Father Corapi's Biography

and this was followed by tumults and violence so uncontrolled that it was safer to travel from one extremity of the known world to the, other than to go from one street of Alexandria to the next. To these scourges succeeded the plague, which raged until there was not one house in that great city that escaped or which had not some death to mourn. Corpses lay unburied, and the air was laden with infection, mingled with pestilential vapours from the Nile. The living appeared wild with terror, and the fear of death rendered the pagan citizens cruel to their nearest relations; as soon as anyone was known to have caught the infection, his friends fled from him: the bodies of those not yet dead were thrown into the streets and abandoned.

At this juncture, the Christians of Alexandria came forward and displayed a great example of charity. During the persecutions of Decius, Gallus and Valerian they had been obliged to remain hidden, and had held their assemblies in secret or in ships that put out to sea or in pestilential prisons. Now, however, they came forth, regardless of danger, and set to work to tend the sick and to comfort the dying. They closed the eyes of the plague-stricken and carried them when dead upon their shoulders, washing their bodies and decently burying them, although they knew they were likely to share the same fate. In the words of the bishop: “Many who had healed others fell victims themselves. The best of our brethren have been taken from us in this manner: some were priests, others deacons and some laity of great worth. This death, with the faith which accompanied it, appears to be little inferior to martyrdom itself.” The Roman Martyrology, recognizing the force of these words of St Dionysius, in fact honours those loving Christians as martyrs. Their charity in thus relieving their persecutors when attacked by sickness may well make us ask ourselves what our attitude is to the sick poor, who are not our enemies but who are, in most cases, our fellow Christians.

460 St. Romanus of Condat  reputation for virtues and miracles Abbot of Gallo hermit in the Jura Mountains
  In território Lugdunénsi, locis Jurénsibus, deposítio sancti Románi Abbátis, qui primum illic eremíticam vitam duxit, et, multis virtútibus ac miráculis clarus, plurimórum póstea Pater éxstitit Monachórum.
       In the territory of Lyons, in the Jura Mountains, the death of St. Romanus, abbot, who first had led the life of a hermit there.  His reputation for virtues and miracles brought under his guidance many monks.

The two brothers soon built the monastery of Condat and then that of Leuconne, two miles to the north, whilst for the women they established the nunnery of La Beaume (the site of the present village of Saint-Romain-de-la-Roche). The brothers ruled as joint abbots in perfect harmony, although Lupicinus was inclined to be the stricter; he generally lived at Leuconne, and when at one time the brethren at Condat were making their food more palatable, he came over and forbade the innovation. Although they strove to imitate the anchorites of the East, they were obliged to modify some of their austerities owing to climatic and other differences. The Gauls were naturally great eaters, and these monks spent much of their time in very hard manual labour, but they never touched flesh-meat and were only allowed milk and eggs when they were ill. They wore wooden sabots and the skins of animals sewn together, which protected them from the rain, but not from the bitter cold in winter or from the summer rays of the sun reflected from the perpendicular rocks.

St Romanus made a pilgrimage to what is now Saint-Maurice in the Valais, to visit the place of martyrdom of the Theban Legion. He cured two lepers on the way, and, the fame of this miracle reaching Geneva, the bishop, the clergy and the whole town turned out to greet him as he was passing through. He died about the year 460, and was buried, as he had desired, in the church of the nunnery where his sister ruled. Lupicinus survived his elder brother by some twenty years, and he is commemorated separately on March as. In the longer Latin biography the austerity of Lupicinus is much dilated on, but there are also wonderful things told of his compassion for his monks and of his spirit of faith. When starvation seemed to threaten he obtained from God by his prayers a multiplication of the corn which remained to them; and when his subjects, yielding to temptation, planned to leave or actually quitted the monastery, he did not deal harshly with them, but was only intent on animating them with courage to persevere in their vocation.

Oswald was a great supporter of St Dunstan’s plans for the revival of religion and for the spread of the monastic order. He and St Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, were the prelates specially charged to enforce the decree that the clergy must either live single lives or resign their cures. In his own diocesan city Oswald showed great forbearance and tact in dealing with the lax clergy of St Peter’s. Instead of removing them, he founded another church near by which was served by Benedictine monks and to which all the people soon flocked. Seeing their church empty the clergy of St Peter decided that they also would embrace the monastic rule, and they carried out their resolution.

The saint spent much of his time in visiting his diocese, preaching without intermission and reforming abuses; he also fostered the study of letters and encouraged learned men to come from abroad. In the year 972, he was promoted to the see of York, but by the wish of the king and with the pope’s sanction he retained Worcester, and although he divided his time between the two dioceses, Worcester remained the place of his predilection, and he loved to worship with the monks in the monastery church of St Mary which he had founded and which became the cathedral of Worcester. Every day St Oswald used to wash the feet~ of twelve poor persons whom he afterwards fed at his own table. On February 29, 992 he had just wiped and kissed the feet of the last poor man and was yet on his knees, saying, “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost”, when he gently passed away. As his body was being borne to burial at Worcester it was noticed that a white dove was hovering over it. St Oswald’s feast is observed in the archdiocese of Birmingham.

One Holy Thursday she said to the companion, “Let us go and look for Christ our Lord. We will go to the hospital and perhaps amongst the sick and suffering we shall find Him.” She could not go empty-handed, and the only things they possessed were their veils for covering their heads on which the companion set such store. These Angela hastily sold to buy food to take to the hospital, “and so we offered food to these poor sick people, and then we washed the feet of the women, and the men’s hands, as they lay lonely and forsaken on their wretched pallets— more especially was a poor leper much consoled”, and great was the joy and sweet­ness they experienced on their way home, and so they found the Lord Christ on this Maundy Thursday. And so this strange life of great simplicity and of such overwhelming spiritual experience ran its course, and at the end of 1308 she knew that death was near. She had all her spiritual children assembled and laid her hand in blessing on the head of each, leaving them as her last will and testament words of wonderful confidence and assurance. Bd Angela died happily and in great peace on January 4, 1309.

We have one other detail of her outer life. Ubertino di Casale entered the Order of Friars Minor in 1273. For fourteen years his life was zealous and exemplary. He was a man of great learning, and these years were spent in various universities. He then fell away grievously into carelessness and sin. He tells us he made Angela’s acquaintance in a wonderful manner which he does not relate, and that she revealed to him his most secret thoughts, “God speaking through her”, as he says, and that she brought him back to a holy life. He adds that he was only one of a large family of spiritual children who owed the life of their souls to her, Though so little is known of her outer life, she has revealed her inner life very fully. “I, called Angela of Foligno, walking in the path of penance, made eighteen spiritual steps before I knew all the imperfection of my life.” These eighteen steps begin with the consciousness of sin, then, through the shame of confession, to the mercy of God, to self-knowledge, to the cross of Christ. At the ninth step, “the way to the cross”, she discards her rich clothing, her delicate food, but this is all still done very much against the grain, for she is not yet really controlled by divine love. At the tenth step comes the vision of Jesus Christ, which is granted to her in answer to her prayer: “What can I do to please thee?” The vision of Christ and His passion reveals to her the smallness of all her sufferings, and she tells us that she wept so continuously and so bitterly that she had to bathe her eyes for a long time with cold water, After the vision of the Cross she knows true penitence, and she decides on a life of absolute poverty. So one by one she climbs her steps. She learns more and more of the Passion. God Himself through the Lord’s Prayer teaches her to pray. She finds what graces come from our Blessed Lady, and at the eighteenth step she says that she realizes God most vividly, and so delights in prayer that she forgets to eat. At this stage she sells her much-loved castle.

Angela tells us that she has dwelt in two abysses, of height and of depth. Now, after the eighteenth step, she is hurled from the abyss of height and we have a terrible chapter telling of her temptations. She seems to herself to be stripped of every good wish or thought. She is tried by the most horrible sensual temptations, haunted by longings for sins of which she had never heard. At last the light broke through and she had a short reprieve. What she calls the next abyss was the temp­tation to false humility, great self-consciousness and scrupulosity. She wanted to tear off her clothes and run about the town naked, with fish and meat hung round her neck, crying out, “This is a most vile woman who stinks of evil and falsehood, who spreads vice and sin wherever she goes. Yes, that is what I am—a humbug. I pretend I eat no fish or meat, and really I am a glutton and a drunkard. I pretend I wear common rough clothing, but at night I sleep under the softest coverings, which I hide in the morning.” She implored the Friars Minor and her tertiaries to believe these self-accusations. At last she was delivered from this curse of false humility only to fall into the other extreme of great spiritual pride. She was filled with anger, bitterness, ill-nature. This state of torment began in 1294 and lasted more than two years. At last her poor tortured soul was lifted out of this abyss of darkness and she was comforted with a vision of God as the highest good, and more and more, as her life proceeded, she was filled with great joy and happiness—that joy which was the keynote of the early Franciscan life. Over and over again in her visions she is shown the love and goodness and kindness of God; more and more she grasps the underlying principle that St Francis taught, which binds all things together and “makes of all things one”—namely, love. When she is in the state of love everything that could be said about God or the life of Christ in Holy Scripture would only be a hindrance—she is “in God” and reads much greater and incomparable words. When she comes to herself after this experience she is so peaceful and happy that she says she is full of love “even for the devils”. She is so lost in love that not even the passion of our Lord can sadden her—all is joy. Sometimes the soul contemplates the human flesh of God which died for us, at other times joyful love wipes out all the sorrow of the Passion. “Therefore” she concludes, “the Passion is to me only a shining path of life.”

A large part of the book of visions is taken up with these wonderful, vivid, but always restrained descriptions of every detail of Christ’s passion and crucifixion. More and more she rises above the pain and suffering in the spirit of her Lord Himself, “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross and despised the shame”. She tells us that assisting at a representation of the Passion (apparently a kind of mystery play) in the open air she was so overcome with this spirit of joy that she seemed to herself to be taken up and hidden in the shining wound of the side of Christ. Wonderful favours and visions were granted her at Mass and holy communion. One of the last recorded visions is Peace. Something had disturbed her and she had lost her joy and peace. At last God spoke to her and told her she was favoured above anyone in the valley of Spoleto. Her soul cried out, Why, then, did God desert her? The answer was that she must trust more and more, and gradually peace returned to her, greater than she had ever known.

Ere 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 study St Paul’s epistles and the lives of the saints. At one time, in her 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 ecstasy, particularly during Mass or at spiritual conferences but she had to pass through a period of perse­cution when she was cruelly calumniated and her honour was assailed. Her soul was also purified by strange pains and by great bodily weakness. However, she passed unscathed through all these trials and was rewarded by wonderful visions and colloquies 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 honoured as a saint from the day of her death. Her bereaved husband used to say that, when he felt discouraged and depressed, he found strength by visiting the room in which his beloved wife had died. Bd Villana’s cultus was confirmed in 1824.

See the Acta Sanctorum for August 26 (Aug. vol. v); Procter, Lives of Dominican Saints, pp. 50—52 ; M. C. Ganay, Les Bienheureuses Dominicaines, pp. 153—175.

Covering herself with a thick black veil she proceeded on foot to the cathedral of Cracow, and repairing to one of the side chapels, threw herself on her knees, where for three hours with clasped hands and streaming eyes she wrestled with the repugnance that surged within her. At length she rose with a detached heart, having laid at the foot of the cross her affections, her will, her hopes of earthly happiness; offering herself, and all that belonged to her, as a perpetual holocaust to her crucified Redeemer, and esteeming herself happy, if so by this sacrifice she might purchase the salvation of those precious souls for whom He had shed His blood. Before leaving the chapel she cast her veil over the crucifix, hoping under that pall to bury all human infirmity that might still linger round her heart, and then hastened to establish a founda­tion for the perpetual renewal of this type of her soul’s sorrow. This founda­tion yet exists within the same chapel the crucifix still stands, covered by its sable drapery, being commonly known as the “crucifix of Hedwig.”

Jagiello seems to have been sincere. He received baptism, together with the new name of Ladislaus, and we read strange stories of the “conversion” of the Lithuanian people—how the temples of the false gods were destroyed wholesale, and how men, women and children drawn up in platoons, “were sprinkled [for their baptism] by the bishops and priests, every division receiving the same, name.”

All through the troubled years which followed, Hedwig was the most stable as well as the most judicious element in the government of the kingdom. She exercised a moderating influence upon the policy of her husband, she came to the rescue of the poor suffering people, who too often had to pay the penalty for the mistakes or the selfishness of their rulers, she won the love of her subjects by her gentleness and boundless charity, and yet she showed that she could defend herself with dignity against Ladislaus’s irrational outbursts of jealousy. It was only in her asceticism that she seemed to forget the need of a measure of prudence. But she was conscientious in all wifely duties, and her husband beyond doubt regarded her with deep affection as well as with a certain feeling of awe. When at last there was promise of an heir to the throne he was extravagant in the preparations he wished made. From the frontier where he was conducting a campaign he wrote about providing jewels and rich draperies. Hedwig replied “Seeing that I have so long renounced the pomps of this world, it is not on that treacherous couch—to so many the bed of death—that I would willingly be surrounded by their glitter. It is not by the help of gold or gems that I hope to render myself acceptable to that Almighty Father who has mercifully removed from me the reproach of barrenness, but rather by resignation to His will and a sense of my own nothingness.” Humanly speaking, she was not altogether wise in her use of penance and prayer. On the anniversary of her great renunciation she went out unattended to make a vigil in the cathedral before the veiled crucifix. Her ladies-in-waiting found her there, hours later, rapt in ecstasy or possibly in a swoon. Not long afterwards the birth of a daughter, who lived only a few days, cost the mother her life. It was believed that many miracles were wrought at her tomb.

When St John Capistran visited the town, Antonia told him that she desired a stricter rule, and he so fully sympathized with her wishes that he obtained for her the monastery of Corpus Christi, which had just been built for another order, and thither she retired in 1447 with eleven of her nuns to practise the original rule of St Clare in all its rigour. Girls gave up brilliant prospects to join her and the convent soon had to be enlarged to contain the hundred or more nuns who sang the divine praises day and night. Humility and patience were the outstanding qualities of Bd Antonia, who for fifteen years bore uncomplainingly a most painful disease, and in her spiritual life had to undergo severe trials. Her son was nothing but a trouble to her he dissipated his whole fortune, and he and her other relations used to come and worry her with their quarrels and affairs. It was also a great blow to her when the Franciscans of Aquila, to whom St John Capistran had entrusted the care of the convent, gave up the direction of the nuns; but they subsequently resumed the spiritual guidance of the community. She was a true daughter of St Francis in her love for poverty, which she called the Queen of the House. She was full of tenderness to her spiritual daughters, and when after seven years she resigned her office, she retained the affection and veneration of the whole community. Bd Antonia at times was seen to be in ecstasy and upraised from the ground, and once a fiery globe appeared to rest upon her head and to light up the place in which she prayed. When she died in 1472 the bishop, magistrates and people of Aquila insisted on conducting her funeral with great solemnity at the public charge. Her cult was confirmed in 1847.