ON ST. JERON, PRIEST AND MARTYR,
IN HOLLAND,
In the year 856.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
The lawful cultus of the Saint from the sacred calendars and elsewhere.
Jeron, priest and martyr, in Holland (St.)
BHL Number: 3865
BY P. B.
So ancient was the cultus of St. Jeron — or, as some write, St. Hiero, martyr — His cultus is ancient even in the martyrologists and calendars, that it is altogether strange that he was not noted in the reformed Roman. His public veneration is gathered from the Auctaria of our Usuard, from the manuscript Florarium of the Saints, from the manuscript parchment Breviaries of Haarlem and Utrecht and others; from Galesinius, Wion, Bucelinus, and the rest, among whom Molanus excelled in the Natales of the Saints of Belgium, in which on this day, from the History which was in manuscript at Egmond, he announces him thus: At Egmond, the birthday of St. Jeron, priest and martyr; who, a Scot by race and distinguished in nobility, being the only son of his parents, could by no means be held by the allurements of the world; but joining himself to the servants of God, he followed the virtues of each.
[2] And when by his merit he had ascended to the grade of the priesthood, among the Hollanders; he turned away and freed many in the parts of Frisia from divers errors. At last, as he had desired, he drank the chalice of the passion. For under the persecution of the Danes and Northmen, being dragged to the tribunal, after scourges and prison and the other injuries, he consummated his martyrdom by the sword. His head is at Noordwijk, the place of his martyrdom: his body a little after, by the diocesan bishop and by Theodoric the Second, count of Holland, with miracles attending, was translated to Egmond, to the monastery of St. Adalbert, a three days' fast having first been kept according to custom. And these places are of the diocese of Haarlem in Holland. In the history they are reckoned to Frisia; for when it was written the name of Holland was not yet known. The feast is very well known to the Hollanders: for many by his benefit have recovered their lost goods. Whence there is this verse:
In things lost, Jeron very often shines forth.
But some men of letters prefer to call him Hiero in their verses. Thus he.
[3] But of what kind and how great that cultus was among the Hollanders, and most celebrated after some memory of his Life, no one teaches more certainly or more elegantly than Sueder, bishop of Utrecht, in the decree which we here long preserve in manuscript, and which is now published at no small cost by the Jansenists in the Batavia sacra, page 216, in these very words, which nevertheless we transcribe from our manuscript: Sueder, by the grace of God bishop of Utrecht, to the perpetual memory of the matter. We judge it worthy and fitting that those should be perpetually frequented on earth with due honor whom the hidden clemency of God, adorned with countless miracles, the merits of their virtues interceding, has exalted with the glory of eternal blessedness. Assuredly the illustrious priest St. Jeron, martyr of Christ — as we have learned by the testimony of the sacred writing of men worthy of credit — coming forth noble in this world from noble forebears, not leaving to his own will the swift and unbridled motions of an untamed will, but providently subjecting them to the rule of reason, grew from youth throughout the course of his whole life from virtue to virtue, striving with ardent desire to be trained in literary studies, and to render himself, by the palm of martyrdom, unto the unfading reward to which he was predestined; and also to render acceptable to their Creator the unbelieving Danes and Northmen and other men, especially of North Holland, West Frisia, and the surrounding places of the diocese of Utrecht, by wholesome teachings and by examples of humility, holiness, and religion.
[4] For when the struggle of the contest of the said holy martyr was completed, of his martyrdom, translation, and his head was cut off through the tyranny of the cruel Danes for the faith of Christ, he in no wise resisting, but of his own accord offering his neck to the headsman's sword, his disciples gave his holy body to burial in a secret place, where for many years it lay hidden and concealed. But in the year nine hundred from the Nativity of the Lord, the noble and pious Count Theodoric the Second governing the land of Holland, that holy body was by divine power revealed to a certain Nochbodo, a just man fearing God, by a vision made to him three times: which being brought to the knowledge of Odilbald, twelfth bishop of Utrecht, and of the said Count, they, hastening straightway to the tomb and opening it, found the relics of the holy martyr divinely and miraculously revealed; which, except the holy head, which they brought forth in the village of Noordwijk, where the aforesaid holy martyr Jeron stood forth as patron, they carried to Egmond of the said diocese, translating them with fitting reverence amid new rejoicings, and solemnly placed them with the relics of St. Adalbert the confessor resting there.
[5] O happy martyr of Christ, then, to whose relics the sick come and are healed, and the memory of his miracles, it is established by whose patronage goods lost or ill gotten are restored to their rightful owners, remedies against dangers are conferred upon those who ask, and the bonds of offenses are loosed! Rejoice, happy Holland, endowed with so great a patron and enriched with so great a treasure. We therefore, providently attending to the aforesaid, and to the other not few miracles by which the holy martyr Jeron shone, and to the affection of sincere devotion of the men of the aforesaid places, which they are proved to bear toward the said holy martyr their patron — that the aforesaid men, as in some measure partakers of the merits of the said holy martyr, and with their patron co-heirs and fellow-guests of the most high King in that kingdom to which no entrance lies open to the proud, may deserve to be made such — to the praise and glory of almighty God and of the glorious Virgin Mary His Mother, and also to the honor of the holy martyr Jeron, by our ordinary authority and by the counsel of our prelates we establish, and by the tenor
of these presents we ordain, in virtue of holy obedience and under pain of excommunication, which we will that gainsayers and rebels incur, strictly commanding and enjoining, that from henceforth in all perpetual time to come the day of the said holy martyr Jeron be solemnly celebrated, after the manner of the day of St. Laurence the martyr, every year on the octave of St. Laurence, in every parish of the said lands of North Holland, West Frisia, and the surrounding places, both in choir and in the marketplace.
[6] For the rest, desiring to render the Christian people more apt for divine grace, by the bishop of Utrecht in the year 1429. to all and each of both sexes who on the feast of the said holy martyr Jeron, or on any other festal day, shall devoutly visit the aforesaid parish church in Noordwijk, following the procession there, or celebrating Mass in it, or seeing or hearing it celebrated, or also lending helping hands to the fabric, the ornaments, or the lights of that same church — as often as they shall do the aforesaid, or any of them — trusting in the mercy of almighty God and in the authority of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and of St. Martin our patron, we relax forty days of indulgences from the penances enjoined, of the gift of a more abundant grace in the Lord, by the testimony of these our letters. Given in the year of the Lord one thousand four hundred and twenty-nine, on the fifteenth day of the month of November. There had been added: The present copy has been collated with its original and agrees with the same, by me Arnold John Bays, notary admitted by the court of Holland.
Lappius compared it with the aforesaid authentic copy. Thus our manuscript.
[7] Observe, however, at number 4 that the revelation of St. Jeron is referred to Odilbald, twelfth bishop of Utrecht, When the translation was made. and to Count Theodoric the Second of Holland, in the year nine hundred from the Nativity of the Lord; which does not agree with the now common chronology of Theodoric the Second. Others therefore prefer to believe that it was reported much later to Baldric, the fifteenth bishop, and to the same Count, namely in the year of the Lord nine hundred and fifty-five, as will be seen below; and this opinion seems to me indeed not a little more probable than the former, and at this time more received. But these things do not touch the certainty of the most ample cultus here established.
[8] The Life of St. Jeron the martyr, written in a threefold style, whence the Acts are here given. was published by Peter Opmeer among the Martyrs of Holland in the year 1625, with the reprinting of Opmeer's own Chronicle. There is contained there the Life of St. Jeron expressed in heroic verse by William Hermann of Gouda, for some years a companion of Erasmus among the brethren of Steyn. So I find noted at the foot of the decree just given. And I judge indeed that we have that very piece in manuscript among the papers collected by our Rosweyde; but since that man did not note whence he received them, and since I have not seen the work of Opmeer just mentioned, I have thought it better, passing these over, to transcribe all that John Gerbrand of Leyden, a Carmelite, Prior of the convent of Haarlem in the year 1495, a man very studious and learned, on the testimony of Trithemius in his Catalogue of Writers, wrote of our Saint. And these things were long ago published in print in the Belgian Chronicle, book 5, chapters 24 and 33, and book 7, chapters 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24, which seem to me by no means inferior to all the Acts of his that I have seen. We confess meanwhile that we are ignorant of very many things concerning this Saint — as, what became of his relics; what is the reason why he was formerly wont to be painted as a priest, holding in one hand a sword and in the other a falcon: for the sword seems to signify his martyrdom; but what the falcon? Perhaps it had been restored to its master through the Saint's invocation; certainly no other cause is known: for this reason, I suppose, it is omitted in the effigy given in the Batavia sacra.
THE ACTS
By John of Leyden, in the Belgian Chronicle, at the year 847, &c.
Jeron, priest and martyr, in Holland (St.)
BHL Number: 3862
By John of Leyden.
CHAPTER I.
Jeron's country, baptism, priesthood, and passion.
The Saint born and baptized in England, About these times there flourished in Holland the blessed Jeron, a priest of the Lord a. He, born in England b of parents noble according to the dignity of the world, to be regenerated without delay in the divine fonts, is brought to the reverend bosom of holy mother Church, that, born again into a new infancy — which divine grace brings forth of diverse sex and age into the one doctrine of the Catholic faith — he might deny impiety and worldly desires, and might begin to live soberly and justly according to the perpetual author of his health-giving regeneration; namely, that being buried with his sins through Baptism, he might live unto justice in the acquiring of eternal blessedness. At the suggestion of the divine grace of the Holy Spirit, he was called Jeron in holy Baptism, that in the very word of his name the merit of his most holy life to come might be shown forth: for he is called Hieron, as it were wholly holy c. But when, brought up in England with the greatest diligence of his parents, he was passing nearly the years of boyhood, he did not, as that age is wont, give himself to childish games; but already then, longing to devote himself wholly to the divine service, he labored, with the increase of his holy body, to perfect the inner man by an abundance of holy virtues. And he grew in age, and no less in wisdom and in holiness d.
[2] then as a priest he converts the Hollanders and Frisians to Christ, Why do I linger in so great matters? Advancing in every virtue, he ascended through the grades of ecclesiastical order and came to the blessing of the priestly office. Which being duly performed, he chose his state in his mind; and desiring to be a partaker in the reward of those who left all things for the Lord, after the manner of our patriarch Abraham, who forsook his country and all who were joined to him by kinship, he deliberated with himself to go whither the Lord should wish to direct him. And so, accompanied by divine grace, he went forth from England, and entering Holland and Frisia, he found some of the inhabitants serving with heathen rites the abominable worship of idols, others, after the acknowledgment of the truth, in various errors, according as they were instructed by false teachers; and considering with himself that perhaps the Lord had destined him thither for their salvation, he therefore, as once his own countrymen, so with all vigilance wholesomely admonished them, that they might come to their senses from the snares of the devil, by which they were held captive at his pleasure, and might take upon them the sweet yoke of their Creator. Why say more? By continually preaching Christ as God, he subdued the fierceness of that people, and in a short time gained a people acceptable to the Lord.
[3] At the same season (in the year of the Lord eight hundred and fifty-six e), when the Danes (and Norwegians) were plundering all the wealth of Holland, among whom in the year 856 slaying some of both sexes with the sword and leading others away captive, they found the holy man Jeron, priest of God, ruling the people near Noordwijk f and instructing bishops g in the Christian faith. Being seized by them, he is reserved for judgment to be examined. But while he was being dragged along, rejoicing that he was worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus, he prayed, saying: Lord, lead me in Thy justice because of my enemies; direct my way in Thy sight. And when he had been brought to the tribunal of the captain of the Danes, the crowd shouted in confused uproar. Some said: Take such a man from the earth; suffer not the enemy of our sacred gods to live any longer. Others urged that he should be long tortured with exquisite torments, both that his bishops might be terrified by his punishment, and that the people of Holland, who hung upon their love for him, might be affrighted by such an example.
[4] Meanwhile, after many afflictions, he is shut up in a dark prison, under the Danes and Norwegians that on the morrow he might either offer incense to the idol, or, if he would not, might perish for his contempt. But he sang psalms: Lord, in the light of Thy countenance I will walk, and in Thy name I will exult all the day. But in the morning, leading forth the blessed Jeron, a son of light, from the places of darkness, they set him in their council before the captain. To whom he said: Did those stripes of yesterday inflict any pain? But the blessed Jeron answered cheerfully: Not only did they inflict no pain, but they made me stronger. For it is written: According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, Thy comforts have gladdened my soul. And the governor asked of what condition he was and what sect he followed. But he answered: Not only free-born, but even distinguished in family, confessing Christ the true God I have worshiped Him from infancy, and to vain idols I will never bow my neck, because the Lord my God says in the Gospel: The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and Him only shalt thou serve. But the governor said: Hear me and sacrifice to the gods, that thou mayest pass what remains of thy life even to old age with joy, and mayest have our friendship. Then St. Jeron answered: Thou persuadest foolish things and promisest doubtful ones. Forsake, thou sayest, God the maker, willy-nilly, and take our custom — nay, that of all ages — and sacrifice to demons, that provision may be made for my life even to old age: whereas He Himself made all things and knows from afar the things that shall be. But the governor said: I would have thee tell me who is that God whom alone thou proclaimest worthy of the praise of every creature.
[5] The man of God answered: It is written: Give not that which is holy to dogs, having professed the faith, neither cast pearls before swine; wherefore thou shalt never with polluted ears drink from me the knowledge of this truth. But since I know that certain of the bystanders are predestined to life, to these I proclaim that they may know what is the sum of our religion. We believe the Father, of whom all fatherhood, according to the Apostle, in heaven and on earth is named; and His Son, and the Holy Spirit, of whom the Psalmist says: By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their power. Their indivisible Trinity, divisible in persons, we venerate as one in substance; and in this Trinity nothing is before or after, nothing greater or less; but all three persons are coeternal to one another and coequal; and every one who beyond this one and threefold God believes or worships anything as eternal God, and has placed in it the hope of his salvation, shall perish.* At these proofs of the true faith, all the Christians rejoicing, the faith of virtues resounded in them; while in the minds of others the monuments of false gods held sway, and in the senses of yet others there arose afresh the terrors of all torments h.
[6] he was beheaded on the 17th of August. But the wicked governor, like the asp stopping his ears at the voice of the charmer, lest he should hear him speak of the injuries done to the gods and to himself, orders him to be punished the more quickly. And while he was being led by his officers, he sang, saying: I have not hidden Thy mercy and Thy truth in my heart from the great council. Wherefore I beseech Thee, Lord, put not far from me Thy mercies; but let Thy mercy and Thy truth always uphold me. When the blessed Jeron had finished these words, being tortured by the executioners with divers kinds of torments and afflicted i, at last, with the confession of the Christian faith, the illustrious martyr of the Lord was beheaded, to live for ever; and he was received into the country of heaven on the sixteenth of the Kalends of September. Then a few,
who were present there, God-fearing men, pricked with grief at the unjust slaying of so great a man, secretly, for fear of the heathen, snatched away his most sacred body and laid it with tears and prayers in a new tomb.
ANNOTATIONS.
* that is, communicable to the persons.
that is, peribit* (he shall perish).
CHAPTER II.
The translation of the body and the miracles.
In the year 955 Nothbodo In the year of the Lord nine hundred and fifty-five a there was in Holland a faithful man set in a lay habit, named Nothbodo, dwelling near to the place where the body of the most holy Jeron the martyr was buried; who, daily giving himself to the tillage of the land, strove to lead his own life without fraud, and sought to share in the necessities of the saints:* for he knew that it had been enjoined upon us in the heart by the Lord that we should make to ourselves friends of the mammon of iniquity, that when we shall fail they may receive us into everlasting dwellings. And therefore he labored to lay up his labors by the hands of the poor in heavenly treasures, where he was sure that they would never be destroyed by rust or moth, nor dug out by thieves in the foul darkness of night. This Nothbodo, while on a certain night he rested half awake upon his bed, saw standing beside him a man, aged in years, tall of stature, comely of countenance; and while he marveled at his wondrous beauty, and being as it were struck utterly speechless with fear did not dare to ask who he was, he who appeared addressed him with this beginning of speech:
[8] Be not afraid, nor greatly fear, dearest brother, for the labors of thy hands have made thee blessed, is admonished by the appearing Saint and the alms which thou dost have purified thy conscience from all filth of vices, so that thou canst see the countenance of thy fellow-servants now reigning with God, and enjoy their converse. Wherefore know that to me also, made by God's grace one of these, it has been granted to appear in thy visions, that thou mayest raise up my relics laid in neglect; and that through this it may be known to all of how great merit I am accounted with God. And when Nothbodo, comforted by the sweetness of that familiar speech, asked with humble answer who he was, and often fortified his brow with the saving standard of our redemption, lest perchance he should be mocked by the fraud of a phantom-making Satan, he said: Right well do I rejoice with thy faith, who truly believest that all diabolical figments are put to flight by the venerable sign of the holy cross. But I am not, as thou thinkest, a phantom; rather, conceived in sins, in my mother's womb I took the common air, so that first, because of the wicked prevarication of the first-formed man, I suffered the hardships of that prevarication; but now, justified by the grace of God, I possess the joys of paradise. And when he had instructed him most fully, as we have already touched, how in the course of the paths of justice, the faith being kept, he came through the palm of martyrdom to the rewards laid up in heaven, he said: Now go into the village surnamed Noordwijk; and there thou shalt find my tomb built of small stones; which, when thou shalt have found the earth dug away, taking my limbs, thou shalt carry them to the place rightly called Egmond, because it has been purged of the filth of idolatry through the illustrious merits of the most holy Adalbert b. And delay not to place them in his venerable shrine; for He who granted him to conquer earthly things Himself also grants him to enjoy the tabernacle of so great a company. Having said this, he withdrew from his eyes.
[9] often, for fear of delusion, But the man of the Lord, remembering that the author of falsehood, often transformed into an angel of light, is wont to deceive the incautious, in no way gave any credit to this first vision; but understanding from God how the matter stood, he beat with assiduous prayers upon the heavenly ears of the divine clemency, in a spirit of humility and with contrite mind, that the truth of so great a matter might be searched out — that, if this vision had been made by Him, it might be manifested to him a second and a third time. And so, when he was set in fastings and prayers, the same one appeared again as before, and admonished him not stubbornly to spurn the obedience enjoined upon him by God; lest, while he scorned to accomplish what the divine goodness had decreed before all worldly ages to be done through him, he should be justly punished, without excuse, with the despisers in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God.
[10] until, his horses being stolen, he appears again to another, And when by continual affliction of abstinence and vigils, for the searching out of this very business, he was without ceasing offering himself to the Lord as an acceptable holocaust, it happened that his horses, while they chanced to be at pasture and the herdsman slept, were carried off by thieves and hidden in the hiding-places of runaways; whom, having gathered bands of friends and servants, he sought through every byway, and, evening now coming on c, he came near the place twice shown him by the Lord; yet disclosing that secret to none of those going about, he there exhorted his companions to give their limbs rest after their varied wandering. And they, fulfilling his counsel with one accord because of the difficulty of the labor, after bodily refreshment settled themselves to sleep just as they were beneath a thicket. And when a deep slumber had seized all that company, behold, the holy martyr Jeron appeared in a vision to one chaste, innocent, and simple man among the aforesaid fellow-townsmen resting there with him, saying: Arise and tell Nothbodo not to presume any further to set little store by the divine commands; and let him know that my tomb is in the part of the eastern quarter, to the right of the place where he himself rested this night. But since the unbelieving ask for signs, when it shall be dawn, run together to this nearby wood, and ye shall without doubt find the horses which ye have lost.
[11] [who, the horses being found, tells the vision to Nothbodo, and digs up the body with him, the bishop being informed, &c.] Then he, awaking and desiring to take a proof of the vision in this, hastily admonishes his companions to rise, and announces that the horses will now be found without difficulty, God showing them. And as soon as they had entered the wood, they see them at a distance in a byway near the public road, tied to stumps by the thieves with little ropes. And now being made certain of the vision by evident tokens, he secretly relates all that he had heard to him to whom he had been bidden. But when he heard this, he was filled with no small joy, because another witness also had been found for the vision formerly shown to him. And, the rest of the multitude being dismissed, when the two of them alone had begun with hoes seized up to dig in the little spot designated to them, presently they behold the casket of the heavenly treasure; and being thereby made most certain that they would by no means seem seducers, as they had been bidden, they send faithful envoys to the holy Baldric d, bishop of Utrecht, and to Theodoric the Second, count of Holland, that they might come as quickly as possible and carry the holy relics with fitting honor to the appointed place. And these, namely the holy bishop Baldric and Count Theodoric, being much given to a pious life, were not slightly gladdened; but, using prudent counsel, they purified both themselves and all the provincials with a three days' fast. And then, as though bidden from heaven, unwilling to suffer delay in coming, they arrived the more quickly; and being refreshed by the fragrance of a most sweet odor which flowed from the limbs of the most glorious martyr Jeron, they understood that he too was one of those of whom the Apostle says: We are the good odor of Christ in every place. And so, exalting the Lord our God, they cry out with the voice of exultation: For Thy works, O Lord, are to be magnified; exceeding deep are Thy holy thoughts!
[12] Then, wrapping the precious pledges in a most clean linen cloth, they laid them upon their shoulders, As they carry it, the sea offers them a bier, in which it is carried to Egmond. and with the tuneful jubilation of psalms and the sweet melody of hymns, they enter upon the road along the sea which leads to the place named above. And when they were crossing the pass which is called Rijnmeer, behold, on this side and on that a wing of the people of every sex and age flows round about, contending in pious devotion who might deserve to be a bearer of so wholesome a work. Meanwhile, as these things thus went forward according to their prayers, when they were drawing near the place whither they were going, they began to fret with themselves as though in anger, that when they were in the wood, while it was possible, they had not made a litter after the manner of human custom, which now, set in fields burnt with the heat of the sun, there was no means of making. And while they turned their eyes busily hither and thither, as is human ingenuity, to see whether by chance the divine providence might furnish aid for such a work, they suddenly see, in the first waves of the swelling sea, a bier borne along, which, being presently cast up on dry land, they seize, and lay in it the limbs venerable to every age. And thus, chanting one to another, Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together, they honorably laid together in the same coffin those whom, though separated in time, an equal merit of the same faith had made companions.
[13] Afterwards, when many years had passed, when it pleased the divine goodness to renew miracles, Long afterwards the head is found, the bells ringing of their own accord. and a church had at some time been founded in the aforesaid village which is called Noordwijk, the workmen, wishing to build an altar in the place where those holy limbs had first been found, dug up the earth and found the head of the holy martyr Jeron, which had at first remained hidden at the finding of the body.
And presently the bells of that same church were rung without any human aid. And so the people marveled that — as no one doubted — angelic spirits had been present at such a ringing, and each strove to know the mystery of a ringing at so unwonted an hour. Now there was in a certain house near enough to the church a certain frantic man bound with chains and fetters, who, taught by I know not what spirit, related there to those who inquired the cause of such a ringing, that at that same hour the head of blessed Jeron had been found; and that therefore the angels of God, praising God (who is always wonderful and glorious in His Saints), were ringing here. And when they had found this in every point true, all, filled with joy, rendered immense thanks and praises to God, devoutly placing the said venerable head in a seemly shrine, where pilgrims almost innumerable from the regions round about devoutly assemble, humbly to ask for help.
[14] A blasphemer is chastised and amended. A certain man dwelt in Eikenduinen, who asked mockingly of a certain neighbor of his, weary in the summer heat of the sun as he returned from a pilgrimage to St. Jeron, by what madness he had been deceived that he should so visit such a Saint, who could help neither himself nor him, nor keep him from weariness — and other like words in mockery. But he, rebuking him for the rashness of so great a blasphemy, answered that he did not doubt the sanctity of blessed Jeron, nor his reward for the pilgrimage made. On the following day, therefore, when he rose in the morning and had duly harnessed four good mares to the plow with their traces* and halters, intending to plow, wishing to drive them he struck them with the whip and goaded them: they stood altogether motionless and fixed, and in no way could he lead them or move them from the place. He, perplexed with exceeding wonder and dismay, consulted his neighbors. At length he came who, as premised, had been mocked by him the day before, saying that this had perhaps befallen him for his own fault, in that he had rashly spoken blasphemy of blessed Jeron. He counseled him therefore to vow that he would devoutly visit the said St. Jeron in his place every year with offerings, lest something worse befall him, and that he might be able to obtain a remedy from him. And when he had done this, straightway the said mares went to their work. Seeing this, he thereafter held the most blessed Jeron in great reverence, and faithfully fulfilled his vow, and related the miracle to all who were willing to hear.
ANNOTATIONS.
that is, pauperum* (of the poor).
perhaps initio.*
* that is, negligently.
perhaps camis.*