William

ON SAINT WILLIAM, ABBOT OF ROSKILDE IN DENMARK,

OF THE ORDER OF REGULAR CANONS OF ST. VICTOR.

IN THE YEAR 1203.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

William, Abbot of Roskilde, in Denmark, of the Order of Regular Canons (St.)

BY D. P.

§ I. Cult, Canonization, Profession of St. William.

The propagation of the Augustinian Rule through the Canons, having happily begun in the eleventh century of the Christian Era, To the Regular Canons from St. Rufus in Provence and from its chief monastery in Provence, called of St. Rufus, being advanced into Spain before the end of the same century, as is said in the Life of Blessed Ollegarius chapter 1, on the 6th day of March; in the following century it extended its branches even to the royal city of the Gauls, when, as is in the MS. Chronicle of Alberic, in the year 1129 into the House of St. Victor of Paris, which was a Priory of the black monks of Marseille, was introduced the convent of Regulars from St. Rufus of Valence, by Hugh of St. Victor. Where note, that "of Valence" is said, not because at that time that was the name to the Congregation, to St. Victor at Paris; propagated from the monastery of St. Rufus of Avignon; but because afterward, when all the monasteries of the Avignon tract had been overthrown by the Albigensians, those who had the seat and head of their Order near the walls of the said city, transferred the name and dignity of the place to Valence in Dauphiné about the year 1210: before which was done, the new Order had spread such copious branches from the Victorine house, that in an old MS. of the same house it is thus read: "In the year 1138 the Canonical Order of St. Victor of Paris was flourishing, and was held in famous report throughout the world, on account of the distinguished persons adorned with morals and knowledge, which it scattered in the various churches of the world, like a fertile vine, bringing forth shoots to be transplanted."

[2] And indeed within the next decade in the year 1147, Abbot Gilduin lent to the neighboring church of St. Genovefa his Prior Oddo: and thence propagated to St. Genovefa, by whose discipline instructed this our Saint William, transferred that same Order even to the Northern kingdoms, having been made in the year 1162 Abbot of Roskilde in Denmark, The Order also passes into Denmark through St. William, or, as in that age it was commonly called by ignorant writers, who confounded Danes and Dacians, Dacia: by which name, with the title of Confessor, on this 6th of April he is found listed in the Additions of Hermann Greven and John Molanus to the Martyrology of Usuard, as also in the Martyrology of Galesinius and the historical Calendar of Felicius. The MS. Florarium of saints also says, "In Dacia the deposition of St. William Abbot." The new tables of the Roman church finally end this day thus: "In Denmark of St. William Abbot, illustrious for life and miracles": inscribed in the martyrologies on April 6, on which words Cardinal Baronius annotates: "Pope Honorius III, when he had ordered that his life be diligently inquired into, being informed by Gregory, a Roman citizen of the noble Crescentian family, then Cardinal Deacon of St. Theodore, acting as Legate a latere in Denmark, Sweden and Bohemia, enrolled him among the Saints."

[3] canonized by Honorius III in 1224. The bull of this Canonization is extant, dispatched in the year 1224, on the 12th of the Kalends of February, in Odoricus Rainaldus, the most diligent continuator of Baronius; in which the Pontiff testifies, that he ordered an inquiry to be made concerning the life, fame and miracles of the aforesaid servant of God by Thomas, formerly Archbishop of Lund (for two years before, the History of the Danes relates that he had died, of which more often below), a man of approved life, God-fearing and just, to whom credit was rightly to be given in this matter; and by the Venerable Peter, Bishop of Roskilde, and the Abbot of Eruad of the Cistercian Order: who being certain about his life and fame, as much by themselves as by others, and about the miracles as much by those in whom they had been done as by witnesses worthy of credit, the truth being known, took care to make the Pontiff certain; among other things setting forth, that so great grace of divine benediction shone forth in Christ, that by his suffrages lepers were cleansed, the sick healed, the possessed freed, the tongue of the mute opened, and what is more wonderful now the same was the gracious awakener of very many dead. The Pontiff then goes on to congratulate the mother Church with a new flower, and the kingdom of Denmark with so great a Patron, and finally, "Let the church of St. Thomas of Paraclete sing a new song to the Lord," he says, "which by the splendor of a new light, of the Confessor himself resting there, has been made beautiful and has appeared comely." Moreover in the same year in which the Bull was dispatched, and in the year 1238 translated, the solemnity was also held. This was performed by Peter, son of James, of this name II, Bishop of Roskilde, who died only in the following year: or if not, by Nicholas Stig, under whom also in the year of the Lord 1238 the Translation of St. William Abbot was made to Oppellut, which in the Sleswig Breviary is called Apilholt, elsewhere Ebbelholt, and on geographical maps Evelholt; distant about 10 miles from Roskilde toward the Northeast, in which was the said monastery of St. Thomas.

[4] It was the usage of that time, as is evident both from other examples, and especially on April 3 in the Acts of St. Richard of Chichester, no. 117, with the faculty of saying a Mass of him, that when the Pontiff enrolled anyone in the number of Saints, he also prescribed proper Prayers, by which his name was to be commemorated under the sacrifice of the Mass. Whether such Prayers were inserted in the bull of Canonization, we do not know: for that part, in which the Pontiff exhorts the faithful, that they should pursue William with the cult and praises of the holy Confessors of Christ, and implore his prayers with the deity, Rainaldus omitted, nor is it worth the labor to seek more laboriously: we have found them, which is enough, copied after the Life in the Victorine codex, and here we give them; that if ever the cult of the sacred is restored in Denmark, or the sacred Order of Regular Canons shall judge them to be inserted in the Office, which not long ago they obtained to be recited concerning this their Saint, they may be at hand for those who wish them, and they are these. Collect. "Almighty eternal God, with proper Prayers. who shinest wondrously in thy elect, whom thou hast willed to glorify by thy indwelling: grant us, we beseech, so to make worthily the commemoration of Blessed William thy Confessor and Abbot, that by his suffraging merits we may deserve to become thy temple." Secret. "By thy gifts, we beseech, O Lord, through the intercession of St. William thy Confessor and Abbot, apply the grace of thy appeasement; that both the remedies already conferred thou mayest protect, and those to be conferred thou mayest propitiously bestow." Communion. "Refreshed, O Lord, by the banquets of the sacred participation, we suppliants entreat thee, that by the prayers of St. William thy Confessor and Abbot we may always be lifted up, and be made worthy of the gifts of divine consolation."

[5] But since at the boundary of the year 1202 and the year 1203 (counting the years in the French manner from Easter to Easter) about the dawn of the Paschal day falling then on the 8th of the Ides of April, His feast sometime on June 16. the Saint died, and so there was danger lest at that time the annual veneration decreed for him should be hindered: we believe that by the ordination

at least Episcopal it was established, that his feast should be kept on the 16th of the Kalends of July, as Trithemius testifies, to be cited below, perhaps on the very day of the aforementioned Translation. But with the honors of the Saints extinguished in Denmark, this usage grew obsolete; according to which in the Sleswig Breviary printed about the year 1502, when Godscalcus of Alevelde held the Sleswig Cathedra, the Office of St. William is prescribed to be made wholly from the Common of a Confessor not a Pontiff, with the proper Collect placed above, and six proper Lections from the Life for the 1st and 2nd Nocturn. More recent writers, who had the sanctity of William known only from the Life, from it also took the day of death, by which they inscribed him in the Martyrologies composed by them; with no regard to the day noted by Trithemius; perhaps for the reason that it did not occur to them to suspect, that Trithemius was treating of the Abbot of Roskilde, as of a Benedictine. But why did he do this? It was not that Cistercian, I believe because he remembered that he was an Abbot, and believed all the monasteries in Denmark to be of the Benedictine, or at least Cistercian order (of which most indeed were). For that author, little solicitous to learn the history of the life, thought it enough to write these things: "William, Abbot of a certain monastery in Dacia, whose name now does not occur; a man certainly of religious and most holy life, merited to be honored by God with many virtues and signs, whose feast is venerated on the 16th of the Kalends of July."

[6] We have among the writers of Northern affairs, published at Frankfurt in the year 1609 by the effort of Erpold Lindebrog, the History of the Danish People; in which after the names and deeds of the pagan Kings, set forth in order without number of years, (The progress of which order in Denmark presently from the time of the introduction of Christianity all things are fitted to the years of Christ, and are brought down to the year 1288: which history concerning the matters of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth century deserves the greatest faith and authority, noting most accurately, not only the births and deaths of the Kings, and what in the time of each was done in the political state more worthy of mention; but also the beginnings and deaths of the Bishops of Denmark, is noted by Chronicles, falsely ascribed to King Eric) as well as the births of each of the convents, which the Cistercian Order acquired in Denmark from the year 1142 to 1210 to the number of twenty-four; noting also in what year St. Bernard entered the Order, and in what year he himself and St. Malachy passed from this life: so that we can in no way doubt, that the author was a monk of the Cistercian Order, and so the title bearing the name "of Eric of Pomerania, King of Denmark" is wholly false: who in the year 1411, more than a hundred years after the end of the Chronicle, having been introduced by right of adoption, most indolently conducted himself and at last also abdicated the kingdom, nowhere commended for literary pursuits. In this history or Chronicle, it is noted that in the year 1202 St. William, Abbot, passed away, and that in the year 1238 the Translation of St. William, Abbot, to Oppelhut was made. Indeed these two points regarded to the aim which the author had set himself, nor otherwise Benedictine chiefly: not likewise in what year either the Roskilde monastery at Eschil, or the Thomean at Ebbelholt had received the Regular Canons. But he would not have omitted to note, that the new inhabitants of those monasteries were of the Cistercian institute: if he could have truly noted this: and if they were not Cistercians, much less can it be said that they were by any other reasoning professors of the Benedictine Rule, from the sole authority of Trithemius, writing so confusedly and unexplored, and in such matters most frequently erring.

[7] But what need is there to seek arguments elsewhere, to overthrow an assertion so little founded? Whoever shall read the Acts either published by Surius or about to be published by us, but a Regular Canon: will in no way doubt, that this our Saint, brought up at his uncle's in the Benedictine monastery of St. Germain des Prés, no otherwise than as a secular boy in a school, and promoted by the same to a canonical prebend in the church of St. Genovefa, afterward from a secular Canon being made a Regular Canon there, introduced and propagated nothing other than the institute of the Regular Canons into Denmark, as is most clearly said in no. 39, and in Surius no. 14 at least concerning the monastery of St. Thomas, in which he spent the last years of his life, while these neglect his cult, he died, and was buried. Wherefore we cannot sufficiently wonder, that William is found not only omitted among the proper offices by the Regular Canons, but not even numbered among the Saints of his Order, except very late; to such a degree that it did not even occur to Pennotus in book 2, chapter 33, no. 17, alleging Surius, and relating how the Regular discipline was established at St. Genovefa, to say anything of the Colonies of his Order led into Denmark by St. William: from whom he could have given truer praise to that monastery than from Peter Lombard, the Master of the Sentences, who from being a Canon of Chartres was made Bishop of Paris, as if he, a secular Canon at St. Genovefa before, had been among the first to admit there the Regular discipline. But having read the Life in Surius, Pennotus recognized the defect and took care to supply it, having obtained the faculty of venerating St. William with a double Office with proper Lections taken from the Life: and thus, of one whose name was not even found in the calendar of the year 1613, his Office for April 6, with some Annotation of the same Pennotus about it, came forth among the proper offices of the Order first at Rome, then at Mons in the year 1635, and then at Venice in the year 1643 and in other later editions.

[8] An occasion given to the Benedictines for claiming him to themselves. Therefore the Canons having used such long negligence concerning the memory of this St. William, Arnold Wion would deserve pardon, because adhering to Trithemius he ascribed him to his own Order, if he had abstained from vitiating the history. But now who can patiently read these things about St. William in the same author in the Annotations to this day? "Surius brings his Life. He was first a monk of St. Germain at Paris under the rule of St. Benedict: then taken up as Abbot of St. Genovefa there, which monastery was placed under the Rule of St. Augustine, he lived as a Regular for some time: but afterward being summoned by Waldemar, King of Denmark, taking up again his former Rule, he was made Abbot of Roskilde." The more prudent Bucelin, although otherwise not at all scrupulous in drawing the Saints to his Order from wherever, took care not to dash himself knowingly and willingly upon such an evident falsity. But that William was Abbot in St. Genovefa, Wion could not read in Surius except in a dream: by which very thing indicating with what accuracy he wrote the rest about William. Also praised by Pontanus. Pontanus in book 3 of the Danish Affairs, page 294, placing his death in the year 1201, praises him with these words, although a heretic: "The same year was also fatal for William, Abbot of the Ebelholt monastery, which they in Latin called 'at the holy Paraclete.' Absalon had arranged that he should be called from the College of St. Genovefa, which was at Paris, into Denmark, together with other companions of the same monastery. These among the Danes first began the monastic life according to the Rule of St. Augustine, such as they had cultivated at Paris by the institute of St. Victor; but William, both on account of the sanctity of his life, and because certain miraculous deeds (so it is related) were observed after his death, was thereafter enrolled among the Saints, His Epitaph and called St. William of Paris." His Epitaph of this kind is circulated:

Born at Paris, blessed in deeds and words, Taken from the world, here lies William buried.

§ II. Life written, and Miracles. Acts at Paris, illustrated.

[9] Life published by Surius with changed style, Surius professes to give the Life of St. William, written indeed by his own disciple, but by himself in several places reduced into a compendium, for the most part also with the phrase changed. We found it in the monastery of St. Victor in Paris in the style, as we judge, original; and not only did we recognize a disciple of the Saint, who lived with him at least in his last years in Denmark, which is most manifest from no. 54 and following: but also a Frenchman by nation, inasmuch as in no. 41, calling certain fish "Perticae," which in Latin we would call "Percae," he proves that he fell into this solecism, on account of the amphiboly of his fatherland, that is, the French tongue, in which both "Perca" and "Pertica" are called by the common word "Perche." This however is the difference between that which Surius found, and this which we give; that the former was such as was written a few years after the death of the holy man, and at no. 57 ended with these words almost: "Many things sufficiently admirable could be commemorated here, which we either heard or saw at the Paraclete, where his holy body is laid: but the very multitude of them dissuades us from doing this." But ours here was augmented by the same writer (which the style itself clearly indicates, and also appears from the end of no. 67) after about ten years with an accession of miracles previously omitted, and therefore the aforesaid clause is found changed in this way: given by us in the original style, "But these things being briefly commemorated, let us come to the miracles which we either saw or heard in the city of our God, that is, in the Paraclete, where rests the glorious Confessor of God William."

[10] together with the miracles added by the same author, To these miracles, deduced through three chapters, no clause is appended, which indicates the end of the writing. Wherefore we suspect, that this material was to be pursued further, if death or some other chance had not hindered the author. Certainly we wholly reckon that all things were done and written, not only before the translation or elevation of the holy body took place, 35 years after the death of the Saint; but even before the business of Canonization was treated; although in the title of the MS. "Saint," in the beginning of the Life itself "Blessed," in the course he is named "the holy and glorious Confessor of God William." But however quickly these things may be conceived as written, yet more than fifty years must be said to have flowed from that time, when the Saint had come from France into Denmark, when this writer was very probably quite a boy or young man: but who knew French affairs less distinctly. who accordingly whatever he could narrate of things done at Paris by the Saint, must have had from others, who had heard from others brought from France; since it is credible that the Saint himself was wont to speak sparingly of his own praises. The author therefore is worthy of pardon, that he has woven a less distinct history of those matters, as regards the circumstances of persons and times, and has in some points strayed from the truth more certainly to be known from the letters of Abbot Suger, through whom all those things were done which pertain to the introduction of Regular discipline into the most ancient church of St. Genovefa: where this same Life of the saint which we give with the miracles is extant in a very ancient MS., as also is found in the monastery of Viridis-vallis near Brussels, which is likewise of the Regular Canons.

[11] In the year 1148 Claudius Malingre in book 2 of Antiquities of Paris, page 157, alleges an ancient book of the Gospels, covered with silver plates; at the end of which, in the Sacristy of St. Genovefa, where it is kept, he reads the following: "In the year of the Lord 1148, King Louis went to Jerusalem," although he had set out from Gaul after Pentecost of the preceding year, yet he did not arrive in the Holy Land before mid-Lent, nor did he go to Jerusalem except after Easter. "In the same year, our church was changed from the state of Secular Canons to the Regular Order, by the aid and industry of Suger of good memory (for he died in 1152), Abbot of St. Denis, Regulars are established at St. Genovefa the same Abbot being enjoined by Lord Eugene and the illustrious King of the French above-mentioned." For when in the year 1147 Pope Eugene coming to Paris, had turned aside to the church of St. Genovefa, dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, and subject immediately to the Apostolic See, as is known from the Bull of Paschal II given in the year 1108; for the sake either of lodging among the Canons, as the aforecited Claudius will have it; or, as this Life has and is more likely, only for celebrating Mass: so both he himself and King Louis were disturbed by the insolence of the Canons residing there, that they took counsel of changing the Order; and the Pontiff, when he was about to return to Italy via Langres, commanded Suger that he should send the Prior of Abbeville of the Cluniac Order with eight monks of St. Martin des Champs into the church of St. Genovefa, rather than monks, who should take the place of the Secular Canons there.

[12] at the desire of the seculars, Suger carried out the matter committed to him diligently: yet, taking occasion from the complaining Canons, who were setting out for the Roman Curia, he discreetly deferred it; meanwhile summoning those whom he judged fit to be established in the said church, if the Pontiff should persevere in his opinion. "When suddenly," he himself says in a letter written thereupon, "on almost the next third or fourth day, on which we had proposed to place the designated Abbot and monks in the same church, behold the aforesaid Canons, namely the Cantor and others, returning from your presence, reported to us that the opinion had been changed, for the good of peace, in the placing of Regular Canons." Therefore not, as our author seems to have believed, while the King and the Pontiff were still present at Paris, whom wavering in this matter was the matter of introducing the Regulars to the church of St. Genovefa acted upon. Nor was that thought taken up at the most urgent prayers of the Abbot of St. Victor, but at the petition of the very secular Canons themselves: whom nevertheless Suger, not finding consenting even in this very thing, "We insisted," he says, "with many and prolonged reproaches, that they should refuse the very things postulated and mercifully granted: until those who were of sounder counsel and sons of light, promised that they would peacefully receive the Regular Canons."

[13] Suger impels to obedience to the Pontiff, Moreover how nothing here was done by the impulse of the Abbot of St. Victor, is still more evident from what the same Suger in his letter pursues thus: "But we, rejoiced over this, since some of the better ones were asking that an Abbot be constituted for them and Canons from St. Victor; both because we knew no church nearer to us more religious in its state, and because by nearness of place it is more convenient for all their need, we turned aside to them; and the venerable Abbot of St. Victor, Gilduin by name, approved in works of piety, now apart and now in his Convent, that he should bring them aid, and as a helper of the Divinity should uproot and destroy, build and plant, we suppliantly begged in the name of the Lord. Who as a veteran Father and prudent manager of the same place (namely from the year 1129) when he urgently refused this very thing; and from him the unwilling Abbot of St. Victor when he learned that we were asking his Prior, a venerable and religious man, to be made Abbot, with tears arising with weeping and anguish of heart, opposing his old age and his failing, and deploring the counsel and aid of the same Prior if he were to be deprived of him, refusing through almost the whole day, and detesting that it should ever be done, he held out until the next Nones. obtains Odo as Abbot: But at last being overcome by the prayers of many, indeed by your authority, by which we pressingly adjured him opportune and importune, as much from mercy as from piety, bearing his own inconvenience for another's advantage; he gave to us the same venerable Prior, with twelve Brothers, religious and honest men: whom on the feast of St. Bartholomew we solemnly introduced to the same church with the Clergy and people of the city, and on the same day we had him solemnly blessed as Abbot before the altar of the same St. Genovefa by the venerable Bishop of Meaux Manasses, whom we had taken with us to manage these things," etc. Which see in du Chesne vol. 4 of French affairs, page 506, or from him in the Sainte-Marthes, and other labors of the same Suger, for defending the Regulars there against the seculars, in another letter to the same Eugene; with 12 companions. Moreover the names of those twelve Brothers are had in the Necrology of St. Victor, and are described in a certain agreement made with the Victorines concerning the running of the water of Bevers, and they are Guibert, Prior; William, Subprior; Henry, William, Stephen, Andrew, Priests; Odo and William, Deacons; Gaufridus and Theobald, Subdeacons. So Claudius du Moulinet to us: who if he had noted the year of the said agreement, we could say more certainly, whether William the Subprior here noted, was our Saint, or another of the same name, who held the same office before him. I am more inclined to believe him the same: because since here, not twelve, but only ten Brothers are noted, I am compelled to suspect that the agreement was written some years after the introduction of the Rule, when out of that duodenary number some had died or migrated back to St. Victor, and certain new ones had come, among whom St. William himself was, when these things were being done, also Subprior; for that he was this is clear from the Life no. 18: so that it remains uncertain, who of the ten enumerated had passed from the monastery of St. Victor to St. Genovefa.

[14] Among those whom Suger calls sons of light and the better ones, we should wholly believe William to have been: who receives St. William into the order, were it not that this Life so clearly testifies, that he was absent in his Provostship, not only when the first disturbances existed at Paris, but even when in the following year the new Abbot Odo was constituted. Namely, sustaining daily injuries from men too unlike himself, he seems eagerly to have either sought or accepted the dignity of Provost, in which he could serve God more quietly, retaining nevertheless his former benefice, on account of which, lest he should be forced to reside at Paris, he could easily have obtained, being supported by such a powerful patronage. Meanwhile, because for those seculars, who did not wish to undertake the Regular Order, the fruits of their prebends remained intact as long as they should live, by the will of the King and Pontiff; the new Abbot Odo had need to warn William of the change made, and to ask how he wished to deal with him: which although it could have been done through letters or messengers, nevertheless he preferred to invite him to himself; whom from those things which he knew he had previously done and suffered, he hoped could not with difficulty be induced to embrace likewise the institute of Regular life, and thus to relieve by the accession of his goods the poverty of the new colony. But these things being thus placed, it will be less to be wondered at, that St. William did not communicate to his disciples afterward in Denmark so distinct a knowledge of the things done in his absence.

[15] And after some years returned to St. Victor, But what follows, after no many years' course afterward, that Guarinus was elected Abbot in place of the deceased Odo, can be ascribed only to the author, remembering less carefully what he had heard. For it is clear from the continuator of Aimoin, ending in the year 1165, that in that said year, at the baptism of Philip Augustus, besides Hugh, Abbot of St. Germain, Herveus also, Abbot of St. Victor, and Odo formerly Abbot of St. Genovefa were godfathers. Therefore Odo was still living, but no longer Abbot. He was living moreover in his first monastery of St. Victor, where even now his sepulchre still stands, with a distinguished epitaph, which the Sainte-Marthes recite. But what other cause was there for him to resign his dignity, and to return as quickly as possible whither he had been sent, Guarinus having been constituted Abbot. than the daily instance of the most excellent elder Gilduin? Therefore in the year 1153, we believe Odo to have abdicated, as Claudius du Moulinet wrote to us that it is contained in the monuments of his monastery: nor do we doubt that Guarinus was substituted for him then, whom although the compiler of that Catalogue of Abbots in the Sainte-Marthes, Boulartius, omitted in the Catalogue, we do not hesitate to place before Albertus, who, by his own admission, was appointed to rule that Abbey only about the year 1167.

[16] This Guarinus had, by the authority of the King, brought into Office a Prior, elected indeed by common votes, but, because he wanted him to be constituted by the King, rejected; wherefore against this less canonical action, William, kindled with zeal for religious liberty, and invited by the nearness of the Pontiff then staying at Sens, William opposes the illegitimate institution of the Prior, ran to him. But he could not approve his fervor sufficiently to the Pontiff; accordingly he heard his suggestion indeed, as is said in the Life, and ordered another Prior to be elected; but he nevertheless wished William himself also to make satisfaction to his Abbot for the irreverence committed against him. But the Abbot seemed to have exceeded measure, and therefore a complaint about him having been brought to the Pontiff, the same Pontiff had need to write in these words. "Alexander, Bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his beloved sons, the Abbots of St. Germain and St. Victor, also to the Prior and Subprior of the church of St. Victor, and to Odo, formerly Abbot of St. Genovefa, greeting and Apostolic blessing. and therefore more sharply chastised It has been signified to us, that when William, Canon of St. Genovefa, had come to our presence, without the license of his Abbot and Chapter; and having been sent back by us to the aforesaid Abbot, that in Chapter he might humbly make satisfaction for such a transgression; so vehemently and shamefully did he treat him, that stripping him of all his garments, and sharply whipping him, for seven days he made him take food on the ground with dogs. But since about such an honest and religious man we ought not easily to believe anything sinister, We, more fully trusting in your honesty, commit this to your discretion to be performed: commanding you to inquire most diligently into the very matter, and faithfully to intimate to us the truth of this matter by your letters. Given at Sens, 15 Kal. Sept." That delation had much exaggeration and fiction concerning the severity exercised against William, he is defended by Alexander III in the year 1164 as is clear from the Life: and we believe this to have been the cause why the Abbot of St. Genovefa did not fear, when cited, to appear before the Pontiff himself together with St. William. But in what year? Baronius reports from Newbury, that Pope Alexander, who in the year 1163 on the 4th of the Kalends of June had celebrated the Council of Tours in Gaul, having been offered the option of establishing his residence in the kingdoms of Gaul or England, chose Le Mans (rather Sens), and there from the Kalends of October, until

to the Easter of the second year (namely 1165), making a not small delay, there managed the business of the universal Church according to the duty of his office.

[17] Therefore this controversy, wrongly referred by Baronius to the time of the aforenamed Pope Eugene, the same had been present in 1162 at the revelation of St. Genovefa pertains to the year 1164; and it was preceded by two whole years by the revelation of the Head of St. Genovefa; whose history exhibited by us without the name of the author on January 3 page 152 from a Brussels MS., in a MS. of St. Victor is found under this title, "Treatise of Blessed William on the revelation of the head and body of Blessed Genovefa": in both places however the 10th of the month of January of the year from the incarnation of the Lord 1161 is noted, counting indeed until Easter, which was by our manner already begun in 1162. Certainly William was always most devoted to St. Genovefa, and reproaching Manasses of Orleans and that he himself was the author of that treatise, becomes very likely above all from this, that what he had done and said with admirable zeal against him who wished to render suspect the truth of the sacred pledge, he himself there from modesty concealed; whence it happens that the history can take great light from this Life, and this in turn from thence, where without dissimulation that Bishop of Orleans of foolish tongue is called Manasses, and those elogia are added, which an equitable reader, and one knowledgeable of the great and many praises and virtues of that Manasses, will perhaps believe with difficulty to have been fitted by the holy man to a Bishop otherwise approved enough.

[18] Charles Saussay in the Annals of Orleans altogether contends that it was done in this Life by some error that "of Orleans" was written, especially because it is added that "the Foolish-talking of the Bishop, which he had brought against the Blessed Virgin, did not in any way remain unavenged: for he, afterward entangled in many crimes, being cast out from his See, miserably ended his unworthy life with a worthy death." he more severely rebukes, describing it. For this, he says, could not be understood of any other than Elias, deposed on account of atrocious accusations: but seventeen years before these things were done at Paris. But as on the one hand we think the Saint is to be forgiven, that moved by the atrocity of the blasphemy and the scandal arising thence, he was more harshly invective against him, from whose mouth by a certain inconsiderate sharpness words so injurious to the Saint herself and to her ministers had fallen out: so to our writer it ought not to be turned into great fault, that he who had already perhaps read these things in the aforesaid treatise, thought him to be the one about whom such bad fame had been spread.

[19] An ancient MS. codex which Stephanius testifies is preserved in the Royal Library at Copenhagen, in his prolegomena to Saxo Grammaticus chapter 11, has these things about St. William: "In the year of the Lord 1161 Bishop Absolon of Roskilde sent Saxo, Died in the year 1203 Provost of Roskilde, to Paris to the church of Blessed Genovefa, and brought back Brother William with three other Brothers into Denmark. And St. William was made Abbot in Echilsio, where there were Regular Canons, having nothing except the name and habit, who before had had a Prior as Prelate. But St. William died in the 40th year after he undertook the Pastoral care, and was buried in the monastery of St. Thomas, in the town of Zealand called Ebbelholt, in the year 1202." Both the year in which the Saint departed to Denmark, and that in which he himself passed from the living, seem to be taken from the history of the Life. For first at no. 24 it is said, "Absolon, Bishop of Roskilde": whom the History, falsely putting forth the name of King Eric, asserts was promoted in the year 1058 (rather 1158), and being solicitous about restoring discipline in that place, called William, formerly familiarly known to him while studying at Paris: "For many Danes in that age, when King Philip had as wife Gerberga, Came to Denmark, not in the year 1161 sister of the King of Denmark, flocked to Paris for the sake of studies, and had their own gymnasium, adjoining that which is now the College of Laon, on the road of St. Genovefa at the foot of the mountain," as Claudius du Moulinet taught us.

[20] Secondly at no. 52 at the end these words are had, "Released into a precious death, he sent forth his spirit on the 8th of the Ides of April, in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord 1202, in the 98th year of his age, but in the fortieth after he undertook the care of the Lord's flock." In which first that difficulty as to the year of death, how it agrees with the Pasch, under whose dawn on April 6 it is certain William died, has not and does not require other solution, than that what was performed on the night of Easter was still imputed to the year then ending, not to the new one beginning with the very Sunday of the resurrection. But that the same year was the fortieth from the pastoral regime undertaken, cannot stand with right chronology and with those things which it is certain were done about the year 1164 at Sens and Paris by the irrefragable testimony of Pope Alexander. Wherefore we greatly incline, but in the year 1171 as it were as more certain, to approve the reading of the Genovefian Codex, in the first place noting the year 1171, and consequently the year in which he died as the thirtieth of pastoral care. For it is more congruous that by a longer episcopate of several years, and with the authority acquired thence and corroborated, Absolon should have attempted that innovation: and it is altogether necessary that that departure be deferred beyond the year 71 of that century. For what could perhaps be said, that indeed in that year Provost Saxo came to Paris, yet the business treated by him was consummated only after some years, does not seem sufficiently probable to the truth: because William entering Denmark found all things so immature and unprepared, that it sufficiently appears that there had not previously been long and anxious debate, whence those who were sent would be sustained, and on what conditions they would be received.

LIFE

By his Disciple in Denmark.

from MS. of the monastery of St. Victor at Paris.

William, Abbot of Roskilde, in Denmark, of the Order of Regular Canons (St.)

BHL Number: 8908

BY A DISCIPLE FROM MS.

CHAPTER I.

Dissolute Colleagues persecute at St. Genovefa a secular Canon: Regulars are introduced there.

[1] Blessed William, born of a noble stock, was handed over by his parents to be educated to the venerable Hugh, Abbot of St. Germain des Prés, Educated at St. Germain des Prés, who kindly receiving him as his nephew, caused him to be diligently instructed in literary studies. And while still an infant he was brought up in the cloister at St. Germain, and was being formed in the first elements of letters, he studiously considered, how the monks in the cloister sat, read, chanted, and prayed: whence, like a most prudent bee, finding the diversity of flowers, he received from them the gifts of honey, and stored them up in the honeycomb of his heart. For he was meditating then with a childish mind, what he would afterward fulfill devoutly in old age. Therefore with divine grace cooperating with him, excelling many of his contemporaries in docility of wit, he advanced by the study of the liberal arts; and among the very masters of the arts, conspicuous in knowledge and doctrine, he was held famous. Therefore Abbot Hugh rejoiced more abundantly at the progress and honorability of the morals of his nephew, and gave thanks to God; and wishing that his advantage should be provided for in the future, He becomes a Canon at St. Genovefa; when he had been promoted to the Subdiaconate, he acquired for him a Prebend in the church at Paris of the Apostles Peter and Paul and Blessed Genovefa, in which there were then secular Canons. Thus having been made a secular Canon, he prudently performed all things pertaining to him. Noticing also that in his tender age he had learned what the monks brought up among themselves did in quiet, taking a book he often sat alone in the cloister and read, and exercised himself in divine lection.

[2] When his fellow Canons saw this, they were greatly indignant; and envying his good morals, from which they ought to have profited, thence they began to fail. Their thoughts against him were evil, inflamed from Gehenna. For they gnashed their teeth against him, nor could they speak anything peacefully to him: where on account of sanctity of life hateful to his Colleagues, for their throat was an open sepulchre, with their tongues they dealt deceitfully, the poison of asps under their lips. Whence they came together in one against the innocent, saying: "Brethren, what shall we do? Behold this man does many things against us and our customs: for he is contrary to our works, wishing to introduce the monastic life upon us. Let us recall to memory what the Philosopher says, Ovid I, de Rem.

Resist the beginnings: medicine is prepared too late, When evils have grown strong through long delays.

Let us therefore resist his evil inventions and uproot them: for if we shall so dismiss him, not only the Romans, but also the Supreme Pontiff and the King of the French will come, and will take away our place, and having cast us out will make men of another habit reign in our tabernacles, and we shall be in a proverb to every people." These and similar things as if by a spirit of prophecy they were exchanging among themselves; ignorant that such a thing would come upon them within a few years.

[3] From that day therefore they were considering how they might afflict him, and, surrounded by fraud, eliminate him more quickly from his Canonry; and they were fools in their thoughts. One therefore of them, who seemed to be more familiar with him than the others (it is unknown whether from his own deliberation, or at the suggestion of others) under a certain appearance of affection, which he did not bear in his heart, met him secretly, saying: "O most dear and most worthy of all love, there is a secret which I wish to tell you, if you being adjured will promise that you will manifest it to no one, by one of them, pretending a desire for a more religious life, until I shall have accomplished in deed what I turn over in mind." To this the man of God answered, that he could very well keep secret, what he wished to be hidden. Then he: "For a long time, dearest Brother, from desire of the heavenly life, I have disposed to change this life which we hold: for although it is called life, yet it is rather to be called death than life; because it is known to lead its lovers to eternal death. For the world is placed in evil and full of all uncleanness, with which it unceasingly entangles its own: whence let us attend to what the Lord says in the Gospel: 'Watch because ye know not the day nor the hour.' Matt. 24:42 And again: 'He who shall not renounce all things which he possesses cannot be my disciple.' Luke 14:33, Rom. 13:11 And the Apostle, he is invited to seek a monastery; 'It is now the hour to rise from sleep.' Let us rise therefore from the sleep of fault, and adorn our lamps, and with the wise let us be watchful; so that when the father of the family comes, without rebuff we may enter with him to the wedding."

[4] And when that one listened intently to his words, he added: "If we shall be two, we shall be warmed by mutual service." To whom the man of God answered: "Salutary are the things which you have spoken, and to a wise man more desirable than gold and precious stone. But what shall we do?" But that one: "If we wish truly to leave the falling and transitory things of the world, let us faithfully offer ourselves to God in the habit of religion with our things." To these things

he, sinking down, said: "I do not yet have the will to become a monk; but for the salvation of my soul and yours, if you match deeds to words, I will do what you urge: yet with this condition, that seeing you first enter, I shall more safely follow." But he rejoicing, rejoined; "You have spoken well; so let it be." And when and persuaded by the same, they often held familiar conversations between themselves about contempt of the world and about their proposition; it pleased both to go as quickly as possible to a monastery of monks, which is called La Charité. When they had arrived, the giver of this counsel, having called the Father of the monastery, humbly opens the cause of their coming: who rejoicing at their coming and vow, embraces them with the arms of charity, and in this manner gives answer: "Our Lord says, 'He who comes to me I will not cast out.' John 6:37 I relying on this sentence, will gladly share the temporal and spiritual things of this house with you, and I shall take care to associate you with this holy congregation, if you do not fail in your proposition." To whom when they had rendered manifold thanks for such a sweet response, and because he had determined to accept their petition; the Abbot orders them to be received into the guesthouse, and necessities to be administered to them.

[5] And when they were seated, he thus addresses William: "Now, with the Lord's favor, Seeing that he must be deserted there, we have begun a good work and profitable to the salvation of our souls: it remains that, with His help, we in no wise desist from what we have begun. How happy you are, dear Brother, that you are subject to no temporal impediment; but being free from all, you can at present take the habit with these holy men! But I must for a little return home, so that I may provide a guardian for my mother and sister: for it would be impious and a most grave sin to me, to leave them without protection; since the Apostle says, 'If anyone has not care of his own, especially of the faithful, he has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.' 1 Tim. 5:3 But you, be of good mind, and do not take ill my absence for a time: but what you have to do, do it quickly. I however, he cautiously evades the fraud. when the term of the delay granted me by you has expired, I promise before God and his Saints that I will return more swiftly." Then William, sensing that these things were not being done by the Spirit of God, but that he might bind him separated from himself with claustral thongs, thus answered: "Your more mature age urges you to go first; but it befits me, younger in age, not to precede you, but rather to follow: this also I remember to have promised you at the beginning of your exhortation." Then the inventor of this deceit, seeing the fictions of his fraud frustrated in effect, drew long sighs from the depth of his chest, and said: "Let us defer it therefore to another time." And so withdrawing from the cloister, they were returning by the way they had come; and iniquity, reciprocated into itself, belied itself.

[6] Lord Abbot Hugh, always fervent with the same zeal of love about the progress of his nephew unshaken, With his Colleagues unwilling and unknowing wished him to be promoted to the grade of Deacon: which when his rivals knew, touched inwardly with sorrow of heart, they feared lest, if he were ordained in his church, he would be advanced to a greater dignity. Therefore devising solace for their fear, they surrounded the Bishop of Paris with manifold prayers, that he should not at all take him up for promotion, or at that time altogether desist from making sacred Orders. By whose prayers the Bishop being overcome, He is ordained Deacon, and too credulous of their words, because they accused him in many things, deferred making sacred Orders. But Almighty God, who catches the astute in their astuteness, and destroys the wisdom of the wise, and rejects the understanding of the intelligent; did not wish what they had contrived against his nephew to remain hidden from Abbot Hugh. Whence the same Abbot sent him with his letters to the Bishop of Senlis to be ordained; and what he wished the same devout Bishop fulfilled.

[7] Therefore having obtained the office of the Diaconate, he returned home, with none of his Canons knowing, where or why he had gone. On the following Saturday he is appointed to read the Homily, because on account of their importunity he could not have a substitute. But this they did, He unexpectedly comes to read: that he, not having one who could fulfill for him the Levitical office, according as the institution of his Prebend required, might be scandalized; and they might have matter of ill-doing against him. On the Lord's night, when the seventh Lection ought to have been pronounced, he himself came forward to pronounce the same, and having opened the book, with a loud voice, he sounded out, "Bid, Lord": but the Gospel was Luke 11:14, "Jesus was casting out a devil, and it was mute." At whose voice of command filled with great amazement and ecstasy, amazed at the matter, the rivals slip away from the choir at what had happened to them, they grew mute and were silent from responding the Benediction: and because their grief was renewed, leaving Matins and the choir, they went out one after another beginning from the elders: and William remained alone at the pulpit, and Master Alberic in the middle of the choir, who was a good and just man: he had not consented to the counsel and acts of those, but was awaiting the kingdom of God.

[8] When morning came, when the Canons had come together, and were ruminating among themselves concerning those things which had been done; Master Alberic coming upon them, thus began to speak: "We can truly say, They are acutely rebuked by Master Alberic. that this night we have seen wondrous things. And who would not wonder? It is not wonderful that the only Son of almighty God was able to cast out a devil which was mute; and the mute speaking, the crowds wondered: but this is more admirable to me, that with Lord William pronouncing the Homily, 'Jesus was casting out a devil,' his fellow-Canons have been cast out of the church, rational men namely; and with him speaking, they have become mute; and his brothers have withdrawn from him, and friends have departed as strangers. With him finishing the sermon, the persecutors of God's servant have been made a parable to all who have heard these things."

[9] But Blessed William, strengthened by continual meditation of the word of God, was prudently ruling himself in all things, so that with the Psalmist he could say, "The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man may do to me." Ps. 117:7, Ps. 72:28 William is adorned with a certain Provostship. And again, "But for me it is good to adhere to God, to place my hope in the Lord God." And when by God's help, whose judgment is a great abyss, and against whose examination the counsel of man is not stable, armed with patience he rendered his adversaries, persevering in their begun malice, disarmed; he is raised to the dignity of a certain Provostship. O the piety of Christ, to be followed with all praise! who in the time of his good pleasure knew how to extol his servant, whom before the time the sons of envy were contriving to oppress. But his fellow-Canons, languishing in shameful idleness, ate and drank in royal apparatus to luxury, in pride and in abuse, until the day on which Lord Pope Eugene entered Gaul, having, besides those things which were outside, daily pressing concerns, the care of all the churches committed to him by God. He broke their pride, and reduced it to nothing: for with him arriving at Paris, what they feared came to pass, and what they dreaded happened to them: not indeed by chance, nor done by William or by his premeditated counsel; but by the just judgment of divine wisdom disposing all things.

[10] Therefore the Lord Pope wishing to know if the vineyard had flourished, if the flowers had given fruits; he withdrew into the parts of Gaul: Eugene the Pope having entered Paris, to whom approaching Paris King Louis and the Bishop of the same City, with a multitude of Clerics and Laymen, ran; and having received him with honor they lead him with great rejoicing to the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary. After a few days it pleased him to visit the church of Blessed Genovefa, and there to celebrate the divine offices, because it was called "Apostolic." When he had arrived there, a silk pallium is placed before the altar by the ministers of the church, where the Lord Pope prostrates himself for prayer. Prayer being completed, he enters the vestry, and is clothed with sacred garments to celebrate Mass. Meanwhile the ministers of the Lord Pope take up the silk pallium, and as he was preparing to say Mass in St. Genovefa, affirming that it was due to them, according to the manner of ancient custom. Which the servants of the Canons taking ill, strove to snatch the pallium from their hands: the Romans on the contrary with all efforts did not cease to pull it to themselves. Why do I delay on these things? They did not cease to pull it to and fro, until, the pallium being torn piece by piece, they struck each other with fists, and the ministers of the church rendered the servants of the Lord Pope bloody with cudgels applied. And when the clamor of those disagreeing rose up in the church, King Louis ran up, a brawl arose between his and the church's ministers: wishing to restrain them: but they, because their foolish heart was darkened, did not fear the King coming in his splendor, but struck him like the others with strong blows.

[11] And while these things were being done, a certain member of the Lord Pope's household, his garment torn and his face scratched with nails, falling at the feet of his Lord, tearfully sets forth his injuries to him, saying, "Behold how those are honored whom the Lord Pope wishes to be honored. Is this the reward due us, These complain to the Pope, who left Rome and our own, and followed thee? Let Rome already feel shame: nowhere have we been without honor except in this church, in which evils have befallen us which we did not deserve; whence we have become a reproach to our neighbors, a scoffing and derision to those who are round about us: but, if thou canst do anything, take away our reproach." But when the Apostolic had known all that had been done, exasperated with exceeding indignation, he answered: "Vengeance is mine, and I will repay." And calling Lord King Louis, he thus speaks: The Pope to the King: "I, for reverence of the Apostles Peter and Paul and of Blessed Genovefa, came here to perform divine mysteries: and the Canons of this church, malicious and foolish, casting off the fear of the Lord, have struck my servants, to provoke me to anger, with fists and whips. But lest they glory long in their malice, do thou, who dost protect the cause of this church, delay not to exhibit justice to me concerning the aforesaid transgressors." But the King said to the Lord Pope, seeking justice from him: "Holy Father, to whom shall I set forth the complaints of injury done to me, or who will do me justice? for I, as thine, while I was trying to separate them, sustained heavy blows from the raging men. But since to thee from the Lord the power of binding and loosing by just judgment has been given, behold they are in thy hand; render their recompense to them." These things said, they withdrew together from that place.

[12] The same deliberate about introducing monks there, But as they were going together, a conversation arose again between them, how they might destroy the pride of those Canons, and rent out that vineyard to other husbandmen, who would render its fruit in its seasons. But yet they did not wish to do violence to any of them,

that they should be deprived of their Prebend, before God should take them away from the midst, because many of them were noble and learned: but that they might vindicate the injury done to them, without sin, through religious men, by committing to them the church of Blessed Genovefa. They therefore decreed that Black monks should be established there: their mind afterward being changed, but this especially troubled them, that for their support, besides one Prebend, which then happened to be vacant, they had nothing. Therefore the Abbot of St. Victor, having learned their counsel about the change of Order, surrounded the Lord Pope and King Louis with affectionate prayers, that the Order of St. Augustine be instituted in the church, to the honor of God and the Apostles Peter and Paul and the Blessed Virgin Genovefa, under their patronage: asserting with many assertions, that more easily from those contumacious ones they would be converted to their regular life, than to the habit and custom of monks.

[13] They hand over the place to the Regular Canons under Abbot Odo. But the Apostolic and King Louis, knowing the good fame of the same Abbot and his Brothers, and that the Religion itself was extolled by all their neighbors, and that the house of St. Victor was redolent with the odor of great charity; gave favorable assent to the Abbot's petition, burning with a just desire. On the next day was elected as Abbot Odo the Prior, a man of holy conversation and all prudence, and an indefatigable lover of religion: and with him were sent twelve Canons, honest men and of good fame, to the church of Blessed Genovefa, as befitted the purity of the Virgin herself: and so the Order of Blessed Augustine in the church of Blessed Genovefa, by the privilege of Lord Pope Eugene and of the Most Christian King Louis, having been immutably confirmed, is preserved there to the present day. Behold, as was commemorated in the beginning, the former Canons, having the prophecy of Caiaphas, lost their place, and that place was given to a foreign nation, namely a religious nation, religiously cultivating the vineyard of the Lord.

ANNOTATIONS.

p The original of both diplomas is preserved in the archive of that monastery: the bull of Pope Eugene inscribed to Abbot Odo and his companions begins: "The Lord by wisdom founded the earth."

CHAPTER II.

St. William, made from a secular a Regular Canon, gives examples of great zeal.

[14] When these things were being done, William had withdrawn into his Provostship, William summoned to Paris. treating and disposing domestic matters with his friends on the following day. When he had sat down to a table loaded with various dishes with his own, behold a certain man suddenly entered, who addressed him thus: "The Lord Abbot Odo of Blessed Genovefa greets you, and sends you these letters." He, marveling beyond what can be believed at the words of the greeter, said: "Who is this Abbot, or when was there an Abbot in the church of Blessed Genovefa?" To whom the messenger: "Odo, Prior of St. Victor, is himself Abbot in the church of Blessed Genovefa, yesterday established there by the Supreme Pontiff and by the Lord King." To these things William: "Am I hearing these things in a dream? or do you tell me true things?" "They are true," he said. Then scanning the text of the letters, he saw that it was commanded him by Abbot Odo, that he should not delay to come to his Chapter as quickly as possible. He arose therefore putting off the care of refreshment, and bidding farewell to all, he said: "I will go and see if this change is of the right hand of the Most High." And when he had entered the cloister of Blessed Genovefa, he saw there men adorned with the habit of Religion. He therefore believed the word which the messenger had spoken to him: but yet he greatly hesitated within himself, why this had come to pass, or what had been the cause of this change. The arrival of Lord William is immediately announced to the Abbot: who hurriedly meets him, and having received him with a kiss of peace embraces him most devoutly.

[15] And while they sat and exchanged conversations with each other; he understands what had been done, the Abbot explains to William the manner of his coming and of his own, and the other things which had happened to them in those days: these things having been related, he began to admonish him concerning contempt of the world, saying: "Son, if you desire to be rich, seek true riches; if you love the glory of dignity, hasten to be enrolled in that supernal court of the Angels. Matt. 10:37, Luke 6:21 Observe what the Lord says in the Gospel, 'He who loves father or mother and fields or houses and other things more than me, is not worthy of me.' 1 John 2:15 And again, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for yours is the kingdom of God: blessed are you who now hunger, for you shall be filled.' And Blessed John the Evangelist says, 'Do not love the world, nor the things which are in the world: because if anyone loves the world, the charity of the Father is not in him.' James 4:4 and is stirred to flee the world: With this Blessed James the Apostle well agrees, saying, 'Whoever will be a friend of this world, is constituted an enemy of God.' Do not delay therefore to be converted to the Lord, and do not defer from day to day: lest suddenly the wrath of God come upon you, and in the time of vengeance destroy you. Very foolish is he, who because for a short time he serves luxury, and feeds his wretched desire with depraved delights; and loses the heavenly pleasantness, and incurs eternal damnation. Therefore renounce all which you possess, and bear the cross of Christ daily: who though He was rich and most powerful, King of heaven and earth, willingly became poor for us, that He might make us rich with Him in the kingdom of heaven."

[16] Then more moved by the sight of the Crucified, After he had imposed an end to these admonitions, having taken his hand, he led him to a glass window, on which was painted the image of the Crucified. Then renewing his speech, he said: "Do you see, my Lord, this image, and do you consider it?" To whom he: "I see plainly and diligently consider: for if this mystery is old to me, through use it is nevertheless always new to me, on account of Him who reformed us and conformed us to the body of His brightness, and renews our inward man from day to day." The Abbot, understanding his heart inflamed by the Holy Spirit, again says: "Do you see, with how great sweetness of love He desires to bind you to Himself and with extended arms to receive and embrace you, He who permitted Himself to be crucified for you?" Straightway the man of God, his face suffused with a shower of tears, and because of his excessive sobbing scarcely able to utter words, with fear responded: he gives himself to Religion, "Would that I might know, that He would deign to have me as a servant to Himself, and to dismiss the errors of my past iniquity and fragility!" To these things the Abbot: "I will be surety, if you will obey sound admonitions, that He will not only dismiss your sins, but after the end of this life will crown you with eternal glory with His Saints." Without delay William, falling at his feet, [had] the faith

in the things said; and he commended himself and his things kindly to God, and so from the shipwreck of this world he escaped naked.

[17] The family of Christ rejoices at the conversion of so great a young man, nor does it less rejoice at the unhoped-for help so suddenly sent to it from heaven. O good Jesus, how magnified are thy works! for all our works, as the Prophet says, thou hast wrought in us. Now we see fulfilled what we read that thou didst say, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." Isa. 26:12, Luke 18:25 But when men savoring only earthly things asked, "Who then can be saved?" thou didst answer, And God is wondrously glorified in him. "The things which with men are impossible, are possible with God." Behold, because thou didst predestinate this one to grace, thou couldst easily make from proud humble, from rich poor. Let each one say what he thinks; it is written in praise of the Apostles Peter and Andrew brothers, that at the voice of one command of the preaching Lord, having left their nets and ship, they followed the Redeemer: but this one not only at the admonition of the Lord, but of his very servant; left not only nets and ship, but estates and possessions, houses and families, riches and honors, and himself besides. Nor do we say this to equate him with the highest Apostles: but so we approve smaller works, that we do not disparage the mighty deeds of the greater.

[18] By the zeal of prayer, Therefore having undertaken the regular habit, William was added to the other Brothers, and was numbered with those twelve; and with his habit changed, he was changed into another man; and with divine grace cooperating, which had foreseen him as a vessel of election, he advanced from virtue to virtue, that he should be worthy to see the God of gods in Sion. For he was endowed with the virtue of charity, eminent in humility, strong in patience, tractable in obedience, and ready for the other kinds of virtues. of abstinence, He applied himself to reading, prayer, divine contemplation; by vigils and fasts he was taming the members of his body; and he who was wont to proceed in silken garments, afterward in abject clothes serves as a poor man the poor; forgetting the riches of his past life, he ate bran bread like the others, and took with thanksgiving wild herbs prepared for food: for two Prebends only could not in the beginning furnish other delights to the Brothers themselves and their household. and outstanding in regular observance, Whence the strong athlete of Christ, stable in the begun religion and order, was to such a degree a vehement emulator, that when he exercised the office of Subprior, he suffered none of the institutes of the Order to be transgressed.

[19] While he unceasingly exercised himself in these and other pursuits of virtues, and now stood approved to God and to men; our Lord Jesus Christ, Through a vision he learns future things from Christ. "He who loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I shall love him, and shall manifest myself to him"; on a certain night, when he had given his members to sleep, appeared to him in a vision, in the form of a most beautiful young man, and calling him by his proper name said, "Know that you shall set out with me to a certain island, where you shall endure many kinds of temptations and molestations; but these being overcome with my help, with the burden of flesh laid aside you shall be with me in paradise." John 14:21 But what such a vision and such admonition might mean, he could by no means conjecture, until he was called into Denmark, to an island which is by name Zealand, where he now rests.

[20] After these things with not many years' courses having run, Abbot Odo in a good old age passed to the Lord: with him dead, Lord Guarinus, the Prior of the same monastery, because he was considered an honest and literate man and provident in affairs, is elected as Abbot. But after he was consecrated and confirmed in his seat, a Prior intruded contrary to the institutes of the Order a discussion was held with the Brothers in Chapter about substituting a Prior. There was there a certain one, to whom the Abbot by all means desired to give the Priorate, with all assenting and consenting with the Abbot: but that Brother resisted, saying, "It is just that in a Royal Abbey officials should be imposed in their offices by the King." When the Brothers heard this, greatly troubled, they said: "If you wish to take on the office of Prior according to the tenor of the Order; we consent to your election: but if you attempt to transgress the bounds which our Fathers have placed, you shall never attain to it." But that one persisting in his proposition, the Abbot, to become master of his undertaking, led that Brother with him to the palace of the King; and because the institution of the order was unknown to the King, that one was made Prior by him in the palace. Therefore bearing back the desired effect, at the hour of refection he approached the cymbal, and striking the cymbal he called the Convent together. The Brothers seeing this, what should they do, what should they say? They could not speak: but by nods and signs they showed the inner bitterness of their heart. But because the just is confident like a lion, William animated by zeal of the Order and love of justice, nobly he repels from the office, after entering the refectory, removed that presumptuous one from the bell, and appointed the Subprior.

[21] That one removed went out with a blush, and with great lamentation exposed to the Abbot the disgrace done to him. and willingly receives the penalty imposed by him: He consoled the complainer blandly, saying: "If I shall not render this to William of St. Germain, I shall never be Abbot." The Brothers being gathered in Chapter in the morning, William was accused, that he had laid a violent hand on the Prior. He denied that he had ever inflicted any injury on a Prior. After some discussion of words he thus speaks: "If in these things I have sinned anything, because from the office of Prior, I drove away not a Prior, but a transgressor of the Order; I am ready to undergo the corrective vengeance." And receiving pardon, he is immediately condemned to silence; and that each week he should fast three days on bread and water, sit on the ground without a tablecloth. But he did not shrink from such a sentence, but noting that the sentence of the Pastor is to be feared, just or unjust, he humbly sustained what had been enjoined upon his head. Then a report went out among the Brothers, but he is absolved. that that disciple was condemned by an unjust office: wherefore a certain one went with haste to the Lord Apostolic, who was then staying at Sens, and intimated everything according to as it had been done to such a great Father. The Supreme Pontiff, not taking well the transgression of the Order, and the innocent gravely sentenced, suddenly ordered the Abbot of St. Genovefa to present himself without delay to his presence, and to make William a companion of his journey. He obeyed the command, and taking William with him came to Sens, and standing before the Supreme Pontiff is accused of rashness and indiscretion, and William is freed from the sentence; and it is most strictly ordered that in future Officials should not be elected or instituted against the institutes of the Order.

[22] While all things held middle silence, and every storm of tempest in that church seemed to be calmed; Before the Gallican Clergy, gathered to seek the head of St. Genovefa, a murmur arose among the people, that the head of Blessed Genovefa had been removed from its holy place. The spirit of this blasphemy at last struck the ears of the King: whence from the reports Lord King Louis was exasperated with immense wrath of fury, he swore by the Saint of Bethlehem, that if this were true, he would eject all the Canons, whipped with lashes, from the very church: and with guards placed, who should have guard of the treasure and relics of that monastery, he sent letters to the Archbishop of Sens and his Suffragans; to the Abbots and Priors of the same Episcopate, ordering that all on the day fixed by him, to investigate the truth of this matter, should convene at Paris. The Brothers, hearing the oath of the King, were troubled, were shaken, trembling seized them: and although the wrath of the Prince was formidable to them, yet more they grieved for the treasure more precious than gold and pearls, which they feared had been taken from them. But before all others the spirit of William was anxious, who had long before taken into his custody the chests of all the relics and the treasure of the church.

[23] The appointed day dawned, the King came with his own, the Pontiffs and Abbots came, when William saw the shrine opened, there came also a not small multitude, desiring to know the outcome of the matter. At length with those named and assigned, who with the Archbishop and other Bishops should ascend to the holy place of the holy Virgin, William wished to ascend with them, nor was he permitted. Whence snatching, I know not better, either a candlestick or a thurible, he said to himself: "If it is not conceded to me otherwise, at least I will ascend as a minister": and he began to go. Therefore when the shrine was opened, behold the head of Blessed Genovefa, the gem of France, is found with the other Relics of her members. When his faithful servant, the great William, saw this, not containing within himself the joy conceived in his soul, but that he should burst it forth with a voice of exultation; forgetful of those who were of greater authority, he audaciously began "Te Deum laudamus"; he intones Te Deum, so that the whole church resounded with his voice, which begun, all the people, who had come together to the feast day, with no less alacrity sang to the end. Which being sung, the Archbishop proceeds with the Collect of the Virgin herself.

[24] When he had imposed an end, the Bishop of Orleans with the greatest indignation thunders out: "Who is that leccator, who against the authority of the Lord Archbishop and the other Bishops, on account of the head of some old woman, and for the testifying of her truth, which these men fraudulently placed here, so rashly presumed to begin the Te Deum?" William to these things: "If you ask who I am, I wish you to know: what calumniously you have brought against me, I am not a leccator, but a servant of Blessed Genovefa: but that you accuse me of presumption, it was not rash presumption, but the entire love of the holy Virgin, which I have always had, that compelled me to do it. The head, which you saw, I do not deny to be of an old woman, always retaining the flower of virginity; Blessed Genovefa stood for seventy years and more, a virgin always clean and immaculate, until she rendered her soul to heaven, and the matter of her body to the earth. But lest any scruple of doubt about this head cling to your hearts, cause a furnace to be vehemently heated, he offers to enter the burning furnace, and I, taking the head, to declare the merits of the blessed Virgin, will enter it lighted unharmed." To this the Bishop, scoffing, answered, "I indeed would not enter a cup of hot water with it, and you would enter a burning furnace?" But the Archbishop, no longer bearing the superstitious verbosity of the Bishop, nodded to him to be silent, and approved the faith of the devout Brother and his sincere devotion toward the holy Virgin: but the foolish-talking, which the Bishop with polluted mouth had brought against the blessed Virgin, could in no way remain unavenged; since God will destroy all who speak a lie: whence afterwards, entangled in many crimes, cast out from his See, he miserably ended his unworthy life with a worthy death.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER III.

William summoned into Denmark is made Abbot of Roskilde, and bravely sustains many adversities.

[25] Under Waldemar King of Denmark. In the year from the Incarnation of the Lord one thousand one hundred and sixty-one, Waldemar the King, son of King Canute and Martyr, was reigning in Denmark; who drove the Slavs from the borders of his kingdom, whom they were wont often to invade, leading captive men and women, and plundering all which they could reach. Indeed since he was the son of the Martyr, by his intervention in all the contests of wars which he waged against the Slavs, who then were pagans, he emerged a glorious victor: whence showing them the way of eternal salvation, he compelled them to submit their necks to the yoke of Christ. This man was wise and discreet, powerful in deed and word, Bishop of Roskilde, Salomon, and acceptable to all the people. At the same time Bishop Absalon was adorning the Priesthood in the church of Roskilde, a man of great counsel, the decoration of the Clergy, the consoler of mourners and afflicted, and the pious lover of all religious, and the modest governor of the whole people; the clement supporter of strangers and the poor, and the greatest persecutor of the Slavs; the ornament of faith, the example of sobriety, the form of modesty, the distinguished mirror of nobility and probity; a shining lamp in the temple of God, and its strong and immobile column.

[26] In this one's diocese was a monastery of Canons, on the island which is called Eschil, The collapsed discipline of the Canons at Eschil. not far distant from the village of Roskilde, surrounded on all sides by the sea. This place, adorned with green meadows and various trees of groves, was delightful and pleasant to those dwelling in it, yet rare at that time was the number of the Brothers dwelling there, who were in vain called Regulars, because they were adorned with the disciplines of no religion. How would they be called Regulars, who submitted their head to no regular censure? How would they be claustrals, who lacked claustral enclosure? They had the written institutes of the Order, but they observed nothing of them. On the greatest festivities of the year, the seculars, who were familiar to them, frequented their house with their women, to celebrate the feasts with them; in the refectory they feasted and got drunk with men and women, and led dances: in such manner the house was confounded in their actions, and its substance was dissipated. Alas! what then became of divine service, when they spent more of the night in drinking than in psalmody and divine contemplation? Who then would become a worthy intercessor to God for the people? In the morning synaxis, burning with excessive drink, they preferred to sleep rather than to sing. Thus living shamelessly, they poured detestable infamy into the ears of all religious.

[27] Not enduring, Therefore the venerable Bishop of Roskilde Absalon, seeing and considering their life to differ from all religion; touched with sorrow inwardly, detested the souls of such men, darkened by the fraud of the devil, and too much inclined to the flux of the age: whence often with silent mind he was turning over, how he should take counsel for that church, about to change the form of the Order and religion for the better with the Lord's consent. At length he remembers the familiarity and friendship, which he had once formed with William, a Religious man, when for the sake of studying he stayed at Paris: and considering him an honest man, a man indeed prudent and discreet, and adorned with holy morals, He asks for William with three companions it pleased him in his soul to give him, once summoned, the above-mentioned place. Therefore having sent a messenger, namely Saxo the Provost, an honest man, to the church of Blessed Genovefa, he earnestly and strongly demands by his letters that the often-named man, namely Lord William, with three other Brothers, be assigned to him: that there was at his place a spot fit for their Religion, which to the honor of God and to the excellence of the Order of St. Augustine, he promises to confer on those same Brothers.

[28] The Abbot considering the petition of so great a Prelate to be just and honest, and obtains it. with the Chapter consenting, adjudged that his postulation should be granted. Brother William therefore was sent, with three others taken with him, with Provost Saxo into Denmark: they proceeding on a prosperous journey, after the Assumption of Blessed Mary entered Zealand, and on the third day came to Ringsted, which is illustrated with the merits of Blessed Canute the Martyr, whose glorious life shone greatly with the light of justice. who being well received by the king and Bishop, It was the will of God that what they desired should meet them there, namely the presence of King Waldemar and of Pontiff Absalon. These on the arrival of those Brothers, rejoicing, embraced them with joyful arms, and received them with the kiss of peace; and when they had for a little while congratulated them on their arrival with bland speech, they promised that they would cherish them as sons, love them as brothers, take counsel with them as friends. Rejoicing in the things which were said to them, they return with joy to their guesthouse. Three days having passed there, they crossed over to Roskilde: whose steps certain of the household of the Bishop followed, who would provide for them there: for so was expedient to the honest custom of the land, and to the probity of him who had called them.

[29] Some days being completed in the city, they sailed to the island of Eschil: they pass to Eschil, where they found six Canons only in name: whose faces, turned pale at their coming, grew white, and speech in their mouth dried up, because they saw now impending the ruin of their evil custom. Whence to the injury of the Brothers arriving, that night after supper, making conventicles, they decreed to go to the presence of the Lord Pontiff, that they should intimate to him what had happened, as if to one ignorant, and might extort from him the affection of compassion, lest they should lose people and place. But the Lord Bishop, having long since foreknown the course of the matter, and reprehending their malice, concealed what he had heard: lest perhaps, while he delayed coming there, the substance of the house should be destroyed more than before. Nevertheless he fixed for them a day, and they introduce the regular life, on which he should show his presence, and as if ignorant, diligently inquire the cause of the coming of the arriving Brothers. Therefore on the day after the feast of Blessed Bartholomew, as he had promised, he came, and having held a conversation with them about a Pastor to be constituted for himself, William being elected as Abbot, Brother William is elected as Abbot, and placed in the Abbot's seat: although before they had been accustomed to have not an Abbot, but a Provost and Prior. On that same day two of the former Canons received and obtained license to go away backward, the Lord Bishop judging that they ought to be dismissed, lest, they behaving malignantly, tumult should arise among the people: four remained, very old and almost useless for every work. One of them, who had the office of Prior, was an honest man, and in his days was found just; whence he began to be one of them, and instructed on the regular path, to end his former life with a better ending.

[29] Here on account of the poverty of the place abandoned by his companions, Therefore after Lord Abbot William had undertaken the care of the house, the Lord Bishop wished, at the request of the same Abbot, to know what and how great was the substance of that house, and what was had in food: and seeing their storerooms almost empty, only six cheeses and a ham and a half being found, he knew that they had eaten up Jacob and desolated his place. Therefore filled with good shame and wonder, the Bishop began to comfort the souls of the Brothers and of the Abbot himself, and so he ordered to be given them five pounds of denarii for the buying of necessary victuals, promising them hereafter sufficient subsidies of expense. Some space of time having passed, the Brothers who had come with the Abbot, not enduring the unaccustomed poverty, and shrinking from the excessive savagery of the cold, received from the Bishop license to return to their country. Which deed greatly moved the Lord Bishop, but he wished violence to be done to none.

[30] But the Abbot, not bearing well the departure of his companions, whom the morals of a foreign land and the unknown language terrified, he also asks to be dismissed by the Bishop. himself asked for the same license which they had received from the Bishop; asserting that the work to which he had been called was beyond his strength; and it would be safer for him to have free return with the others. At these words of the Abbot the countenance and mind of the Bishop fell: at length however he broke forth in this speech: "With desire we have desired your arrival, for the advancement of this church: but, as we perceive, the enemy greatly envies its prosperous successes and increases: for he fears exceedingly that he is about to lose the ancient right, which he had hitherto possessed through the enormities of those inhabiting that place. But if the Lord should wish to change the proposition of your soul with a more inclined counsel, we would ask with great affection of piety, that you should not try to desert once undertaken the office of governance. But persuaded to remain, Let it not be dread to you alone to undertake this work: because victory of war does not consist in the power of man, but strength is from heaven; and so the Lord saves in few, as in many. What you believed was to be fulfilled by the aid of your Brothers, the Lord is able to fulfill by the service of us alone." By these and other admonitions of the venerable Bishop, seasoned with the salt of wisdom, the Abbot strengthened; and remembering within himself, that the Lord through the Prophet Jeremiah says, "Cursed is the man who trusts in man, and places flesh as his arm, and his heart recedes from the Lord"; his purpose of soul changed, he acquiesced to remain to see the end. Jer. 17:5

[31] In the same year a decree went out from the Lord,

and behold a famine came in the land, when the corn failed; and the animals died almost all, namely sheep and cows: and therefore neither butter nor cheeses, except a few, could the remaining Brothers have to eat. Whence turned to sedition, they examined not all things by divine judgment, but ascribed the whole weight of their adversity to their Abbot, saying, he endures many reproaches from his own: "Woe to us! why in our days has this ragged man come here, a vile little man, who drinking nothing, eating nothing, but changing all the better things of the house into silver and gold, and placing them in his purse, tortures us with want of food, supplying leaves of trees and wild herbs for food." This seminary of lying published by them ran through the ears of many: and because the depraved minds of men are always prone to detract from good things, among the malevolent the truth was obscured. But the man of the Lord was not moved by the objections; but bore all patiently, made as a man not hearing, and not having rebukes in his mouth.

[32] On a certain night, while the Brothers had given themselves to sleep, Satan was present among them; and the lamp, A demon tries to burn him, which was wont to shine in the middle of the dormitory, he overturned; and by the Abbot's bed, where there was a great heap of straw, he placed it to burn the Abbot. But heavenly protection did not desert its soldier in this contest: for the straws around were burned in the manner of a crown, and a board placed under the straws sustained the burning, but the fire did not touch the Abbot's bed at all. The rumor of this deed came to the ears of the Bishop: who after not many days turned aside to the cloister, and approved what was said as consonant with truth.

[33] On the next night, the ancient enemy grieving that effect had been lacking to his arts, then by threats intended through another turned himself to another kind of tempting. For he approached the bed of a certain Brother sleeping, and said: "Know that I have been the Lord of this place, set over all drinkers and fornicators; but at your Abbot's coming I suffer violence, which will not turn out well for him." And when the Brother asked who he was, and by what name he was reckoned: he confessed himself to be called Salmanasar, and to have been King of the Babylonians from ancient times. And he added: "Counsel the Abbot to desist from his undertakings, nor to accept from the Bishop the due blessing of Abbots: for with me unwilling he will not be able to remain in the cloister." To whom the Brother answered: "What you suggest to me to be done, suggest to him yourself: do you not also have knowledge of him?" "I have," he said, "but less now than before: whence announce to him what I have commanded, with this sign given him, that in the crypt of Blessed Genovefa of Paris he wrote with his own hand the seven Psalms with the Litany for a certain Cleric: relate also that on another night for the injury done me I wished to burn him, but I was frustrated in my desire, he tries to drive him from the place, because one stronger than me came upon me; nor could I obtain, that what I wished should be mandated into effect." Morning coming, the Brother intimated to the Abbot what he had heard: but he, making little account of what he had heard, gave no faith to the suggestion of the devil, having no memory of the seven Psalms. After a short time a servant of Provost Thoco, and to make credible by revealing his secrets: returned from the city of Paris to Denmark, approaches Abbot William with these words: "My Lord salutes you, and commending himself wholly to your friendship, asks affectionately, that you would entreat the Lord Bishop for him, that to him applying himself to study he would stretch out the helping hand of his customary largess: and this sign that he sent me, that at Paris you wrote for him the seven Psalms with the Litany." The Abbot marveling at the things related, truly recalled that the devil had insinuated to the Brother through a dream, namely that he had written the seven Psalms for Provost Thoco.

[34] At another time too Abbot William, accompanied by Thrumo a Priest, a literate and discreet man, for the sake of lodging, turned aside to a village called Thorstanthorp, where while the night was in the middle of its course, the ancient enemy, raging against the holy one of God, devised new incitements of his wickedness, at another time tries to mock him sleeping, bearing the habit of sanctity, under the appearance of a most ancient and most foul monk: and approaching the Abbot's bed, previously fortified with the sign of the saving Cross, was laboring to irritate the resting one in it the tinder of lust by obscene work. But he, although he had given his eyes to sleep, yet vigilant in mind, said to the adversary: "Go back, foulest of all, in me through God's grace you shall obtain no effect of your desire." The devil hearing this, is stirred by the goads of fiercer cruelty; and coming nearer, breathes a cloud of stench into the Abbot's mouth; and with nefarious mouth uncovers sins long since abolished by confession and washed away by a shower of many tears. The Abbot however, while in sleep he was so gravely wearied by him, by a strong thrust of his somewhat raised foot threw the enemy from him. Who seeing himself mocked by the man of God, began to rage like a most cruel lion; and repelled by him and to direct his steps to the bed of Priest Thrumo, lying and awake in another part, and to dash a most powerful blow against his side, so that it seemed to the Priest that he had broken some of his ribs.

[35] In the morning when dawn gave an end to the night, praises of God having been sung, because the time was cold, both, namely the Abbot and the Priest, withdrew into the warming room. As they were sitting there, the Priest thus addressed the Abbot: he turns his rage upon his companion. "O my Lord Abbot, may almighty God guard and help you." And the Abbot answered: "Amen." And when he had said this twice or thrice, the Abbot asked why he was repeating this so often. To whom he: "I know that you have suffered many stings of temptation, and are about to suffer more; but from all these may God free you. I saw this night how great molestation you sustained from Satan, and how he was pouring into your mouth a cloud of most foul stench, and I heard how great reproaches and insults he was bringing to you; and when he departed from you confused, he rushed upon me violently, and striking my side, I think, broke some of my ribs. Therefore I judge that this same enemy must be manfully resisted by you, lest, if he triumph over you conquered, he cast you into Gehenna." At this voice the Abbot began to grow weary and fearful, recalling to memory the vexations of the adversary which he had sustained the previous night.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER IV.

Virtues of St. William, and some miracles of him while living.

[36] Among tribulations and snares unconquered he endures many things The ancient enemy still raging, that no effect followed his temptations against the Lord's Christ, disposed through his satellites to effect, what he could not fulfill by himself: whence he inspired the hearts of certain Brothers, to affect the man of God with various insults, and to provoke him with many injuries, and thus to compel him with disgrace to return to his own home. Rom. 5:3 But he was not afraid of the words of the impious, because he was strengthened upon a firm rock: for he frequently remembered with himself that Apostolic saying, "Tribulation works patience, patience proof, proof hope; but hope does not confound." Rom. 5:3 And when those degenerate sons had no progress in such things, they took counsel together to deliver him to death: sometimes they planned to drown him in the sea by putting him in a sack, sometimes to pierce him with darts, and sometimes to sell him to the Slavs; more often they tried to extinguish him with axes driven into his brain: but God, whose providence in His disposition is not deceived, dissipated their counsels, and gave to His beloved an outcome with the temptation.

[37] But why did they attempt to do this? Because his spirit was with God, in holding the rigor of the Order, on account of discipline. and in every observance of religion, nor did he allow them to run through the precipices of vices: for he was the indefatigable imitator of holy religion, the admirable conserver of the Order and holy institution, the strong extirpator of vices, the true lover of virtues; searching out and teaching whatever was honest and full of holiness. He was severe in correction, diligent in correcting, sweet and humble in exhortation, modest in giving account: truthful in speech, just in judgment, faithful in what was committed. He was the consoler of the infirm, the most kindly provider for the poor and for strangers. He was persistent in vigils, fasts and continual prayers, indefatigably taking care of his flock, and, as a faithful servant who would make the talent entrusted to him profit, his illustrious virtues in governing, discretion, he was constantly commending him to his Lord by prayers. While the Brothers rested at night, he anticipated the matutinal hours by vigils, and entreated the mercy of the Lord for them with devout groans. In his sermons, by which he instructed the Brothers to do well, he was prompt to tears

and to lamentations, so much that he often provoked his hearers to penance and compunction of heart, and it was clearly evident to all that divine grace was always with him. Animated with zeal for the Order, at times he was rigid with the elated and proud, and compelled transgressors of the Order to undergo corrective vengeance and to bear sentence: for he knew that he would render account to God for as many, as by his example or silence he should allow to stray from the paths of justice. Finally those who were of obstinate mind, nor inclined to seek pardon for their excesses, he himself showing them the form of humility, sought pardon from them contrary to the rule of his dignity.

[38] In the persecutions, which were inflicted on him by his disciples and others, fortitude, he was constant and patient, and by the virtue of patience he overcame all. The virtue of piety and mercy abounded in him so much, that he received those sinning against him, and after sins returning for pardon, with all cheerfulness and modesty, and for their excesses he wept most abundantly, and rendered manifold thanks to the Lord for their conversion. He always followed charity, charity, he detested envy and detraction, he scarcely uttered a dishonorable word or vain talk or foolish laughter, nor did he wish to hear it from anyone's mouth. His speech was continually of peace and concord, and humility and gentleness, and of the honor with which the Brothers should anticipate one another. Frequent in prayers, piety, assiduous in readings, in devotion he was outstanding. From the diurnal and nocturnal hours also, without great necessity, he never wished to be absent. austerity of life, About devotion in the choir, among those singing psalms, and the sacred ministry of the altar, his mind was zealously engaged, and those more devout in these things he loved most tenderly. He tamed his flesh with a hairshirt until the day of death, and compelled it to serve the spirit. He wished to have a frugal table, not for the refreshment of his body, since he was of wondrous abstinence; but for the refreshing of the poor and infirm, whom he cherished with paternal affection. On his couch he had nothing, except a woolen mat placed over straw, or bear skins for expelling the cold, when winter raged more, unless the molestation of excessive infirmity had compelled him to grant his members softer things: and as his food was modest, so also his clothing.

[39] He founds the monastery of St. Thomas. The monastery of St. Thomas the Apostle, in the place which is called Paraclete, he first constructed, and transferred the Order of St. Augustine into it, and in transferring instituted it to be observed, and by the privilege of Lord Pope Alexander caused it to be confirmed as perpetually to be observed there. But now since in praise of the man of God we have somewhat digressed from our proposition, let us return to set forth what we began. A dysenteric is cured, To a certain dysenteric, in the village which is called Methelhuse by the inhabitants, it was revealed through a vision, that he should taste of the food of Abbot William, and be cured of his languor. That man believed the speech he had heard, and having sent a messenger quickly to the cloister, he sought and received what he wished. And when he had eaten the food brought to him, the flux of his infirmity ceasing, he deserved to be reformed inside straightway by them.

[40] A certain girl, from the village of the name Nadweth, near the cloister, and a girl dying was held in the torture of great infirmity: and when for three days she lay as if a lifeless body, and only the vital heat seemed to be in her members; her friends and kinsmen stood around her, mourning her as if dead. But the mother of the girl, Brigida by name, because she had passed many days and nights sleepless over her, keeping vigils, on the fourth day was seized by light sleep: and when she slept, she saw in sleep a woman, clothed in snowy garments, standing at the bed of the sick girl, and saying such things to her: "Woman, you are greatly troubled for your daughter." But she: "What wonder? for three days we have sustained her, now about to pass: and behold there is still time left." The other answered: "Know that your daughter can recover health and take increase of life, if she shall taste of the food or remains of Abbot William of Paraclete." These things said she disappeared: but the mother of the girl waking, set forth to all who were present, all things which she had heard and seen in sleep. They counsel her to obey the command of the admonisher, because the aforesaid Abbot was held by many to be a Saint, and truly so he was, with divine grace shining in him.

[41] The woman therefore, strengthened by the hope of the good vision and the consolation of her own, hastens with quicker step to the cloister, and to the officials, whom she found outside the enclosure of the cloister, the foods prepared for the holy man having been tasted, lays out in order the vision which she had seen. The petition of the woman is therefore announced by the Brothers to the Abbot, and the vision heavenly manifested about the remedy of her daughter is recounted. The man of the Lord, always bearing pious bowels over the afflicted, compassionating both mother and daughter; ordered the fish, which we call "perticas" (perch), and the broth, which had been prepared for him, to be imparted to the woman in the name of the Lord, that it might be salvation and remedy for the girl, laboring in the crisis of death. She rejoicing in the gift, soon returns home hurriedly, and poured what broth she had brought with her immediately into her daughter's mouth. Which when it had been done a third time, and with a wondrous rumbling was flowing to her inner parts; the girl revived, and drew breath, and after a little sat up, who had been as if dead: and when her own had come to her, opening her mouth she blessed God, and said: "Now I shall not die, but live, and shall narrate the works of the Lord: for I trust in the Lord, that by the prayers and merits of Abbot William I have been restored to health." Those who had come to her, were bearing witness to the truth about these things, and we know that their testimony is true.

[42] A certain man was languishing in the village Anese, and desired freely water from a spring, likewise another drawing water sent by him. which the Abbot had caused to be cleaned and marked with firm enclosures: but since no one could have access to the same spring, except at the nod of him who kept it closed, he had his desire intimated to the Abbot. Brother Ericus, therefore, who had the custody of the aforesaid spring, was summoned, and was commanded, to give a cup of its water to the sick man. And when the languid one had tasted what was brought, he soon knew how salutary was the taste of it: for it not only extinguished his thirst, but also conferred the grace of the desired health.

[43] A certain monk of the Cistercian order, Haquinus by name, of the cloister of Esrom, A hoarse man is cured by the laying on of hand; was anxious for many years with such hoarseness of a blocked chest, that it could scarcely be discerned by those standing around what he said. And when he had found remedy for his infirmity in no antidote of drink or other art; good counsel occurred to him, that he should go to the asylum of St. Thomas of Paraclete. He came therefore, and approaching the Father of the monastery, with a plaintive murmur set forth what he suffered, and began to ask him humbly, that for the grace of recovering health he should place his hand on his throat. But the man of the Lord, somewhat gladdened toward the one asking, with the sign of the Cross premised, touched his throat, saying, "May the Son of God heal you." And he was heard on account of his reverence: for the monk felt divine help to be with him: because the arteries of his gasping chest were gradually dilated, and the organ of the voice long lost was being reformed from day to day. Therefore having returned to the house whence he had gone out, he was strengthening his Brothers, manifesting to all, that at Paraclete there is an Elder who knows how to cure men; affirming, that this is Abbot William.

[44] At some time, when William was returning from the Roman Curia, the horse of his servant having injured its foot among the crags of the Alps, could not make any journey; an injured horse by touch; troubled in mind about this misfortune, he entreated the Most High, that on account of the merits of the Saints, whose Relics he brought back with him, that horse should be cured. The prayer finished, he stroked the foot of the horse full of pain with his hands, and by stroking mitigated the pain: and from that hour that horse was cured, completing the journey begun.

[45] On a certain day, when he was going out on the business of the house, he rode a certain rouncy: but a Brother, The sluggish gait of a horse is changed: who was going with him, considering the beauty of the horse and the disposition of its members, said: "Alas! that such a horse does not amble." To whom the Abbot: "Do you believe that it will be able to amble?" But he: "I by no means believe, because it is old, and will not in the least change its natural gait." To whom again the Abbot: "O you of little faith, why do you doubt? God is able to make it amble as much as is pleasing to you." And saying this, he began to urge it with spurs. But that one, forgetful of its usual gait, made level steps, ambling well as long as the man of God sat on its back. But the Brother, full of wonder at the miracle seen, having returned home narrated to his Brothers what had been done on the way; how the Father of the monastery had made the rouncy amble; and all marveled.

[46] At some time he lay on a bed of sickness, held by the torture of excessive infirmity: St. William sick dangerously. and while he was in doubt about the space of his life, on a Sunday night, stirred by a graver stimulus of infirmity, he invoked his Lady Blessed Genovefa, whom with all desire of mind he loved, that mindful of him she would approach to pray the Lord for him. She, taking pity on her devoted servant, when he slept a little, appeared to him, standing at the foot of the bed in which he lay; and with a joyful face and sweet address was consoling him, saying; "Fear not, for we have a good Lord." He, recognizing her from the cheerfulness of her countenance, began to give thanks to the one coming, inquiring, who that Lord was. To whom she: "Jesus the Son of God." But the man of the Lord hearing the Son of God named, as much as sleep allowed, rejoiced more abundantly; and after a little while waking, and feeling himself restored to health by the prayers of the holy Virgin Genovefa, he blessed God, he entreats health from St. Genovefa, who does not forsake those hoping in Him, but in His Saints is always wondrous. Indeed many other miracles the Lord deigned to work through him, which are not written in this book, because either through negligence given over to oblivion they are not held in memory, or because to those detracting from his sanctity they seemed incredible: but now let the pen turn to his glorious passage, and at what time and how he migrated from this world to the Lord, ought to be related in brief speech.

ANNOTATIONS.

e In

the northern shore of Zealand not far from Kronborg. The Convent established there, in the very year in which St. Bernard died in 1153, the history bearing the name of King Eric notes.

CHAPTER V.

The happy death of the Saint and signs of his future glory going before and following.

[47] Seven years before his passage from this world to the Father, Seven years before forewarned of his death, on a certain night, through a vision a man, of decorous aspect, venerable gray hair, handsome face, stood by him and said: "You shall live seven days." He, greatly solicitous about his vision, but full of the Spirit of the Lord, passing seven days unharmed, interpreted that by seven days were signified seven weeks, or seven months, or seven years (which was more true); as the outcome of the matter proved. Chastising therefore his body and bringing it into servitude, although he had before loved the Lord God with all devotion of mind, and had clung to his commandments with continual observance; yet from that time until the end of his life, he so crucified his flesh with its vices and concupiscences, that his past life, in respect to the life that followed, would be believed to have been delicate and voluptuous. For who saw him praying without tears watering his cheeks? And when at the altar he celebrated the Divine Offices, offering the sacred mystery to God, he was so inflamed, so wept, as if he beheld the present passions of the Lord in the flesh. It is long therefore to express in words with how many vigils, fasts and continual prayers he afflicted himself, and prepared himself as a holocaust to the Lord. The Lord still added to test the patience of his servant, he diligently prepares for it, and to test him like gold in a furnace; so he filled his body with ulcers, so that from the sole of the foot to the crown there was no health in him. He knowing, that virtue is perfected in infirmity, bore all patiently, and said: "If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, why should we not endure evils?"

[48] Meanwhile, when the seven years had been almost passed in wondrous abstinence and mortification of the flesh, when Lent, especially the last Lent: to be observed by all the faithful with sacred devotion, was approaching; the man of the Lord with diligent mind meditating his last things, and the agony of his end, although he was still ignorant of the day and hour of his dissolution, yet knowing that the term which could not be passed was approaching, daily, with the greatest contrition of heart and effusion of tears and great reverence, celebrated the sacrifices of our Lord Jesus Christ, and fortified himself with the most holy participation of His Body and Blood. On the Wednesday which precedes the Lord's Supper, while he was resting in his chamber with certain Brothers, who had come to him for the sake of conversation, the Prior complained to him and the other Brothers, that he had never endured a graver night. But the man of the Lord on the contrary answered: "I do not recall ever to have had a better and more delightful night: because I saw my Lord Jesus Christ: two others were with him and I was the third, with whom I was ineffably delighted." To these things the Prior said, "Perhaps, holy Father, the Lord in this visitation comes to call you to himself, as he promised you before you entered the parts of Denmark." Sighing at the Prior's answers, and watering his face with tears, he said: "Let it be to me according to your word."

[49] On the next day which is called the Lord's Supper, he approaches the altar to celebrate the Divine Offices, at the Lord's Supper he offers his last sacrifice, and Absolution being made over his disciples in the customary manner, and the same having communicated from his hands, and the Mass having been celebrated; about to receive Christ in the poor, he goes forth with the other Brothers, and performs the mandate with their great devotion: which performed, he enters to take his last supper with his disciples, in this imitating the Lord's example. O happy supper, which is more illustrated by the presence of so great a Father, than enriched by the delights of refreshment! Who can express in words how cheerful a countenance, how joyful a face the holy man showed to all who were present at that banquet? Already in his face in a wondrous manner a certain presage of future joy was shown, which from the abundance of gladness, which was seen in him beyond the usual, could be known. Already the divine mercy had entered the place of his dwelling, and he bears on his countenance a sure hope of salvation from it: prepared for him to sup: already the Holy Spirit had filled his whole inner man, and like a Bridegroom in the chamber, so in the bedchamber of his heart he rested: already it was shown in his flesh, subject to bodily eyes, with how great joy of exultation his soul exulted in the Lord his God, on account of the glorification of future retribution, which the Lord had disposed to give him, as to a certain disciple of his, a man of honest conversation, by name Gerard, twelve years before and more, he deigned to reveal through a vision.

[50] On a certain night to the aforesaid Canon resting in his bed, about to pass to glory, concerning what was prepared for him, a certain man mature in age thus thunders out, "Arise, follow me." Having followed him, he is led to unknown places: at last coming to a certain plain, very beautiful and pleasant with flowers, they enter a house of wondrous size, constructed of marble stones. But how great was the brightness, how great the sweetness of odor, how wondrous the pleasantness that was in that house, the tongue of the seer could not express: but a seat was placed in it adorned with precious gems and purest gold, and in the middle of the seat was placed a golden crown, decorated with the most precious stones, but still imperfect: but around the seat were four men, sitting in white, composing golden plates with precious stones to the perfection of the crown. And when the aforesaid Brother, long ago was revealed to his disciple. full of admiration and as if rapt in ecstasy, was silently considering the things shown him; his guide addresses him with these words: "Do you know whose this seat or crown is?" When he denied that he knew, he said: "This seat your Abbot merited in the time of his conversion from the world to the Lord, when he left houses and riches and the glory of this world for Christ, and denied himself, taking up his cross to follow the Redeemer: but the crown when it shall be perfected with many tribulations and dire persecutions, which he has manfully sustained for the observance of the Order and will still sustain, he shall be crowned; and it shall be fulfilled in him, what the Apostle James says, 'Blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he has been proved he shall receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love Him.'"

[51] After he rose from supper, he wished to wash the feet of his disciples: stricken by his last sickness, but touched by most grave pain of the side, he was not permitted. Jas. 1:12 Therefore sitting, he thus prayed: "Lord God, in all things and through all things let your will be done, who are blessed unto the ages. Illuminate your face upon your servant, and save me, and do not confound me from my expectation: do not cast me away in the time of old age; when my strength shall fail, do not forsake me." Therefore the infirmity persisting and growing heavier, he is led to bed; enduring the remainder of the day and half of the following night with great torture. Afterward, because divine grace was not empty in him, that pain is calmed and he is seized with a light fever: and when he began to be deprived of bodily strength, on Easter Vigil, the Brothers, who had come to him for the sake of visiting, asked him, that he should provide for himself and be anointed with the sacred Unction. To whom persuading these things, he said: "It is not with me as you think: I feel no pain, and no weakness at all in my body. I would wish a bed to be made for me in the choir, that I may be present at the ministry of the coming night of the Lord's Resurrection." To whom answering, that they could by no means endure the voices of those singing; he rejoined, "Let us do then what is better." O the venerable unchangeable devotion of so great a man about the cult of divine service, which could be diminished neither by the event of any thing, nor by the discomfort of so great a defect!

[52] He is clothed with a new hairshirt, But while he thus labored, Brothers were assigned, who keeping vigils would watch over him. Therefore on the holy night of the Lord's Resurrection, the man of God solicitous about his passing, calling one of those standing by him, said: "Know, son, that a new solemnity has come, to be venerated by all the people: we ought therefore to be clothed with new garments. Bring me the garment which you have, that I may put it on." He understanding of what garment he spoke, brought him a new hairshirt, and the old being removed clothed him in the new. And when he was in great weakness, he is again admonished by his guards to enjoy the moisture of the sacred Oil. To whom persuading these things, he answered: "With our Lord Jesus Christ granting, I shall await the light." Meanwhile the Convent being engaged in the vigils and praises of the glorious night, when the third Lesson had received its end, and the third Responsory "When the sabbath was past" was begun; one of the guards hastily runs up, indicating that he would soon pass away. The gloom of night having been driven away, the dawn of sacred light was then shining red, which the man of God had promised himself that he would await: and when that Responsory was being sung, and duly anointed he piously dies, "That coming they might anoint Jesus"; the Prior, certain Brothers having been summoned, went out of the choir, bearing with him the moisture of sacred Oil, with which he should anoint the venerable Father now dying. When they had come, this alone the holy one of God was often repeating: "Quickly, quickly." The Unction being completed, he was laid on ashes and a hairshirt, so that according to the doctrine of Blessed Martin he should die in ash and hairshirt as a Christian and true Catholic. Which being done, released into a precious death he sent forth his spirit, on the 8th of the Ides of April, in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord one thousand two hundred and second, in the 98th year of his age, but in the 40th after he undertook the care of the Lord's flock.

[53] So that soul, having gone forth from the prison of the flesh, passed from sadness to gladness, from labor to rest, from the world to the Lord. But the spiritual sons, on the very day of Easter, transferred the body of the venerable Father with hymns and canticles, with groans and tears, into the holy church, placing it in the middle of the choir. When they had received themselves in their seats, "Te Deum laudamus" is begun, and the matutinal Lauds of the Lord's Resurrection, with the tearful voices of those singing, yet with due veneration, are completed. How wondrous God is in his Saints, reader, notice: because neither was the life of this man without glory, nor his death without grace, but in the sight of God very precious: for on that day the Lord received him into paradise, on which the same Lord

rose victorious from the dead; and he who celebrated the solemnities of the Lord's Resurrection with great rejoicing often on earth, on that same day with due honor was associated with the Angelic choirs. on the next day he is buried: On the second day of Easter he was buried before the altar of St. Thomas the Apostle, which he himself had constructed; Lord Abbot Turchil of the church of Blessed Mary of Esrom, with his monks, performing the obsequies for his funeral, and Priests and Clerics and many others running up with great devotion, that they might be present at his obsequies. In which place our Lord Jesus Christ, to the praise and glory of His name, through the suffrages of His glorious Confessor, to the present day bestows innumerable benefits, upon those who with their whole heart seek Him, to whom is honor and glory, through infinite ages of ages. Amen.

[54] O how great was the grief of all! how great especially were the laments of the disciples, who although we were made certain of the glorification of so great a Father, yet bereft of his presence, The grief of the disciples is assuaged we grieved after the human manner. Our festive days were turned into mourning, and our sabbaths into lamentation: though we ought to have rejoiced, that whom we had as teacher on earth, we should have as intercessor in heaven, if the mind admitted the reason of grief. But blessed be God, who turned our sorrow into joy: for after the passage of our Father, our young men saw visions, and our elders dreamed dreams, through which we were certain that the Lord was shortly to glorify His Saint.

[55] There were two young men of the household of the same saint, established in different regions, by a double vision. who in the very hour of his passage from this world, saw in a vision how he passed to the joy of the Angels: and although their vision is somewhat different, yet both are worthy of full faith in relating and in memory. One of these, Nicholas by name, was in the Teutonic parts in the city of Hildesheim giving his work to the study of letters: by which he was shown to ascend into heaven, this one at the same hour, in which the man of God laid down the clod of his body about to enter heaven, saw through a vision a certain person unknown to him, clothed in a white stole, ascending into heaven: and as is wont to be done in pictures, in which the Lord's Ascension is commemorated, he is depicted wholly received below clouds, and only his feet appear; so also this Saint was received below white clouds, and only his feet and the extremities of his garments were seen. And when that one with fixed eyes wondered at the things seen in heaven, a certain man stood by him saying; "Why do you marvel looking into heaven: this man taken up into heaven is your Abbot; who in patience overcame the persecutions of the world: but now he is crowned, because he lived faithfully in the commandments of the Lord." That one waking, and led by the road to the monastery from which he had departed apostatizing, with Angels accompanying returned; and offering himself for emendation, announced the aforesaid vision to all.

[56] To the other of the aforesaid, Godmund by name, dwelling in the cloister which is called Sora, such a vision of the glorified man was shown. As the dawn of the Lord's Resurrection approached, he beheld in a vision, almost waking, a multitude of Angels, singing with most sweet sweetness: among whom two Angels, shining with ineffable brightness, were supporting on the right and on the left a certain man mature in age, adorned with Priestly garments, holding his arms leaning on their shoulders, and going as far as heaven. These were followed by the devil, surrounded by no small crowd of raging and gnashing demons. But when the holy Angels were received into heaven, that ancient enemy, like one grieving, was returning by the way he had come with his own: but some of the demons followed with slow step, limping along. He who saw this vision, and with the demons confounded. having become bolder, said to one of those who came slower than the others: "I adjure you by the Son of God, that you show me what these things are which I have seen." He looking at the questioner with grim face and oblique eye, answered: "If you wish to know, your Abbot William has been taken from the world, and with such service of Angels, has been carried into heaven: but we came, that we might have some right of ours in him; but having suffered violence from the Angels, we have been frustrated in our purpose." In the morning of the first day after the sabbath rising, the aforesaid young man laid out his vision to his master and all who were with him: who answering said: "Truly we believe that he has already received sleep, and his place has been made in peace." At length having returned to our house, he took care to intimate the same things to us in order, and having undertaken the habit of Religion there he began to serve God.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER VI.

Miracles after the passage of St. William.

[57] Our Savior Jesus Christ, wishing to reveal the insignia of the virtues of His most beloved Confessor William, For the confusion of his rivals whom He clothed with the stole of immortality after death in heaven, in the sight of the sons of men; gave him power, over those sick with various languors, to do works which He Himself did, and greater than these: that many might praise His wisdom, and unto the age His memory should not be wiped away and not depart, and His name should be sought in generation and in generations. The servant of God therefore began, after he slept with his fathers, first among the incredulous and his rivals, like the morning star in the midst of mist, gradually to shine with miracles; that He might show to be liars those who had defamed him and detracted from his sanctity, blaspheming his name. But after he had been glorified among his neighbors, he began, to the praise and glory of the name of Him who founded all the Saints, like the sun shining at noon, far and wide to gleam with greater and more frequent prodigies: whence from the four quarters of the earth a concourse of peoples was made, He becomes illustrious by miracles, desiring to see the wonders which were being done through him. He drove demons from possessed bodies, healed paralytics, restored sight to the blind, step to the lame, hearing to the deaf, speech to the mute, the contracted and those creeping on their own knees he raised to their due state, cleansed lepers, raised the dead, and brought back half-dead from the jaws of death to life; and not only men but also animals he healed, inasmuch as God multiplied His mercy with him: the winds restrained their whirlwinds at the invocation of his name, and the seas rested from bitterness. But these things being briefly commemorated, let us come to the miracles, which we either heard or saw in the city of our God, that is in Paraclete, where rests the glorious Confessor of God William.

[58] The first in his teeth which had fallen out while he lived, When Abbot William was still in the corruptible body, laboring with old age, two teeth were pulled out from his head: which committing to Brother Saxo, he said: "Have the custody of these teeth with you, and do not lose them." He did what he had been asked, hesitating within himself why he had given him this command. But after the Lord took him from the midst, his disciples who remained alive, in memory of so great a Father, wished something of his things or garments to be imparted to them: among whom was the Sacristan, Brixius by name, complaining that he had received nothing of his things, except the furred mitre, which he had been wont to wear on his head. To him so complaining, the Brother to whom the teeth had been committed answered: "I will give you a gift not small, rather great, a precious pearl, namely a tooth of our Father, who loved you in his life, not only singularly, but specially one." And saying this, he delivered the tooth. That one giving manifold thanks for the gift conferred upon him, kept the received tooth, as was fitting, in great veneration. O how great benefits God conferred upon mortals through this tooth afterward! which if they were written, the weak mind would in no way acquiesce to believe.

[59] There was at that time in the cloister a certain scholar, Grimolf by name, about fifteen years from his birth, by whose washing the falling sickness is healed, laboring with the falling sickness. On a certain day, when dashed to the ground by the aforesaid disease, he was rolling foaming, Abbot Richard came up, the successor of the man of God: and moved with mercy over him, says to the secretary who had come with him: "Do you see how miserably that Cleric is tortured? Go quickly, and wash the tooth of our Father in water, and pour that water into his mouth, that we may test what virtue is in that tooth." Obeying the precept of the Abbot, he fulfilled what was enjoined on him: and when he wished to pour the saving liquor into the mouth of the sufferer, he could not, because he kept his teeth pressed together. Therefore seizing a knife he opened his jaws, pouring the brought water into his mouth: which when he had absorbed by tasting, he began to roar and groan, as if he had taken boiling liquor of oil: after a little nevertheless he rested, as if rapt in ecstasy. Some hours of the day having passed, his spirit revived, and he arose healthy: but afterward that disease did not touch him, nor afflict him, nor bring any trouble. This beginning of signs the servant of God made after his passage, in the sight of his disciples, and manifested his glory. The same mercy Sueno the son of Tolph obtained, laboring with a similar disease.

[60] St. William again manifested the glory of his sanctity in the village of Frisleven: but he manifested it thus. and two energumens are freed. There was a certain woman there, possessed by a most evil demon: who revealed the secrets of the heart of all who came to her for consolation, and reproached them for their sins, as the enemy suggested to her. The Deacon, who was in that village, came to invoke over her the name of his God, and to cast out the demon. The woman saw the Deacon entering to her, and stirred to insults, cried out: "Deacon, why do you come? stand outside. You are not worthy to enter under my roof. Who you are, I know well, and your deeds; having knowledge of your ways. You are he who stole the hen of a poor woman, and plucked it, and hid the plumes with the feathers under one hedge, and at supper

you ate it, thinking your theft to be hidden from me. Depart from me, most wicked one; depart: let your blessing be far from me." The Deacon, confounded by the things objected against him, returned to his home sadder than he had come, conscious of the objected crime. A certain convert from the household and house of the holy man, dwelling in the same village, detesting the madness of the aforesaid woman, came to the cloister, and asked that water be given him, in which the tooth of the holy man had been washed. He asked, and obtained, and returning offered it to the woman to drink: she drank, and with the unclean spirit expelled she was made whole from her infirmity. Afterward, no long time having passed, another woman in the same village was seized by a demon, and was cured by a similar medicine.

[61] While Brother Saxo was making a journey, when he was passing through Methelhuse, the men of that village cried out to him, likewise in Methelhuse another, saying: "Lord, if you can do anything, help us, taking pity on us." When he asked them what they had, and what they wanted to be done for them; they answered, "There is here a woman, Hestrith by name, who having an excessive appetite for eating roots of vegetables, entered her garden, and began to dig them from the ground, and avidly to gnaw those dug up; when she had done this, immediately an evil spirit leapt upon her, vehemently tearing her: and behold we hold her bound, lest she kill herself and strangle her children: we beat her with rods and threaten greater whips, but we make no progress in this, rather we add punishment to punishment." He moved at the misfortune of the woman, ordered water to be brought to him, which signing with the tooth of St. William, which he had retained for himself, and dipping in it, the name of the holy Trinity and of the Saint himself being invoked, he gave to them that they should take it away, and offer it to the raging woman. And when she had drunk the offered water, soon the wicked guest, not sustaining the force of the sacred liquid, unwillingly left the dwelling which he had occupied, and the woman received her pristine sense. But the aforesaid Brother a little after returning, turned aside to the woman's house, to see how she fared: he found her sane and wise, and praising God in His Saint, who had wrought His mercy with her.

[62] And a woman giving birth to a dead fetus In the same village the wife of Wider was pregnant: the time of her giving birth was fulfilled, but because of the difficulty of delivery she could not bring forth. She was tortured miserably; laboring in birth but not bringing forth; languishing, but not dying. Afflicted by such torments, she became a cause of grief to all her own. Meanwhile within the mother's enclosures the infant was deprived of life, and the womb of the unhappy mother became the tomb of wretched offspring: a corpse lay in a corpse, the dead in the dying, taken away before seen, buried before born. But her husband, anxious for his wife's death, ran to and fro; appealed to all, if he could find any remedy for the dying woman. At last he came to the cloister, found the Sacristan, asked him if he knew any counsel, by writing or medicine, against so wretched a case. To him asking thus, he answered: "There is no need of medicine or writing in such a crisis, but of God and the suffrage of the Saints: if you shall bring faith, I believe I can confer on her an antidote of salvation. the same water drunk preserves life. I will wash the tooth of St. William in water, which you shall bear to her to drink: if she shall believe that by his merits she can be freed, after tasting it she shall escape the danger of death." He did what he promised, and sent him back to his own well instructed in faith with the saving drink. And when he had returned home, what he brought he poured into the mouth of the woman, already near death from grief, and went out. Scarcely had he gone out, and the holy liquor running down to the secret parts of the woman, she brought forth a putrid fetus. When she had seen this, her spirit resumed, she cried out: "If this was to be for me, what need was there for me to conceive. Attend, Lord, and see, if there is a grief like my grief: but I thank thee, who by the merits of thy holy Confessor William hast freed me from the danger of death." The neighbors hearing that such a miracle had been done with her, rejoiced with her, giving no less praise to God and St. William for the second miracle than for the first.

[63] A furious man is restored to sane mind, At a certain time, when Brother Saxo now often named had come to Willike, and had received himself into a guesthouse; a certain demoniac entered, raging and gnashing. Such madness afflicted him, that often leaving his dwelling he lived among beasts like a beast. From his entrance the whole household was disturbed, fearing his assault. Looking at the raging one, the Brother said, "Do you wish to eat?" To whom he responded, mocking and raging: "You eat." To him answering thus, again he said, "Do you wish to drink?" and he ordered water to be given to himself. And when there was delay in bringing the water, he took whey which was at hand; and dipping in it the tooth of St. William, offered it to the raging man. And as he drank, it was made in his mouth sweet as honey: whence to his giver he said, "Good is what you have given me, I ask that you give more." And when he had drunk a second and third time, the phantastic spirit being expelled, he was made master of himself. On the next day he was following the same Brother to the cloister magnifying God, and rendered thanks to his liberator William, teaching all by his experiment, that powerful and holy is his name.

[64] At a certain time, when Lord Peter Bishop of Roskilde, our Brother, was with us, and in the evening had sat down to supper; his servants, who were bringing in things necessary for refreshment, announced to him saying, "Blessed be God, because we have already seen with our eyes a burning taper, like a torch from heaven, Upon the tomb a lighted torch seen to descend from heaven: descending upon the tomb of St. William; and the roof of the church making a passable way to it descending." One after another entered as messenger of the same vision. Then the Venerable Priest, with eyes lifted to heaven, blessing God, began thus to speak: "Were it not that the Lord is powerful to magnify and glorify whom, and how much, and how He wishes, I could scarcely bring faith to the miracles which are related to have been done at the tombs of certain ones, whose life and conversation while they were in the flesh I have known: but no scruple of doubt clings to my heart concerning the virtues which are done by this Saint; whose life I have considered so approved in all things, that scarcely anyone can sufficiently marvel at the contrition or compunction of his heart, the humility of mind, the purity of conscience, the great charity to friends and enemies, and the outstanding liberality to the poor in the greatest poverty: I will therefore praise his name assiduously and will praise it in confession, because his good things are established in the Lord, and He Himself will be his eternal reward."

[65] A certain woman, poor in things, but rich in faith, presented herself at the tomb of St. William, to ask from him the grace of health: At it a woman is cured of a swelling of the belly, who had a belly, as we saw, so swollen by the greatness of the tumor, that it could scarcely be girded with a three-cubit girdle. The Brothers going to refreshment, she, having received license, was persisting at the tomb of the man of God with tears and prayers: as they were taking corporal food, she was refreshed with spiritual food: for in that space of an hour she was cured of her infirmity, as if the Confessor of the Lord had responded to her praying: "Woman, your faith is great; let it be to you as you wish." O how firm the faith of the infirm! how meritorious! how quickly rewarded! The Brothers returning to the Church, in giving thanks, she was found so thin and slender, that scarcely was she believed to be the same, retaining no trace of tumor or swelling. Being asked if she had sustained any rupture inwardly or outwardly, through which the noxious humor or pus had flowed down; she denied that she had felt any rupture or pain in her healing, but that the tumor had been calmed, as it had pleased Him who had made her sound. In memory of this deed and for the increase of faith in others, the girdle which she had used was suspended, having the length set above. The signs therefore are rung, and praises are given to God, and He is glorified by all in the miracle, which He wrought for the merit of His servant. Prodigies are multiplied from day to day; the cruse of oil does not fail, but is increased in the house of God; the alabaster of ointment sweats, the celestial fragrance of balsam is diffused; crowds of the languid run together, and obtain the rewards of benefits.

[66] Of how great sanctity our memorable Father St. William stood in his life, The Saint complains that he is confined in the choir of the Canons: the prodigies of the following as well as of the preceding miracles shall declare: for in order that he might frequently and publicly display the manifold benefits of his piety to the needy, he often complained to the Brothers and others through visions, that he was enclosed in a narrow place; because he was buried in the middle of the choir of a small church, built of wood, which could receive few besides the Brothers; and therefore he was not able either to profit them or to confer on others the grace of desired health, as long as he was confined there and the access of men prohibited. and a free place being left, Therefore while in the seventh year, after he rested from his labors, the sanctuary of a new and larger church constructed from tiles was being completed, and the choir of the Brothers being arranged in it, separated far from the mausoleum of the man of God, and the wooden church being left to pilgrims and the infirm coming from everywhere to pray; on the vigil of the Lord's Ascension so great a multitude of people gathered, that the church being filled, scarcely could the whole courtyard hold the others: then from vespers until the Mass of the following day, fourteen miracles were done: but on the next Sunday four, on the feast of Pentecost every day four or five.

[67] But when the feast of Blessed Botulf the Abbot followed, which is venerated eight days before the feast of St. John the Baptist, Very frequent miracles are done. when the greater altar was being dedicated in honor of Blessed Thomas the Apostle by the Venerable Bishop Peter of Roskilde, so many and so great wonders were done, that no one knows how to relate them, except Him from whom nothing is hidden: For on the road by which they came, and in the wood far from the monastery, where the servant of God had sat or walked, the sick were healed. O how great was the joy and exultation then in all the people, seeing the great and wonderful things of God which He wrought through His Saint! The church resounded, the courtyard resounded, the wood resounded in the voices of those praising and saying, "This is the day which the Lord has made, let us exult and rejoice in it." We also rendered the tribute of our service, singing and making psalmody in heart and mouth to the Lord, because He is good, because His mercy is unto the age, and because the rising from on high has visited us, and raised up a horn of salvation to us in the house of David his servant. Then we remembered his words,

with which he consoled us in his life, as we were complaining of our poverty: for he said to us: "Be patient, for God will yet visit you with His salvation, and your barns shall be filled with abundance, and this place shall be very glorious."

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER VII.

Other miracles of St. William.

[68] A certain woman of Kopmanhaven, Olava by name, from infancy had suffering eyes, on account of which cause she incurred blindness: One blind woman is enlightened hearing the fame of the holy man celebrated everywhere, she came to his tomb, with tears and prayers asking that she might deserve to receive light. She asked, and obtained what she wished: for while she was persisting in prayer, her eyes were opened, so that she saw all things clearly. On the vigil of Pentecost a young man of twenty years, dissolved by palsy and destitute of all use of limbs, brought by the hands of others to the tomb of St. William, is laid down: the guardian of the tomb is asked, that he should exhibit to that paralytic the saving liquor, namely the water in which the tooth of St. William had been washed: who satisfying the prayers of those asking, gave the medicinal water, by tasting which the sick man received the use of his limbs, with all the joints consolidated to their due use.

[69] A certain woman of Bardeleve, Reginalda by name, and another: from her mother's womb had gone forth blind. As her darkness so also her light: she lacked the light of the eyes, but she flourished in the light of the heart. Whence rooted and founded in faith, knowing that the Lord is near to all who invoke Him in truth, with her brother as guide she set out on pilgrimage to St. William. When she had arrived, at night she began to keep vigils in the very cemetery. And when she sat down and rested from her labor, a grievous horror invaded her, and fear and trembling came upon her: whence as if in ecstasy, she was raising herself on her feet, and was making wondrous clappings with her hands: after a little she falls back to the ground, and is raised again. And when she was thus often impelled, her brother, knowing her to be pregnant with offspring conceived, feared greatly lest she should miscarry, or what she was carrying in her womb should be suffocated by so great a labor: whence turning to the Lord and to His Saint, he began humbly to pray for her. But because the eyes of the Lord are upon the just and His ears upon their prayers, the infant is preserved in the womb, and the woman is enlightened by the merit of the man of God: for her night was turned into light, and under the darkness of that very time she lost the darkness of the eyes.

[70] Andrew the Priest of Zunthe was in peril from long labor of the eyes, A Priest weak in the eyes is cured, and feared to lose the light of the eyes and be subject to the darkness of continual night. With a contrite heart and humbled spirit therefore, that he might escape this darkness, he vowed that he would set out for St. William. Having therefore the hope of recovering health, and knowing that a foolish and faithless promise displeases God, he begins the journey, about to fulfill his vow. And because the virtue of the Saint was for healing him, on the way by which he was coming, the dimness having been removed, his eyes began to grow bright, and to recover the lost sight. Arriving at the tomb of the man of God, he declares this miracle to all, blessing God, who gave them such a Patron for the salvation of His people.

[71] Speech is restored to a mute energumen, Five days before the feast of Blessed John the Baptist, the citizens of Roskilde setting out from their city came to St. William: with them came a certain mute, a good mercenary, Ketil by name, a Norman by nation: Satan had bound his tongue for eleven years, nor could he speak anything. After he entered the church, the spirit disturbed him, and struck down he fell to the ground. He rose again often, but with unstable step he could not stand: he turned himself on his sides, and rolled from place to place: he fell on his face, was dashed against stone, wherever the impulse carried him: injured by frequent falling and much torn, he was throwing off his garments: he seemed to have come for his misfortune, because he was thought to be mad, whom thus divine power was disposing to heal. On the Lord's night, when Matins had almost been sung, the bond of his tongue was loosed and he spoke rightly, magnifying God. The people ran to the pious and glorious spectacle; as full of joy as worthy of admiration: the men of Roskilde ran, to see Ketil speaking, whom they had long known as mute: at length he is presented to the Brothers, and placed before the Prior: to whom asking, whence he was and how he had lost speech, he answered: "I am sprung from Norway, eleven years ago sleeping in a field, I lost speech: I fell asleep sound, I awoke mute." As he was relating these things, a certain noble matron, with whom he had lodged for two years, was bearing witness to his words, with many others who had come for the feast day.

[72] On the day of St. Nicholas there came to us a certain peasant of Lucethorp, with his son deaf and mute, being twelve years old. This one the father had appointed as keeper of his cattle: who, as is the custom of shepherds, lying on a certain little hill, fell asleep: But when he rose from heavy sleep, A deaf and mute boy is cured he was made deaf and mute. He asked us for his son, that he might be admitted to the tomb of the Saint: to the one asking we gave assent: but the guardian of the tomb taking the tooth of St. William, put it in water, and poured the same into the ears and mouth of the boy, saying: "I command you in the name of the Lord and through the virtue of St. William, that you tell us by what name you are called." At this voice of the one adjuring the mouth of the boy was opened, with hearing at the same time restored, and he answered: "Peter." After this being asked more things, he answered freely to each: seeing these things we rejoiced with great joy, praising God in His Saint, who made the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.

[73] At another time a certain boy of seven years was brought, and another: whom the mother's womb had poured into this light deaf and mute: there was present then in the church no small multitude of people, which the rumor of the novelty attracted. A Brother therefore taking that common effective medicine of the languid and infirm, put it into the boy's mouth and ears saying: "In the virtue of St. William I command you, that after me you speak the words, which you shall hear me uttering." Adjured in the virtue of the holy Confessor, he soon received two senses, denied to him from the beginning of his birth, namely hearing and speech: and the Brother beginning the Lord's prayer, he speaks word after word, with an articulate and intelligible voice, though in forming and expressing the words he stammered: but those who had brought him, stood stupefied, marveling at what proceeded from his mouth.

[74] Likewise an ulcerous eye On a certain solemnity, when innumerable men and women were running together to our Saint, a certain woman brought a little girl between her arms, in whose eye an immense ulcer had grown, and very horrible to behold. Approaching with her daughter the Brother who had the care of the sick, she asks that he pour a drop of the sacred liquor into the eye of the wretched daughter. Inclining his ears to the petition of the woman, he accomplished the request, and moreover applied the holy tooth to the swelling. Wonderful to say! immediately the skin under the eye was ruptured, as if pierced by iron, and the swelling subsided, yielding to the presence of the Relics: and pus did not cease to flow, until the eye was opened, and became like the sound one in clarity of seeing: and all the people, as they saw, gave praise to God.

[75] With miracles growing more frequent and the fame of the Confessor increasing, To one asking health a certain woman, tormented with many pains, fled for his aid. She was humbly praying the Saint, that by his prayers he would commend her to the Lord, that thus He might free her from her miseries, as He should know to be expedient for her. Keeping nocturnal vigils in the church, when seized by light sleep she reclined her head on the bench on which the saint in his life was wont to lean, persisting in prayer, she saw the Confessor of the Lord standing by her and saying: "Woman, a quick and happy death is promised. return to your house, because at present you cannot be cured: yet your salvation is in the hand of the Lord: after you shall have spent some time in your torments, like a living stone in the celestial building you shall be placed." At these words the woman waking, is made happier by the promises than if she had lost her bodily pains: and relating to those standing around what had been said to her, and noting that God's decree is immutable, having returned to her home, with the greatest devotion she was awaiting the end of her life.

[76] With a weak one healed Nor do I think that that should be passed over in silence, which is not much unlike the preceding in relation. There was a certain man weak in limbs and as if frenetic, in the village of Anese which is near the cloister: this one wishing to obtain from the Saint solace for his infirmity and weakness, came to his sarcophagus. And when he had continued there five days in prayer and tears, that he might see divine help upon himself; death to be soon met with is indicated. he is given over to sleep. To him sleeping appeared the Confessor of God, saying: "Why do you lie here? You shall not have health in this place: but returning to your house you shall recover health: but it shall not be for you of long duration." Hearing these things the heart of the man was disturbed and his bones trembled, and sleep was taken from his eyes. Awakened therefore and mindful of his vision, not without great contrition of heart, he announced to us what he had heard. Instructed therefore that divine providence is not deceived in its disposition, he returns to his own home. Afterward no long time having passed having been made stronger, taking an axe, that he might cut wood, he enters the wood: and while he more zealously applies to his work, the oak on which he was laboring falls upon him, and with limbs broken he is dead. Yet what was the cause that he met such a death, is not mine to discuss: because the judgments of God are a great abyss.

[77] Two women cured, one blind, In the same village dwelt two women, laboring with different infirmity: one had lost the light of her eyes, the other in a certain part of her body was being consumed by holy fire (erysipelas). Assiduous prayers were they pouring to God for their liberation, and they bound themselves by vow to St. William

that by his interceding merits they might deserve to be freed from such calamity. While these were thus persisting in prayer, she whose eyes had grown dim, saw in a vision herself as on a pilgrimage going to the monastery of St. Thomas, and having St. William meet her on the way, clothed in a surplice, and bearing an aspersorium with holy water in his hand: seeing which she was very much frightened, scarcely dared to ask who he was. Nevertheless she asks: "Who are you, Lord?" To whom he: "Trust, daughter, I am Abbot William, whom you have often invoked: the other suffering holy fire: and now I go to the woman, who is being afflicted with biting fire in your village, because she cries to me all day long: but you meanwhile go to my place of rest, and there await my coming." At that same hour she woke cured, with the light of her eyes received: and in the other the fire was extinguished, not illuminating but consuming. But to speak briefly, as both together were cured by divine mercy, so together they came to the tomb of the Confessor of God, together they fell to the ground, together they rose, together after giving thanks they declared to all the glorious miracles wrought in them: nor only did they do this, but also their village-mates, who bore witness to their cure with great joy.

[78] A certain Priest of Scania, Reinerus by name, of Hazdelzar, likewise a Priest consumed by the same fire. struck by holy fire in the tongue, was sick almost to death, because that languor was most powerful. He had once been a disciple of St. William, but apostatizing among the seculars he was living secularly. When death was now at the doors, and the end of his life was hastening, he sent his son to the monks of the church of all Saints, that he might bring some Brother to him, who would render to him the ministry of Confession and Unction, and invest him with the habit of his religion. Meanwhile returning to himself, and drawing back in mind how much glory of miracles the Lord had made his holy William illustrious; compunct in heart, because he had not satisfied him either living in the flesh or glorified after the laying aside of the flesh, he said within himself: "Holy Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But spare my sins: if however, before the messenger returns, you shall visit me with some grace of salvation, I will return to your house, and what I have failed in I will take care to amend." In heart he vowed justice; and behold the divine mercy, which is always present to penitents, came to him, and freed him invoking His Saint. The biting fire was suddenly extinguished, and the swelling in his mouth broke, and pus mixed with blood flowed forth, as if someone were pressing the tongue with fingers. Made whole he approached the saint, narrating to us how much the Lord had done for his soul: but yet he put off renouncing his apostasy: for he was of the number of those who in the time of their tribulation cry to the Lord, and when they shall have been freed return to iniquity, and that error is worse than the former.

[79] A certain girl, in the village of Gherluse, was tortured with the same disease: already she had ceased to speak, A dying girl is cured. and was awaiting her last hour. There was in the same village a certain Cleric, Laurence by name, who tenderly loved her. This one above others anxious for her death, whom his soul loved, hurries to the cloister, and having obtained medicinal water returns more quickly, and into the mouth of his beloved the saving liquor which he had brought, he more carefully pours, and with the same he anoints the growing swelling, which being done the matter of the disease was extinguished and the woman convalesced from her infirmity.

[80] But which is easier, to give health of mind or of body? He who healed many in body, and a frenetic woman, healed a woman of the city of Ripen in mind. She had gone mad many weeks after childbirth, and had inflicted on her husband, mother and sister and other friends an unexpected wound of grief. By these she is drawn to the Saint; with hands bound behind, though resisting and crying out, she is presented to the Saint: led into the church, she fills the church with clamor, multiplying words of blasphemy. There raving all day and all night, with the light of the sun coming, she deserved to receive the light of reason: released from the bonds, she placed a parting in her hair: clothed in her garments, she made joy for her kinsmen: at the Matin Mass she took the Eucharist from the hand of the Priest; and she who had been brought in sadness, now master of herself returned with gladness.

[81] A certain man, Bernard by name, was going by ship to the fair of Scania: to whom sailing on the sea, A lost hawk is restored, a hawk, which he held in his hand, having slipped, flew away. The next day when he had arrived at port, and had sat down to breakfast, he heard from those sitting with him, that by St. William unheard-of miracles were being done in his times. Marveling at these things and still having a heart wounded by the loss of his hawk, he broke into this speech: "St. William, give me back my hawk, and I will give you a mark of wax." These words finished, the hawk by divine nod came, and sat down before him. Astonished by the novelty of so great a miracle, what he vowed to the Saint he did not delay to render, giving praise to the Most High, who gave such power to men. Great is our Confessor, and great is his virtue, and of his miracles there is no number.

[82] There was brought to his tomb a certain woman, Caecilia by name, from the village of Ekebe, having all her limbs dissolved with excessive paralysis; A paralytic woman is healed. she lay altogether without power of hands, feet, and all her body: she seemed to have no sign of life, except that in her eyes there was motion. Wherever the necessity of the body called her, she was carried by the aid of two or three; because she could not turn herself from side to side, nor close her hands when open or stretch them out when closed, nor draw back her feet when stretched out or extend them when drawn up. She lay from the ninth hour until evening, awaiting the mercy of God. Then first she began to tremble, then to move her head a little: at last she felt her legs and feet being recalled from insensibility, the nerves being warmed, and her whole body except her right arm to be renewed into a certain grace of agility. She felt therefore and experienced, that by the manifest power of God she had been made sound, except for her right arm, which remained withered for her correction. Glad she at once sat up, and with tears arising for joy, about to render thanks to the Saint, she approaches his tomb. A clamor arises among the people, God is praised on high, with only the arm excepted, who bestows such grace of healing on his holy William. Why however her arm remained withered, nor did she obtain complete health, the woman is amazed, the Brother guardian of the tomb wonders. Whence on the following Sunday he asked her to return, and to entreat the piety of the Lord and of His Saint for the restoration of her arm. The woman kept the words of the one asking in her heart, and on the following Sunday she returns: but as she came, so she withdrew.

[83] Again on the holy day of Pentecost she returned: nor then did she deserve to be heard. which, the confession of a hidden sin having been made, The guardian of the tomb wonders that the woman came and returned so often with vain labor, he said to her: "Woman, search your conscience, and diligently inquire if any way of iniquity is in you, and confess it, and you shall be made clean." She obeyed the healthy words, and in her house she placed before the eyes of her heart the hidden things of conscience, diligently investigating by what committed deed she was still bound as guilty. At length she remembers having committed a certain crime, which she had never confessed to anyone. Then groaning, and indulging more copious prayers and tears, she returns to the Saint of God; and having found the Brother who had the custody of the tomb, she adores him prostrate, saying, "Lord, be merciful to me a sinner. is restored to her. I have indeed sinned much, nor have I taken care to amend; but hear me the late penitent, and pray for my sins." Therefore having confessed to the aforesaid Priest the crime which she had hidden, and making a promise of a more amended life, she suddenly received the health of her withered arm. Seeing that she had received the soundness of her whole body, the woman exulting cried out, "Turn to the Lord our God, for he is kind and merciful, patient and much merciful, and ready to relent over malice." There was on the same day the feast of St. John the Baptist, and a very great multitude of both sexes had gathered, which hearing what had been done glorified God, who had scourged the woman in body to this point, that He might cleanse her soul from crime. O the man of great piety, by whose prayers the woman was freed from every calamity, as much of soul as of body! O distinguished prodigy! for the more the soul is the better part of man, the more glorious it is established that his cure is a miracle. Truly through our Confessor was this done, and it is wonderful in our eyes.

[84] A leper is cleansed. There was a certain young man in Gothland, Ligner by name, very rich, but a leper. He wished to give much to physicians, sons of men in whom there is no salvation, for the cleansing of his body; but there was none to help him. Noting at last, that vain is the salvation of man, and that to cling to God is good, and to place his hope in the Lord God: after crossing the sea he came to us, with the hope of attaining bodily health. His hands, arms, feet, and legs, and his whole body the filthy leprosy had infected: after some time according to his petition he remained with us, persisting in vigils and prayer, and often washing and refreshing himself with medicinal water. Which done, according to the merit of his faith, from day to day he was improved, the contagion of leprosy vanishing. Having returned again to his country he was perfectly cured, and who before on account of the stench was avoided by all, henceforth had communion with men, and dwelt with them. We had as witnesses of his cure his parishioners and the Priest: who, his flesh having been renewed and flowering again, testified that no sign of leprosy remained in him.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER VIII.

The remaining miracles of St. William.

[85] Truly glorious is the Lord in His Saint, and praiseworthy in His works, A girl is cleansed who mercifully succored a girl by the name of Inghefrit, of Nordenberghe, of the village of Luagbe, infected with most evil contagion of leprosy, and blinded in her left eye, in the house of His Confessor William, while to her in part he restored sight, in part cleansed from leprosy. She having obtained the gift of such great benefit, brought back to her parents, to whom she had been the cause of immense grief, matter of unexpected joy returning to her own, and being cleansed wholly while returning. In the following year she returned with her mother, with the leprosy wholly put to flight, to give thanks to St. William for such a great benefit, who had freed her body from destruction. On her return those who had seen her before were amazed, because so changed was her face, so annihilated was the leprosy, so flowering was the flesh. Priest John and her mother were bearing witness, that by the merits of St. William she had been cleansed from her leprosy.

[86] The hand of the Lord was laid heavy upon a woman of Aland, Tonna by name, diffusing leprosy through her whole body, and a woman from leprosy. and wounding her flesh with grave ulcer: all who saw her shunned her, because from the sole of her foot to the crown there was no health in her. The woman heard the fame of the Confessor, and received very much about his miracles, whence she hastened to go to him, that he might grant her according to her heart, and fulfill her desire, and it might be done according to her faith. When she had arrived at the place she prostrated herself in prayer next to his tomb, and cried to the Lord with her whole heart, that He would take pity on her. The Lord heard and took pity on her, and became her helper: for as she rose from prayer, in the sight of all who were present, the leprosy fell from her body, like scales from a fish: and all who saw, blessed the Lord, saying, "Because today we have seen wondrous things."

[87] A certain contracted woman was brought to us from Norway, twenty-six years of age. She, with the help of her own, had sought the thresholds of many Saints; that to her whom nature had denied the office of walking, the author of nature, contracted women are cured, one, to whom all nature is subject, might confer it through the suffrage of the Saints. But God had deferred giving her health through others, that it might become to His holy William a cause of praise and glory. The woman arrived at the port of health, namely at the tomb of the man of God, and determined in her heart, not to relax her spirit from prayer nor to depart elsewhere, until he should consolidate her bases and soles. After fifteen days, the nerves being stretched and the heels of the feet protracted from the buttocks, our Confessor placed her feet upon a rock, and directed her steps; and all the people saw the contracted one walking and praising God: they saw and rejoiced.

[88] When a very great crowd was coming together to St. William, and they were hurrying from the cities to him; another, a certain woman contracted from her birth, Olava by name, of the town of Copmanhaven, having heard the fame of the previous miracle, on the vigil of St. John the Baptist was brought to the Saint: but on account of the pressure of the crowds she could not come into the church. On the following night therefore, when she was sitting next to the church toward the south, and with tears arising was most devoutly entreating the grace of the Saint for her liberation; there appeared to her a certain man of venerable gray hair, saying, "Woman, enter the church." But she: "Lord, lacking ability to walk and in the multitude I cannot enter, nor do I have a man to put me in the church." "Creep," said the elder to her, "to the door of the church, which looks to the North: and there a man in a gray cape and white cap will meet you, who will lead you in." Consoled by these words she crept quickly, and when she had come to the door she found a man, having the garment as the elder had said to her: who at her request carried her into the church. Where having been received among the languid, trembling and falling here and there, she herself began also to tremble: which when she had done, she knew that the days of her cure were near. She was anxious however, that she had not long clothes, but only short ones in which she was wont to creep: whence she was entreating the Saint in this manner, "O kindly Confessor of Christ William, if you will be willing to confer on me the grace of health, I pray do not allow me to roll on the pavement when I am half-clothed, lest my shame be revealed, and I become a mockery to all the people." She prayed, and it was done to her according to her prayer: for the first Nocturn being finished when she was resting, she felt the nerves of her right leg contracted from birth being loosened and by loosening extended: and likewise as if after one hour similarly the nerves of the left leg. With her bases and soles consolidated after a little, she is raised upon her feet: and what nature had not given, going here and there, by exercise she grasped. Which done she put in the mouth of the people a new song, a canticle to our God: for many saw and rejoiced, and hoped in the Lord. Of this woman the witness was Dean Absalon, of the church of Blessed Mary of Copmanhaven with his Brothers, and all the citizens of that fort.

[89] a third, Memorable and to be remembered among the faithful, that the grace of our most pious Father prevented the vow of some, and compelled them to the obligation of a vow; some his pledge immediately with health follows; some he meets on the way; some he receives at the entrance of the cemetery; others he awaits either in the church or at the very tomb; others departing he accompanies; some holding back longer from aid, at last he restores to health. To a woman of the city of Lund, Gutha by name, with nerves contracted and tightened, for twenty-five years walking had been taken away. She came twice to the Saint, nor yet having obtained her vow did she return sound. On the second day after the Ascension of the Lord a third time she came, and continuously until the vigil of Pentecost lying near the tomb in vigils and prayers, she was more devoutly awaiting the mercy of God and of the Saint himself. The Lord looked upon the humility of His handmaiden, adding to her what she intended in prayer: for on the holy vigil of Pentecost, with the Prophecies and Glorifications completed, with the Deacon pronouncing the Gospel, a most sweet sleep crept upon her, and she heard a voice saying to her, "Woman, rise: it is not fitting for Christians to sit at the Gospel, but with reverence to stand and listen to what is read." Awakened she looked to the woman who stood at her back, and asked her, what she had said to her. To whom she: "Nothing." Understanding that this voice had come from above, she exulted more abundantly, and immediately felt her nerves being extended, not however without trouble; her shins being invigorated, her flesh being warmed again, and the marrow in her bones being heated. Therefore having found the drachma which she had lost, she rose rejoicing and praising; and before the reading of the Gospel received its end, three times with firm step she went around the tomb of the Confessor, more earnestly giving thanks by sounding: but the people in hymns and confessions blessed the Lord, who willed by the glory of so great a miracle to precede the following day, in which Mount Sinai glowed with celestial fire, and the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples of Christ in tongues of fire.

[90] A boy crushed in a mill Paul, son of Entingi, a boy of eight years, from the village of Tortorpuyt, with his parents was lodging near the mill, which belongs to the dwelling of the monks of Aswarbode: when they were going to the meadows to gather hay, the boy remained at home. Meanwhile entering the mill-house, to lead the horse that was turning the mill, pushed by the impetus of the wheel of the mill itself, he fell between a certain column and the very wheel of the mill; so that the horse could not turn the mill. Thus between the wheel and the column, with his back broken and other limbs crushed, he remained from sunrise until the third hour. At that hour came eight men, who drawing back the wheel with great difficulty pulled out the dead boy. The mistress of the house, Ingerth by name, ran up, and wishing to test if he were still alive, turned him this way and that, and raised him into the air: but in vain, because in him there was neither voice nor sense, but he lay without vital breath, so that all said, "He is dead." At length the wretched parents came, wailing and crying, "Lord, have mercy. Alas! what has happened to us?" And with knees bent they cried out, "Glorious Confessor of God William, give back to us our son." And the boy did not rise, but remained dead the whole day, and at night until cockcrow. At cockcrow however as they were vowing, that if he were raised, he is raised. they would present him to God and Blessed William, his spirit revived, and he began to move: but he did not recover speech until day. In the morning when the day was dawning, he said to his mother, "When shall we go to St. William?" The woman rejoiced and marveled that he named the Saint, whom he had never before heard named, and answered, "Son, after eight days, on the day of St. Lawrence, if you shall live." When the solemnity of the glorious Martyr Lawrence came, the father and mother of the boy came together, bringing him in their hands, now having his limbs sound, except his back which was still wounded, with a part withdrawn where it had been broken. We diligently inquired the truth of this miracle, and we learned, from the testimony of them and others who had been present, that truly our Confessor had raised him from the dead, and restored him to his parents.

[91] Likewise another drowned in waters. The son of a certain widow in Oreberghem, of four years of age, playing with other boys near a river, but by chance having slipped below the bank of the riverbed, was drowned in the very waters. The boys return home who had played with him, announcing to the mother that her son had been thrown into the river. Having heard these things, with garments torn from her breast and hair plucked from her head, she cries out and wails, "Woe to me wretched!" At her cry the neighbors gather in one place, and running to the place where the boys say he fell, they do not find him. Going down along the bank of the river, they find him in a certain bay of the same river, where the force of the whirlpool had enveloped him. Having found him they pull him out, and having pulled him out with lamentation and wailing they carry him home. They suspend the boy by the feet livid of color, and open his mouth with a piece of wood placed in it, so that the water with which he is swollen may flow out: but in this further labor and grief, because his spirit had failed. Then they roll him in a bed, and strive to recall him to life by vain effort.

Meanwhile the mother of the boy, but now not a mother, bereft of her son, pours continuous tears, gives frequent sighs, directs clamorous voices to God, not ceasing to invoke St. William, that he would restore her son to her: she is shaken with such great grief, she is afflicted with such great sorrow, that she provoked all to wailing and lamentations, and all together with her cried out, "Holy Confessor of God, show upon our dead one the power of your help, though we are unworthy: that we may believe in your wondrous things, which have often resounded in our ears." But the mother made a vow, saying: "Holy of God, if I shall deserve to receive my son raised up by your merits, I will offer you the half of his portion, whatever in movables shall come to him, and I will bring him to you." The Confessor taking pity on the woman, restored the boy to life, with first the sign of ruddiness appearing in his face, and afterward with him rolling his eyes around: and there was great gladness in the house, and joy occupied the extremes of mourning. Joy and gladness the woman obtained, and grief and groaning fled from her, and all cried out, "We shall confess, Holy of God, because you are terribly magnified: wondrous are your works, and we know it exceedingly." In the following year she visited St. William with her son, and before all the Brothers and the multitude of people, with witnesses being brought, she confessed that her son had been dead, and called back from the dead by the merits of St. William.

ANNOTATIONS.

ON BLESSED CATHERINE OF PALANZA, FOUNDRESS OF THE MONASTERY OF ST. MARY OF THE MOUNT

ABOVE VARESE IN THE DUCHY OF MILAN.

IN THE YEAR 1478.

Venerable Catherine of Palanza, Foundress of the monastery of Mary of the Mount, of the Ambrosian Congregation under the rule of Augustine, above Varese in the Duchy of Milan (St.)

BY D. P.

[1] Since at one time, as is reported, Blessed Ambrose, persecuting the Arian heretics, who had greatly prevailed in the diocese of Milan and other parts of Lombardy, [The Arians being conquered St. Ambrose is believed to have erected an altar to the Blessed Virgin] with divine help had driven them out from a certain mountain existing in the aforesaid diocese, and on which the aforesaid heretics had taken refuge; there, in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by whom, as is firmly believed, victory against the said heretics had been promised to him, he erected a certain altar; and with many other Bishops assisting him, consecrated it, and on it first sang Mass in honor of the same Blessed Virgin. Afterward, by the succeeding devotion of Christ's faithful, there a church was built in honor of the same Blessed Virgin Mary, with a great multitude of people flocking to it from that time forward, for the sake of devotion which they bear to the same Blessed Virgin Mary, and also on account of the frequent miracles which the Most High through her intercession does not cease to work there daily. Thus far Pope Innocent VIII, by a bull of the year 1491 granting certain Indulgences to be set forth to those piously going to the place. The matter is related at more length by Ripamontius in book 4 of the History of Milan and others.

[2] That mountain, formerly very harsh in situation and ascent, now for the greater convenience of pilgrims leveled to some extent at great expense, on a mount situated above Varese, and to be ascended by a broader and easier path, is distant from Milan about fifty miles; and from the west it looks down on Lake Verbanus commonly called Maggiore, but to the south and north on two smaller lakes, of which the one takes its name from Lugano, the other from Ghivira, the adjacent towns. The mountain, from the neighboring castles on right and left, some call "of Velate," others "of Orona": but the more frequent usage, introduced by the Milanese, has it called St. Mary of the Mount above Varese, which is between the beginnings of the streams Arno and Olana a not insignificant town, called by some the village of Varon, where from the year 1010 there were Archpriests, on the testimony of Leander Alberti in his description of Italy. The ancient religion of the same mountain and of the church founded on it is shown by this, that from the year 1010 it is found to have had Archpriests, placed over the Deacons and Canons constituted there: of whom Caesar Tettamantius testifies that he saw expressly named in ancient monuments up to fifteen; adding, that so great was their authority, that they had the right of conferring Minor Orders and the Benefices themselves; and the matter remained in that state until the times of Gasparino Perri, who out of his affection for the monastery constituted there had both his Archpriesthood and the other Canonical prebends attributed to it in the year 1502: and from that time the Curates of the same church began to be called Archpriestly Vicars.

[3] The full history and description of this church, and of the Parthenon added to it in the year 1484 by the authority of Sixtus IV, and at last Catherine instituted a monastery, Caesar Tettamantius, Oblate and Curate of Robecco, published in Milanese print in 1655: which we, six years after, passing through Milan received as a gift from the admirable and reverend Lord Christopher Suadelli, Titular Sacristan in the Metropolitan church. From this history we give the Life of Blessed Catherine of Palanza or of Palantia, illustrious first for eremitic conversation there, then for monastic institution. She had been after death buried in the collegiate church of the place: but for exhuming Blessed Catherine, Pope Alexander VI, having been asked for the faculty, to his beloved daughters in Christ the Abbess and convent of the monastery of Blessed Mary of the Mount, of the Order of St. Ambrose ad Nemus, for whose exhumation and translation living under the Rule of St. Augustine, of the Milanese diocese, gave a Brief, a copy of which, together with other documents of the cult of the Blessed, and authentic instruments of miracles, was sent to us, who was present on the sacred Mount to deliver spiritual exercises according to the custom of our Society to those pious nuns, and could report things observed with his own eyes, when we had undertaken these things to be commented upon, R. F. Francis Castillioneus, joined to us by old friendship while he lived. The words of that Brief are these.

[4] "Beloved daughters in the Lord, greeting and Apostolic benediction. You have caused it to be set forth to us, Alexander VI grants the faculty. that when formerly Catherine of Palanza, the first Abbess of that Monastery, had passed from this light, and since that monastery did not have a church within its enclosure, she was buried in the Collegiate church of St. Mary of the Mount, near which the said monastery is constituted; and that you desire to have the body itself of Catherine, on account of her praiseworthy life, also from the fact that she was the first Abbess of that monastery, exhumed and buried in the church of that monastery. We, inclined in this matter to your supplications, to you, that the body of Catherine itself from the said church, in which it is buried, with the consent of those whom it concerns, you may cause to be exhumed, and may have it transferred to the church within the enclosure of that monastery, and may cause it to be buried in it, freely and lawfully, by the tenor of these presents we concede and grant. Notwithstanding Apostolic constitutions and ordinations, and other contrary things whatsoever. Given at Rome at St. Peter's under the Fisherman's ring, the 26th day of April 1502, in the tenth year of our Pontificate. D. of St. Sebastian."

[5] granted afterwards that she should be publicly venerated in the church, Thus far the private piety of the Sanctimonials toward the deceased Mother could seem to be done enough; for there is nothing in the said Brief which could be extended to public veneration granted to Catherine as to a Blessed. But the pious importunity of the faithful dwelling around prevailed, that the sacred deposit should not be removed from the eyes of the common people, and that it should be retained outside the cloister in the church, with those whom it concerned being indulgent, as Tettamantius asserts at no. 23: who about the manner of the exhumation, the state of the opened body, the order of the translation, the form of the second deposition taught us nothing, because he found nothing written about these anciently. We do not doubt however, that the indulgence of publicly exposing the body was lawfully obtained: since with the aforecited Tettamantius testifying, and to her shining with miracles a distinguished monument was built in 1533, in the year 1533 a beautiful monument was made in the said church, with such an epigraph, which Castillioneus sent described: "By her prayers the blind receive sight, the lame step, the mute speech, the leper cleansing, the deformed beauty, the sick health: the asthmatic, the weak and the languid are cured": as can be more fully read in the thirteen Notarial and public instruments, which, common and repeatedly recurring juridical formulas being omitted, constitute the fourth chapter of this Life; but more briefly, but in Italian, are had in Tettamantius's History in its chapter 18.

[6] All those miracles were wrought within the first two months from the death of the Blessed: afterward many others were done, which although they do not exist written down in authentic writings, yet many and great they must have been, on account of which the aforesaid monument was raised, in which somewhat raised above the ground, within the chapel of the three Magi, in which it is viewed with the cult of candles, now rests the venerable body, and is still often shown, almost entirely whole. "But as often as it is shown," says Castillioneus, "at least two candles are lit before the ark; and two Clerics clothed in linen stand by, bearing in their hands the same number of lighted torches: besides the lamp burning continually before the tomb, and the candles and torches reverently offered by the frequent people flocking to venerate. Many also cause frequent Masses to be celebrated there in honor of the Blessed: but she is venerated never with more frequent concourse, than on the Sunday in Albis (Low Sunday): since this day is held celebrated with a peculiar festivity, and is especially venerated on Low Sunday. because the 6th day of April, on which the Blessed went to her heavenly country, for the most part falls in Lent, in which, according to the Ambrosian rite, no solemnity of a Saint is held. But then in memory of the Blessed a Mass of the Holy Spirit is sung. Anathemas, even of silver, have been offered and are repeatedly offered not a few; but are not long left hanging on the monument, but are kept separately by command of the Abbess. Various images too are seen around the church, in which Catherine is honored with a radiated head, and with the title of Blessed expressly added: even in one most ancient one painted high upon the wall; and in pictures engraved on copper, which for fostering the piety of arriving pilgrims are distributed by the Sanctimonials."

[7] Beginnings of the Ambrosian Congregation, The Ambrosian Congregation, whence Blessed Catherine took the habit, Rule, and rite of the divine Office, has long since been extinguished, by the authority of the supreme Pontiffs. While it stood, it stood within the single Province of Milan, numbering there many monasteries, under one proper General, residing in the principal Abbey of this institute, which St. Ambrose ad Nemus,

commonly called Andemo, was named. It is in one of the suburbs of Milan, which takes its name from the Como gate: where formerly there was a dense little wood, and three noble men in the age of St. Ambrose led an eremitic life, and were often visited by the same holy Prelate, as the ancient tradition of the place has. Certainly by those who afterward inhabited the place, the hermits erected a church there to St. Ambrose: but their successors, having at length taken up the Rule of St. Augustine, passed over to the monastic institute, which was then greatly propagated in that Province, as Paul Morigia writes at chapter 45 in the History of Religions. That it had monasteries not only of men, but also of women, we are persuaded because how Blessed Catherine pertained to it, we do not believe that this mountain monastery was without example: "It is however certain," says Castillioneus, "that the said monastery is immediately subject to the Archiepiscopal Jurisdiction; and not even formerly, when the Ambrosian Congregation still stood, was it in any way subject to its General or to Visitors sent by him." This very thing is sufficiently clear from the Life soon to be given, and from the history of Tettamantius: since Gasparinus de Porris, Archpriest of that very place, to whom and to whose successors from the formula of her profession those sanctimonials were subjected, was a secular Priest. Nevertheless, just as the Oblates of the Tor de' Specchi, instituted by St. Francesca Romana, are reckoned to the Camaldolese Order, from which they took their habit and form of living, although without any subjection to the Order: so to the Ambrosian Congregation it must be reckoned that the monastery of St. Mary of the Mount pertained.

[8] The Blessed retained her surname from her fatherland Palantia, which Charles, Bishop of Novara, in book 1 of his Novara in the description of the Intrensis termination, her fatherland Palantia, calls a noble village or burg, situated on the Western shore of the greater lake about XV miles from the Mount. Others have made the same with the ancient Pollentia, to be sought further away; but he himself maintains that it retains its ancient name from Pallas, the most beloved freedman of the Emperor Claudius: and this he confirms with two arguments. First because in that very place is found a marble monument, placed for the safety of Claudius, by another freedman of the same Claudius, not less beloved, Narcissus. Secondly because on the other shore of the lake is a hamlet Calpurninus, commonly called Carpugninus; but we know from Tacitus, that that Narcissus had a beloved mistress, by the name of Calpurnia. Which things Charles saying, seems to have thought, that Narcissus was lord of several estates around the Lake, of which one he ordered to be named from a colleague and companion, another from a mistress. Which things, as perhaps are true, so certainly are all vain: and from the birth of this Blessed Catherine, gracious with the Lord of heaven, Palantia has been rendered far more illustrious; than from the memory of however powerful a man in the court of an earthly Emperor.

LIFE

From the Italian of Caesar Tettamantius.

Venerable Catherine of Palanza, Foundress of the monastery of Mary of the Mount, of the Ambrosian Congregation under the rule of Augustine, above Varese in the Duchy of Milan (St.)

FROM THE ITALIAN OF TETTAMANTIUS.

CHAPTER I.

Birth of Catherine, and the rigor and form of her solitary life on the holy Mount.

[1] About the year of the Lord 1437, in a noble and opulent little city of the diocese of Novara, All his household being extinguished by plague, called Palanza, and situated on the shore of the Greater lake, there was living a certain man of not the lowest birth nor fortunes; whom God had made by a happy marriage the parent of twelve offspring; for the sake of fleeing the pestilence raging there, he with these and the rest of his family migrated to Vogogna, a town of the Vallis Ossolana. But here also the plague of epidemic having entered, with continued deaths took away father, mother, and children of both sexes, with one surviving from all, the little daughter Catherine; who was brought to Milan, and commended to a noble matron, Catherine is brought to Milan: called also Catherine herself, by the surname "of Silence," and aunt of a certain James of Ossona, a man very distinguished there. This woman was adorned more than by her nobility by the fame of a holier life: therefore under her protection the little girl, being educated, began from her tender nails to give indications of future sanctity; adorned with virtues fitting that little age, humility, obedience, tender affection toward all sacred things, and there most piously educated, and above all that religion which from the examples of her mistress and nurse she was drawing, toward the most blessed Virgin Mother of God, to whom on each Saturday she took up the custom of reciting the Hail Mary a thousand times. Meanwhile the aforesaid matron departs from the living, and within a few years leaves Catherine twice an orphan; who stirred more vehemently to contempt of the world and desire of following and imitating Christ by the consideration of human mortality, with great grace began to speak more frequently about these things, and about mortifying natural affections, and about seeking only eternal beatitude, to the stupor of hearers, and to those admiring wisdom so precocious in her.

[2] When she was in her fourteenth year of age, God inspired a great desire of living in a religious state, in her 14th year of age she resolves to dedicate herself to God. and of dedicating to the only Spouse of chaste souls the virginity to be dedicated. Because she saw that this could not be kept unstained, unless the body was brought into servitude and subjected to the spirit, she began to macerate it with vigils, fasts, prayers; also with frequent scourgings afflicting her innocent flesh; and those whose chastity she knew was celebrated with more notable praise through the Catholic Church, I mean the holy Virgins Catherine, Agnes, Lucy and others, to apply as patronesses, fasting on their vigils, and by other means deserving them. At last taking up in deed what she had determined in mind, she betook herself into a certain monastery: but that she should not be clothed there in the monastic habit the aforesaid James of Ossuna and the noble Elisabetha Chiocara effected, to whom, greatly dissuading her from doing so, forbidden to enter a monastery, not to obey, she who was most obedient considered as a religious matter. Indeed God willed to reserve her for a new monastery which she would found: meanwhile she persevered in visiting the sacred places of Milan, and now this, now that church to approach; nowhere however to be more frequently and gladly than in the Ambrosian crypt, since she desired to have this Saint peculiarly as her advocate. Great fruit also she was gaining from sacred reading and hearing the divine word.

[3] It happened at one time that Blessed Albert, of the Order of Friars Minor of St. Francis, speaking to the Milanese people, said many things about the most bitter pains endured by Christ our redeemer for our sake: which when they had penetrated more deeply into the breast of Catherine, immediately when she returned home, she prostrated herself before the image of the Crucified, and suffused with many tears, she vows chastity. she made a vow of perpetual chastity. From this time she began to be more fully suffused with heavenly delights, and more frequently to see the divine Spouse, even with bodily gaze. There was a time when she dreamed that sailing alone through a deep and stormy sea, with great labor she reached the desired port; and not long after she saw her Jesus Crucified, and heard him saying: "Beloved daughter Catherine, the place fit for your pious desires, in which you shall lead and end your life intent on the service of me alone, I have chosen for you, called St. Mary on the Mount." By these words marvelously cheered Catherine, betook herself to Palantia; and thence after a stay of a few days, to the sacred mount designated for her: where she found certain solitary women, and loved their life, tested by the experience of a short time, so much, that when she had returned to Palantia, and stricken by plague, to bid her last farewell to her kinsmen, she could not be moved by any reasons from her holy proposition. Having returned therefore to the same women, with the intention never to leave that place, she found them all stricken with plague, and with great charity she served all of them until they died. At the last she was also touched herself, and was compelled for the sake of necessary help to return to Palantia. Here, fearing lest others should contract the contagion from her, she made a vow to God, that if she should obtain health without anyone's inconvenience, she would soon return to the mount, and remain there all the time of her life. Nor did health delay the vow; but on the very spot it seized Catherine: so that God seems to have sent that disease to her for no other cause, than that she should be confirmed by the religion of the vow, which by his inspiration she had disposed to make.

[4] She goes to the Mount and offers herself to God; Knowing furthermore that many impediments, dangers, temptations are wont to offer themselves to one seriously undertaking the service of God, with a brief and fervent prayer in this manner she addressed her beloved: "O eternal and omnipotent Creator and Redeemer God, behold me your humble handmaiden, gone to this dry and harsh place, that I may do your will enough: therefore I commend to you my soul and body: you protect, defend, govern me: because without you I can do nothing: but with your help, my hope, I can do all things. Thy will be done in me. Amen." These things said she stood erect on her feet, and as if she were established among the delights of paradise, feeling herself cheered, she began there the eremitic life, in the year 1452, on the 24th day of April, she endures the rain while her companions return, sacred among the Milanese to the great George the Martyr. Certain pious persons had come with her, to conduct the little novice of Christ to the place of the destined contest: who as they were preparing to return to Palantia, all the sky began to be troubled, and dreadful with thunders and lightnings, with its obscurity threatened a rain soon to fall. Catherine seeing them uncertain of counsel, persuaded them each to say on bent knees the Angelic salutation: then embracing and kissing each in order she bade them rise, and in God's name to set out on the way, promising that that great rain, which they feared, would not descend, until they had returned dry to Palantia.

[5] Thus now the first care of the solitary was to clean and repair the little hut, having begun a most austere life, in which she might establish her dwelling; with which labor having been protracted even to the late evening, she sat down a little, still fasting: and having given thanks to God that she deserved to suffer that weariness for His love, after some rest she gave herself to prayer, applying her mind with pious meditation to recalling the torments of Christ suffering. This being so refreshed, her body also God willing to be refreshed, caused that as she rose from prayer she saw a piece of bread placed nearby, brought there by some Angel (as she piously wished to believe); and having taken it with thanksgiving, she again gave herself to prayer and spent a good part of the night on it; the rest she took in modest sleep upon the bare ground. she constantly perseveres in the same. She persevered then for many months, adding a harsher progress of life to such harsh beginnings, and against the terrors thrown by the infernal enemy setting the sign of the Cross. Often also betaking herself to the tomb of one of the aforesaid solitary women, she seemed to laugh at death and provoke it. But she herself encouraged herself to perseverance, by the consideration of those labors which courtiers, sailors, soldiers, merchants, farmers, in their life daily endure for the hope of some temporal advantage. She sometimes said also to herself: "How many sleepless nights did Christ draw out for love of me, how often

did he endure thirst and hunger? how much did he sweat and freeze for my sake? and shall I deem it grave to suffer anything in turn for him?" Thus prepared in mind, with kinsmen coming to visit her, and pitying her leanness and squalor, and striving to persuade her to seek a more convenient place, she would answer, that her hope was firm in God, at whose command she had begun to dwell there.

[6] Moreover in the first six years of solitary life, macerating her body with continuous fasting, the frequency of her fasts, she lived on only Lenten foods, and those cheap and very sparingly taken: afterward having fallen into a grave illness, she was compelled to moderate somewhat that excessive abstinence, interposing other days between the fasting days, on which she would more fully satisfy natural necessity; yet using no other foods, than those we have designated above. The order of her fasts therefore was this: first from the first Wednesday after Epiphany until Lent and then to Easter; by which she intended to honor the example of Christ the Savior, then beginning his fasts: then from the vigil of the Lord's Ascension until Pentecost; in imitation of the Apostles, whom the common opinion holds to have fasted at that time: thirdly from the Exaltation of the holy Cross until the Nativity of Christ; according to the institute of certain Religious. She also fasted fifteen days before the Assumption of Our Lady; either because she wished to prepare herself to celebrate more religiously the chief feast of the sacred Mount; or because she had proposed to herself in this the example of the Mother of God herself, whom the Greeks think to have fasted on all those days, and therefore themselves too are wont to keep that fast, which they call of the Blessed Virgin. To conclude in a word, Catherine fasted almost for ten full months through the year: and the same observance she afterward introduced into her monastery, and even now the living memory of her example preserves it there for the greater part.

[7] and the rigor of her other penances: Besides, for the first three years, on all Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays of all Lent she altogether abstained from all food, content with only the reception of the Lord's Body: and she did the same on the vigils of several Saints; what had been prepared for her, distributing among the poor. From fish also throughout the times of Lent and Advent she always abstained; considering them excessive delicacies: and then likewise she was refreshed with only one kind of food. But so great was her desire of suffering for Christ, that macerating the flesh with that rigor of fasts, she added to these a threefold scourging of herself on each day, using for this an iron chain, which now is with the nuns as relics: once for chastising her own failings, again for helping the souls in Purgatory, a third time for all the sins of the whole world. For seventeen continuous years, moreover, she was clothed with a rough hairshirt, and girded her loins so tightly with a cord woven of horse-hair, that her tender flesh was gnawed not a little. clothing All these things seasoned the continual meditation of Christ's passion: of which that she might more easily remember, the mountain in which she dwelt she likened to Olivet or Calvary; foreseeing perhaps that that place, with chapels built through the whole mountain, distributed through the mysteries of the Rosary, would someday be transformed into some semblance of the holy City. Nor did she allow any day to pass in which she did not recite attentively the history of the Lord's Passion, written by John the Evangelist.

[8] As often as she allowed herself to lie down, to repair her exhausted strength by the briefest sleep, and her manner of sleep, with many sobs weeping she said: "O the hard little bed of my beloved! the foxes have dens and the birds of heaven nests: but the son of man has not where to lay his head: but I most wretched sinner am reclined upon straw, lest I feel the hardness." But on the night of the Lord's Nativity admitting no sleep, but spending the whole of it in contemplating the mysteries of the incarnate Word, she was likened to the prudent virgins, awaiting the coming of the Spouse. Moreover her prayer seemed to be almost continual, and her zeal for prayer. since often in a certain little atrium of her hermitage, with knees bent for many hours in the night; sometimes even rapt in ecstasy, she continued for ten hours praying. If fever sometimes held her, as long as some of her disciples was present, she took rest, but when she had departed, again she turned to praying. She had collected for herself a bundle of certain psalms and vocal prayers to be recited every day. Finally she was wont to be present at the sacrifice of the Mass with so great application of mind, that as often as the sacred body of Christ or the blood to be adored in the chalice was elevated, she was rapt out of herself. She kept silence, wherever and whenever she could, with the laws of charity safe: but conversations and idle words she most vehemently hated, knowing it had been said by the Apostle Paul: "Evil conversations corrupt good morals." 1 Cor. 15:33

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER II.

Catherine admits some companions, is illustrated with prophetic spirit and the grace of cures.

[9] To Catherine wishing a companion, A city placed upon a mountain cannot be hidden, nor an outstanding virtue founded upon Christ, because the very elevation of the mountain and of Christ raises them to be seen by the eyes of all. Therefore when some years had been drawn out by our holy solitary on the mount we have described, in the manner we have described; God wishing to take the burning and shining lamp from under a bushel, and to reveal it to the utility of many; caused the fame of her sanctity to be diffused throughout the whole Duchy of Milan, and to call forth very many from everywhere to visit her and implore the help of her prayers; who were all dismissed by her, instructed and animated with salutary admonitions to lead a life according to the norm of Christian law. Moreover the same God had inspired Catherine, almost from the very beginning of her eremitic life, the great desire of communicating with others the advantages of the utility found by her, to be aggregated into the same society; whom to this end to be divinely incited she often asked with instance of many prayers. for 18 days a certain Domnina adheres: Therefore on the seventieth day after she had ascended the sacred mount, there came to visit Catherine a certain Domnina de Ruffinis, one of those who had conducted the Virgin going forth from Palantia to the harsh places of the mount, and, unless I am mistaken, her kinswoman. She remained in that hermitage for eighteen days, and often noticed Catherine praying on bent knees, and striking her breast with a hard flint, as St. Jerome is said to have done.

[10] In the year 1454, on October 14, when the virgin was in her thirtieth month on the mount, afterward Juliana, a rustic girl, the desire of leading a life similar to hers brought an inseparable companion for her; and afterward the divine goodness kindled the same in several others. That one was Juliana de Puresellis, born between Busto Maggiore and Gallarate, at Cassina Vergherana, as some; as others think, at Cassina of the Poor. She had a rustic father, who this daughter long accustomed to be greatly delighted by frequenting sacred things, hearing the divine word, and recalling the torments of Christ; fleeing the cruelty of her father forcing her to marriage, accustomed also to spend whole Lents on bread and water, and meanwhile to labor no less than the other members of the household; finally certain to be involved in the marriage of no mortal spouse; tormented in many ways for ten whole years, to the end that she should consent to admit a husband; indeed sometimes enclosed in a bedchamber he cruelly beat her in the face, striving to extort that one thing by threats or by blows. Therefore when the girl saw that she could not in her father's house hold the method she desired of pleasing and serving God alone; and when she kept asking the Mother of God with prayers, that she would deign to indicate to her the way in which she could satisfy the inflamed desires of her soul; by a certain interior instinct she felt herself admonished, to go to the sacred Mount, there about to understand, where, how, and in what company she ought to serve Christ.

[11] She went therefore, on the year and day we have said, following the lead of a certain brother of hers experienced in the way; and seeking counsel from Catherine, and having gained the Indulgences, at that time proposed there for all, she heard of Blessed Catherine, what and how holy a life she was leading nearby. Therefore she approached her, and humbly asked, that since she herself did not know how she ought to serve God, Catherine should give counsel, which she would be certain to carry out, as if received from God's mouth. The Blessed saw her to be moved by the Holy Spirit, and therefore responded: "The counsel of the human spirit ought not to be preferred to the divine, who has both inspired in you the will to serve God, and the desire to seek from me the way in which you could do it. Therefore if you wish me to open to you what I think, and you yourself desire to be taught by experience, that which I have already begun to know by experiencing; before all things fervent prayer is needed, by which you may prepare your soul for the temptations, which can neither be absent nor are wont to be absent from those undertaking the service of God: she asks to be admitted as a companion and obtains her request. know meanwhile, that none has such capacity of wit, which could grasp even the smallest part of those goods which God has prepared for those who love Him." And when Juliana, enkindled by these words, again offered herself ready for all things, and begged that the Blessed not repel her from her own company; again she was ordered to return to prayer. She obeyed, and returning thence she began to relate to Catherine what and how much she had endured in her father's house. Then finally the Blessed said, that they seemed to her altogether similar to the passions of St. Juliana, therefore she was received by her as a companion.

[12] Juliana cheered beyond what can be said, and having returned to her brother, and although ignorant of letters, "Return home," she says, "alone: for I have found here both home and mother, by whose guidance I hope to save my soul." But she was then twenty-seven years old; wherefore Catherine did not judge it expedient to make loss of time in imparting to her the knowledge of letters; but it was enough to prescribe to her the Lord's prayer with the Angelic salutation to be said, and to teach her some other devout little prayers of daily use; making such progress in this exercise, that she gave her mistress hope of no common holiness. And indeed Juliana was most desirous of advancing in the spirit,

and therefore often fell as a suppliant at the knees of Catherine, she makes outstanding progress, especially in humility. that she should not tire of the labor necessary to her instruction, and that she should teach her as accurately as possible every method of pleasing Christ. On a certain day therefore Catherine declared to her, that the sum of Christian discipline and perfection was contained in that rule, which the Lord Jesus himself prescribed to us, saying: "Learn of me because I am meek and humble of heart": on this way therefore the Spouse was to be followed, if she wished to make any progress. And from that hour Juliana began so seriously to act upon it, that whatever she did or said, tasted of humility. Being asked from the reading of what book she had so fully acquired such salutary knowledge, she would answer, "Of that book alone, in which charity and humility, not so much in words as in examples, were read described."

[13] To these is added Benedicta Bimia, For twenty-seven years Catherine and Juliana lived thus joined, when it pleased the divine goodness to add to them a third, who should more sweetly tighten the bond of most ardent love on both sides, by the communication of her fervor and love. For under the year 71 of the same century, on the 11th day of the month of March, Benedicta Bimia, born of a noble place and family near Varese, in the very flower of her youth, drawn by the odor of good example, which those holy companions were pouring forth about themselves far and wide; with none of her kinsmen knowing, having obtained an opportunity of going to the sacred mount, and finding one window of the aforenamed hermitage open, suddenly threw herself through it, with the Blessed ones astonished at the novelty of the unexpected irruption. Who however when they knew the holy purpose of her soul, and proved it to be from God, and also two others: in nothing delayed to accept Benedicta as a companion; whom, though delicately brought up, neither the harshness of the place nor the hardness of the food and clothing observed by them subjected to their own eyes terrified. The example of Benedicta a little after was followed by Francisca of the same family and name Bimia, nor thereafter were any lacking, through whom the Bimian name should endure on the sacred mount; so that today also there are still there four sanctimonials of that name. Finally there joined them a fifth, a certain Paula de Amurtiis of Busto.

[14] for whose instruction Associated with these companions Catherine began with greater fervor than before to apply herself to the pursuit of every kind of virtue, as one who now had need to receive the sustenance of spiritual increase not for herself alone, but for her new daughters in Christ. But while the disciples strive to imitate Catherine in competition, and to transfer her examples into themselves; the first foundations of the new monastery are laid, not those weak and material ones, which sustain no eternal fabric; but the spiritual ones of humility, prayer, obedience, patience, abstinence and chastity; and therefore most firm, because solidified upon the rock, which is Christ. To examples the Blessed added also the words of salutary admonitions, to which added efficacy the testimonies drawn from the sacred Scriptures which she suggested to her, not by the diligence of human study, but by wisdom infused from heaven, cultivated by holy prayers and contemplations, outstanding wisdom is infused into Catherine, to the stupor of even the most learned men, who heard her most eagerly treating and explaining such things. But how fully the unction of the Holy Spirit had imbued her with this knowledge, could be manifest even from this, that whenever it happened that Priests celebrating at the altar before her read or pronounced something wrongly, she was wont to summon them to herself privately, and modestly to ask them to look over beforehand in private the Mass to be said, before they should approach the altar, lest thereafter they should err in anything in public concerning so august a mystery, with scandal to the more expert who might happen to be present. She also exhorted the same Priests, by which she also corrects Priests erring while sacrificing, especially those on whom lay the care of souls, to watch diligently for their salvation, and to be zealous to shine before their subjects by the example of life, and to perform their office with diligence and charity.

[15] Besides these things, God had imparted to her the gift of looking into hearts, by which nothing was more opportune to her for adjusting an admonition to place, and she penetrates the secrets of hearts; time, and persons. For she used it very discreetly, and if by such reasoning she had learned anything hindering the salvation and progress of another, especially of her own disciples; she took care that the person to be admonished should be offended as little as possible, and therefore drew her aside and revealed to her, what she had learned about her: with such evidence of truth, and with such demonstration of maternal affection suggesting remedies, that everyone willingly acknowledged the fault, however secret, and promised emendation. No one had ever seen her angry; nor, if anything against God's law was reported done, immoderately disturbed: the same is done by her outstanding humility, but the same sweetness and serenity always continued in her words and countenance, indicators of interior meekness: to which since the highest humility was joined, it came about that she judged herself a most vile sinner, and most unworthy of all, although she had always led a life free from every mortal stain. It happened that someone angry at her inflicted a slap on her: to whom she, mindful of the Lord's precept, patience, turned the other cheek. She seemed indeed terrible in reproving vices: but those austerities she softened by words full of love and sweetness, by which she vehemently inflamed the hearts even of those who were being rebuked. But she was so patient in all her diseases and pains, that when sometimes from the frequency and harshness of scourges she bore more than twenty wounds on her emaciated body, she did not show by even the slightest sign any sense of so many wounds.

[16] charity. From the alms offered her she kept one part for her slender food, a part she distributed to the poor, a third she spent on having Masses said for the conversion of sinners. She had most tender bowels of charity and commiseration, and was most greatly afflicted whenever she learned someone was tribulated. But since she could not through herself exercise the external works of corporal mercy, by frequent prayers she tried to supply the failing faculty for those things. She is piously affected by receiving the Holy Eucharist. Most piously devoted to the sacrament of the Eucharist, on every feast day she took care to receive it, and that in such a way that she more often seemed rapt out of herself and intent on contemplating only heavenly things, throughout the whole day and night preceding the communion; when also she used only lenten foods, not departing from this pious custom even when the day appointed for sacred Synaxis was Monday, and so on the Sunday she had to fast. But she took care above all to live so, according to the admonition of her St. Ambrose, that she might deserve daily to receive the Eucharist; purging even the slightest faults with much penance, tears, sorrow, and frequent confession. On the day on which she communicated she endured speaking to no outside person at all: but her disciples happening then to approach, she dispatched with the briefest words. So when she remained collected within herself the whole day, it happened on a certain feast of the Lord's Nativity, that the internal ardor of her soul bursting forth by chance, kindled her face with unusual redness, and certain lucid rays seemed to proceed from her.

[17] But God willed also sometimes to reveal by other gifts and effects of supernatural graces, how pleasing she was to Him, as she now would foretell future things, and bring healing to desperate sicknesses. And first indeed when Catherine, a girl of only fifteen years, She foretells to her companion Domnina the outcome of her marriage: was staying for some days at Palantia to dispose her affairs, and had as companion Domnina de Ruffinis, mention of whom has already been made elsewhere; the brothers of Domnina took counsel of betrothing the same to a certain citizen of that town. Domnina ran to her friend Catherine for counsel: she herself asked three or four days of delay, during which she would seek God's will: then she said to Domnina: "If you marry Clement (this was the name of that citizen) many inconveniences shall befall you: yet nonetheless I judge that you must obey your brothers, and I promise that you shall at last be consoled and shall live quietly." Nor did it happen otherwise than she had foretold: that Clement, among various calamities of his family, almost always lay sick: but Domnina after his death took up the habit of the third Order of St. Francis, and in it lived separated from secular cares. she causes things taken to be restored by prayers: To a certain noble of Lodi a chest had been stolen by theft, full of very valuable furniture: who after he had commended himself to the prayers of Catherine, found it returned to his home on the fortieth day; nor could he ever know who had brought it back.

[18] She obtains offspring for barren marriages: For six women, hoping for a remedy of long sterility through the prayers of the same Catherine, she obtained the desired fruit of marriage: among whom was a certain Magdalena, an illustrious woman, married to John Aloysius Visconti: She also freed a certain young man from the infestation of demons, by which he was marvelously vexed. Another woman most gravely afflicted, when she commended herself to her prayers, found herself heard and consoled. Lord Guido Castiglione was sick at Castiglione, She foretells to the sick life or death; Doctor of Laws and Archpriest in the Cathedral of Milan in the year 1468; who hearing that the physicians feared for his life, sent off Father John Besozzus to Catherine, of whose sanctity he had heard much, to ask whether he would recover from that disease. Catherine answered that he would recover, only that he should cause alms to be given for himself, some Masses to be said, and some poor to be clothed: which done, within a few days the Archpriest recovered. But Peter of Castiglione Archpriest there, in the year 1477 in the month of October, sending his nephew James to her for a similar cause, learned that it would be that within not many days he would certainly die, and he died on the fifth of November.

[19] In the year 1462 at Milan in the parish of St. Peter the Fisherman, Elisabetha de Cattaneis, the mother of Donatus Ciocarus, was in extreme danger of life in childbirth, and to a despaired-of parturient that she would live more than 12 years. for whom the most experienced physicians Simon Mazetta and Anthony Bernareggius clearly declared, that it could not be that the mother should live beyond that day, or at most night. When these things had been said, a certain Christopher of Sesto, a little town of Elisabeth's homeland, came up, and signified that on the next day he was going to the holy mount: to whom Donatus said, "Then go to that pious solitary, I beseech, that she may obtain for my mother a longer life, given up by the physicians, at least for seven years in honor of the seven joys of the Virgin Mary." Christopher went, and approached Catherine: who that evening said nothing else, than that Donatus ought patiently to acquiesce in what had pleased the divine will: but on the following day she enjoined him going away, that he should return joyful to Milan, for he would find Elisabeth loosed from fever, and that she would outlive not only seven but more than twelve years: as indeed she lived as survivor in the sixteenth year after these things, when Donatus deposed these things by testimony.

ANNOTATIONS.

miles remain.

CHAPTER III.

The hermitage having been converted into a monastery, Catherine is elected Prioress, and dies piously: likewise her companions Juliana and Benedicta.

[20] Moved by the whisperings of detractors However exemplary the life of Blessed Catherine was, and however much it was established that she was often honored by God with the knowledge of secret things and the foretelling of things future, and therefore it ought to be doubtful to no one, but that she was most acceptable to God; nevertheless some were found, who began to murmur about her, that it could in no way be held lawful, what she gathered companions in that hermitage, subject to no Rule approved by the Pontiff; indeed they spread it among the common people that she was excommunicated on that account. Catherine bore them patiently, she consults about the state of the new family: and, lest importunate sharp speech be imputed to them as sin, strove to entreat God with many prayers. Yet she brought the matter to the counsel of most prudent men, among whom were Lancelot de Comites of Meda, General Vicar of the Most Reverend Archbishop of Milan, and Master Francis de Cruce: who all said, that nothing in that association could hitherto be blamed, provided they had come together only for the sake of penance, and not as about to constitute a new Religion through itself. Not content with these things, she began to press with many prayers with God, that she might deserve to understand from Him, whether this form of living pleased Him, or whether He wished something added or changed. Thus while she persevered praying, and taking no food for a longer space of time; she was so weakened, that she almost lost the use of speaking. But on the following night there appeared to her her singular patron and advocate St. Ambrose, and animated by St. Ambrose through a vision, clothed in white Pontifical vestments, and having in his hand three chains, one of which he seemed to offer and said: "Catherine, handmaid of God, take this, about to be its preserver and guardian." The Blessed understood, and signified to her companions also, that by those three chains were signified as many Orders of the church, namely of Martyrs, Confessors, and Virgins, whose college she was to found on the sacred mount: and therefore with them assenting she determined to change the eremitic life into monastic.

[21] with the consent of her companions she asks for a monastic rule, Therefore in the common name of the five companions, namely Catherine, Francisca, Benedicta, Paula, and Juliana, a supplicant petition was offered to Pope Sixtus IV: who by a Brief of the year 1474, issued on November 10, committed to the Archpriest of Milan, to convert the hermitage of the holy Mount into a cloister, and to give to those enclosed there, what they asked, the habit of the Brothers of St. Ambrose ad Nemus, and to make them professed of the Augustinian Rule. Then by another Brief of the following year, on the 29th of September, he granted to have within the cloister a garden and cemetery, and to use a black veil. and she professes it The first Brief having been received, the pious virgins delegated certain noblemen to Master Guido Castillioneus, then Archpriest of Milan, to deliver to him the Apostolic letters. The said Archpriest received them on the 2nd day of January of the year 1475: and after a long and mature examination, the whole matter having been discussed with Gasparinus, Archpriest of the church of St. Mary on the Mount, to whom the nearest hermitage adhered, on the 10th day of August of the year 1476, he betook himself there; and with the consent of the aforesaid Gasparinus conferred the right upon the virgins, of having there a cloister, garden, and cemetery: and admitted them endowed with the sacred habit to religious profession, under this formula: "I N. by professing promise obedience, poverty, under the rule of St. Augustine, chastity to Almighty God, Blessed Mary, and Blessed Ambrose our Father, and to you Archpriest Apostolic Commissary, to live according to the Rule of St. Augustine and the Constitutions of St. Ambrose: subjecting myself to the care and regime of the Venerable Master Gasparinus de Porris, Archpriest of the church of St. Mary on the Mount, and obedience of the Archpriest, and of his successors canonically entering, according to the form of the letters and Apostolic Brief made thereupon, which we have received and admitted to be kept until death." Moreover he granted to the same, that they should recite the Canonical hours after the Ambrosian rite, and imposed on them the black veil, and ordered them to elect an Abbess or Prioress, to be confirmed by the said Archpriest, for three years.

[22] The votes of this first election, four of them, fell upon Catherine: who being asked to consent to it, first she herself is elected Prioress: she asked for a delay of one night, about to do on the next day whatever she should know to be God's will. But with the others insisting that she should not delay, she answered, that she did not wish to resist the divine disposition: and thus kneeling before the said Master Castillioneus, she received from his hands the ring and possession of the monastery, with all the ceremonies and rites observed, customary to be observed in such an action: with great congratulation of the new Religious, stretching out their hands to her in sign of the promised obedience, and receiving her as Mother, as of all these things it is evident by an instrument signed by the hand of John Galerata, Archiepiscopal Notary. Thereafter by admonitions and examples Catherine began more diligently to exercise her beloved daughters in the norm of religious life; foreseeing her death she substitutes Benedicta, whom when her strength exhausted by continuous penance of twenty-four years foretold her approaching death, in the twentieth month after her pronounced profession, three weeks before her death she called to her Benedicta Bimia, and indicated to her her approaching passage, then addressing her with these words: "My dearest daughter, as St. Francis to Brother Bernard, the first of his spiritual sons, so I too impart my benediction to you in the name of the Lord. Take comfort, I beseech, and be magnanimous, and trust in Him who is powerful even without me to rule and guard you: I again bless you, and constitute you heir of this my monastery; for after me you shall bear the burden of this regime." These words said, weeping and lovingly embracing Benedicta, "Again," she said, "my daughter, I leave you my benediction."

[23] Three days before her death, she ordered all to come to her, and said: "My little daughters, strengthened with the last rites the testament, which I can and will leave to you dying, is this: that you keep peace and concord among yourselves; and be constant in the observance of your vows, love one another mutually." Finally she asked Master Gasparinus Porrus her Rector and Confessor, that he would hold the place and her daughters in it as commended to him, and confer upon her the last Sacraments. These having been received and the hour of departure approaching, the customary commendations of the soul having been read, she piously dies. she ordered herself to be turned on her right side, and fortifying herself with the sign of the Cross she asked the Litanies to be recited. It had come to the name of St. Ambrose, when with a profound inclination of the head venerating the sacred name, she was believed likewise to expire her soul: but a little after piously kissing the image of the Crucified brought to her, she said, "I see my beloved Crucified." Then again when the Confessor said, "Behold your Crucified": "I see him," she said, "and I have him engraved on my heart." Finally repeating these words nine times, "Into thy hands Lord I commend my spirit," she departed from this life, in her forty-first year of age, of Christ 1478, on the sixth day of April, on Monday, at the 18th hour. The body unburied for fifteen days stood exposed in the church to all, and always white and incorrupt; Honor shown to her body. afterward it was buried there, because the claustral cemetery had not yet been consecrated. Alexander VI being made certain of her laudable life, by a Brief of the year 1502, April 25, granted the faculty of exhuming her and transferring her to the choir of the monastery for the solace of the Religious: but popular devotion prevailed that she be left in the church and there preserved, until in the year 1536 a beautiful monument was made for her, in which raised moderately above the ground, within the chapel of the three Magi, she now rests, and whole is still often shown with veneration to those approaching.

[24] Benedicta Bimia is subrogated to her, Benedicta having obtained the office of Prioress by common suffrages after Catherine, splendidly promoted the state of the monastery, and brought it about that Archpriest Porrus and the other Canons transcribed their prebends to it. From this the fabric of the monastery was increased, and the church of Blessed Mary was multiply adorned. But also Lucretia Alciata gave her most splendid inheritance and herself to the monastery, thenceforth called Sister Illuminata. Others and several others imitating this one rendered that holy assembly more frequent and more celebrated, greatly increases the affairs of the monastery: animated by the holy admonitions and examples of Benedicta to follow the religious life there, although the highest rigor of discipline was observed, so that the Sanctimonials, almost always clothed with a hairshirt, took sleep only on straw, and all ate and dressed hardly and meagerly. They also observed this pious custom, that while they were silently intent on manual work, one of them all would read aloud the Life of some Saint, from which each would select for herself some virtue, to be expressed by imitation and exercised more zealously, and to have the same as matter for pious conferences and sermons, religiously to be mingled to alleviate the weariness of labor.

[25] Juliana dies in 1501, With matters so prosperously succeeding in the monastery, in the secular year five hundred forty Religious were numbered, among whom Juliana, the first companion of Blessed Catherine, was then still living, whose pious invention this was, that in each year she should count up to a hundred thousand Angelic Salutations to the Virgin, inviting also other Sisters by preceding them to do the same; whence it seems to have flowed, that from the Nativity of the Mother of God until the feast of the Purification, at certain intervals of hours, many such Salutations are recited by each, which at last reach the fore-noted number, and weave, as they say, a certain garment for the most blessed Mother. There was noted in Juliana a singular custody of the senses and mouth, with esteem of sanctity, with most profound humility and simple obedience: other gifts of the Holy Spirit, as they could easily be hidden, because they were internal, were by her concealed most zealously, lest they should beget for her human praise. Finally in the year 1501 seized by a malignant fever, and fortified with the Christian Sacraments, when she had survived fully thirty days, almost without all food and drink, and fed only on the delights of heavenly contemplations; on the very night of the Assumption of Mary, she wished to be transferred from her bed (it was a sack stuffed with dry leaves) to the bare ground. There after some hours of quiet silence, lifting her hands and eyes to heaven, and as if sweetly conversing with someone long and lovingly desired,

she rendered her soul to heaven, but left her body to the earth; which during washing was found restored to youthful beauty. And it was then indeed, although sweetly fragrant, given common burial; her body is transferred to the choir in 1547. but in the year 1547 on the 12th day of February, still found whole and palpable, it was translated to the choir of the Sanctimonials, and by them is piously honored there. Certain wonderful things are also said to have been done at her invocation or apparition: and that great John James Trivulzio, not long after Juliana's death, testifying that many things had befallen him as she had foretold, wished to have a magnificent monument built for her: and would have done so, if the pious Virgins, deeming such ornament of sepulchres little befitting to their poverty, had not asked, that he should convert the expenses destined for it to adorning the propylaeum of the church with his magnificence: which also is seen to have been done.

[26] It had indeed been established from the beginning of the monastic order introduced there, The Pontiff orders the prefecture to be only triennial. that by the common suffrages of the sanctimonials a Prioress should be elected every third year: but these, interpreting that it was free to them to prolong the once elected magistrate as often as they pleased, could never be induced while Benedicta was alive to elect another for themselves. Therefore she, piously fearing lest that liberty might degenerate into servitude, if some one more desirous of continuing command should happen to be elected after her, asked and obtained from Leo X, on the 16th day of March of the year 1513, that no one should be allowed to hold the Prefecture beyond three years. But the Pontiff willed her person to be held exempt from this law, and therefore she could never obtain that she should be allowed to live privately or to die: and she remained in office until the year 1519; when to the same religiously deceased was substituted Sister Illuminata, of whom mention has been made above, and thereafter other and others in order. Under whom their discipline always remained in place, and with the chief men of the Clergy and people the will of promoting her remained: for also St. Charles Borromeo Archbishop of Milan visited it frequently, and Margaret Queen of the Spains of happy memory, in the year 1601 writing to those Sanctimonials themselves, deigned to name herself and the King her husband Protectors of that monastery.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER IV.

Miracles of Blessed Catherine confirmed by public instruments, from the original Latin MSS.

FROM MSS.

[27] In the name of the Lord, In the year from the Nativity of the same 1478, A blind man of five years in the 11th Indiction, on Friday, the 17th of the month of April, in the presence of me the Notary and the undersigned witnesses, specially called and asked for these things, James de Lionibus, son of the late Pelolus called Rubeus, dwelling in the place of Cabialio of the valley of Cuvio of the Duchy of Milan, voluntarily, spontaneously and of certain knowledge, also by his oath swearing, swore and swears on the holy Gospels of God, having touched the writings with his corporal hand, in the hands of me the undersigned Notary, said and protested, and says and protests; that while he himself James, who is thirty years old or thereabouts, already for five years past had been deprived of his sight, on account of intense cataracts lying on both eyes, and had learned of the miracles by the body of Lady Catherine, formerly the Hermit, newly deceased in the church of St. Mary of the Mount of Varese; he approached the said body, and by his prayers requested all present, that they give him a little of the cloths of Lady Catherine herself for wiping his eyes, because he hoped by her merits to receive his sight. And at length the venerable man, Master Brother James, of the Order of St. Francis and hermit of St. Francis in Pertica, sight restored to him by the touch of the body made the eyes of the blind man himself to be touched with the hands of Lady Catherine. Which done immediately he received good sight, and recognized all the things which were subtly shown him, renouncing exception to the aforewritten protestation of the aforesaid and undersigned things, not so done and acted, and all proof and difference to the contrary.

[28] And concerning all these things we, George of Marliano and Francis of Velate, were asked, he professes before witnesses. the undersigned Notaries, to make a public instrument, one and many of the same tenor. Done in the houses of the Lord Archpriest of the said Church of St. Mary of the Mount, with these present: Master Brother James of Bimio, of the Order of St. Francis and Hermit of the said church of St. Francis of Pertica; Master Presbyter John of Pioris, Beneficiary of the church of St. Bernard of the said place of the Mount; John Peter of Gavanzate, son of the late John, dwelling in the burg of Varese, head of the parish, of the aforewritten Duchy, all known; Master James del Mayno, son of the late Master Damian, of the city of Milan, of the Ticinese gate, of the parish of St. George in the palace; Dominic of Canezariis, son of the late Peter, of the city of Milan, of the Tonsa gate, of the parish of St. Stephen; Bartholomew of Erimis, son of the late Master Anthony, of the city of Milan, of the Ticinese gate, of the parish of St. Sebastian; Benedict of Delfinonibus, son of the late Nicholin, of the city of Milan, of the Ticinese gate, of the parish of St. Mary Beltrade; and John of Lasate, son of Master Marcolus, of the city of Milan, of the Ticinese gate, of the parish of St. Mary Beltrade; all suitable witnesses, called and asked.

[29] But afterwards, in the aforewritten year, indiction, and day, By a similar attestation it is proved, that a contracted arm was healed, Lady Eugenia de Blanchis, widow of the late Lord Peter, and daughter of the late Lord Bertolin, dwelling in the place of Velate, of the parish of the burg of Varese, about seventy years of age... said and protested... that while she herself Lady Eugenia had her right arm contracted in its sinews, in such a manner that she could work badly with the said arm, and could scarcely move it to her head: but since for two years past she had been much weighed down by pains in the said arm, she had recourse to a little of the tunic cloth of the said Lady Catherine, which Lady Paula de Blanchis, widow of the late Lord Stephanin of the said place of Velate, had brought to her: and palpating that cloth over her arm, from one end to the other, suddenly she was made whole, in such manner, that she is powerful and strong in the said arm, feeling no pains in it, and acting with her right arm better than she was wont in her left. And concerning the aforesaid things it was asked, as above. Done, as above, immediately before and immediately with the aforewritten persons.

[30] health restored to a dying boy, Afterwards... John de Fictombris, son of Peter, son of Peter, dwelling in the place of Masnago, of the parish of the burg of Varese... said and protested... that while he himself John, who is 24 years old, had one son of his, of the age of one year, sick with a very venomous colic in the chest, with the greatest itchings, so that the boy himself was not at rest, and concerning whom several times there was doubt of death, because Nicolaus de Martis, barber and assistant in the said cure, said he had seen other sons migrate in a similar way, at whose watching Nicolaus the barber himself had been present. But when he John, hoping in the merits of Blessed Catherine, had touched the body of the said Lady Catherine with a little cloth, which he had with him; when he applied it at home, he again touched the said boy sick as above with the said little cloth. Then on the next day he found his son to be made whole from sick.

[31] a withered arm restored, Afterwards... Dominic de Cavaleris, son of the late Joannolus, dwelling in the place of Cabialio of the parish of Cuvio... said and protested... that while he himself Dominic, who is about sixty years old, had one daughter of his, by the name of Joannina, of eight years, and had one arm withered for six years past, and had learned of the miracles of the said Blessed Lady Catherine; his Dominic's wife, by the name of Catherine, led the said Joannina withered in arm to the said church: and prayers having been made to the said body, at the request of those standing around, they caused the said body of Blessed Catherine to be palpated or touched with the said withered arm: and immediately the said Joannina was made whole, and so powerful is she in the said withered arm as in her left.

✠ I Francis of Velate, son of the late Christopher, dwelling in the burg of Varese, head of the parish, of the Duchy of Milan, public Notary of Milan, these miracles, together with Master George of Marliano, public Notary of Milan, being asked, delivered, wrote over, and in part caused to be written by another.

[32] On Monday the first of the month of June, in the burg of Canobio, in the house of dwelling of Master Andrew, son of the late Master John Matthew de Bagiocchis, Several together testify of across the river of the parish of Canobio, in the presence of me the Notary and the undersigned witnesses, Lady Catherine, daughter of the late Lord Donat de Magotia of Locarno of Lake Major, wife of Master Andrew de Bagiocchis aforewritten, dwelling in Canobio, who is, as she asserts, about 30 years of age; Comina, daughter of the late George of Coldironibus, of Cardo of the parish of Canobio, inhabitant of the said burg of Canobio, who is of age 30 years or thereabouts; Antonia, daughter of John formerly Master Roncius, from across the river of the Burg of Canobio, who is 18 years of age, as she asserts, or thereabouts; Petra, daughter of Donat de Zochis, of the said burg of Canobio, who is 18 years of age as she asserts; and Anthony, son of the late Antonin Malastia of Ronco, who is 18 years of age, as he asserts; all of whom dwell in the aforewritten burg of Canobio, of Lake Major, of the diocese of Milan, spontaneously and of certain knowledge and in all other ways, right, way, cause, form, by which they better could and can, they themselves and each of them, said

and protested... that it was and is true;

[33] That when in the present year and in the month of April just past, the color of the dead woman returned to life and her eye was opened. it was reported, that a certain Lady Catherine, hermit in the church of St. Mary of the Mount, was deceased, and was doing many miracles by the mercy of the Almighty, they departed from Canobio and went to the said church to visit: and they visited the body of the said Lady Catherine the hermit. And it was on the 10th day of April, which was the fourth day or so after the death of the said Lady Catherine the hermit: whose body was in one chest in the said church. And they placed themselves in prayers before the said body: and within a short time while they were standing in prayers, they saw the face of Lady Catherine the hermit, which face before was pale, become colored. They also saw the said Lady Catherine opening her left eye: and at the aforesaid things were present many other persons. The aforesaid, Lady Catherine, Comina, Petra, Antonina and Anthony renouncing exception and right of the said protestation not being made and all help of evil fraud and of the undersigned things without just cause or from unjust and generally by any other occasion removed and renounced... There were present the witnesses known and asked for the aforesaid and called, Matthew son of the late Lord John Matthew de Bagiocchis, inhabitant of the said burg of Canobio; James de Martinis of Belinzago, inhabitant of the said burg of Canobio, and James, son of Albert Mozy of Gurzio, of the parish of Canobio.

✠ I Eusebius the Notary, son of the late John de Carmeo, inhabitant of the burg of Canobio, this instrument of protestation being asked delivered and subscribed.

[34] On Saturday, the sixth of the month of June, Sister Francisca of Upper-Bimio, nun and professed of the monastery of the most glorious Lady St. Mary of the Mount of the parish of Varese, it is declared how of the Order of St. Augustine, with the canonical Hours however according to the custom of St. Ambrose, for the perpetual memory of things and that the truth may always appear, to the honor of almighty God and of the most glorious virgin mother Mary, said and protested... that in truth on Monday, the sixth of the month of April, on which day departed the Rev. Lady Catherine of Palantia, Abbess and hermit of the said monastery (who departed about the seventeenth or eighteenth hour of that day) she herself Sister Francisca with a pair of scissors, at the second hour of the night or thereabouts, began to cut the nails of the middle finger of the said late Lady Catherine of one hand; and she does not remember if it was rather the right hand or the left: and that in cutting the said nail blood came out from the said finger. blood flowed from the nail of the dead woman cut more deeply, And that the said blood having been seen, Sister Benedicta of Bimio took from the hands of Sister Franceschina the said scissors, saying that she was cutting too deep below the said nail. And afterward Sister Benedicta herself cut all the other nails of the said late Lady Catherine, except the nail of one curved or bent finger, which could not be extended even while she was alive. And this was done in the presence of Sister Juliana, Beltramina of Bimio, and Catherine of Varese called Tarancina. And concerning the aforesaid things a public Instrument was asked to be made by me the undersigned Notary. Done in the said monastery, beside the first door of the said monastery. There were present there the witnesses, Master James of Brincio, son of Donat; Anthony de Cesarigo, son of the late Maffiolus; Luchinus de Comerio, son of the late Zanonus; all dwelling in the place of Brincio, of the parish of Cunius, of the Duchy of Milan; Defendens of St. Mary, son of the late Petrolus; John of St. Mary, son of the late Antonin, called Rampono; Joseph Columbinus, son of the late James, all dwelling in the place of St. Mary of the Mount; and Cassianus of Avinio, son of the late Andreinus, dwelling in the place of Velate of the parish of Varese.

[35] ✠ I Peter of Plantavidis, son of the late Lord James, dwelling in the burg of Varese, public Notary by Imperial authority... Who, on the same day, place, and with witnesses a similar protestation of Sister Benedicta of Bimio, of the same cutting of the nails and flowing of blood, various depositions about the same miracle. in altogether the same form, being asked delivered and subscribed. Likewise the protestation of Sister Paula of Busto, that she saw the said nails cut, and that she then truly heard the other Sisters of the said monastery saying, that blood had come out from the first finger cut by Sister Francisca of Bimio: but that she herself Sister Paula did not see the said blood, because she was behind the other Sisters standing there. Likewise the protestation of Sister Juliana of Cassianis of Verghera, that she was truly in the place where the nails of the said Lady Catherine were cut, by Sisters Francisca and Benedicta of Bimio; but she herself Juliana was not looking to the task of Francisca and Benedicta themselves, because she was attending to saying her prayers. There and in the same manner there protested, Beltramina of Bimio, daughter of the late Anthony, and widow of the late Beltramin of Lugano, dwelling in the place of Upper Bimio, of the Castellany of the burg of Varese, and Catherine of Varese, daughter of the late Antonin, widow of the late Anthony called Taranzin, dwelling in the said burg of Varese. That they were present in the said monastery, where the body of the said Lady Catherine had been placed on a gallery, where the said Ladies stand to see Masses in the said monastery, and how the nails grew back, which gallery is within the church: and they saw that Sister Francisca of Bimio began to cut the nails of the said Lady Catherine, and at the middle finger of the right hand, and that she cut one nail a little below: and that they saw that blood came out of the finger: which having been seen Sister Benedicta of Bimio took from her hand the said scissors, and was strained to cut the other nails, and cut them except for the nail of one finger, which was curved in the right hand, which was the fourth finger of the same right hand: and that afterward, eight days after, when the seventh day was being held, the said Catherine saw the said nails which had grown.

[36] The same women before the same Notary in the same instrument testified, but the body remained incorrupt for 15 days. that they saw Lady Catherine and her body uncovered, and with respect to face, hands, arms and feet, in the said church for fifteen continuous days, in such a way that the whole body could be seen: and that the said body was without any corruption and without any bad odor: and that they saw the very body every day of the said fifteen days, except one day when the said Beltramina had not come to the Mount: and that they handled the hands of the same late Lady Catherine dead as above, and the arms which were white and colored: and that the fingers of the hand of the said Lady Catherine could be bent and were bent, as if she were alive. To draw up the instrument there were present the witnesses, as above. And the same things about the incorruption of the body, tested for fifteen days every day several times by themselves by handling, were testified by the aforenamed, John and Defendens of St. Mary: while they were being taken down there were present the witnesses, Lafranchus de Pozzis, son of the late Master Donat, dwelling in the place of St. Mary of the Mount; Anthony, son of the late Albertin, dwelling in the place of Brincio of the parish of Cuvio; Luchinus de Comerio, son of the late Zanin, dwelling in the place of Brincio; and Anthony Barberius of Velate, son of the late Master James, dwelling in the place of Velate of the parish of Varese.

[37] With the same present and on the same day and manner, The miracle of the growing nail is confirmed Master James del Mayno, son of the late Master Damian, of the city of Milan, of the Ticinese gate, of the parish of St. George in the palace; Bartholomew de Curvis, son of the late Master Anthony, of the city of Milan, of the Ticinese gate, of the parish of St. Sebastian; and John Peter de Donatis, son of the late Master John, of the city of Milan, of the parish of St. Euphemia; at the instance of the aforesaid Notary, public person, stipulating and receiving in the name and stead and for the utility of any person, whose interest is, shall be or could be in any way in the future, for the eternal memory of the matter and that the truth may always appear, said and protested... that after the death of the Rev. Lady Catherine of Phalantia... for six days or thereabouts, the said Master James himself, in the presence of the aforewritten Bartholomew and John Peter, handling the said body, took the nail from the right hand of the said Lady and of the finger which had been cut, and that afterward another nail grew or rose on the said finger, which can be seen by the one present: which nail the protestors themselves saw, and also the first nail taken by another.

[38] Many witnesses depose, The aforesaid Master James, Bartholomew, and John Peter, as also Bernardinus de Maziis, son of Ambrosinus, dwelling in the burg of Abbiate grasso, of the Duchy of Milan; Ambrosinus de Angleria, son of the late Beltramin, of the city of Milan, of the eastern gate, of the parish of St. Babilas; and Bernardinus de Porris, son of the late about the incorruption of the body found by them, Janetus Fazinus, dwelling in the place of Lentate of the Duchy of Milan... swore and swear... that they themselves, all laboring at the church of St. Mary of the Mount, to make the stalls of the choir of the said church, already for three months past, namely from the second week of Lent just past, by the command of the Venerable Master Archpriest of the said church; received and handled the blessed body of the late Venerable Lady Catherine of Palantia, formerly Abbess or Hermit of the monastery of St. Mary of the Mount, several and several times, making for it themselves a chest and sepulchre, and carrying that body in several places of the said church from place to place. And that they saw through the space of sixteen continuous days the said body to stand colored and sound and without any corruption, especially the face, arms, hands and feet without any stench and bad odor: and they smelled that very body several times.

[39] and about asthma cured, And that the said Bernardinus de Porris was suffering an asthmatic infirmity, every two or three or four days, in such manner that in the time of his infirmity he could not do or work anything. And prayer having been made and recommendation to the prayers of the said late Lady Catherine, he remained and has been freed from the said infirmity: and they saw him and see him healthy, and he works with them. And they also saw so many other sick persons, a withered hand, who remained freed from their infirmities: and among others one girl who had one hand maimed up to the elbow,

so that she could do nothing. And that the said John Peter made the same girl to touch the venerable body: and immediately the said girl remained healed, and they saw her healed. And a certain other who had such infirmity in the eyes in such a way that he could not see, weak eyes, and water came out from his eyes; and with his prayers made to the said late Lady Catherine, he remained freed from the said infirmity. And a certain other who could not walk without crutches or staves, long-standing blindness, and remained freed in such a way that he could walk without those staves. And a certain one of sixty years, who had stood for such a time that he could not see, as certain persons who were with him said; and having placed himself upon the body and chest of the said Lady Catherine, he cried out giving thanks to God, that by the merits of the aforesaid Lady Catherine he saw the face of the said Lady Catherine and other things which were shown him: because before he could not see. And from many other various infirmities they saw many other sick persons made whole, in the said times in which they stood at the said place of the Mount. a useless arm,

[40] And that the said Bernardinus de Maziis saw one, who had fifty years, having one arm, with which he could not help himself: and the veil of the said late Lady Catherine, which the aforesaid Lady Catherine wore on her head, having been touched, immediately he felt himself freed from the said infirmity... Done upon the stone, situated before the door of the said monastery. There were present six witnesses, hitherto named in the prior attestations and Anthony Cerimi of St. Mary, son of the late John, dwelling in the said place of St. Mary. But afterwards in the aforewritten year, indiction and day, the aforewritten Bernardinus de Porris... said and protested, that he saw a certain man from the parish of Ogona, who was mute and crippled in one leg, and walked with staves or crutches, and saw little. a maimed leg, And that afterwards he saw and heard him sound and seeing: and he left there the staves or crutches, his prayers having been made and his recommendation to the said late Lady Catherine.

[41] On the same day and with the same persons present, Master Antoninus Tizonus, son of the late Master Firmus, of the city of Milan, of the Ticinese gate, of the parish of St. George in the palace... said and protested... that on the ninth day after the death of the late Rev. Lady Catherine of Palantia... he received a little cloth of the tunic of the said late Lady Catherine; and he carried that cloth to Milan. And that the cloth itself he gave to a certain Lady, who afterwards gave it to John Ambrose de Prædis, citizen of Milan, a dangerous fever, of the Ticinese gate, of the parish of St. Vincent: who had one brother, who was sick and suffered fevers, in such a way that he could not sweat, nor have the benefit of the body, nor sleep. And that the said cloth having been placed upon the body of the said sick man, he had all the said benefits: which if he had not had, he would have been dead according to the judgment of his physician. And the said physician was protesting that it had been a miracle. And that the same Master Anthony also had one daughter, who had large and swollen cheeks: and that Ursina, a deformed swelling of the cheeks, the wife of the protestor, made a vow and commended herself to the prayers of the aforewritten late Lady Catherine: and immediately the said prayer and vow being made, his said daughter remained freed. And that the same Master Anthony also saw the said late Lady Catherine on the ninth day after her death: and that he smelled her body, and it had no bad odor but a good odor...

[42] How she moved her arm On the same day the Venerable Master Presbyter Anselm of Lampugnano, Chaplain of the church of St. Mary of the Mount... said and protested... that on Sunday, the 12th of the month of April just past, at the celebration of Vespers in the said church, in which there were many persons, a great cry arose among the said persons, standing around the body of the late Rev. Lady Catherine of Palantia, in which cry he the protestor himself heard some crying: "O blessed Virgin Mary"; others: "O Blessed Catherine"; others, other things. And that he Master Anselm said to those persons, why they were crying out in such manner. And that they said, that they saw that the said Lady Catherine had moved one arm, and that she had opened one eye. Which having been heard the protestor himself went to the said place, where the venerable body of the said late Lady Catherine was placed, which was in a certain sepulchre in the said church below ground, yet open with high bars, by one arm and a half and more above the ground. And he saw that the said body of the said late Lady Catherine, placed in the said monument by the protestor himself and by other Presbyters of the said church, had moved one arm. And this was without any person being or being able to be in that sepulchre to move the said arm. Done in the hall of the Venerable Master Presbyter Gasparinus de Porris, Archpriest of the said church of St. Mary of the Mount. There were present there as witnesses the said Lord Presbyter Donat de Blanchis, Canon of the church of St. Victor of Varese, Lord Presbyter Peter of Velate, Canon of the church of Saints Peter and Paul of Abiate; and John Anthony de Montegatiis, son of the late Margiolus, dwelling in the place of Rhaude, of the Duchy of Milan.

[43] and fevers and a weak arm There and with the same witnesses present on the same day, Tristantus de Porris, son of the late Anthony, of the city of Milan, of the Ticinese gate, of the parish of St. Peter in campo Laudensi... said and protested... that on the Tuesday just past, while he was in the house of habitation of the Masters Francis, Simon, Robert and Gasparinus, brothers of Trezzo, dyers, situated in the Vercellinese gate, of the parish of St. Peter in Caminadella, those brothers asked him the protestor about the miracles, which the late Lady Catherine of Palantia was doing. And he himself Tristantus said, that it had been true, that she was doing miracles. And that those brothers said, that they had had of the cloth which the said Lady Catherine had worn on her back: and that they had a certain lady at Milan who was suffering from fevers, her cloth cured. and had one arm weakened, in such a way that she could not move it. And that they gave the said cloth to the lady herself. And that the said sick lady had placed the said cloth upon her sick person. And that the said sick lady remained free from the said fevers and arm...

✠ I Peter of Plantanidis, as above.

The above-written instruments agree with the originals seen by me: and for faith

✠ I Presbyter John Baptist Niger Nigronus, son of the late Anthony, Curate of Velate of the parish of Varese, of the Milanese diocese, public Notary by Apostolic authority and of the Archiepiscopal Curia of Milan, have subscribed with the customary seal of my tabellionage. Hyacinth Gratianus, Doctor of Both Laws, Canon of the Metropolitan church of Fermo, and Vicar General of the Archiepiscopal Curia of Milan, also testifies for the same... in the Archiepiscopal palace, on Wednesday, the seventh of the month of March 1670. It was subscribed:

John Thomas Busius...

ANNOTATIONS.

p Tuscan "Maneggiare," French "manier," just as from "hand," "manus," the Teutons form "handelen," to treat, to handle.

q "Stropiatus" useless or maimed, as if you would say ensnared or impeded, by an idiom common to French, Italians and Spaniards, from the Teutonic word "Strop," a snare, bond.

r What here are "tamolae," below are also called "scrociae," elsewhere "crociae," crutches placed under the armpits.

s Perhaps mute, because no word follows about speech restored.

t Here too an idiom common to almost all vernacular languages, Italians "poco"; French "peu" adverbially for "little."

v "Sbarra" or "sbarro" is taken by Italians for an enclosure; perhaps from the material first at hand for the use of enclosing, namely the long and round shafts or poles of young fir trees, which are called by the Teutons "sparre."

x Here also an idiom common to French and Italian languages, that with an active verb in place of the Accusative is joined an Ablative by the preposition "De."

y That is, by which she was clothed, in a locution customary among Italians.

* elsewhere "de Bezutio."

April I: 7. April

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