the 200 Martyr Monks of Cardeña

ON STS. THE 200 MARTYR MONKS OF CARDEÑA,

NEAR BURGOS, IN SPAIN.

In the year 872.

HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.

The 200 Martyrs of Cardeña near Burgos in Spain (SS.)

BY THE AUTHOR P. B.

§ I. Their cult and relics.

Concerning the most ancient and most noble monastery of Cardeña, or of St. Peter of Cardeña, In the monastery of Cardeña of the Order of St. Benedict, near the people of Burgos, from whom it is a league and a half distant toward the East, in Old Castile, there was treated quite cursorily on the occasion of St. Sisebutus the abbot at the day XV of March, page 412: inasmuch as it had long ago been sufficiently set forth from another source by Prudencio de Sandoval in the Foundations of the monasteries of the same Order throughout Spain, part 1, from folio 34, and somewhat earlier by Alfonso Chacón, or Ciaconius, in a special little book on these two hundred Martyrs, published at Rome in the year of Christ 1594 to hasten their canonization. But now it is much less necessary to spend time on its description; since the Most Reverend Father Master Friar Francisco de Berganza has made public its history, scattered indeed but nevertheless most abundant, in two volumes of no small bulk, from the Madrid press in the year of Christ 1719. The work is entitled: Antigüedades de España propugnadas, etc. But this same place was to our two hundred Athletes at once the training-school of religious perfection, then the illustrious wrestling-ground of the contest by martyrdom, and finally their glorious sepulcher; nay, a sanctuary not undeservedly to be compared with the chief ones of Spain, namely those of Cordova and Saragossa; as Alfonso Ciaconius, chapter 14, and Berganza, part 1, page 134, prove from Ambrosio de Morales. Nor would you say that that man most celebrated for erudition, Benito Arias Montano, thought otherwise, if you read the Hymns with which he adorned our Martyrs in Tamayo, in the Spanish Martyrology at this day.

[2] their common sepulcher, by an old epitaph, But they are all buried together in that part of the cloister or ambulatory which they had drenched with their innocent blood and strewn with their bodies; that part, I say, which, on Ciaconius's testimony, chapter 16, lies nearest to the church, which was then plundered and destroyed with the whole monastery by those same Saracens who had made this slaughter. The Christians, after the departure of the Arabs, having attended to the bodies of these Martyrs with the office of piety, left it attested by a perpetual monument how much veneration they themselves both paid to that place and judged should be paid by posterity: for in the wall which was nearest to the common sepulcher of the buried Martyrs, at nearly five feet above the ground, they inserted two stones, both equalling in breadth nearly a fourth part of an ell, but unequal in length; since the upper one, which extends to three fourth parts of one ell, exceeds the lower by four fingers: but a single Latin inscription runs on across both, cut in Gothic character not deeply indeed, yet clearly expressed in this manner:

In the Era 872, on the fourth weekday, the eighth of the Ides of August, Cardeña was struck down, And there were slain there by King Zepha 200 Monks Of the flock of the Lord, on the day of the holy martyrs Justus and Pastor.

So Berganza after others in the place already assigned; where he also subjoins this observation: I hold it indeed as certain that these two stones were inscribed immediately after the martyrdom: for if this had been done later by those who afterward restored the monastery, they would assuredly have used one stone for one inscription, not two, and those unequal; nor would they have grazed only its topmost surface with the letters, which is an indication of hurried work.

[3] There increased thereafter the religious awe of the place by an annual prodigy, by which namely the pavement placed over the sepulcher of these Martyrs by an annual prodigy, and by signs of consecration, was wont every year on the eighth of the Ides of August to sweat out a certain bloody and fragrant liquid, of which on the following day no trace remained; and that from time immemorial, nay from their very slaughter (as Ciaconius contends, chapter 21) until the times of Henry IV, king of Castile, who indicates that it had not yet ceased in the most ample Privilege which he conferred on the monastery of Cardeña on the XVIII day of September, in the year of Christ 1473, and which can be read entire in Berganza, part 2, page 234 and following. Hence perhaps is to be traced the law or custom by which, as Ambrosio de Morales also observed in his own age in the Chronicle, volume 1, book 10, folio 355, it was provided out of singular reverence that no one should pass that way; but that, wherever one had to go, it should be done by another road; lest a place so sacred, rashly trodden, should seem in some way to be profaned. Certainly when it began to be dealt with about restoring the ruins of the same monastery, that a particular account was had chiefly of this holy treasury Berganza thus narrates, part 1, page 135: At the time when the monastery was rebuilt (namely in the year of Christ 899, as is shown in the same place, page 175), that part of the cloister seems to have been consecrated; because it was the sepulcher of so many holy bodies: in memory of which matter two crosses with some keys beside them were impressed on the outermost walls of the same cloister. Those keys Ciaconius, chapter 14, and Antonio de Yepes in the general Benedictine Chronicle at the year of Christ 834, chapter 2, call the keys of St. Peter; but by them

joined to the crosses both agree with Sandoval, in the Monastery of St. Peter of Cardeña, §3, that the consecration of the same place is designated; and Ciaconius indeed says, they are wont to be a most certain proof and a manifest indication of consecration.

[4] Berganza proceeds, referring to the same year, as it appears, such adornment as there was of the same sanctuary, which he thus depicts: On the circuit (of that side of the cloister), not far from the roof, there are fastened by nails some panels, only half an ell broad, on which the martyrdom is sketched with a brush; although now only very few figures can be distinguished there, on account of the colors faded with age. Beneath these panels there hang others, exhibiting on a white ground an inscription in blue; but neither can the characters of this now be discerned, except very few; both because the color has faded, and also because in the middle space of the place a chapel was afterward built, and dedicated in the name of the same Martyrs. I shall append here a transcribed copy of it, which is kept in the archive, although not even this can now be read entire: Come to judgment, all. In that part of the cloister are two hundred monks of this monastery, who endured death for the faith of our Lord the Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ... On the fourth weekday... Of salvation... in... Come, soldiers of Christ... shall live forever... if a monk... your heart * shall spring up as the grass. Then a little below: The letters which are on those panels are Gothic and capital. So the eyewitness. Whence we do not think those are to be heard who have written otherwise concerning this inscription: as that it consists of French characters; that it was first expressed on those panels in the Latin idiom; whereas the Latin copy of the archive was translated from the Spanish prototype of the panels, as Ciaconius altogether affirms, chapter 14; finally that it was set up after the Gothic characters were abrogated in the council of León of the year 1091 and French ones substituted for them in use; which we wonder that Ciaconius asserted, chapter 23, where, writing of John of St. Dominic, abbot of Cardeña, he says, Who restored the cloister, and ordered that description to be painted around the tombs of the Martyrs in the Spanish tongue, yet with French characters, which were then in use. And yet that John presided, according to Berganza, part 2, page 228 and following, from the year of Christ 1448 until 1457. But who would believe that a writing could be so recent, of which, from the very century immediately following (in which Ciaconius made mention of it), neither the original nor the copy, although stored in the archive, could any longer be read in any way in its entirety, the letters fleeing away, as he himself is compelled to confess?

[5] which old Breviaries also prove; From what has been said hitherto it shines forth, I think, sufficiently that these Champions were from all memory back openly acknowledged and honored as truly Saints and Martyrs. And so he who desires more arguments to this effect, let him consult the authors already cited, Ciaconius especially, chapters 14, 22, etc., and Berganza. I cannot, however, refrain from setting forth that one and far most solid among the arguments of Ciaconius, from chapter 27: But these, he says, two hundred Monks of St. Peter of Cardeña, are reckoned to be of the number of Martyrs whom the Spanish church at some time received: for otherwise how would public prayers be made concerning them in many churches of Spain; and honor and cult of the Saints be exhibited to them; and they be placed in the Calendars of the sacred codices under the title of Sanctius and his Companions, Martyrs? Which Ambrosio de Morales, the royal chronicler, testified by letter that he had seen, when by order of Philip the second, Catholic king of the Spains, he had sought out from every quarter various Breviaries (then ancient, as is in Berganza, part 1, page 156) for the library of St. Lawrence, for some pious purpose. But that the churches of Spain dared and attempted this on private authority is contrary to reason. There intervened, therefore, the public authority of the prelates of Spain, who determined this for just causes, since the matter was rather well known, and more frequent miracles drove them to decree this and to place them in the catalogue of Martyrs. But lest anyone should cavil that those letters were perhaps foisted upon Morales, let him go to his Chronicle, volume 1, book 10, folio 355, where in these few words he confirms the foregoing: Concerning these holy Monks some Spanish churches recite an Office. Berganza, part 1, book 2, chapter 11, adds also the Order of St. Dominic, which celebrated with an Office on the sixth day of August the same Saints, inscribed somewhere in its Martyrology before the Roman decrees; and he cites as witness Father Jaime Bleda of the same Order, in the Chronicle of the Moors, book 7, chapter 28. Finally Pope Clement VIII himself below will both acknowledge their old cult, and complain that by the injury of the times it had in his own age almost died out.

[6] Of which matter indeed Yepes, century 4, and the Apostolic See itself at last vindicated it folio 41, seems somewhat obscurely to lay the cause upon the monks of Cardeña themselves; as those who, deterred by a certain holy timidity, as he himself calls it, at length did not dare to celebrate the Office or feast of their own Saints, because the Apostolic See had not yet approved their martyrdom by an express sentence. But whatever cause at last moved them, it is wonderful, at its urging, how long and how greatly they labored, that they might at some time obtain such a sentence from the supreme Pontiffs, and by it not only restore the former honors of their Martyrs, but also establish them in perpetuity, increased with new additions. The business was undertaken with immense spirit and with powerful patronage under Pope Eugene IV; but, interrupted again and again by various and unhoped-for mischances, as Berganza narrates in the place cited, at last under Clement VIII it had already begun to be almost despaired of, when the Martyrs themselves seemed of their own accord to have restored it. For there came then by chance to Burgos from the kingdom of Valencia the doctor Vicente Ferrer, canon penitentiary of the church of Orihuela, and there, being informed concerning the sanctuary of Cardeña, he determined out of his exceptional piety to run out to it in the year 1599 on the vigil of St. Benedict: but in it he felt himself so moved that not even at Rome, whither he set out a little afterward on account of another business, could he so forget that day and place, but that, his own affairs being finished there, he thought of stirring anew the cause of these Martyrs. He therefore goes of his own accord to Friar Pedro Arévalo, procurator of the monks of Cardeña in the City, and opens his plan to him; but finding the man's confidence broken by the long duration of the matter, he turned his mind elsewhere, namely to the abbot of the monastery himself, to whom he immediately gave letters, in which he asked this charge for himself, bargaining for no other reward than that in prayers and Sacrifices he should enjoin remembrance of him upon the monks; and then, that as often as they happened to pass by the sanctuary, so often they should address their Martyrs with this prayer: Give strength, bring aid; that Vincent, your unworthy servant, may be able to obtain what he asks.

[7] The condition being, as was fitting, most willingly accepted, he first attempted this by a petition in the year 1602 before the supreme Pontiff, first by adopting them into the Roman Martyrology in the year 1602, and Vincent obtained that our Martyrs should have a place thenceforth in the Roman Martyrology. Nor indeed was there need, the Most Holy Lord affirmed, of any other declaration of their sanctity and martyrdom, resting on so ancient a veneration of so many churches; as Berganza proves in the same place, chapter 13, whose narration we here abridge. There remained therefore only the execution of the Pontifical mandate, by which the Martyrs might be read as inserted forthwith in the said Martyrology; nor was there any delay on the part of the Most Eminent Cardinal Baronius, except that a new edition of the same Martyrology, already advanced far beyond the month of August, to which these Martyrs had to belong, was drawing to its end. But after mature deliberation with Vincent, lest perchance, if another public edition were awaited, the matter should pass into oblivion, he judged at last that it was expedient that another new edition should straightway be prepared at the expense of the monks of Cardeña, in which at the sixth day of the month of August this announcement, dictated by the Cardinal himself, should be appended: At Burgos in Spain, in the monastery of St. Peter of Cardeña, of the Order of St. Benedict, of two hundred Monks with Stephen the abbot; who were slain by the Saracens for the faith of Jesus Christ, and buried there in the cloister by the Christians. No sooner said than done. Thus augmented the Roman Martyrology came forth in the same year 1602 at Rome from the printing-house of Stefano de Paulino. But how it came about that in the editions of the Roman Martyrology afterward following that supplement was omitted, as I do not divine; so I do not see what more could be required for its lawful authority.

[8] then also by a Pontifical Brief, Ferrer, encouraged by so prompt and prosperous a success, presently drew up a second supplication to be presented to the Pontiff; by which he might obtain from him faculty for the churches of publicly reciting the Office of the same Martyrs. The Most Holy Lord, having received the petition, remitted it to the Congregation of sacred rites; this to Cardinal Baronius; who, inflamed with a singular affection toward these Martyrs, wrote out with his own hand their proper Lessons in the second Nocturn; which the Pontiff afterward, when approved, inserted into an Apostolic Bull, these words being added at the foot: But the Apostolic See also by its authority restores to life their memory, now almost extinguished by the injury of the times, and presents it to all the faithful to be celebrated. It was given, as will be seen in the following paragraph, in the year of Christ 1603, on the XI day of January; but on the XVIII day of February, being brought to the monastery of Cardeña, it filled the whole of it with incredible joy. And so the abbot on the following day gave thanks to God by a solemn Sacrifice; then on the XX day of February he ran out to Burgos, thence to Valladolid, to communicate the whole matter here with the Catholic king and the nobles; there with the archbishop, the chapter, and the magistracy. To Philip III this announcement came so pleasantly that presently he commanded public signs of gladness through all the cities of the whole kingdom; then to the abbot, who was planning a chapel over the sepulcher of the Martyrs, he assigned for that purpose thirteen thousand ducats, giving besides hope of a more ample munificence. The abbot, returning home, sets about the work with the most august adornment he can: on the altar of the chapel he places many relics of the same Martyrs, and in the midst among them a statue of St. Stephen, their abbot and leader: the sepulcher itself, which they call the sanctuary, was covered with a raised flooring, and iron gratings set in place lest access should lie open, with two silver lamps procuring reverence for the place by a perpetual light.

[9] by which the cult wonderfully flourished again; Meanwhile the sixth day of August was at hand, the same being both the birthday of the Martyrs and the day decreed for celebrating the canonization; which, to say it briefly, both in the neighboring city of Burgos with festive fires and games, and especially in the monastery of Cardeña, was spent from the first Vespers onward with such pomp, majesty, gladness, and piety, as he will easily conceive who knows the most magnificent and most ready religious devotion of the Spaniards of its own accord toward ecclesiastical solemnities of this kind; to which there was added at that time a royal exhortation by letters addressed to the chief men of Burgos; there was added also the authority of the archbishop of Burgos, which he employed among the churches subject to him for honoring by supplications from every quarter

by instituted processions this triumph; there was added finally the industry and dignity of the Benedictine Congregation throughout all Spain, contributed to the greater splendor of that day: for there had flowed together thither the most reverend minister General, who performed the chief parts in these sacred ceremonies; then at his bidding fifteen abbots in all, five definitors, and other leading men from the whole Congregation to the number of two hundred and twenty: which very number, however, the throng of the other Orders, flocking together from the city of Burgos and the neighboring monasteries, surpassed; the remaining multitude was believed to have reached eight thousand heads. And this was the first fruit of their veneration restored by the Apostolic sentence, thereafter wonderfully propagated to very many churches by a most liberal sharing of relics.

[10] And in that very year 1603 those relics were sought and granted by so many prayers repeated from every quarter on almost every day, thereafter widely spread with the relics. that the monks of Cardeña, lest this sacred treasure, however rich it was otherwise, should shortly be wholly dug out, judged that they must necessarily beg for, and obtained, an Apostolic Brief, by which it was provided that it should not be lawful for anyone thenceforth without the express faculty either of the Pontiff himself or of his Nuncio to pluck anything thence, except for cathedral or collegiate churches; which law indeed exempted neither the abbots of the place, nor the visitors, nor finally the Generals themselves of the Spanish Congregation; a deprivation of dignity, office, and vote both active and passive being set forth against offenders, and other penalties reserved to the judgment of the Most Holy Father. After this decree the distribution was both more sparing, and a more accurate account began to be kept of the relics — whither, how many, and of what kind were carried away thence in every direction, whether within Spain, or into Germany, or into America (for thither also the Procurator general of the Most Reverend Fathers the Discalced Carmelites asked that not a few be carried). But a list of all these, because it is longer than seems fit to be reported here, may be read in Berganza himself, part 1, book 2, throughout the whole fifteenth chapter. For us it is enough to have observed from it that on occasion of the relics the cult of our Martyrs so far increased that they were chosen as Patrons by four churches, those of Arcos, Buniel, Osorno, and Ros; but that by several dioceses, namely those of Compostela, Osma, Badajoz, Palencia, etc., they are celebrated each year on the VII day of August (which the archdiocese of Burgos also now observes) with a more solemn Office under nearly this title, as may be seen in their directories: Of Stephen and his Companions, Martyrs. Double, or: Greater Double.

* others add: AND YOUR BONES

§ II. Their Acts.

The most ancient Acts have perished; That there once existed most ancient manuscript histories of this so numerous and so illustrious a martyrdom is testified by Ciaconius, chapters 14 and 23, Sandoval in the Monastery of St. Peter of Cardeña, §3, and Berganza, part 1, book 2, chapter 7. And the latter indeed records that there were three; the former mentioned only two of similar antiquity; of which one had as its author Alfonso III, king of the Asturias, surnamed the Great, who is believed to have reigned at that very time, namely from the year of Christ 866, as Juan de Ferreras will have it in the History of Spain, until 912. Both of them Friar Jerónimo Bermúdez, a learned man of the Order of St. Dominic, and surviving at least until the year of Christ 1594, as the same author indicates in chapter 23, saw and read at Rome with Lord Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, then ambassador of Philip II, the Catholic king, on Ciaconius's testimony. But they had been consigned to Mendoza together with the other instruments of Cardeña, after King Philip had committed to him the pressing anew of the cause of our Martyrs, as also of Rodrigo de Vivar, whom they also call the Cid, before the Vicar of Christ. But when the unexpected defection of the Sienese, over whom Mendoza had been set as prefect, broke off this sacred business, happily promoted by him, it is uncertain where he at last left all the monuments handed over to him; certainly to this day no industry has been able to detect them; which the monks of Cardeña deservedly indeed, but hitherto in vain, lament.

[12] their substance nevertheless being saved; This loss the inscriptions and panels mentioned in the preceding paragraph in some measure alleviate; and then whatever other compendia of the Acts were written at the time when those most ancient Histories either had not yet been carried away from Spain to Rome, or were not yet lost: for these, while those fountains were ready at hand, cannot be believed to have been drawn from elsewhere; otherwise they would at once and easily have had to be convicted of falsehood by those same sources, if in any point they were at variance. Such we think are those things which are without doubt recited in those Breviaries of which we made mention at number 5; such also those which Ciaconius, chapter 14, says that Morales read concerning the monastery of Cardeña and these Martyrs in the manuscript Annals or Compostellan History: for that this History was written before the middle of the twelfth century, we said at the day XXV of July, page 16: then those which the same Ciaconius in the same place affirms that Alfonso X, king of Castile and León, surnamed the Wise, wrote after the middle of the thirteenth century, in the General History of Spain; and those which the Monuments of Cardeña, composed at nearly the same time, report in Berganza in the Appendix, page 588, where the text set forth in Spanish runs thus in Latin: In the Era 872 King Azepha came into Castile, and overran the whole region; and came to the monastery of St. Peter of Cardeña, and slew there two hundred Monks who dwelt there: the abbot then was dom Stephen. On the fourth weekday, on the day of Sts. Justus and Pastor, in the month of August. Such finally ought to be reckoned the things which Henry IV asserts in the Privilege (concerning which above at number 3) about the monastery of Cardeña; namely that it is established for him, among other things, that two hundred Religious had been placed in it to serve God; but that on a certain day, sacred to Sts. Justus and Pastor, King Zepha came powerfully and in hostile fashion with his Moors to the said monastery; that they entered it, and seized whatever they found in it, all the Monks, as many as there were, being slain; but that all these were buried in the cloister of the said monastery; that for their sake a miracle is wrought by God every year; for when the day on which they were beheaded returns, the pavement of the cloister in which they are laid appears sprinkled with a bloody color.

[13] which is set forth sincerely enough For indeed it is plain from these and other things, more of which can be read in Ciaconius, chapter 14, and elsewhere, that by divine providence it came about that those most ancient Histories perished only then, when their chief substance, long since received into so many other monuments as into a most safe asylum, could rather extort historical credit than demand it. Whence Baronius did not hesitate, even before the Pontifical oracle, to insert it into his Annals at the year of Christ 834, number 12 and the following; which before and after him most of the more recent Spanish historians, cited in Ciaconius in the same chapter 14 and in Berganza, part 1, book 2, chapter 7 toward the end, have often done. I said that their chief substance was thus preserved; because among those moderns certain ones, when they describe this martyrdom, not content with these things, judged that some circumstances besides were to be taken in, more specious than necessary or confirmed by certain antiquity; nay not even consistent among themselves, as Yepes confesses, century 4, at the year of Christ 834, chapter 2: to all of which accordingly we think that quite simple narration of this contest is to be preferred, which Pope Clement VIII approved and inserted into the Bull, which for that reason we have deferred in its entirety to this place. Behold it therefore, with some observations of ours subjoined:

Pope Clement VIII.

in the Bull of Clement VIII, For a perpetual memory of the matter. Since it has come about by the providence of almighty God that the renowned soldiers of God, whose precious death bought immortality at the price of blood and received a crown from the consummation of virtue in heaven, should be wonderfully honored also in the world; it befits us to strive with the utmost effort that those whom the weak condition of the age has perhaps gradually overspread with darkness may by our authority be recalled to a more celebrated memory. In whose number there come to be reckoned those two hundred Martyrs, athletes of Christ, whose well-conscious mind preserved patience in the monastery of St. Peter of Cardeña, of the Order of St. Benedict, near Burgos, while they were cut down by the tyrants with swords like sheep.

[15] Desiring therefore to adorn and set forth these, and also their life, morals, death, prescribing the Office of these MM. for the diocese of Burgos, monuments, relics, and images with all the honor and reverence which is fitting, so that we may know that those who die in the Lord live even more happily as dead than in the present life; being moved also by the prayers of our most dear son in Christ Philip the third, Catholic king of the Spains, and of our venerable brother the archbishop, and of our beloved sons the chapter of Burgos, and the administrators of the same city, and also of the general Congregation of the said Order, and of the abbot and convent of the aforesaid monastery, presented to us in their name; by the opinion of our venerable brothers the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church set over Sacred rites and ceremonies, we by Apostolic authority by the tenor of these presents judge and declare that the office of the common of many Martyrs for the said two hundred Martyrs buried in the said monastery, with the below-written lessons to be recited in the second nocturn, and revised and approved by the same Cardinals, and also by our beloved son Caesar, priest Cardinal of the title of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus, called Baronius, and to which the same Caesar subscribed with his own hand, and whose tenors we have ordered and commanded to be written below, may freely and lawfully be recited under a double rite in the city and diocese of Burgos: all the Rubrics of the Roman Breviary, however, being observed. Notwithstanding any Apostolic constitutions and ordinances whatsoever, and all other things whatsoever to the contrary.

[16] But the tenors of the said lessons are of this kind. Namely of the fourth. with three Lessons At the time when the savage tyranny of the Arabs was afflicting the Christians in Spain, and Zafa their impious king was devastating the province of Castile, but was chiefly harassing violently the servants of God, the defenders of the Christian faith, Religious men, whom he knew to be the keenest assailants of their execrable sect; among the other venerable monks who, serving God in various places of the Spains with a more devoted worship, were oppressed by their persecutions, those were more fortunate who, at Burgos in the monastery of St. Peter, named of Cardeña, flourishing with an outstanding sanctity of life, were found worthy that all together, two hundred in number, should be advanced by the Lord Jesus Christ to the crown of martyrdom.

[17] But of the fifth. For these, under Stephen their abbot, a most holy man, continually exercised in the spiritual wrestling-ground, and taught to conquer the flesh, proper to despise the world, and to war down the powers of the air, hearing that those same Arabs, ministers of Satan, were at hand, thirsting for their blood, would receive no ransom, that they might find a better resurrection: but with one accord, mighty in the armor of God, fervent in spirit, they stood constant to undergo whatever evils; and rightly understanding that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory which shall be revealed in us, they strengthened one another with mutual exhortations to undergo martyrdom, and with assiduous

prayers fortified themselves.

[18] in the second Nocturn. Of the sixth, finally. Thus therefore, confirmed by divine grace, standing firm in mind in the cloister of the monastery, they received with the utmost patience the executioners rushing in: by whom, each one being cruelly slain, they received the longed-for crown of martyrdom on the eighth of the Ides of August, on the fourth weekday, in the year of salvation eight hundred and twenty-four. The holy Martyrs were buried in the same place by the faithful of Christ, who came together thither after the deadly cohort of the Arabs withdrew from there. But God, who not only crowns His soldiers in heaven, but also makes them glorious on earth, illustrated that place with a celebrated miracle to the glory of those same Martyrs, when for several following years, on the anniversary day of their slaughter, He showed it reddening, as though sprinkled with fresh gore. But the Apostolic See also by its authority restores to life their memory, now almost extinguished by the injury of the times, and presents it to all the faithful to be celebrated.

Given at Rome at St. Peter's, under the ring of the Fisherman, on the XI day of January 1603, in the eleventh year of our Pontificate.

M. Vestrius Barbianus.

[19] A more accurate epoch of this martyrdom. We have given this Bull from an old copy, printed, as it seems, at Rome, and long preserved here among our papers. The same Yepes published a hundred years ago in the Benedictine Chronicle, century 4, partly in the Appendix, folio 433 verso, partly at the year of Christ 834, chapter 2, folio 41 verso; but he so distributes the Lessons that he does not seem to have had an authentic copy before his eyes; as Berganza without doubt had, when he translated it into Spanish, part 1, book 2, chapter 13: yet the latter followed him in this, that in the sixth Lesson, in place of "the year of salvation eight hundred and twenty-four," which is also expressly stated in the Lessons formerly printed for the use of the church of Burgos, he substituted "the year of salvation eight hundred and thirty-four." And certainly in the former number there is a most certain error, and one so palpable that it seems to be attributable to the printer alone, not to Cardinal Baronius, who knew excellently both that this martyrdom happened in the Era 872, and that the Spanish era is prior to the common Christian one by only thirty-eight years; as is clear from volume nine of the Annals (published before he composed these Lessons) at the year of Christ 834, number 12. And so the year 824 certainly had to be emended. But was that rightly done by the year 834? Baronius doubts it in the same place; and not without reason: for the same old monuments which testify that this matter happened in the Era 872 express the day on which it happened much more evidently in these terms: On the fourth weekday, the eighth of the Ides of August, on the day of the holy MM. Justus and Pastor. The most skillful founder of the Annals saw that these things could not agree with the year of Christ 834, in which the sixth day of August fell on the weekday not the fourth, but the fifth; and therefore judged either that they were altogether to be cast aside (yet he himself did not dare to cast them aside), or that they must necessarily be referred to the year of Christ 872 with Ciaconius, to whom he refers his readers. But Ciaconius shows in chapter 17 by not a few examples that the word "era" was formerly frequently used among the Spaniards themselves not to signify the Caesarian or common Spanish era, but the Christian: whence he gathers that in this place also that word is so to be understood; and therefore that the Martyrs suffered in the year of Christ 872, in which the sixth day of August, the same being formerly the feast of the holy MM. Justus and Pastor, really fell on the fourth weekday. This opinion displeased some, and especially Yepes; but Berganza lately so vindicated it, part 1, book 2, chapter 8, that it seems altogether that one must stand by it.

[20] The same author in the preceding chapter observes that the leader and abbot of this glorious troop is called by some of the more recent writers Sanctius, the name of the abbot; the number of the Martyrs; the tyrant. because they had found him so named in old Breviaries and Martyrologies: At Cardeña, however, he says, the name of Stephen was constantly given him; which the ancient Breviary of the same monastery itself attributes to him. But it is believed that the name Sanctius is a patronymic. Concerning the number of the Martyrs there is no controversy; except that it seemed to Morales too great to be believed to have comprised only the Religious of that monastery: wherefore he determined that those two hundred Monks were partly of Cardeña, partly others who had then flowed together thither from the neighboring monasteries either for refuge or for the taking of counsel. But against this conjecture of his and of his followers there stands the inscription given above at number 4; likewise the old testimonies recited at number 12; then it is established from Berganza, part 1, book 3, chapter 10, page 221, that the members of the monastery of Cardeña, restored after this slaughter, were exactly two hundred; why then should it not be believed that it maintained as many before its ruin? The name of the tyrant is written variously, in one place Zepha, in another Azepha, in another Zapha. That name has hitherto been commonly reckoned a proper one, until it lately began to seem to Berganza to be an appellative and common to the supreme commanders of the Moorish armies on account of their office; whence he thinks that by that word there is designated Almundar, son of Mohammed, tyrant of Cordova; but leaving these and other little certain matters, we hasten to those things which, as they are less doubtful, so will without doubt seem more illustrious for the glory of these Martyrs.

§ III. Certain miracles.

Many old miracles; but few known individually: That prodigies were long ago frequent by the patronage of the same Martyrs, Ciaconius proves from the Chronicle of Alfonso the Wise, chapter 21; the same, Berganza says, part 1, book 2, chapter 10, is manifestly gathered from the multitude of donations and privileges formerly conferred upon this sanctuary by kings, princes, nobles, and private persons: both confess, however, that a distinct knowledge of very few of them has come down to them. Most celebrated among all is that annual one, of which there was treatment before at numbers 3 and 18, and which Berganza supposes at last ceased with the overthrow of the Saracen tyranny among the Spaniards about the year of Christ 1492, in the same place, chapter 9, number 104. To this another is subjoined by various authors, such as Ciaconius, chapter 14, Sandoval in the Monastery of Cardeña, §3, Yepes, century 4, folio 41, and others, concerning some abbot, I know not which, of the same monastery, who had died, and who on account of his exceptional virtues and his singular affection of piety toward these Martyrs while he lived was held by all worthy to be laid in the place nearest the Martyrs. But it seemed otherwise to God: for his body, buried there the day before, the earth cast out on the following day; and that once and again, until, being carried thence into the tomb appointed for the abbots, it rested. A third, not much unlike the former, Berganza alone, so far as I know, records, part 1, page 143, to this effect: a certain abbot of Silos had by chance died in the monastery of Cardeña; and it seemed good to give him a place of burial at the extremity of that side of the cloister in which the pledges of the Martyrs rested. But behold, the ground there had scarcely begun to be dug up when it began to pour forth so much water that it both seemed likely shortly to flood the cloister, and deterred the monks from their purpose; as men who understood well enough from this prodigy that God had this care, that the ground consecrated by the relics of so many Martyrs should never admit the fellowship of any other corpse whatsoever. These things before the Bull of Pope Clement VIII.

[22] [more recent ones are the healing of a dying woman or the raising of a dead one in the year 1604,] But the things which happened after it, in the seventeenth century, have been accurately reported in a special book by order of the most reverend General; whence Berganza transferred them into his History, part 1, book 2, chapters 9 and 10; of which behold for yourself a Latin epitome, both faithful and reduced to the order of the time in which each happened. In the year of Christ 1604, when Father Friar Antonio Ordóñez was journeying through the town of San Esteban de Gormaz (in Old Castile beside the river Douro), and was narrating in his lodging many things concerning the recent solemnity of the Martyrs of Cardeña, he so affected his hostess Catalina González toward them, that he was in a manner compelled to leave with her before his departure a particle plucked from their relics which he carried with him. Few days had passed after these things, when Catalina's neighbor, María Pastor, was seized with a grave disease and so violent a paroxysm that for several hours she was believed dead, and her husband was already ordering her body to be made ready for the funeral. When Catalina hears this, grieving especially at this, that the poor woman had not been furnished for eternity with the last helps of the Church, she flies at once with her relics; and placing them on María's head, begs her husband to allow them to be laid there for a while: for that the Martyrs of Cardeña gave her every hope that shortly either María would return to her former health, or at least would duly be fortified with the last Sacraments of the Church. Wonderful thing! After a little while, she who was already either dead or thought so, comes to herself; speaks; narrates that just now in a dream there had seemed to her to descend from heaven a little box of relics and to be placed on her head. At this those standing by declare what Catalina had done; namely that it had been her box, furnished with relics of Cardeña: but then María earnestly commends herself to these Martyrs, and shortly rises up wholly sound and well. Further, a juridical and public testimony of this matter was drawn up before Andrés López de Calle, an authentic copy of which is kept in our archive, says Berganza.

[23] likewise another of two spouses, 1609, In the year 1609, on the XXV day of January, there came to Cardeña in fulfilment of a vow a noble knight, Antonio de Melgosa, having brought with him Francisco López, public notary of Burgos, by whose lawful instrument he testified these two things: first, that his wife, Isabel de Medina y Guzmán, given up by the physicians, and without any pulse of the arteries that could indeed be observed, was lying down, when he himself applied to her the relics of our Martyrs which he had: but that on the following day in the morning she had so far recovered that the physicians, summoned and testing her pulse, declared that this must be ascribed to a heavenly prodigy; for it did not seem to them that it could have come about in any natural way that she should still be alive. Secondly, that he himself also afterward fell into a disease so grave that, being despaired of by the physicians within the third day, he received the Sacraments of the dying according to the prescription of the Church: and that then at last there came into his mind the remedy which he himself had lately applied so happily to his wife; that he therefore asked for the same relics, and took them into his hands, and thus at once implored the help of those Martyrs, at once felt it little by little, and at length, being wholly restored, bound himself by a vow, which he was now discharging, of coming as a suppliant to the sanctuary of Cardeña to pay the thanks due to Martyrs so saving to him.

[24] In the year 1612, on the XXIV day of April, there appeared in the same place in fulfilment of a vow Martín de Olivares together with his wife Juana Cortés, several others, in the year 1612. and one of their daughters. An incurable malady had attacked them both: wherefore, after the industry of physicians and surgeons had been exhausted without any benefit, each made a vow of visiting the sanctuary of Cardeña, and of remaining there for nine continuous days for the sake of supplication. They had scarcely uttered the vow when both both grew well, and fulfilled what they had promised.

From this prodigy another was born: for the report of it, wandering about Burgos, kindled the confidence of Juan Bravo, procurator of the same city, and of his wife Mariana de Asperilla, who had begotten a girl lame from the womb. Her therefore they offered to Jerónimo Bravo to be carried to the Martyrs of Cardeña: he undertook it; carried her thither; took care that a Mass be celebrated there; the lame girl was present; and when it was finished, she began so to walk as if she had never limped, being most completely healed on the VI day of May of the same year 1612. In the same year, on the XII day of June, Lucas de Zaldivia, a silversmith of Burgos, had visited the Martyrs on horseback, together with his wife Mariana de Albear. While they return thence homeward by a steep road, the horse so reared itself that it both threw the rider off on his back, and moreover, rolling over, crushed him. The stricken wife cries out to the Martyrs; the people run up, and take him, groaning, out from the heavy weight: but Lucas, marveling that he was injured in no part, ran back to the Martyrs with the most ardent piety; judging that this mishap had befallen him only because he had come to them before not disposed with the mind which was fitting.

[25] Two dying men, or dead, suddenly made whole in the year 1613: Lorenzo Gallo, an inhabitant of the place which people commonly call Cardeña Ximeno, disease had brought to such a state that he now gave no further signs of life; when his wife and neighbors commended him to our Martyrs, at the same time sending someone to Cardeña to have the Host offered at their sacrosanct altar. When he, returning, comes to Gallo's little bed, the man suddenly exclaims in the formula most familiar to the Spaniards: God help me!* Whence do I come? And straightway, with joined hands invoking the holy Martyrs, he immediately rose up wholly sound and vigorous. The same also happened to his son. Whence, presently coming to Cardeña on the XXIV day of December in the year 1613, he brought with him two linen cloths, namely those just prepared for wrapping the corpses of both, and deposited them in the oratory of the Martyrs for an eternal memory of the matter. There are subjoined here three miracles without a year appended, I believe because they happened about the same time. And they are these:

[26] Pedro Ruiz de Santillana had received from his brother, a monk of Cardeña, a particle of the relics of these Martyrs; fires extinguished: this he placed in a small case, but the case itself in a larger chest, beside which he also set a light, being about to go out into the field with his whole household: then, returning home from there, he found that the chest had been seized and consumed by the little flame set beside it, with everything that was in it, except only the case which I mentioned, whose outermost surface alone being scorched ever so slightly, the fire had of its own accord gone out. At which he, greatly astonished, reverently took up the case, and hastening to the monastery of Cardeña, showed it whole, as it was, to his brother and to the monks for their contemplation. But more illustrious than this miracle, as being public, were two others, one of which happened at Santander in Cantabria, the other at Miranda de Ebro in Old Castile. Namely on the same seventh day of August in both places, on which the two hundred Martyrs are celebrated throughout the diocese of Burgos, a huge fire broke out; in both places the citizens, dismayed at the sight of it, and especially the neighbors, imploring the aid of the Martyrs, made a common vow that they would thenceforth always observe that day as a feast and solemnity; in both places they marveled at the flame immediately subsiding and dying out, as though of its own accord.

[27] [a boy unhurt beneath a wheel in the year 1616: the relics of the MM. stained with blood in the year 1617:] In the year 1616 don Luis de Salamanca with his lady wife and an eight-year-old son sought Cardeña by carriage, to venerate the Martyrs. When they were now very near thereto, the son, impatient of delay (as boys are), and eager to get down, while he does this too incautiously, so slipped beneath the carriage, which had not yet stopped, that the rear wheel caught one of his shins; yet with no other harm than that the mark of the rim rolled over it appeared on the shin; which the parents ascribed as a notable benefit received from the Martyrs, whom they venerated intensely. In the following year, when in the sanctuary of the Martyrs there were dug up as many bones, destined for Seville, as would suffice for a whole skeleton, certain ones among them were found sprinkled even then with bloody marks (which Berganza hands down was observed also on other occasions, part 1, book 2, chapter 15); also certain fragments both of a tunic and of a scapular, of black and coarse cloth, but so firm and tenacious of color that boiling water, when they were washed out, neither dissolved the texture nor took away any of the brightness of the original dye, and that after seven hundred and forty-five whole years in which they had lain buried and overwhelmed in so damp a ground, or rather mud: for the monks of Cardeña hold it for certain, from that twofold event which we reported above at number 21, that no one else was ever buried there after the Martyrs.

[28] a cloth made purple by them about the year 1635: The most illustrious lord Friar Plácido Pacheco, once General of the Benedictine Congregation in Spain, then bishop of Cádiz, but when this matter happened promoted to the church of Plasencia in Extremadura in the year of Christ 1632, in which he also ceased to live on the V day of October in the year 1639 — he, I say, had received at Cardeña notable relics of these Martyrs, to be consigned to the marquis del Carpio at Cordova; but he had wrapped them at Burgos in a white cloth, lent him for this purpose by the lady Felipa de Haro. When therefore he unwraps it at Cordova in the presence of the marquis himself and his household, it, now wholly made purple with blood, astounded all. And so the marquis asks that this too be granted him together with the relics; but the prelate refuses; for that it was not right that it should pass to any other than to her who had lent it to be returned. Thus it came back to Burgos to Felipa; by whose testament it was afterward bequeathed to the sanctuary of Cardeña; where, placed on a border, it is seen even today.

[29] In the year of Christ 1640, on the IV day of February, there came to Cardeña Lucas Calderón from the neighborhood of Castrojeriz near Burgos, having ordered a sacrifice of the Mass there, to show a grateful mind toward the Martyrs; wonderful healings in the years 1640 and following. inasmuch as by their help, implored for six days, without any other human remedy, he had been freed from an abscess which before had eluded all the art of several physicians and surgeons.

There happened to be in the same monastery Don Pedro de Ocio Gutiérrez, a captain of Spanish infantry, and also a familiar, as they there say, of the Holy Office (which post noble men in Spain seek after), when some relics of the Martyrs were being dug up, to be transferred elsewhere; on which occasion he too obtained a particle with a little of the earth which had clung to the bones then unearthed. Glad with so precious a gift he returns home (he dwelt at Santo Domingo de la Calzada, in Old Castile); where he learns that Don Miguel, Duke of Estrada and his kinsman, his arm being gravely wounded, to which a most burning fever had been added, was, in the judgment of the physicians, in a very present peril of his life. He visits him therefore; tells of the Martyrs, and of the relics just now brought with him; urges him to drink water consecrated by their being duly dipped in it; they are dipped by Don José, the Duke's own brother and canon of the church of La Calzada; the sick man drinks it with confidence; and made so much progress on that very day that the physicians, returning in the evening, were astounded; but within the fifth day he recovered most completely; testifying, with his own name and his brother's subscribed, that this must be attributed to a miracle, so far indeed as both could comprehend.

The same Don Pedro de Ocio Gutiérrez wrote to the monastery of Cardeña on the XXIII day of December in the year 1656 that, at his urging, a spell had thus wholly departed from a noble matron; that thus a Religious man at La Calzada in the convent of St. Francis had been freed from a violent fever; and that thus finally a two-year-old boy had been freed from plainly deadly smallpox.

[30] In the year 1674, in the month of December, that side of the new cloister the place next to the sanctuary flowing as it were with blood, 1674: which is contiguous to the side in which the Martyrs rest, for many days flowed with a certain sweat as of blood, a numerous people running together to the spectacle from the neighboring places round about, and, besides other leading men, the most illustrious Don Enrique de Peralta y Cárdenas, archbishop of Burgos, himself; who, moved both by the novelty of the matter and by a singular affection of mind, when he had returned thence, sent thither his provisor, accompanied by not a few theologians and physicians. All the theologians, except two, having long and attentively contemplated the place and the liquid, judged that the latter was not natural. It seemed good to the physicians, for the sake of a test, to collect some of the same flowing moisture and to put it into boiling water. While this is done, that liquid, being thrown in, immediately coagulated; seeing which, even those two theologians whom I mentioned acknowledged a miracle with the rest. A part of the coagulated liquid was granted to the archbishop: with the other, with which the walls were wet, very many were staining linen cloths and papers; until that part of the cloister was so blocked off with boards that anyone could look in, yet not enter; until after many days, when it returned of its own accord to its former state and dryness.

[31] In the year 1675, on the V day of July, there came to visit the same sanctuary Don José de Tosantos Ramírez, beneficed clerk of Bastida, Don Pedro de Salvatierra, with Don Víctor de Tosantos Corcuera, attesting in writing that Don Víctor, burning with a pestilent fever and livid spots (the Spaniards call it Tabardilla), the remaining miraculous healings: and now destitute of human remedies, at the urging of Pedro and José, drank a little water with the dust of the sepulcher of the Martyrs of Cardeña sprinkled in it, and thus straightway began to recover.

There are added here two miracles without a mark of time, wrought in the convent of Benedictine nuns which they call that of St. Salvador de Palacios: where the abbess Leonor de Lerma, brought by a grave disease to extremity, had now for the third day wrestled with death, when at last the relics of our Martyrs, kept there in the lower choir, were brought to her: she therefore commends herself to the holy Brothers (as these Martyrs are there called); and immediately is somewhat better; thence soon she obtains entire health. In the same place, when another Religious woman was taking food, a fish-bone lying crosswise so blocked her throat that she seemed on the very point of being suffocated; but the same relics being presently applied, at the same moment she cast up the bone. But if I should pursue the other prodigies of this kind which I have found recorded in the archive, says Berganza here, in recounting like matters both many pages would have to be filled by me, and weariness created for the pious reader — chiefly the healings of fevers, both tertian and pestilent.

[32] Bones marked with blood in this century, And we therefore shall here make an end, when we have reported, as the most recent of all, what Berganza himself narrates of himself at the beginning of chapter ten. He says, then, that for the sake of inspecting the old inscriptions and panels he entered the Sanctuary of Cardeña together with the most reverend Father Master Friar Juan Bautista Lardito, then already deceased, who had held the dignity of General minister of the Benedictines in Spain from the year 1705 until 1709: and that both first began to marvel at the dampness of the place, as one which compelled him to run back for the shoes which they had taken off at the entrance; although they nevertheless knew that from the same ground there were dug up bones of the Martyrs so bright and entire as if by whatever human industry they had been

preserved from rot: and then that that most reverend Father perceived there such tender motions of mind toward the Martyrs, that he demanded that a notable part of the relics be dug up for him, to be exposed in his convent of St. Martin at Madrid; but that he would meanwhile see to the Apostolic Brief necessary for that. Berganza, returning in the following year, entered the same place, to be present at the digging up of the said relics; and saw that in the ground, hollowed out by the diggers only to half an ell, there was nothing but mud: but when this too had been carried out to half a man's height, he saw uncovered one bone of an arm, then another of a thigh, and at last one skull, broken by an incautious digger. But when these relics were being taken out of the mud, We saw, he says, as many monks as were present, that they bore in various places marks as of blood, one of which, which appeared on the skull, was spread out to the measure of a human palm. This I set down, as a witness and beholder.

* Valga me Dios!