Roch

ON ST. ROCH, CONFESSOR,

AT MONTPELLIER IN GAUL,

In the fourteenth century.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Roch, confessor, at Montpellier (St.)

BY J. P.

§ I. His birth; his name; a fable fastened upon the Saint; whether he embraced the Third Order of St. Francis.

Montpellier, commonly Montpellier, a most well-known city of Gaul in Lower Languedoc, The Saint's birthplace; obtained for itself a most famous name by the birth and death of St. Roch the confessor, and also by certain marvels which are recorded to have happened there after it, if we believe his Acts. Of that city Hadrian Valesius treats in his Notitia of the Gauls; and among other things concerning it he observes the following: that in that city, 530 years ago, the studies of letters, and especially of medicine, flourished, as letter 307 of Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, shows. For in that letter I read this concerning the archbishop of Lyons: And so by the public highway \, with a mixed throng of pilgrims, as one of them, he came to St. Gilles: and when he fell sick, he passed on as far as Montpellier: and having stayed there some time, he spent upon the physicians both what he had and what he had not.* But more happily, more surely, and more profitably did the heavenly and almighty physician afterwards ennoble that same city, when by His divine goodness He brought forth there into the light this holy Confessor, who was one day to cure by his most powerful patronage with God the most grievous and incurable diseases of afflicted men, and to be everywhere throughout Europe a great deliverer especially from the pestilential plague, and, so to say, a continual miracle in the removing of that evil. And indeed that the holy Man drew his birth in this city is the common consent of authors; with whom we more readily agree in this matter than in the things which are everywhere circulated concerning his nobility, and which we cannot pass over unnoticed, since they need correction, at least as it seems to us. Hear the matter.

[2] The Belfort Acts, which we shall give below, having spoken at number 1 of Montpellier, his nobility, thus proceed concerning the Saint's father: Whose lordship a certain most noble knight, by name John, once held, born of the most illustrious blood of the kings of the Franks. The Breviary of the church and diocese of Schleswig, of which afterwards, in the first lesson on St. Roch, does not attribute to him a royal birth, but a lordship or rule, there thus expressed: He had for his native place Montpellier … a not ignoble town of Narbonese Gaul: over which and over certain others his father ruled, not after the manner of tyrants, but with justice, integrity, prudence, the fear of God, and the good will and favor of all his people. The Life of Diedo agrees, to be produced by us afterwards in the first place, chapter 1, number 4. John Pins, in the Life which will then be more fully indicated by us, writes this to our purpose: In that place (he had just been treating of Montpellier) a certain rich and opulent man, born of an illustrious and famous family, exercised rule at once by land and by sea. Bzovius in the Ecclesiastical Annals at the year 1327, number 26, signifies that he was born of parents who were lords of the city of Montpellier; which Spondanus also does in his Continuation of the Annals of Cardinal Baronius, at the same year 1327, number 10. To these things which we have just related from various authors concerning the Saint's nobility, it has seemed good to subjoin some observations.

[3] as it is asserted by various writers, Let us weigh, then, these three points: first, the royal blood; then the aforesaid lordship; and thirdly, let us say something briefly of his nobility apart from these two titles; that we may thence deduce which of these three titles can more probably be attributed to the Saint. Of the Acts which we have cited, the Belfort alone assert that the Saint was born of royal blood. But since their author is anonymous, of uncertain date and of uncertain authority, let it be permitted us to desire a further proof of this assertion before we subscribe with our vote to this opinion, especially because these Acts and the others are not of so great value as we could wish them to be for so memorable a Saint. Let that matter, then, remain undecided, which we have no means at hand of proving or disproving from elsewhere. So it seems to us that we must say upon the first point. But the second is of no better, nay of worse, mark, according to what we shall bring forward against it; which indeed agrees neither with the series, nor with the names, nor with the time of the lords or dynasts of Montpellier.

[4] not sufficiently For William Catel, in his Monuments of the History of Languedoc, published in French at Toulouse in the year 1633, after he had treated in book 4, page 654, of the lords of that place, then from page 660 weaves their series to our purpose and recounts their names. He marks four Williams; then Mary and Peter, king of Aragon; James his son, whom at page 676 he affirms to have made his testament while he was at Montpellier, on the XXV day of November in the year 1272, by virtue of which he transferred that city with all his lordships and castles to his second-born son James, having died, as the same Catel adds, according to the Spanish historians, in the year 1311. And to this James the second he relates that Sancho, king of Majorca, succeeded; and to him James the third; and that by him the lordship of Montpellier was sold in the year 1349 to Philip of Valois, king of the Gauls, and that that sale was confirmed in the year 1350 by Peter, king of Aragon, who had succeeded to the kingdom of Majorca, the descendants of its heirs failing. Baudrand however in his Geography, at the word Montpellier, reports that this city was sold to Philip of Valois … by Sancho, king of Majorca, to whom it had before been subject.

[5] proved, But this is not of such moment here as to detain us, much less to lay upon us a new inquiry: for it suffices for our purpose that the dominion or lordship of Montpellier, attributed above to John the father of St. Roch, agrees neither with the names, nor with the time, nor with the series of the lords of that place, since no dynast of such a name is then noted among them, according to what we have produced from Catel. Odoricus

Raynaldus, in volume 15 of the Ecclesiastical Annals at the year of Christ 1327, number 56, fully perceived the falsity of this title, when he gave this warning: But it must not be dissembled in silence that certain fictitious things are found in his deeds in Surius (add, in others also), as when it is said that his parent ruled over Montpellier, and that Roch abdicated his principality that he might undertake a pilgrimage: for it is established that at that time the kings of the Balearic isles held that principality as a fief of the Gallic crown, and had received it from the kings of the Franks by a feudal engagement: although it may be understood of some notable magistracy or prefecture. Concerning the third point, or the Saint's nobility, it remains to speak.

[6] The same Catel as above, in book 2, chapter 6, page 294, in the compendium it is proved. which he has concerning St. Roch, affirms that he was born of noble parents; he is also indicated to have been the son of a certain noble of Languedoc in the Lives of the Saints printed at Paris in the year 1704. But in Peter de Natalibus, in the supplement or appendix after his Catalogue of the Saints, chapter 15, all title of nobility is indeed abstained from, and only this is recorded: Roch the confessor, of the Narbonese race, begotten at Montpellier of his father John and his mother Libera; but immediately he is said to have abdicated his principality, etc. He was therefore not only noble, but even a prince, according to the said appendix. But of what kind? If you would have it that he was a prince or dynast at Montpellier, and hammer this out of the "paternal towns committed to his uncle," which follows presently in the same place, this has already been sufficiently refuted a little before. But if of another kind, that is truly very obscure to us, and so unknown that not even by groping does it seem possible to come to the knowledge of it. From what has been said, therefore, it is concluded that the things circulated concerning the family of St. Roch among the authors hitherto cited are very uncertain, as are many other things which pertain to his deeds, as will appear afterwards. But since the Saint is now in so long a possession of nobility, we judge that he should be left in the same.

[7] Nor indeed is the very name of St. Roch so clear His name, as to suffer no difficulty. In the Belfort Life it is thus said: He was called Roch in Baptism. Pins agrees in his Life. We have a French manuscript Dissertation of Peter Louvet, composed concerning St. Roch, to which he subjoins a letter addressed to our Henschen from Lyons on the V day of September in the year 1664: and in the said Dissertation he mentions several men of Montpellier once named Roch in the thirteenth century; as Stephen Roq, consul there in the year 1258; Raymond Roq, consul in the year 1296; the same or another of the same name in 1317; Bartholomew Roq in 1322. He thinks that this may have been the uncle of St. Roch, if the name of consul be taken for governor and administrator of the city. To these things, Baluze in his notes to the Lives of the Popes of Avignon, volume 1, column [ ], when he had found in a letter of Pope Gregory XI among the legates of the people of Montpellier Imbert Roch, an inhabitant of the said place, adds that he notes this that greater credit may be given to those who say that St. Roch was born of that city. But what would you conclude thence, either for his family or for his birth in the said city? For the names Roq or Roch alleged above — to whom would they not rather seem to be surnames, since they are placed after the others? But that our Saint's name Roch was given him in baptism we have said above from the Lives, and therefore it cannot be a family surname received from his ancestors, if the Lives declare the truth. Further, the family of this St. Roch, surnamed A cruce, is most ancient and most noble, as will be said below at number 26. It follows therefore that even the Saint's name itself has its own inconveniences.

[8] the year of his birth, etc. Behold now, reader, some things concerning the year of his birth. This I find neither in the Belfort manuscript nor in Pins. But the Life of Diedo at number 7 marks it with these chronological notes: And this was the year one thousand two hundred and ninety-five from the Incarnate Word, in which Roch … came forth into the light. In the Parisian Lives of the Saints, which I lately cited, his birth is fitted to the said year 1295 or 1280. And indeed if he departed this life in the year of Christ 1327, and in the 32nd year of his age, as we shall afterwards report, that year of his death must agree with the year of his birth 1295 and with the age I mentioned. But who will vouch for an exact chronology of the Saint? See what will be said below in §8. Of our holy Confessor's boyhood and education the Life of Diedo writes in chapter 1 among us; of his parents snatched from him by death, in the same place; of his Roman pilgrimage, and of the various places throughout Italy in which the pestilential plague was extinguished by him, and of the other things which he did there, throughout the course of the same Life, which may be compared with the Belfort Life.

[9] A certain fable to be struck out of the Saint's Lives. Further, that altogether marvelous deed needs examination, by which a certain Cardinal with the title of Angleria, which is of the province of the Lombards, is reported at Rome to have been saved from the said plague by St. Roch, from the Belfort Life, numbers 5 and 6. But Raynaldus, designated above, chastises this matter as apocryphal in these words: It is also related that Bl. Roch spent three years at Rome with a Cardinal, a Breton by nation, and was by him brought to the Pontiff; which things are fabulous, as is plain, the Roman Curia being fixed at Avignon: nor could he have come earlier, since he is reported to have been born in the year 1295. There is added to this, that the fabricators or transcribers of this fable stuck fast, as I may say, in expressing the family name of that counterfeit Cardinal, some thrusting forward one thing, some another. For he who in the Belfort manuscript is named with the title of Angleria, Diedo the biographer at number 15, where he also relates that fiction, calls a Breton Cardinal; the Breviary of Schleswig, a Britonic Cardinal; the German Life, a Cardinal of Porto; Pins, a certain Gallic Cardinal, of the race of the Bretons, a man of most famous and most illustrious name. This fable, therefore, with the marvelous circumstances woven into it, must be struck out of the Lives of St. Roch, and relegated to old wives' tales.

[10] It is also wrongly ascribed to him That St. Roch, clothed in the habit of a pilgrim, went to Rome, the Belfort Life asserts at number 14 in these words: He is clothed therefore in a pilgrim's habit, his head is covered with a hat, a wallet hangs from his shoulders, a pilgrim's staff enters his right hand, and Roch, intent upon penance … hastens toward Rome. Pins in the Life expresses the matter thus: And so, putting on the traveling and pedestrian habit, and taking a little hat, a staff, and pouches, he set out on his journey to Rome. But Diedo has this: Clothed in a certain short scarlet garment, and with a mean cloak laid over it, taking a hat, a wallet, and a staff, and his feet covered with shoes, he directs his journey toward Rome. But whether from that clothing, or from elsewhere, certain men have taken a handle for enrolling the Saint in the Third institute of St. Francis, I do not dispute, since it is established that this was done by Arthur du Monstier in his notes on the Franciscan Martyrology at this XVI day of August; for which matter he there also names others. Among these Father Brother Benignus Fremaut also professes his name, in his General Legend of the Saints, etc., of the Seraphic Order, book 8, at the XVI day of August, indicating that the Third Rule of St. Francis was taken up by him before he set out into Italy. But upon what foundation? Wadding in the Annals of the Minorites at the year 1327, number 10, says: Him some enroll in the Third institute of St. Francis, whom he cites, but writers of a more recent age. I could have wished for more ancient co-assertors: nor yet do these contradict, nor do our own reject him whom others freely offer, nay eagerly embrace. However it be, lest I should grudge to my own one whom others attribute and reverently look up to, I set forth his life in compendium. By which words he abundantly intimates what he thinks of that matter. Nor indeed is this read in the Acts which we are to give; nor do I know of any mention being made in others, however ancient, even compendious, of any Franciscan institute which Roch at any time professed.

[11] I know indeed that in the most reverend Father M. Antony de Sillis, in volume 2 of the Monuments of the Third Order, page 81, the Third Order of St. Francis. in letters given by Pope Paul III at Rome in the year of Christ 1547, by which he grants that an interdict and cessation from divine offices on certain days, and on the feasts of the Saints, men and women, of the Third Order (which are there enumerated), may be removed and suspended in the churches of the aforesaid Third Order, as is premised in the summary of those letters; I know, I say, that among the heavenly citizens of the aforesaid Order who are there recorded St. Roch is reckoned; but I answer, first, that Sillis is cited in the Monuments of the Third Order by Wadding, and yet he says, I could have wished for more ancient co-assertors. Secondly, those letters name among the other Saints of the Third Order St. Louis, King of the Franks. But Spondanus, the continuator of the Ecclesiastical Annals of the most eminent Caesar Baronius, at the year 1254, number 11, speaking of the dress of that holy king, says: That he was of the Third Order of the Minors, to which he devoted himself after his return from Syria, some will have (see Wadding, volume 2, at the year 1254, from number 28); which nevertheless is scarcely credible, since none of the ancients mentions this singular matter. This matter therefore is to Spondanus altogether uncertain and almost incredible; but it is to be weighed by us at the XXV day of this month, to which we remit the decision of it, lest meanwhile we determine anything about it too hastily. Thirdly, in these and such Apostolic letters the favor which is sought by the petitioners is wont to be granted, and just as it is sought. Prayers therefore being offered to the Apostolic See concerning the feasts of the aforesaid Saints, Pope Paul III kindly assented, but by no means intended to inquire, much less to determine, whether all those Saints truly embraced the Third Order of St. Francis, as is plain enough.

\* That is, a road paved with stones or flint.

§ II. His memory in the sacred calendars; the beginnings of public cult in the fourteenth century; whether it was decreed to him by the council of Constance for the driving away of the plague in the fifteenth century; his body then held as a saint's, and translated to Arles.

The Saint's yearly memory That the cult of this most famous Saint was spread far and wide through various provinces of Europe, very many records persuade us, which we shall bring forward, beginning with the sacred calendars which have made mention of him. In the supplements to the Martyrology of Usuard published by us, on this XVI day of August this is given from Greven: At Lyons in Gaul, of blessed Roch, pilgrim and confessor. He, sprung of illustrious birth from Aquitaine, and from boyhood of the best conversation, received from the Lord a singular grace of curing men of the disease of the epidemic. At last, after many good works, being detained five years in prison as a spy, he there rested in the Lord. Thus there. Our manuscript Florarium thus

announces and praises him on the same day: At Angleria, a city of Lombardy, the deposition of St. Roch the confessor, a man most illustrious in birth and in sanctity. He among other kinds of infirmities was wont to cure that disease which men commonly name the pestilence. And therefore men burdened with such a disease ought to invoke this St. Roch with devotion. His memory is also had with a eulogy in the German Martyrology which is wont to be cited under the name of Canisius.

[13] various hagiologists report, with the Roman Martyrology. Molanus in the additions to his Usuard published in the year 1568 records him very briefly: At Lyons in Gaul, of blessed Roch the confessor, a helper against the pestilence. But in the edition of the year 1573 he announces him In the Gauls. Further, take Maurolycus, Felicius, and Galesinius here as inserted. Arthur du Monstier reports him thus: In Narbonese Gaul at Montpellier, the deposition of St. Roch the confessor, who, sprung of a noble family but made poor and humble for Christ, bore the insignia of the Third Order of Minors: at length, conspicuous for patience, chastity, and miracles, he passed to the heavenly country; whose power shines forth chiefly against the disease of the epidemic. Saussay also wove him into his Gallican Martyrology with a great eulogy, drawn from his Acts. In the new Parisian Martyrology he is marked thus: In Narbonese Gaul at Montpellier, of blessed Roch. Let the Roman Martyrology set the crown upon these announcements, in which this is recorded: In Narbonese Gaul at Montpellier, the deposition of blessed Roch the confessor, who freed many cities of Italy from the disease of the epidemic by the sign of the cross: whose body, afterwards translated to Venice, was most honorably laid in a church consecrated to his name. This is in the editions of the years 1678 and 1701. Others which I have seen differ somewhat from these. The sacred calendars therefore abundantly show that the celebrity of St. Roch's cult grew famous through various provinces of Europe. But it seems that something must also be said of its first origin or antiquity.

[14] The Life of Diedo at number 34 subjoins this to the Saint's obsequies: The prince (namely his uncle, as he had premised) raised him a church at great expense, and ordains a solemn day on which St. Roch died, The beginnings of the cult immediately after his death, from his biographers. namely the sixteenth of the Kalends of September in the year of Christ 1327 … which solemn and appointed rite is celebrated by the inhabitants down to these times. The compendium of the Life in Peter de Natalibus writes this concerning the Saint's uncle: The obsequies being performed at great length, he gave the holy body to burial, raising a church of great cost for it. Which if they be true, it is concluded from them that the public veneration of the Saint began together with his happy death. The Belfort Life does not determine the year in which he began to be publicly honored; for it writes thus: Solemnly and religiously they bury the blessed Man: who afterwards in the Apostolate (that is, under the Roman Pontiff, so far as I understand) was gloriously dedicated as a Saint, and they built an ample and most famous church to his glorious name. That not very long after his death also, by the Roman Pontiff — whose name however he does not express — the Man's sanctity being ascertained, he was placed among the heavenly citizens with solemn rite, and that then at last an ample and rich church was built for him, Pins affirms; but the same author designates no year thus far. For he narrates thus: Thereafter they magnificently buried him, borne out with the utmost pomp of a funeral: whom a little afterwards the Roman Pontiff also, the Man's sanctity being ascertained, placed with solemn rite among those above: and at last in that place where he had been buried an ample and rich church was built.

[15] To the year of Christ 1414 and to the council of Constance Castellinus has recourse in his Treatise on the Certainty of the glory of canonized Saints, page 443, There are those who in the council of Constance as if the honors of the Saints were shown to St. Roch by the decree of that council. For he thus records there: St. Roch the confessor, whom Francis Diedo the Venetian and P. \ Pins of Toulouse affirm to have been enrolled in the number of the Saints with the appointed solemn ceremonies. Yet by their leave, nothing certain is had of this, as Cardinal Baronius and Peter Galesinius testify in their notes on the Roman Martyrology on the XVII of the Kalends of September, that is on the XVI day of August. Yet to the same St. Roch the honors of the Saints are shown by decree of the council of Constance from the year 1414. Baronius in his notes on the Roman Martyrology on the XVI day of August. John Pins in the Life of that Blessed one, and others. But let us produce the text of Baronius: Diedo writes … that he … in the year … 1414 became known to the Fathers of the council of Constance, by whose decree, for the driving away of an oncoming plague, the honors due to the Saints were paid him: for with solemn pomp they carried his image, all the people accompanying, through the city: which being done, that plague presently vanished. And thence an example was taken, so that everywhere his venerable images, altars, chapels, and finally churches were erected.*

[16] But of this decree, and of the plague which is said to have raged at the time of that council, would have the Saint canonized for the driving away of a plague: we desire to learn even a single testimony, if only sufficiently fit to produce belief, either from the acts of this council or from authors of the same time. Let those certainly produce it who wish the present fact to be believed; they will assuredly earn great favor both with us and with learned readers, and will deserve excellently well of the honor and glory of St. Roch among men, by establishing that public and solemn miracle which is reported to have been wrought by his patronage in the most open theater, so to say, of the Catholic world, and from which by some, as we have seen, the public veneration of this Deliverer is said to have been diffused in all directions as from its original or chief fountain. That deed is nevertheless narrated in the Life which we shall give below in the first place, by the author Diedo, among us in chapter 4, number 35 and following. Further, the Fathers did not come together at Constance to take away the heresy of the Greeks, as the same biographer writes among us in the same number 35; but the chief cause of celebrating this council was the schism which had now for nearly forty years been dividing the Church. In it also were condemned the errors of John Wycliffe and John Huss, and likewise of Jerome of Prague. The aforesaid history is also related by John Pins; and he indeed fixes that sacred assembly to the same year 1414, but not to the same day as Diedo, but to the ninth of the Kalends of August; likewise he more rightly indicates that this was done in order that the wicked heresies of certain men might be taken away.

[17] which matter is here Albert Krantz in his Metropolis, chapter 25, relating in compendium the deed done at Constance, writes this: Then the name of Roch came into oblivion; but in the year of Christ 1415, when the council was being held at Constance, and the plague was raging there, his name began from the Germans to become notable to the Italians. John Philip of Bergamo had gone before, in his Supplement of the Chronicles, published at Brescia in the year of Christ 1485, writing this at the year 1327 concerning St. Roch: Whose most holy Man's merits and works, when they had long lain hidden among our Italians, at last in the year of the Lord 1415 the name of that Roch was brought to them from Germany, because he freed Constance, a city of Germany, where the general council of the Christians was being celebrated, from a very great plague: where now basilicas, chapels, and churches are built in his name not only through the cities, but through the castles, through the villages, and as it were through private houses; to which those who flee experience the merits of that most holy Man. And so his feast is celebrated on the XVI of the Kalends of September. To this author add what is in Peter de Natalibus in the Supplement, chapter 15: And those returning from the council of Constance, which had lately been freed by him from a raging pestilence, carried his name into Italy in the year of salvation 1415.

[18] examined. We see therefore so many authors agreeing about that plague, which they will have to have been taken away at Constance by the patronage of Bl. Roch. But of this matter we read nothing in the Belfort Life; likewise nothing of it in the proper lessons of the Breviary of Schleswig; yet the deed is narrated in an Appendix which is subjoined to that Belfort Life in our manuscript, and is noted as taken from a manuscript of the Celestine Fathers of Paris. What then must be said of this famous deed? I could indeed wish to see that public decree of veneration, for a pestilence driven away by the Saint at Constance, established by firmer testimonies. Yet since it is our part to favor the Saints so far as we can, truth being always preserved, I set forth what I think of that matter. What if some grave and perilous disease then raged in the said city, and was taken away by the invocation and patronage of St. Roch: whence occasion was given for composing that adorned and bedizened history, such as is read in Diedo and elsewhere. Meanwhile, if this conjecture of ours pleases anyone not, let him search out another, that he may extricate himself from these difficulties and decide the matter, if perhaps more light shall shine upon him. But we wonder that this is written by Spondanus at the year 1327, number 10, where, after he had rightly praised our Confessor as a most safe refuge, by the divine mercy, for those laboring under plague and epidemic, he presently subjoins: Which the Fathers of the council of Constance also felt in the year one thousand four hundred and fourteen, when public supplications had been begun under his invocation, and his image had been borne with solemn pomp through the city. From which he seems sufficiently approved by the Church and, as they say, canonized, etc. We wonder, to say it again, that these things are so narrated by the said author, since we find in him no trace of a pestilential plague at the time of the council of Constance in the year 1414 and the following years. From what has been said thus far we conclude that the first and genuine origin of the public and solemn veneration by which our Confessor was, as they will have it, enrolled in the number of the heavenly citizens, does not seem to us rightly to be sought from the act of the synod of Constance, at least as it is set forth by the authors recited above. Nor indeed do we find that he was ever placed among the Saints by that rite.

[19] Meanwhile it cannot be doubted that his public cult flourished long before, His body is honored before that time and translated to Arles. as Arthur relates at this XVI day of August in his notes on his Franciscan Martyrology, §5: It must be known, he says, that John Maingre Boucicaut, Marshal of France, a most illustrious and most vigorous man, greatly loved the Religious of the Order of the Holy Trinity, of the Redemption of captives (whom in France we commonly call Mathurins), and conferred goods and revenues upon them, and especially upon those of Arles. Moreover, as he adds, by Apostolic authority granted him, among other pledges of the Saints, he translated to Arles from the city of Montpellier the body of St. Roch in the year 1372, on the Kalends of April, and out of his piety gave it as a gift to those Religious of the aforesaid convent of Arles: where it has been preserved with the greatest veneration, and is honored with so great a concourse of people that it is no wonder \ if all nations and even the most remote kingdoms have eagerly and earnestly desired particles of this most sacred body.* Then the aforesaid Arthur enumerates in §6 and

following some relics afterwards plucked thence: concerning which in the next paragraph.

\* Read I., that is, John, as presently below here. \ Read sit*.

§ III. Public veneration from the sacred relics in Spain, Gaul, Turin; likewise in Italy, Germany, and Belgium; his patronage in time of plague.

The relics The sacred remains of St. Roch, transmitted at various times through divers tracts of Europe, solidly prove his public cult and its extension and continuance. In the first place, as Arthur testifies in the cited §6, Alexander VI by his diploma, dated at Rome on the day before the Nones of February in the year 1501, bids those Religious (he had just been treating of the Mathurins of Arles) to impart some particles of these relics, to be transmitted to the kingdom of Granada for the defense and strengthening of the Catholic faith lately introduced there; that they might be distributed through the Convents and monasteries recently built in that kingdom. And this Apostolic bull was reverently received and read through by the aforesaid Religious, and by the vicar general of the archbishop of Arles, in the presence of the consuls of that city, the Viguier, and other chief citizens, expressly noted in the verbal process then drawn up. For the execution of which bull, and according to the supreme Pontiff's good pleasure, there was given a bone of St. Roch which is called the nape of the back. To the original of which matter are seen subscribed Peter Borbery and Peter Bruny, royal notaries and secretaries of the aforesaid archbishopric.

[21] at Arles The same author in §8 proceeds thus to our purpose: In the year 1533, under the Pontificate of Clement VII, Francis I reigning in France, William le Vasseur, surgeon of that same king, obtained from the aforesaid Supreme Pontiff an Apostolic diploma, dated at Marseilles on the Nones of November, in the 10th year of his pontificate, by which faculty was given him of taking something of the relics of St. Roch at Arles. And when he had earnestly requested of the same most Christian king the confirmatory execution of this Brief or Pontifical indult, the royal munificence assented to his pious wishes on the 10th day of the same month and year; provided that it were done with the consent of the Minister General of this Order, and that the sacred relics themselves should by no means be carried out of the kingdom. Fortified with these letters he came to Arles, and there from the reverend Father Brother Gentian of Andin, Minister or Superior of the Convent, in the presence of the other Religious and of the magistrate and of very many citizens of that city, he reverently received as a gift a bone of the neck of St. Roch, commonly called a vertebra. And this gift William himself translated to the town of Villejuif (commonly Ville-Juive) not far from Paris: the feast of which translation is kept every year on the first Sunday of May: and there many indulgences are had, granted both by the bishops and Cardinals of Paris and also by the Apostolic See, as Du Breul testifies in book 4 of the Antiquities of Paris, pages 1221 and 1222; but that William is there called le Vavasseur.

[22] translated into various tracts of Europe, To these add what Arthur has in §9, expressed in these words: Likewise in the year 1557, on the XXII day of May, a part of the head of St. Roch was carried to Marseilles, and laid up with fitting honor in the convent of the same Order (whose church is dedicated to Roch himself), all due circumstances being observed; as appears from the verbal process by M. Saxi, notary of Arles. And thereupon the officials of the archbishopric of Arles gave letters testimonial on that matter to the prelate of Marseilles: which being read, that prelate relaxed forty days of enjoined penances to all Christian faithful visiting the aforesaid church (where the relics of St. Roch are preserved at Marseilles), dated at Marseilles on the last day but one of April in the year 1570.

Likewise in the year 1575 (so Arthur proceeds in §10) on the XVI day of April, a certain bone of St. Roch was brought to Rome by the reverend lord Alexander Barvich, abbot and perpetual commendatory of the monastery of St. Mary. Which holy relic indeed was taken out and expressly consigned to him before the lord vicar of the Metropolitan church of Arles, with authentic letters of the same lord vicar, and of the lord Francis Biol, justiciary of that city, and of the consuls of the city.

[23] translated, Then in §11 the same Arthur says: In the year, therefore, 1616, on the 1st day of August, the most reverend General of that Order, seeing such relics of St. Roch thus dispersed everywhere in the world, and that peril threatened this convent of Arles of being shortly despoiled of its sacred remains, commanded in virtue of holy obedience, under pain of major excommunication of sentence already passed, to be incurred by the deed itself, all provincials, visitors, conventual ministers, and other Religious of his Order, that they should not henceforth suffer or permit them to be carried away, dispersed, or taken, under the penalties expressed. Given at Arles in the year and on the day above.

Now let us come to §12, where the following stands: Meanwhile in the year 1617 the same most reverend General sent a portion of the head of St. Roch from Arles to Douai, to a convent of his Order, where it is honored with frequent miracles, and, enclosed in a gilded silver case, is borne solemnly in public procession on the feast of St. Roch with the utmost devotion of all the people. Which is established both from the letters themselves of the most reverend General, dated at Paris at St. Mathurin's on the IV of September in the year 1617, and from the consent of the most illustrious bishop of Arras, set down in writing on the XVII day of August in the year 1618.

[24] Add that the Priors of the confraternity of St. Roch of the city of Turin (to proceed with Arthur, §13), earnestly desiring to have the relics of the same St. Roch with them, their possessors sent into Provence \ the lord John Lewis Lamberti, presbyter, doctor of canon law, prior of the church of the Blessed Virgin of the place of Scarnafigi, in the diocese of Turin: who, coming to Arles and humbly setting forth his petition to the Religious of the convent of the most holy Trinity, of the Redemption of captives, suffered a repulse from them on the ground that it was provided by law not to carry such holy relics out of the kingdom. He urges in the name of his prince, the most serene Duke of Savoy; then of the archbishop of Turin; whose letters he shows, dated the XX of November of the year 1619: to which he adds also letters of the most eminent Cardinal Bandini, Dean of the sacred college of Cardinals, containing the same, dated at Rome the XXV of September of the year 1619. But when he profited nothing, he offered letters patent of his most Christian majesty, dated at Saint-Germain-en-Laye the XXVIII of April of the year 1619, directed to the archbishop of Arles and to the consuls of that same city; by which it was notified that he had given his consent, and that he wished satisfaction to be given to the aforesaid legate of Savoy according to his desire concerning these relics of St. Roch.*

[25] But the Religious cried out that they would by no means obey them, being at one time very unwilling; since by the law passed under the aforesaid penalties by their most reverend father General they were hindered from executing these things. Wherefore, by the consuls, the city council being assembled and the matter more maturely discussed, it was concluded that, to avoid scandal and to shun violence in the deed, the aforesaid Savoyard legate should go to Paris and meet or address the reverend Father General himself, if perchance he should be willing to give his assent. Which also was done; for he, freely assenting, gave his consent at Paris on the XVIII of March in the year 1620, for this once only, without consequence for the future. Then the metropolitan of Arles, the consuls, and the more notable of the clergy and people, together with the physicians and surgeons, went to the convent; they call the Superior with the Religious: who, fulfilling the commands, open the chest and take the upper part of the bone of the left thigh, of the length of one palm, and of the weight of more than five ounces by the goldsmith's weight: which the legate reverently receiving wrapped in white silk, and carefully bound and kept. Then in the name of the Priors of the confraternity of Turin, fulfilling his vow, he offered with pious devotion a gilded silver chest, adorned within with red silk, that henceforth at Arles the bones of St. Roch might be more honorably laid up in such a precious case: of which an inventory was made and set down in writing in the register of the pontiffs of Arles and in the archive of the aforesaid convent, in the book of Relics marked N., folios 146 and 147; which holy relics I, out of piety, venerated at Arles in the year 1620.

[26] Lastly, that Arthur may add strength of credit to the foregoing collection, as Arthur testifies. he indicates in §15 whence he received what he has there related. And all these things, he says (as also others, which will be given presently at number 29), have been excerpted from the archives of the convent of the city of Arles, and transmitted to me under authentic seal and signatures, in the year 1617, on the IV day of December, by the lord Gerard, counselor of the king and his advocate in the city of Arles of the province of Provence. Further, the family of this St. Roch, surnamed A cruce, most ancient and most noble, flourishes gloriously to this day both at Montpellier and at Paris, with which last has remained the six-foot \ staff of St. Roch himself, reverently preserved by the lady Isabella A cruce, lady of Lunel-Vieil, of Montuilla, etc.; of all which mention is had in a public instrument drawn up upon these matters, secured with signs and seals, dated at Montpellier the XIV of March in the year 1636. Moreri however in his Historical Dictionary*, at the name Montpellier, assigns our Saint's staff to Montpellier in the monastery of St. Paul. From these things, therefore, which have thus far been brought forward on the testimony of Arthur, it most clearly appears that the Blessed one's cult was excellently promoted through various tracts of Europe with a great increase of piety toward him and of the tenderest affection. And that these things may shine more clearly, we have ready at hand more of this kind to be subjoined to Arthur's collection, concerning sacred remains, confraternities as they are called, and pious places erected in honor of the same Confessor.

[27] Various other relics are enumerated. In volume 1 of our month of April, on the 2nd day, page 72, there is a treatment of the relics of St. Mary of Egypt among the people of Antwerp, some of which, with the pledges of thirty-four other illustrious Saints, are there related to have fallen to the city of Antwerp in the year 1633 on this occasion, which is there afterwards more fully set forth. Namely, Antony, natural son of the Lusitanian prince Louis, proclaimed by popular favor king of that same Portugal, but defeated in battle by Philip II, king of the Spains, and excluded from the kingdom, and having gone into Gaul, carried to Paris a chest rich in sacred relics, which in the year 1594, delivering it to his son Emmanuel, he dispatched with letters witnessing his donation, which are there produced. And Emmanuel in the year 1633 gave that sacred treasure as a gift at Antwerp to the Prelate of the monastery of St. Salvator, as may be seen at page 73. And among those other sacred pledges is placed under number 24 a part of the spine of the back, and the chin of St. Roch the confessor, the XVI of August. Volume IV of May, page 609, may also be consulted. But of the relics of Antwerp I shall treat after the Saint's Lives. Elsewhere others are noted. Thus Piazza in part 2 of his Sacred Hemerology on this day assigns his arm in the church of St. Roch at Rome; a part of which is had at St. Sebastian's outside the walls; and his dish at St. Marcellus's; a finger at St. Mary the New; and other relics at St. Anne of the Rope-makers, and at the Victory. Thus at Paris, says Baillet, in more than ten churches either his relics are shown or are carried about in supplication on his

feast: although the translation of those which are besides in his parish church is celebrated on the last Sunday after Pentecost. And in our manuscript notes they are recorded to be at Brussels in the church of St. Gaugericus. To those of Prague in Bohemia, of which I was speaking, add those of Düren in the country of the Ubii. For in a fragment of a letter of Father James Kritzradt, dated the V of December in the year 1651, there is this: I lately read of a copious pilgrimage to the relics of St. Roch in Bethany at Düren, a monastery established some years ago, and of the number of pilgrims recorded. Others Rayssius notes in the Belgian Sacred Treasury among the people of Luxemburg, page 366, and near Dendermonde among the Cistercian virgins of Zwijveke, page 500; others at Prague in Bohemia Thomas John Pessina in his Phosphorus, page 516; others in the church of Orleans Charles Saussay in his Annals, page 553. In Bernardinus Manzonius, in the Chronology of Cesena, page 63, in the parish church of St. James of Porto Cesenatico, among other sacred remains a molar tooth of St. Roch is said to be preserved. And from those things which stand transcribed among us from the manuscript Lipsanology or Inventory of the royal monastery of St. Lawrence of the Escorial in Spain, we have that relics of Roch the confessor are preserved there also. With these may be supplemented what Arthur had collected concerning the relics.

[28] But concerning the most pious and at the same time most effectual refuge to him against the plague of pestilential contagion, Giles Gonzalez Davila records in his Ecclesiastical Theater, volume 2, which contains the churches of Seville, Palencia, etc., relating at page 177 that in the year 1519, when there was a great plague at Palencia, both chapters, as he calls them, the ecclesiastical and the secular, The Saint implored the aid of the divine mercy, and bound themselves by a solemn vow to observe the feast of St. Roch to the end of the world, and on the XVI day of August to go in supplication to the church of St. Marina, where the Saint, he says, has his altar; and that by the blessed Confessor's patronage the pestilential evil ceased. But that which Fremaut records without note of time is singular, and I transcribe it here on his credit. When the plague was raging in the convent of St. Clare in the place which is commonly called Villa do Conde in Portugal, a certain unknown pilgrim brought thither an image of St. Roch, saying that the Religious should venerate it with firm hope that those of them who had been touched by that evil should recover, and that none who were then free from it should thereafter be touched. The event answered the word, the pestilential plague being also quickly driven from the aforesaid city or village of Portugal. The same author adds that this image is even now honorably preserved in the choir of that monastery. Great confidence also was conceived among the French concerning St. Roch's patronage against contagious disease. Namely in the year 1522, on the first day of March, the senate and people of Arles uttered a vow to St. Roch of building him a chapel, that by his intercession with God the city might be freed from the plague and contagion of the epidemic which was then dreadfully raging. From a public instrument by M. John de Camoeret, notary and secretary of that city; as Arthur, designated above, narrates in §7.

[29] Add what the same Martyrologist has in §14 concerning public veneration: is a patron in plague for after he had said that in the year 1620 he had venerated the Saint's relics at Arles, as was set forth a little before, he thus proves it by various arguments: Thereupon, on account of the pestilential disaster by which the people of Arles were miserably vexed, the archbishop erected in the aforesaid convent a confraternity in honor of St. Roch, giving 40 days of indulgences, in the year 1628, on the X day of October: which sodality was approved by the Apostolic See, and confirmed by a diploma of Pope Urban VIII with many indulgences, dated at Rome at St. Peter's, on the Ides of March in the year 1629. The number of the brethren being afterwards increased and piety growing warm, they gave as a gift a silver and gilded statue of St. Roch, and erected in his honor a most beautiful church. Other cities and towns also — as Salon in Provence in the years 1631 and 1632; Vermenton in the diocese of Auxerre in the year 1633; Montargis of the diocese of Sens in the year 1635, etc. — when at different times they were tormented with the same plague, vows being uttered to Bl. Roch, their prayers were salubriously heard from heaven. In grace whereof processions were held, feasts instituted, altars, oratories, chapels, and churches built, and most rich and most frequent offerings made.

[30] plainly But if the reader has a mind to go back to earlier times, Pins in the Life of St. Roch writes this: Nor is there reason why I should busy myself more wordily in narrating his innumerable miracles: nor, if it pleased me, should I be able to attain to it worthily: for it is incredible, and not easily told, how many and how great things almost daily all mortals record that they have experienced: of which each single one would demand a volume to itself. But within our own memory a savage plague had invaded at Paris the monks of the most sacred Virgin (who are commonly called of Mount Carmel). At which peril the brethren trembled in fear. Nor had it then left much room for counsel of mind: when one of them, a man excellent among many, brought forth an image of St. Roch, and instituted also a solemn feast to be celebrated in that consecrated chapel on every Sunday … Nor was it heard that thereafter anyone died there of the plague. In those times also this most foul plague had invaded Amiens, Beauvais, Arras, the Nervii, the Morini, and innumerable other cities of Celtic and Belgic Gaul: to which, as soon as the name of St. Roch was brought and he began to be honored and venerated there, suddenly all that fury of the disease grew cool.

[31] singular, From the additions to the transcript of the Life of St. Roch written by Diedo and transmitted hither by Gamans, the aforesaid plague invaded the Parisian monastery of the Brethren of the most blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel in the year of the Lord 1490; and eighteen Brethren were cut off by that pestilential disease. Likewise "one of them," etc., who was not named by Pins, is there called Brother John Philip, otherwise of Arras, lector of sacred Theology. And there also the things done by him in honor of the Saint are thus narrated: He set up an image of the most blessed Roch in that same monastery of the Carmelite Brethren, and ordained that a special commemoration of most holy Roch should be made on all Sundays: but on the first Sunday after the feast of the Assumption his \ feast is celebrated with solemn Mass and sermon. In the same manuscript there is a treatment also of the plague among the people of Amiens, Tournai, Cambrai, etc., at the same time. Lastly, as we also learn from that transcript: In the year of the Lord 1495 there were at Paris many burdened with the plague and destitute of human remedy, who came as pilgrims to the image of Bl. Roch and there left their vows: who say that they were freed by his merits. Wherefore they honor his name up to the stars. And we Carmelites believe that this most holy man Roch specially chose this monastery, namely of the Carmelite Brethren, for the working of miracles, and therefore stirred up the devotion of the crowd, that his name might be forever praised there.* But lest we bring forward only ancient examples of veneration for the deadly poison driven away by the Saint's saving help, I subjoin to these two most recent ones. The first, that the most serene Doge of Venice with his most excellent retinue, together with the Papal Nuncio and the Imperial legate, on the XVI day of this current year 1736 visited the church of St. Roch, to give thanks to almighty God because in the year 1576 He had so mercifully deigned to free that city from pestilence through the intercession of this Saint, as the public news of Antwerp records; and they add that on the same day there was no common concourse of pious men to venerate the body of the same Saint, which rests and is preserved in the said church. The public news of Cologne marks 1492 for 1576. The other is that the most august Roman Emperor Charles VI willed his Austrian piety toward St. Roch to be attested in the same year and on the day just noted, when with the accustomed solemnities he celebrated the feast of the same Saint at Vienna in the church of the reverend Fathers Augustinians in the suburb of Landstrasse, from the cited documents of Antwerp.

\ Understand provinciam* (province). \* That is, six feet long. \ Read hujus or ejus*.

§ IV. The Saint's most present patronage in contagious disease confirmed from elsewhere; confraternities erected in his honor; his glory celebrated by poets.

In the territory of Rome the Saint's image appears wondrously; A deed altogether admirable concerning our Blessed one's most present patronage against the pestilential disease is read handed down to memory long since among us in volume III of the month of June, in the Praetermissi at the XVIII day of that month, from page 550. And since the history of that deed chiefly pertains hither, although it is described there, we shall nevertheless not grudge to repeat it here anew. Thus, then, our Father Conrad Janninck had related the matter there: The apparition of SS. Roch and Sebastian is celebrated on this day at Tusculum, commonly Frascati, a place most noble for the palaces, villas, and country retreats of the Roman princes, in the church of St. Mary of the Fishpond, which was formerly the cathedral there; now it is generally called St. Roch's. The celebration had its beginning in the year 1656, when, the pestilential plague raging at Naples, which is believed to have consumed half the inhabitants of that most populous city, and thence creeping widely through the Roman Campagna and infecting many also at Tusculum, on the XVIII day of June there appeared on the side wall, which is on the left to one entering the church, not far from the front, first the face of an image of St. Roch, and a little after also the face of St. Sebastian painted near him, the plaster of the wall falling away, without any man's work and unexpectedly, under which they lay hidden, and had lain hidden so long that no memory of such images there survived among the citizens, even the oldest.

[33] The city, at once judging that the Saints, appearing so wondrously at such a time and place, wished to undertake its patronage against the assault of a violent contagion, in time of contagious disease he is invoked with the greatest fruit. conciliated them to itself more and more with prayers and vows. Nor indeed were they deceived in their opinion, nor frustrated of their hope. For it is not known that anyone was then cut off at Tusculum by the pestilential plague. Some indeed were touched by it; but being anointed with the oil of the lamp which burns before the images of the Saints, they were cured and preserved. Nay, the same oil, sought also by many strangers, both Religious and secular, especially at Rome, and applied to the sick with confidence, wrought like cures. Certainly so many offerings and votive gifts were brought from every side for that cause that from them a marble altar was raised at those very images. These things I myself, having lately [1699] stayed at Tusculum, received from persons worthy of credit; and I inspected face to face upon the wall the altar and the images of the Saints, the veil being removed, through the glass windows with which they are neatly covered, of the just stature of a man, and having I know not what of venerable antiquity and majesty. The city, mindful of the benefit, instituted every year on this day a public supplication, with all the sodalities of the pious citizens accompanying, in thanksgiving.

[34] The Roman confraternity To the sodalities or confraternities in St. Roch's

honor as concerns those erected, the Roman one was famous in the sixteenth century, as is clear from the Apostolic letters of Pope Pius IV, which stand in Laertius Cherubinus in the Bullarium, volume 2, page 25 and following, prefaced with this title: Confirmation of the confraternity of St. Roch, deliverer from the disease of the epidemic, hitherto instituted in the City, and adorned by Alexander VI and Leo X with certain privileges, with the concession of other indulgences and favors, etc. From which letters I cull this: Whereas at another time it was set forth to Pope Alexander VI, our predecessor of happy memory, on the part of our beloved sons the brethren of the confraternity of St. Roch the confessor of the said City, that certain faithful of Christ dwelling in that same City, piously considering that very many professors of the Christian name were by the intercession of the same St. Roch not only preserved from the disease of the epidemic, but even, when infected with the said disease, were freed from it; and that in the said City no church under the invocation of such St. Roch existed, had made and ordained among themselves a certain confraternity under the invocation of the same St. Roch; and, that they might have a place in which they could assemble for the celebrating of divine offices and for those things which pertained and should pertain in the future to the direction and government of the said confraternity, had leased a certain plot \ of ground of the Augustan mount of the said City, near the public road by which one goes to the church of St. Mary of the People, also of that City, under a yearly payment of ten ducats, in a certain manner and form then expressed; and that those brethren intended to have a church built and erected there under the said invocation, and to have Masses and other divine offices celebrated in it by a chaplain or chaplains otherwise fit, and to furnish and support it with ecclesiastical ornaments: the aforesaid Predecessor, that the faithful of Christ might visit it and hear the divine offices, and that by the intercession of the same St. Roch with the Most High they might be preserved from and freed from this disease of the epidemic, inclined to the supplications of those same brethren, by certain letters approved and confirmed the aforesaid confraternity by Apostolic authority, giving faculty of making statutes, of deputing officials, of founding the church of St. Roch at Rome, of receiving pious offerings*, etc., which are there set forth at length, and which Pope Leo X afterwards confirmed, as may there be seen.

[35] erected under three Pontiffs, and enriched with privileges These things therefore being premised, Pope Pius IV thus confirms the said concessions by his own authority also: But whereas, as the brethren of this confraternity of St. Roch have lately caused to be set forth to us, that church itself has been built and erected to the praise of God from the pious alms both of the said brethren and of other faithful of Christ, and in it divine Offices are celebrated and divers works of charity are exercised, and that church is laudably ruled and governed by those same brethren, and they desire that their confraternity, and all the aforesaid privileges, indulgences, exemptions, and indults granted to them, for their firmer subsistence, and that they may be able to persevere from good to better in exercising such pious works, should be approved and confirmed and enlarged by Us also: We … inclined to the supplications of the same brethren in this part, approve by the aforesaid Apostolic authority by the tenor of these presents the confraternity of St. Roch of the City, and its privileges, indulgences even plenary, exemptions and indults, and their confirmation and approbation, and the letters of our predecessors Alexander and Leo drawn up thereupon, and, as far as they concern them, all and singular the things contained in them and whatsoever has followed thereupon … and add to them the strength of perpetual firmness, etc.

[36] Then he imparts the favors, indulgences, and indults of other pious places of the City, and with graces, which were afterwards restricted. which are declared in the said letters; likewise the faculty of publishing indulgences and of making statutes: to these, the extension of the privilege of the court to all persons and ministers, and also the enjoyment of feudal and ecclesiastical goods; finally another plenary indulgence for those visiting the said church even on another day than that of the same Saint's festival, to be chosen by the brethren; and lastly a plenary indulgence for each of the brethren, etc., set in the article of death, the same Vicar of Christ most kindly grants, as is more fully contained in the often-mentioned letters, given at Rome at St. Peter's under the Fisherman's ring, on the XVIII day of October 1560, in the first year of his Pontificate. But although before the said letters this admonition is prefixed: These indulgences our most holy Lord Paul V moderated, and granted others, in his constitution not yet published, though confirmed on the III day of October 1606; and the rule for aggregating other confraternities Clement VIII handed down in constitution 115, "Quaecumque" (consult besides the marginal notes to the said letters) — yet from the premises it is plain that the confraternity of St. Roch erected in the city of Rome by Apostolic authority, and enriched with so many privileges, was there most famous under three Pontiffs, namely Alexander VI, Leo X, and Pius IV. Further, we here observe in passing that there came forth a decree on the XIV day of March in the year 1714, by which by the sacred Congregation of the most eminent and most reverend lord Cardinals set over Indulgences and sacred Relics three summaries of asserted Indulgences granted to the confraternities of St. Roch are proscribed, and it is declared that those confraternities existing in whatever places and aggregated to the archconfraternity of the City may use and enjoy no other Indulgences, concessions, and privileges but those which are contained in the aforesaid Brief of Paul V of holy memory, and which are reported word for word in the aggregations wont to be dispatched by the same archconfraternity. That decree is had in the Great Roman Bullarium, or in its continuation published at Luxemburg in the year 1727, part 2, page 443.

[37] But now some other things occur concerning the aforesaid Roman archconfraternity. Certain other notices concerning the said confraternity. In Panciroli, in the Hidden Treasures of the fostering city of Rome, Region 5, number 19, it is written that the sodality of St. Roch in the place which they had bought, de gli scavioni, that is, of the slaves (see the same, number 20), in the year 1499 built there a church of the holy Confessor, very great and beautiful; from the archive of this church. Near it he signifies that there is a hospital for sick men of various professions and crafts; and also another erected for women and endowed with revenues by Cardinal Antony Maria Salviati; likewise that the day of St. Roch, the XVI of August, is celebrated by that archconfraternity with solemn apparatus and music, a captive also being freed from perpetual imprisonment, and maidens being given in marriage on the sacred day of the Mother of God assumed into heaven. But afterwards at page 460 he says that the habit of the aforesaid archconfraternity of St. Roch is green, with his image, and two brethren who bend their knees before him. So much for Rome.

[38] Confraternities at Bologna and elsewhere. What shall I report of the sodalities of Bologna? Masini in his Bologna Surveyed, at the XVI day of August, affirms that the feast of St. Roch is celebrated in several places where his altars and images exist, and among the Confraternity of St. Roch in Pratello, as he calls it; and also that blessed bread is distributed: and he indicates that in the year 1509, on the VI day of August, the sodality of that same Saint was instituted, where also of its dress: lastly, that by this confraternity in the year 1605 the body of St. Roch was visited at Venice with solemn rite, and a banner offered there, etc. He also records an archconfraternity of SS. Sebastian and Roch, to which the senate in the year 1522 committed the care of those infected with plague: and a peculiar kind of garment is there also described. Lastly, the aforesaid Masini records that among the archconfraternity of St. Mary of Death a most solemn feast is held, and that relics exist there. And this is singular, namely that by that archconfraternity one condemned man is freed from prison, by a Brief of Gregory XIII, on the first day of June in the year 1576. As concerns France: of the confraternity of Arles instituted in honor of St. Roch mention was made by us on another occasion above at number 29; of that of Turin at number 24; of that of Venice at number 42; but of that of Antwerp there will be a treatment below after our Saint's Lives, in his posthumous glory.

[39] The Saint's glory Besides the sodalities, which by outward cult and work willed to attest a singular affection of piety toward this Saint, the poetic art has moreover wished to bind his glory in meter, and to commend it in letters to posterity. Let there be for an example the elegiac poem which is had after the Life of St. Roch, printed in ancient type under the name of Peter Louis Maldura, but wrongly. At the end therefore of that Life this title is noted: An elegiac poem of Theoderic Gresemund the younger of Mainz, to the reader of this book, in praise of St. Roch. Gesner in his Library names two Theoderics; the one Gresemund of Speyer, the other Gresmund de Mechschode. The one recorded in the first place he indicates to have been a poet; and his poem on the history of the violated cross … he says was printed in the year of the Lord 1514. Of this man of Speyer there was perhaps a son of the same name, the younger, of Mainz, who composed the said poem.

[40] celebrated in the verses of poets Thus it runs, nor does it display the frenzy of an altogether unhappy vein:

Whoever thou art that readest this little book with devout mind,     Do thou honor the holy powers of a wondrous Man. The smoky air nourishes the wicked breathings of pestilence;     An ill-omened mist gives the death-bringing plague. Lo, both young and old fall, the poison destroying them;     Lo, one is plunged in Stygian waters, never to return. And the tempest rages like a sea driven with waves;     Lo, in its madness it snatches away, alas, many men. Whoever thou art here present, venerate now blessed Roch,     And heap up pious prayers to Roch. Roch, father, hope, anchor, and refuge of the wretched,     Lend thine ear to thy servants, Roch, father of the wretched. The ruler of Olympus endowed thee with a worthy gift,     That thou mightest avail to drive the wasting plague from the world. The wretched nations demand thy favoring power:     Let this disease go forth an exile from our borders. And let not the angelic hand, glutted with the ruins of men,     Go on to tear in pieces our race. But let almighty God pour forth the fury conceived in His heart     Upon the Turks and upon wicked men; And let Him not commit His sheepfolds to wolves, but shelter     Us from the deadly and world-destroying plague. These things we beg of thee, father Roch, with rising tears:     Kindly ask of the Lord help for us. For thou canst: only now protect thy devoted clients,     Preserving at once both body and mind. Above all defend the learned physician John     Nel, by whose service thy praise flourishes in the world. He willed thy deeds to be printed and rendered in little books;     May he, committed to thee, bear worthy rewards.

From the close of this elegy it seems to be gathered that by the effort and care of that John the Life of St. Roch, which is in the same copy in which that poem stands, was printed.

[41] To these add an epic poem, from which John Bachot, says Arthur, in his Christian Fasti at the XVI of August … from John Morel in his Poems brings these lines from an oration to SS. Sebastian and Roch, for the checking of the fury of the pestilence. Thus he sings:

Thou too, father Roch, who once didst learn to succor The wretched sick, when thou didst bear the contagions of the dread Disease and a raw wound upon thy body: Come, with joined hearts and prayers turn away from the realm Of the Franks the hell that riots in our slaughters: Grant us to be free from the twin plague of body and of soul. Mindful, we will set for you at the solemn altar Burning tapers, etc.

What of this, that the reverend lord Baldwin Coune of Liège, chaplain of SS. Stephen and Denis, wrote the Life of St. Roch in elegiac verse, printed at Liège in the year 1636, and dedicated to the very reverend father in Christ and lord Gerard of Salinis, abbot of the ascetic Benedictine monastery of St. Lawrence near Liège?

\* That is, a measure or portion.

§ V. Divine Offices, Masses, singular observance of the feast, churches dedicated in the Seraphic Order, etc.

In the Breviary of Schleswig We think it altogether singular and worthy of note that the public cult of Bl. Roch was propagated so far that it reached the far distant northern region and was there celebrated with a peculiar rite, as is proved from the Breviary of the church and diocese of Schleswig, which was cited by us above. In that praised Breviary, therefore, at the second Vespers of St. Bartholomew after the Benedicamus, the history of St. Roch is prescribed to be read, with proper antiphons, hymns, etc., in this manner: Antiphon. Hail, prudent physician and vanquisher of the plague; be thou our reliever in the limbs from the epidemic, and our advocate, O Roch, with the King of glory. ℣. He loved. Collect. O God, who art glorious in the glory of the Saints, and grantest to all who trust in their patronage the saving effect of their petition; grant to Thy people that, by the intercession of blessed Roch Thy confessor, it which shows itself devout at his festival may be freed from the languor of the epidemic which he suffered in his own body for the glory of Thy name, etc. Through.

[43] St. Roch is honored At Matins, the invitatory: Let us adore the Lord, who did wondrous things, when He gave to the world a new physician, Roch. Psalm: Venite. Hymn:

Let all things rejoice together in the praises of Roch, Let the palace of the star-bearing sky be glad, And let the orbit of the rounded world resound;     Let there be one voice of them that sing.

Let that happy land rejoice in its guest, Let this one flourish in his renowned patronage: For it now has Roch, the best of physicians,     Who puts to flight the dreadful plague.

He who gave all his goods at once to the poor, And gave himself as a help to the wretched, Relieves the sick with a wondrous token,     Not by an herb, but by the sacred cross.

This grace was deservedly rendered to him, Who with highest zeal and fervent heart Despised riches and delights and the lineage of glory,     Keeping nothing for himself.

Let each of us with trembling breast Seek his protection in hard affairs. If our faith be perfect and our mind whole,     The merciful one will soon be at hand for us.

Thee, simple and threefold Godhead, we beseech, That by the merits of Roch Thou wouldst take away our harms: Give peace to Thy servants, and to us glory,     To Thee through all ages. Amen.

[44] with a proper Office IN THE FIRST NOCTURN, ANTIPHON. Holy Roch was a tree that is planted in moist places, while he was adorned with very many virtues. Psalm: Beatus vir. Antiphon: He understood and served the Lord with trembling, and, despising riches, went to Rome supported by a staff alone. Psalm: Quare fremuerunt. Antiphon: Praying at last he bears to God: Thou art my glory, Thou liftest up my head, Thou art my victory. Psalm: Domine, quid. ℣. He loved. Lesson I. But neither this nor the following do we produce, because they contain the Blessed one's deeds, known from elsewhere. ℞. Roch, noble and shining with much honor, whom an illustrious line and abundance of wealth had endowed. ℣. He despised all things, growing warm with the love of virtue. Whom an illustrious. Lesson II. ℞. Thirsting now to see foreign places, he makes for the City. Meanwhile the plague oppresses Italy and Cesena. ℣. Roch is present to the wretched; with the sign of the cross he raises them all. Meanwhile. Lesson III. ℞. O father, and living care of the sick, heal our sores, which spirit and flesh endure. ℣. And bring help to thy servants, who venerate and love thee. Our sores.

[45] proper to him, IN THE SECOND NOCTURN, ANTIPHON. He spurned the vanity that pleases the foolish world, and with most fruitful increase offered himself as a servant to all. Psalm: Cum invocarem. Antiphon: From morning and all the day Roch stood before Christ, and with devout prayer directs his heart to things above. Psalm: Verba. Antiphon: Thy name, wondrous King, then shone in Roch, when the unspeakable honey of the world had wholly dried up for him. Psalm: Domine, Dominus. ℣. The mouth of the just. Lesson IV. ℞. At last after many perils he came to the towers of Romulus, and here the plague rages with full rein. ℣. He signs the priest's brow with the living cross, and departs. He came. Lesson V. ℞. Thence the Saint, hastening to the city of Piacenza, preserved this and the rest that were burdened with the plague. ℣. Nor was there delay: Roch too is burned with the death-bringing fire. This. Lesson VI. ℞. O thou who by the sign of the life-giving cross raisest up the sick, save us also while we are hurt by the cruel fire. ℣. We who trust not to be relieved by the Paeonian art. Us also.

[46] IN THE THIRD NOCTURN, ANTIPHON. His tongue had wrought neither guile nor fraud, wherefore he sings praise to God, with whom he now dwells. which Psalm: Domine, quis habitabit. Antiphon: By his words Christ fills the desire of the heart, and blots out what was sad, giving all joy. Psalm: Domine, in virtute. Antiphon: Joined to his salvation, may he cleanse us from crime, and obtain that he who honors him inwardly may be pricked with compunction. Psalm: Domini est terra. ℣. The just shall spring forth. Homily: Vigilate — what and of what kind it is, is there designated. ℞. A fountain is made for the afflicted Roch, while a dog brought him bare food, and the kindly power was not wanting to the Saint. ℣. Who had spent both himself and all he had upon the wretched. Brought. ℞. Then, seeking his native land again, he is taken and cast into the shadow of a prison; but when he sees the end of life at hand for him. ℣. Behold, he calls a priest and takes the food of the Lord. Of a prison. ℞. O thou who art borne to heaven with sacred lights, and, by the sign of the tablet, what thou canst avail with the Lord. ℣. Preserve us, Roch, from the pestilential poison. And what. Glory. And what.

[47] At Lauds, antiphon: The famous day is now here on which holy Roch more joyfully passed out of the world's darkness, an excellent citizen of heaven. is here given. Antiphon: Lo, the invocation of Roch profited those afflicted with plague at Constance, when a wondrous deliverance was there. Antiphon: A thing most well known to the Venetians, of how great merit Roch is; and the latest ages shall tell it with perpetual vow. Antiphon: This our house likewise firmly attests the same, from which Roch then bravely put to flight the madness of the plague. Antiphon: Thus the merit of Roch preserved very many places of Picardy, and Paris also, from the diseases of the epidemic. Little chapter: Many shall praise together. Hymn: This is a true worshiper of Christ. ℣. The just shall flourish as the palm. At the Benedictus, antiphon: Let our choir set forth with joy the pious solemnities of St. Roch; by whose wondrous grace of healing the whole world shines with a ray. Now, joined to the eternal glory of the Saints, he rejoices happy in their company. Collect as above. Others are there designated. At the Magnificat, antiphon: Roch passes rejoicing to the kingdom after his miseries, having measured the footsteps of Christ; how blessed, how joyful he enters to the nuptials of the kingdom, wondrous prodigies declare it. Therefore let the whole world seek him, pouring forth tears, that the epidemic may not rage. Collect as above.

[48] These things from the said Breviary of Schleswig it has seemed good to transcribe hither: In many other places from which, as it comes upon us to wonder that the cult of Bl. Roch made its way to so far distant a tract of the north, so this also altogether singular befell him, that it penetrated also into the East, not without splendor of name: for in the Calendar of the proper feasts of the church of Jerusalem, which Wadding published in the Annals of the Minorites, volume 3, page 499, although not many Saints are inscribed in it for each month of the year, yet on this day, among those of the XVI of August, is marked the name and feast of Roch the confessor, double. With which rite also it is noted on the same XVI day of August in the Ordo of reciting the divine Office for the church and diocese of Venice of the year 1657. And among the feasts of the Patriarchal palace of Venice, which are had at the end of the cited Ordo, on the aforesaid day is had the name of Roch the confessor. In the proper Offices of the metropolitan church of Mechlin in our Belgium there is also marked on the same day Of Roch the confessor, double ad libitum, with this proper collect: O God, who didst deign to adorn blessed Roch, Thy confessor, with so admirable a grace of healings that he restored to soundness by the sign of the Cross of Christ alone those seized with the plague of the epidemic: grant to us Thy servants, fleeing to his merits and patronage, mercifully to be freed by Thy loving-kindness from the peril of this contagion, and from all sudden and unforeseen death. Through our Lord. What is done in the diocese of Roermond in honor of St. Roch, the Canonical Hours to be said on the proper festivals of the diocese of Roermond, together with the litanies of the same church, etc., which were printed at Louvain in the year 1609, show. For there his feast is celebrated on the XVI day of August with a double rite. The collect is: O God, who didst deign to adorn blessed Roch Thy confessor with so admirable a grace of healings, as above. And in the said Litanies of the church of Roermond, which are had after the proper Offices of the same, St. Roch also obtains his own place among the other Saints who are invoked in them; whence it is plain enough that no ordinary confidence was conceived in that diocese concerning the patronage of the same Saint and his merits with God, and also concerning his beneficent will to succor the wretched.

[49] his memory is famous I have in my hands a Mass of him of sufficiently ancient printing (but I find neither the year of the one nor the place of the other added in the copy), in which are noted the COMMEMORATIONS which are made after the Mass and after the Gospel of St. John In the beginning was the Word: Let Thy wrath rest, O Lord, and be appeasable over the wickedness of Thy people, as Thou hast sworn by Thyself. Holy God, holy strong One, holy immortal One, have mercy on us. Prayer: Almighty and merciful God, look propitiously upon the people subject to Thy majesty, and let not the raging fury find us, but let the right hand of Thy propitiation guard us. Through. Another: Almighty everlasting God, who by the prayers and merits of the most blessed Roch Thy confessor didst recall a certain general plague of men; grant to Thy suppliants that they who for the recalling of a like plague flee under Thy trust may, by the prayer of that glorious Confessor, be freed from it and from all disturbance. Through. By the intervention of St. Roch, O Lord, may our service be pleasing, and may the offerings of our gift become the rewards of the devout. Through. Another: Filled with the sacred gift, we suppliantly beseech Thee, O Lord, that what we celebrate in the office of due service, we may, by the intercession of blessed Roch Thy confessor, feel to be an increase of Thy salvation. Through. In the Roman Missal which was published in the year 1511, this Preface of the Saint is prescribed to be recited: Who by mercy alone didst recall the destruction hanging over the Ninevites: to whom, when Thou wast a propitiator, Thou didst grant the penance of prayer

grant also to this Thy people, prostrate and praying before the sight of Thy glory, health, and grant the effect of the deliverance which it desires, that Thou mayest not suffer those whom Thou hast redeemed by the precious blood of Thine Only-begotten to perish by the ruin \ of mortality. Communion: O how magnificent is Thy name, blessed Roch; who by thy intercessions knowest how to heal a multitude of the sick, and to show thyself propitious to all who commemorate thy glorious name: come and save us from disease and from the plague of the epidemic, and grant a temperate air.*

[50] and honored with Masses. But lest, spending time in inquiring into and collecting such documents of St. Roch's public veneration, I should seem to abuse the reader's patience, and, as they say, to carry wood into the forest, I add two things to these. And first indeed, that it was greatly increased from day to day in many places. For Wadding in the Annals of the Minorites at the year of Christ 1327, treating of this holy Man, at number 13, says: Lately it was granted by the Purpled Fathers of sacred Rites, Urban VIII approving, that in all churches and chapels sacred to him the Office and Mass should be recited. Then Harold in his Epitome at the same year, number 4, has: And it is wonderful how many churches, altars, and chapels are today erected in his honor, and how many sodalities of the Christian people are enrolled for works of piety: of which the chief is here in the city of Rome, where Roch's birthday is festive to the whole people, and is honored with singular solemnity and concourse of the faithful. Lastly, according to Hueber in the Franciscan Menology at this XVI day of August, number 8, Innocent XII in the year 1694, on the XXVII day of March, granted that his feast should be celebrated in the Order of Minors of the Observance under the rite of a greater double.

[51] The other thing which I add to these, and which appears wonderful beyond measure, At Paris his feast is observed as one of precept. is read in the Life of St. Roch in Baillet, namely that the observance of his feast, no otherwise than of those feasts which are of precept, was gradually and imperceptibly introduced into several churches, but not so much by the decree of any synod, or by the statute of any prelate, as by the peculiar devotion of the peoples, who implore his patronage against the plague. There is added to this, that although the most illustrious Hardouin de Péréfixe, archbishop of Paris, wished in the year 1666 to abrogate this feast in that city together with several others, and the abrogation had its force in most of the other feasts, yet neither he nor his successor Francis de Harlay could suppress the feast of St. Roch among the people. Further, his Office is there used only in places where his relics are preserved, or where confraternities are erected in his honor; everywhere else the church of Paris makes only a simple commemoration in the Office of the Octave of the Assumption; and the other part of the secular and regular Clergy which follows the Roman rite in that great city recites the Office of St. Hyacinth; yet so that the people there continue to close their shops in honor of St. Roch, as the cited author affirms.

[52] The Seraphic Order attends this same Saint with great affection of piety, Why and in what manner he is honored by the Seraphic Order. the occasion of so peculiar a cult arising from this, that he is held as one of the said Order, whose Third institute or rule he professed: which opinion by no means seems to us sufficiently probable, and has therefore been refuted above in § I from number 10; this good meanwhile having followed from it, that a singular honor is paid to this Saint by the nurslings of St. Francis. For Arthur du Monstier, in the Franciscan Martyrology, in his notes at this XVI day of August, after he had said from those whom he cites that St. Roch was of the Third Order of St. Francis, proceeds thus: Wherefore, as to a chief patron of our Order, several churches of the Convents of the Seraphic Religion have been dedicated to him. On which matter Gonzaga, part 2 of the Origins of the Seraphic Religion, in Convent 29 of the Roman province; in Convent 28 of the province of Bologna; in Convent 29 of the province of St. Antony; in Convent 12 of the province of Candia; in Convent 1 of the province of Brescia, etc. Hence it was decreed in the provincial chapter of our province of St. Denis of the Recollects, celebrated in the year 1625 at Montargis in the diocese of Sens, that the Office of St. Roch should thenceforth be recited by us under a semidouble rite: which was confirmed in another following provincial Chapter at Paris in the year 1629; as is established from the same provincial statutes of the aforesaid province, chapter 2, article 1, published by the reverend Father Charles Rapine; but now it is made a double. Then indeed that rite was raised to a greater solemnity, as was said a little before from Hueber. Fremaut extends this thus: Pope Innocent XII in the year 1694 granted that all the Orders of St. Francis might celebrate the feast of St. Roch, as of a confessor of their Third Order, with the divine Office and Mass under the rite of a greater double.

\ Perhaps ruina*.

§ VI. The Saint's body translated to Venice; the difficulties which trouble this translation; the most magnificent church there; the confraternity, etc.

Concerning the Saint's body translated to Venice That translation is read set down by the testimonies of very many writers, and therefore we are more certain of it than of the manner in which it was accomplished, since different writers relate it differently. First, then, let us establish the fact. James Philip of Bergamo in his Supplement of the Chronicles, at the year of Christ 1327, has handed down to memory this to our purpose: But his (Roch's) holy body was in this year, which is 1485, carried by certain men by stealth to Venice, and was received by the Senate and the whole people with as great devotion and glory as any writer could tell: for they at once began to build him a most famous church at vast expense. And this matter that chronographer relates in the same year in which his Work is noted to have been printed at Brescia, namely 1485, so that a testimony of greater antiquity could not be desired. Yet elsewhere it is noted otherwise in him, as you may see below at number 60. But in the Paris edition of the same Work, published in the year 1535, it is said that it was stolen by stealth by certain men of the diocese of Tortona and carried to Venice, etc.

[54] writers indeed agree well enough; Pins in the Life narrates this: In this ancient, noble, and opulent city of Venice this most holy body is honored with a wondrous and incredible zeal and favor of all the citizens; nor is there reason why I should busy myself more wordily in narrating his innumerable miracles, etc. Where you see that the translation is not so much set down as presupposed. And by James of Bergamo how little or no light was given by that word by stealth? Nor more by others: not by the Supplement in Peter de Natalibus, published at Vicenza in the year 1493, where this is: In 1485 his body, carried by stealth to Venice, was most devoutly received by the Senate, and a most famous church built to his name; not by the Legend of Claude de Rota, printed in the year 1531; not by the Roman Martyrology of the year 1586, which marks indeed the fact but not the manner of the fact: His body was afterwards translated to Venice, and there honorably entombed; not by Krantz in the Metropolis, book 9, chapter 25; not by Spondanus, who more timidly than the rest says, His body was, AS THEY WILL HAVE IT, translated by stealth to Venice, etc.; not by Raynaldus at the year 1327 at the end: THEY SAY his body was translated to Venice. But in the year 1485, in which that translation is narrated to have happened, authors agree well enough. But the whole hinge of the matter of which we here treat turns on this, that some several other circumstances of it, at least historically probable in some measure, should be brought out.

[55] Francis Sansovino, in the city of Venice described by him and published there in the year 1581, folio 71 verso, but they disagree about the manner. records the Saint's body to have been brought thither from Germany by certain German merchants. Dominic Martinelli, in the book which he entitles Il Ritratto di Venezia, which may be called in Latin The city of Venice graphically portrayed; and which book was published there in the year 1684, also indicates at page 354 that the body of St. Roch was brought thither from Germany; but by whom, he does not add. But Arthur, alleged above, relates this otherwise in §3, citing others, namely that his body was honorably laid in the church built by his uncle; where it rested at Montpellier so long, until it was translated by theft to Venice by certain men of the diocese of Tortona in 1485. But in §4, correcting that opinion, he says: Not the body, but some portion of the body was carried to Venice. For how could the body of St. Roch have been carried out from Montpellier to Venice in the year 1485, whose greater and chief part and almost the whole was already preserved at Arles from the year 1372? See what we set forth on this matter from the same Arthur above in this Commentary, §2, number 19; to which add what was said in §3 of the parts of these relics of Arles, which are there recorded to have been distributed in various years of the sixteenth century. Hence therefore it comes about that that famous translation of St. Roch's body to Venice, if you consider the manner and the other circumstances, is altogether obscure, nor is it supported by any probable foundation of narrative, by force of which the truth of it may be fitly and conveniently persuaded to the reader. Can nothing more explicit, then, be hoped from elsewhere?

[56] Francis Ciapetti, in the Italian book which he calls la sacra magnificenza, etc., It is set forth — let us call it the monuments of the august Venetian Society of St. Roch, which were reprinted at Venice in the year 1678 together with the Life and translation of the same Saint — seemed, or let us rather say wished to seem, to have found a historical narrative of this deed, when toward the end of his work, being busy to set forth that translation, he heaps together indeed various circumstances of it, but produces no fit documents by which he may duly establish his matters; which it will suffice here to contract into a compendium. He says therefore that the Saint, translated of old from Montpellier by an unknown chance, long rested at Voghera (commonly Voghera, which I read to be a town of the Duchy of Milan, in the territory of Pavia, and once called by the name of Iria). And at the beginning indeed the Saint's cult there was frequent enough, as the cited author has it at page 105; but with the lapse of time it had so cooled altogether that the sacred building, through the negligence of the priest its keeper, no longer presented a sanctuary in which the people formerly venerated the Saint, but a workhouse in which he had been a captive and had been despised by his own while he lived. His memory, moreover, lived among foreigners, but among so few who made pilgrimage to that sacred deposit, that to few fell the happiness of seeing that miraculous body. And wonderfully, as he indicates at page 116, the desire of obtaining those relics of the Saint had kindled Thomas de Albertis, a Venetian merchant, at that time minister and afterwards most worthy prefect of the sodality

of his at Venice.

[57] He turned all his care to that end. His ample generosity, therefore, impelled to this theft first a certain John of Padua and Nicholas the German in the year of Christ 1483, the history about a year and a half before the sacred body was carried to Venice; then others; but without great result (page 117), until he fell in with Brother Maurus of St. Francis, a Camaldolese, who in the year 1484, in the month of August, was shut up at Venice in a dark prison on account of calumnies; but the help of St. Roch being implored, he was afterwards freed from it in the same month. Moreover it happened conveniently that that Brother thought of Voghera, being about to render to St. Roch the thanks which he had vowed: for when these had been paid by him there in the following month of October, Thomas earnestly commended his affair to him. But he, having fulfilled his vow, and not even then attempting the theft on account of the difficulties of the matter, departed, certainly then no richer than the rest. But on the XII day of the same month he set out on the journey, and on the XX reached the walls of Voghera; yet he did not then enter the place, but on the following day, that he might search out everything more diligently. Then he left nothing untried that he might obtain his wish; but, the matter being unaccomplished, returning to Venice he reported to Thomas de Albertis that he had been able to do nothing, because, although it was without any guard, yet this sacred deposit was shut up with four locks in all (page 118 and following).

[58] by which it is said But after four months, counsels being again shared with Thomas, undertaking the same journey he accomplished the whole matter, and brought the theft safely to Venice in the year 1485, on the III day of March (page 122 and following). And Ciapetti depicts the minutest circumstances of the deed so distinctly and so positively that you would say that he had been present there, and, observing and searching everything, had entered all and each in his tablets. But that a prudent reader should admit that history with the same ease with which it is there related, he will doubtless desire documents duly furnished from elsewhere. And the said writer will have it that in that sacred treasure carried off were the Saint's head, and likewise the bones of the arms and legs and of all the other members of the sacred body, except two little bones (page 124), of which a little later. Meanwhile Thomas de Albertis, prefect of the sodality of St. Roch, being informed of the deed by Brother Maurus on his return to Venice, moves every stone, as I may say, that, a severe and authentic examination being premised, it might be established that the body translated thither was truly the very body of that Saint. He communicates the deed to the most illustrious Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church: by whom he is bidden to begin a verifying process, as they call it: the cause is instituted and set forth by the said Thomas on the XXIX day of April in the year 1485: likewise Brother Maurus appears on the last day of April: he sets forth to the Patriarch the deed done by him, and corroborates it with an oath: nor are other testimonies wanting, as may be seen, according to Ciapetti, in the process juridically drawn up. Not content with these, the most illustrious Patriarch takes care that the sacred bones be examined, employing for this especially John George, who had inspected the sacred body at Voghera: Antony de Lapia also, dwelling at Venice, who five years before the body was carried off had distinctly observed it, lent his help. They approach therefore the body, and see that its characteristic marks agree with the account. Wherefore, the truth of the fact being also confirmed by the testimonies of many others, it seemed good to expose it to public veneration (page 126 and following).

[59] that the body of St. Roch was translated from Voghera to Venice. Furnished therefore with these certain notices, the most illustrious Patriarch judged that the body of St. Roch should be placed in a church consecrated under his name, that it might be honored by the faithful with due piety. But since the church which then stood was judged not fittingly enough to suit the greatness of so famous a Patron, the same most illustrious lord Gerard, having made an authentic report to the most excellent council of the Ten concerning the sacred body translated to Venice, at the same time by letters given on the XVIII day of May in the same year obtained from it the faculty that it should be lawful for the prefect of the sodality to build a new and more magnificent church of the Saint, the ancient one being destroyed, in which the sacred deposit might be placed: which was kindly granted him by it. Some months afterwards, therefore, with the retinue of a solemn pomp it is laid up in a certain small church, until that mass of building should rise in which it most honorably rests, and which is now held, says Ciapetti, in so great veneration that every year, besides the continual concourse of a numerous people who betake themselves thither to venerate that sacred pledge, the most serene Prince of the Venetian Republic, accompanied by a copious multitude of nobles, is present on the Saint's feast day at the most holy Sacrifice of the Mass. But of that magnificent church I shall speak below. Now from the aforesaid translation of the sacred body to the city of Venice certain consequences flow, which it is certainly altogether fitting to the present design to bring forward.

[60] For if all be true which Ciapetti so clearly related concerning that translation and all and singular its circumstances, Hence flow and which I have taken from his diffuse narrative — wherein especially he asserts that all the members of the body of St. Roch, two little bones excepted, were translated from Voghera to Venice in the year 1485 — then it is false, first, that the same body was translated by Apostolic authority from Montpellier to Arles in the year of Christ 1372, of which matter there was a treatment above at the end of §2. It is false, secondly, that those sacred relics, very many, were at divers times sought and obtained by divers persons from Arles: in comparison with which, how little and almost nothing is the fragment of bone which Louis, king of France, obtained through his orator at Venice, according to Ciapetti, page 137? Thirdly, the Venetian translation is greatly embarrassed by the fact that neither the year 1485 nor the foregoing circumstances of the history which Ciapetti recorded agree aptly enough with James Philip of Bergamo, who at the year of Christ 1478 says: Robert Sanseverino, universal commander of the forces of the Venetians … received the body or relics of St. Roch with the greatest solemnity, and placed them at the monastery of St. Job. These things are had in the Brescia edition of that contemporary chronologer, printed in the year 1485: which I add for this reason, that in the Paris edition, which appeared in the year 1553, I do not find these among the deeds of Robert Sanseverino; struck out perhaps or omitted, because he who edited that other impression saw that there, as they say, the water sticks. Fourthly, false are the documents of which we treated in §3. Fifthly, this alone remains, that we are now in the midst of a suit between the Venetians and the people of Arles concerning the true possession of the aforesaid body.

[61] That suit could indeed easily be decided and settled if each party would acquiesce in a notable portion of that same sacred treasure. consequences which embarrass that translation. And although it is not thus far certain to me whether the people of Arles claim more, since the body is recorded to have been first translated to them; yet Ciapetti claims more at page 124, indicating that from the chest preserved among the people of Voghera Brother Maurus took out the head, the bones of the arms and legs, and of all the other members which he found there, except two particles of bone, which he adds that he left there. Nothing therefore, if these things stand, have the people of Arles; nothing the others who are said to have obtained sacred relics from Arles. Hence arises the question, whose possession is the better, the Venetians' or that of the people of Arles? Arthur points to his documents, Ciapetti to his: but neither so produces them that both can be compared with one another and examined by me. And what fair arbiter of things would adjudge the cause to one of two litigating parties, the documents of both parties not being inspected and weighed? It remains, therefore, that theirs be the stronger cause whose stronger documents shall be produced: from which let them either settle this cause themselves, if they can, or commit it to others to be settled. Meanwhile it is worth noting that those things are altogether uncertain and wrapped in the darkness of oblivion which Ciapetti has from page 113 concerning the Saint's body translated to Voghera from Montpellier, and this he himself confesses. But Arthur distinctly notes by whom, to whom, by whose faculty, in what year and on what day the body of St. Roch was translated from Montpellier to Arles, and with how great a concourse of people it is there honored. But of these and other things let the competitors for that sacred deposit see; let them shake out their records, inspect the chest, examine the parts of the relics, and inform the learned what and how much of these they possess. For the whole, or almost the whole body of the Saint cannot be attributed to each.

[62] The Saint's name most famous among the Venetians Further, that the name of our holy Confessor is most famous among the Venetians is plain from the magnificent monuments of piety erected there out of a singular piety toward this great Deliverer. Of the church, the chapel, and the urn, and of the zeal of the peoples flocking from every side to his sacred body, Ciapetti treats at length at page 130 and following; but most fully of the sodality or confraternity most flourishing under the name of the same Saint, and of the works of mercy, the ornaments of the place, etc., from the beginning of his little work from page 7 to page 44, heaping up various eulogies upon this subject, which it is neither convenient nor fitting to transcribe hither, written by him in an oratorical style. Martinelli is briefer in the description of the church, at page 352 and following: and concerning the consecration of the same church he produces this inscription: Dominic Alerius, bishop of Chisamos, consecrated the church repaired from the foundations, with the tower next to it, and dedicated to St. Roch: which may be happy and fortunate forever to the college and to those who visit the church, in the year of Christian salvation 1508, on the Kalends of January, the first Sunday. But in what year the Saint's body is said to have been brought into that noble sepulchre, the following inscription in Ciapetti, page 136, indicates:

TO ST. ROCH, PRESERVER

OF THE CITIZENS FROM

EVERY PLAGUE, AND THIS

TOMB FOUNDED FOR HIS

RELICS. 1520.

[63] from various monuments there. The aforesaid Martinelli from page 354 treats of the confraternity of St. Roch and of the magnificent adornment of that same place: at whose steps he asserts that this inscription is read upon a marble tablet, which, since it conduces both to declare the intercession of the most holy Patron, most powerful with God against pestilential contagions, and to the praise of the confraternity, will not unfittingly be given here. Thus then it runs: 1576. Under Alvise Mocenigo, Doge of Venice, there raged a pestilential plague, than which none was ever either longer or more destructive, an avenger of our crimes; everywhere through the whole city corpses lay prostrate, beset with carbuncles, spots, and horrid buboes; in the same houses, at the same hour, funeral followed funeral. Everywhere tears, sighs, sobs: everywhere the pitiable aspect of a whole city, the citizens either suddenly dying, or, terrified by fear, forsaking their sweet country. At last at some time, the Virgin Mother of God and most blessed Roch interceding, this so sad and dire Fury seemed, at the end of the month of December, having begun to rage and be furious in March, to have lost almost all its force. And in that interval of time, when about four hundred brethren of our society had perished, to those same brethren and their families, by the care of that most excellent man Dominic Ferro, grand master of the society,

zeal, diligence, kindness, and charity were assuredly never wanting. And he indeed willed so great a disaster to be attested by this very monument, and that reading posterity might marvel, and follow with most pious tears the vast multitude of Venetians consumed by the cruelty of the plague. But since the pestilential poison, which is here so tragically related, and which is asserted by a public inscription, for the perpetual memory of the matter, to have been taken away by the Saint's patronage, was very famous, inasmuch as such a plague then raged than which none was ever either longer or more destructive, as was premised at the place just mentioned, it is plain that that evil is the same of which mention was made above in §3 at the end, and that the year 1576, memorable to posterity, is rightly noted there, according to what has already been premised; a grateful remembrance of this immortal beneficence surviving meanwhile even to this day among the Venetians after so long an interval of years, and that with a solemn acknowledgment of how much they owe to their most excellent Deliverer. Nor does the year 1492, marked from elsewhere in that same paragraph, please, because, if there was then a pestilence at Venice, it did not rage so lamentably; and accordingly it did not leave behind it so great a cause of piety as that earlier one of which I spoke.

§ VII. Various copies of the Life reviewed.

The Life which Diedo Since several copies of the Life of St. Roch are preserved among us, we have thought it our part to inform the reader concerning them. And first indeed we shall speak of that which we have in manuscript, prefaced with this title: The Prologue of the Life of St. Roch the confessor, from the library of St. Gall. The Life is preceded by the author's letter; and this by his name, etc., in this manner: Francis Diedo, philosopher, jurist, prefect of Brescia, to the commonwealth and city of Brescia, greeting. James Philip of Bergamo, cited before, adorns him with deserved praises at the year of Christ 1471: Francis Diedo, a most noble patrician of the Venetians, most learned in philosophy and in Pontifical and civil law, and unremittingly devoted to the Venetian Republic, was in these same times held in the greatest esteem and honor, for his learning and eloquence of speech, not only by the Venetian senate, but with the supreme Pontiff and other Christian potentates, to whom he was often sent as orator. For although he was excellently skilled in laws and poems and histories, and understood most subtly with a most penetrating genius both philosophy and divine things, yet he brought forth in elegant style, while he was prefect of Brescia, the history of St. Roch the confessor, on account of the peril of the plague, and composed other little works of devotion. At length, when he was discharging the office of captain at Verona in the year of the Lord 1483, he there departed this life.

[65] And he applied his mind to writing the Saint's deeds in consequence of a vow; published in consequence of a vow, We have thought it worthy, as he says in the cited letter, most illustrious citizens … to vow to God, first indeed that we would by no right offend His majesty; to erect a church, that is, a basilica … lastly, that we would weave together his history and the course of his life. But whence he wove them he had premised in the same place at the very beginning of his preface or letter, in these words: Although concerning Roch … we have nothing certain ascertained from ancient and sacred codices: yet, lest the family, pilgrimage, life, and death of this most holy Man should be in obscurity, we have gathered some things both from certain barbarous fragments and from Latin ones, written however in a spring-like tongue and with a rude Minerva; from which we have found that he was a servant of God and given divinely to his parents: by whose charm, sanctity, and glory being allured, we have judged that he above the rest was to be imitated, pursued, and adorned by us. Nor indeed were the vows which we just now recorded from the author himself frustrated of a most desired issue. For after he had related them, he presently subjoins: Not by the aid of physicians \ or of other men, but by the prayers of Roch and the clemency of God, the whole city so returned wholly free from the epidemic as if it had never before been seized with a sickness of this kind.*

[66] when it was written. But when he published his lucubration on the life of St. Roch — to be fitted, of course, to the press, since the typographic art had been invented by that century — I draw from the close of his letter in our copy transcribed from the library of St. Gall, namely: On the day before the Kalends of June, in the year of the Lord one thousand four hundred and seventy-eight. And what end the author set before himself in his writing, he indicates in the same letter: We did not, he says, check tongue or pen before we had fulfilled our vow. And lest the memory of such great matters, to be committed to writing for our own and future ages, should altogether lie hid, we willed to devote that little leisure which is left us from public and private business to the setting forth of these things, partly that we might please the immortal God and Roch, partly that we might bring pleasure to this our city, which we exceedingly love, and delight also to learned men … And so I think that no judge will be so unjust toward me as to condemn this our little work, by which we have fulfilled our vow: which … will bring at least this profit to the learned, that, our errors being corrected, they may be able more eloquently or more copiously to adorn the Life of the most illustrious Roch.

[67] From the letter of Maldura Nor indeed do we judge that the letter of Peter Louis Maldura to Diedo should be kept from the press, but that it should be given here — not only because it is had neither in the ancient edition of the Life of St. Roch which we have, nor in the Valerian, nor in the Surian, but for other reasons also, as will be made plain from what we shall say below concerning that letter. Behold it for thee from our manuscript of the library of St. Gall, in which it stands after the Life of St. Roch, with this title and written to this effect: To the magnificent and most illustrious Francis Diedo, a pillar of the senatorial Order, nursling of philosophy, most learned in Imperial and Pontifical law, and well-deserving prefect of Brescia, Peter Louis Malditra (rather Maldura) sends very much greeting. Although it is proper to good works that they need no external commender, but attest their own grace of themselves; and though that which is approved by sight is more than that which is praised in speech (for it uses its own testimony, not another's suffrage); and though the work composed by thee, most excellent man, in praise of St. Roch in a lofty style, is itself attested with most abundant credit by all Brescia (over which, while thou wast ruling, thou didst this), by reason of the elegance of learned speech applied to it, and the abundance and gravity of the greatest matters — so that it can neither be crushed by the censure of the sharpest malevolent man, nor exalted by the commendation of the most learned: yet I have judged it my part, for my most burning love and reverence toward Roch, both to congratulate thee for so great a gift given to Christian men, and at the same time to render immortal thanks, because thou hast not suffered the praises and heraldings of so great a Man, which he had procured for himself with long watching and with a foregoing hand, to lie longer in obscurity.

[68] For thou hast embraced all things so acutely, so concisely, so weightily to Diedo concerning the Life of St. Roch, — his manners, acts, life, all — that nothing richer, nothing more splendid, nothing finally more polished can be said or thought than this compendious little work of thine. For thou hast so set before all men's eyes a matter before wholly unknown, designating the places both ancient and old by name, not passing over the miracles in silence, that among posterity the life of Roch, which has now long lain buried in darkness either through the carelessness of writers or through slight religion toward God, has by thy work, thy zeal, thy holiness been made most fully attested. Wherefore I doubt not that so laudable a compendium will be far approved by all: I should even believe that there will be many who, led by thy example and thinking the argument prepared for them by thee, will attempt to extol the merits of Roch with a longer compass of speech. But I foresee that they will spend their labor and oil in vain: for they will do what has been done, and will recognize that the opportunity in that matter has been snatched from their minds \.*

[69] Wherefore let them cease, whomsoever I admonish, to curl thy little lucubrations for Roch with the curling-irons: it is concluded, lest, whence they hope for praise, they incur the derision of the whole people, and perhaps the indignation of Roch: by whose nod and will I think it came about that for thee, a most learned man, most observant of the fair and the true, and the most praised of all in our memory, the praises of so praiseworthy a Man were reserved, whereby they should have more grace, weight, and credit among mortals. Farewell, ornament of the senatorial Order, and host and pillar of the good arts, etc.

But how agreeable to our present design it is to have produced this letter will become plain from our observations upon it, which we set before the reader to be weighed.

[70] First, who would not gather from the said letter, and most certainly conclude, that this, not that, is the author that by Maldura, its author, not only are the things which Diedo wrote concerning St. Roch praised, but that the same Maldura never afterwards even dared to undertake such a work, or to persuade another to undertake it? So that it altogether follows that Maldura never published anything of that Life. James Philip of Bergamo, cited above, praises him at the year 1471: Peter, he says, de la Maldura of Bergamo, of the sacred Order of Preachers, a most acute doctor of sacred theology, etc. Then besides his Work on St. Thomas, of which the same author there treats, some others, as he adds, they relate that he published, which, he says, I have not deserved to see (where you see that there is nothing about the Acts of St. Roch). At last that excellent man died at Piacenza, with a great heralding of sanctity, in the year from Christ's birth 1482. Échard illustrates him more fully among the Writers of the Order of Preachers reviewed, volume 1 from page 863, where he is called Brother Peter of Bergamo; but among his writings of which there is discourse I likewise find nothing concerning St. Roch. There also he is marked to have died at Piacenza in the year 1482. The aforesaid Échard warns that the Portuguese writer must be corrected, when … he divides into two one man, called de la Maldura and of Bergamo.

[71] Secondly, from these premises it is concluded that the Life which stands in Surius under the authorship of Peter Louis Maldura of that same Life: is not Maldura's, but Diedo's: for it is of the same argument, although it is printed there without the prefatory letter to the people of Brescia and without Maldura's letter to Diedo: had these been present in Surius's copy, the editor would without doubt have noted Diedo, and not Maldura, as the author of that Life. Into which error perhaps another copy led him, printed in older type, which I have before me; but I find in it neither the place, nor the printer, nor the year in which it was published. And it bears this title: Peter Louis Maldura on the Life of St. Roch, a most worthy intercessor with the Lord against the plague of the epidemic, together with his Office. This copy therefore is of the same argument as the Surian, presents the same author, keeps the same manner of narrating the Life without either of the letters of which I spoke. Whence the suspicion has occurred to us that either from this printed copy, or from a like manuscript copy, the Acts of St. Roch passed into the Surian edition. But in another printed copy which is among us Diedo's name is prefixed.

[72] whence a certain modern biographer is corrected. Thirdly, from what has been said above it is clear that Baillet groped in the dark like a blind man, when in his critical table of the authors and Acts of the month of August, which stands in him before that month, at page XV, treating of the biographers of St. Roch, he uses so wretched a criterion that, such as it is, it almost wholly deserves to be struck out, being composed of an accumulated heap of falsehoods. Hear his absurdities. His Life, as he there reports, written by Peter Louis Maldura, is found in the Surian collection. He wrote only after the body of St. Roch had been translated to Venice, which happened in the year 1485: whence he judges that Francis Diedo, a Venetian noble, was transcribed by him, who composed the first history which was had of St. Roch down to that time, a short time before, when he was prefect of Brescia. He adds that it is very probable that that Maldura is the same as Peter Maldura of Bergamo of the Order of Preachers, who at that same time was teaching theology at Bologna: to these things, that Diedo is said to have composed that work out of devotion, that he might preserve himself safe from the plague; but that there is room for doubting whether he had any other titles than what was published among the common people concerning the events and miracles of our Saint; that Maldura seems to dissemble that he was an Italian, when he says that it was Italians from whom he had received the knowledge of the name of St. Roch. These are the things which we have excerpted from that hypercritic; but how liberal a sponge is needed to wipe away all those stains is not obscurely clear from what has been said before, and from the same source they can be wiped away. But of what kind the Acts of Diedo are, we shall indicate afterwards. Now meanwhile let us bring forward certain other copies.

[73] Other copies There is among us another history rendered from Italian into German in the city of Vienna in Austria, printed at Nuremberg in the year after Christ's nativity 1484, for the honoring of St. Roch and of his life and merits with God, not yet then very well known in those lands. It relates the Saint's deeds in substance as they are commonly circulated. Yet I read nothing there of the deed of the council of Constance. Consult what was premised on that matter above in §2. Then the Acts of our Confessor were published in Latin under this title: To the most illustrious Lord, the Lord Antony du Prat, most worthy great chancellor of both Gauls, the Life of St. Roch of Narbonne, published by John Pins of Toulouse. After its end is placed the following colophon: The Life of St. Roch of Narbonne published by John Pins of Toulouse, senator and royal orator, ends: printed first at Venice by Alexander de Bindonis in the year of the Lord one thousand five hundred and sixteen, on the ninth of the Kalends of November: and again at Paris in the same year by Jodocus Badius on the Ides of March. And it describes the Saint's deeds, which are everywhere narrated.

[74] In Peter de Natalibus, bishop of Equilino, both printed in the Catalogue of the Saints, printed at Vicenza in the year 1493, after the end, in its Supplement or appendix, chapter 15, there stands a compendium of the Life of St. Roch. But what is there at the end — In the year … 1485 his body, carried by stealth to Venice, was most devoutly received by the Senate, and a most famous church built to his name — this, I say, must have been added by another, according to what our Henschen wrote in our codex: Peter de Natalibus began the Catalogue of the Saints in the year 1369 on the day of St. Barnabas, being still parish priest of the Holy Apostles at Venice; he finished it in the year 1371 on the 16th of May, having been made bishop of Equilino. So it is handed down in the manuscript Codex of the lord John Angelo, Duke of Altemps, in Thaddeus Donnola's Treatise on the place of the martyrdom of St. Felix, bishop of Spello, published at Venice in 1620. Nay rather, that that Supplement or appendix does not agree with the age in which the aforesaid Peter flourished, will be said afterwards. And with the compendium just designated agrees that which stands in Claude de Rota in his Legend printed in the year 1531: where however another year of death is marked, as I shall say below. The more recent biographers we pass over, intending to proceed to the manuscript copies.

[75] Besides the manuscript from the library of St. Gall, which we mentioned before, and in manuscript. there are some others among us, among which is that which Chifflet sent hither from a manuscript codex, and which thus begins: It is established that Roch was begotten of his father John and of his mother by the name of Libera. He had for his native place Montpellier, which was formerly called Agatha or Agathopolis, a not ignoble town of Narbonese Gaul. Which words are common to this anonymous codex with the opening of Diedo's Life. But this last is much more prolix than that of this anonymous writer; who abstains from chronological notes of the years of Christ to be fitted to the history of St. Roch, from which the time of his life and death might be determined: nor does he report his recognition after death, nor anything else which others write happened after it, concluding his narrative with these few words: At last Roch dies: whose soul is borne by angels into the heavens. But although it is very much contracted, yet it exhibits the common marks of the Rochian history.

\ Read perspicacissimo*. \* That is, of physicians. \ Perhaps recenti, or recentia*. \ Perhaps omnem*.

§ VIII. The Belfort manuscript singular concerning the Saint's return and therefore concerning the place of his death; our judgment on the Acts of St. Roch; the year and day of his death; which Lives, and why, are given by us in preference to others.

To the transcripts already reviewed another must be added, which stands among us, and is noted as taken from a manuscript of Belfort, who writes that he has these things from a manuscript of the Bethlehemites near Louvain, The Belfort copy weaves the Life more briefly than Diedo: and that he collated it with a manuscript of the Celestines of Paris and of Amiens. And that transcript narrates our Saint's deeds more briefly than Diedo. Yet it does not call them to chronological reckonings, from which the beginning or end of his life might be gathered. What it affirms concerning St. Roch's father you have above in §1, number 2. It has nothing of the plague extinguished among the Fathers of the council of Constance by his invocation and patronage. But after the Saint's history in that manuscript copy an appendix is subjoined from a manuscript of the Celestine Fathers at Paris, and in it that deed among the people of Constance is also narrated. Further, the Belfort transcript, although otherwise sufficiently accommodated to the common features of the Rochian history, has yet one singular point against the torrent of writers, when namely it affirms that the holy Pilgrim, his affairs in Italy being dispatched, betook himself to Angleria, a province of Lombardy toward Germany, and there exchanged life for death. Its text may be consulted below among us in chapter 2, number 14; which if you shall wish to compare with Diedo's, you will observe, first, that the anonymous author of it relates more concisely what Diedo has set forth more fully.

[77] [in which copy the Saint is said not to have returned into Narbonese Gaul, but to Angleria:] But whether that anonymous writer took his briefer Life from that biographer, or from sheets or documents which gave light to the latter, is not established for us. But if you weigh the text of both, you will see that they agree almost in the substance of the matter. Secondly, the fragment of the anonymous writer indicates, as was signified above, when it places Angleria, a province of Lombardy toward Germany, whither our Saint, about to return from Italy to his native land, withdrew: concerning which place see our Annotations to chapter 2 of Diedo's Life, letter d. Hence it would follow on his system that the captivity, death, recognition, etc., of our holy Pilgrim happened outside Narbonese Gaul; which is contrary to other writers everywhere. But we do not dare to gainsay their opinion, so commonly handed down, and to subscribe to the view of a particular biographer, especially since he is of uncertain date and name and of uncertain authority: and although, to confess candidly, the other biographers also whom I have seen are of slight authority, yet we have preferred here to speak with the greater number rather than to follow that anonymous writer. Other authors, therefore, determine otherwise about the present matter, speaking thus of the Saint's return from Italy into Narbonese Gaul and of the place of his death:

[78] which is opposed by the other writers of the Life everywhere. Diedo in the Life, among us in chapter 4, says: He was brought into Gaul … Directing his journey therefore into his native land, he came to a certain town which Roch had given … to his uncle, etc. Pins: Thence he began to return into his native land … and there for five years was miserably kept in chains. In Peter de Natalibus, in the Supplement: He returned into Gaul, and being taken in his father's town … is thrust … into prison, in which, five years being spent … he fell asleep in peace. James Philip of Bergamo at the year of Christ 1327: And departing thence, God accompanying him, he was brought … into Gaul … Coming at last to the first fortified town, being seized as a spy, he is thrust into chains and into prison, and there spent the space of five years. There is added to this, that the Roman Martyrology announces him thus: In Narbonese Gaul at Montpellier, etc. Spondanus, designated before, says: Returning to Montpellier, when, being unknown to all, he had been seized as a spy, etc. From these we do not support the Life rendered from Italian into German, of which above at number 73: for although it does not name the places which the anonymous writer above expressed, yet it indicates that St. Roch, departing from Italy, sought a certain city toward the German tracts, and was there delivered into captivity, etc.

[79] The reader will rightly require and expect what should be thought of the history of that Saint, The Acts, to the celebrity and age of this Saint marvelous indeed enough, but confirmed with no great weight of legitimate authority, as I just now indicated. Our Papebroch long ago left this concerning it committed to writing in a certain posthumous sheet: Of all the things which are read written concerning this Saint, since not all rest upon certain credit, one thing seems to be established: that he came from Narbonese Gaul into Italy, at the time of some great mortality (such as was in the year 1348 and the following), and first to Acquapendente, then also to Rome; and at last, after various cities of Italy had been aided, that he came to Piacenza, freeing many everywhere by means of the sign of the cross. Yet, being himself seized with the plague, lest he should be a burden to others, he withdrew to a certain hut of Sarmato beyond the Trebia; where the hunting dog of a certain noble Gothard, carrying off loaves from his master's table, fed him, until, being divinely healed, he returned to Montpellier his native place. There, being taken as a spy, he died in prison. But the name and sanctity of the Man being disclosed by demoniacs, he was honorably buried, and began to be held as a patron against the plague. And when in the year 1414 this had become known at Constance to the Fathers gathered there for the council, and, a supplication being instituted, the plague had ceased; they afterwards, returning to their own countries, propagated everywhere the veneration of Roch. The Venetians say that they have his body in the convent of his name from the year

1485: but it is established that the greater part was carried to Arles in the year 1372, and that from there relics were communicated to many. So he, the matter being at that time still premature. There may therefore be consulted what we have weighed above in §2 concerning the council of Constance; and concerning the body translated, in the same place, and in §6.

[80] Meanwhile it will seem wonderful that so illustrious a Saint has not Acts of a better stamp. not sufficiently agreeing. But let us consider that the ways of divine providence are various and unsearchable, by which He glorifies those who glorify Him: some indeed both in life and in death; but others chiefly after death, as seems to have happened to St. Roch: whose deeds, not a few, while he lived, came to the knowledge of men in an obscure manner, that they might transmit them to posterity; but how great his merit was with God, and how precious his death in the sight of the Lord, the same Lord willed to declare by the most manifest signs of public veneration, through his most present patronage against the pestilential plague, through confraternities erected, sacred buildings, supplications, pilgrimages, and vows; by which He made his name illustrious everywhere on earth, and propagated it so far that the whole race of men, by a certain innate piety, is busy to render this great Deliverer propitious to itself with God, with zeal as it were vying in invoking, esteeming, and loving him; which happens especially when the divine justice, avenger of human sins, hurls upon them the deadly scourge of a tragic plague.

[81] But besides those things which through the course of this Commentary we have noted as needing correction in the Rochian history, The year and day of his death, it is worth while also to remember that the year of his death which the writers mark causes trouble. It is the common opinion that the Saint departed from this life in the year of Christ 1327. So Diedo, so the Compendium of the Life in Peter de Natalibus, so James Philip of Bergamo, Spondanus, Bzovius, Catel. In Claude de Rota the year 1322 is marked; but by the fault, as I suspect, of the copyist or of the typesetter. He is also reported to have died in the thirty-second year of his age. Which if it be true, his birth belongs to the year of Christ 1295. The aforesaid James Philip places the day of his death on the sixteenth of the Kalends of September, as also do the cited Compendium and Catel; and Diedo too, at least in our manuscript; for in the two printed copies the seventeenth of the Kalends of September is noted. But Pins marks that he died on the sixteenth of the Kalends of August, if that placing be his and genuine, and not corrupted by another. But concerning the year 1327, to return to it, in which they set down his death, some observations remain.

[82] and also of his deeds in Italy If true things are related of the Saint, in about the twentieth year of his age he set out into Italy. And having crossed the ridges and windings of the Alps and entered Italy, he came to a town which the inhabitants call Acquapendente: for that was vexed with a most savage plague, as may be seen in Diedo's Life among us at chapter 2 near the beginning. And what wondrous healings he there wrought, and in other places throughout Italy, in taking away the pestilential plague, the same biographers afterwards commemorate at length. Which, that they may be true, it is necessary that there be found about the year of Christ 1315, in about the twentieth year of St. Roch's age — if those things stand which I have said of it from common opinion — a plague which then raged through Italy, and a plague of such a kind that it may seem able to be accommodated to the wonders wrought there by him, of which the authors speak. As I inquired, there occurred to me in Spondanus, at the aforesaid year of Christ 1315, number 6, a pestilence which so consumed almost all Europe that a third part of men is thought to have been carried off by it. But someone will object: Although the year is suited to our purpose, yet that does not seem to be the pestilence which we are investigating; for Diedo and the others who have handed down to memory the deeds of the Saint seem only to indicate a pestilential contagion which raged through Italy, not one which raged through almost all Europe, since they enumerate various cities of Italy indeed as saved by him. But it may be answered that the writers speak of Italy alone (whatever be the case with other regions of Europe) because with them the discourse is chiefly of Roch alone, who in Italy alone played those admirable parts of a great deliverer, the remaining regions of Europe not belonging to their purpose.

[83] in the time of a plague. But let us proceed a little further. James Philip of Bergamo at the year of Christ 1348 says: A mournful and pitiable plague began this year, and for three years raged through almost the whole world, which, creeping everywhere through the provinces … so raged that scarcely one in ten out of a thousand men survived. Its tragic scene Spondanus and Raynaldus, the continuators of Baronius, represent more fully at that year. If the reader will look to this with Papebroch, alleged above, then, according to what I reported a little before from the writers, the Saint's birth may be attached to the year of Christ 1328, his pilgrimage to Italy to the year 1348, and his death to 1360, if, as is reported, he departed this life in the 32nd year of his age. I have said, according to what I reported from the writers. But since these things are so obscure and uncertain, and it is not certainly established which of the two contagions is more suited to the present matter, it has pleased me rather at the beginning of this Commentary to fix the year of the Saint's death in the fourteenth century than to a determined year of that century.

[84] It remains that I forewarn the reader concerning the two Latin copies of the Life, Certain observations of which one was formerly published in print, the other is in manuscript, which we are presently to print. The Latin Acts of Diedo are older than those of Pins: yet the lucubration of the latter seems to us of better stamp than that of the former, because less amplified and wordy; yet so that, if you look to the subject of each, the substance of both is almost the same: whether Pins contracted this from Diedo we have not ascertained. But since the Acts of the latter have a far greater age than his, it has seemed good to commit Diedo's to the press. In antiquity indeed Peter de Natalibus preceded; but besides that in him there is nothing but a compendium in the Supplement or appendix to the Catalogue of the Saints which he wrote, many things persuade that that compendium itself, as also the said appendix or supplement, is not by that author. For first, the little preface prefixed to it not obscurely indicates this, when it says: After we have come to the end of the book (namely of the Catalogue of the Saints) … it has seemed to us that it would not be useless to subjoin the deeds of certain Saints, which, imitating THE AUTHOR OF THIS (namely of the history or Catalogue), we have culled from their histories. Secondly, the same is persuaded by the noting of years, which by no means agree with Peter's age, of which was said above in §7, number 74. For in chapter 4 the canonization of St. Vincent Ferrer is placed in the year 1455; in chapter 7 the translation of St. Catherine of Siena in 1430, her canonization in 1460; in chapter 9 the translation of St. Monica in 1417; in chapter 11 the death of St. Bernardine of Siena in 1443, his canonization in 1450, his translation in 1472. More of this kind may be seen in the same place in chapters 12, 15 (which is on St. Roch), and likewise chapter 22.

[85] But besides what I have premised concerning his age, I read in the Chronological Library of our Labbe concerning the two that the Catalogue of the Saints was brought by him to its end on the XXVI of May in the year 1382. In the new edition of Italia Sacra, volume 10 or the Appendix, in which Equilino is placed among the Ughellian anecdotes concerning the antiquated bishoprics of Italy, at column 87 it is said: Peter de Natalibus … was already adorning the see of Equilino in the year 1372, on the XXVI day of May, being made bishop from being parish priest of the parish church of the Holy Apostles, at least after the eleventh day of June 1369 \, on which he was still administering the aforesaid church of the Holy Apostles. Frequent mention is then made of him in the old charters which I have seen, down to the year 1400. If these things be so, Vossius erred, in the Latin Historians, book 3, chapter 8, when he reports that about the year 1470 he published certain histories of the Saints. Oudin erred, when in the Commentary on Ecclesiastical Writers, volume 3, column 2647, he writes thus: Peter de Natalibus, bishop of Equilino, whom in the first attempt of this Work I had wrongly placed at the year 1380, erring by almost a whole century, is read to have flourished about this year 1460 and the following. But the flight from error led him into error. He is read, he says; but that "he is read" is nothing, if it be compared with the eyewitness testimony of Ughelli, who saw the old charters to the contrary. Who wove the series of those prelates from the year of Christ 876 down at least to the year 1463, in which he treats of Andrew Bono, the last bishop of the see of Equilino. Who, after he had made mention of the said old charters down to the year 1400, says: in which, from the praetorian record-office of Torcello, Christopher de Gibiginis, beneficed in the church of St. Paul of Venice, procurator of Peter Natalis, bishop of Equilino, presses the praetor of Torcello for the execution of a sentence passed by the patriarch of Grado against a certain Rodolph de Prato. What would you more? Miraeus therefore must also be corrected in his Supplement on ecclesiastical writers, chapter 511, when he records that about the year one thousand four hundred and seventy he briefly put together certain histories of the Saints; and Noël Alexandre, in volume 8 of his Ecclesiastical History*, published at Paris in the year 1714, page 180, laboring under the same parachronism. These things on occasion of Peter de Natalibus, too many indeed for our purpose, but not without fruit for the common good, that his age may from so gross and so common an error be brought back to the true reckoning of time. But let us now return to Diedo, than whom we know none more ancient who prefixed his name to the Acts of St. Roch.

[86] Lives Since these things therefore are so, it is our mind to reprint Diedo's Life, although I well know that it needs a liberal sponge, and that it is abundantly stuffed with digressions, amplifications, and trifles of that kind, which the same author either found in the sheets which he used or himself wove in. I know besides that that recognition by which St. Roch after death became known to men, being before unknown in captivity, is very marvelous; which to critics of a more delicate nose will perhaps seem to have something of the catastrophes with which stage plays are wont to be adorned. But we, who so far as we can, truth being preserved, ought to favor the Acts of the Saints, do not dare to brand this recognition with the censure of falsity. Yet there are certain other things in them to be corrected: concerning which consult what we have said above in the Commentary, and shall further say in our Annotations to this Life. And indeed, what copy is there that does not need correction, since the substance of almost all is one, agreeing so far in the chief facts (whatever be the case with their accidents) that he who knows one Life knows all — from a fountain, as

it seems, not sufficiently clear and bright? More concerning Diedo and his lucubration has been premised above. Further, we shall produce it from our transcript, which is noted as copied from the library of St. Gall (a most famous monastery of the Order of St. Benedict among the Helvetians in the diocese of Constance; concerning which Mabillon in the Annals of that Order). But since it is faulty, we have collated it with the Life published in the most illustrious Augustine Valerio in his Holy bishops of Verona, etc., which stands there from folio 58 verso, and also with another ancient impression of the same Life, that it might come forth among us more correct. And so much thus far concerning the printed Life of St. Roch.

[87] which we commit to the press. Nor indeed does the Belfort manuscript copy, of which mention was made above, seem to be kept from the press. First, because it is a manuscript, nor, so far as we know, hitherto published. Secondly, because although the author be of uncertain name and time, yet it is not certain to us whether he did not write the Life of St. Roch before Diedo outside Italy, and perhaps in Gaul, since from the collation of the Belfort transcript with two other copies it is clearly established that it was preserved in Gaul. Thirdly, because it is short enough and neat. Fourthly, because although in the substance of the narrative it agrees almost with Diedo's, yet it differs much in the manner of narration, so that this may seem able to be reckoned a critique of that. Fifthly, because the author seems more rightly and more sincerely — let us say also more happily — not to have marked the notes of time from which a chronology of the deeds done by the Saint might be formed. And indeed that anonymous writer perhaps preferred to mark no such notes rather than such uncertain and obscure ones that he could find in them solidly neither beginning nor end. For these causes, then, taken together, we shall set before thine eyes, reader, the Acts of this anonymous writer after this Life such as it is, composed by Diedo; both divided into numbers and chapters after our custom.

\* Read 1369.

THE LIFE

By Francis Diedo, prefect of the city of Brescia,

from the library of St. Gall, collated with two editions.

Roch, confessor, at Montpellier (St.)

BHL Number: 7273

By Francis Diedo.

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

The author writes this Life from uncertain documents, Francis Diedo, philosopher, jurist, prefect of Brescia, to the commonwealth and city of Brescia, greeting. Although concerning Roch, whose life we are about to write, we have nothing certain ascertained from ancient and sacred codices; yet, lest the family, pilgrimage, life, and death of this most holy Man should be in obscurity, we have gathered some things both from certain barbarous fragments and from Latin ones, written however in a spring-like tongue and with a rude Minerva; from which we have found that he was a servant of God and given divinely to his parents: by whose charm, sanctity, and glory being allured, we have judged that he above the rest should be imitated, pursued, and adorned by us. For although there are many studies of letters which can bring honor to men, yet I think that one is above all to be desired which pertains to the right rule of living. Which instruction indeed no one could ever worthily enough praise, extol, or embrace. For if the recollection of the most illustrious Greeks and Romans, and his deeds which are vain and proper to the heathen, vehemently kindles the minds of mortals to the pursuit of glory, how much more ought we to imitate the deeds of holy men, and their life and manners, who save body and soul together, and by their excellent institutes make us worthy of the divine gift?

[2] Wherefore let us set these before us to be imitated; let us look upon and contemplate these. and out of a vow, on account of the city of Brescia, For generally in instructing men one imitates painters (who instruct their disciples not only with words but also with certain images set before them), that we may the more easily kindle their minds to the cultivation of the best arts. And since this is so, as we were considering by what means we might render God, angry through our fault, kindly toward us, and might free this most illustrious city of Brescia, almost overwhelmed by a most savage plague ^a — the city, I say, which is the defense and bulwark of the Venetian Republic, which in the storm of war, when matters were at such a pass that all things were laid waste by the enemy with sword and flame, stood firm, resolved rather to suffer whatever is more bitter than death than to fall away from fidelity to the Venetians: we have thought it worthy, most illustrious citizens, as does not escape you, to vow these three things to the most good and great God. First indeed, that if by the prayers of Roch He should dispose your minds to the true knowledge of Himself, so far as human frailty allows, we would by no right \ offend His majesty; to erect a church, that is, a basilica worthy of the Venetian \ state and of the most glorious Roch; lastly, that we would weave together his history and the course of his life, that by this Saint's example we might allure others to live well, happily, and rightly. Which being done, and the foundations of the church being laid, not by the aid of physicians \ or of other men, but by the prayers of Roch and the clemency of God, the whole city so returned \ wholly free from the epidemic, as if it had never before been seized with a sickness of this kind.

[3] freed by the Saint's patronage from a most savage plague. Wherefore, although this most holy Man had shone brightly enough among the Germans and the French, and had given wondrous proofs of sanctity, yet being led by this recent gift and by the greatest example of so great a matter in our own time, we did not check tongue or pen before we had fulfilled our vow. And lest the memory of such great matters, to be committed to writing for our own and future ages, should altogether lie hid, we willed to devote that little leisure which is left us from public and private business to the setting forth of these things; partly that we might please the immortal God and Roch; partly that we might bring pleasure to this our city, which we exceedingly love, and delight also to learned men. Apply your minds, therefore, most excellent citizens, to our lucubration, and read through the institutes of Roch, which can vie with the rest in austerity of life and greatness of glory: which, since they are worthy of everlasting memory, we cannot but wonder that certain most learned men of our age have not undertaken this task of writing or interpreting them, and have suffered them so long to lie hid among barbarians and in obscurity. And so I think that no judge will be so unjust toward me as to condemn this our little work, by which we have fulfilled our vow. Which, although it does not answer to the dignity and merits of the holy Man, will bring at least this profit to the learned, that, our errors being corrected, they may be able more eloquently or more copiously to adorn the life of the most illustrious Roch. If only they will not disdain to read these our little writings more carefully, they will perhaps judge that the labor was spent by us not unpleasantly or uselessly. Farewell ^b. On the day before the Kalends of June in the year of the Lord one thousand four hundred and seventy-eight.

ANNOTATIONS.

\ Elsewhere nulla in re*. \ Elsewhere Veneta* is not found. \* That is, of physicians. \ Valerio: redditur*.

THE ANCIENT CHAPTER HEADINGS FROM THE MANUSCRIPT OF THE LIBRARY OF ST. GALL.

The Prologue of the Life of St. Roch the confessor.

Chapter I. Of his birth.

Chapter II. Of his training and learning.

Chapter III. Of his parents, their death, and his bereavement.

Chapter IV. How he handed over his principality to the prefect.

Chapter V. How at Rome he heard the confession of a Cardinal, and freed him from the plague by the sign of the Cross.

Chapter VI. How Roch after the Cardinal's death left Rome, and heard a voice on the way, etc.

Chapter VII. How a rich man's dog daily brought bread to Roch, and at last converted the rich man, etc.

Chapter VIII. How Roch at last bade the rich man go begging.

Chapter IX. How Roch was healed by an angel.

Chapter X. How Roch was imprisoned by his own prefect, etc.

Chapter XI. How he died, and what was done after his death by the prefect and his wife.

Chapter XII. How the city of Constance during its council was freed from the plague by the intercession of St. Roch.

CHAPTER I.

The Saint's birth; his education; his contempt of the world; the death of his parents; his goods distributed to the poor.

Chapter I.

It is established that Roch was begotten of his father John and of his mother by the name of Libera. He had for his native place Montpellier, What parents the Saint had: which was formerly called Agatha or Agathopolis ^a, a not ignoble town of Narbonese Gaul: over which, and over certain others, his father himself ruled, not after the manner of tyrants, but with justice, integrity, prudence, the fear of God, and the good will and favor of all his people ^b. Who, although he practiced military discipline through almost all his life and was engaged in it, yet, despising the softness and allurements of this world as fleeting and of little moment, worshipped God with all faith and charity; not unaware that to a man who fears God nothing anywhere is lacking, and that all fortunes flow to him from every side, and all things fall out for him according to his wishes. Wherefore he set the immortal God before himself as his guide in the doing of all things.

[5] He, having a wife unfruitful and barren and brought on even to old age, Prayers being poured out to God and to the Mother of God not knowing by what means he might obtain offspring from her (which he wonderfully desired: for it is implanted in all by nature to desire a posterity from ourselves, in which we judge that we are perpetuated), exhorts her that she should go as a suppliant to the immortal God and to the Virgin Mother of the Savior, and pray that a son might be given her, useful and fruitful to all, pleasing to God, whose glory he should not only guard but strive to increase and make illustrious. The wife, most obedient to her husband, with eyes raised to heaven, implores the help of God and of the Virgin in these words:

[6] Thee, Parent of all things, and thee, Queen of the world, Virgin, the only hope of mortals, the mother asks him and obtains him, the joyful and sweet refreshment \ of all the afflicted, by whose help all we mortals live, do not, I beseech thee, forsake the servants due to thee \, hoping in thee and in thy piety and compassion toward all, and grant our prayers (if only it be for the good of the Christian commonwealth). For we desire a son, not that he may increase our patrimony, gather fortunes, and confound human affairs at his pleasure; but that he may bestow them upon the poor, may serve thee, may proclaim the praise and glory of thy majesty, and may not hesitate for thee and for the greatness of thy name to undergo all torments and even death. Having said this, it seemed to the woman that God and the Virgin had granted her prayers. Returning home, therefore, she meets her husband and discloses the whole matter; they enter upon an honorable fellowship and a divine wedlock, and beget a son.

II.

[7] And this was the year one thousand two hundred and ninety-five from the incarnate Word, by a peculiar favor of God and the second year of the five hundred and eleventh Olympiad, in which that happy Roch, most skilled in divine things, came forth into the light: the interpretations of whose name we leave to others, since many and various are described by learned men. This one thing however I dare to affirm, that he was a man stripped of all crimes and filled with virtues. Nor let it seem wonderful to anyone that he was begotten with God's inspiration: for who would deny that the breath of the divine Spirit can be brought upon a woman, and that certain beginnings of offspring can be infused by God Himself, and that God can have a communion of charity with man? From which indeed graces follow, by whose helps it does not seem absurd that a man should be begotten in this manner. Nor yet must you think this of such a kind as the things which are handed down in fables among the Phrygians concerning Attis; among the Bithynians concerning Herodotus; concerning Endymion among the Arcadians; and among the Romans concerning Numa: all of whom they fable to have had fellowship with the immortals, and say that the divinity by no means despises the meetings of the wise ^c.

[8] given to them: These things are vain and proper to the heathen. For in that age the demons acted at their pleasure, yet by divine permission. But we, who imitate the most holy Church, judge that Roch was so begotten as we believe John the Baptist to have been begotten of Elizabeth and Zachary, already worn out with age, by divine inspiration, through their goodness and faith toward God. And so the mother, beholding a boy of wondrous beauty and marked with a red cross upon his breast, was astonished, and was affected with the greatest delight, thinking that he would be most pleasing to God; and she determined to nurse him with her own breasts: who, as he was conceived and begotten by a miracle, so that most holy infant bore before him signs and presages of goodness and holiness. For when the mother, in memory of the blessed Virgin, took food only once on Wednesdays and Fridays, the boy too, that he might himself render honor to God and dispose his body to fasting at a tender age, on those same days drew milk from her breasts but once. And when he had reached the fifth year of his age, being taught by the Apostle Paul to chastise his body and bring it into subjection, he used food and drink most sparingly.

[9] who from his earliest age despises the world and gives himself to virtues. But in his twelfth year, hating all delights and magnificent furnishings, expenses, and ampler outlays, he chose rather to embrace liberality toward the poor and needy. Moreover he loved foreigners and strangers equally with his own fellow citizens; with cheerful face, with almost divine speech, with kindness, with dignity of manners, and with splendor of soul preferred above all others of that age, he showed himself the same to all mortals. And he purposed above all things to regard, console, and help the poor to the best of his power. And if any time remained to him, he did not turn his mind to pleasures and delights, but to the worship of the most high God, and, by inquiring into His powers and greatness, so far as his age allowed, being perfected with the highest genius, he seemed to all to have made such progress that he obtained a great and singular name and glory.

III.

[10] Meanwhile his father John, weighed down with age and sickness, seeing death approaching \, His father, about to die, orders Roch to be summoned, whom he thus addressed: The time is at hand, my son, in which I shall leave the storms, tempests, and tossings of this world, and shall obtain the rewards of my works; when I may also have a place with the immortal God, if He shall deem me worthy of this gift. But since I love thee above all others, and have fixed all my cares and thoughts upon adorning thee alone, I have thought that certain things should be recalled to thee which have seemed to conduce to living well, happily, and rightly. Thee therefore by the powers above I beg and adjure that thou despise not these my precepts. Worship God, therefore, above all, and remember very often the torments and tortures of our Savior, by which He willed us to be saved, and by His innocent blood called back the human race, corrupted and lost by the stain of all crimes and vices, from the lowest depths of Acheron and from eternal night into the light. Bring help likewise to orphans, widows, and to all of that kind who are destitute of substance and of the protection of others and of their own. Beware moreover of the tenacity of avarice, the most pernicious of all wickednesses, which no wise man ever followed.*

[11] For if thou shalt bestow upon the poor the fortunes in which thou hast abounded; paternally exhorts him to virtue with great fruit. if thou shalt give in marriage to a husband maidens destitute of parents and of means; if thou shalt bind in wedlock women foully prostituted, being drawn away from their error; if lastly thou shalt observe clemency, know that thou shalt be pleasing to men and to God Himself: if thou shalt practice hospitality, and shalt not think it unworthy to visit those burdened with disease and to handle them with thy hands, all mortals will judge thee worthy of fellowship with God. Roch promises that he will obey his father, who a little after departed this life. The obsequies, therefore, being performed with solemn pomp after the custom of the country, while this holy Youth was still in tears and was distressed by his father's funeral, before he had completed his twentieth year he lost his mother, worn out with squalor and grief. Not forgetful, therefore, of those things which his father had enjoined, nor given over to sloth or idleness, not to luxury or vices, he did not suffer himself to be ruined by wantonness or wickedness; but imitating the teaching of the true light, which says, Sell what ye possess, give alms, and make yourselves bags which grow not old, lay up an unfailing treasure in heaven, which no thief approaches nor moth corrupts, he secretly imparts his hereditary wealth to the needy, imitating the teaching of Christ, who forbade distributions of this kind to be made openly, lest each distributor should in this world take his reward from that glory: and He ordained that the right hand should not know the business of the left hand in the bestowals upon the poor. ^{d e}

ANNOTATIONS.

\ Elsewhere refugium*. \ Elsewhere deditos*. \ Elsewhere mortem subveritus*.

CHAPTER II.

His Italian pilgrimage; the healings of the plague-stricken; his journey to Rome; a Cardinal wondrously freed from the plague; his conversation with the Pontiff; his deeds at Piacenza in the contagious disease; the Saint himself seized with it, and divinely aided.

IV.

His substance therefore being exhausted for the praise of God and the honor of the Virgin, Having abdicated his principality, he makes pilgrimage into Italy, and his father's admonitions being zealously performed, so far as his age allowed him, judging that he profited his native land but little, he abdicated his principality, and, his uncle being set over the towns which he had received from his father, and the sum of the commonwealth being handed over, he himself determined to set out into Italy; clothed in a certain short scarlet garment, with a mean little cloak laid over it, taking a hat, a wallet, and a staff, and his feet covered with shoes \, with no companion, he directs his journey toward Rome; and having crossed the ridges and windings of the Alps, and entered Italy, he came to a town which the inhabitants call Acquapendente ^a: for that was vexed with a most savage plague. Which being learned, Roch at once betook himself to the hospital, that he might serve the sick poor: and calling out Vincent, the master of the hospital, he thus addresses him: I perceive that this place is filled with those laboring under the plague, and that thou art one who, forsaken by the rest, alone servest them. And since this is so, I beg thee to join me to thee as a companion, that we may the more easily care for them: I will help thee so long as life remains. To whom Vincent: Although, my guest, thy charity toward thy neighbor and thy faith toward God is no common thing, yet thy age is so tender and the excellence of thy form will by no means endure this assiduous labor and immense stench.*

[13] and there To this Roch: Is it not read in the sacred codices that to those who rely on the divine protection nothing is difficult, if only we direct our actions to His worship, being allured by that immortal hope, and being made perfect \, for whose love we have come hither? It is also written: Whatsoever ye shall do to one of the least of mine, think that ye have done it to me. Vincent denies that Roch can attempt this without the greatest peril of life, that all are burdened with the plague, and very many die daily: and he calls God Himself to witness that none escapes. Why therefore, he says, shouldst thou expose thyself to so great a danger and set thyself before death? How many tears there are here, how many cries, how many wailings, is hard to tell: on the other hand there is no pleasure, no leisure, no rest at all. But Roch: Is it not written that where the peril is greater, there the reward must also be far greater? For not to everyone who fortified cities was given the mural or the siege crown, but to him who had saved a Roman citizen from the enemy, or had leapt over the rampart, or had first climbed the wall, or had freed a city from siege: all of which, as great and arduous, so that ancient age was wont to adorn with immortal glory and merit. If therefore, allured by this vain and mortal glory, they did not hesitate to pour out not only their wealth and strength, but their life and soul; why should we, who imitate Christ, spare our life, especially since we have it in the sacred Writings that none are crowned, nor enter the dwellings above, nor have an appointed place in heaven, where they may enjoy eternal ages, save those who have lawfully striven and have held their soul in hatred? Grant therefore, I beseech thee, that I may go to the sick.*

[14] Then Vincent, thinking this man as if sent by God, he is admitted to help those infected with plague, and heals them. and fearing lest, if he repelled him, he should stir God Himself to anger and take away some good from his sick (for he judged that this divine man would be to them a help of health), therefore leads him to the sick, whose right hands he all touches, and, fortifying them with the sign of the cross, frees them from the plague; and while he goes about the city he diligently does the same. Whereat amazement seizes all, and, being loosed from the plague, they raise God and His name to the stars. And they judge that he was sent from heaven and given divinely in so great a destruction of mortals. And so Roch bids the citizens and inhabitants whom he had brought back to their former health not to disclose his name; and leaving that town he set out forthwith for Cesena ^b, a city of Togate Gaul ^c, seized in the same manner, and renders it whole.

These things being accomplished, he hastened by long journeys to Rome, which he had perceived to be infected and contaminated above the other cities of Italy.

[15] Being brought thither, he turned aside to a certain Breton Cardinal ^d, Having set out for Rome, he turns aside to a Cardinal, his equal in goodness and manners: who both was and was held to be of the highest authority with the supreme Pontiff. All proclaimed him most worthy of God \ and a pattern of holiness. To him Roch wished to confess his faults, and received the Eucharist from the hands of that excellent man. And he, when he looked upon Roch's face and saw a certain divine light flashing from it, was astonished, and followed him with the greatest veneration, and begged that he would free the City, almost overwhelmed with the plague: the City, I say, the seat of Christ, once the head of the world, the dwelling of holy men, once the nurse of the good arts and the liberal disciplines, and in the time of St. Peter the lodging of innocent men, and not undeservedly called the head of the world. But Roch said: The health and death of mortals, reverend father, depends upon the divine Maker. For He condemns those entangled in pleasures, wickednesses, and other crimes, and prone to sinning. He ceases not to protect and cherish those given to virtues and integrity of manners and justice. He frees the sick and brings back the dead to life. Pray therefore to Him, who repels none who flee to Him, and with hands nailed to the gibbet of the cross calls all, about to embrace those who shall have turned their thoughts to Him. Yet with eyes raised to heaven he thus prays to God: Although, most clement Parent, the prayers of this most holy Cardinal have much more weight with Thee than our speech; yet, that the splendor of Thy glory and the greatness of Thy name may shine forth more clearly, I have not hesitated to pour out my prayers to Thee: suffer this city, the seat of the most holy Church, to be freed by Thy piety and clemency from this most savage contagion, and this most holy man to be preserved from all peril in the sign of Thy cross.*

[16] who, the sign of the cross being impressed on his forehead This prayer being made, Roch signs the Cardinal's forehead with the cross, so that its impression penetrated the skin, as though the cross had been burned in with a cautery. Going out therefore from the Cardinal's house, he is asked by several what that cross means for him. To whom he: A certain divine man fortified me with this cross, that he might preserve me from the plague. Some praised it: several others exhorted the Cardinal to lay aside the cross, which disfigured his face. Moved by shame, the Cardinal, returning home, begs Roch to take away the cross from him, lest he be a mockery to all. To whom Roch: There is no servant, reverend father, who does not glory to bear the insignia of his lord, whether soldier or commander. Wherefore the Apostles Andrew and Peter thought it not only not shameful but even glorious to be crucified, and willed to suffer that so bitter a death, that they might seem to imitate Christ their teacher. Francis likewise, a little before our age ^e, a most holy man, did not fear to receive the stigmata as a sign of victory and glory. Why therefore shouldst thou despise this, in which the Son of God, that He might save thee and the rest, was with highest honor \ fixed with nails and pierced with a spear? Bear therefore the standard of life and salvation, that thou mayest obtain grace. For it is read:* He that would enter into life, let him take up his cross and follow Him who spared not Himself.

[17] being freed from the contagious disease, leads him to the Pontiff. At which words the Cardinal at once acquiesced, and was wont and determined \ to bear the cross, and brought Roch to the Pontiff, and informed him that this was he who had burned the cross upon him. But Roch, prostrate upon the earth and cast down at the Pontiff's feet, bathes them with tears, and asks pardon for his sins. The Pontiff, beholding the man, says that he needs no pardon, and affirms that he is a divine man. Then the Cardinal asks whence he has learned this excellence in him. As soon as, he says, we beheld him, certain deep rays seemed to come from his eyes, which brought upon us admiration and amazement*: and turning to Roch, he asks of what country and of what parents he was born. But Roch, whether that he might contemplate the Pontiff, to whom the keys of the heavenly kingdom and the power of binding and loosing had been granted, upon which rock the whole church is built; or perhaps fearing lest, if he should tell his country or his parents, being known to all he should be drawn away from his purpose, kept silence; and, pardon being obtained from the supreme Pontiff, he followed the Cardinal, whose company he enjoyed for three years.

VI.

[18] When the Cardinal had departed this life, Roch would stay no longer at Rome, [Leaving Rome, he heals at Piacenza those infected with plague, with which he too is seized,] and going out of the city he went about all the neighboring places and towns: those seized by the plague he saves by the impression of the divine cross, so that all to whom he had come worshipped and praised the most high God for Roch's virtue, in that He had granted so much to a man as to call back the dead almost from the shades. And when he had traversed and healed almost all Togate Gaul, seized with disease, he betook himself to Piacenza ^f, a Transpadane city, vexed with a fierce pestilence, and turned aside to a certain hospital, in which, being kindly received, he sees, signs, and saves the sick after his custom, to a man. Weighed down therefore with labor and sleep, he lays himself upon a little bed, and while he rested he hears in his sleep a most delightful voice: My Roch, thou who hast endured journeys, cold, fasting, and vast labors, thou must also for my sake suffer pain and torments and tortures of the body. Awakened by the sweetness of that voice, he felt himself burdened with a sharp fever, his hip pierced as with a sword, so that with the burning and the pain he obtained no rest, nor could he even restrain his voice; and with eyes directed to heaven he said: Although before, most sweet Jesus, I judged myself to be Thy servant, yet now, since Thou hast given me a share of Thy torments and hast made me worthy of them, I hold it ascertained that I am dear and pleasing to Thee: for whose love these things seem sweet to me; for whom I do not shun even death.

[19] Having said this, he began again to cry out. But the sick who were brought thither in abundance and is ill treated; all cry out against Roch, and beg him to be silent, and to bear patiently, like the rest, the pains which are not taken away by crying out. But that Saint, burning with charity, lest he should be a hindrance to the rest, went out of the hospital and laid himself upon the ground before the doors. And those who passed by rebuked the host and bade him be brought in, thinking that this had been done through the host's negligence. The host denies that he will stay with the rest, lest he should disturb their rest. Wherefore, being held by all to be mad, he is driven from the city. Then Roch, God accompanying him, leaning on his staff, crept as he could to a wood near the city. And when he was pressed with a very grievous pain, he stopped at a certain cornel tree, and there rested a while: presently he betook himself to a certain hut close by: and again he prays in this manner:

[20] How much I owe to Thy majesty, most gentle Jesus, but is divinely aided in a wondrous manner. who hast willed to try Thy servant and to torture him with deserved torments, I am not unaware. Since perhaps I have not brought help to the sick with that charity which Thy love demands in me, may Thy clemency, I beseech Thee, pardon our weakness. For who among mortals is there who can serve Thee according to Thy deserts? Therefore forsake me not, most kindly Jesus, nor suffer me to perish here alone amid the savagery of wild beasts, destitute of all protection. But the admirable God, who never forsakes His servants, at once sends down a little cloud from heaven, which, gliding down to the door of the hut, poured forth a spring of water ^g beneath Roch's very feet; with which welling he was wondrously delighted, and his body being washed and somewhat cooled, he seemed in some part to have soothed that most bitter pain: which spring indeed we behold preserved down to these our times. But lest He should seem to have given him only drink, and not food also, lest he should perish of hunger, and that He might show that he was pleasing to Him, and might furnish to others also an example of endurance, He gave a certain wondrous and hitherto unheard-of testimony of His power.

ANNOTATIONS.

The city of Cesena is my native place, which the wave     Of Cesis divides, and it has its name from its native river;

or because its territory is divided by two rivers. More in the same place.

\ Elsewhere perone munitis*. \ Elsewhere nulla mortali spe pellecti*. \ Elsewhere gratissimum*. \ Read dedecore*. \ Elsewhere crucemque gestare statuit*.

CHAPTER III.

He is fed divinely; his sanctity becomes known; he exercises the patience of Gothard, and leads him to the solitary life; he is healed by an angel; he cures beasts; a heavenly voice comes to him.

VII.

For there was a certain country place near this wood, with numerous buildings erected at very great cost, In a wondrous manner a dog brings him bread: to which the chief men of that city had fled: among whom Gothard, of a not ignoble family, was a most opulent man. He had several servants, and dogs fit for hunting, of which one, coming forward too boldly to his master's table, when Gothard had reclined, snatched a loaf, contrary to custom, from his hand, and fleeing thence carries it to Roch. The master made little of this, attributing it to familiarity or need: but when on the following day at dinner and supper he had done the same, Gothard, stirred with anger, assails his servants with reproaches as though they were not giving the dog food. But they said: We give food to this and to the other dogs, O master (as God lives); and what this means we know not. Which when Gothard had heard, he determined to follow the dog if he should attempt it again. He came a little after, and snatched the loaf as he had begun. But Gothard forthwith, leaving his food, followed him as he fled: who carried the loaf to Roch's hut, and with head bowed offered him the loaf: which Roch, receiving, blessed the dog. But Gothard, who had continuously watched him, being oppressed with amazement said: Unsearchable are Thy ways, admirable Jesus, infinite Thy power, singular Thy goodness, and immense Thy piety toward the men who serve Thee, whom, hungering, Thou fillest with good things, but the rich, who serve their feasts rather than Thee, Thou sendest empty away: and who didst give food to Elijah by the ministry of a raven.

[22] whose master Gothard meets the Saint, Kindled therefore with divine ardor, Gothard came straightway to Roch's hut; and asks him, lying prostrate upon the ground, who he was, or what evil he suffered. Then Roch begs him to stand far off: for he announces that he is vexed with the plague. Gothard, returning home, thus revolves within his mind: Alas, wretched and unhappy me, and bereft of the divine light! This dog of mine, to whom nature has denied understanding and has numbered him among the brutes, whose life and death may be reckoned the same, having compassion on this poor sick man, with so great industry and so great skill sought food for him, found it, brought it. But I, who abound in riches, to whom understanding has been given by nature and the right of compassion, not unaware that no good is dismissed without reward with the immortal God, and looking for the reward of my works, shall I suffer this holy man to perish alone among wild beasts and briars, forsaken by all? God forbid that so great cruelty or savagery should be contained in me.

[23] and learns his sanctity. Returning therefore at once to Roch, he addressed him with these words: I perceive, most blessed Man, that I have wronged God and thee together, and have exercised cruelty upon thee. Having returned, therefore, I will remain with thee in this hut, nor will I return home before thou hast obtained good health. This thy coming, said Roch, is the more pleasing to me in that I judge it done rather by divine providence than by human counsel — that providence which sprinkles the hearts of men with the dew of His Spirit, which foresaw all future things from eternity, which passes over no good without a most ample reward; but no evil which it does not punish, and has embraced justice mingled with clemency, all rigor of severity being laid aside. Nor has it so fixed the eyes of its piety upon the good that it should seem to have forsaken the evil. But to those whom it has chosen it shows the right way of life, as I conjecture it has done in thee. Whence it is plain to me that, since, shame and fear being laid aside, thou desirest to serve Him, thou art pleasing to Him. Go on therefore as thou hast begun, that thou mayest attain the happiness which I seem to see that God has promised thee.

VIII.

[24] While these and many other divine things the men were discoursing, He is led by him, when there was no bread, they so prolonged discourses of this kind that they began to be pressed by hunger: and they marveled wondrously that the dog had not brought the bread as he was wont. Gothard therefore addresses Roch: In what way, my father, shall I procure food for thee? To whom Roch: Future things are by no means to be sought after, if only we have placed our hope in Him who rules all things with right judgment, who has never failed in necessary things, but has never been seen to abound in superfluous ones; yet by the fault of our first parent it has been laid upon mortals that they should get their living by labor and sweat. Do thou therefore take staff, wallet, hat, and cloak, and go about the neighboring places, and beg bread from door to door. No labor indeed, father, said Gothard, do I shun, if only I may please the immortal God and thee. But all who dwell in these places know me, and will never persuade themselves that I am either of so great sanctity, or have fallen into so great misery, that I must beg. Follow Christ and the Apostles, said Roch, who, although He was the Son of God, by whose word all things were created out of nothing, yet, being God and man, did not blush to seek His living from mortals. And those who followed Him, all things being left, thought it glorious for themselves to beg. Moved by these words, Gothard set out joyfully for Piacenza. Here, while he goes about certain houses and asks for bread, since all knew well that he was most rich, he is held by all in derision.

[25] At last he turns aside to the door of a certain friend, to go begging. with whom he was on most familiar terms. But when he had been recognized by him, the friend, stirred with anger, assails Gothard with what reproaches and insults he could, as though that excellent man had most prodigally squandered his patrimony, which was very ample: Why, said he, didst thou not give bread more sparingly to thy dogs? which if thou hadst given them in moderation, thou wouldst be free from this misery, and wouldst keep thyself at home without disgrace to thy family. But if there had been ever so little prudence or wisdom in thee, thou oughtest rather to have died of hunger at home than to beg to the injury of thine own. But since by thine own fault and by thine errors thou hast fallen into this want and beggary, live wretched: begone hence, villain: begone, disgrace of thy family, worthy of the hammer and the axe. Gothard therefore withdrew, impatient of the injury and insult. For he complained that his friend, in whom he greatly trusted, had shown no sign of good will toward him. Then, the whole city being gone through, he returns with scarcely two loaves to Roch, and discloses to him the whole matter. Then Roch: That friend of thine, who despised the servant of God, being smitten with the plague, is vexed with vast pain, and will depart from this light of life. Yet his ignorance must be pitied. Wherefore I have determined to visit the city and to heal the sick in the power of God. Thou meanwhile shalt keep this our little lodging and hut.

IX.

[26] But on the following day Roch, not yet free, taking his staff and leaning upon it, sets out as he could for Piacenza, The Saint is healed by an angel, cures beasts, and hears a heavenly voice; visits the hospital after his custom, consoles the sick with cheerful face and with most delightful words, touches them, and frees them with the sign of the cross. And going forward through the city, he brought back to their former health those laboring under that disease and hoping in God. But when the sun had declined to its setting, he determined to seek his hut again. And so he goes alone through the wood: and all the beasts, vexed with ill health, casting themselves at Roch's feet, sought health. Wherefore many, moved by the greatness of the matters, followed him outside the city, and heard a voice sent from heaven crying to him: Roch, Roch, we have heard thy prayer, and have given thee health. Return therefore, God favoring thee, into thy native land, to do penance, that thou mayest be enrolled in the number of the Saints.

The minds of all were amazed, because they had heard a new and unheard-of name.

[27] by which he becomes known, though unwillingly. Of these one, acceptable to God, judging that this was Roch who healed the sick, yet desiring to be more certain, entering the wood, betook himself to Roch's hut; and finding him there, he said: Hail, most holy Roch. Since I hold it clear that God has had mercy on thee and has given thee back health and good soundness, and has called thee back into thy native land, I wished to visit thee before thou shouldst depart hence: and because we perceive that thou art most pleasing to God, we commend to thee this our city, and all of us and our fortunes, and give them to be cherished by thy help. Roch, who had thus far disclosed his name to no one, said: Who taught thee this my name? He tells the matter as it was done. Roch, at first supposing that no one save himself had heard that voice, learned that this man also had understood it; and, bending his knees to the ground, he begs him not to disclose to any mortal that he was Roch, that unknown he might return freely and without trouble of mind into his native land. He promises that he will do so.

[28] With saving admonitions But Gothard, beholding that Roch, who a little before, being wounded with the plague, could scarcely walk, had presently become free and whole, judging that this was done by a divine gift, followed him with greater veneration. To whom Roch, turning, exhorts him with what reasons he can that he should choose a life in the woods and serve God, who teaches in doctrine; who exhorts in exhorting; who presides in solicitude: that he should likewise weave a bag which fears no moths, and should so show himself to those above that they may think him worthy of heavenly fellowship. And that when both had come to death, as they had been companions of troubles and labors in this billowy uncertainty of things, so in heaven they might together enjoy the divine light. Which being seen, he said, my Gothard, nothing further is sought, nothing desired: since in it are all things which meet in the perfect majesty of the Godhead: so that it gives no satiety. But those who behold it somewhat more earnestly, the more they gaze upon it, the more they desire to see, according to that sacred word: My spirit is sweet above honey, etc., and, They that eat me shall yet hunger; and they that drink me shall yet thirst.

[29] he exhorts Gothard to the solitary life. Come then, my Gothard, follow Him who created all things out of nothing; who not only loves us all, but also cherishes and embraces us; who seeks not our fortunes, not our wives, not our children, not finally anything of mortal things; but the ardor of the heart, kindled with His love and charity, not for His own but for our advantage, after the manner of the best of parents. To whom Gothard said: My holy father, know that I will do all things, if only thou wilt suffer me to make pilgrimage with thee and wilt join me as companion of thy journey; or at least if thou wilt stay here with me a little while, that, being imbued with thy discipline, I may the more easily bear the hardships of the desert. Which when Roch had understood, judging that he would profit not a little this man, inclined to living well, happily, and rightly, changing his purpose, he made a stay of some days under the old and accustomed hut with Gothard: in which time Roch, most skilled in divine things, teaches Gothard the doctrines of Paul the hermit, and the institutes of Jerome, Antony, and the rest who wore out their life in the desert.

A NOTE.

\ These words down to thou shalt keep* are not in the ancient edition which we have. \ Elsewhere ambage*.

CHAPTER IV.

His patience proved for five years in prison; his innocence defended, the apparition of an angel; his patronage against the plague obtained; his death; his recognition; miracles, churches.

He is taken as a spy, These things being accomplished, Gothard being left in the wood, Roch, God accompanying him, was brought by long journeys into Gaul, which was vexed with the din of arms and the whirlwind of wars. Directing his journey therefore into his native land, he came to a certain town which Roch, as we have already said, had given to his uncle, and had appointed him prefect of that place. He went into the church according to custom: and being seized by the lictors (for they thought him a spy), and cast into chains, he is brought to the prince; by whom, being asked who he was, he said that he was a servant and pilgrim of Jesus Christ; and he begged that he would suffer him to pursue his vows. The prince by no means recognized Roch by reason of his habit and squalor ^a, and, oppressed by suspicion and fear of war, ordered him to be thrust into the darkest of all prisons, and commanded the keepers diligently to watch him. Whereat he judged that the immortal God had chosen that kind of trouble, which seemed the heaviest, in order to save him; and he gave Him thanks that He had made him worthy of every kind of torment.

[31] Entering therefore the prison, the companion of darkness, stench, and scorpions, [and cast into prison; and, his patience being proved for five years, he prepares himself for death:] with knee bent to the ground he prays to God and to the Virgin Mary that they would not forsake him, but grant him strength, that he might the more easily bear the other hardships. Here therefore, with the greatest labors, with the greatest austerity of life, with watchings, with beating his body with stripes, with so great abstinence that he thought it luxury to take anything cooked (in short he had so worn out his body that he could scarcely gather his squalid limbs from the ground), he spent five years. Which being accomplished, judging that he had come to the end of life, he entreats the keepers of the prison to bring in some priest to him. The priest, therefore, being led into the prison, enters upon a light conspicuous with a brightness receiving its source from nowhere: whereat he was wondrously amazed. Then, beholding Roch, and marveling that his face breathed something divine, and at the brightness of his eyes, being made half lifeless, he scarcely dared to utter a word, and asked Roch what he wished.

[32] [his innocence is shown; there is a running together to the prison; an angel appears to him:] Then he, cast down at the priest's feet, implores pardon for his offenses, and asks that the Eucharist be given him. The priest, weeping, betakes himself to the prince, and warns him as modestly as he can that God has been grievously wronged, in that he has now for five years kept in prison a most holy man, wholly free from all crime. He related the austerity of his life, the man's patience, and moreover the lights seen in the prison: all which are indications of sanctity. This matter being spread abroad through the town, the townsfolk, led by piety, were held by a desire of seeing the man, and betake themselves in troops to the prison: and Roch, being seized with sickness, when he had given himself a while to rest, a messenger of God appeared to him in his sleep, saying thus: It is time, my Roch, that I should place this thy most holy soul in the bosom of the Father. Wherefore if thou hast proposed anything to be desired for thyself or for mortals, before thou depart from life, ask it of the most good and great God: for whatsoever thou shalt desire shall be done.

XI.

[33] He asks of God patronage against the plague, Then Roch: Most gentle Parent, said he, who didst free Thy people from the hands of the Egyptians, the sea of the Arabian gulf being passed through: who didst snatch Lot, hoping in Thee, from the most wicked cities and from the flame of fire: who didst save Jonah \: who didst snatch Noah from the deluge; who rejectest none who hope in Thee, disappointest none: deign not to disdain to preserve, protect, and defend from the most savage plague all who trust in Thee and implore Thy help, who by word or deed shall have invoked our patronage; and let not this be by our merits, but let the greatness of Thy compassion and clemency grant it to my prayer. And moreover deign of Thy piety to have this wretched and guilty soul presented before the sight of Thy majesty, although I have never done anything in this life whereby I should think myself worthy of so great a gift: yet show, most kindly Jesus, the force of Thy piety and clemency toward me.* This prayer being made, seeing that the most good and great God is most clement to His own, and beholding that beatific object, being caught up into heaven while yet alive, he learned that He had granted his desires. and obtains it, and dies. Which gifts, although the Maker of all things can bestow upon mortals by His own power, yet He exercises the munificence and clemency of His majesty upon us as it were by certain instruments, the merits of His Saints so demanding. For God willed that they should in His name cast out demons, take up serpents, and by laying hands upon the sick bring them back to their former health. The charity, therefore, of the divine greatness being entreated, Roch, cast upon the ground, with eyes turned back to heaven and his limbs most modestly composed, rendered his soul to God. Then indeed those who had gathered at the prison see great lamps shining within through certain chinks; they report it to the keeper of the prison: who, the doors being at once opened, found the most blessed body stretched upon the ground, and lamps burning at head and feet. And at his side a tablet inscribed with these letters: that those laboring under plague, fleeing to Roch's patronage, would escape that most savage contagion. Which when it was reported to the prince, being moved by the greatness of the matter, he orders the most holy body to be carried to the church with the utmost pomp: which he himself also adorned with his presence.

[34] But the prince's mother, when she read Roch's name found upon the tablet, He is recognized by his uncle, who has a church erected for him. addresses her son with these words: This is thy nephew, born of thy brother; on whose death he kindly granted the rule to thee, and set out for Italy and foreign regions. But that we may be made more certain, let us go to the body, on whose breast, if we find a cross, know that this is he. Which cross being found, the mother began to rebuke the prince, detesting his cruelty, on whose account a most holy man had been cut off by an undeserved death and to the disgrace of his family. Whereupon there is lamentation and wailing. The townsfolk bedew with tears the corpse of their former prince and most holy body, and fix kisses upon it. And the obsequies being duly performed, the prince erected him a church at great expense, and ordains a solemn day on which St. Roch died, namely the sixteenth \* of the Kalends of September, in the year of Christ 1327, and in the second year of the five hundred and nineteenth Olympiad: which solemn and appointed rite is celebrated by the inhabitants down to these times. And the merits and works of this most holy Man lay hidden from the Italians for more than eighty-seven years.

XII.

[35] But in the year one thousand four hundred

and fourteen, A most savage plague on the fifteenth of the Kalends of July \, the faithful of Christ and the prelates of the Roman Church ^b, that they might take away the heresy of the Greeks ^c, all came together into one at Constance ^d, a most famous city of Germany. That city a most savage plague entered, so that all took counsel about flight: for they judged that this was done by the working of demons, that they might attempt, if they could not wreck the Church of God and the little ship of Peter, at least to toss and disturb it. But the most clement God, since He was unwilling to destroy the Christian commonwealth, when the prelates, fearing death, had all to a man determined to leave the city, a certain German youth, fearing that the Christian religion would be shaken, being inspired by the divine power, addresses the Fathers more boldly than became his age, thus: Although God the maker of all things can save the most holy Roman Church and the Christian commonwealth and this city, yet He has willed to bestow certain special gifts upon His Saints, by whose intercession mortals may obtain their wishes and desires. For I hear that a certain Roch is held in the highest veneration by the French: by whose merits all who flee to him are freed from the plague.*

[36] I give you therefore this counsel, most excellent Fathers, that we all flee to him, invoked at Constance, he extinguishes. and that we chastise our body with fasting: and make supplications through the city under the banner and sign of Roch, and pray him to press with his prayers before God, whose cause we plead, that He may not disdain of His compassion to grant health to the city. All the Fathers approved the youth's counsel, and with solemn pomp they carry Roch's image through the city, all the people accompanying; they make supplications after the custom, and chastise the body with fastings and stripes. Which being done, it is hard to tell how quickly that plague vanished. Wherefore the citizens and inhabitants, and the whole assembly, turn their mourning and grief into joy, and the Germans too followed the holy man with the greatest honor.

[37] Christian affairs, therefore, being happily set in order, and the assembly dissolved, His name is carried into Italy: churches, miracles. the Italians brought Roch's name to us; to whom at last, being returned after a long postliminy, he furnished matter for building basilicas, chapels, or churches in his name: to which those who flee behold images, statues, tokens of vows, and the works of the most holy man: which if we should wish to commit to writing, it would surely be harder for us to find a beginning than an end. Wherefore we shall purposely pass them by, lest, if through our carelessness we should praise the merits of such great works too little, we should seem to have taken away a part of his glory. Let us all therefore imitate him; let us follow him with pious prayers, that, serving God and him together, we may by his supplications obtain the gifts of the divine clemency ^e.

ANNOTATIONS.

\* Wanting. \ Elsewhere the seventeenth*. \ Elsewhere only the tenth*.

SHORTER ACTS

By an anonymous author,

From a manuscript of Belfort, who acquired it from the monastery of the Bethlehemites near Louvain, and collated it with two other manuscripts of the Celestine Fathers of Paris and of Amiens.

Roch, confessor, at Montpellier (St.)

BHL Number: 7276

FROM A MANUSCRIPT.

CHAPTER I.

The Saint's wondrous birth, and his health-bringing pilgrimage into Italy after the death of his father and mother.

The Saint is born at Montpellier The empire of the Franks has very many and distinguished provinces; among which, both for the fertility of its soil and for the situation and celebrity of its cities and towns, the Province of the Occitan tongue, which is joined to Aquitaine, is wont to flourish. In it indeed there is a singular town of great name which is called Montpellier. Whose lordship a certain most noble knight, by name John, once held, born of the most illustrious blood of the kings of the Franks. Him the nobility of his birth adorned no more than the pursuits of all human and divine virtues commended him. He had a wife by name Libera, most illustrious alike in birth and in beauty: and both were so devoted to the Son of almighty God that they ever strove with tenacious love after holy and divine works. But when that most devout man had received no heir from his most devout wife, they made vows to God for the receiving of an heir who should also be a servant of Christ. And on a certain day, when the especially devout wife was praying to Christ and to His most glorious Mother the Virgin Mary in the church upon that matter, she heard this voice of an angel: O Libera, God has heard thy prayer; and thou shalt receive a grace from the Lord.

[2] The woman therefore conceived a son \, who was called Roch in Baptism. marked with a little cross: He brought from his mother's womb a cross \ impressed on his skin above the left side; whereby indeed that most holy stigma should show him most dear to Christ. Wherefore his parents, greatly marveling, blessed the Lord; and therefore the mother, though noble and delicate, suckled and nourished the blessed infant Roch, and not unwillingly underwent the other labors of a nurse. And when the most devout mother spent two days in each week in fastings, the blessed infant Roch, while his mother fasted, refrained from milk, nor did he then suck from his mother more than once: and, what was wonderful to all, on that day the blessed infant was more vigorous, more cheerful, and fresher. When he was in the fifth year of his age, diligently obeying his parents, he was already growing up with illustrious virtues, and the sign of the cross fixed in his side also increased with time. Going also to school ^a, he wondrously excelled all in knowledge, giving himself to fastings, prayers, and other pious works: and so he came to his twelfth year, in which he began more strictly to chastise his body with abstinence \*.

[3] At this time the father of Bl. Roch, a man confirmed in all divine love, is seized with a very great sickness: and feeling himself already near his last end, In the 12th year of his age he loses his father, in the 15th his mother. he calls his son Roch to him. O Roch, he said, my only heir, thou seest that I shall shortly end my life: four commands I leave thee in my testament, together with my rule and my inheritance: the first, that, as thou hast begun, thou serve Jesus Christ continually: the second, that thou be mindful of the poor widows and orphans: the third, I appoint thee steward of my treasures, that thou likewise bestow them upon pious uses: the fourth, that thou frequent the hospitals of the needy and the poor. These things Roch promised that he would do of his own accord; and the immortal soul of the most devout lord John left his mortal body. In the fifteenth year also of his birth Roch buried his most devout mother. And so after a few days he diligently executes his father's testament, visits religious places and the houses of the poor, cares for the wretched, the oppressed, and the sick with his means and counsel: consoles widows, wards, and orphans, gives poor maidens in marriage: and in these pious offices not unwillingly dispensed all his father's substance.

[4] After he had fulfilled his father's commands, he determined to leave his native land with himself, [Then, about to make pilgrimage to Rome, he comes to Acquapendente, stricken with plague,] and to make various pilgrimages through Christendom. He is clothed therefore in a pilgrim's habit \*, his head is covered with a hat, a wallet hangs from his shoulders, a pilgrim's staff enters his right hand: and Roch, intent upon penance, after many deserts, hastens toward Rome. But first he came to a town named Acquapendente: where, when he had learned from many on the way that a most dire plague was raging, he ran most eagerly to its hospital. The charge of this hospital a certain man by the name of Vincent had; from whom blessed Roch obtains, not without many prayers and labor, that he himself might serve the sick day and night: for he feared lest Roch, blooming and young, should at once be cut down by the pestilential dart. But after he came to the sick, he blessed them all in the name of Jesus Christ, and undauntedly handled the limbs of each one: so that they at once confessed that a holy man had been brought in to them; because he had already extinguished the burnings of so great pains through the whole hospital. Thence, going through Acquapendente, Roch hastens to visit the house of each one vexed with the plague: and whomever he had touched with the sign of the cross and with the memory of the passion of Jesus Christ, the most savage plague left him.

[5] and, when it and Cesena were freed, at Rome Acquapendente being freed from the contagion of the plague, he makes for Cesena, a magnificent city of Italy, which no less a plague had long vexed, and frees it in a short space. Thence at last he came to Rome: in which, through the whole city, a place free from the plague could scarcely be found. And there was at that time at Rome a certain Cardinal with the title of Angleria ^b, which is a province of the Lombards. Now blessed Roch approached this Cardinal's house, and when he had stood a little while in the Cardinal's sight, suddenly a wondrous consolation and hope glides into the mind of the Cardinal, who was infected with the plague: for he understood that the youth blessed Roch was most dear to God: this his face, this his manners, this Roch's modesty showed forth. Wherefore he commended himself to blessed Roch, that he would free and preserve him from so great a plague. And behold, Roch signs a cross with his finger upon that Cardinal's forehead: and straightway a most apparent and most manifest cross is seen impressed upon the Cardinal's forehead, and thus the Cardinal is protected from the plague.

[6] he heals the Cardinal and many others, and goes to the Pope: And when he begged holy Roch that the mark of the cross might be taken from his forehead, lest it should be a spectacle to the people, Roch exhorts him to bear the Redeemer's sign perpetually upon his forehead in memory of His passion, and reverently to honor it, since by it he had been freed from the dire plague. The Cardinal therefore brings blessed Roch to the Pope ^c, who at once saw a most shining and heavenly ray flash and gleam from Roch's forehead; and blessed Roch himself obtained a plenary indulgence from the Pope. But when the Cardinal asked him about Roch's family and native land, he, affecting no mortal glory, concealed his country and his family. At last, a blessing being again received from the Pope, he withdrew, and remained with the Cardinal at Rome for three years, granting continual services and labors to the poor and to those vexed with plague.

[7] after three years he goes to Rimini and Novara, and heals them. But after three years the Cardinal, worn out with age, dies; and Roch, leaving Rome, came to Rimini ^d, a most flourishing city of Italy: which he likewise freed. Rimini being freed from the plague, he came to the city of Novara ^e in Lombardy, oppressed also with a very great plague; and there for two whole months he served the sick of the plague with all his heart and with all God's help. Thence, after the plague was removed, toward

Piacenza he directed his steps, because he had understood that in it too the plague reigned beyond measure. For it was ever his study that in the name of Jesus Christ and in His most holy passion he should make men safe from the plague; and first of all he betook himself into the houses of the poor and into the hospitals, because those places had greater need of help.

[8] Infected with the plague at Piacenza, he is cast out. When he had been long in the hospital of Piacenza, and had healed of the plague almost all the sick there, on a certain midnight he heard in his sleep this voice of an angel: Roch, most devoted to Christ, awake, and study to know and to cure the plague which is now in thee. He, straightway perceiving himself smitten with the deadly dart in one of his hips, gave thanks to God. And when he was tormented with grievous pain, and all were deprived of the rest of sleep by his languor and groaning, that blessed man quickly took himself from his bed, and lay at the outer threshold of the hospital, awaiting the light of the coming day. The citizens of Piacenza, passing by when the sun had now risen and seeing Roch, accused the master of the hospital of impiety; but he, clearing himself before the citizens, said: Assuredly, against our will he withdrew out here. Therefore the citizens hastily drove blessed Roch from the city, lest through him the city should be infected with a greater plague.

ANNOTATIONS.

\ Elsewhere of wondrous beauty* is added. \ Paris manuscript, which was red*, \ Perhaps his mother him*. \ Elsewhere austere to himself alone, gentle to others*. \ Elsewhere clad in a scarlet garment and a mean cloak, and with no companion*.

CHAPTER II.

His deeds at Piacenza, his return to his native land, his death there, and his wondrous recognition.

Dwelling near Piacenza, he raises up a spring Oppressed with so great and so burning a pain, he yet patiently bears his being cast out; and, ever blessing almighty God, he set out into a certain wood of a deserted valley not far from Piacenza; and there, as he wished, he made himself a tiny roof of leafy boughs. Soon, mindful of the glorious name of Jesus, he raised his mind to prayer and said: Great thanks I give Thee, Savior Jesus, that Thou wouldst deign to send me, as to the rest of Thine afflicted with the plague, into this desert place (I pray Thee) the refreshment of Thy grace. The prayer being ended, straightway a cloud glided down from heaven, and beside his little cell is turned into a most beautiful and most clear spring, which is there even today, whose water might bring refreshment to the burning Roch ^a.

[10] There was near that same wood a country estate, which certain nobles inhabited; among whom a certain man dear to God, and is fed by a hunting dog, Gothard ^b by name, possessed great lands and a great household. He had brought up familiarly one out of many hunting dogs, which was wont fearlessly to handle bread from his master's table; and, when bread was lacking to Roch, it carried bread to him. When Gothard had rather often noticed this, and knew not to whom it carried it, his household also being ignorant, at the next dinner he ordered a delicate loaf to be set upon the table: which straightway the dog after his manner takes up, and hastens to Roch. He therefore follows the dog, and they come together to the little cell of blessed Roch. But seeing how familiarly it offered the bread to the blessed man, he reverently salutes Roch, and sits down beside the holy man: who, fearing lest he should be taken by the contagion of the plague, said: Depart, friend, in good peace; for a most violent plague holds me. Gothard therefore returned to his house: where he speaks these things silently within himself: This poor man, whom I have now left in the desert, is surely a man of God, since a dog, an irrational animal, alone carries bread to the sick and forsaken man: therefore I, who have seen this, ought rather to do the same, who am both a man and a Christian. In this holy meditation, returning to him, he said: I desire to do thee mercy, holy Pilgrim, and I now visit thee again, never about to leave thee.

[11] and Gothard, whom he teaches the eremitic life. Roch gave thanks to God, and instructed Gothard continually in the law of Christ. After they had been together a little while, and the dog brought bread no longer, Gothard seeks counsel for the getting of bread; and, when he was pressed more and more with hunger, he asks a remedy of the blessed man. He, according to that word of the Lord, In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread, exhorts him to return to the estate, and, renouncing all his goods, to follow the way of Christ, and to ask bread in the name of Jesus. But Gothard says that he fears this for shame (because he was there both well known and rich). Yet at last, taught by the frequent admonition of blessed Roch, he comes to Piacenza, where also he was most well known, begs, and there asks alms at the door of a certain gossip of his. He harshly reviles Gothard, because he stained his friends with this beggary, most unbecoming to a prudent and rich man, and drove him from the door, mocking and angry: and thus Gothard is compelled to importune the houses of others by begging. On the same day the plague fell upon that gossip, and upon very many others who had denied alms to Gothard. Returning at length to the wood, Gothard sets forth to blessed Roch the things which have been told; but blessed Roch foretold that the death of that gossip of his would shortly come to pass: which so happened.

[12] Not yet healed, he heals Piacenza; But indeed Roch, moved with piety and mercy, although he himself was afflicted with the plague, approached Piacenza, which was full of the plague; and, Gothard being left in the wood, he brought help to all the people of Piacenza with great labor of his own, and in the name of Jesus, by touching and blessing, freed the city from all plague. And he himself, still both languid with his own malady and almost lame, returns to the wood: where he found with Gothard many who had heard of it, and had therefore come into the desert valley; before all of whom the man of God worked miracles.

[13] then, being made whole, he is sent into his native land; After a little time Gothard and his companions, having returned to Piacenza for certain business, left blessed Roch for a while in the valley. Blessed Roch indeed had made prayer to God that he might be freed from the plague, whereupon sleep seizes him rapt away. Meanwhile Gothard returned from the city, and, when he had now come close to the sleeping Roch, he heard this voice of an angel: Roch, friend of God, the Lord has heard thy prayers, and, behold, thou art healed of the plague. The Lord therefore bids thee direct thy step toward thy native land. At this sudden voice Gothard was astounded, who before this had always been ignorant of Roch's name, and forthwith related the voice which he had heard to Roch, who was awakened and divinely healed of the plague. He therefore begged that he would conceal his name, as one affecting the glory of no mortal: and after he had tarried some days in the desert with that same Gothard and the rest of his companions, instructing them all and confirming them in holy works, he bade them farewell: and, a pilgrim, and ever zealous of penance and of the divine love, he sets out toward his native land.

[14] While he was making again for his native land, he betook himself to the province of Angleria in Lombardy toward Germany [c]; where, being taken at once as a spy, where the lord of that province was waging war with an enemy; whose soldiers seized blessed Roch, and delivered him to their lord as a spy and a plotter: and he without delay consigned blessed Roch, who ever confessed Jesus, to a black prison. But the man of the Lord, sparing all, patiently underwent the prison, and, mindful of the name of Jesus day and night, humbly commended himself to God: so much so that the prison wrought him no discomfort, who received the prison in place of a desert and of penance. After he had lived there for five years, at the end of the fifth year, when it was now the will of God that the soul of the holy man should be joined to the fellowship of the Saints, he who was wont to bring food to that same blessed Roch in the prison, on each of those days and hours beholds a wondrous splendor everywhere through the courtyard and the prison, and sees Roch praying prostrate on his knees to the ground: all which things he reported to his lord. And the fame of this matter straightway filled the whole city, so that many of the citizens ran together to the prison because of so great a novelty: and they saw the same, and all beheld it, and praised God, and accused that lord of savagery and impiety.

[15] When at last he knew that by the will of God he should end this mortal life, after 5 years he dies holily, he calls the keeper of the prison to him, and asks that he would entreat his lord in the name of God and of the glorious Virgin to send a priest to the prison, to whom Roch, as he was dying, might confess. Which when he had obtained, and had most devoutly confessed \, he asks that for the three following days he might be suffered to be wholly alone in the prison contemplating heavenly things, that the better and the nearer, as he departed from life, he might meditate upon the most holy passion of Christ. For the man of God had perceived how the citizens of the city were suppliantly praying their lord for his release from prison. All which things the priest reported to the lord \, and thus that three days' solitude was granted to blessed Roch. At the end of the third day an angel of the Lord came to him with this voice: Roch, behold, God sends me for thy soul: of whom, if thou desirest anything in this last part of thy life, thou oughtest now to ask it. Roch therefore besought almighty God with a most devout prayer that all Christians who should piously and reverently make memory of him in the name of Jesus might be freed from the plague: and, the prayer being made, he expired.

[16] and then first is recognized, buried, and honored. After the third day, the lord of the city sends to the prison to release blessed Roch from prison. But those who came found him already ended in life \*, and saw through the whole prison the rays of an admirable light, so that they undoubtedly understood him to be a friend of God. There was also at his head a great taper, and another as great at his feet: by which tapers the whole holy body was lit up. They found moreover beneath his head a tablet divinely inscribed with golden letters, in which it was written that God had granted to his prayer that which he had asked for those in distress. From it besides they learned the name and authority of blessed Roch; and, that name being known,

the mother of the lord of that city, now worn out with great old age, understood that Roch had been the son of the lord John of Montpellier, who was the own brother of this lord of whom we have already spoken; all which things they had before been ignorant of because his name was unknown. They recognized moreover that blessed Roch was their nephew, by the sign of that most holy cross which, as we have said, he had brought with him at his birth from his mother's womb. Thus therefore, repenting and afflicting themselves with grief and lamentation, at length with the whole concourse of the people of the city they solemnly and religiously bury the blessed man. Who afterward was gloriously dedicated a Saint by the Apostolic See ^d; and they built to his glorious name a large and most famous church.

I pass thee not by, most holy Roch: I have sung \*     My songs, nor do thy blessed wonders ask for verse. Nor therefore does this present page set forth in freedom     How bountiful toward thee is the grace of the great God. How much more art thou at hand than Chiron and Apollo,     In that thou art rightly the one sure health against plagues. Now do ye despise the mortal physician, ye whose     Bodies the wasting feverish plague possesses; Hasten to the Saint's steps, and make your vows to Roch,     He alone has known angelic aid by gift. This last gift and boon he asked as he was dying,     That he might free the pious sick from the plague. Christ granted the merit under a fixed covenant:     Therefore, woman and man, give ye your prayers to Roch.

ANNOTATIONS.

\ The Paris codex adds, and he asks that the Eucharist be given him*. \ In the same place this is added: And with tears he goes to the prince, that he may release so holy a man.* \ Perhaps functum*. \* In the same manuscript.

POSTHUMOUS GLORY

AMONG THE PEOPLE OF ANTWERP.

Roch, confessor, at Montpellier (St.)

BY THE AUTHOR J. P.

§ I. Relics, pious foundations, a confraternity, a privilege.

Documents kindly furnished to us here After I had gathered in the course of my preliminary Commentary on the Life of St. Roch very many things concerning the public veneration of that same Saint spread through Europe, from the Confraternities erected in his honor, likewise from relics and sacred buildings called by his name, I judged that those things also ought to be sought out which are done here at Antwerp, and which I thought would conduce to illustrating the posthumous glory of the most holy Confessor. In which matter I have here obtained a strenuous and obliging helper, the Reverend and most learned Master John Engelgrave, licentiate of both laws, and likewise Canon of the distinguished parochial and collegiate church of St. James, and Actuary of the chapter; by whose care, besides the authentic instruments communicated to me by that praiseworthy man concerning the things which are done in the aforesaid church, I received moreover certain other notices written in his own hand, suited to the end I intended; which for that reason below, by a brief designation, I shall call the Antwerp Notices. Besides these, I obtained from elsewhere certain other documents which regard other places of this city. And from these places indeed I shall first begin the singular piety of the people of Antwerp toward St. Roch. Concerning the sacred relic, therefore, preserved in the chapel of St. Roch, I bring forward this testimony, transcribed most recently from the original in our museum:

[2] Ambrose Capello, by the grace of God and of the Apostolic See bishop of Antwerp, they treat of the relics, to all and singular who shall see these presents, greeting in the Lord. Whereas it has been proved both by right reason and by innumerable experiences and by the usage of all ages, that the bodies left on earth of the Saints reigning with Christ in heaven, and their other remains, are ornaments of churches, defenses of cities against visible and invisible enemies, and public incitements of piety; and whereas on the part of the Reverend Master Gaspar vander Herstraten, priest, there had been exhibited to Us a certain part of the backbone of St. Roch, which the Venerable and Reverend Master Francis Diericx, of the Cistercian Order, abbot of St. Savior of this city (as was clearly proved to us by authentic letters and otherwise) had taken from that treasury of the relics of the Saints of the royal chapel of the kingdom of Portugal, which was recognized and approved by the most reverend lord John Miraeus, bishop of Antwerp, of pious memory, our predecessor, and by us; and whereas the same Reverend Master Herstraten had humbly besought Us that we would deign anew to inspect, recognize, and fortify with our episcopal seal the said Relic of St. Roch, and to hold ratified that welcome donation by which he, with a candid spirit of liberality and with a peculiar devotion toward St. Roch, gave as a gift the aforesaid part of his bone (as he had received it as a gift from the Venerable and Reverend Master abbot aforesaid) to the chapel of St. Roch in the street commonly called de Gochus-straet in this city:

[3] We, in view of the premises, and being as much as possible intent upon amplifying the worship of the said Saint, which have been given have again reviewed and recognized the aforesaid holy relic, have fortified it with our episcopal seal impressed in Spanish wax, and by our ordinary authority have approved it as a true and genuine relic of the said St. Roch, and have permitted it to be exposed in the aforesaid chapel of St. Roch (in whose favor we have accepted and held ratified the aforesaid donation) to the public veneration of the faithful of Christ. In faith of all which we have ordered these presents, signed with our own hand, to be strengthened with our greater seal and with the signature of our secretary, at Antwerp in our episcopal palace, the XX day of May in the year of the Lord MDCLXXII.

F. Ambrose, Bishop of Antwerp, as above, etc.

By mandate of the aforesaid most reverend lord bishop.

P. de Bisthoven, secretary. Besides this instrument I have also seen the act of the aldermen, as they call it, concerning the donation of this sacred relic made by the said Master Francis Diericx, abbot, to Master Gaspar vander Herstraten; and concerning the latter's cession, by which he testifies that he has given that sacred pledge in perpetuity to the chapel of St. Roch, which stands in the street commonly called de Gochus-straet. Which things the consuls, aldermen, and senate of the city of Antwerp confirm by their testimony on the V day of December in the year 1671.

[4] Further, that chapel belongs to the house of exposed or foundling infants (commonly het Vindelingen-huys) and to the madhouse. to the chapel of St. Roch, Concerning the latter our Charles Scribanius in his Origins of the People of Antwerp writes thus at page 112: A madhouse (in St. Gochus-straet) for those who have wandered from their own manhood, such as in a great commonwealth and a vast neighborhood can never be lacking. This place was given by the almoners, and the fruit answers to the work. But concerning the former a little more fully: An orphan house dedicated to foundlings: of whom in a great population and a crowded neighborhood there is a great number, and they now count a hundred and eighty. It has for its authors the almoners of the city in the year MDXXXII: a noble work, and one which would deserve a name in a prince. They are brought up, and, as soon as their age allows, are taught, according as each one's ability has borne: and reading and writing are added, that nothing may be lacking for an honorable education and for the rest of life. Thus Scribanius. But that nothing may be lacking to their Christian instruction either, Christian doctrine is set forth to them on Sundays by one of the fathers of the Society (the priest of the place instructs them for the duly performing of their first communion), and by two of them, at fixed times of the year, their confession of sins is heard. In the said chapel on every Tuesday Mass is said in honor of St. Roch. In the same place his relic is exposed to public veneration: likewise on the XVI day of August the Saint's annual memory is celebrated with festive rite, and a sermon is preached to the people.

[5] and in the hospital of St. Julian, There stands also here at Antwerp in de Hoogh-straet, as they call it, that is, in the high street, the hospital of St. Julian: concerning which the praiseworthy Scribanius at page 110 says, They are mistaken who would have it to have stood a thousand years ago. I find it built in the year MCCCIII. To pilgrims coming from every quarter this house is open for two days, and they are kindly entertained: and lest divine things should be lacking, a chapel is attached, and in it a daily Mass. I have in my hands a printed copy of the plenary indulgence, as they call it, to be gained on the feast of St. Julian the confessor, the singular patron of pilgrims, in the chapel of this Saint, which is situated in the said street: and in the same copy it is noted that in that chapel on Wednesdays in summer at the seventh hour, and in winter at half past seven, a Mass is sung in honor of St. Roch, whose sacred relics also rest in the same place, with an indulgence of forty days granted by the most illustrious bishop of Antwerp to those who shall have devoutly been present at it.

[6] [and also in the church of St. James, with foundations in favor of the chapel of St. Roch,] A sacred pledge is likewise exposed to public veneration in the church of St. James, of which I spoke above, enclosed in a silver reliquary. I have seen and venerated it, and have observed that its reliquary is properly closed and fortified with the seals of the most illustrious Ambrose Capello. Consult what will be said below in §3 at the end. But very many other monuments of a singular piety toward St. Roch have there been left to the memory of posterity. And indeed the worship of that same Confessor was begun or continued in his chapel of the aforesaid church now from two hundred and twenty-four years ago, according to the Antwerp Notices designated before, in which it is reported that a rent which cannot be extinguished, of four florins yearly, under mortgage of a certain house in the street commonly called de Lange-nieuwe-straet, was founded in favor of the said chapel from the year 1512 by a certain lord chaplain: whose payment, which, as I understand, is discharged down to this present time, stands in place of a confirmation, since I do not have the instrument of the foundation. In the same Notices it is said that there is another foundation for discharging five Masses at the altar of St. Roch in that same place every week. Likewise another, as the often-mentioned Notices record, for celebrating two Masses there every week. The date and the other circumstances of these two foundations have not come to my hands: yet I have here woven both in on occasion of the former, which I named in the first place. Let us pass on to other times.

[7] In the year of Christ 1563 a diploma was granted by Philip II, king of Spain, and with a royal privilege given to the same altar. in favor of the altar of St. Roch: an authentic copy of the letters, written in the Flemish tongue, I have before me, from which I cull the following. The confraternity brothers of the altar of St. Roch, in the year just designated in the said diploma, are reported to have offered a petition in which they signify that they had understood that several persons of the sodality of that same altar wished to provide for that altar by certain foundations, and to augment them with rents; but that a difficulty was created for them because, if these foundations and administrations were admitted by the prefects of the church of St. James, they could be converted to other uses, and thus the pious intention of the well-disposed persons and of the members of that same confraternity

might be infringed or extinguished. Which reason is indicated in the said diploma to deter the aforesaid members and other well-disposed persons from adorning that altar and the divine worship, and from augmenting its foundation; and that therefore a petition had been offered by the above-said confraternity brothers, in which they ask that to the administrators of the aforesaid sodality or confraternity of the above-mentioned altar there be granted the faculty that the administration, the receipt of money, and the government of the foundations be in perpetuity in their own hands, as well as both those goods which then belonged to that same altar and those which should hereafter accrue to that same altar; so that neither the prefects of the church, nor the prefects of the Holy Ghost, as they call them, nor any other Superiors, whether spiritual or secular, might in any way be able to meddle with them, or to dispose of them, or to change anything in them. To which supplication the above-mentioned Philip, king of Spain, kindly assented in his council, as appears more fully from the letters, fortified with the royal seal in red wax, and given at Brussels on the IV day of May, in the year of the Lord 1563. There were therefore at that time at Antwerp those who were affected in no ordinary degree toward the worship of St. Roch. There were those who had at heart the preservation of that worship. There was, finally, a confraternity; but how long before that it had been begun is not known: this is known, that the Saint's sodality was afterward raised to a greater splendor, as I shall presently tell.

§ II. The confraternity canonically erected; its statutes confirmed by Pope Alexander VII; the spiritual graces granted to it.

In the year 1658 the most illustrious bishop of Antwerp In the year of Christ 1658, on the XII day of August, the most illustrious Ambrose Capello canonically instituted and erected the confraternity of St. Roch the confessor in the church of St. James at Antwerp, already many a time mentioned, for all the faithful of Christ of both sexes, under the title and invocation of that same Saint, in the chapel and at the altar erected in his honor in the said church, and under certain statutes and ordinances. But because the copy of the said institution and erection is written in our Flemish tongue, we therefore render it into Latin to this effect: Brother Ambrose Capello, by the grace of God and of the Apostolic See bishop of Antwerp, to all who shall see these presents, greeting in the Lord. Whereas the incomprehensible goodness of God, who is merciful even in His punishing, being stirred to just anger by the manifold sins of men, often chastises with various scourges even those whom He loves, that He may bring them back to amendment and receive them into favor: and whereas for that cause the faithful of Christ have in every age, when pressed by necessity, fled to His mercy and to the intercession of His Saints; who, although they are in general honored, esteemed, and heard beyond measure with almighty God in their intercession, yet it has in fact been ascertained, with visible consolation and fruit, which very many men have experienced, that God appoints in this wretched world certain ones of His holy friends as peculiar patrons and defenders against various kinds of diseases and miseries which are most dreadful and hurtful to men: of which kind especially is the sudden sickness: against which, among the rest, as a singular patron there is honored and invoked St. Roch the confessor, who, while yet living here on earth, served and succored with great zeal those who were seized with the sudden sickness, and who himself also was infected with it; so that he seems to have peculiarly deserved that same patronage with God.

[9] All which things considering, and this besides, that it has pleased God for our sins grievously to visit this city with the aforesaid sudden sickness, as also the surrounding places, both in the past year and in the present, and at other times, as even now at present we feel; institutes the confraternity of St. Roch, it has seemed good to Us, according to the humble prayers and the pious desire of certain devout faithful of Christ, for the greater honor of God, the consolation of Christian souls, and the driving away of these punishments, by these presents to institute and erect a confraternity in the collegiate church of St. James in this city, for all the faithful of Christ of both sexes, under the title and invocation of St. Roch the confessor, in the chapel and at the altar erected in his honor in the same church, under the following statutes and ordinances:

I. The direction of this confraternity shall always be held by a canon of that same collegiate church, to be named by Us for this purpose: as now we name Master Francis de Wolff, canon of that same church.

II. Whoever wish to enter into this confraternity shall be enrolled by the aforenamed director, or by someone to be substituted for him, nor shall they be bound to give anything on that account: yet it shall be free to each one to give what pleases him.

III. On the day of their enrollment, having confessed their sins, they shall receive the holy Sacrament of the altar, and then they shall be able to gain an indulgence of forty days, reciting in the same place five times the Lord's Prayer and the Angelic Salutation.

[10] and prescribes rules for it. IV. Likewise they shall be able to gain an indulgence of forty days on the feast of St. Roch, and continuously through the whole octave, when at that time they shall be present at any of the divine offices of Mass, of sermon, or of lauds, which are then held in the same chapel, reciting, as above, five times the Lord's Prayer and the Angelic Salutation for the obtaining of peace, the conversion of unbelievers, and the driving away of the sudden sickness and of the death that stalks far and wide. Likewise all priests saying Mass on those same days in the same chapel of St. Roch shall in like manner gain an indulgence of XL days.

V. Every one enrolled in this confraternity shall daily recite the Lord's Prayer and the Angelic Salutation, that through the intercession of St. Roch it may please God to console those who at that time shall have been infected with the sudden sickness, and to free and preserve all others from that same sickness.

VI. On every Tuesday a Mass of St. Roch shall be said. Every one also, as opportunity serves, shall appear there on those days, or on others on which any Masses or offices of piety shall be held in honor of St. Roch, that he may attend those offices, if it can be done; and, praying as above, he shall gain an indulgence of XL days.

VII. No one is bound to any of the aforesaid exercises and devotion under pain of venial sin; but he who omits them, whether from forgetfulness or from negligence, loses only for that time the reward which God bestows for pious works of this kind. So done in our episcopal palace on the XII day of August in the year MDCLVIII. And there is subjoined in the transcript of this instrument: I attest the agreement of this extract with the registers of the bishopric of Antwerp. P. de Bisthoven, secretary.

[11] In the same year 1658, on the XXVIII day of September, our most holy Lord Pope Alexander VII confirms the statutes of the said confraternity by Apostolic letters, whose canonical institution which, transcribed by me hither from their own authentic original, run thus: Pope Alexander VII. For the future memory of the matter. Desiring that works of piety and Christian charity be everywhere exercised with the increase of divine worship, we willingly, when it is asked of Us, add the strength of Apostolic confirmation to those things which are known to have been providently done for that end, and we follow the faithful of Christ with fitting favors and graces, that they may be the more cherished in the exercise of those same pious works. For our beloved sons the officials and confraternity brothers of the confraternity under the invocation of St. Roch, canonically erected in the secular and collegiate and parochial church of St. James of the city of Antwerp, lately caused it to be set forth to us that formerly certain statutes were published for the happy and prosperous direction and government of that same confraternity.

[12] But whereas, as the same petition subjoined, in the same year those things are the firmer which are fortified by the authority of the Apostolic See, and the aforesaid officials and confraternity brothers therefore desire that statutes of this kind be strengthened with the patronage of our Apostolic confirmation, that they may be the more exactly observed and the more firmly subsist, and that other things be granted them by Us, as below; We, wishing to assent, so far as we can with the Lord, to the wishes of those same officials and confraternity brothers in the premises, and to follow them with special favors and graces, and absolving their individual persons by the tenor of these presents from any sentences of excommunication, suspension, and interdict, and from other ecclesiastical sentences, censures, and penalties, imposed by law or by man on any occasion or cause whatsoever, if by any means they stand bound by them, for the obtaining only of the effect of these presents, and deeming them to be absolved, being inclined by the supplications humbly offered to Us in their name upon this matter, do by Apostolic authority, by the tenor of these presents, confirm and approve the aforesaid statutes, provided however that they be in use, and approved by the Ordinary, and be not revoked, nor comprehended under any revocations, and be not contrary to the sacred canons and to the decrees of the Council of Trent and to Apostolic constitutions and ordinances; and we add to them the strength of inviolable Apostolic firmness, and supply all and singular defects both of law and of fact, if any have in any way intervened:

[13] Decreeing that statutes of this kind, as also these present letters, are and shall be always and perpetually valid, firm, and efficacious, Pope Alexander the Seventh confirms, and shall have and obtain their full and entire effects, and shall be inviolably and unshakenly observed by all and singular whom it concerns and shall in future concern; and that so it must be judged and determined by all judges ordinary and delegate, even by the Auditors of causes of the Apostolic palace; and that it be null and void if anything otherwise upon these matters shall happen to be attempted by anyone, by any authority, knowingly or unknowingly, notwithstanding anything to the contrary. Given at Rome at St. Mary Major, under the Fisherman's ring, on the XXVIII day of September MDCLVIII, in the fourth year of our Pontificate. Gualterius. And beneath these letters it is noted: The statutes of the aforesaid confraternity, published by Us, are still in use, nor revoked, which we also will to be observed. Done at Brussels the XXV day of October in the year of the Lord MDCLVIII. By mandate of the most illustrious and most reverend Lord Bishop of Antwerp. I. de Wese, secretary.

[14] and with favors Nor was it enough for the aforesaid Vicar of Christ on earth to confirm this confraternity and its statutes in perpetuity by letters so express and so effectual; but he willed also kindly to follow it with peculiar favors, drawn from the sacred treasury of the Church, and paternally to cherish it, as is plain from his own Apostolic letters, given on the same day and year: Alexander VII. For the perpetual memory of the matter. Whereas, as we have learned, in the secular and collegiate and parochial church of St. James of the city of Antwerp there exists canonically instituted a certain pious and devout confraternity of the faithful of Christ of both sexes under the invocation of St. Roch, not however for men of any one particular craft, whose confraternity brothers and sisters have been wont to exercise very many works of piety and charity; We, that the aforesaid confraternity may day by day receive greater increases, trusting in the mercy of almighty God and in the authority of His blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, grant to all the faithful of Christ of both sexes who shall hereafter enter the said confraternity, on the first day of their entrance, if being truly penitent and having confessed they shall have received the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, a plenary indulgence:

[15] and with spiritual graces And likewise to the confraternity brothers both already enrolled and to be enrolled in the said confraternity in due time

and sisters, at the hour of death of any of them; if likewise, being truly penitent and having confessed and been refreshed with holy communion, or, in so far as they shall have been unable to do this, being at least contrite, they shall have devoutly invoked the name of Jesus with the mouth, if they were able, but if not, with the heart, a plenary indulgence also: and to those same confraternity brothers and sisters, both now and for the time being existing, likewise truly penitent and having confessed and been refreshed with holy communion, who shall have devoutly visited the church or chapel or oratory of the aforesaid confraternity on the feast day of St. Roch, from first Vespers until the setting of the sun of that same day, in each year, and shall there have poured out pious prayers to God for the concord of Christian princes, the extirpation of heresies, and the exaltation of holy mother Church, we in like manner mercifully grant in the Lord a plenary indulgence and remission of all their sins.

[16] paternally Moreover, to the said confraternity brothers and sisters, likewise truly penitent and having confessed and been refreshed with holy communion, who shall visit the said church or chapel or oratory on the feast days of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the most holy Trinity, and also of the Assumption of the Blessed Immaculate Virgin Mary, and of All Saints, as aforesaid, and shall pray there, on whichever of the aforesaid days they shall have done this, seven years and as many quarantines: But as often as they shall have been present at Masses and other divine Offices to be celebrated and recited from time to time in the said church or chapel or oratory, or at public or private gatherings of that same confraternity to be held anywhere, or shall have received the poor into hospitality, or shall have composed peace between enemies, or caused or procured it to be composed; and likewise those also who shall have accompanied to ecclesiastical burial the bodies of the dead, both of confraternity brothers and sisters of the said confraternity and of others, or any processions to be held with the Ordinary's license, and the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, both in processions and when it shall from time to time be carried to the sick or to others, wheresoever and howsoever; or, if hindered, when the signal of the bell has been given for it, shall have said once the Lord's Prayer and the Angelic Salutation, or also shall have recited five times the same Prayer and Salutation for the souls of the deceased confraternity brothers and sisters aforesaid; or shall have brought back some sinner to the way of salvation, and shall have taught the ignorant the precepts of God and those things which pertain to salvation; or shall have exercised any other work whatsoever of piety or charity: so often, for each of the aforesaid works, we relax sixty days of the penances enjoined upon them or in any way otherwise owed, in the form customary to the Church; these presents to be valid in perpetual times to come.

[17] But we will that, if otherwise any other indulgence has been granted by Us to the said confraternity brothers and sisters performing the premises, either perpetually or for a time not yet elapsed, he cherishes it. these presents shall be void: and that, if also the said confraternity is already aggregated to some archconfraternity, or shall hereafter be aggregated, or united by any other reason whatsoever, or also in any manner instituted, the former and any other Apostolic letters shall in no way avail them; but from that time by that very fact shall be wholly void. Given at Rome at St. Mary Major, under the Fisherman's ring, on the XXVIII day of September MDCLVIII, in the fourth year of our Pontificate. Gualterius. And below it is subscribed: Let it be published. Done at Brussels the XXV day of October in the year of the Lord MDCLVIII. By mandate of the most illustrious and most reverend Lord Bishop of Antwerp. I. de Wese, secretary.

§ III. The prefect and patron of the confraternity; the past and present solemnity on the feast of St. Roch, etc.; the persons enrolled in that sodality.

The patron and prefect of the confraternity chosen by civil consent, But inasmuch as it conduced in the highest degree to the stability and perpetuity of the often-named chapel and of the aforesaid confraternity that some person be chosen upon whom the supreme prefecture both of the one and of the other should rest, so also this matter was afterward prudently provided for by choosing someone as supreme prefect (they call him superintendent) and patron of both: whose election and designation was confirmed first by civil, and then also by ecclesiastical, authority, as is gathered from the following instrument, which I present from the authentic copy: Brother Ambrose Capello, by the grace of God and of the Apostolic See bishop of Antwerp, to all who shall see these presents, greeting in the Lord. The reason of our office demands that we follow with peculiar benevolence and with an especial favor beyond the rest those who direct their zeal to the adornment of the house of God and to the amplifying of the worship of the Saints, and who piously and liberally bestow their care and their means. On behalf, therefore, of the very reverend, noble, and most learned lord Alexander Roelans, priest, licentiate of both laws, Apostolic Protonotary, temporal lord of Mol, Balen, Dessel, etc., there was exhibited to us a certain act, praised and approved, so far as in them lay, by the lords consuls and senators of this city on the XXVIII day of September in the year MDCLVII, by which the churchwardens of the collegiate church of St. James in this city, with the assistance and consent of the noble lord Henry van Halmale, knight, etc., chief churchwarden of the same church, on account of the singular devotion of the said Master Roelans toward St. Roch (whose chapel in the said church he had resolved to adorn and enlarge with a new altar and with other pious works), so far as in them also lay, chose and acknowledged him and his successors as superintendent and patron of the aforesaid chapel of St. Roch, with the privileges inserted in that same act: and whereas on his behalf humble supplication had been made to us (considering that already, according to the aforesaid pious purpose, he had at his own expense enriched and adorned the aforesaid chapel with a notable marble altar erected in it, with the sacred relics of that same St. Roch, and with other splendid and precious ornaments), that we would deign by our Ordinary authority to approve and confirm the said election and acknowledgment of himself and of his successors as patron of the said chapel of St. Roch;

[19] is then confirmed by ecclesiastical authority: We, being fully instructed and informed of the aforesaid pious works, as being notorious, and favorably inclined to a supplication of this kind, have judged that the said act of the aldermen, with the privileges and conditions inserted in it, ought to be approved, even as by our Ordinary authority we approve and confirm it; and we anew name and confirm the aforesaid Master Alexander Roelans and his successors as superintendent and patron elect of the chapel of St. Roch and of its confraternity in the collegiate church of St. James in this city, requiring all and singular whom it concerns to receive, hold, and acknowledge him and them as such; that so much the more, by so conspicuous an example of his munificence and piety shining before them, the members of the said confraternity and the rest of the faithful of Christ may be stirred up and inflamed to a greater devotion and worship toward St. Roch, saving our right and that of every man in all things. In faith whereof we have ordered these presents, signed with our own hand, to be strengthened with our greater seal and with the secretary's signature. At Antwerp the XIX day of May MDCLXXIII. Brother Ambrose, bishop of Antwerp. By mandate of the aforesaid most reverend Lord Bishop, P. de Bisthoven, secretary.

[20] whom another succeeds in the year 1728. Finally, in the year 1728 of this century, on the X day of May, the very reverend, most noble, and most learned Master Philip James de Cano, licentiate of both laws, and also canon and cantor of the Chapter of the distinguished church of St. James aforesaid, since he is the son of the lady Catharine Carenna, who was the daughter of the lady Isabella Roelans, sister of the said Master Alexander Roelans, and thus one of the successors representing that same Master Alexander, is declared superintendent and patron of the often-named chapel and confraternity; as is asserted at greater length in the notarial instrument then drawn up upon this matter, from which I have extracted these things; and the same gentleman continues to be such now, namely in the year of Christ 1736, in which I write these things. These things being thus set forth, this also seems to remain, that I should instruct the reader concerning the past and present solemnity with which St. Roch was formerly honored, and with which he is honored there to this day.

[21] It fell out very conveniently that, while the very reverend and most learned Master John Engelgrave, praised above, was meeting with me, By the testimony of the Chapter of St. James and we were treating together of matters pertaining to the veneration of St. Roch, he graciously promised me that he would see to it that a public instrument of the Chapter of St. James upon these matters should be drawn up: which afterward he also most obligingly brought to me. And it conduces especially to the knowledge of the aforesaid festival, and is drawn up in these terms: We the Dean and Chapter of the distinguished collegiate and parochial church of St. James at Antwerp, at the request of the Reverend Fathers the Hagiographers of the Society of Jesus, make known and declare that, in order that by the merits and patronage of the holy Roch the confessor the contagious pestilence might be turned away from the city, the most illustrious and most reverend Lord bishop Ambrose Capello instituted in the aforesaid collegiate church, in the chapel dedicated to that Saint, a Confraternity of the same on the XII of August in the year MDCLVIII, with certain rules annexed, the first of which is that one of the canons of the aforesaid Chapter shall always have the direction of this Confraternity: which erection and ordination of rules were in the following month approved and confirmed by the holy Lord Alexander VII, Pope of pious memory. That feast, therefore, is solemnly kept with an Octave every year on the XVI day of the month of August. But at the beginning of the aforesaid institution a sermon was wont to be preached by a reverend Father of the said Society (the evening lauds in honor of the said Saint being solemnly celebrated with musical harmony): but in course of time (the people flocking together but moderately) it was ordained that a sermon should be preached only on the first day; which is so observed down to this present day.

[22] After which Offices there follows on the first evening an honorable procession through the great circuit of the parish, the present and past worship is declared. which a vast number of torchbearers renders conspicuous by reason of the incredible concourse of the people. In this procession there is carried the image of the Virgin Mother of God most preciously adorned, which the relics of the holy Roch follow, in a silver casket set upon a larger silvered bier: both are preceded by a wooden image of this Saint skillfully carved: and then the Holy of Holies in the venerable Sacrament is borne by the Reverend Lord Canon Director (the whole Clergy and Chapter accompanying), who also throughout the whole Octave performs a solemn Mass, and the Litanies in the evening with the said Blessed Sacrament, ending the last day of the Octave with a procession through the ambulatory of the church, which the Chapter with its Clergy again accompanies with lights. A commemoration in honor of St. Roch was formerly celebrated every three months: but, charity growing cold, and consequently through the failure of alms, it was interrupted and ceased, so far that this devotion is practiced only on the annual principal feast, unless now and then in a special manner, necessity urging, as in the year MDCCXX, when the plague was raging among the people of Marseilles, devotion toward the aforesaid Saint be shown. In faith and confirmation of all which we have ordered these presents to be dispatched by the Reverend Master Canon Actuary, and to be strengthened with the accustomed seal of the Chapter, this XI of August MDCCXXXVI. By mandate of my Venerable Lords the Dean and Chapter aforesaid, J. Engelgrave, Priest, Canon and Actuary of the Chapter of St. James.

[23] [Concerning the reliquary, and concerning the members enrolled in the Confraternity from the beginning.] To these things may be added the following, which the most noble and most learned Master Canon, the present director of the confraternity, communicated to me in writing: namely, that the silver reliquary of the relics of St. Roch is marked on the back with the family arms of Master Roelans, and with this subscription: I belong to Alexander Roelans, knight, lord of Mol, Balen, Dessel, etc., perpetual patron of the sodality of St. Roch, MDCLVIII. Likewise, that the lords confraternity brothers have from the erection of the confraternity always been men of the more noble rank of this city: to which the Count de la Tour and Tassis first subscribed with his own hand; his arms and those of very many others being painted in the book of the confraternity: among which shine forth also those of the most illustrious and most reverend former prelates of this city, Ambrose Capello and Ferdinand van Beughem. Concerning the aforesaid Count de la Tour it is reported that on account of the plague raging at that time he fled hither, that he might commend himself to the patronage of the aforesaid Saint, celebrated in this distinguished church for more than two hundred years. Let this be the end.