and Giovanna, she already had 22 children. Lapa kept Catherine
and breastfed her, but didn't have enough milk for her twin,
who was given to another's care and eventually died. A 25th child
was born and named Giovanna also, though she lived only a few years.
Thirteen of the children lived to adulthood and all remained at
home until they were married. Eventually eleven grandchildren were
included in the household, which was big enough to include a foster
son Tommaso della Fonte, whose parents died in the plague of 1348.
Though Catherine
was not a pretty child, she was popular in the neighborhood
because of her gaiety and wise little sayings. According
to her first biographer Blessed Raymond of Capua she always
had the ability to charm others. She was slight and pale, her
features delicate, the texture of her skin exquisite, and
her hair long, thick, lustrous, and golden. She was animated,
cheerful, friendly, sensitive, and charming. All her movements
were swift and graceful.
Prayer came
naturally to her. At the age of five she would kneel
on each step of the stairs of her home and say a prayer.
She was only seven when she reported her first vision--of
Jesus seated on a throne surrounded by saints, when returning
with a younger brother from visiting one of her married sisters.
The young child dragged at her hand, but she was lost in ecstasy.
From that day she was consecrated to His service and engaged
herself entirely in prayer, meditation, and acts of penance
in which she encouraged her friends to join her.
Raymond
of Capua, her confessor and biographer, wrote "...
taught entirely by the Holy Spirit, she had come to know
and value the lives and way of life of the holy Fathers
of Egypt and the great deeds of other saints, especially Blessed
Dominic, and had felt such a strong desire to do what they did that
she had been unable to think about anything else."
The Benincasas
owned a small farm out the outskirts of San Rocca
a Pilli, 14 km from Siena, where Catherine spent time. She
had a passion for flowers and wove them into little crosses
for her early confessor Padre Tommaso. She often dreamed that
angels descended from Heaven and crowned her with white lilies.
Her parents wanted her to marry and encouraged her to enhance
her looks. For a time she submitted to the ministrations of
a hair dresser and to be decked out in fashionable clothes, but
she soon repented of her concession meant to please her mother
and sister Bonaventura. At age 16, when a real courtship was imminent,
however, she told her mother she had taken a vow of perpetual
virginity when she was seven. When her mother didn't take her seriously,
she cut off her luxurious golden hair (Saint Rose of Lima did
the same in a similar situation).
Her mother was enraged, discharged
their maid, and decided Catherine should dress like
a servant and perform a servant's tasks. Catherine accepted
her tasks cheerfully and performed them capably. The
men of the family objected but were overruled by Lapa;
however, her father promised her that she would not be forced
into marriage and he insisted that she be given a room to
herself and time to pray because he had seen a white dove hovering
above her head.
She dreamed
that she encountered Saint Dominic and was overcome
with a desire to enter the Third Order of the Dominican
Sisters of Penance. At that time there were about 100 devout
older women and spinsters in Siena who were known as Mantellates,
because of the black capes they wore over their white habits.
Still unpersuaded
that her daughter would not marry, Lapa took her
to the spa at Vignone hoping to fatten her up in preparation
for marriage. A week later they returned. Catherine had
scalded herself at the source of the hot springs in order to
disfigure herself. She had also contracted smallpox.
During her illness she extracted a promise from Lapa to ask the
sisters to accept her daughter. The Mother Superior said Catherine
was too young (pleasing Lapa) but Catherine insisted that the order
had no rule about it. Lapa assured her that Catherine had cut off
her hair, scalded herself, and now had smallpox, so that she would
no longer be attractive. Then the Mother agreed to visit Catherine.
Several weeks later Catherine received the mantle and habit.
For three
years she left her bare room only to attend Mass,
broke her silence only for confession or to meet an emergency,
ate sparingly and alone, and recited the Divine Office
during the hours when she knew that the Dominican friars slept.
She underwent
periods of aridity, but was never subject to temptation.
On Shrove Tuesday, 1367, she prayed for the "fullness of
faith" and had a vision in which she saw Jesus, Mary, Saint
John the Evangelist, Saint Paul, and Saint Dominic, the founder
of her order. During this vision, the Blessed Virgin presented
her to Jesus, who espoused Himself to her. He placed on her
finger a gold ring with four pearls set in a circle in it and a wonderful
diamond in the middle, saying to her, "receive this ring as a pledge
and testimony that you are mine and will be mine for ever." No
one else could see the ring but it was always before her eyes.
She had
many marvelous religious experiences.
At the age of 26, she first
felt the pain of Christ's suffering in her own body.
Two years later during a visit to Pisa, she received
Communion in the little church of Santa Christina. As she
meditated in thanksgiving upon the crucifix, five blood-red
rays seemed to come from it which pierced her hands, feet, and
heart. Thus, she received the five visible wounds of His suffering--the
stigmata. It caused such acute pain that she swooned. Unable
or unwilling to eat, Catherine went for eight years without food
or liquid other than the Blessed Sacrament. She prayed that
the marks not be conspicuous, though they are traceable on her
incorruptible body by a transparency in the tissues.
Oftentimes she was seen levitated
in the air during her prayer. Once, as she was being
given Holy Communion, the priest felt the Host become
agitated and fly, as if of its own volition, from his
fingers into her mouth. In the Life of Saint Catherine, Mother
Francis Raphael relates that the saint was immune to fire.
She tells of a time that Catherine fell forward into a fire in
the kitchen during a religious ecstasy. The fire was large and fierce,
but when Catherine was pulled out of the smoking embers neither
she nor her clothes were damaged. But none of these divine favors
would have meant much to a needy world if Catherine had remained
hidden in her home. In 1370, she heard a divine voice that commanded
her to leave the cell and enter His service in the world to promote
the salvation of her neighbors. Thousands came to see her, to hear
her, and to be converted by her. A mystical circle of members of religious
orders, secular priests, and lay people gathered around her.
Of course,
public opinion in Siena was sharply divided about
Catherine. It may have been in consequence of accusations
made against her that she was summoned to Florence to appear
before the chapter general of the Dominicans. If any charges
were made, they were certainly disproved, and shortly thereafter
the new lector of Siena, Blessed Raymond, was appointed as her
confessor.
The core
of her teaching was: Man, whether in the cloister or
in the world, must live in a cell of self-knowledge, which
is the stall in which the pilgrim must be reborn from time
to eternity. The press of the repentant was so great that the
three priests of her neighborhood, who had been provided by
the pope to hear the confessions of those who were induced by her
to amend their lives, could hardly cope with it.
She dispatched
letters that often had been dictated in ecstasy, to
men and women of all ranks, entered into correspondence
with kings and princes and with the Italian city-states. She
took part also in public affairs, and Catherine welcomed all
who came to call--the curious, the seeking, the devout. She
collected information from them all.
Even the
pope relied upon her good judgment. At this time the
papacy was tragically weakened by contested papal elections,
pope and antipope denouncing each other. Catherine supported
the true Pope Urban VI against his opponents; but he was a
somewhat graceless man, and her letters to him never hesitated
to reprove the pope for this fault, while remaining entirely
loyal to him.
Twice at
least she successfully intervened in matters of high
politics. Catherine made peace between cities torn by factional
strife: she made peace between the pope and the city of
Florence. On June 18, 1376, Catherine arrived in Avignon as unofficial
ambassadress, and induced the pope to return to Italy, and--this
was the greatest work of her life--brought to an end the Babylonian
captivity of the popes. Thus, on September 13, 1376, Pope Gregory
XI started from Avignon to travel by water to Rome
Choosing Thorns Image
by Boeri Boeri © 1997
It was a month before Catherine
arrived back in Siena, from where she continued
to exhort the pope to contribute to the peace of Italy.
By his special request, she went again to Florence, still
rent by factions and obstinate in its disobedience and under
interdict. There she remained for some time amid daily murders
and confiscations, in danger of her life but never daunted, even
when swords were drawn against her. Finally, she established
peace between Florence and the Holy See.
Catherine
dictated from memory The Dialogue in five days before
she left Siena forever.
It is her account of her visions.
She was clairaudient and clairvoyant, also awareness
of communion with Jesus. She was illiterate, but yearning
to be able to read the breviary, when suddenly she could
read--either through the help of Father Tommaso della Fonte
or Alessia Saracini (her friend), or through a miracle.
Her foster
brother Tommaso della Fonte became a priest and her
confessor during the time of her novitiate.
He provided her with other
books, such as a short history of the Church, lives of the saints, the Psalms
and other portions of the Bible. She later astonished learned ecclesiastics
with her grasp of these subjects.She loved music and to sing, was passionately
fond of children. She began to make friends again,
first among the Mantellate and Dominicans, then among
the priests and physicians at the Hospital of Santa Maria
della Scala, where she began her nursing career, then among
the intelligentsia. She had the gift of healing. Much of what
she did was met with ingratitude.
Catherine
loved working amongst the sick.
Unlike most other volunteers,
she would care for those with the most repulsive
diseases, such as leprosy, which was then virtually
incurable. She gathered round her many friends, and when
a fearful plague broke out in Siena, she led them boldly among
those who had caught it sometimes even digging graves and burying
the dead herself.
Catherine also suffered moral
temptations, and often it seemed that God had deserted
her. Was it for this that she had forsaken all to follow
Him? A woman suffering from cancer, to whom she had given
devoted care, pursued her with a vicious tongue and poured
out upon her all the irritability and despair which were provoked
by her hopeless condition, but Catherine remained incredibly
patient and forbearing; her visions returned and her heart was
strengthened. "O my Savior, my Lord," she cried, "why did You forsake
me?" "My child," came the answer, "I have been with you through
all. I was in your heart all the while."
This composite
picture shows the mature Catherine choosing the Crown
of Thorns. The lower left image of the saint is a detail
of a larger work showing the young Catherine at the time her
father saw a dove hovering over her head as she prayed.
She gave
freely from her father's resources to the poor beggars,
some of whom she claimed were saintly visitors in disguise.
Through all her arduous life
she remained gentle and forgiving, serving Christ
in the lives of the poor, following Him into mean streets
and crowded hovels, taking upon herself the burden of pain
and sin that she met with, nourished and sustained by her frequent
visions. Our Lord appeared to her holding in one hand a crown
of gold and in the other a crown of thorns, and asked which she
would choose. Without hesitation she reached out her hand for
the crown of thorns.
Francesco
di Vanni Malavolti, a famous philanderer, so desired
Catherine's friendship that he went immediately to confession.
They had an spontaneous and lasting friendship because
of their mental harmony. After the death of his wife, he
entered the monastery and spent the remainder of his days
in prayer and contemplation.
Andrea Vanni
was a friend whose portrait of her remains in the
Church of San Domenico in Siena. He and Catherine's brother Bartolo
led the revolution that toppled the government.
For thirty years this brave
and devoted soul showed how there is a Power that
transcends our earthly life, and awakened many, by conversion,
to a sense of the Eternal. "Her prayers," we are told by
an eyewitness, "were of such intensity, that one hour of prayer
more consumed that poor little body than two days upon the
rack would have done another."
When the
great Western schism broke out following the death
of Pope Gregory in 1378, the new pope, Urban VI, called
her to Rome. A rival pope was established at Avignon by
some cardinals who declared Urban's election was illegal.
Christendom was divided into
two camps. She spoke to the cardinals in open consistory,
wrote to the chief sponsors of the schism, to foreign
princes, and through her influence, helped to overcome
the French anti-pope in Italy. She also continued to write
to Urban, sometimes urging him to remain patient in trials
and other times admonishing him to abate his harshness that was
alienating even his supporters. Instead of resenting
her reproofs, Urban invited her to come to Rome to advise and assist
him. In obedience, she left Siena forever and took up residence
in the Eternal City. There she labored indefatigably by her
prayers and exhortations to gain new adherents to the true pontiff.
After she
had offered her life as a sacrifice to God, and had
seen and felt in a vision the Almighty God pressing out
her heart as a balm over the Church, she fell mortally ill
and died in the arms of Alessia Saracini after eight weeks
of most acute suffering at the age of 33--the age at which her
Master had died. And when she died, she was merry and joyful.
Catherine
is one of the greatest mystics of all time. In her,
the extraordinary mystical states that are the preparation
for true sanctifying graces and the counterpart of the burdens
of sainthood, became particularly evident. The history of
literature gives the saint a place of honor beside Dante and
Petrarch (Bentley, Gill, Harrison, Keyes, Schamoni, Walsh).
In art,
Saint Catherine is always portrayed as a Dominican
tertiary (white habit, black mantle, white veil) with
a stigmata, lily, and book. Sometimes she is portrayed (1) with
a crown of thorns and a crucifix; (2) with her heart on
a book; (3) with her heart at her feet and a scourge or skull,
book, and lily; (4) with the devil under her feet; (5) crowned
by angels with three crowns; (6) celebrating her mystic marriage
with Christ; (7) giving clothes to a beggar, who is really Christ
(Roeder). Catherine is the patron of Italy together with Saint Francis
of Assisi (Roeder).
|
January 19 1392 Blessed
Nicholas Konchanov, Novgorod Fool-for-Christ ; The Lord
glorified Blessed Nicholas with the gift of miracles and clairvoyance.
Born at
Novgorod into a rich and illustrious family. From
his youthful years he loved piety, he went to church faithfully,
and loved fasting and prayer. Seeing his virtuous life,
people began to praise him. Blessed Nicholas, disdaining glory
from men, began the difficult exploit of folly for the Lord's
sake. He ran about the city in the bitter cold dressed in rags,
enduring beatings, insults and mockery. Blessed Nicholas and another
Novgorod fool, Blessed Theodore (January 19), pretended to be irreconcilable
foes, and graphically demonstrated to the people of Novgorod
the pernicious character of their internecine strife.
Once, having
overcome his sham opponent, Blessed Nicholas went
along the Volkhov as if on dry land, and threw a head of cabbage
at Blessed Theodore, therefore he was called "Konchanov"
(i.e. "cabbage-head"). The Lord glorified Blessed Nicholas
with the gift of miracles and clairvoyance.
Once, after
being turned away by servants from a feast to which
he had been invited, he left. Immediately, the wine disappeared
from the barrel. Only upon the return of the fool, and through
his prayer, did it reappear again. When he died, Blessed Nicholas
was buried at the end of the cemetery by the Yakovlev cathedral.
Relics of
Blessed Nicholas rest under a crypt in the church
of the Great Martyr Panteleimon which was built over his
grave |