ON THE VENERABLE PETER THE TEUTON,
CAMALDOLESE HERMIT IN ETRURIA.
IN THE YEAR 1472.
CommentaryVenerable Peter the Teuton, Camaldolese Hermit, in Etruria (S.)
By the author D. P.
Augustine of Florence, Camaldolese monk, and founder of the histories of his Order, of which he published three books in the year 1575; in book II, treating of the privileges, of Calixtus III and Pius II, sovereign Pontiffs, obtained by the favor of Mariotus, Prior of the sacred Hermitage and 43rd General of the whole Order, in chapter 71 of the same second book sets forth thus: A recluse living, "These times produced the Venerable Peter Zelandrinus, the Teuton, a most illustrious Hermit. He within the secret places of the Lord Pope's first cell, and afterwards of St Bartholomew's, for thirty years, squalid and uncultivated in body, drew out his stay; while most clean in soul, for the safety of the holy Mother Church, in hiddenness he did not cease to weary the heavenly Father with perpetual prayer. Wherefore as he was most acceptable to the divine goodness, it happened that he saw the soul of Pius II Sovereign Pontiff, he sees the soul of Pius II being borne to heaven: borne to the heavens by the hands of Angels; just as it has been handed down to memory, that to St P. Benedict, at the death of Germanus Bishop of Capua, happened; with the whole world gathered before his eyes, under a certain shining splendor. They report still, from tradition, that he then with a cry burst forth into these words, with ineffable jubilation of heart from the mystery: 'Look, Brothers, look: behold the soul of the supreme High Priest, raised up by Angels into heaven, penetrating the ether by glorious assumption': which very thing those who committed to writing the deeds of Pius himself have not left untouched."
[2] opposing the sign of the Cross to a marauding soldier, There is a report besides, that during the passing of a certain army, a certain phalanx of soldiers had decided to come to depopulate the sacred hermitage, because they had perceived that a great quantity of grain and utensils had been brought there by the men of Casentino, on account of the fear of war. For this reason the hermits were affected with the greatest sorrow, so much so that there were not lacking some fearful ones, who decided to procure their safety for themselves by fleeing through the high ridges. But the venerable Peter, recluse, earnestly exhorting his family to hope in the Lord Jesus, and that a solemn supplication be held; when the hermits two by two, with the banner of the holy Cross going before, approached his cell; the man of God leaped up from prayer, and had scarcely formed with his right hand the sign of the holy Cross against the soldiers, he girds the hermitage with thick darkness, who had now entered the wood; when God by a great miracle, with an inexpugnable wall of most thick and most cold darkness, in the blink of an eye girded the hermitage round, so that the day, before most clear, was changed as it were into the dark shadows of night; and so great a horror invaded all, and cold and confusion, that not without great difficulty was there at length a return to the camps.
[3] The venerable Peter survived to the year 1473: dying he is buried beside B. Peregrine, he left these fragile shadows on the 6th day before the Kalends of May, being in his ninety-eighth year. With his body buried beside B. Peregrine, divine honors were paid to him equally by the Fathers. Augustine had treated of B. Peregrine in book 2, chapter 50, and we shall treat of the same on the 3rd day of the month of June. Neither did those Hermits of pristine simplicity care to describe the Life, content to hand down the memory of the virtues to their posterity through hands; and as this gradually faded away, except for the traces of one or another more illustrious action and the religious veneration of the sacred bodies, nothing remained, whence it might be known by what right they were everywhere called Blessed. Wherefore to Blessed Peter also (for so both Augustine in the title of chapter 43, and other authors unhesitatingly write, and is still used in the sacred Hermitage) to Blessed Peter, I say, can be ascribed the end of the epigram, affixed by the monk Gabriel to the chest of B. Peregrine: and is honored with votive tablets:
If, however, you wish to know both his life and his manners: The pious votive tablets placed beneath will tell you these.
[4] For Peter's chest also is reported to me to have been adorned with several votive tablets, in the year 1661, on the 20th of January, when I climbed again to the sacred hermitage: the body together with other Blessed bodies is kept separately, but with the temple recently restored and magnificently adorned, the chests had then been removed from their places, which they had had behind the high altar, together with the bodies, and brought into the sacristy, until another place was prepared, worthy of their sanctity, which has now been done, and it can be presumed not to have been done without the translation of the bodies into more decent chests, since the old ones, very simply assembled from boards and inside scarcely covered with silk cloth withered with age, were entirely unworthy that for so long a time they should contain such a treasure. For the bodies are not dissolved, although long lying in a damp place, but consist with solid composition; yet dry and rigid, and with features confused and a cinerary or stony color induced, presenting only a rough form of a man; and the same light in weight and breathing no heavy odor, as I myself am an eyewitness. Otherwise nothing was being done about them in the divine Offices, nothing on their anniversary day by those pious hermit-dwellers, without special cult in the Camaldolese hermitage, avoiding all ostentation. They, lest they be impeded by the access of secular men from the leisure of quiet contemplation, do not even have for the sake of sacred things the open gates of the wall, surrounding their hermitage; but at one of them a small chapel, and they appoint each week one of their own to celebrate Mass there. To guests and Pilgrims, however, who out of devotion wish to see the aforesaid hermitage, besides a guide to the temple and to the cell of the Pope mentioned above, nothing is provided; lest anything detain them there beyond what is needed, and so they are compelled, at least for the cause of bodily refection, to descend to the lower monastery. The hospice "of the good fountain" called in the Acts of St Romuald, where with great charity and liberality is administered to all who come.
[5] That cloister, whence by an arduous path of one and more miles one ascends to the hermitage, in which, similar to oriental laurae, is succinctly described on February 8, in the Acts of St Romuald, number 10. The hermitage itself has the form of Laurae, so often mentioned in this work and notably in the Acts of Sts Theodosius and Sabas; inhabited not by contiguous cells, as are the Carthusians', but by separate ones; so that besides the temple, common to the whole hermitage, to each cell its own chapel is attached, and the hermits are able to live shut up for weeks or months, outside all conversation and sight of anyone; except that at certain hours one of the Conversi may approach, who in the time of reclusion may assist those celebrating Mass, and supply slender food. The most extreme of all and somewhat ampler than the others is the Cell of the Pope, so called, because in the year 1220, Hugolinus Cardinal of Velletri, afterwards Pope Gregory the ninth, for six whole months lived there shut up, with St Francis having accompanied him there, and another cell (which is now called of St Francis, and out of reverence is inhabited by the Major or Prior) inhabiting at that time also. is the Pope's oratory, There as the Cardinal was celebrating, in the oratory which he himself had consecrated, at the very moment of consecration there stood above his head a dove sent from heaven, by which sign the Conversus then ministering to him, afterwards shut up in the same cell, knew and predicted to him the future Pontiff; whose bones also are placed within the wall of the oratory more highly, with this elogium: "Of B. Leonard, recluse hermit, the bones are placed here: whose soul after long maceration of the flesh, was seen in a fiery sphere to penetrate the secret places of heaven; and the bell of the hermitage was heard to be rung without the help of mortals. He also by prophetic spirit predicted the most Reverend Hugolinus Cardinal, then shut up in this cell, would be a future Pope: which so happened, and he was called Gregory the ninth." Indulgences also of one hundred days were granted by Gregory, to those visiting the oratory of that cell; which that they may more freely gain, both the hermits themselves and the pilgrims, the place is now kept almost empty; but formerly there were allowed to dwell those who desired a longer reclusion.
[6] So there dwelt he, on whose occasion we began to say these things, Peter, from his fatherland Zealand called Zelandrinus, from his nation or idiom common also to the Belgians called the Teuton. What is the other cell, called of St Bartholomew, I do not remember to have heard there: I only know, that pointed out to us at a distance was a cell hanging from a high rock above the hermitage; from which Peter migrated to the cell of St Bartholomew. in which a certain recluse dwelt, keeping perpetual silence, and not descending to the rest in the church except on the Lord's Supper, to whom once each week a Confessor Priest would ascend. When Peter therefore had decided to live perpetually shut up, and could not on account of the Indulgences to be gained in the Oratory of St Mary be entirely free from interruptors; it is credible that he obtained that more remote one. As to what pertains to Pope Pius II, he, prepared to mount a fleet against the Turks, while he awaits the Doge of Venice, died at Ancona, in the year 1464, on the 17th day before the Kalends of September. His most pious death various have praised: but who has touched on the vision made to the Venerable Peter (which Augustine here hints at) we have not yet read: nor is there need of the testimony of outsiders, who would have narrated things heard from the Camaldolese hermits; since the truth of the matter is more securely received from the narration handed down by themselves through hands.
[7] Furthermore the things which we have given in Latin from Augustine concerning Peter, the same Silvanus Razzius rendered in Italian in the lives of the Saints and Blessed of the Camaldolese. other things less foundedly written about the same. Of the same Peter Thomas de Minis makes mention, in the Catalog of Saints and Blessed of his Order, edited at Florence around the year 1606. Arnold Wion in the Wood of Life speaks in this manner: "At Camaldoli of St Peter, surnamed the Teuton, who saw the soul of Pius II the Pope, crowned with three diadems, far placed himself, borne to heaven by the hands of Angels": he cites however in the Annotations the Camaldolese Tablets: of which there is no memory at Camaldoli; as neither of the Vallombrosan, often cited by him, at Vallombrosa: from which you may learn, that these were nothing else than a Catalog by some monk, when Arnold asked it, by private authority woven together. He then cites Augustine, in whom he could not have read either the title of Saint, or any word about the three diadems. Meanwhile Hugh Menard and Gabriel Bucelinus, not knowing the faith of such a writer to be anywhere suspect, although they had Augustine's text before their eyes, preferred nevertheless to transcribe the words of Arnold. Nor content with these Bucelinus, while he sought a longer elogium from Augustine, and could not but add something of his own, about to describe the danger prepared by the hand of marauders and warded off by Peter, with bold exaggeration he invented the extreme destruction threatening Camaldoli from the imminent army.
April III: 27. April