ON ST. ALBERT, BISHOP OF FERRARA
IN ITALY,
In the year 1274.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Albert, Bishop of Ferrara (B.)
BY THE AUTHOR P. B.
§ I. The cult and relics of the Blessed one.
The things which were said in this Work at the VII day of May, on the occasion of St. Maurelius, bishop, martyr, and patron of the men of Ferrara, concerning the finding of B. Albert, bishop first of Piacenza and then of Ferrara, His public cult, seem more than sufficient to confirm the lawful antiquity of his cult. For it is established thence that his body was found together with the body of St. Maurelius in the same year 1419, on the same day and month, the VII of May, in the same church of St. George near Ferrara, in the same crypt or underground chapel beneath the high altar, in the same tomb; but in a separate case, yet like that of Maurelius, that is, of lead, one ell long, and inscribed with these words: Here is the body, or the bones, of blessed Albert, bishop of Ferrara and confessor. It is established that those who assisted at that same finding — Peter Boiardi, bishop of Ferrara, Nicholas the marquess of Este, with a most ample retinue both of clergy and of nobles — at once, falling upon their knees, honored the relics; then, the due ceremonies being performed, raised each chest singly, that is, one after the other, from the crypt to the high altar; and that at the twin translation this same eulogy was repeated with the loud voice of those chanting: Behold a great priest, who in his days pleased God and was found just: then straightway, at both chests laid up on the altar, the sacred office of the Mass was most solemnly celebrated by the most reverend lord bishop. Who here would not recognize the public cult of B. Albert, not then only present, but also long past?
[2] For what do the leaden little chest of one ell — which most certainly could not have been capable of holding the body at first when he died, but could hold it dissolved, dug up, and washed — whose beginnings seem to be referred what does the inscription of Blessed Albert signify, unless the long-past raising of his body or bones? What likewise could the finding of that same little chest, placed beside the like little chest of St. Maurelius within the same tomb in the chapel — then indeed neglected and deserted, but formerly public and frequented by the supplications of those resorting thither — indicate more evidently, than that there had at one time been there a public veneration of B. Albert no less than of St. Maurelius? For indeed, if those who illustrated this finding with so great an apparatus and pomp could have doubted of this matter, they would never in it either themselves have exhibited an equal cult to the relics of each Saint, both joined and separate, or have permitted it to be openly exhibited by any other whomsoever. There had gone before therefore, long since, a manifest religious devotion toward this blessed Prelate, before the age assigned to the finding of his relics: although otherwise this very age would alone abundantly suffice for the proof of an immemorial cult.
[3] Long, I say, had that gone before this: which we gather even from this, toward the beginning of the 14th century, that the Olivetan monks, on the witness of Bonavert in the Italian Life of St. Maurelius, page 52, do not know the time at which the said bodies, received into those two shrines, were laid in that underground oratory within the common sepulchre: for although the praised author there alleges no other cause of this ignorance than that that church was rather often restored and possessed by different rectors, before it came to the monks of Monte Oliveto through Pope John XXIII, in the fifth year of his Pontificate, of Christ 1414; yet anyone easily understands that the chief cause of it was the antiquity of the event, which indeed left to the fifteenth century not only no surviving witness of it, but not even a memory. And so Papebroch in his account of Maurelius, number 29, not rashly suspected that this deed happened perhaps in the same thirteenth century in which B. Albert died. There favors it indeed that general opinion of all concerning his sanctity when he departed from life, confirmed, as will be narrated below, by a double miracle at his very obsequies.
[4] But that former cult was wonderfully illustrated by that solemnity the finding of his body in the year 1419 increased it, by which we have said that in the year 1419 his body was found and translated together with the body of St. Maurelius: for how much this was at heart to God, very many prodigies at once declared, concerning which Papebroch thus speaks in the place cited, number 13 and the following: The report of the aforesaid finding, spread abroad in every direction, in a short time stirred up so great a multitude of men desiring to adore, to see, to touch, that the monks, considering the danger, lest, being by no means equal to sustaining the multitude, they should not be able sufficiently to ward off from the sacred treasure hands piously rapacious, shut it up in a certain archive within the sacristy, until a new sepulchre should be built. But the report growing among the common people that the Fathers were contriving to carry the holy bodies elsewhere, it lacked little but that, making an assault, they would have broken open the door of the sacristy. Wherefore care was quickly taken that a wooden altar should be built, after the manner of a great chest, which, to be opened from above, should be placed in the middle of the church in the chapel which was then reckoned under the name of the holy Virgin; and there they shut up the aforesaid chests, having first shown them openly to all the people, all vying in bowing the head, raising their hands and arms to heaven, striking their breast, crying with a loud voice: "Succor us, have mercy on us." From that time so many miracles were done that I am not sufficient to set them forth; yet I cannot be silent about a thing altogether new and admirable. In the same place from which the sacred relics had first been drawn, there began to well up a spring of water most beautiful and most savory, and moreover most healthful to those who go down thither for the cure of various infirmities, either to take it drawn as a drink, or, receiving it for a bath or sprinkling, to pour it upon their bodies; of whose vast number I shall recount a few, described by name.
[5] adorned with very many miracles. Then he subjoins eight miracles, recounted one by one in Italian by Bonavert in the Life of St. Maurelius, page 58 and following, which may be read with us in the same place contracted into Latin; provided only that the reader, being warned here, observe this one thing, that our translator, while he studied brevity, cut away here and there those circumstances added to them by which the Italian writer had most expressly signified that all these prodigious benefits were obtained not through the suppliant invocations of St. Maurelius alone, but of Maurelius and Albert together, and accordingly were of old referred, and now also ought to be referred, no less to this man's patronage and glory than to that of the other. For the rest, the things which have hitherto been produced so far persuaded our Elders of the lawful cult of B. Albert, that already then in the same place, number 19, they decreed a fuller mention of him in this Work at this day; which Castellanus seems to have noticed, when he, perhaps alone hitherto, made a place for him on the same day in the universal Martyrology which he published at Paris in the year 1709; for thus he announces: In Æmilia, of St. Albert, bishop of Ferrara.
[6] Although that cult afterwards gradually languished. Further, although within the same church afterwards the sacred bodies of each were laid, each in its own chapel, not a little more honorably — namely that of St. Maurelius at the right of the high altar in a silver casket enclosed in a bronze monument; but that of B. Albert on the left side of the same altar in a tomb which, elegantly sculptured of white marble, with gold gleaming here and there, shone, as has been said elsewhere — yet we cannot deny that that veneration of him, at one time so fervent among the men of Ferrara, gradually grew cool: for this is clear not only from Philip Ferrari, whose laborious sagacity in searching out Saints and Blessed, especially of Italy, the memory of this Albert, already then too much obscured, altogether escaped; but most of all from the letters of our Father Heraclius Cristanelli given hither from Ferrara on the XXIV of April in the year 1676, in which, making mention of the aforesaid tomb of the Blessed prelate, he says: If your Reverence asks of me in what veneration his sepulchre is now held, I answer: In almost none; nor is any memory made of him through the whole year: by which words he affirms not indeed that all veneration has ceased, but nevertheless almost all; just as neither does Bernardinus Faynus take away all in the Heaven of the Church of Brescia printed at Brescia in the year 1658, when at page 341 he reckons this Albert among the men of Brescia who are neither Saints nor canonically Blessed, whose memory is only held in benediction: for in his eulogy at page 93 he acknowledges a sufficiently recent distribution of his relics: Of whom, he says, the Fathers of the Oratory at Brescia, followers of St. Philip Neri, enjoy no mean relic, granted to them by the favor of Valerian Scalea, abbot General of the Olivetan Religion.
§ II. Certain deeds of the same, and his happy death.
B. Albert in the year 1244 Bonavert in his St. Maurelius, page 51, judges that no Life of B. Albert was written: for he did not reckon as a Life, with Guarini in the historical Compendium of the churches of Ferrara, page 393, that slight Italian eulogy with two miracles, which is preserved in manuscript in the archive of the Olivetans, among whom the Blessed one rests, and whence we received a most faithful transcript, subscribed in the year 1675 on the XXVII day of April by Father Andrew Lazari of the Society of Jesus, and sent hither in the following year by Father John Heraclius
Cristanelli, and to be inserted in its own place presently after some other things which the most diligent investigator of his affairs, Peter Maria Campi, Canon of Piacenza, reports and proves concerning him in his most ample ecclesiastical History of Piacenza, collected and arranged with the utmost labor, part 2, from page 181; and which we shall skim from him, here translated into Latin. He begins from this eulogy of him:
[8] B. Albert was by fatherland of Brescia, by family a Prandoni, is made bishop of Piacenza, and is praised by Pope Innocent IV: in degree master and doctor (whether of Theology or of laws is unknown), by profession and state a cleric and secular priest, formerly of the household of the Cardinal of Præneste (James Pecorari, who died in the year 1244), but now (in the same year 1244) subdeacon Apostolic and chaplain of the Pontiff, and the fifty-fourth in the series of the bishops of Piacenza. Nearly in agreement is the letter of Pope Innocent IV concerning the promotion of Albert to the see of Piacenza, directed to the Provost and Chapter of that same church, which there has it thus: We, attending more diligently to what it concerned our solicitude, that in that church we should place such a man as should be pleasing to God and acceptable to men, diligent deliberation having first been had, have set over that church, by the counsel of our Brethren, as bishop and pastor our beloved son, Master Albert, our subdeacon and chaplain, a man indeed after our own heart on account of the prerogative of his manners and of his knowledge, concerning which we bear him laudable testimony, as to one who has long conversed with us laudably, etc. Given at the Lateran on the second of the Ides of March, in the first year of our Pontificate; that is, of Christ 1244, in whose month of October it is shown in the same place, page 182, that Albert was already in possession of the see of Piacenza.
[9] In the following year Campi says at page 183 that it is likely he is said to have written against the emperor Frederick II: that he was present with a hundred and forty other bishops at the first council of Lyons against the emperor Frederick II; both because the acts done then at Piacenza are ascribed to the Blessed one's Vicar, nor is anything found done by himself in the year 1245 or the following; and because thereafter he was long and bitterly harassed by Frederick and those adhering to him: although he could have drawn this also upon himself by writings, in which he is said by Ughelli, Faynus, and others to have assailed that emperor most hostile to the Roman See. In the same place at page 186 it is read that he examined, approved, and ordered to be recorded in a public writing certain miracles of St. Raymund Palmarius; concerning which matter his Acts may be seen, or rather their first Appendix, at the XXVIII day of July, page 661, number 19.
[10] In the year 1248 he is known to have urged upon the Roman Pontiff, and to have obtained, that he should either erect or restore a general school at Piacenza, he erects studies of letters at Piacenza; founds a prebend: and endow it with the laws which other universities then enjoyed. The letters of Pope Innocent IV himself our author exhibits in the same place, page 399; where also may be seen the instrument dictated by the Blessed one in the year 1249, by which at Piacenza in the collegiate church of St. Antoninus he founded a priestly prebend to the honor of God and of the glorious Virgin Mary, and of Sts. Antoninus and Victor, with these conditions among others, that he who enjoys it should make due and continual residence in the said church, and, as the Lord shall grant him the power, should celebrate the divine Office in that church, and on each Saturday to the honor of holy Mary, and on Monday for the remedy of my soul, he says, and of my predecessors and successors and of all the faithful departed, should celebrate Masses; which Masses if he omit through any hindrance, let him say them afterwards when he shall be able to celebrate, etc.
[11] he carefully cares for monasteries, In most difficult times he extended his cares also to guarding the stability of the Religious families, lest any harm should befall them either in domestic matters or, what is worse, in the fervor of their primitive spirit. Hence in the year 1250 he skilfully freed Arduin, abbot of St. Sabinus, from the straits of the debt by which his monastery was pressed — in the same place, page 204. Hence in the year 1252, before the prefect of the militia of Piacenza, he took into his own protection and trust, by a public instrument recited in the same place at page 401, the convent of St. Syrus together with the men subject to it and all its goods, and rendered it secure against the robberies then everywhere troublesome there. Hence finally in the year 1256, when he himself, an exile and a fugitive to the Roman curia, had learned that among the nuns of the monastery of Piacenza which they called Jerusalem discipline was going to ruin, he ordered this by his vicar to be united with the most flourishing monastery of St. Syrus, all the nuns and lay sisters being translated hither from thence; that there they might learn hereafter to live rightly by others' laws and examples, who at home could no longer be amended by their own. The authentic mandate Campi represents in the same place, page 402.
[12] and the Catholic faith; therefore hateful to the heretics: But with how great a zeal he burned for promoting the Catholic religion may be conjectured from this, that he is known to have taken as a companion of his journeys, on Campi's witness at the year of Christ 1250, that most ardent defender and vindicator of the Roman faith — then indeed by preaching, authority, miracles, but a little after also by his blood and most glorious death — St. Peter the martyr, of the Order of Preachers, whose Acts may be seen with us at the XXIX day of April, page 696, number 33, where also a prodigy of his is narrated, wrought in the presence of this our prelate Albert. This familiarity indeed between the two, if it did not find both animated by the same ardor, must be believed to have animated them: since, as heretical marauders took away St. Peter from among the living in the year 1252, so in the same year that same favorer of heretics and enemy of the Pontiff, Ubert Pallavicini, first by hatred, and soon after, being chosen lord of Piacenza, began to persecute Albert with most obstinate injuries and tyrannical plunderings, to such a degree that at the beginning of the year 1254 that most mild Man, his church being commended to a vicar, thought he must flee secretly to Rome to the asylum of Pope Innocent IV. But indeed, whose hatred and snares he thus withdrew his throat from, so did he kindle that man's most rapacious avarice against the estates of his church, that, since he could not be restrained even by the solemn anathema of Pope Alexander IV in the year 1257 against him and the men of Piacenza adhering to him (which Campi recites at page 403), Piacenza had at length to be deprived even of its bishopric together with the Bishop of whom it was not worthy, and who was thence translated to Ferrara. See the same author, page 214, where he not undeservedly commends with a eulogy the so long-lasting patience of this Prelate amid so many adversities.
[13] Further, what he did when set over the church of Ferrara being translated to the see of Ferrara, he died on the 14th of August 1274, must chiefly be understood from the manuscript of which we made mention above at number 7, and which we have thus translated from Italian into Latin: Toward the venerable prelate of the city of Ferrara, blessed Albert (as is had, and as I have read with these eyes, in the register * of the prelates of the episcopal record office of Ferrara), when, presiding over this church, he shone with holiness of life, there flourished the greatest devotion and reverence of the people, on account of that very sanctity which all observed in his prayers, fastings, alms, and exhortations. And he presided there (so far indeed as could be ascertained) about fifteen years. And when he was already near the end of his life, out of an affection of compassion he himself distributed many alms, and ordered many for various Religious and other poor. And so in the year one thousand two hundred and seventy-four, on the fourteenth day of August, he passed from this life to the blessed and immortal one, after he had a little before made a testament and one codicil, and had ordered his body to be carried out to the church of St. George, to be given burial there. A numerous people, stirred by the opinion of his sanctity, ran together to the obsequies: and as many as were present at them beheld on that same day two miracles in two persons, who by the touch of the body of B. Albert were freed from the diseases under which both were laboring. The truth of this matter was proved by the testimonies of many, as appears even now from ancient instruments drawn up by the notaries of that time. And those miracles are as follows.
[14] The first. That there was seen there a certain man, by name Dominic Calzolaro *, an inhabitant of the borough of St. John outside the walls of Ferrara; who affirmed for certain that for more than four years he had borne his right hand and arm wholly useless, when, approaching with confidence and devotion, and bringing that same arm and hand to the body of B. Albert, he suddenly felt himself free from this infirmity. Many witnesses being examined upon this, all professed that the things which he asserted were true, namely that he had been disabled in that arm for more than four years; for that they had all seen it. The second miracle. A certain woman, Betta by name, said that she had been deprived for more than six months of the use of her right hand, before, being stirred by faith and religion, she came thither, and, touching with that hand the body of B. Albert, she at once recovered, and, with many standing round about, was perfectly freed from that ailment. A memorial of this prodigy still survives in an old writing of the witnesses then present and beholding, who were partly Canons, partly Religious, men worthy of credit and recounted by name by the hand of a contemporary notary in the same ancient codex, which is marked "O. of the monastery." Thus far the Ms. transcript, to which is added in another hand: I, the undersigned, give full and undoubted assurance that whatever is here written concerning B. Albert has been taken from an ancient manuscript which is preserved in the monastery of St. George of the Olivetan Fathers. So I testify on the XXVII day of April 1675.
[15] Nearly in agreement are the things which from the same source Bonavert reports in the Life of St. Maurelius, page 51 and the following, Concerning his testament, and from him Peter Maria Campi in the ecclesiastical History of Piacenza, part 2, pages 214 and 287; nay also at page 455, where he believed that he was representing the authentic Testament of the Blessed one with this beginning: In the year one thousand two hundred and seventy-four, in the second Indiction, on the fourteenth day of August going out, in the presence of witnesses, etc. But he who shall read the whole, I am deceived if he does not judge with me that this is not the Testament, but another legal instrument, later than the testament and the death of the Blessed one, which the executor of the testament ordered to be drawn up for his own security. This is plain first from the time at which Albert died, in the year, as has already been said, one thousand two hundred and seventy-four, on the fourteenth day of August; whereas that instrument was made in the same year indeed, but on another day, namely on the fourteenth day of August going out; that is (as Du Cange rightly proves in the Glossary at the words "the month going out") on the eighteenth day of August, a full four days after his death. The same is plain from this, that that instrument on that same XVIII day of August testifies to payments already then made to the heirs by the testament; which certainly could not be valid except after the death of the testator, and accordingly after the testament itself, which certainly had preceded his death. For the rest, we confess that that instrument is most worthy to be read and most worthy of credit, and contributes very much to those things which concerning the virtues of the Blessed one
have already been said, excellently to confirm them; but because it is rather long, we have preferred to point to it rather than to reprint it.
[16] and concerning the time in which he sat at Ferrara, As regards the time of his bishopric in the church of Piacenza, namely from the year 1244 to 1257, Campi rightly proves it: but it does not seem so certain whether he was translated to the see of Ferrara in that same year 1257, or rather somewhat later; which Ughelli must altogether make out among the bishops of Ferrara, in volume 2 of Italia sacra published a second time, column 544, number 40, if these words of his are faithful enough, as they seem to be: B. Albert de Pandonis (read Prandonis or Prandonius), of Brescia, formerly bishop of Piacenza, was translated to the see of Ferrara in the year 1261 by Urban IV; as is had in the Formulary of Marinus de Ebulo, vice-chancellor of the same Pontiff. In which way indeed he must be said to have sat at Ferrara only thirteen complete years; for which the Ms. recited before could reckon about fifteen years, if there be understood in this place (as they can be understood) fifteen years incomplete at both ends. More concerning this blessed Prelate is not available.
Annotata* that is, a codex
* perhaps "shoemaker" as an appellative.
An Addition to the Commentary on St. Albert of Ferrara.
Writings from Ferrara have come in Thus far had Father Bosch carried the matter, whom afterwards such an infirmity seized that he was compelled altogether to abstain from our studies. Meanwhile there came in from Ferrara some writings pertaining hither, sent by our Father Peter Brescianini, and laboriously collected by the very reverend and most learned Lord Joseph Antenori Scalabrini. He with unwearied labor copied out various instruments filling twelve leaves of paper, but in them he embraces very many things which pertain rather to St. Maurelius, bishop and martyr, to St. George, to St. Romanus, and others, already long since illustrated in our Acts, and to be further illustrated in a supplement at their proper days, so that account of them cannot be taken here, just as neither of the various figures, of which we have here chosen that one alone from which we may be taught in what honor St. Albert the bishop has hitherto been held among his own people, whose deeds, never hitherto published, have here, so far as could be done, been not undiligently collected and illustrated. Here is the delineation itself engraved on copper, with a sufficient explanation of the whole matter.
An engraving of the front part of the marble tomb in which is laid the body of B. Albert Prandoni, Bishop of Ferrara, out of which is formed the Altar of St. Benedict among the Olivetans in the church of St. George outside the walls of Ferrara. It exhibits the gilded images of B. Albert in the middle; of the holy Martyrs George and Maurelius, Bishop of Ferrara, at the sides.
[18] In that whole fuller writing of Antenori many instruments are more amply reported, both those pertaining to the illustrious family of St. Albert, and those pertaining to the School erected by him, to the monasteries founded, or in various ways enlarged, to his testament, to his monuments, of which we have already given the chief above. But by these and by various amplifications and digressions our Antenori Scalabrini has proved this against Ughelli and several others, that St. Albert was raised to the see of Ferrara not later than the year 1257, which he manifestly shows from various inscriptions and epitaphs, where the year is expressly stated while St. Albert was sitting at Ferrara, so that in this, as also in the rest, he wholly agrees with Bosch; and accordingly we have not judged it worth while to write out here word for word all those testimonies, since we judge both this and all the rest sufficiently proved and illustrated.