ON BLESSED DOMINIC VERNAGALLI OF THE CAMALDOLESE ORDER, AT PISA IN ETRURIA.
IN THE YEAR 1218.
CommentaryDominic Vernagalli, of the Camaldolese Order, at Pisa in Etruria (B.)
By D. P.
The Camaldolese Order had three monasteries at Pisa, under the invocation of Saints Michael, Fridianus, and Zeno, named in the Privilege of Alexander IV, in which in the year 1258 he confirmed all the possessions of the Order. The first of these, In the monastery of Saint Michael once fallen into commendam, returned by postliminy to its ancient right and liberty, by the benefit of D. Severus of Volterra, Vicar General of Saint John the Baptist of Padua, as Silvanus Razzi writes in his Epitome of the Camaldolese history; who spent many years there as Abbot, and about to write the Lives of the Saints and Blessed of the Camaldolese, applied much diligence to learn something of Blessed Dominic Vernagalli, whose body is preserved most honorably in the church of the same monastery; yet he could find only very few things, relying partly on the tradition of the elders, partly on the testimony of a certain ancient codex. We have found nearly the same things contained in the epitaph, sent to us by the Most Illustrious Knight Franciscus Maria Ceffinus, he died holily who in a certain manuscript (perhaps the very one Razzi had before his eyes) found noted that it had been sculpted or painted on the altar-table; namely that which the aforesaid Razzi says was erected for the Blessed near the preaching chair; which was without doubt done only because of great and evident arguments of sanctity in life and of blessedness after death, though that careless and ungrateful posterity has consigned them to oblivion. The epitaph is this:
In the year one thousand two hundred and nineteen; Founder of a Pisan hospital He migrated to Christ, who possesses this tomb, Dominic, priest of Christ: who to this place Subjected himself, and founded a Hospital. He died on the 12th day before the Kalends of May.
That this Hospital was situated near the monastery of Saint Fridianus, Alexander IV testifies in the already cited privilege; which with its own Founder, now a priest as it seems, passed into the right of the Camaldolese Order: in which Razzi says he afterwards lived long and most holily, his body is honorably laid beneath the altar and his body after death was placed in a precious marble coffer, and rested beneath the altar we have mentioned. "There," he says, "it remained forty-two years, honored and visited with great concourse of the Pisan people: but afterwards, when the church was enlarged, that coffer was translated beneath the aforementioned pulpit in the year 1262." But not even there was it left long; for in the last restoration of the church and choir, it was placed where it is even today (namely in the year 1600, when he was publishing his work) in one of the chapels at the side of the sacristy. Ceffinus, writing in the year 1671, says it is preserved under the altar of Saint Romuald, which, as belonging to the Founder of the Camaldolese, is most dignified after the principal altar. The first
mention of him made in the first part of his Camaldolese History in the year 1575 was Augustine of Florence: him Razzi followed, and Thomas de Minis in the catalogue of Saints and Blessed of the whole Camaldolese Order: but because none of them expressed the day of his death, he therefore seems to have been passed over by Bucelin in the Benedictine Menology. All the same erred in the year of his death, not attending to the style of the old Pisans, who ended their year at Easter, when the modern year is but in the course of the third or fourth month: whence it comes that Easter of the common year 1218, falling on April 15, began their year 1219, as has already been shown at the Life of Blessed Clara of Pisa on April 17.