ON BL. BALDUINUS, ABBOT OF THE CISTERCIAN ORDER,
AT RIETI IN ITALY,
IN THE YEAR 1140.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
The memory of this Blessed in the more recent hagiologies and in the letters of St. Bernard; his public cultus, and his distinction from another Cistercian of the same name.
Balduinus, abbot of the Cistercian Order, at Rieti in Italy (Bl.)
BY G. C.
Filippo Ferrari in the general Catalogue of the Saints at the XI day of August announces from the records of Rieti the yearly memory of St. Balduinus, abbot of the Cistercian Order, at Rieti, This Blessed, who from the Menologies and in the same place in his notes advises the following concerning that Blessed: He was of the family of the Count of the Marsi, and was a disciple of St. Bernard the abbot, to whom the latter wrote his fifteenth letter. But Chrysostom Henriquez in the Cistercian Menology at the XV day of July (we referred that Blessed hither from there, volume IV of July, page 5) adorns the same Abbot with the following elogium: In Gaul, blessed Balduinus, monk of Clairvaux, disciple of our most holy father Bernard, and loved by him with a special prerogative of affection, a man sufficiently instructed in divine and human affairs, and most celebrated for a singular reputation of sanctity, who, being appointed abbot of the monastery of Rieti, formed the monks committed to his care by his most pious manners and by the example of an angelic conversation. I do not know why Henriquez announced this Blessed in Gaul, since he died and was buried at Rieti in Italy, as we shall see below.
[2] Further, the singular love of St. Bernard toward this Disciple of his is easily gathered from his two hundred and first letter, and from a letter of St. Bernard which among the works of the mellifluous Doctor is inscribed to Balduinus, abbot of the monastery of Rieti, and which in the Mabillon edition of the year 1690, volume 1, column 192, runs thus: The letter which thou hast sent breathes forth thy affection, and moves mine. And I grieve that I cannot write according as I am moved. Nor do I linger in excusing excuses, knowing that I speak to one who knows. Thou knowest, I say, under what a burden I groan; and my groaning is not hidden from thee. But do not thou measure by the brevity of the sheet an affection which no discourse could set forth by any prolixity of its own. And the malice of my occupations might indeed bring it about that I write briefly, but not that I love little. Let action exclude or hinder action; but does it hinder affection?
[3] As a mother loves an only son, so did I love thee when thou didst cleave to my side and please my heart. I shall love thee absent also, lest I should seem to have loved my comfort from thee, and not thee. Thou wast most necessary to me. And from this above all it is clear how sincerely I love thee. For today I should not have lacked thee, had I sought the things that are mine own. But now thou seest that, my own advantages being despised, I did not begrudge thy gains, placing thee indeed there whence thou mayest one day be transferred over all the goods of thy Lord. But do thou take care to be found a faithful and prudent servant, to share the heavenly wheat with thy fellow servants without envy, and to distribute it without sloth. Then the holy Master exhorts this beloved Disciple of his at greater length to rule his subjects in the monastery of Rieti strongly and gently, and himself to shine before them by the example of the virtues. Hence it is sufficiently plain how highly St. Bernard esteemed this Man so dear and useful to him, whom nevertheless he judged should be set over the monastery of Rieti. Although it is great praise to be esteemed and loved by so great a man, nevertheless these reasons would not suffice to assert the sanctity of Bl. Balduinus, unless there were added from elsewhere trustworthy testimonies of public cultus, which we shall now bring forward.
[4] as Ughelli testifies, Ferdinando Ughelli in the last Venetian edition of Italia sacra, volume 1, column [ ], on the occasion of Dodo, bishop of Rieti, makes mention of our blessed Abbot thus: In his times, or certainly a little before, Bl. Balduinus died at Rieti, son of Berard X, Count of the Marsi, and brother of Raynaldus, abbot of Monte Cassino and Cardinal. Balduinus was a pupil of St. Bernard, and, being made a Cistercian monk, so shone with heaped-up virtues that, when the people of Rieti had demanded from St. Bernard a colony of monks, he chose Balduinus to preside as first abbot over the monastery of SS. Matthew and Pastor; who by his prudence, sanctity, and examples wonderfully increased that monastery in fortunes and in divine worship, and, full of holy works, departed from this world, and was buried in the cathedral of Rieti, where his memory is honored with the celebrated veneration of the peoples on the 11th day of the month of August.
[5] as our Oldoini testifies, I suspect that here an error has crept into the number of the day on which that blessed Abbot died, or is venerated: for some assign the second day of August to his veneration, some the tenth or eleventh of the same month, and others finally the fifteenth of July, as we have already seen. Our Augustin Oldoini, on the occasion of the Balduinus who was taken from the Cistercian Order to the Roman purple, in the Additions to the Lives and Deeds of the Roman Pontiffs and of the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, volume 1, page 982, makes mention thus of Bl. Balduinus the abbot: Filippo Ferrari, in the Catalogue of the Saints who are not in the Roman Martyrology, and Ferdinando Ughelli, in the additions to Ciaconius, recognize from the records and monuments of the church of Rieti a man other than Balduinus the abbot: for the latter was the son of Bernard, Count of the Marsi, and brother of Rainaldus, abbot of Cassino and Cardinal, and died in the year 1140, and, buried in the church of Rieti, is venerated on the tenth day of August.
[6] The most illustrious Ángel Manrique, in the Cistercian Annals at the year of Christ 1130, chapter 6, number 6, cites from the additions of Ughelli to Ciaconius, under the Pontiff Innocent II, the following words of that adder: and other writers Balduinus, first abbot of St. Pastor in the diocese of Rieti of the Cistercian Order, sent from being a monk of Clairvaux by St. Bernard, was the son of Bernard the tenth, Count of the Marsi, and the own brother of Rainardus, abbot of Cassino, Cardinal of the holy Roman Church; who, renowned for holy works and miracles, died in the year 1140, and was buried in the cathedral of Rieti, and there with the utmost veneration is venerated on the second day of August. You see that here the second day of August is assigned to his cultus. But in the documents of Rieti which were sent to our predecessors in the year 1673, after an elogium of Bl. Balduinus similar to the above, we read at the end the following concerning the day of his death and veneration: Full of holy works he departed from this world on the XXI day of August, and was buried in the cathedral church of Rieti, in the chapel now called DELLE GRAZIE, beneath the altar dedicated to the most sacred Virgin of the Rosary, where his memory is honored with the celebrated veneration of the peoples on the said XXI day of August. In choosing the day of the yearly festival we have followed this manuscript instruction of the people of Rieti, and have placed this blessed Abbot today in our Work.
[7] But whatever be the true day of his death or of his veneration, he is publicly venerated in the city of Rieti. by these testimonies we are made more certain of the public cultus of this Blessed, which moreover is confirmed from a letter of our Pierre Poussines, who in the year 1674 wrote from Rome to Papebroch in this manner: As soon as I received the letter sent to me by your Reverence on the XXVII of April, I took care to write to friends at Rieti, that the notices desired thence by you might be sent … Concerning Bl. Balduinus, the Cistercian abbot, the friend at Rieti who writes promises that he will take care to search out whether any monuments concerning his Acts and miracles are to be found there, and will send all to me. Concerning the cultus of this Blessed the same man affirms that his feast is celebrated with a double rite at Rieti, and that his body rests in one of the chapels of the episcopal church beneath a marble altar with an open little window, through which the light of a lamp burning perpetually before his bones is seen; and that his head also, enclosed in a silver form, was accustomed to be exposed on the chief feasts of the year with other reliquaries on the principal altar of that church. These are the things which the people of Rieti answer to your inquiries. These seem to suffice for proving the public and immemorial cultus of Bl. Balduinus, although we have received no further notice of his particular deeds.
[8] Nor did the above-praised Ángel Manrique find more concerning his deeds, Although we do not distinctly know his deeds, who in the Cistercian Annals at the year of Christ 1140, chapter 9, number 10, writes this concerning his death: In this same year, illustrious for miracles and renowned for merits, holy Balduinus is transferred to those above, the son of Bernard, whom we said to have been promoted ten years before by the same holy Father as the first father and shepherd of the monastery of Rieti … To us it has not been granted from elsewhere to know either his Acts or his miracles; nay, not even on what occasion he lies buried in the cathedral of Rieti, and not in his own church of St. Pastor, although one may not press the doubt. He is commemorated in the Menology on the fifteenth day of July; but with no greater notice than that which could be drawn from the letter of Bernard, of which we too have adduced a fragment above. Manrique had set forth the fragment of this letter, which we too have given above, in the same Cistercian Annals at the year of Christ 1130, chapter 6, number 6, and had begun his abbatial office in that same year 1130, and affirms that it lasted for ten years until his death. Therefore we at the beginning of this historical Commentary noted in the margin the death of this Blessed in the year 1140, since we have not found a more probable year for it.
[9] nevertheless he is wrongly confounded with another of the same name, Some have wrongly confounded this Bl. Balduinus with another of the same name of the same Cistercian Order, who was raised by the Pontiff Innocent II to the cardinalitial dignity. Among these assertors of the confusion may be numbered the most eminent Baronius, who in the Ecclesiastical Annals at the year of Christ 1137, number 33, betrays his erroneous opinion in this matter, after reporting certain deeds of Balduinus the Cardinal, in these words: There exists a most obliging and most affectionate letter of St. Bernard (he cites in the margin letter 201, part of which we set forth above) to Balduinus, abbot of the monastery of Rieti, whom I think to be the same as this man who was taken to the dignity of the Cardinalate. Chalemot in the Cistercian Hagiology and Sartorius in the Cistercium bis-tertium do not record Bl. Balduinus, abbot of Rieti, and probably, following the example of Baronius, thought that he was one and the same with Balduinus the Cardinal.
[10] as Pagi and others have observed. Further, it was easy to fuse the two Balduinuses into one, since each was an Italian, each of Clairvaux, and each a disciple of Bernard, as Pagi says in the Historico-chronological Critique on the Annals of Cæsar Baronius, at the year 1137, number 18, where nevertheless he corrects this error of the most eminent writer thus: Baronius wrongly confounds that Balduinus, the first Cardinal created from the Cistercian Order by Innocent II in the year 1130 at the council of Clermont, and afterwards archbishop of Pisa, who thought it worthy to be the scribe of the divine Bernard, with the other Balduinus, first abbot of the monastery of Rieti, and likewise
a disciple of Bernard, to whom the two hundred and first letter of the divine Bernard is addressed, when he was ruling the monastery of Rieti. But that monastery of Rieti was twofold, the one of St. Matthew, the other of St. Pastor, and over this latter that Balduinus was set at the time when the other Balduinus was holding the Cardinalitial dignity. Chrysostom Henriquez in the Menology, Ángel Manrique in the Cistercian Annals, and Jean Mabillon in his notes on the two hundred and first letter of St. Bernard, volume 1 of his Works, column 192, observed this same historical error of Baronius long before Pagi. Behold all that we have been able to find concerning that blessed Cistercian Abbot.