Father Corapi's Biography

Although his feast is no longer included either the Carmelite proper or the 2004 edition of the “Martyrologium Romanum”, his name is mentioned in the Byzantine “Synaxaria”. Saint Spiridion was born in Tremithous in Cyprus in 270 AD. Son of a poor family, he had no formal education and earned his living as a shepherd. After the death of his beloved wife, he dedicated himself to the Church and eventually rose to the office of Bishop of Tremithous. During the Maximinian persecutions he was arrested and exiled, but was returned to his see after the coming to power of Constantine. He participated in the Council of Nicea, and died around 348. When the Saracens took the island, the Cypriots opened his grave in order to remove his sacred bones to Costantinople. They found that his body had remained intact, while from the grave emanated a scent of basil, true signs of the sainthood he had shown during his life. When Costantinople fell in 1453, a Corfiot elder, Georgios Kalohairetis, brought him to Corfu, where his three children acquired the Saint's relics as an heirloom. The sacred remains then passed as the dowry of his doughter Asimia into the possession of the Voulgaris family, who placed them in their private church (which was located on the site of the Pallas Cinema). The relics of the Saint were transferred to their present church when, during the fortification of the town, the original church was demolished. The Holy Relics of the St. Spiridion go out on parade in Cyprus four times each year to commemorate times when his powerful intercession was felt. He is considered to be the island's Protector.

Spiridion had very little learning, but he had made the Scriptures his daily study and had learned what respect is due to the word of God. Once when the bishops of Cyprus were assembled together, St Triphyllius, Bishop of Ledra (whom St Jerome commends as the most eloquent man of his time), was preaching a sermon. Mentioning that passage, “Take up thy bed, and walk”, he said “couch” instead of “bed”, thinking that word the more elegant and suitable. St Spiridion objected against this false nicety and attempt to add graces to what was more adorned with simplicity, and asked the preacher whether the word our Lord Himself had used was not good enough for him. *{* The obvious reflection that this rebuke would sometimes apply also to Alban Butler himself is modified by the further reflection that the fashions of the eighteenth century are not ours. But there are not wanting writers and speakers to-day who might with advantage ponder this anecdote.}

 The relics of St Spiridion were translated from Cyprus to Constantinople, and again to Corfu, where they are still venerated. He is the principal patron of the Catholics of Corfu, Zakynthos and Kephalonia.

Standing at the door of his church, in endeavouring to save the lives of some, he exposed himself to the swords of the infidels, who cut off his head. St Florentius, his deacon, and St Jucundus, his lector, were massacred by his side. His sister, St Eutropia, seeing herself spared in order that hers might be another fate, threw herself upon her brother’s murderer and kicked and scratched him till she too was cut down and killed.

There is a passio incorporated in Flodoard, Historia Remensis ecclesiae, for which see MGH., Scriptores, vol. xiii, pp. 417—420, and other texts in the Analecta Bollandiana, vol. I and vol. v. Consult also Duchesne, Fastes Épiscopaux, vol. iii, p. 81. It seems probable that Nicasius was martyred by the Huns in 451, rather than by the Vandals in 407. 

Fortunatus left Italy when he was about thirty in order to return thanks at the shrine of St Martin at Tours for his recovery from some eye-trouble. He wrote poems to all the bishops and other distinguished people who entertained him on the road and, his visit to the court of Metz coinciding with the royal wedding, he composed an epithalamium for Sigebert and Brunehilda. At Paris he was particularly impressed by the care with which the clergy sang the Divine Office.

From Tours Fortunatus went to Poitiers, where he settled down, was ordained priest, and formed his lifelong friendship with St Radegund, Abbess Agnes, and the nuns of Holy Cross, for whom he became a sort of factotum and unofficial steward. A constant exchange of letters went on between him, his “mother” Radegund, and his “sister” Agnes, letters that were often accompanied by poems, most of which are lost. The friendship was intimate enough to be playful, and  serious enough to be fruitful. One Lent Fortunatus wrote Radegund a letter in Latin verse in which he asks her not to shut herself up so closely during the peni­tential season: “Even though the clouds have gone and the sky is serene, the day is sunless when you are absent.” He tells her to drink wine and to eat more for the sake of her health, and thanks her for the fruit and dishes she had sent him. “You told me to eat two eggs in the evening: to tell the truth I ate four. I wish I could find my mind always as prepared to submit as my stomach is ready to obey your orders.” And he tells her he sends flowers, roses and lilies, when he can get them.

In 569 the Emperor Justin II sent a relic of the True Cross to the monastery, and we see Fortunatus in another mood. King Sigebert deputed St Euphronius of Tours solemnly to deposit it in Holy Cross (Meroveus of Poitiers, who was no friend of Fortunatus, having refused), and for that occasion Fortunatus wrote the hymn Vexilla regis prodeunt, which we now sing as a Vespers hymn at Passiontide and on feasts of the Cross.

He was at his best as a liturgical poet, and there is another hymn of the Passion of his used in the Roman liturgy, Pange Lingua gloriosi laureain certaminis; the Easter Salve festci dies is also his.

Venantius Fortunatus was peculiarly, almost morbidly, alive to the sufferings and hardships of women, as may be seen in his lines on virginity, addressed to the Abbess Agnes, and elsewhere in his works. But this sensitiveness of temperament makes him the more valuable as a recorder of the part played by Christian life and thought in Merovingian Gaul, a part which in its finer manifestations was to a very considerable extent in the hands of women. The usual estimate of Fortunatus personally is that he was “an illustrious personage, a good poet and a great bishop”.

   Not all judgements have been so kind, and adverse critics have asserted that he pushed tact and prudence beyond the border of mean-spiritedness and flattery, and that his guiding principle was to get as much enjoyment out of life as possible. It must be admitted that he seems often rather too anxious to please; but it must also be admitted that, properly understood, to “make the best of both worlds”, is a praiseworthy Christian ambition. No honest way of life is inconsistent with sanctity, and St Venantius Fortunatus was a cultured Roman gentleman of refined taste and rather fastidious habits. His name has not been admitted to the Roman Martyrology but several French and Italian dioceses keep his feast.

Bartholomew Buonpedo, commonly called Bartolo, was born at Mucchio, near San Gimignano in Tuscany, during the earlier part of the thirteenth century, and was destined by his father for marriage and a secular avocation. But Bartolo had other ideas, and left home to become a servant in the Benedictine abbey of St Vitus at Pisa. He worked in the infirmary and made so good an impression that it was suggested to him that he should take the habit. While he was considering this our Lord appeared to him in sleep, and told him that he would win his crown by twenty years of physical suffering rather than by becoming a monk.

   Having received some training at the monastery, Bartolo, when he was thirty, was ordained priest and appointed to the parish of Peccioli. He had become a tertiary of the Order of St Francis, and he lived and fulfilled his pastoral duties in complete accord with the spirit of that saint. He took into his house a youth Vivaldo (Ubald), who after Bartolo’s death became a hermit and is venerated for his sanctity to this day.

   In 1280 Bd Bartolo was smitten by a disease which was recognized as leprosy, and he remembered what our Lord had told him about twenty years of suffering. Accompanied by the faithful Vivaldo, he retired to the leper-house of Celloli, of which he was made master and chaplain, and though the disease was malignant in him it never incapacitated him from celebrating Mass. He lived thus, in infinite patience and ministering to his fellow sufferers, until December 12, 1300, just twenty years after his leprosy began. He was buried in the Augustinian church of San Gimignano, where towards the end of the century one of the friars wrote an account of his life and miracles. His tomb is still venerated in the same church. He has been called “the Job of Tuscany”, and he is known always in San Gimig­nano as Santo Bartolo. A local feast was approved in 1499 and the cultus was formally confirmed in 1910, the Friars Minor fixing the feast for December 14.

The decree of confirmation of cultus, printed in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. ii (1910), pp. 415—454, contains a relatively full summary of the life of this beatus, and it mentions that Prosper Lambertini (Benedict XIV) considered that the cultus had already been equiva­lently sanctioned in 1499 in virtue of a papal delegation of Alexander VI. Fuller details of Bartolo’s history are given in Wadding, Annales Ordinis Minorum; and in Mazzara, Leggendario Francescano (1680), vol. ii, pt 2, pp. 681—684. See also Leon, Aureole Séraphique (Eng. ed.), vol. iv, pp. 165—169, who appeals more directly to a life by the Augustinian, Fra Giunta, written, it is said, in the fourteenth century. There is a popular life in Italian by E. Castaldi, Santo Bartolo (1928).  

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 Leon, Aureole Séraphique (Eng. trans.), vol. iv, pp. 174—177.

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.

Long accounts of Bd Nicholas may be found in all the Franciscan chroniclers. For example, in Mazzara’s Leggendario Francescano (1680), he fills pages 718 to 749 in vol. ii, pt 2; and in the Croniche of Leonardo da Napoli, pt 4, vol. ii, more than 120 closely printed pages are devoted to him. The best biography is probably that of G. Alapont, Compendio della Vita del B. Niccolô Fattore, which claims to be based upon the process of beatification and was printed in 1786. A short life in English was included in the Oratorian Series in the middle of the last century, and see also Léon, Auréole Séraphique (Eng. trans.), vol. iv, pp. 178—191.