ON ST. PHILIP BENIZI, CONFESSOR OF THE ORDER OF SERVANTS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY, AT TODI IN UMBRIA,
In the year 1285.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
BY G. C.
§ I. The various writers who committed to letters the Acts of this Saint, both in Latin and in Italian.
The deeds of this holy Man have been written so copiously and so lucidly From the Annals of the Servites that they have left scarcely any matter for our preliminary Commentary. Wherefore in this paragraph we shall treat only of the various writers of his Life and miracles, among whom Archangelo Giani in the Annals of the Order of the Servants of the most blessed Virgin Mary, Century 2, book 3, chapter 10, number 4, reviews the following in these words: The Father General also, together with the rest of the Chapter, desiring that not only the continual memory of our blessed father Philip should be preserved, but also that the devotion of the people toward him should be increased much more from day to day, decreed that his deeds, formerly collected by Friar Peter, General, should be written out anew, out of which his divine Office might be composed, which in each of the places of our Order had been accustomed to be celebrated every year with solemn rite; and this charge was committed to Father William of Alessandria, who was an eloquent orator and exceedingly well versed in the divine Scriptures.
[2] In honor also of our father Philip, by the procurement of the same Andrew, the authors are reviewed, many were writing either the miracles happening from day to day, or his deeds; and among these there is set forth as worthy of memory Father Marius Georgius of Venice, who, since he held the first place among the philosophers and theologians of our Order, had written two books On Ecclesiastical Liberty against the Simoniacs; and since he was also no less a graceful than an elegant poet and an eloquent orator, he sang the Life of the same blessed father Philip of ours in heroic verse; which they say Dom Dominic, a physician of Todi, also did at Todi, who set down the deeds of the same Blessed one in plain and prose speech indeed, after the measure of that rude age, yet most truthful, and which even in our times are preserved in manuscript with Giovanni Battista Guazzaroni, an illustrious man of approved learning. Francesco Sansovino in the Venetian History, book 13, in our copy folio 242, calls the former of these two biographers, instead of Marius, Marcus Georgi. Moreover that Marius or Marcus Georgius and Dominic of Todi seem to have flourished in the fourteenth century.
[3] who wrote the deeds of this Saint, Then Giani in the same place assigns another writer of the Life, and at the same time proves the immemorial cult of St. Philip in this manner: Nor yet is it to be thought that, on account of this diligence of Andrew the General, the feast of blessed Philip first began at this time to be celebrated: for from monuments worthy of credit, especially the Diaries of the monastery of the Annunciation, from the year 1336 and thenceforward in turn down to these our own times, it is clear that the feast of blessed Philip was celebrated every year in the month of August. Nay more, Master Cosmas of Florence, who wrote his deeds about the year 1480, asserts confidently that from the flashing forth of his miracles after death, divine honors of this kind were straightway paid to him; which perhaps that author could easily have gathered also from those same preceding Diaries before the aforesaid year 1336, which are now wanting.
[4] For the rest, it is not on that account to be denied that by the care of Andrew the General some great increase was added to the devotion of blessed Philip, both in prose style, since at this time his feast-day was accustomed to be proclaimed by pipers throughout the whole city of Florence every year and successively; and that the Magistracy and the Senate of Florence itself used to hasten in solemn pomp to the Annunciation on that day and to be present at his divine offices, is ascertained from the same Diaries. Wherefore, if from the monuments of a single Florentine monastery alone it has been possible to descry so many and so great things concerning blessed Philip, what if it had been permitted us to search through all the monuments in each of the monasteries of this our Order? Nor is that pious rite to be passed over, handed down in certain churches of this Order from time immemorial down to the present, of blessing those loaves to be distributed among the people on the feast of blessed Philip, in memory of that angelic bread which he himself, in the greatest dearth at Arezzo, prostrate in prayer before the image of the blessed Virgin, obtained abundantly for his famished Brothers. The miracle on the occasion of which this rite of blessing loaves was instituted will afterwards be distinctly narrated in the Acts. Meanwhile let us proceed to the tracking down of the other writers of the Acts.
[5] About the year of Christ 1470 Ugolino Verino composed in honor of St. Philip Benizi a hexameter poem, and in verse, in which he relates most of that Saint's deeds and miracles, and which the praised Archangelo Giani inserted entire into the Annals of his Order before the third Century. Moreover that Ugolino was (we here use the words of the same Giani, by which he advises the reader before the edition of that poem) equally erudite in the humane letters and vehemently polished in the manners of a blameless life, and held in such authority with Lorenzo de' Medici, the patron of the ancient discipline and of all letters, that he chose this one man to instruct his son Giovanni, who afterwards, ascending after the Cardinal's purple to the summit of the Roman see under the title of Leo X, first of all men advanced the Medici family with great auspices to the highest principalities. As though by this one deed alone Ugolino should be reckoned worthy of perpetual glory, that he instructed a lofty boy of high native gifts. Ugolino wrote very many most elegant poems, and especially concerning the families of the city of Florence, all of which, partly published and partly in manuscript, are preserved in the Medicean library of St. Lawrence. But that this poem in honor of blessed Philip may seem to some less consonant with his accustomed elegance, this happened, in my judgment, because he sang it in passing and offhand, and perhaps for this reason called it a SYLVA; perhaps also for the sake of Christopher of Justinopolis, the General, when at the chapter held at Florence in the year 1470 discourse was again had concerning the canonization of blessed Philip. But whatever be the cause of this lesser elegance, we shall not reprint that poem, in which there are contained only those things which will afterwards be more clearly explained in the Acts.
[6] We shall also pass over Taddeo Adimari of Florence, which Pocciantius also inserted into his Latin Chronicle. and Niccolò Borghesi, a patrician of Siena, who in the same fifteenth century celebrated the praises of St. Philip in rhythms or hymns, as may be seen in Giani in the Annals before book [ ] of the first Century, and before the fourth Century. But of the authors of the following century, who committed to letters anything pertaining to the Order of the Servants of the blessed Mary or to St. Philip Benizi, we mention only Michele Pocciantius of Florence, who in the year of Christ 1567 published at Florence a Chronicle of the Order of the Servites. Very many deeds and miracles of St. Philip are briefly narrated in order of time in this Chronicle, which was taken from more ancient monuments, as Pocciantius himself testifies in the dedication of his Work in these words: I resolved at length, so far as it could be done, to excerpt out of all the Annals of this our monastery of the Annunciation, brought together into one, whatever has been handed down to memory concerning those ancient Fathers of ours who laid the foundations of our Servite family, who, being brought into the company of the Saints, ennobled it, who, adorned with distinguished erudition and learning, set the same in great glory and praise. Moreover Pocciantius before the beginning of his Chronicle expressed these ancient documents by name.
[7] Giani first published an ample Life of him in Italian, At the beginning of the seventeenth century the often-praised and ever-to-be-praised Archangelo Giani wove together at length the Life of St. Philip, as he himself indicates in the first Century of his Annals, book 2, in the Annotations to chapter 16, in this manner: The things which the author runs over briefly concerning blessed Philip Benizi in these Annals, if anyone desire to read them more fully, let him consult the fuller History of the same author concerning blessed Philip, published at Florence at the press of the Marescotti in five books, 1604. We suspect that it was concerning this same Life of St. Philip Benizi, which is not at our hand, that it was decreed in the general chapter of the Servites held at Rome in the year of Christ 1603, that the History of blessed Philip, published by the command of Angelus Maria, General, by Master Archangelo Giani, associate of the province of Tuscany, be distributed through each of the monasteries of the Order, as is reported in the fourth Century of the praised Annals, book 6, chapter 6. Moreover this prolix history of St. Philip seems to have been written in the Italian idiom, as will presently appear from what is to be said below.
[8] and afterwards abridged it in Latin, Afterwards Giani reduced the same Italian Life, unless we are mistaken, to a Latin abridgment, which, written by hand, among the papers of our Museum
we preserve, and in which that translator addresses to the most eminent Girolamo Bernerio, protector of his Order, this preface: The book concerning the history of our blessed father Philip, composed by me with sufficient copiousness in the Tuscan idiom, which I had transmitted to you (most ample Cardinal) in days past, since you had gladly received it, and not without the highest piety of soul — as I perceived in your presence from your most weighty words — had afterwards read it through and approved it, you also at the same time exhorted me, such is your kindness, that while it should be permitted me at leisure during these days of my stay at Rome, I should render this same history in the Latin tongue as it were a synopsis, and, as they say, cut down to an abridgment, on this condition, that whoever should strive to run over and more closely inspect the deeds of the same blessed Father might easily attain it with almost a single glance of the eyes. But I, since I am always ready (as I ought) to obey you at a nod and to comply with the highest desire, straightway undertook the Work under your auspices, and completed it with such speed that it can scarcely be believed that all these things were gathered together by us with a running pen (so much does obedience avail). Receive therefore, most watchful protector, this slender declaration of my observance toward you, which, if I shall have learned that it is not unpleasing to your most excellent goodness, I shall be much the more stirred up that you may hereafter find the same more compliant. Meanwhile may blessed God, who appointed you protector to this our Servite fellowship, deign to promote you to the summit of the Apostolate for the government of the whole Christian commonwealth, and may the most blessed Virgin our patroness, whom daily I implore with our blessed Philip as your preserver, repay a fair and equal grace for your protection toward us. From our house of St. Marcellus in the City, the eighth of the Kalends of June, 1606.
[9] Then the praised author begins to write the promised abridgment of the history, out of which and out of others at length which is divided into five parts: for first the deeds of St. Philip are briefly narrated down to his death. Secondly, the miracles which happened not long after his death. Thirdly, the various translations of his sacred body, in which also certain miracles were wrought. Fourthly, treatment is made of his sacred relics, which are honored in different cities and regions. Fifthly and finally are reported some things pertaining to the promoting of the solemn canonization of Bl. Philip, which nevertheless could not be obtained from the Apostolic See until long after the death of Giani, as we shall see below in this preliminary Commentary. I had first determined to publish this synopsis of the Life in type; but afterwards I changed my mind, since I saw that the same Giani had inserted a great part of the same abridgment into his Annals, which he afterwards ordered to be printed at Florence in the year 1618. Wherefore in the Annotations to the Acts of St. Philip to be published below I shall cite those Annals, which please me most of all, because their author, after almost every chapter, assigns in the Annotations the documents from which he drew his narration. I say nothing here of the Italian Life of St. Philip, which Pandolfo Ricasoli Baroni, a Canon of Florence, comprised in three books in the year 1626, and dedicated to Pope Urban VIII. I also pass over in silence the poetical panegyric which Carlo Casini, a Servite, then composed in Italian in honor of this holy Man, and ordered to be struck off in type at Florence in the same year 1626. Without doubt these and other things were seen by the later Servite writer of the Latin Life, concerning whom we shall now give a few preliminary notices: for he in the Acts to be published below, chapter 5, number 52, reckons in general five and thirty writers of the best note who committed to letters the deeds of St. Philip.
[10] Cherubinus Maria O'Dale, an Irishman, whom we, after the example of others, shall surname in Latin Dalæus, Dalæus collected at length the Latin Acts of St. Philip published at Innsbruck in the year 1644 a Latin history of St. Philip, and dedicated it to the most august emperor Ferdinand III. That writer gathered it from various monuments, as is plain from the permission to print which the Very Reverend Father Vicar General of the Order of the Servants of the most blessed Virgin granted him, and which is read prefixed to this Work thus: Since the Fathers, theologians of our Order, deputed to the censorship, judge the present Life of our blessed father Philip, gathered by Father Friar Cherubinus Maria Dalæus from the Annals of the Order and from the history of the same published in Italian, and endowed with Latinity, to be worthy of the light, I, Father Friar Archangelo Beneveni of the Order of the Servants of the Blessed Virgin, by the authority granted me by the most reverend Father General, grant the faculty of printing it. At Innsbruck, in the Convent of St. Joseph, the XXIII day of November, in the year 1643.
[11] which we shall reprint after this Commentary. This Latin Life, which Dalæus divided with sufficient elegance and orderliness into three books, we shall subjoin to this preliminary Commentary, and after our manner divide into more or fewer chapters, the titles nevertheless of the old books and chapters being prefixed, lest anyone suspect that anything has been changed or passed over in this our edition. Moreover we shall illustrate the several chapters with the accustomed Annotations, which we shall excerpt from the Annals of Archangelo Giani or from the Chronicle of Michele Pocciantius. But since after the publication of Dalæus's lucubration not a few things have been added to the greater glory of St. Philip Benizi and to the increase of his cult, we shall faithfully report these in the following paragraph out of the Bull of canonization and the later decrees of the Roman Pontiffs.
§ II. The posthumous glory of this Saint from his solemn canonization, the increase of cult that followed, and the declared sanctity of his first companions.
Pope Benedict XIII testifies, Although thought was more than once given and action taken concerning the obtaining of the canonization of this blessed Man, nevertheless that matter could not be brought to the wished-for end before the year of Christ 1671, in which Pope Clement X solemnly enrolled Philip Benizi in the catalogue of the Saints. But since at that time Apostolic letters were not drawn up concerning this matter, the supreme Pontiff Benedict XIII graciously supplied this defect in the year 1724 by publishing a constitution, which in the most illustrious Giusto Fontanini, in the Codex of Canonizations, page 542 and following, runs thus: Benedict, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to the perpetual memory of the matter. It agrees with reason and befits equity that those things which the Roman Pontiff, in a plenary assembly of the venerable brethren, Cardinals of the holy Roman Church, patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops, their unanimous counsel having been communicated, has sanctioned and defined, should at length obtain their effect, although afterwards, on account of the death of the same Pontiff, Apostolic letters were not drawn up concerning them. Long since our predecessor of pious memory Pope Clement X, being about to set forth for the imitation of all the faithful of Christ the servants of God whom he had known to have once shone with the excellence of the highest virtues and signs in the various companies of the religious Orders, chose among the rest one venerable man, Philip Benizi, of the family of the Friar Servants of the blessed Virgin Mary, whom, on account of his sanctity, approved and recognized according to the rite of the Holy Roman Church, he should decree to be venerated and honored everywhere.
[13] that St. Philip Benizi, Philip was brought forth into the light at Florence of the Tuscans in the year of Christ the Lord one thousand two hundred and thirty-three, while the yearly feasts were being kept of the blessed Virgin Mary assumed into heaven, from whom his parents had obtained him by their prayers, himself destined to be a great ornament to the family of the Friar Servants of the same Virgin, instituted on the same day and year. His studies of the sacred Letters being completed at Paris and Padua, he obtained this from the Lord by assiduous fastings and prayers, that the Order of the Friar Servants of the blessed Virgin Mary, to which he should give his name, might be shown him beforehand: whose habit he put on in the rank of the lay brethren out of modesty, and for some time led a solitary life in the wilderness of Monte Senario above Florence. Afterwards raised out of obedience to the priesthood, and despising earthly things through the contemplation of heavenly, he devoted himself wholly to the promulgation of the word of God, and, set over his family as General, ardently applied himself to this one care, that through himself and his own, instructed in various tongues, he might see to the preaching of the Gospel of Christ the Lord everywhere; which he himself, exceedingly desirous of the salvation of souls and terrified by no dangers, was accustomed to do diligently and with such alacrity that our predecessor of pious memory Pope Clement IV, moved by his fame, chose him for himself as Apostolic preacher.
[14] Being about to convert sinners to God, he traversed Gaul, Germany, whose Acts and miracles Frisia, and Sarmatia, and by the same pious impulse restored to Christian concord the city of Pistoia, torn by the deadly hatreds of the Ghibellines and Guelphs. Whence it came about that many, purposing to imitate the Man of God, bestowed their goods on the poor, and the chief leaders themselves of the Ghibelline faction, returning to their heart, embraced the religious institute of Philip. The fervor of his highest charity shone forth when at Viterbo he bestowed on one begging alms his own inner garment, drawn off from himself; covered with which, the poor man recovered from the disease of leprosy. He gave also a great proof of Christian mildness, most pleasing to God, when, rebuking in a sermon the crimes and manners of the people of Forlì in Emilia, and being beaten with rods and assailed with stones, he besought God for his persecutors with such spirit that from among them he drew one, Peregrine, to penitence, who, entering Philip's Religion, blotted out his own sins and those of his fellow citizens, and afterwards himself also flourished in outstanding virtues and miracles, and is therefore, God favoring, to be enrolled by ourselves as soon as possible in the canon of the Saints.
[15] Philip, striving to emulate the manners of the ancient anchorites, are here compendiously narrated, withdrew for four years into a cave of Monte Senario, that he might more freely be at leisure for God. Equal to his other virtues was the humility of his heart, by which he refused the bishopric of the church of his native place, hastening thence to Viterbo after the pious falling-asleep of our predecessor Pope Clement IV, where, having publicly professed himself unworthy of the Pontifical dignity offered him by Ottobono, Cardinal deacon of the Holy Roman Church of St. Adrian, and patron of his Order, he returned into the solitude, prophesying that this same Ottobono would one day be raised to so great a summit, but would possess it only a short time. He was our predecessor of pious memory Pope Hadrian V. But Philip, seized with the love of religious solitude, when he had again hidden himself three months in the cave of Monte Senario, being strengthened with the Pontifical blessing at Perugia by another predecessor of ours of renowned memory, Pope Honorius IV, sought Todi, where, having delivered a sermon to the people who had come to meet him in great throngs, he took to his bed with a mortal disease, and, reciting with proofs of the highest piety and religion the penitential Psalms of David, not without profuse tears, he passed to the Lord in the year of salvation one thousand two hundred and eighty-five, on the tenth of the Kalends of September, while were being completed the solemnities of the Octave of the blessed Virgin Mary assumed into heaven, on which he had come forth into the light. To his body, publicly exposed for six days, the peoples were seen to flock together in the greatest throng for the sake of veneration, and the sacrifice of the Mass, with the bishop, the clergy, and the whole city present, was celebrated by the will of God not for one deceased, but of a blessed confessor.
[16] was enrolled by Pope Clement X in the catalogue of the Saints, Presently the just Man became renowned for prodigies. At his body and tomb the lame received walking, the blind sight, and the dead themselves received life: which things and others being duly known and examined, our predecessor of happy memory Pope Leo X enrolled Philip in the number of the Blessed, and granted that an Office and Mass in his honor might be celebrated by the Friars of the Order of the Servants of the blessed
Virgin on the recurring anniversary day of the blessed Man, there afterwards acceding to this also the authority of the diplomas of our predecessors of holy memory Clement VIII and Paul V. Wherefore, according to the rules and ritual constitutions of the holy Roman Church published by the Roman Pontiffs, the sanctity of the Man of God being known after the custom and several times brought under examination, even under our predecessor likewise of happy remembrance Urban VIII, and always approved, attested by his most notable virtues and signs, at the pious prayers most vehemently repeated before this holy Apostolic See by various Princes, but especially by Leopold of illustrious memory, elected emperor of the Romans, and by Cosimo III, formerly Grand Duke in Tuscany subject to him; the same Pope Clement X pronounced that Philip Benizi, concerning the greatness of whose virtues and prodigies it had been clearly established, was to be enrolled in the canon of the holy confessors.
[17] and confirms by this constitution his Apostolic decree, not then published, And so, the day being appointed, namely the second Sunday after the Resurrection of Christ the Lord, the day before the Ides of April of the year one thousand six hundred and seventy-one, the first of his Pontificate, when he had gone forth into the most sacred basilica of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, about to perform so great a ceremony with solemn rite, prayers to God having been repeated once, a second and a third time, in a plenary assembly of the venerable brethren, Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops, for the enrolling of Philip Benizi in the canon of the holy confessors, by the unanimous acclamation and suffrage of all, after the sacred hymns and prayers piously poured out to God, and the grace of the Paraclete Spirit earnestly invoked, to the honor of the holy and undivided Trinity, the exaltation of the Catholic faith, and the amplification of the Christian religion, the same Pope Clement X, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, decreed and defined that blessed Philip Benizi, together and equally with the blessed confessors not pontiffs Francis Borgia, Cajetan of Thiene, Louis Bertrand, and the virgin not martyr Rose of St. Mary, is a saint; enrolled him in the canon of the holy confessors, and sanctioned that the same should henceforth be venerated, invoked, and honored by all the faithful of Christ as truly holy; pronounced that in his honor sacred buildings and altars, in which the most holy sacrifice of the Mass may be offered to God, might be built and dedicated, and that every year on the tenth of the Kalends of September, on which day the holy Man fell asleep in the Lord, his memory might piously be venerated as that of a holy confessor not pontiff. Presently, thanks having been given to God with the greatest joy, and a special prayer having been recited to the Lord through the merits of blessed Philip, he celebrated Mass at the high altar above the confession of blessed Peter, with commemoration of the same Philip and of the rest, bestowing on all the faithful of Christ who were present a plenary indulgence and remission of sins.
[18] But lest concerning this Apostolic decree of Pope Clement X, he confirms by this constitution, the definition, sanction, enrollment, relation, concession, and the other things aforesaid, it should ever hereafter be possible in any way to hesitate, because decretal letters were not drawn up according to custom by the same Clement or by his successors Innocent XI, Alexander VIII, Innocent XII, Clement XI, and Innocent XIII, Roman Pontiffs of pious memory, our predecessors, We, who, though of unequal merits, have by the Lord's disposition succeeded the same in the chair of blessed Peter, will and by Apostolic authority decree that the decree, sanction, relation, enrollment, concession, and the other things thus far mentioned, from the said day before the Ides of April of the year one thousand six hundred and seventy-one, obtain their full effect in every respect, as if concerning them decretal letters had really been drawn up on the same day by the same Pope Clement X and promulgated according to custom, as is related above. Moreover we will that the present letters suffice everywhere and altogether for proving the decree, definition, sanction, enrollment, relation, statute, concession, and the other things aforesaid, and that no further support of any other proof whatsoever be required for it. Moreover, because it would be difficult for these our letters to be carried to each place where there might be need, we will that copies of the same, even impressed in type, subscribed by the hand of a public notary and fortified with the seal of some person constituted in ecclesiastical dignity, obtain everywhere the same credit which these our own would obtain, if anywhere they should happen to be exhibited or shown. Let it therefore be lawful to no man at all to infringe this page of our decree, definition, sanction, enrollment, relation, statute, concession, or to go against it with rash daring. But if anyone shall presume to attempt this, let him know that he will incur the indignation of Almighty God and of his blessed Apostles Peter and Paul. Given at Rome at St. Peter's, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation one thousand seven hundred and twenty-four, the day before the Nones of June, in the first year of our Pontificate.
19] ✠ I, Benedict, bishop of the Catholic Church. [to which he himself with very many Cardinals subscribes,✠
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✠ I, Francis, bishop of Palestrina, Cardinal Barberini.
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✠ I, Lorenzo, bishop of Frascati, Cardinal Corsini.
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✠ I, Joseph, priest Cardinal of the title of St. Praxedes, Sacripanti.
✠ I, Thomas, priest Cardinal of the title of St. Mary in Trastevere, Ruffo.
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✠ I, Philip Anthony, priest Cardinal of the title of St. Cecilia, Gualterio.
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✠ I, Louis, priest Cardinal of the title of St. Silvester in Capite, Pico della Mirandola.
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✠ I, Antony Felix, priest Cardinal of the title of St. Balbina, Zondadari.
✠ I, Peter, priest Cardinal of the title of St. John before the Latin Gate, Corradini.
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✠ I, Melchior, priest Cardinal of the title of St. Mary of the Angels, de Polignac.
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✠ I, Bernardinus, priest Cardinal of the title of St. Peter in Montorio, Scotti.
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✠ I, George, priest Cardinal of the title of St. Agnes, Spinola.
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✠ I, Louis, priest Cardinal of the title of St. Prisca, Belluga y Moncada.
✠ I, Joseph, priest Cardinal of the title of St. Susanna, Pereyra de la Cerda.
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✠ I, John Baptist, priest Cardinal of the title of St. Stephen on the Cælian Hill, Salerno.
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✠ I, Alvaro, priest Cardinal of the title of St. Bartholomew on the Island, Cienfuegos.
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✠ I, John Baptist, priest Cardinal of the title of St. Matthew in Merulana, degli Altieri.
✠ I, Vincent, priest Cardinal of the title of St. Onuphrius, Petra.
✠ I, Prosper, priest Cardinal of the title of St. Chrysogonus, Marefoschi.
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✠ I, Nicholas, priest Cardinal of the title of St. Mary in Domnica, Coscia.
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✠ I, Benedict, deacon Cardinal of St. Mary in Via Lata, Pamphili.
✠ I, Joseph Renatus, deacon Cardinal of St. George in Velabro, Imperiali.
✠ I, Lawrence, deacon Cardinal of St. Agatha ad Montes, degli Altieri.
✠ I, Charles, deacon Cardinal of St. Angelo in the fish-market, Colonna.
✠ I, Curtius, deacon Cardinal of St. Eustace, Origo.
✠ I, Fabius, deacon Cardinal of SS. Vitus and Modestus, de Abbatibus Oliverius.
✠ I, Charles, deacon Cardinal of St. Mary in Aquiro, de Marinis.
✠ I, Julius, deacon Cardinal of St. Adrian, Alberoni.
✠ I, Alexander, deacon Cardinal of St. Mary in Cosmedin, Albani.
✠ I, Nicholas, deacon Cardinal of St. Mary of the Rotunda, Giudice.
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P. Cardinal Prodatary
F. Cardinal Oliverius
SEEN
From the Curia, J., archbishop of Ancyra.
L. Martinetti
Registered in the Secretariate of Briefs.
[20] With how great joy the long-desired canonization of St. Philip Benizi was received, [while meanwhile the cult of the Saint after the canonization had been not a little increased.] is shown by the Florentine Applause, published in Italian in the year 1672, in which elegant Latin inscriptions and ingenious poems in honor of this Saint are read. But this transitory and private veneration of the city of Florence the Apostolic See willed to render perpetual and universal, when in the year 1694 Pope Innocent XII propagated the cult of St. Philip through the whole Church, as is plain from the following decree: At the exceedingly humble supplications of the Reverend Father Giovanni Francesco Maria Poggi, General, and Father Pietro Antonio de' Rossi, Procurator General of the Order of the Servants of the blessed Virgin Mary, presented in the name of their whole Religion to our most holy Lord, and remitted to the sacred Congregation of Rites, and reported by the most eminent and most reverend lord Cardinal Ottoboni, the same sacred Congregation, graciously inclined, judged that it might be granted that the Office of St. Philip Benizi, professor, or rather propagator, of the said Order, hitherto recited on the XXIII day of August under a semidouble rite ad libitum, and thereafter by precept in the universal Church, be hereafter recited every year by all, both secular and regular, of either sex, who are bound to the Canonical hours, under the lesser double rite by precept; if it shall seem good to our most holy Lord. The 2nd day of October, 1694. Report therefore having thereupon been made to our most holy Lord concerning the aforesaid by me the secretary, His Holiness graciously assented on the IX day of the same month and year, 1694.
A. Cardinal Cybo
B. Inghirami, Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Rites.
In the place of the † seal.
[21] After I had gathered these things concerning the notice of the biographers and the public veneration of our Saint, It pertains also to his posthumous glory, there came into my hands the excellent Work of the most eminent Cardinal and archbishop of Bologna, Prospero Lambertini, which is entitled On the Beatification of the Servants of God and the Canonization of the Blessed, and began to be published in type at Bologna from the year 1734. In this Work, book 2, chapter 24, §42, or volume 2, page 286, is found the decree by which the Apostolic See declares the immemorial cult of six venerable men who founded the Order of the Servants of the blessed Virgin Mary. Since mention of those blessed founders recurs rather often in the Acts to be published after this preliminary Commentary, for the clearer understanding of the matters to be related, for the greater glory of St. Philip Benizi and his companions, and for the more illustrious splendor of the aforesaid Order, I shall not think it burdensome to transcribe everything pertaining hereto.
[22] In the place just cited of the praised Work that decree is thus reported: that not long ago by the Apostolic See The doubt having been discussed in the sacred Congregation of Rites at the instance of the Postulators of this cause, whether it be established concerning the cult exhibited to the same Blessed from time immemorial, and the case excepted from the decrees of Urban VIII of holy memory, so that the sentence of the most reverend Ordinary of Florence is to be confirmed in the case &c.: the same sacred Congregation of Rites, upon the report of the most eminent and most reverend lord Cardinal Zondadari, the most reverend lord Prospero Lambertini, archbishop of Theodosia, Promoter of the faith, having first been heard in writing and by word of mouth, judged that it should be replied that the immemorial cult of six out of the seven founders of the Order of the Servants of the blessed Virgin Mary is established, if it shall seem good to our most holy Lord. The VII day of July, 1725. And report thereupon having been made concerning the aforesaid by me the secretary to our most holy Lord, His Holiness (namely Benedict XIII) graciously assented, on the XXX day of the same month, and of the year 1725.
[23] there was declared the immemorial and lawful cult After setting forth this decree, the most eminent writer there reviews the names of the seven founders,
and proves the immemorial cult of the seventh from another source in these words: The names of these seven blessed founders are the following: Bonfilius Monaldi, John Manetti, Benedict of Antella, Bartholomew degli Amidei, Ricovero Lippi, Gerardino Sostegni, Alexis Falconieri. Moreover the seventh, that is, Alexis Falconieri, has been mentioned in what precedes, because, since the cause of his beatification and canonization had its beginning and its progress by the care, zeal, and expense of his most noble House (which was also done in the cause of blessed Juliana of the same family), whereas the cause of the other six founders was promoted, and is promoted, by the religious Order of the Servants of Mary, hence arose the separation of the one cause from the other, although both rested upon altogether the same foundations, as much in respect of sanctity as of cult: for as many writers, whether ancient or more recent, and as many witnesses examined, as have written or deposed concerning the fame of the virtues and miracles, and concerning the ancient cult, of blessed Alexis, the same have likewise written and deposed concerning the fame of the virtues and miracles, and concerning the immemorial cult, of the other six founders.
[24] of seven venerable men, Then the praised author in the same place, number 165, confirms the ancient veneration of these seven founders in this manner: There is in the province of Tuscany a mountain of notable height, which on the southern side looks toward the city of Florence, and on the northern, opposite, regards the Mugello country, walled about by a continued chain of the Apennine mountains. This mountain is called Senarius, which some of the more ancient writers have called Asinarius, but others Sanarius, from the healthfulness of the air. On its summit, namely, was built a church with a sacred hermitage, into which nearly five centuries ago, with the approval of Ardingo, then bishop of Florence, seven noble men withdrew, who, having cast away riches and the pomps of the world, embraced a harsh manner of living, and founded the Order of the most blessed Virgin Mary.
[25] who founded the Order, In this sacred place all died piously, except Alexis, who fell asleep by a precious death in the Convent of St. Mary of Cafaggio, today of the most holy Annunciation of Florence, although his body was presently carried away to that same mountain, and laid up together with the bodies of his six other companions beneath the high altar. But at present in a chapel situated behind the choir, which is commonly called the CHAPEL OF THE RELICS, there is an adorned altar, on whose panel is depicted the most blessed Virgin, who, accompanied by angels, holds out the black habit to the seven founders praying before her; and beneath the same altar, if the frontal be removed, though it be made of solid material and of varied workmanship, there appear seven heads placed separately, with a crown of flowers upon each one of them, and with a certain inscription carved in golden letters, which runs thus: The heads of the seven Blessed founders of the Order of the Servants of the blessed Virgin Mary, as is gathered from the visit of the bishop of Florence made to that place in the year 1719, afterwards reported in the Process drawn up concerning the immemorial cult of these six out of the seven founders; in which Process indeed innumerable proofs of a most ancient public cult are contained.
[26] Finally the most eminent man thus concludes this matter in the same place: in which St. Philip served. So piously and holily, and with so great mortification of the senses, did those seven founders live in the hermitage, that Gaufridus, Cardinal Legate, seriously admonished them concerning too great cruelty toward themselves, inasmuch as in so great harshness of life they seemed to wish to compass their own death. Wherefore, moved by his authority, they were compelled to relax their former rigor, as may be read in Archangelo Giani in the Annals of the Sacred Order of the Servants, with the additions of Father Luigi Garbi, book 1, chapter XII. In the list of the aforesaid founders some put in place of Bartholomew degli Amidei a certain Luteringus, and in place of John Manetti a certain Victor; but it does not seem that we should recede from the common opinion, which stands for the names expressed by us above. This appendix having been transcribed, nothing more now seems to remain, save that we reprint the Acts of St. Philip Benizi and illustrate them with certain notes.
LIFE
Compiled by Father Friar Cherubinus Maria Dalæus, an Irishman.
From the Innsbruck edition of the year 1644, which we illustrate with annotations.
FROM THE PRINTED EDITIONS.
TITLES OF THE BOOKS AND CHAPTERS IN THIS EDITION.
BOOK ONE
Containing the secular life of Bl. Philip, and his private life in Religion.
Chap. I. The native place, birth, and preludes of the future sanctity of Bl. Philip.
Chap. II. The education of Bl. Philip up to the studies of the graver disciplines.
Chap. III. The beginnings and increases of the Order of the Servants are disclosed, that the things to be said may be more clearly perceived.
Chap. IV. Bl. Philip, after applying himself diligently to letters at Paris and at Padua, having returned to Florence, is received by God, the lover of good souls, with singular favors and graces.
Chap. V. Bl. Father Philip is enlightened before the miraculous image of Our Lady of the Annunciation at Florence by an admirable vision, which Bl. Father Bonfilius explains. On this occasion the history of this image is reviewed in few words.
Chap. VI. Philip prays as a suppliant that he may be received into the Religion among the Lay Brothers, and, being heard, is clothed with the sacred habit of the Religion.
Chap. VII. The exercises and studies of Bl. Father Philip in the monastery of Cafaggio, which today is called of Our Lady of the Annunciation.
Chap. VIII. Philip sets out upon the way to the solitude, where God manifests by a miracle the sanctity of his Servant.
Chap. IX. Bl. Philip, still lying hidden under the name and condition of a Lay Brother, is set over the novices of the monastery of Siena by the Father General as master, and, his outstanding learning being disclosed on that journey by divine counsel, he is initiated, even against his will, into the sacred Orders.
Chap. X. Philip, having governed the novitiate of the Servants at Siena, becomes a priest, to whom, when he had rendered an account of his function on the occasion of the general Chapter, a choir of the Heavenly Ones sang in accompaniment as he performed his first Sacrifice.
BOOK TWO
Containing the deeds of Bl. Father Philip under the office of Prior General until his death.
Chap. 1. Bl. Philip, having been made General, presents himself to Clement IV, the supreme Pontiff, who by his authority ratifies and holds valid his election.
Chap. II. Philip, undertaking the first visitation of the monastery of Arezzo, restores the Fathers, almost done to death by starvation through the dearness of grain, with bread obtained by divine power.
Chap. III. Philip, in the Chapter held at Pistoia, having established the Order of the Servants by new laws, reduces it to the exact form of a religious commonwealth.
Chap. IV. Philip, being assailed by a keen temptation to abdicate the Generalate, strips off his own undergarment, clothes a leper with it, and heals him on the spot.
Chap. V. Philip, when after the death of Clement IV he is designated supreme Pontiff by the Cardinals, seizing upon flight into the pathless solitude of Montagnata, hides himself.
Chap. VI. Philip's sanctity again becomes known and is affirmed, health-bringing waters being drawn forth from the rock, which gave the name to the Philippic Baths on Mount Tunniato.
Chap. VII. Philip, the chapter at Florence being completed, and a journey into the Gauls undertaken for the visitation of the Religion and the promulgation of the Gospel, foretells at the city of Modena to certain wicked execrators of the divine Godhead the merited punishments by which shortly afterwards they were burnt up.
Chap. VIII. The deeds done by blessed Philip in the Gauls and in Germany.
Chap. IX. Philip and his companions, making their way into Italy through the Alps of the Allobroges, after three days of wandering and starvation, are led back into the way by angels.
Chap. X. Philip, at the invitation of many leading men, several sacred houses having been founded and others restored, being summoned to the ecumenical council, goes off to Lyons.
Chap. XI. Philip escapes by flight to the people of Pistoia the bishopric of Florence conferred upon him, and leads back in great part into the way of salvation those same people of Pistoia, rent by the factions of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, confraternities of penitents both of men and of women having been instituted.
Chap. XII. Innocent V, supreme Pontiff, having attempted with vain endeavor to abolish the Order of the Servants, shortly afterwards ceased to live.
Chap. XIII. Philip, joined by Pope Nicholas III to Cardinal Latino, settles the tumults of the Guelphs and Ghibellines among the Florentines.
Chap. XIV. Philip, by the mission of Nicholas III, supreme Pontiff, and at the request of Rudolf I, the Austrian Cæsar, sets out a second time into Germany to settle the tumults of the Roman Empire.
Chap. XV. What Philip, making his last visitation of the Religion, did and endured at Forlì, Florence, Siena, and Todi.
Chap. XVI. The religious death of blessed Father Philip, and his last preparation for it, and his final admonitions to the Brothers.
BOOK THREE
Comprising the miracles wrought by him after death, and other proofs of his sanctity.
Chap. I. Of the older miracles.
Chap. II. Of the more recent miracles.
Chap. III. The repute and fame of Philip's sanctity, while he lived, and after he had lived.
CHAPTER I.
The Saint's native place, parents, birth, indications of future sanctity, pious education, and virtues in boyhood.
Book I. Chapter I.
Etruria, which was the native land of our blessed Philip, has borne the praise in all ages, as much for the arts of peace and of war as for a certain inborn propensity toward religion and piety, The Saint at Florence so that, if it should please us to use a borrowed light in sketching our most serene star Philip, we should have more copious matter than the plan of our undertaken design, in which we study brevity, would seem to demand. For indeed that from the very times of the Aborigines a Etruria was the interpreter of the gods b, and initiated with a kind of general priesthood into the superstition of those times, and could nevertheless direct her generous eyes toward the flashing radiance of the Gospel, proves I know not what kinship with the Divinity divinely implanted in the men of that sky and soil; and even today (be there no ill-will in the word) I should almost have said that there is scarcely a province in the world which so vividly represents, by its exercises of piety, the venerable likeness of the primitive Church; which to pursue and demonstrate at greater length does not belong to one who contends that the births of great heroes rather illustrate their native land than are illustrated by it.
[2] Meanwhile, though all other things befell our Philip by divine gift, yet it will belong to our modesty of noble stock, to give thanks to Florence, the royal seat of Etruria, in which he was born, because she gave him most illustrious parents. These were James and Albaverde; of whom the former obtained his paternal lineage from the ancient and most illustrious stock of the Benizi, which, so long as it stood, not only attained the highest honors of that Commonwealth, but had them almost as household possessions, and had cause for many ancestral images. The mother made an equal nobility more noble by the outstanding excellence of her religion and of her remaining virtues. But, as nothing in human affairs is perpetual, of so great and illustrious a family of the Benizi nothing now survives except the house in which Philip was born, which is seen in the quarter of Vitis, which is called that of the Guicciardini, bearing on its ancient walls the arms of the Benizi race, that is, upon a blue field, a white eagle with open breast; a symbol, namely, commending as it were by a kind of hieroglyphic the genius of the Benizi family from its generous sincerity.
[3] and of barren parents, For the rest, although the spouses lived together in the highest concord, yet in a contention pleasing to heaven they strove most keenly in the zeal of Christian piety, and the desire of offspring, which they had long lacked, sharpened that contention the more, the more earnestly they wished that a line of descendants should arise from them,
which by its perpetuity should match the age of the world; that there might be those who, as long as possible in place of themselves, mortals of a brief span, should worship and venerate the divine goodness. The contest was so decided, with the wished-for outcome for both, that, although by the constancy of their prayers they obtained what they had long and greatly desired, yet by this very thing they received a weightier cause for persisting more earnestly in what they had begun, inasmuch as it is more just to adore the divine goodness for a benefit received than for one merely sought. For when in that childlessness which I have mentioned, and in this zeal of piety, they had lived a great part of their age (by a certain hidden counsel of God, that that barrenness of bodies might be a fruitfulness of souls, which would make all the virtues sisters to Philip, but especially endurance and unbroken confidence in God), they have recourse to her whom her own virginity made fruitful, and to the Mother of him who can do all things, save to deny that which is asked with the Mother interceding and giving her patronage.
[4] he is born, not without a preceding vision of his mother, And so the vows conceived, and the supplications persevered in with ripened constancy, had their moment, and the Mother of God made Albaverde the Mother of Philip: and that Albaverde might recognize that she had obtained not only a son but a saint, while she bore him in her womb she sees, in her sleep, a most brilliant radiance set before her, which, going forth from her belly, embraced all things far and wide with a shining brightness, and poured itself over the whole world. And that this indeed was no fabrication put together either by the forces of nature, or by the affections of women with child, or by the power of the imaginative faculty, or by some violent apprehension, that Son of light, and brother of the same womb, when brought forth into the light, made clear to the good of the Christian cause. But lest the birth of the Blessed boy should be prodigious by one omen only, others worthy of memory brought it about: for in the same year, and on the same day, on which the Order of the Servants arose in an unwonted manner, as we shall afterwards see — that is, in the year one thousand two hundred and thirty-three from the childbearing of our Virgin, on the eighteenth of the Kalends of September, which day is sacred to the same Virgin Assumed — the mother poured Philip forth into this light, with a truly admirable and delightful harmony, as it were, of all things, by which it was by no means obscurely portended that Philip, born on the day of the inaugurated Queen of the heavens, and on the same day of the birth of the service of her Servants, would both greatly make illustrious her majesty and their diligence, and in turn be himself made illustrious.
[5] Nor indeed did Philip put off doing what we say until the boy's toga or the manly gown; which were followed by nay, by a more brilliant portent, having scarcely passed the fourth month of infancy, with an admirable eloquence, such as the Powers above alone can bestow, he began to act as patron of the Servants; for once by chance, being carried in his mother's lap, he had caught sight of two of the seven men, founders of our Family, begging from door to door: and behold, exulting with gladness, turning to his mother in articulate and distinct speech, Come, Mother, he said, see, the Servants of the Virgin Mary; bring forth an alms. The novelty of the thing struck those standing about, who were amazed not without cause that words were at hand, in favor of the Servants of the Virgin and for the proclamation of their glorious title, to one who could plead his own causes only by wailing and by other mute intimations, as befitted the condition of his age c. This omen of Philip's future sanctity did not stop at these words alone and bare, but betrayed itself also in deed, and that no less wonderful than the words: for on fixed days in the week he abstained from the milk of his nurse, which by reason of his age was almost the only nourishment he could use; and leaving his soft cradle and the other allurements that court sleep, by a certain divine instinct he stretched out his innocent and still milk-fed limbs upon the ground for a more troublesome rest.
[6] Whence you would not absurdly assert of this Infant that which the weighty author Lawrence Surius has concerning St. Nicholas, wonderful indications of his future sanctity, bishop of Myra in Lycia. "Who could doubt that this Infant was breathed upon and sanctified by the divine Godhead at the very outset of his birth, who began to venerate God before he began to live, and to fast before he began to eat? For we hold it ascertained that, whereas on all the other days and nights he frequently drew the breasts of his nurse, yet on the fourth and sixth feria he was willing to taste milk only once, and that in the evening. And this he always kept with a fixed and unmoved order, so that by no blandishments, by no coaxing of the nurse, by no necessity of nature could he be turned aside from the fast he had begun. Wherefore even the most rigid interpreter of good things must plainly confess that this happened not by chance, or from a distemper of the stomach, but as it were of set purpose and by the inspiration of the Spirit of God." Thus far Surius d. All of which things, with the name alone changed, agree with our Philip.
[7] Wherefore, although we here aim at this alone, that Philip may deservedly appear admirable to all, which he gave as an infant; yet we confess that it is no wonder that, a foundation so notable and so early laid, so noble a mass of virtues could be superimposed by him through the untiring labor of fifty-two years in both lives, the contemplative and the active, this inborn and foster-brother favor of God the Best and Greatest leading him by the greatest short cuts, at which he labored with incredible diligence.
II.
[8] That Philip's education answered to the manifold brilliance of his birth then piously brought up by his parents, the highest honorableness and religion of his parents and the splendor of his house make easy to believe. Their care was wonderfully stimulated by the fact that from that prodigious conception itself and from the course of the first days after he drank in the light, they divined by no vain conjecture that the hand of the Lord was with him, so that they were persuaded not so much that he had been given them as a son, as that he had been entrusted to their care: and for that and for many other reasons, but especially because they remembered that he was the gift of the most blessed Virgin, they held him dear and precious. Accordingly, being carefully guarded within the walls of home until he passed out of boyhood, in the pursuit of humane letters and in the companionship of all the remaining virtues, he either conquered or knew nothing of the noises of the forum, the hostile enemies of tranquil minds, especially in tender age; to the great good and increase of his virtues and his learning, of both of which he gave noble specimens as occasion offered.
[9] and instructed in the elements of the faith, Therefore, beginning from the elements of Christian piety, and having embraced them in his memory with the greatest quickness, he recited them in the morning on rising from sleep, and before sleep in the evening, not as befitted a boy, but with greater weight and impressiveness than falls to a grown man. Then, having become ten years old, without ever interrupting either his fast (which he had begun when he had scarcely drawn the vital air) or his custom of lying on the bare and cold ground, he added to his fixed prayers the Office of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the Dead, and those seven Psalms of David which the Church prescribed rather for those about to bewail the crimes of a past life than for the like innocence. Moreover in the deepest hush of night, rising from the place where he lay poorly, he passed a good part of the night in the contemplation of heavenly things, and continuing that custom until his death, he carried it almost into the very tomb.
[10] in the exercise of various virtues And hence indeed it followed (as it must needs follow) that he drank into his soul so great an ardor of striving through all things arduous and harsh toward the inward glow of divine love, that when from time to time he was brought by his mother to the churches (which she frequently visited), far otherwise than other boys of nearly the same age are wont, who restlessly here and there through the churches (as though having found a more spacious playground than at home) either run about or disturb those praying, he, with his tender knees fixed on the ground and his pure hands folded toward heaven, full of reverence, with prayers of wondrous ardor interspersed, looked up and observed the sacred rites, so that it could easily be noticed by the bystanders that the most sacred marrow and spirit of those rites was penetrated by the Blessed boy, so that he seemed like not so much a secular boy as a man initiated into sacred things and thoroughly practiced in them. But if at any time he was not admitted by his mother, with prudent moderation, into this fellowship of piety, but was bidden to keep himself at home, he softened the harshness of that command by his love of obedience. Meanwhile, however, at home, instead of sweet apples, little swords, and riding on a reed (which the sons of heroes are wont to love after their fathers' disposition), he handled sacred things, set up little altars, and adorned them when set up with sacred images and tapers: and having made himself both sacristan and priest to himself, with no less ardor and veneration than in the church he applied himself to prayers e.
[11] he advances daily, His boyhood having been passed in these arts and pursuits, when he seemed to have grown into a youth and to have come of sufficient age for the graver disciplines, his parents set over him, to imbue him with both virtues and letters, a religious man of approved virtue and learning. That counsel of his parents so kindled Philip, who without it was wonderfully inclined to virtue, that it is incredible by how great an interval he outstripped the diligence of all around him. Certainly men on oath, in the examination instituted concerning his life, solemnly affirmed that he not only held far off the allurements of that age, but also that in all things, both what he did and what he said, he showed himself such as could be seen as the very idea of perfection: so did all the virtues, each one of them, breathe forth something divine from that heavenly soul. But chiefly among these, charity toward all mortals and compassion toward the needy led the household: by which he came to the aid of the want of all, so far as his means and the condition of his estate could extend to it, with a readiness of hand no less than of heart. Then he ordered the care of himself upon such principles that, having summoned to the tribunal of an exacting mind that youth which is slippery unto falls, he laid down laws for it and fixed limits; and that it might not stray beyond these, he employed as guardians reverence for the divine law, and the affliction of his virgin body, and prayer also both mental and vocal, each of them exceedingly fervent and fiery, together with the most frequent reception of the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist.
[12] Philip therefore being furnished with this equipment and these arms, and stoutly resists the temptations of the demon. divine providence would not have opportunity of fighting be wanting to him, lest glory be wanting; but Philip nobly assailed the battle line of every kind of engine drawn up against him, with all hell conspiring, valiantly scattered it, and gave a noble spectacle of himself to God, the Lord of hosts, the presider of the games: and chiefly by the defenses of fortitude, patience, and humility, he carried off a glorious triumph over the utmost efforts of the powers below: and by that strength he made a way for himself to the more illustrious honors of the Christian warfare. And so, as it were for a prize of victory, the divine Spirit being sent upon him, the purpose of trampling down the vanity of present things and of passing over to the religious institute of life began to grow in his soul with daily increase, and the seeds cast in his heart from the age of five months onward, ripened by great advances through a certain divine heat, were hastening to the harvest; nor did the daily huge increases of that twin family of the Servants press this heaven-sent mind but little, so that it can scarcely be explained with what impulse he was borne to embrace and to seek after it (being enrolled under the name of a servant of the Mother of God), of which vow he at length became possessed in the twentieth year of his age.
ANNOTATIONS.
so much so that the Romans used to send their sons into Tuscia or Etruria for the sake of learning religion, or rather superstition, as the ancient writers testify.
CHAPTER II.
A brief notice concerning the origin and increase of the Order of the Servants of the most blessed Virgin Mary, which the Saint afterwards entered.
III.
For the more exact perceiving of the things which must henceforth be narrated, Seven men stirred up by divine power we shall have brought no little light, if we relate in a kind of brief summary the origin and youth of the Order of the Servants. There was therefore at Florence, among the others which that city has in great number, a certain confraternity of men, instituted in the year of Christ 1193 (which, from the proclaiming abroad of the praises of the great Virgin, they called the Laudantes, the Praisers), and it endures even today, except that, its seat being changed while its institute is preserved, in place of the Laudantes it is called, from the name of the patron saint adopted, the society of St. Zenobius. To this, among others distinguished in dignity and religion, seven Florentine men of the patrician order gave their names: who, when in the year of restored salvation 1233, on the day sacred to the Virgin Assumed into heaven, they were present with the rest of the confraternity at the divine service in honor of the Queen of the heavens inaugurated on that day, a hidden ardor, gliding in by divine power, settled in the souls of each, of serving God and his most holy Parent with a certain loftier service, the cares of fleeting things being cast aside.
[14] And so, when the assembly being dismissed they had come together, and that divine inbreathing which they had drunk in with their whole marrow did not so contain itself within the bounds of their souls as not to break forth even into their very faces and eyes, they stood a while, struck with mutual contemplation, each one wondering at that in another by which he in turn carried away the one who wondered at him. That silence held for some little while by persistent modesty, no one making a beginning of speech, until he who happened to be the eldest, undertaking with great lowliness of mind to bring forth what he saw was being ill and wretchedly dissembled both by himself and by his companions, disclosed not so much what he himself as what all the others were bearing in mind. Each snatching the words from the mouth of the narrator; by which they in turn related that they too, during the prayers just now completed, had been suffused with an unwonted illumination of mind, and that they had been admonished in the same tenor and with the same affections, that, the encumbrances of falling things being cast aside, they should embrace the solitary life, akin to heaven and born for the bewailing of the errors of a past life, chiefly under the protection of the Queen of the heavens. Wherefore, using a summary deliberation, as in a matter that was clear, they determine by concordant judgments that the divine command must by all means be obeyed; and for its execution they appoint the sixth of the Ides of September, which is festal for the Nativity of the Mother of God.
[15] the bishop of Florence being consulted, When that day dawned, they all together approach the bishop of the city, Ardingo a, the second of that name, a man complete in all the parts of his dignity, and almost greater than his own eminence; and they set forth to him in order their plan and its author: and they ask that with his good leave and authority it may be permitted them to take a place for the carrying out of the divine command: which the holy man, and best interpreter and appraiser of divine things, not only granted them, but also, praying good things upon these most auspicious beginnings of theirs, dismissed them from him laden with every accompaniment of happy wishes: let them go, and, as would surely be happy and favorable for the Christian Commonwealth, comply with the divine biddings. Glad at these successes of their affairs, flowing in a perpetual series according to their heart's desire, they withdraw beyond the walls of the city of Florence into a lowly cottage of the village of Camarzia, and there set up the common life, which they had long had in their vows, amid a voluntary want of all things.
[16] For the rest, their names, transcribed hither from the book of life, were these: and all impediments being removed, Bonfilius Monaldi, John Manetti (afterwards, to conceal the honor of his lineage, called Bonagiunta), Benedict degli Antelli, Bartholomew degli Amidei, for whom the sweetness of his surname, as fitter for the institute, made the name Amadeus. Ricovero Lippi Scalandroni (that family today bears the clan-name of the Uguccioni), who accordingly assumed the name of Uguccione. Alexis Falconieri, and Gerardino de' Sostegni, which is the family that is now called de' Migliori; having certainly by receiving this Saint b been made better on a great occasion. Thus our Seven men, neither under the twentieth nor above the thirtieth year of age (which is worthy of note), were taken from the three orders of men out of which the Christian people is composed. For some of them were from the virginal ranks of the Church, others from the celibate state of widowers, others were even bound by marriage covenants; who nevertheless dealt gently with their wives, so that these, content to keep their own goods for themselves, did not hinder the divine plan of their husbands: to the holiness of which request they not only acquiesced, but also, new covenants of a more divine love having been struck between themselves and their husbands, being enclosed either in their own houses or in monasteries, or enrolled by giving their names to convents of Religious virgins, they vied with the men and the virgins in holiness and constancy of purpose.
[17] And so, these and all other hindrances being taken out of the way, they commit their purpose to execution, the seven leaders of the Mother of God's expedition, after contests of outstanding fortitude sweated through beneath the sweet yoke of Religion, after many and various labors endured, and notable work done in tilling the vineyard of the Lord, the course of a most holy life having been run through with the glory of admirable things, were borne to heaven, some later, some sooner, their noble spirits to receive the heavenly honors and the triumphs due to deeds well done, while their bodies, having obtained the honor of burial on Monte Senario, the original seat of our family, became renowned thence in every direction by miracles.
[18] For the rest, as it ought to be doubtful to none that these seven men, and afterwards by the Mother of God like seven columns hewn out by the divine wisdom for building the faithful house of his Mother, were chosen; so it is established that they have fallen into error who have thought either those seven, or even Bl. Philip himself, of whom we here treat, to be the chief founders of the Order of the Servants; since that honor belongs to the Virgin Mother of God herself, or (that we may speak more worthily and more reverently of so great a majesty) to the Order itself from so great a Foundress. Certainly their vocations, whose series and order we shall here weave, will most clearly prove that these men whom we have just praised thought of nothing less than of contriving (so far as in them lay) some new Order anew: so that accordingly our family neither can nor ought to acknowledge any other human author than the Mother of Christ herself. Meanwhile we the more easily pardon this error in others, because a writer most versed in sacred history in our own, and perhaps also in our Fathers', age, somewhere making honorable mention of our Philip, calls him the Institutor c of the Order of the Servants, though the Pontifical letters by which our institute is approved cry out against it; which speak in express words with us.
[19] by frequent callings, And so the first vocation of the Fathers already mentioned is that in which, the Queen of heaven appearing to them in an august and visible form, with radiant face and encircled by a blessed company of heavenly spirits, they were bidden, by a command indeed gentle but effectual, to seize upon a holier and loftier institute of life, taking into the fellowship of that glory those whom a soul ready and inclined to so salutary a counsel should recommend. The second vocation was that in which the same Virgin showed herself to be seen by each one apart in their own houses, on the day after that on which they were enrolled in the register of the confraternity of the LAUDANTES; and in this, and in that which is third in order, which happened when they withdrew outside the city into the cottage of which we spoke a little before, they received a divine oracle concerning the establishing of a common religious life, secular things being cast aside.
[20] and admonished by repeated apparitions, Called hence by a fourth vocation to Monte Senario, they girded themselves, by the command of the same Virgin, to lay there more solid foundations of Religion. The fifth was more illustrious and more admirable than all these, when on the very vigil of the sixth feria of Holy Week, while the same Fathers were fixed in the contemplation of the most bitter sorrows and the death of Christ the Savior, a dark garment (which we call the habit or scapular) was cast by the same Mother of God upon each of them, as a symbol and memorial of that mourning which, at the time of her Son's passion, made the same most holy Mother the Queen of martyrs and the chief mourner at the greatest funeral that ever was. Finally, the sixth was that which, as the crown of the rest, gave to them thus clad in black the name of Servants by a heavenly hand, appearing written in golden letters engraved in a certain place of Monte Senario; from all which it is, as I judge, sufficiently clear that the Religion of the Servants grew together, as it were by certain steps of admirable things, by the work of the Most Blessed Virgin alone, and that these men were led by the hand of God whither they themselves did not even know.
[21] and dwelling on Monte Senario, Our seven Fathers had passed altogether seven years on this lofty mountain, thinking rather of cultivating their souls, and of attaining the highest summit of perfection through the contemplation of the passion of Christ and of other divine things, than of founding or propagating any Religious Order, although in this space of time they meanwhile attained that loftiness of spirit and of true sanctity which could suffice for so great a work and mass. But it pleased otherwise the true Foundress of the Order, the Mother of God, who in that heavenly mind of hers, the sanctuary of divine providence, had already determined to prepare, from this seedbed of these seven Servants, an infinite harvest of Servants from all the regions of the earth; which she willed to be made manifest by a portent of this kind.
[22] they are moved by the miracle of a vine suddenly fruitful, On the sloping ridge of that holy mountain the holy men took a plot cleared of briars and thorns for the planting of a little garden; not so much in hope of any produce in a place of so barren a sky and soil, as that they might have wherewith to cut the throat of idleness, the hostile enemy of virtue, after the example of the ancient Fathers; in that garden, among other stocks and plants of easy cultivation, they set some cuttings of vines. A thing wonderful to tell! On so alpine a mountain, which is stretched out to a height of nine miles from the city of Florence, and accordingly for the greatest part of the year lies stiff, bound by frost, and bristles with the rest of the soil's harshness, out of the vines set out there arose one which the course of nature
anticipating, in one night, that which immediately preceded the third Sunday of Lent, before the feast of the Virgin of the Annunciation, at which time in rich places and those most exposed to the sun scarcely any forerunners of spring are discerned, in the same year in which it had been planted, suddenly rejoicing in vine-shoots, and before flowering heavy with the fruit of clusters, and moreover, its fruit-bearing branches spread far and wide, embracing a very great tract of the mountain, turned upon itself the eyes and admiration of all.
[23] All being astonished at the novelty of so unusual a thing, Bonfilius, and they establish the Order of the Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary. who acted as superior of the family, went down to Florence, and faithfully related to Ardingo, bishop of the city, everything concerning the prodigious vine as the matter stood: but this, although in itself unusual, was not new to Ardingo, a most holy man, and one frequently admitted, on account of the notable integrity of his life, to the knowledge not only of this but also of other heavenly secrets; for he replied that on the night just past this vine, as it was described by Bonfilius, had been shown to him by the Virgin Mother of God, and that she had said that by this portent it was intended and signified that all should understand that she willed this institute of her Servants to be propagated through the whole world, and that no one might doubt this would come to pass by her authorship, she had subjoined that saying of Ecclesiasticus: "I as a vine have brought forth a sweetness of odor, and my flowers are the fruit of honor and honorableness"; and hence it came about that thereafter very many of good expectation were admitted by the Fathers into the society, to which hitherto they could be induced by no arguments; and a little after this the vine of the Servite Congregation, creeping forth happily from this mountain in every direction, increased in various places with the number of monasteries as with branches, when it had grown up into the form of a regular Religion, in the year 1267 from the childbearing of our Virgin received blessed Father Philip as Prior General in the fifth place. That is to say, in the eighth year from its confirmation by Alexander IV, supreme Pontiff, in which space of time it was propagated with wonderful speed through the four chief provinces of Italy, as our diligent historian Giani d pursues at greater length in the Annals of our family: for us it will have been enough to have tasted these few things concerning so noble an origin, according to the plan of our undertaking, as we hasten to return to the way.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER III.
The Saint's literary studies, his grief at the discord of his fellow citizens, and his prodigious calling to the Religious Order.
IV.
When Philip, under the teaching of that religious man whom we said above was set over him for his instruction, The Saint at Paris had made such progress in the more polished literature and in Latin eloquence that he seemed likely to linger longer in them only in idleness, his parents determined to move him on to graver studies. And because at about this time the university of Paris had been established with better laws and greater breadth by St. Louis, king of the Gauls, chiefly at the exhortation of Innocent IV, supreme Pontiff, it pleased them to destine the Youth thither above all. When he arrived there, having obtained distinguished teachers, he shortly gave in the philosophical disciplines so distinguished a specimen of his talent that after a few months he was judged by his doctor worthy to approach the more divine disciplines and those of deeper inquiry. Meanwhile, however much with diligence and industry he gave himself to disputations and to the study of natural things, yet, by no means unmindful that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, he willed that nothing should thereby be taken from the fervor of prayer and from the frequent use of the Sacraments.
[25] and gives his labor to medicine Thus, with piety and industry for companions, having measured out the course of philosophy with unwonted advance, he threw his father (who was informed of his son's progress by those who congratulated him) into anxiety, lest, if he drew out delays in those studies which are perfected by speculations, his most brilliant talent, having found immense spaces, should be swept away and swallowed up in those alone; wherefore he was led by domestic opinion to think that his son's happy talent must be moderated, by which opinion it had been persuaded in that age that for the noble youth in a free people to be set to studies requiring the whole man was a kind of fault, because by this means young men would be turned away from the care of household affairs and of the commonwealth. Whereby it came about that, philosophy being completed, Philip was bidden to devote the rest of his labor to medicine, both because at that time all the most noble men followed this faculty, to the greater profit of the state and good of the citizens than is seen in our age, and also because the kinship of medicine with natural philosophy would not at once blunt the honorable impulse of a talent already poised for speculations.
[26] For the rest, although that counsel of his father fell out very unwelcome to Philip, with happy success, as one who was carried with the whole ardor of his soul toward theology; yet he, weighing and pondering all things at their proper value, and considering that the greatest talents, when they are lifted incautiously on high toward these divine things, fall by so much the graver a fall, thought it safer for himself to order his affairs by the prescription of his elders rather than of his own genius or talent. Wherefore, having undertaken medicine with the same ardor as philosophy, he made it so his own while still nineteen years of age that he carried all away into admiration of himself.
[27] Being then recalled to Florence, he was sent thence to Padua and recalled to his native land, to receive the insignia of each faculty with which doctors are honored; where, many proofs of outstanding learning having been given, and the examination surmounted with the highest praise, he was presented with a double laurel, amid greater applause of all than was welcome to the most modest young man. These distinctions, and the fame of virtue joined to them, being carried to his parents, wonderfully kindled in the heart of each their longing for their son, which was very great even without this desert, and at length brought it about that they summoned Philip home from Padua; whose wishes and paternal affections he set before his most beloved letters, and, revering obedience above knowledge, returned to Florence, where he spent in the private study of the sacred Letters the time now freed from his scholastic task. For other relaxations of mind he had visitations of the sacred buildings; for banquets, frequentings of the Eucharistic feast; and if any labor was given in spare hours to the natural sciences, it was done that by them, as by supports and certain steps, the soul might be raised to the consideration of divine things; of which he at this time experienced marvelous perceptions even by this road, and was frequently rapt out of himself, poured out in ecstatic love into the embraces of God; and there arose in his soul those burning desires (whose seeds he had long since drunk in with his milk) by which he was impelled to receive the habit of the Servants of the Most Blessed Virgin.
[28] Occupied at home in these arts and in this purpose, from the fellowship of such frequent converse with God there he lives with great piety and praise; a certain appearance shone out in him which seemed more than human, admirable and venerable to all the orders of the city. For such was his compliance at home toward his parents, such his courtesy abroad with the leading men of the Commonwealth, such his modesty with his equals, such his affability with his inferiors, such finally his dexterity in acting when use demanded, that by these endowments, joined with the example of a most upright life and manners, he stirred up in all admiration of himself no less than veneration, so that not undeservedly he bore the name of the restorer of Christian integrity among the Florentine youth.
[29] But meanwhile there tore at his soul, burning with love of his native land, but grieving at the factions of the citizens, the compassion with which he was borne toward the city afflicted by the factions of the Guelphs and Ghibellines b; for that evil had at this time so broken out afresh, to the ruin of the human race, by the zeal of the emperor Frederick c, that it went to overturn not only the Florentine Commonwealth but even the whole of Europe; besides this, the license of most abandoned manners and wicked deeds had grown out to an immense degree; for the mending of which, when Philip saw himself with grief unequal, committing himself and all else to God, he abstained most diligently from party zeal, and, safe by the sole protection of his conscience, could never be induced, with however great enmities the families of the whole city were armed for mutual destruction, to put on a sword or any other kind of weapon.
[30] he prays for their peace before the Crucifix, For the rest, so many crimes being committed against the divine goodness before his eyes, wounded and anxious at the peril of his fellow citizens, he made it his custom, in affairs so desperate, to seek a remedy prostrate at the feet of a certain image of Christ fastened to the cross, which he both procured for many others, and himself drew down upon himself from that fountain of goodness the most ample favors of divine grace. But that was a singular favor by which, being kindled more ardently than usual with the love of taking up the Religion, he received from that holy image this oracle in express words: "Go, Philip, to Monte Senario d; there I will teach thee the incomprehensible delight of eternal life."
[31] by whom he is urged to a more perfect life; Not upon a dry or stony thicket, at peril of being choked, were those seeds of the divine calling received, but upon a fruitful and well-worked soil, as the fruit that shortly followed showed: for at the time of solemn Lent of the following year 1253, having begun a life admirable both for abstinence from food and for the hardship of his lying down, and for the other afflictions of the body, he bade farewell to all delights, except those which he had received to be tasted from divine contemplation and from the study of the sacred Letters. Meanwhile, frequently visiting the sacred places which lie between Florence and the ruins of the destroyed city of Fiesole e, of his journey to the mountain, whither he was destined by Christ crucified,
he laid, as it were a new Isaac to be sacrificed there, certain rudiments and beginnings.
[32] Since it is proper and connected, as by a necessary consequence, to divine apparitions and to things exceeding the ordinary course of nature, that they should marvelously illumine the human mind struck by an unwonted light, and, having set it aflame, carry it away into the love of divine things; hence it can scarcely be sufficiently explained with how great increases Philip, his body subdued by various macerations and his soul by the habit of contemplation, and well prepared, was daily made more serene, and from the presentation of this light was kindled with the love of future blessedness, so that accordingly, seized by a most burning thirst for justice (which is the eighth among the Gospel beatitudes, and which the Fathers hold to be the desire of solid sanctity), he began already to be happy and blessed.
[33] and a suppliant before an image of the Mother of God, By chance on a certain day, on which he was above all driven by these flames, he had betaken himself from home to the new chapel of the Servants of the Mother of God, where was the miraculous image of Our Lady of the Annunciation, to be present at the divine sacrifice; where he was again invited to the Religious institute of the Servants by the most efficacious calling of all those with which God or the Most Blessed Virgin have thus far deigned to favor him. But before I set this forth, it is well by a digression, not unpleasing to the reader, to bring out in few words the origin of this prodigious image, and presently to return with us into the way to Philip, the spectator of the admirable scene. There is not far from Florence a suburb, ennobled by the defeat of the emperor Henry III received from the Florentine army, which they call Camarzia.
[34] Here in the year 1250 from salvation brought to us there was begun to be built an oratory, with a certain dwelling adjoined, in which as in a lodging the Fathers, whose prodigious origin coming from time to time from Monte Senario to Florence on business, might be received. There long since, on the raw and as yet fresh wall, there stood an image of the Virgin, which they called Mary of Cafaggio, figured with colors tempered not with oil but with water; and when this had been effaced amid the ruins of the buildings by the injury of the times, the Fathers, thinking that the memory of it should be renewed by them, resolved to see to it that another should be painted in that oratory after the prototype of the effaced one, with the same colors and on a like space of raw wall. And because at about the time of the most happy message brought from heaven to the Virgin they had been honored with the illustrious title of Servants of Mary, it pleased them that that image should above all be painted under the form of that mystery, in which the same Virgin, having given her consent with the utmost obedience that can be conceived, called herself the handmaid of the eternal Godhead. And so, for the beginning of the work, there was summoned a painter f, famous in that age not so much for the artistry of his painting as for his piety toward the most blessed Virgin (for in whose honor indeed he cultivated perpetual virginity); and he, out of his love toward the Mother of God, having taken upon himself the care of completing this work without charge, before setting his hand to the work, willed to prepare himself by the safeguard of fervent prayers, and, his sins being expiated through sacred confession, by receiving the sacred Eucharist; to which zeal of his there were added also the prayers of the Fathers, who even then presaged in their minds I know not what of happy omen.
[35] The work being thus begun, the image of the archangel Gabriel now seemed to breathe upon the wall; or renewal is set forth, the effigy also of the most blessed Virgin herself, except the face, head, and neck, had come forth finished before their eyes, and the other accessories of the work had received their final touch of light, when behold, the painter, about to set the last hand to the sacred image, suddenly began to tremble in all his limbs, but especially in his hands, to grow pale in countenance, and at last to swoon; and, as though he had never handled a brush, all his art and skill of painting seemed to have vanished from his hand and mind. Therefore the painter, astonished at the novelty of the thing, both gives himself to prayers, and entreats the Fathers to appease for him the divine Godhead; which they undertaking without delay, not without tears which both wonder and fear of the unwonted event had drawn forth, pleaded the cause of the dismayed painter before God and the most blessed Virgin. On the following day the painter returns to the work, and, having for some little while contemplated something in it, being suddenly seized by a certain divine slumber or ecstasy, departed from his senses; then a little after, being restored to himself, he gathers himself upon his feet, gazes at the image (which in that hush of the mind he had seen finished and completed), and with the greatest amazement recognizes it as now expressed in the neck, countenance, and head, for the expressing of which his hands had been numb the day before; and both he and the others standing by, redoubling the cry of miracle, with vast applause give the most abundant thanks to God and to the Virgin Mother of God. The outcome of the matter being noised abroad, there is a running together of the whole city and of all the orders to the oratory of the Servants, and, due honors having been paid to the image, by decree of a full senate the commonwealth ordained that these words, Madonna santa Maria Madre di gratie, that is, Divine St. Mary, Mother of graces, should be inscribed beneath the image, which even today are seen inscribed in an ancient character g. And by this privilege indeed, among others, it seemed good to the Queen of the heavens to ennoble the beginnings of her Servants.
[36] But to return to Philip, whom we left a suppliant before this image so divinely completed, he is called to the Religious Order when he had composed himself to hear the divine service in this oratory, on the fifth feria within the octave of the Lord's Resurrection (which in that year had fallen on the VIII of the Kalends of May), while blessed Father Alexis Falconieri h was performing the Sacred rite (in whose Epistle are had those words, Philip, draw near and join thyself to that chariot), Philip, moved by those words as if spoken to himself, seized by the divine Spirit, is carried away from his senses into an ecstasy of most sweet violence, and, journeying outside himself in it, he seemed to himself to be exposed in a solitude of vast horror, among sheer crags and thickets of prickly thorns, where, his feet moreover sticking in the clinging mire, anxious with manifold evil, he seemed perhaps to be wrestling with doubtful issue against death itself. Caught amid these straits, when with the words of the royal Prophet, "Save me, O God, for the waters have come in even unto my soul," he was imploring the divine help, he hears a voice of wondrous sweetness glide into his ears, by which, being restored to himself and his mind's state made serene, he was led out from that borderland of perils; and presently there opened to the blessed Youth a heaven flashing with a light unknown to mortal eyes; whose brightness and tranquility, as well as the majesty of its other adornments, as there is nothing like it in human affairs, so no words are found by which it can be described.
[37] by a wonderful vision In the spacious and blessed plain of this heaven a chariot of solid gold, yoked with a spirited lion and a gentle lamb, was drawn by a swift indeed, but skillful, guidance of the driving. In the chariot itself, placed upon a lofty throne, sat the Queen of the heavens in a dark garment, but one which much glory of rays made bright, which a dove of unknown whiteness, hovering above the summit of the throne, poured far and wide in great abundance in every direction from the Virgin's head and countenance. Frequent choirs of heavenly spirits in attendance increased the pomp, who, holding up the many-colored canopy of her that sat, stiff with gems, sang out the praises of their Queen in most sweet harmony. The Virgin herself, holding forth in her hand a habit such as the Servant Fathers had lately begun to wear, when the heavenly ones had ceased to sing, said with a voice sweeter than the very harmony of the heavenly ones: Philip, DRAW NEAR, AND JOIN THYSELF TO THAT CHARIOT.
[38] in a certain ecstasy, The Virgin seemed about to bring forth more; but blessed Father Alexis intervened, who, the Sacrifice being meanwhile ended, and about to close the oratory as was his office, when he sees the blessed Youth withdrawn from his senses and clinging motionless, thinking him overcome by sleep, rouses him. Philip, restored to himself, drawing a heavy sigh from the depths of his heart, said: Ah, reverend Father, so may God pardon thee, as I excuse this error of thine. Nor did he accuse with more words the blessedness cut short; yet, magnifying to himself the greatness of the loss incurred, he weighed with grief in a severe balance the glory and the profits of that spectacle, because he seemed to himself not yet to have gained so much in the commerce of heavenly things as in that half hour. Meanwhile, when the night came on which followed this happy day, and Philip was using its solitude and silence for freedom of dealing with God, the Mother of God again showed herself to him to be seen, addressing him in these very words: "Philip, go tomorrow to my servants: for from them thou shalt learn the lessons of the chariot foreseen, which thou shalt take care straightway to carry out, being destined to become my faithful servant." Nor more; and from the sight of him, astonished and now sufficiently persuaded, she withdrew into heaven.
[39] Philip, when day dawned, having drunk in with all his marrow the fire of the heavenly calling, whose explanation from a spiritual man hastens his step to the oratory of the Servants, and, having heard Mass there (in which he earnestly commended to the Virgin, the author of the calling, his purpose), asks to be admitted to the superior of the place, who was then Father Bonfilius; who, when he came, due honor having been paid him, the Youth sets forth with bashful modesty, as was fitting, the visions presented to him, and the accompanying precept of communicating them. Then he entreats the Father that he may be taught by him as interpreter what and how much Christ and his most holy Parent will and command to be performed by him through these vast benefits. Bonfilius, rich in the divine spirit, and versed and clear-sighted in this kind of matters, replies that by that solitude presented to him, rough with briars and thistles, his secular state was signified, but that the chariot is the Religious state, to which he is called by the Mother of God: that the four axles of the golden chariot are the four cardinal virtues, upon which as upon hinges the institute of the Servants rests. That by the lamb and the lion, by which the same chariot is drawn, are designated Religious humility and fortitude, which it is fitting should be companions in arduous deeds undertaken in the divine service; but that the dove denotes the necessary purity of heart and skill in contemplation. Finally, that the dark garment borne in the Virgin's hand, and the invitation made, by which he was admonished to join himself to the chariot, are oracles which foretell that he will be a Servant of Mary in the new family of the same Virgin (where he is to be taught the mortification of the Cross of Christ).
[40] That interpretation kindled the already burning mind of Philip, he receives with great joy on both sides. and at last brought it about that he determined on what he had long been about, to embrace this Religious institute. Nor was Bl. Bonfilius i filled with less delight in that meeting, who saw flashing forth from the modest countenance of Philip, as he told his tale, rays of divine splendor, indubitable signs of his future sanctity. O happy and thrice blessed Youth, he silently thought, who esteemed the splendor of his lineage, the blandishments of fortune, the light of the sciences at no more than the value which God is wont to set upon the contempt of such things; whence the glory of the supreme Giver shines out the greater, who bestowed upon his Servant such great gifts, that he might have what he should both piously acknowledge and bravely despise, and by both open for himself a way to salvation. And thus far indeed concerning the manner of life which Philip led until he took up the state of the Religious life. From which, as I think, it becomes clear that he, by the breathing of divine grace inspiring him from his very cradle, was advanced by a short cut to such a summit of perfect wisdom, to which others, not so fervent, as it were through
certain steps, and by a laborious pilgrimage through the various windings of the spiritual life, are scarcely at last brought over a great interval of time.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER IV.
His entrance into the Order, his spiritual masters, humility, patience, and desire of solitude.
VI.
Here now, as it were certain first-fruits of the seed sown by the most blessed Virgin in the soul of Philip while still an infant, Asking to be admitted into the number of the Lay Brothers, are consecrated, being brought to the altars of the same Virgin. For however great a name he deservedly obtained, by the brilliance of his birth, the repute of his learning, and the fame of his integrity and piety, among all the noblest, most learned, and most upright of the city, keeping the substance of those names, he delayed not at all over these shadows of a great name, but, being now enrolled in the more sacred commonwealth of religion, according to the nature of the institute he had undertaken, having undertaken the mass of sincere holiness with a certain most wise architecture, he laid as foundation-stone a stone of the best vein, humility. And so, on that day on which we mentioned above that he had set forth the grounds of his calling, being invited by Father Bonfilius to the frugal dinner of the poor table of the Servants, toward the end of the dinner, unexpectedly raising himself from the table and sinking upon his knees in the middle of the dining hall, he earnestly entreats the Fathers with most ardent words that they would deign to grant him the favor of two petitions, of which the first was that they would admit him to their fellowship and count him worthy of the sacred habit of the Religion; the second, that it might be permitted him, being placed among the Lay Brothers, in some fashion to repay that favor by the common service of all. And these things indeed he pleaded with such abundant tears, and with so great a sense of compunction and self-abasement, that he compelled that venerable assembly of Fathers, astonished with admiration of his deep humility, to burst into tears.
[42] Then blessed Father Bonfilius, looking round upon the other Fathers, he obtains his wish, as though silently seeking the judgments of each, when he understood that all assented not so much with words as with sobs, replies to Philip: that he and the Fathers, being indeed Servants of the Mother of God, by whom he had been prodigiously called with such unwonted proofs to this family lately instituted and increased by her, neither would nor indeed could refuse to comply with his petitions; that accordingly with such alacrity and readiness as was fitting they receive him, and, having embraced him in the bowels of Religious charity, make him a son of the Religion and a novice, thenceforth to serve under the standards of the great Mother: and because the second part of his petition flowed from the same source as the first, that is, from the spirit of the Mother of God who called him, who placed the whole sum of her glory in the title and office of a handmaid, and preferred that name to the name of Mother; it pleased them also that under the name and condition of a Lay Brother he should doubly serve the service he was to take up. And in this manner Philip, in the twentieth year of his age, being made possessor of the greatest of all the vows in which he had lived up to that age, on the sixth feria within the Octave of the triumphal Resurrection of Christ is clothed with the habit of the Religion; his name nevertheless he did not change, according to the received custom of our Order, because in that meeting which he had with the most blessed Virgin, when she addressed him from the chariot, he had been called by the same Virgin to the Religion under the name of Philip.
[43] and learns the virtues proper to his Order, From this so prosperous outcome of Philip's affairs it becomes manifest that the first glory of his increase must, after God, be ascribed to the liberality and providence of the most blessed Virgin, who, while she designates for him this institute of her family to be seized upon before all others, and imparts the spirit most proper to that institute, that is, notable humility, is to be believed to have willed to recompense the service of Philip toward her, continued from his very infancy. For assuredly the patronage of the Saints has this perpetually joined to it by a certain necessary bond; so that scarcely is anything more efficacious for entering into the grace of God and for earning his propitious kindness than their prayers to God on behalf of their clients. And as among the Saints the Most Blessed Mother of God assuredly stands preeminent, so it is easy to believe that she was abundantly liberal toward Philip at this entrance, adorned with so many windings of wonderful things. Among the number of which benefits we shall not undeservedly reckon this, that, whereas upon noble youths who are meditating a Religious institute a thousand hands of parents, friends, and others (who account the seeking of such candidatures madness) are wont to be laid, yet Philip had as promoters of his purpose both his own parents, who held him their only son and uniquely beloved, the fruit of so many vows and the solace of their well-earned old age, and also that Religious man whom we mentioned above as set over him, and especially bishop Ardingo, a man most illustrious with every light of the sciences and of piety, and finally all the good men who flourished in that age in the city.
[44] under most experienced By these ways and supports, Philip, having been initiated as a servant of the Virgin, obtained as superior Bl. Bonfilius de' Monaldi (whom he had used as interpreter of the apparition lately had): whose outstanding holiness of life a voice that glided down from heaven at the time of his death, by which he was invited to heaven, attested, comprising much in few words with this eulogy: "Good son, because thou hast heard the voice of my Son, and hast inviolably observed it, thou shalt receive a hundredfold, and shalt possess eternal life": and his body, most sweetly expiring at that voice, for a proof how precious in the sight of the Lord was this death of his saint, for some while breathed forth a sweetness of unknown fragrance a.
[45] masters of the spiritual life, This guide of his life being lost, Philip took care to insinuate himself into the acquaintance of those whom he thought most like him in sanctity: among whom, besides those of his own house, was St. Peter of the Order of Preachers, the supreme censor of heretical depravity throughout Italy; who, after much sweat gloriously spent in that office, at length as a most valiant martyr laid down his blood also b. He, both by his own charity and diligence toward all good men, and by the commendation of the most blessed Virgin appearing to him, both held that new family of her Servants wonderfully commended to himself, and commended it to others, but especially to the Florentine commonwealth and to Innocent IV, supreme Pontiff, before whom he vividly proclaimed the admirableness of this Religion's beginning.
[46] who by sanctity But among those of his own house, Philip especially venerated blessed Father Bonagiunta c, one of the seven men who after the Mother of God were the authors of the Religion, a man otherwise illustrious on many accounts; yet memorable chiefly for a prodigy which came about in this manner. The blessed Father with a companion had gone forth through the city of Florence to beg in that famine and plague which in the year 1244 devoured almost all Italy, and in that quest necessary for the welfare of the brothers he turned aside to a moneyed man, infamous for the bitterness of his usuries, whom lately the blessed Father himself had gravely admonished concerning the peril of his salvation on this very account. He, when he noticed the mendicant Servants of the Virgin waiting for an alms before his doors, sends them by a maidservant bread and wine mortally poisoned; which when the Fathers had received, they offered a part of the benefit received to the maidservant, of otherwise known piety toward the Servants of the Mother of God, and when she, almost done to death by the avarice both of the times and of her master, greedily brought it to her famished mouth, Bonagiunta said: Beware, daughter, thou wilt pay with death,
shouldst thou bite that death; thy master's benefit, mingled with poison, has made a piece of maleficence, by which he was going to snatch away my life; but when thou hast returned to him, thou wilt find that he has paid for this and other offenses with death; and at these words, the plague having been driven from the gifts by the powerful sign of the cross, he ate of them with his companion without harm.
[47] But the maidservant meanwhile, coming to her master, whom she had left sound and safe, and shone with miracles. found him stretched on the ground and lifeless, called upon in vain several times d. When this deed became widely known in every direction, it was as a trumpet of the praises and merits of the Servite family. This therefore, and other outstanding lights of Gospel splendor shining upon the candlestick of the Church, Philip repeatedly observing with as it were eagle eyes, heaped up his own light in no small measure from another's; being by no means ignorant that vast increases accrue to ingenuous holiness from the company of holy men.
VII.
[48] So great a force in the breasts of men, corrupt from their very origin, has that allurement of divinity affected by our first parents obtained, With the greatest humility that not only are they bent with difficulty and reluctance to Christian humility, but they are even snatched away by a violent gadfly, as it were, of ambition into all those honors upon which ill-persuading pride sheds some shadow of dignity. And so, if there is anyone who has it ready and easy to raise and lift himself above others, and yet of his own accord abdicates that power, and confines within the limits of reason this impulse raging toward preeminence, he becomes another and a different man from himself, of whom you might deservedly pronounce that word of Scripture, 1 Kings X: "The spirit of the Lord shall leap upon thee, and thou shalt be changed into another man"; a follower, namely, of him who said, Matthew XI: "Learn of me, because I am meek and humble of heart."
[49] Our Philip, about to lead the column in the number of these, he performs the mean offices of the monastery, by an example scarcely to be imitated, certainly to be admired, though he flourished in youth, was renowned for illustrious lineage, had a delicate constitution of body, excelled in perspicacity of the sciences, and had grown accustomed (albeit unwillingly), by reason of the splendor of his house, to the services of attendants — with that impulse with which the sons of this age strive after great and showy things, with that same impulse Philip was borne toward the obscure and mean, pursuing chiefly those things by which he had believed that the splendor of the gifts which he had could best be blunted. Therefore when he received the care of the little garden, the first province committed to him, and was bidden to act as steward of the garden-produce, which was chiefly the revenue of the house, he so gave himself wholly to that work that no sultry, no cold, no rainy weather, nor finally any inclemency of sky or soil held him back from the cultivation. Nay, moreover, the day being spent in the garden, he spent a good part of the night in the services of the kitchen and the refectory. Wonderfully did the variety of these mean offices delight him, especially that which was employed to make trial of his obedience. And so at one time he served the brothers already seated at table, at another he waited upon the sick, from time to time, conspicuous in a long sack, he begged from door to door, then as porter he opened the doors of the monastery to those who came; finally, for the service of the sacristan, he swept the church and served those who offered sacrifice; in general he seemed alone to embrace all the services of the house.
[50] and mockeries patiently borne, In which, although he was very laboriously and variously stretched, yet he suffered nothing to hinder him from attending the choir most diligently, especially by night. Nay, it was observed that he was always the first in choir and the last. And these things indeed with the greatest diligence and constancy; but this with an unwonted patience, that most cheerfully he bore the jests of satirical mockery and the reproachful gibes of certain men who had formerly known him; for few nobles among his fellow citizens were found in that season who, condemning the blandishments of present things, gave themselves to Christian philosophy. Wherefore they kept saying that Philip was mad, by the fault either of a deranged mind or of a soul degenerating into meanness, in those tattered and torn patchwork garments, drawing the squalor of his face and his leanness by interpretation to the same conclusion; which nevertheless both his unwearied labors and fastings and the other afflictions of the body, but especially the suspension of a soul perpetually raised toward divine things (even when it was occupied with other matters), procured. Which PATIENCE indeed of divine things (that we may speak with the Areopagite), when once it has settled in the soul, among the other outstanding things which it does, turns the mind away from the desire of food, unless it be both necessary and easily got, in the choice of garments seeks the meanest of coverings, and out of labors chooses both the most difficult and the most obscure.
[51] When all these things had exercised Philip for a whole year in the monastery of Cafaggio e, he burns with desire of the eremitical life. a vast longing for a stricter life and a more rigid penance came upon his soul; for hitherto at Cafaggio he seemed to himself to have attained rather the vow than the reality of solitude. When these goads of the divine spirit, with an ardor and love of solitude growing greater day by day, keenly ranged through the Youth's soul, and the best appraiser of virtues knew that, with the holiness of obedience inviolate, a subject may propose to his Superior the promptings and desires of a loftier holiness, and await his judgment; he resolved to refer the whole matter to the superior, and, that the boon of the grace obtained might come more readily, he alleged that his wished-for quiet and solitude at Cafaggio was disturbed by the importunate and frequent visitations of his own people. The matter and the manner of the proposal pleased the superior, and, having numbered Philip among the family of Monte Senario, and prayed good things upon his good beginnings, he dismisses him to the solitude; where, with God and the most blessed Virgin as presiders of the games, he fought it out for some while for the palms of eternal verdure and the crowns of heavenly glory.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER V.
The Saint's eremitical life on Monte Senario, his charge of the novitiate at Siena, and his learning disclosed on the journey.
VIII.
We have received that Alexander the Great, king of the Macedonians (as St. Jerome among others reports in the history of St. Hilarion), was accustomed Leave having been obtained from his Superiors, to proclaim Achilles happy because he had obtained Homer as the praiser of his brave deeds. Whether that most ambitious youth envied the author of his own lineage, or whether he judged thus, that the desire of immoderate praises can be satisfied only by the most ingenious craftsmen of feigning and of lying; we for our part shall deservedly proclaim our Philip much happier, by as much as he was more averse to this vanity, by so much the more truly possessed of this wish: for of his notable deeds not only five and thirty writers of the best note a, but the very interpreter of eternal truth and of heaven, the vicar of Christ on earth, Paul V, stood forth as herald in the Apostolic letters by which he granted that he should be praised in the public offices of the Church, of which the sum, for the present purpose, is contained in these words: "The youth (Philip) grew and was strengthened in spirit, and was in the deserts until the day of his manifestation to the Church of God."
[53] Therefore in the twenty-first year of his age Philip, kindled with that love of solitude which we have a little before described, he betakes himself to Monte Senario, sets out on his journey from Florence with the letters of his superior to Monte Senario (part of which the most noble family of the Stufa had lately given as a gift to the Congregation of the Servants of the Mother of God), a mountain which, like a prepared mountain of the house of the Lord on the top of the mountains, situated in the midst of six other mountains, thrusts its heavenly summit into the clouds, and in a manner acts as the Capitol of the rest. The seven first Fathers, the sowers of the Order, had first begun to inhabit this place after the manner of hermits, with huts scattered around the little chapel which had been built on the very ridge of the mountain, boarded together with such rude workmanship that they were more remarkable for the sky, which they let in on every side, and for their poverty. Hither therefore Philip, having been borne as to the tranquil anchorage of a port, when he had brought in the ship of his mind heavy with heavenly merchandise, the anchors of outstanding constancy and hope being cast, rested for many years, having begun a manner of life admirable both for the rigor of its penance and for the splendors of its contemplation.
[54] And so he exchanges the patrician splendor and the rich comforts of his father's house whose site is described, for the dread of the woods and the harshness of sheer crags and caverns. For while the rest of the Fathers dwelt in cells joined together with boards, as we have said, Philip chose one made by the hand of nature, which you would call not unlike that which St. Benedict, having left Rome, chose for himself in the mountains of Subiaco b; for on that side where Senario looks obliquely toward the rising sun and the seven Ploughing-oxen, and turns toward the country which today they call the Mugello a back rough and shaggy with the unevenness of thick-set stems, a hundred paces below the chapel there is seen a very ancient cave, which, dug out into the mountain, gives a floor of the measure of a small chamber, of a height not exceeding the middling stature of a man (such as Philip is established to have been). Although in this our age, worn by antiquity and by the throng of men, it seems hollowed out to a greater height. At the very entrance of the cave, on the left hand as one goes in, a little altar presents itself, over which from above hangs the sign of the health-bringing cross, cut with rude sculpture in the very rock; on the side of the rock a little bed appears set up, at whose head there juts out from the same rock a pillow no softer than the bedstead itself, procurer of brief slumbers.
[55] and there giving himself to contemplation, This altar was the altar of incense of Philip's prayers and contemplations. This sand of the cave was that on which he endured to the end those contests of penance and of spiritual labors which could equal Philip with the Antonies, the Macarii, the Onuphrii, and the other athletes, the wonders of their ages: for here to join days to nights in prayer and in the contemplation of divine things; here bravely to suffer the injuries of that same sky mingled with its delights — rains, snows, frost, and the rest of the intemperate weather that is friendly to the mountains; here with roots of herbs and cold water in a manner rather to kill than to sustain his body, that the soul, drawn out into a slender rod of smoke from the spices of myrrh and frankincense, might penetrate more freely from the desert to heaven; here finally, all other commerce being condemned, he loved to lean upon his beloved Jesus, and strove with labor by no means vain to approve himself to his eyes, so that always, whether absorbed in God or gathered into himself, he might so act that to the Holy Spirit visiting him nothing should appear in the divine lodging of his soul which might offend so great a guest. How greatly these pursuits of the most valiant Youth were approved by God the presider of the games may be understood from the following prodigy.
[56] While Philip in this retreat of solitude so lived a solitary, by his prayers he draws forth a spring, that the manner of his life to obedience
he squared by the rule, it could not be that his solid sanctity and merits should lie hidden from his superiors: whereby it came about that they thought of sending him to other places of the Religion, to be illumined by his example; which when Philip perceived, although he held nothing more venerable than obedience, yet he betook himself to prayer, and in it earnestly besought the goodness of God that he would in some way make manifest to him by what fault of his own the labors endured beneath that rock, and his pure tears, and the other battles fought out there, had been less welcome and had displeased the divine eyes, so that on that account he deserved to be discharged and cast down from the tranquility of that state. Scarcely had he made an end of praying when (wonderful to tell), by the indulgence of the Godhead he had implored, to testify both to Philip himself and to the memory of the ages that far otherwise had his labors and contests and tears been esteemed in heaven, it came to pass that from that hardest rock, and one most arid by the nature of the rest of the mountain, a spring of the clearest welling water suddenly burst forth. That God might show that Philip's tears could not have perished, he gave this perennial fountain, which even to this day, having obtained its name from its author, is called the fountain of Bl. Philip c, destined to be a lesson to posterity that by the tears of the penitent all the hardest things grow soft, and that things which before were barren, being watered with this moisture, are set right unto fruit.
[57] Something akin to this event is had among the monuments of Gaul concerning St. Caprasius the martyr. (something like it befell St. Caprasius) He, in the most cruel time of the prince Maximian against the Christians, terrified by the fear of tortures, had hidden himself in the cavern of a pathless solitude, where, when he had recovered himself from fear, he began to be ashamed of his cowardice, and accordingly, turning to prayers, besought God chiefly that, if he judged him worthy of the victory of so glorious a contest, he would attest it by drawing forth a spring from that rock beneath which he lay hid; which having straightway come to pass by divine power, Caprasius, having perceived in so clear an omen the sweetness of victory, took courage, offered himself of his own accord to Dacian the governor, and, having bravely discharged an excellent contest, triumphed over the tyrant d. And so, as down to our own age the fame of this and the name of the fountain of St. Caprasius endures perpetually in Gaul by this prodigy, so in Etruria it has seemed good to God, for the greater glory of his servant Philip, to preserve both the name and the veneration of this fountain from that time, for four hundred years, to this day: and that indeed on a mountain to which the inclemency of nature has granted not even one little vein of water; so that all things in it would necessarily dry up, were it not provided for from heaven, that is, by rain.
[58] It is a matter full of miracle, that the basin of the fountain, hollowed out in the rock by the ingenuity of nature to the capacity of ten or certainly twelve sextarii, still marvelously welling forth, when, being filled from a vein of undiscovered welling, it is drained, straightway brims to the topmost lip of the little trough, and there by a certain hidden command is stayed, so that it does not overflow; so that as often as it is drawn either wholly or in part, it returns on the spot to its former fullness. A thing worthy of memory is that which happened toward the summer of the year of restored salvation 1595, by whose drought, when the rain waters caught in the cisterns had dried up, this one little fountain sufficed abundantly to supply water to the whole monastery of our hermits which is situated on that mountain, and to the daily guests and workmen, to the number of four hundred, who were then building an edifice in that place, being poured back again and again to those drawing with this perpetual tenor: in which, as it recalled the prodigious oil of the Prophet Elisha supplied to his hostess the widow, so more wonderfully it withstands not only vessels but time also, since, surviving to these our times, it keeps by a perpetuated miracle, as an inviolable institution, this beneficent custom of pouring itself back, in no way delayed by the throng of those who draw. And truly it was fitting that the fountain which was given by divine power as a witness of Philip's merits should itself become immortal concerning the immortality of those same merits, and, by the nature of truth, could never be emptied.
[59] And would that, as much as this fountain by its gentle murmur silently hints at the sanctity of Philip, and he did other things which are unknown. it were given to it to speak with some more vocal sound of the familiarity of heaven with that cave, of the delights administered thence to its inhabitant, of the consolations, spectacles, admonitions, and the familiar meetings of the heavenly ones, and finally of the victories won in it by our most holy Anchorite, with the Saints as spectators: perhaps there would be supplied what the diligence of Philip's humility withdrew from this history, nor is it doubtful that the four years spent in that cavern would, even alone, give a full volume. But this is the fate of all those who commend the deeds of the Saints to the monuments of writers for the good of posterity, that they find none more zealous to intercept their supply than those very persons to whose glory they most wish to be of service. In which zeal, though Philip was second to none, yet he could not bring it about that the splendor of his sanctity should contain itself within those hiding-places, so that on that account he treated with his Superiors of entering upon some plan by which, perpetually enclosed and hidden somewhere, he might fall out of the eyes and memory of all men; of which petition of his hope was given him when he was transferred to the monastery of Siena, as we shall presently see.
IX.
[60] When the year 1257 from the salvation brought forth by the childbearing of our Lady was rolling on, Still a Lay Brother he is set over the novices of Siena, and blessed Father Bonagiunta, the second Prior General of the Order of the Servants e, had rendered to heaven the soul he owed, in his place was substituted Father James of Siena f, a man memorable among few even for this, that before he had given his name to our family, having governed the society of the Laudantes of Our Lady, which we praised above, and the beginnings of our family sprung from the same society, he laid such foundations of both works as could suffice for so great a mass of sanctity to be borne through so many centuries thereafter. He, by no means an unskilled appraiser of virtue, weighing Philip's merits and sincere holiness at their proper weight, and delaying not at all over the condition of Lay Brother in him, set him over the novitiate of the monastery of Siena as governor and censor. In which how little the Father General erred, divine providence shortly showed on a slight occasion, which now at last determined to bring forth into the light Philip, inaugurated for the undertaking of great works, and to show to heaven his learning joined with outstanding sanctity, that veil of the Lay Brother's habit being cast off, and to set it in a lofty place whence it could strike the eyes of all. And this happened nearly in this manner.
[61] and unknowingly, to two Dominican Fathers and to his companion Philip, as we began to narrate, having set out on the road to Siena with the orders of the Father General, with a certain Brother Victor g as companion, had fallen in by chance with two German Fathers of the institute of the Preachers, who, being excellently learned and having discharged among their own the public offices of teaching or of governing, were making for Rome on the business of their commonwealth; these, having got Philip and his companion as companions of the journey, because they were not skilled in the Italian tongue, began to greet Philip in Latin and to address him at some length; whom Philip so satisfied by answering with such polish and readiness that he seemed not so much to speak as to pour forth a Latinity drunk in with his milk. The Fathers, drawn by the sweet allurement of his eloquence, weave one conversation out of another, and among other things, when they inquired concerning Philip's institute, he both discloses the name of the Servants of the Virgin Mother of God, and thereafter narrates the admirable origin of his family, namely, how twenty-five years since it came about by divine counsel that the Queen of heaven herself founded this institute, and, praise being perfected for her out of the mouth of infants and sucklings, made the name of the Servants; and he infers with most acute and erudite reasoning that this was most agreeable to divine providence. For, since in the Church of Christ there were so many and so various Orders, devised with the best and most holy laws by different founders, it was fitting that there should be some one Order which, having obtained both its name and its holiness from the patronage and service of the great Mother, should, together with the rest, charge against the sectaries arising in this age, who were going about everywhere to abolish and cut down all piety with every kind of arms, and thus, with the arms of doctrine and of most holy example as it were joined, should cover and protect the Church of God, the enemies being driven back.
[62] Having spoken more to this effect, he delighted the Dominicans in a wondrous manner, astonished with admiration of his eloquence joined with deep humility he discloses his learning on the journey, and of the cultivation of his talent. Understanding that he had assuredly been advanced by divine power to so great a light of the divine Scriptures, both they and his companion Victor (hitherto ignorant of this learning of Philip's) with one accord assail him, and exhort him to see to it that he be initiated into the sacred Orders, that those gifts of the divine bounty might more conveniently pass to the common profit of his neighbors. To this the most modest Youth replied that he indeed, by the inspiration of God and of the Mother of God (to whom he had committed himself wholly), who directs all things, had preferred this state of service in the Religion to all others; and that he desired to persevere in the same to the last breath of his life. For the rest, that he hoped it would shortly come to pass that the Religion would be provided with illustrious men, who might both extend and protect the borders of the Christian cause; accordingly he besought them again and again that they would deign to pardon him for having abused their patience in listening, and spoken more freely and at greater length than befitted a lay Brother in their sight: but that if anything had rashly slipped out which might seem to have deserved such applause, he begged of them the favor of silence concerning it, since the discourse had been undertaken rather out of a desire of complying with them and beguiling the labor of the journey than for any other end. But these prayers were in vain, save that they effected this, that the more earnestly they were employed, the more were those who knew kindled to publish Philip's learning, made the more commendable by this anxious humility also.
[63] Therefore, having been brought to Siena, Brother Victor, laboring under the burden of his gladness, which his Superiors having learned, could not restrain himself from at once relating to every one of his own whom he met concerning Philip's learning and Latin eloquence, and the whole series of what had been done on the journey. The same the Preacher Fathers did no less busily, who wonderfully proclaimed Philip's sanctity and excellence in the sciences, both among strangers everywhere through the city and before Philip's own Superiors. Now acclaiming him the ark of the sciences, now the treasury of wisdom, now the equal of St. Stephen the protomartyr on account of the wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke. Moved by these so honorable praises, which, drawn by no means from vanity, truth itself fulfilled, the Fathers of Siena write in full to the Father General of the endowments detected in Philip. He, being then by chance absent at Rome, was pressing for the confirmation of his Order before Alexander IV, the supreme Pontiff, who, by the imperious admonition of the most blessed Virgin appearing to him, at length by two Apostolic letters given, a certain decree of Innocent V (which stood in the way) being annulled, first of the Pontiffs approved the Institute of the Servants; and for that reason our family set up a statue to him, as a monument both of its own grateful mind and of his beneficence toward the Servants of Mary, and dedicated it at Our Lady of the Annunciation in Florence.
[64] And so the letters of the Fathers of Siena, brought to Rome, heaped up in no small measure for the Father General the gladness of his commonwealth's business well conducted before the Pontiff. they order him to be initiated into the sacred orders.
Meanwhile there also arrive at Rome those two Dominicans from Germany, the heralds of Philip, and they urgently press his promotion to the sacred Orders before the General, no otherwise than if they were transacting their own business at great cost of labor. The Father General therefore yielded to the common good and to the authority of men so weighty and learned, so as to give Philip serious orders to prepare himself for receiving the sacred Orders; which, after a long contest waged in that breast, the dwelling place of all the virtues, between humility and obedience, humility at last yielding, he resolved to do, as will presently be seen.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER VI.
The Saint's priesthood, and the public miracle at his first Mass.
After Philip, having spent two whole years at Siena, had filled the youth entrusted to him with the divine spirit by which he himself was driven, not so much by salutary admonitions at Siena he takes thought for another's as by the plan and example of the life he had established, the archetype of all true virtues, he gave those things which he had before vividly expressed in the souls and manners of the novices, reduced to several heads, to be judged in the general council of the Fathers held on Monte Senario in the year of Christ 1259. Which, as they most sweetly gave off the fragrance of that sincere spirit of the Virgin Foundress, infused by her into the Religion, so were eagerly received and praised by that assembly of the Fathers, destined thereafter to be the foundations of the Religious structure of the Servants. But this diligence of Philip did not meanwhile so contain itself within the narrow bounds of his own house as not to embrace with vast fruit the welfare of the Sienese. That at that age was chiefly imperiled by the intestine discords of civil factions, which king Manfred a, lifted up by immoderate successes, sowed and nourished, that with the forces of the Sienese he might wear down the cause of the Florentines, who followed the Pontiff's party; by whose perfidy and the virulence of whose counsels he ennobled Montaperti on the Arbia in the following year with a memorable slaughter b.
[66] How great a profit Philip gained from this opportunity, and provides for his own salvation, amid the tossing of that most turbulent tempest, was declared by the catalogue of approved men who afterwards, by their illustrious deeds, showed themselves the lawful sons of so great a Father and disciples not unlike so great a teacher, as our Annals, which pursue more copiously the deeds excellently done by them, demonstrate. Meanwhile Philip, the laborious Servant of Mary, not unmindful of his own salvation in procuring another's, if ever at any time, then above all at this time applied himself to that care of the most complete purity which it is fitting should precede the inauguration of the Gospel priesthood. It does not seem greatly required that we should be lengthy in teaching this more minutely and fully; for since Philip was in a manner born, certainly brought up, from the very cradle in a careful and never interrupted zeal for perfecting the inner man, so that he made it his perpetual custom to anticipate, so far as he could, all the degrees and increases of divine grace by the preparation of a subdued and heightened mind, it will have been easy for anyone to know what manner of man he showed himself in the contemplation of this honor and burden, to be dreaded even by angelic shoulders.
[67] Meanwhile the Prior General, the chief undertakings of his Commonwealth having been advanced and settled at the Apostolic See, and an account of his office having been rendered in the Chapter, proclaims a general chapter to be held on Monte Senario in the fifty-ninth year of this century, and it pleases him to summon thither also Philip, already consecrated in the sacred orders by John Mangiadori c, bishop of Florence, yet not having as yet performed the sacrifice (because, drawn back by humility and timid from reverence, he was awaiting the commands of his elders); who, when he was present, being brought into the chapter, and an account rendered of his charge, which he had discharged for the novitiate of Siena, after he had set forth to that venerable assembly of Fathers the disposition of his novices, their natural endowments, inclinations, and finally the progress of each, he demonstrates, both by many other things and by this in particular, how much lies in the careful and watchful education of Religious youth, since for the most part it can be gathered from the novice what kind of veteran he will turn out to be.
[68] The Fathers, having approved both Philip's work and his judgment, he is bidden to prepare himself for his first Mass, accompany him with heaped-up prayers for divine grace as he departs from the office of master of novices and goes to that cave of his on Senario, in which not long since he himself, from a novice, by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, stood forth in a short time as a veteran master of ascetic philosophy; let him therefore use the days granted him for preparing himself, that with the light and ardor of soul that was fitting he might perform that work than which nothing more divine or more august can be handled by mortals. Philip obeys, and, as that leisure was then the sum of his wishes, so he used that time in such a way that the redundance of heavenly graces abundantly supplied its brevity: for when, the chapter being ended and the public affairs of the Order duly ordered, the day appointed for the Sacrifice of Philip the newly ordained priest had dawned, with singular expectation of the Fathers on account of the opinion they had conceived of the Man's sanctity, he comes forth to the altar robed in priestly attire, and in countenance and in the rest of his aspect, from his fellowship with the word of God, walking more like some one of the immortal saints than like a mortal man.
[69] in which the singing of angels was heard, And so, having begun the divine service, he melted the souls and eyes of all the Fathers, dazzled by the shining splendors of the glory divinely bestowed, into sweet tears and into a rich and most ample contemplation of divine delights. And now the Sacrifice was at its midpoint, and the most holy consecration of the body and blood of Christ was completed; when in that Marian assembly of the Fathers an irradiation of unwonted light began to be seen, and presently, through new transports of souls poised toward God, the impulses of body and spirit, and these beginning to be lifted upward, were no longer in their own power, but, by a certain rapture of a mind absorbed in the majesty of Christ present in the sacred Eucharist, were driven by his spirit rather than by their own. And these motions indeed were forerunners of the admirable event which afterwards followed and set an admirable crown upon the unwonted matter; for scarcely had our seraphic newly ordained priest lifted up with those pure hands, accustomed to heaven, God the bread of Angels to be adored, when behold, a heavenly harmony flowing from on high into the ears of all who were present sounded forth with wondrous sweetness, redoubling with a modulation worthy of angelic artistry that threefold and, to Seraphic spirits, familiar Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth d.
[70] the Fathers present being astonished, Which thing, as it affected no less wondrously that most pious Congregation of Fathers than it once affected Isaiah — shall I call him seer or evangelist? — admitted to a like foretaste of heavenly blessedness, so it begot in the souls of both not dissimilar motions and affections. For just as Isaiah relates that those Seraphim of his, with sonorous voices of the deepest understanding (which are their vernacular), with great striving of divine love provoked one another to praise God together by that thrice-holy chant; so in the souls of those holy men who were present at this Sacrifice of Philip and at its music it engendered a certain clearer perception and estimation of the divine Triad, loftier than human grasp.
[71] whom the biographer compares Moreover, just as in Isaiah the lintels were moved by the force and efficacy of the seraphic voices, so the souls of that venerable senate were moved and advanced toward God, and their hearts enlarged, by the drawing and efficacious sweetness of that heavenly harmony, which, although it was most sublime and bore the minds it affected loftily upward, yet, not otherwise than it befell Isaiah, when, astonished at the divinity of his spectacle, he said: "Woe is me, because I am a man of unclean lips"; so there was no one of those Fathers who, beholding himself in that most brilliant light of contemplation as in a most polished mirror, did not confess his own unworthiness, and acknowledge himself a sinner; and indeed the newly ordained priest himself, to whose merits and holiness the heavenly ones were applauding with this festive favor. As those Seraphim of the Prophet, struck at the greatness of the divine Majesty, hid their own faces and eyes with their wings, so Philip, when he was presented to himself as one who in so great a dignity of the priesthood was performing mysteries so great and so august, professed himself most unworthy.
[72] But, as the lowest degree of humility is always joined and connected with the highest of exaltation, with the seraphic chant, so, when the live coal had been brought from the altar at which he stood and applied to his lips, grasped in the tongs of the heavenly bread, all things in him were cleansed and changed, and he himself also was changed into a man after God's heart, and into a most brilliant interpreter of his divine will. Whereby it came about (as likewise befell Isaiah when changed by the coal, when he readily offered himself prepared for all the services of God, saying: Behold me, send me, and the Lord said, GO) that Philip a little afterwards, being appointed leader of the whole Marian family and Apostolic preacher of the universal Church, showed forth the dignity of each office, not only by deeds
matched it, but even illustrated it with many lights of notable distinctions, so that this comparison of him with Isaiah, and our reasoning upon the parallel of the whole matter, ought not to seem an idle digression sought out for the adornment of the history: since in this most auspicious time of the law of grace, God being now more familiar, the use and communication of these heavenly intimacies with the Saints, the friends of God of the new Testament, is wont to be far more frequent and far more abundant than with the holy servants of the old Testament.
[73] Certainly with that wisdom and that prudence Philip devoted strong and faithful labor to the whole Order of the Marian Servitude; whom the prophet Isaiah relates. in all those offices which he afterwards discharged, in work and in speech, and in performing the office of Apostolic preacher (which name in that age was of great and far and widely extended dignity), he had power conferred so great and so divinely bestowed, as the proofs of the admirable works performed in that work by a most faithful workman in the field of the Lord showed; concerning which, since we shall thereafter have frequent occasion to speak, and our discourse hastens thither, we shall have reported these things thus far concerning this chapter of Senario, honored from heaven, and in it our newly ordained priest Philip, in a place, as it seems, not unfitting.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER VII.
The Saint's election to honorable offices and to the supreme government of the whole Order, and his pious diligence in administering this charge.
Book II. Chap. I.
Having thus far been occupied with Philip in his private state, among the no doubtful preludes of his future greatness, now, with the same man brought to the helm of the Servite commonwealth, The Saint unwillingly we shall begin somewhat more amply, in the more open field found for his virtues. Thus therefore, as we set out to say, Philip, initiated into the priestly rites, when he congratulated his humility, honored with this dignity, very little indeed, was induced to expose it to be loaded with new honors by the authority (which from his very entrance into the Order he held for a law) of blessed Father Bonfilius de' Monaldi, him whom we praised above as the chief of our seven men. He, having summoned Philip to himself after the manner by which he always had him in his power, sets before his eyes for consideration, with great weight of arguments and in a long and weighty discourse, the difficulties of the whole Marian flock and the affairs hard to accomplish; then his own strength and that of his surviving colleagues, broken by old age, and the consequent necessity of a succeeding support for sustaining the mass of the Commonwealth, which by its greatness and evidence overshadows every shadow of humility pretended against honor: by which Philip's modesty being overcome, he sounded the retreat for his zeal poured out toward a private life and for his love of lying hidden, and gave his hands and mind to obedience and the public good.
[75] is raised to dignities, Having therefore been made general Definitor, and presently also colleague of the Prior General, the servitude of the Mother of God having been ordered and adorned at home according to that office, he shortly performed illustrious deeds abroad also. Among these that was notable, and most necessary to the still struggling Order, that, having delivered before Urban IV, the supreme Pontiff, a marvelous discourse of powerful persuasive spirit, he brought it about that the confirmation of the Order was ratified by him with a notable addition of several privileges. Besides this, he enlarged the monastery of Siena with new works built, that it might be inhabited more spaciously, having also procured for it new revenues of income: and with the same zeal, by the liberality of the Florentine Commonwealth and of certain private persons, and especially of the most illustrious Falconieri, he adorned the church of Our Lady of the Annunciation at Florence, enlarged with a magnificent structure, the confraternity of those who Praise the Blessed Virgin (from which we said in the preceding book that the Order drew its origin) being restored. That confraternity is today called of St. Sebastian, because in the oratory assigned to it by Philip next to the monastery of the Order there, the head of St. Sebastian is held in great honor and veneration. These and other works worthy of the everlasting memory of posterity, which for love of brevity we omit, having been accomplished honorably and profitably at Siena and Florence, Philip removes to Cesena, and, having given some outstanding proofs of spiritual beneficence in the strenuous labor of several months for the relief of that ailing city, departs.
[76] Meanwhile, the general chapter of the Order being proclaimed in the year of Christ one thousand two hundred and sixty-seven, it is held at Florence, and the office of General laid upon him, in which blessed Father Manetto degli Antelli a, one of the seven men who sowed the Order, eminently holy, weighed down by age and by the labors of many journeys and of an austere life, when he had abdicated the office of Prior General, blessed Father Philip Benizi, by the votes of all the Fathers, a few hours before he arrived, is elected in his absence Prior General of the Order (which may it turn out well for the Marian Commonwealth, as it turned out most excellently) in the thirtieth year of his age; but sanctity had supplied Philip's age: for the man's understanding was hoary, and the age of old age was a life unspotted, not reckoned by the number of years, and heaped with all the parts of so great an office, and complete.
[77] But when Philip learned this, dismayed with horror at the unexpected thing, having in vain deprecated it, he fell at the knees of blessed Father Manetto, the president of the chapter and the author of his election, and as a suppliant with the lowliest prayers begs off this province, greater than his strength and merits; for he had chiefly on this account entered the Religion, because he trusted it would be allowed him to live not only as a private person, but even as the drudge and servant of all, and in that state to enjoy the most sweet fruits of obedience and subjection, rather than that it should come into anyone's mind that he, born and destined by God for services and obediences, should preposterously be applied to commands over others. Let God therefore and our Lady the Mother of God avert that he should take into his mind any other counsel, or any other judgment or thought than this decree of his soul once fixed. And when he pleaded these things with the greatest earnestness, and the matter had been brought to such a pass that this decisive will of his seemed able to be moved by no conditions, divine providence took up the cause of the Religion and the arbitration of this controversy: for suddenly a voice from heaven glided into the ears of all who were gathered together, of this tenor: "Philip, beware lest thou resist the Holy Spirit; I have chosen thee out of the world, that thou mayest be the guardian of this my flock."
[78] That sentence, striking Philip, thereafter imposed silence upon him, and the burden and honor of the office of General. he acquiesces in the divine will, And so, being raised to the highest place, after he had sat down, by the very look of his countenance and by a certain aspect more august than human he stirred up great motions of admiration and veneration in the souls of all who stood by. Then, in a certain vehement transport of mind, being rapt into admiration of the divine goodness and providence toward the Religion, he began an exhortation from those words of the Psalm: "Rejoice in the Lord, ye just; praise becometh the upright." In it, the celebration of the divine praises having been commended to the Fathers, he marvelously exhorted them all to unconquered constancy in the spirit received through the seven men, the authors of our institute: asserting that these are the treasures in which God has placed the abysses of the deepest sanctity and knowledge.
[79] Then, having inveighed with a most keen peroration against the disturbers of Religion and bravely and the deserters of a purpose once taken up, he expounded that saying of the Royal seer, "The Lord bringeth to nought the counsels of nations, and rejecteth the devices of peoples, and rejecteth the counsels of princes," against this factious and ambitious kind of men so divinely, that not only in this extempore sermon, but in many others also which he delivered in the same manner upon the psalms, with incredible impulse and energy of spirit on various occasions, many writers of the best note b have admired in him that which the whole East once venerated in St. Gregory Nazianzen, namely, that there was never in them any room for censure.
[80] and sweetly Thereupon, having received the insignia of the office he had entered upon (which by the custom of that age were the censor's rod and the seal of the Order), amid the obeisances of the congratulating Fathers and the customary signs of subjection, Philip alone, silently groaning within himself at all these honors of his, was digesting great cares in his soul from the conflict of virtues otherwise friendly, humility and obedience, as could be gathered from his sorrowful countenance. The rites which are wont to be employed for the inauguration of a General having been performed in this manner, there is joined to him according to custom as associate or colleague Father Lotaringo of Florence c, of the patrician family of the Stufa, whom Philip himself had brought up in the Religion from his youth to great hope; a man in whom the brilliance of his lineage and the excellence of his outstanding learning, especially the more polished, seemed to contend on equal terms with the integrity of his life, the sweetness of his manners, and the gravity of his prudence.
[81] he administers his office. And so, all being accomplished, when Philip, restored to himself, was at rest alone, he began seriously to turn over in his mind and to consider with how great charity and how great prudence there was need for leading without stumbling to the pastures of eternal life so many Religious men, of whom he had so unexpectedly become the Shepherd. For, holy Man that he was, more effectual by the example of the best works than by the sternness of authority or the splendor of words, he determined with himself according to the prescription of our rule to require from his brothers imitation rather than obedience, and love rather than fear. Hence to all he was kindly and easy of access, to himself harsh and hard, to himself sparing, to others liberal, courteous, and full of the bowels of mercy: far otherwise than some are wont, who preposterously judge that to beat out good fruit from their subjects by force and harshness, as though armed with the scourge of power, is at last to preside with praise and truly.
[82] Kindled with ardor for the spreading of the faith, Whence Philip so ordered his whole manner of life in this honor, for the discipline of the rest, that he was the first to undertake labors, the last to leave off; that others enjoyed the fruits and advantages of his dignity, while he reserved to himself the burdens and disadvantages: and none the less, reckoning himself an unprofitable servant in so holy a custom (which he esteemed a debt), he added to all these a singular rigor of life and a humility in which he so excelled among his own that he showed himself the brother and companion of each rather than their superior or governor. And although at the beginnings of the office he had entered upon he was pressed by many and weighty affairs — journeys to be accomplished, visitations to be instituted, discourses to be delivered to the peoples, wanderers to be recalled to the way of salvation, those lying in grief to be consoled, cities and provinces to be brought back into mutual favor, and finally commissions entrusted to him by leading men, by Pontiffs, by the Emperor to be discharged — yet, so far as was permitted, he was never absent from choir, never from the exercises of the ascetic life either by day or by night; and this expense (if indeed it be an expense) he made up with admirable
diligence and dexterity in handling affairs, in which he was marvelously strong, easily and by a short cut.
[83] he presents himself to the supreme Pontiff, In all which Philip aimed at this alone, that peace might grow together throughout the whole world among Christians, that all might return to the obedience of the Catholic Church, and that with concordant arms and minds they might vindicate into liberty from Ottoman servitude the land consecrated by the life and death of our Savior. But these things we shall see more minutely hereafter from the series of the history; to which that Philip might give a beginning, when he had been confirmed in his office by John Mangiadori, bishop of Florence (who had succeeded that Ardingo, the chief patron of the Order of the Servants, when he had died d): for it pleased Urban IV, the supreme Pontiff, that this should be done by the bishops in such elections, because in that season approaches to the supreme Pontiffs were difficult and long.
[84] Philip nevertheless none the less determined to present himself to Clement IV, the supreme Pontiff, and offers him his subjects, not so much that he might be established in the office he had undertaken by his authority, as that under his auspices and by the authority that is vicar of the divine the affairs thereafter to be conducted might have so much the greater force and weight, and that he might render to His Holiness an exact account of the increases of the Order of the Servants (which the same Pontiff had charged) and of its progress in the more divine literature, and above all in the study of the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldean tongues; and that, if anywhere he should wish to use the labor of the Servants of the Mother of God in propagating or defending the faith, he might know that they were ready and furnished with all things which are required for missions. And it had opportunely happened at that time that there was present before the Pontiff an ambassador from the king of the Tartars (whom some called Cham, others Cabila), easily the chief of that king's nobles and of the magnates of the realm, Coyatulus by name, who in his king's words, through Venetian interpreters, urgently requested that heralds of the Gospel be sent from the Apostolic See into that kingdom e.
[85] Philip, thinking that this was the time for following God and gratifying the will of the Pontiff, some of whom were sent into Tartary, and finally also a notable occasion for enlarging the borders of our religion, kindled with zeal for the divine glory and the salvation of souls, casting himself at the knees of the supreme Pontiff, offered several nurslings of his Order for that expedition. Philip was treated most kindly by the Pontiff, and his so abundant will to deserve well of the Church of God having been magnificently praised in that assembly of Cardinals and other prelates, he acknowledged that the fame which even then, when he was colleague of Manetto the General, had filled Rome concerning him, had scarcely equaled the truth of his holiness. For the rest, the things which Philip wished accomplished were committed by the Pontiff to Cardinal Ottobono Fieschi, nephew of Innocent IV and second Protector of the Order of the Servants, who both approved Philip's election by the Pontiff's authority, and together with him transacted with the envoy Coyatulus concerning the choosing of suitable men for the Tartar expedition.
[86] That matter, begun with most auspicious beginnings, seemed to promise nothing but happy successes: where their successors for after the Roman Church had prayed good things upon those Apostolic men and future lights of the church among the barbarians, and the Roman people had followed them with the best omens, opportunely, when they came to Venice, having found a fleet lying at anchor and about shortly to give its sails to the winds, they go aboard it, and — may it be happy and favorable — when they landed among the Scythians f, each having obtained his own province, as they had before been arranged, they girded themselves to the work destined for them; in which how strenuous a labor the Servants of the Mother of God expended may be clear even from this, that far and wide through Asia, throughout the whole empire of the Tartars, and indeed in Eastern India itself, or that which is beyond the river Ganges, they founded colonies, all or most of which they hold down to our own age: for whereas for several centuries of years nothing certain or ascertained could be had concerning our men, separated by so vast a tract of lands, at last in the year one thousand five hundred and thirty-six from salvation brought forth, a certain venerable Father Anastasius g came in from the deep and made port at Venice with three companions, in precisely our habit of the European Servants. He, being brought to Rome to Paul III (who wonderfully favored our Order, and for that reason had created the Reverend Father Master Dionysius Laurerius of Benevento h Cardinal of St. Marcellus), was received with every kind of benevolence, having also obtained the pontifical approbation of certain laws for those parts.
[87] are said still to survive to this day. Those men reported that it was established by a very ancient memory received from hand to hand that the Order of the Servants was sown in their shores by those Fathers who had been sent thither some centuries before by blessed Father Philip: and moreover that, as time thereafter went on, being propagated with great increases by a more copious number of men and monasteries, it had become famous in those regions. That narration seemed to the Pontiff and to the others who were present at the man's admission not so much new as delightful; and the newcomer Fathers might have seemed to be men returning from the number of those once sent, and on that account they recalled those seven youths, sleepers of several centuries, so did they relate with fresh memory, from the most remote parts of the world, as though roused from a long lethargy, things done several ages before. Likewise afterwards, in the year of salvation brought to us 1600, some others, with the same fashion of garments and the same name of Servants, made their way from the same parts by Florence to Rome to obtain the munificence of the sacred Jubilee. But what proves a little more clearly how great both in fame and in work Philip, though absent, by the aspiring favor of divine grace, effected and availed among those barbarous nations, is that memorable thing which happened when, in years just past, Ethiopians i, even laymen, had come to Florence, and scarcely had they entered the walls of the city when, partly by nods, partly by other signs, since they did not know Italian, they inquired as best they could of those they met for the house of blessed Philip in the Via Guicciardini, saying that they wished to venerate the likeness of Bl. Philip which is kept in that house, and which is said to come nearest to the original; which reverence, brought from their own home, they must be believed to have drawn from none but our men, whom they had in their own country. And this indeed was the outcome of this expedition into Asia; the other deeds excellently done by those Fathers have perished through the distance of the places and the rarity of commerce with those nations.
[88] He prudently provides for his Order, Furthermore the supreme Pontiff, having discerned in this offering of the Servants for the propagation of the faith Philip's excellent mind toward the Church of God, creates him also Apostolic preacher; which honor, or burden, he took up the more willingly because he had already determined in his mind, the Convents of Italy having been visited, to set out for the Western and Northern provinces. From these seemingly perplexed windings it is not obscurely clear that it was plainly the work of divine providence and of the Virgin Mother of God's care for her own, that the holy Man was thus unexpectedly and at so opportune a time compelled to take up the reins of our commonwealth; since, when the first and chief columns of the Servite family were failing through old age and labors, nothing was nearer than that some defect should befall the framework of the new fabric, if it had lacked a substitute support; for at this very time, as we mentioned a little before, blessed Father Manetto, the General, full of days and of labors, had abdicated his office; blessed Father Bonagiunta had died: and Bonfilius, the first and leader of the seven men, had followed him to heaven.
[89] Blessed Father Amadeus also, afflicted with various and persistent diseases, Father Amadeus, a man of great counsel, being dead, and exercised by many other bitternesses (which with an unconquered loftiness of soul he always not only bravely endured, but even, with the Apostle, gloried in), was received into heaven to perceive the eternal delights of love. Blessed Father Amadeus was (that we may in passing rescue the memory of so great a man from destruction), besides the illustrious splendor of his lineage, endowed with the highest prudence and dexterity in the conduct of affairs, by which and by other endowments he was of no small use and support in the first beginnings of the Religion to blessed Bonfilius, who used him as helper always in arduous matters: until, his poor body succumbing to labors and to his advanced age, being made unequal to public business, amid the bravest examples of patience and proofs of constancy, he awaited Christ, the goal of his hope and the wage of his long service.
[90] His singular holiness (of which he had gathered great repute at home and abroad) was affirmed both by public fame and by the admirable things which happened around him by divine power; whose virtues and miracles are narrated. among which this in particular is memorable, that an unwatched infant having fallen into a well (which is at the foot of Monte Senario), when he had been drawn out thence lifeless and shown to the man of God, he restored him by the impression of the life-giving cross to life and to his parents. Nor was that a less illustrious proof of his complete holiness and of his outstanding love toward God, gathered from the odor of his good works, that, while he was rendering up his soul now to be borne to heaven, the fragrance of a most sweet odor arose over the whole mountain of Senario; and as soon as he expired, a great globe of flame was seen by those present, astonished at the miracle of the thing, to make straight for heaven from his little bed k.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER VIII.
The miracle wrought at Arezzo by his prayers, and the new laws prescribed by him for the Order of the Servites.
II.
The commonwealth's affairs having been thus settled, as we have said, before Pope Clement IV, When the Servite Fathers at Arezzo and Philip being encouraged by his salutary admonitions and blessing, departing from Orvieto a, he sets out on the road to Arezzo, where divine providence, which destined his labor for great undertakings, had prepared matter for the disclosing of his sanctity and merits; where, when he arrived, about to visit the Convent of that place, he found both the Convent reduced to extremity by famine, and the city itself by discords; for the Guelphs and Ghibellines in it, raging in mutual butchery among themselves, were confounding all things divine and human; and the party zeal had advanced to such madness that not only did they destroy one another with the sword in alternate slaughters, but they even set flames and torches beneath the houses, brought devastation upon the fields by spoiling the harvest, cut down the fruit-bearing trees, and in six hundred other ways ennobled their civil hatreds toward mutual destruction with every example of barbarian hostility. So that Arezzo then seemed liker to an arena of ghostly furies rushing together against each other with hostile torches than to a Christian city.
[92] labored under a great scarcity of grain, From which it followed, as was necessary, that a vast want of crops and dearness of all things succeeded the disaster of civil war; the bitterness of which so drove our Fathers that, if God had not been present in time to his laboring servants, they must either have deserted the city that greatly loved them, or certainly have been on the spot destroyed by hunger; which was the cause of the blessed Father's hastening thither before other places. And so, when, being brought to the monastery, he had them all in his sight, and the pious Father contemplated them, bloodless and wasted and almost destroyed by long fasting, so that they might seem certain living corpses scarcely clinging to their bones, and shades of men rather than men, he groaned with his inmost feelings at so foul a spectacle of his own, and straightway began to think of looking about for help (for the present peril did not brook delays).
[93] Therefore he bids the refectory be set out in the accustomed manner and the tables be made ready, The Saint, prayers having been poured out, and then bids all to follow him into the church: where all together before the most august Sacrament of the Eucharist and the effigy of the Most Blessed Virgin at the high altar, poured out in prayers, they clung for some while to the ground, praying with silent minds gathered into God, until Philip, that silence eloquent to bend God being broken, with an overflowing fervor of spirit, burst out into these words: "Most merciful God, who once in pathless solitudes didst in manifold ways feed thy people, the children of Israel, destitute on every side, and didst refresh with heavenly food thy banished prophet Elijah as he sank beneath the juniper; who didst satisfy on the mountain the crowds that followed thee by the increase of thy merciful hands; who didst double the provision for thy soldiers Paul and Anthony by means of a raven, and didst nourish Mary Magdalene by the ministry of thy angels with prodigious bread; suffer not, I pray, that thy servants who hope in thee should perish, consumed with hunger; and thou, most Holy Lady, Queen of heaven and Consoler of the afflicted, by that milk which flowed divinely from thy virginal breast and fed him who feeds all things, I pray and beseech thee, fail not thy adoptive sons in this present peril, whom to this present time thou hast always covered and cherished with singular proofs of thy special care and solicitude for them" b.
[94] He had not yet ceased from these and other like things in the transport of his rapt mind, when to the ears of all there glides from the doors of the monastery an unwonted crash as of one knocking on urgent cause. The porter hastens up, opens the doors, finds no mortal; yet he finds a supply sent from heaven to men beset by long affliction, two capacious baskets full of loaves of outstanding whiteness, and, astonished, reports what had happened, while the General and the Fathers were still fixed in prayer. They, poured out with their Superior and the author of the miracle into thanksgiving, after they had suppliantly adored the goodness and providence of God and of the Most Blessed Virgin, sat down glad and amazed at tables furnished with those loaves, by whose sweetness after long fasting, and by wonder at the miracle, they were to be refreshed in soul and body. Nor from that time onward did they want, the city too being on the spot relieved of the scarcity of grain. When the fame of that miracle, published with many and favorable murmurs of the people, had reached the bishop of Arezzo, who was then William Ubertini c, he, the matter having been examined by his office and with care, judged that that admirable deed was to be ascribed to Philip's merits and holiness.
[95] But Philip, the perpetual hater of vainglory, shrank at this applause of himself, he uses for the settling of the citizens' dissensions. and turned back upon the head of the evil demon the perils of popular breeze; since he used its favoring gusts to bring over the common people themselves to sounder counsels and a better mind, as the people of Arezzo experienced to their good: for a little afterwards Philip, supported by the authority of Pontifical preacher, and famous by the fame of the recent miracle, in public sermons and private conversations so vividly set before the eyes of the Aretines the present and pressing evils arising from their discords, that, although the minds of some of the more powerful citizens were still held by the desire of vengeance, yet it appeared that by Philip's authority the foundations of concord and piety had been laid, because thereafter many proofs of public amendment were commonly given.
III.
[96] So notable a work having been accomplished for the renown of Philip's name, In the Chapter of Pistoia the visitation of the Convent of Arezzo and of the rest which were then in Etruria being completed, Philip on an appointed day summons to Pistoia the Fathers who had the right of voting in the Chapter and of delivering an opinion, that by common counsel, the opinions of all being brought forward, some more exact laws might be framed; accordingly, beginning from that verse of Psalm 118, Blessed are the undefiled in the way, with admirable eloquence and the weightiest arguments he demonstrated that the divine laws are the sole safeguard and pillar for Religious men; and accordingly, although the Religion for these thirty-five years, the most sweet law of charity being written in the hearts of the seven founders, had been administered by the prudence and diligence of blessed Bonfilius, the first General, with certain laws added as opportunity brought them by the succeeding Generals, yet that it greatly behooved that a full volume of the old and new laws and of salutary statutes should be made under the name of the Constitutions of the Order of the Servants, since the Order itself, now approved by the supreme Pontiff and greatly increased in the number of men and of places, necessarily required a formula by which a likeness and equality of manners and ceremonies to be equally observed everywhere might be established.
[97] he proposes new laws, All who were gathered in full number and present went over to the blessed Father's opinion, and to him the business is given of writing and arranging those laws, as he should perceive to be most for the good of the Religion. Philip shortly presents the matter accomplished, both because by the authority of the supreme Pontiffs Alexander IV, Urban IV, and Clement IV power had already been given to the Religion of convoking assemblies or Chapters and of framing laws, and also because from long use and living together with the first Fathers, and from his own private illumination which came to him from God, he had the outlines of that matter sketched in his mind and now almost expressed.
[98] which, written by him, they accept, Therefore in a few days he gave to the Fathers enrolled in that Chapter, to be judged and discussed with ripe deliberation, the formula of the whole institute reduced to fixed heads, arranged in comely order in three parts (of which the first treated of divine worship, the second of the studies of good letters, the third of the seemliness of ascetic manners and the administration of goods, if there were any), written out in his own hand. The Fathers, when they had sufficiently turned it over in their minds and in their hands, not only sanctioned it, but also, having accepted it with the most willing wills, ordained that it should as soon as possible be brought into practice and into exercise; and those laws were always held of such holiness that after Philip's death it was sanctioned by public decree that in each Convent, on each Wednesday and Saturday, they should be read at table together with the little work which the same blessed Father had written concerning our origin; and to this our own age the authority and veneration of this formula, in great part inserted into our modern constitutions, stands firm.
[99] And this office of lawgiver, so happily performed (as good authors think), led some writers of the first note into that error and hence he is by some wrongly called the institutor of that Order. of thinking and leaving in writing that Philip is the author and primeval founder of the Order of the Servants d; in which, although they have fallen into a most manifest error by, as they say, a whole heaven's breadth (which is established from the tenor of this history and of our Annals), yet they seem worthy of excuse, because they were led into that necessity of erring by the opinion of the common people and of certain writers of that age, who rashly inserted into their monuments the same thing not sufficiently accurately examined. For, as it had grown common everywhere that a certain Philip Benizi of Florence, a man of outstanding learning and rare sanctity, had propagated a certain Religion of his own of the Servants of the Most Blessed Virgin by the brilliance of his preaching and the admirableness of his miracles, within and without Italy through various parts of the world; fame, which after its own nature magnifies all things and grows as it goes, rashly added of its own, to the most true and genuine praises of Philip, the distinction of having founded the Religion.
[100] For, as each one heard of the vast increases of the Religion by some he is wrongly called. which were discerned in those two and thirty years (during which the blessed Father presided over it), and as all deservedly ascribed everything to Philip, by whose work the Religion had been increased with new monasteries, adorned with notable learning, established and settled with the best laws, and finally confirmed and enrolled in the register of the mendicant Orders by different Pontiffs, it came about that, the fame of the seven first Fathers and the glory of their deeds being gradually overshadowed by so many distinctions, the repute of the whole glorious work of the Order's founding inclined toward Philip alone, against his will. From all which the divine providence toward this Religion wonderfully shines through: for as to it the beginning
came from a divine oracle, its name from the otherwise mute mouth of infants, its habit from the Most Blessed Virgin herself, as also the prescription of its rule, so its constitutions were procured for it through a Man inspired by God, so that it might be left attested to all ages that it consisted of no part save what was received from God.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER IX.
The Saint's various attempts to lay down the office of the Generalate, hindered by the publicizing of the healing of a leper and by a certain heavenly vision.
IV.
These foundations of good laws having been laid and so happily established, While the Saint in various ways when it seemed that provision and precaution had been sufficiently made for the present for the common cause, so that the Order might now be led by anyone, and, that discipline being observed, affairs might be prosperously conducted, Philip, by his perpetual love of solitude and his vows of lying hidden, began seriously to think within himself of abdicating the Generalate, and, mention of that matter having been made several times in private, at last also in this council of the Fathers at Pistoia he strove with all his might to attain it; and first indeed, pleading by right, he contended that this was permitted him by the law made in the very first general chapter held at Florence in 1255, by which it had been decreed that it was in the General's power to hand over his watch to another, and to reduce himself to the ranks, to the former condition of a private person.
[102] wishes to abdicate the dignity of the Generalate, Then, turning to prayers, he prostrates himself on the ground before that assembly of all the Fathers, and earnestly begs them that what was permitted him by the laws might also be permitted him with their good leave and peace; that he, having now for a whole year discharged this office, had made trial of the powers of his body and mind, and had found their slenderness unequal to the bearing of so great a charge: accordingly, since by the Fathers' own confession enough had been done by the laws just passed, let them be willing and consent that he who at their bidding had collected those laws should be the first to sanction them by obeying and complying; but if they were otherwise minded, he declared that he would be induced by no conditions to persist in the office; that he had the safeguard of the law adduced a little before, whereby he knew that this design of his could be neither a deceit on his part nor a stumbling block to them. When Philip had discoursed on these and like things with vast spirit, with such divine eloquence as he was endowed with, it is incredible with how great a stirring of soul he struck all who were present.
[103] having suffered a refusal from his own, Yet in a doubtful and sudden matter neither did God fail the Fathers, nor did the Fathers fail themselves; for that same consent which there had been in choosing him was in all one for retaining him; and in turn with voices agreeing with their mind they openly declare to him that they do not assent, and that he will not lay down his office save with his life. Philip nevertheless persisted in his opinion, and, his eloquence and prayers being spent, he applies in vain to the bending of the Fathers' minds tears and such other arguments, as many and as choice as can be devised by the skillful ingenuity of humility, while they, their judgments being fixed, changed nothing. Thus on that day Philip's humility and the Fathers' charity departed from that contest with victory inclining to neither. But since meanwhile a most powerful temptation, masked with specious reasonings, was turning Philip in every direction with wondrous artifice, and broke out afresh with greater increases from his repulse, he rested in this hope: that on occasion of approaching the supreme Pontiff, among the other things which he wished obtained, he might obtain also this discharge on grounds of ill health.
[104] This was indeed easily the most crafty of all the temptations which ever assailed that unshaken mind of Philip, and the nearest to peril: and hindered by the approaching death of Father Manetto, for it went about both to invert the order of divine providence, which moderates and tempers the alternations and times of the solitary and the laborious life by the divine promptings of its own calling, and, feigning a most sincere self-abasement, it persuaded that the public welfare of many, and the present necessity of an Order scarcely lately grown together, should be postponed to private quiet and tranquility. And perhaps Philip, suffering something human through the weakness of nature, would have been led into the snare, had not the care of the Virgin Mother of God, which perpetually watched over him, scattered the mockeries and cunning of that worst counselor by one and another means, sweet as well as wonderful. One of these was that, when, the assembly of the Fathers being dismissed, he had set out on the way to the Pontifical court, which at that time was at Viterbo, resolved upon the design of abdication he had taken up, a courier came upon him with letters by which it was announced that blessed Father Manetto was in his last extremity, which matter compelled Philip, being moved, to leave off the journey he had begun and betake himself to blessed Father Manetto; because the letters brought word that he was vehemently awaited by the dying man.
[105] Therefore, having swiftly remeasured the part of the journey that lay behind toward Monte Senario, he resolves to obtain this from the Pontiff; after he had consoled Manetto by his coming and by a discourse suited to the time, and when they had discoursed to and fro in various conversations, according to the wisdom of both, concerning the fleetingness of present things and, on the other hand, the eternity of things to come, the blessed old man, after he had as Prior General in the fourth place propagated his Order with singular diligence, especially through the Gauls, met his last day in the Christian year 1268, not without a fame of singular sanctity; for indeed during the celebration of the divine service he imparted by his blessing serviceable feet to a lame man, a speaking tongue to a mute, and the vital use of his ears to one somewhat deaf a. But this digression (that we may return to Philip) only for a while deferred, it did not scatter, the design of the journey and abdication he had undertaken; so that a miracle was needed to convince Philip, who thought so abjectly of himself and of his merits and of his fitness for governing. For indeed, his companions having been recalled to the road — blessed Father Sostegno de' Migliori, blessed Father Uguccione degli Uguccioni b, and Father Lotaringo della Stufa c (whom he had brought along for this very purpose, that the Pontiff might not be able to allege the difficulty and scarcity of successors as ground for refusal) — he goes on with the journey he had begun to Viterbo.
[106] They had come into the territory of Siena, when behold, when they had scarcely entered it, but by the sudden healing of a leper, and were making their way between Buonconvento and San Quirico, there presents himself in their path an old man creeping out of the village of Camigliano; he, as he had no means for dragging out his wretched life save in the kindness of travelers, so to his extreme want there were added, as it were a heaping up of misery, elephantiasis d and ulcers running with corruption, by which he was eaten away alive and breathing: besides which, in a cold and harsh sky, as the season of the year then bore, he did not sufficiently cover with even a torn patchwork cloak the limbs blasted with so many evils. He therefore, when he came into sight thus disguised, with a dying and tearful voice begs an alms of the blessed Father; whom he, gazing upon and melting in his inmost marrow with compassion for a condition so tormentingly afflicted, turns a little aside from the way, and, stripping off his own tunic, or the white woolen undergarment which we wear, casts it upon the man; adding that saying of St. Peter: "Silver and gold I have not, but what I have, this I give thee." Scarcely had the whole of that gift come to the touch of his body, when straightway the stinking scales of his corrupted skin fell away, the ulcers closed and vanished from his whole body, strength and vigor returned to his deadened limbs, and finally color and vital warmth were seen to be so restored to his whole body that no trace remained in the man of the elephantiasis just now wiped away.
[107] who had published the miracle everywhere, The beggar, thrown into amazement at the miracle of so heaped-up happiness and beneficence, lifting his voice and hands to heaven, without measure or order, now adores the mercy of God, now, clasping the knees of his extemporary physician, proclaims him a divine man and one come down from heaven to him. And although Philip, seriously rebuking him, bade him abstain from unseasonable acclamations, and give the glory of that deed to God alone, in which he acknowledged nothing of his own; yet he, out of his mind with joy at the recent benefit, his mind estranged from the sense of what was commanded, so much the more strongly redoubled the miracle with a stentorian voice, to Philip's perplexed anxiety and blushing. And since through all that journey he could neither be torn away nor driven off from making himself of his own accord, out of gratitude, a bondman to the Fathers' service, he filled all those crossroads through which the road to Viterbo lay with the fame of the admirable deed, in rings of men running together at his summoning, and in what were almost regular sermons: so that, however much Philip hastened to lay down his honor, yet the fame of that deed, outstripping his arrival at Viterbo, wrapped him in greater honors than those he wished to abdicate. For the Pontiff, when he arrived, holding him in the highest veneration and love, the credit of this ascertained prodigy being added to the prerogative of his old repute, bade him confer concerning the things he wished accomplished with the Cardinal Protector, who would report everything faithfully to him.
[108] being bidden to draw out delays, This Philip judged should be done by him the more earnestly and swiftly, because, scenting it from the unwonted honors paid him by the nobles of that court, he saw that he had been betrayed and hemmed in by the fame of the recent miracle. That he might escape those plaudits, more troublesome to him than any ignominy, having briefly reduced his business to two heads, he pressed the Cardinal urgently; first, he begged that the constitutions lately made be ratified by the Pontiff; in the second, he sought not a little more earnestly that it might be permitted him, with the good leave of the same Pontiff, to abdicate the Generalate and hand over that province to another. The Cardinal, having heard most kindly and gladly, after his manner, the things which were brought forward by him clearly and with spirit, undertakes to lay both heads of the petition before the Pontiff; although toward the second, which concerned the abdication, and which Philip especially commended to him, he did not sufficiently incline; the customary honors having been exchanged between them, they part, the decision of the whole matter being deferred to the day of the Pontifical audience.
[109] at length from a certain vision he understands, But to Philip, glad not so much in the hope of having his laws strengthened as of having his authority abrogated for himself, it seemed good to the Mother of God, the foundress and pillar of the family of her Servants, to scatter by a memorable portent that device of the evil demon by which he had now long assailed Philip, the greatest of the Servants, to the ruin of the common cause; since indeed on that night which preceded the day appointed for the Pontifical audience, Philip seemed to himself in his sleep to have begun with his own hand to lop off one of his arms from his body, with a vast sense of pain: and that, to prevent his doing it, a heroic woman of august and venerable aspect had opportunely come up and stood in his way; at which altogether ill-omened dream being dismayed, when he awoke and with anxious mind was pondering that dream as of the kind
which are not presented to sleepers for nothing, conjecturing not vainly, he reports the whole matter in order to his colleague Lotaringo.
[110] He affirms that he had been disturbed by the same spectacle on the same night, that this was a temptation of the demon, and that, when he grieved most gravely at Philip's lot in that mutilation, he had been informed by the Most Blessed Virgin that by this portent was signified the abdication whose plans Philip was turning over with himself; which, what else would it be than that the right hand, as it were cut off from the rest of the body in the midst of its work, should cease and lie useless, to the greatest detriment of the public and private good? Let him therefore see, in his wisdom, what he was doing; and let him beware lest this be some cunning of the evil demon lying in wait, who under the empty names of quiet and humility contrives sloth and public ruin. And so that it greatly behooved that, mindful of his first calling to the Order, mindful of the second to the helm of the Order, mindful finally of affairs still succeeding happily under his leadership, he should, a new impulse of soul being taken up, go forward against all difficulties more boldly and more confidently, under the auspices of God and the Virgin Mother of God. By these and many other reasons, and by the very authority of Lotaringo, and above all by the agreement of the things which each of them saw in his sleep on that night, Philip at last being overcome, giving those hands which a little before he was going to cut off, changed his will of deserting his dignity for the future, the fraud that lay beneath being perceived; and brought it about that the crafty enemy fell away from his great daring and from the victory which he had already devoured in hope against our Marian company.
[111] This same, or certainly some more wicked and inveterate evil demon, seems within the memory of our fathers' grandfathers to have demanded for himself, as by the example of St. Ignatius of Loyola by a kindred and quite twin manner of battle, St. Ignatius, founder of the Society of Jesus; but with a like profit of his labor: for when the holy man had been created Superior General of the Society, of which after God he had been the author, as was fitting, and he, seized with the love of humility and of a private lot, admitted nothing of that dignity either to his ears or to his mind, he too was refuted by the miracle of a malignant enemy driven by his merits out of a possessed body: and when again, like our Philip, he had established his Order with most holy laws, thinking himself discharged from the difficulties of abdicating his office, he resumed his suit for a release to be carried through among his own; but how little that was then to God's heart, the common consent of all the Fathers, by which he was bidden to think of anything else, and the accessions made throughout the whole world under the leadership and auspices of Ignatius to his most illustrious and most flourishing Religious family, taught, and teach even today, to the vast good of the Christian cause e.
[112] Which I wished to recall by a digression not, as I think, unwelcome to the reader, and by a judgment of St. Augustine that it may appear by what windings the divine Architect of saving things draws the lines of his wonderful works and undertakings; however much those very men whom he uses as workmen and ministers, ignorant of his hidden judgments, and driven by reasons of private welfare and quiet more specious than true, strive to escape the offices enjoined upon them. In which matter St. Augustine most beautifully describes the evenness by which the mind, striking against neither side, ought to stand firm between the necessities of the Church and the seeking of honors; and to those wavering in a like tossing he shows a sure lodestar, writing to Eudoxius in these words: "If Mother Church has desired any labor of yours, receive it not with greedy elation, nor spurn it out of flattering sloth; and set not your leisure before the necessities of the Church, in whose travail, if no good men were willing to minister, you would not find how you should be born."
[113] the biographer strives to prove. From which surely it is concluded that, as much peril as there is in honors sought after of one's own accord, so much safeguard for the Church of God in bringing forth her offspring into the true light is placed in truly and sincerely modest prelates; not in those who, as the same Augustine says, SPURN THE RIVER AND THIRST FOR THE SEA, while with painted humility they disdain the drinkable and sweet waters of obscurer churches and dignities, but glow with a shameless desire for the false brine that will only increase their thirst. This deceit of the enemy of the Servite name being therefore eluded (that we may pursue the series we have begun), it remained that Philip should according to his office solicit the confirmation of the new Constitutions: but there intervened against that petition the unexpected death of Clement IV, the supreme Pontiff, who in those days, his age worn out and his health afflicted by troublesome diseases, almost suddenly met his last day holily and piously on the X of the Kalends of September, in the year one thousand two hundred and sixty-eight from the childbearing of our Mother of God.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER X.
The Saint's flight into a pathless solitude, lest he be elected Roman Pontiff, and there the health-bringing baths brought forth from the rock by his prayers.
Meanwhile the leper healed by Philip, when, as we mentioned a little before, When the Saint had resumed the office of the Generalate, he had strenuously acted the herald in all the neighborhood of the city of Viterbo and in the whole Sienese territory, and, proclaiming abroad the trumpet of Philip's sanctity by the miracle which had befallen himself, had followed his physician to Viterbo, he made the fame of the deed, which was still fresh, fresher yet and more celebrated in the minds of the nobles who were then in that city, when he showed himself present, and, preaching after his accustomed practice quarter by quarter through the city, glad and vigorous published what had befallen him from Philip, General of the Servants. In which, although he wearied Philip, whose name was thereby made illustrious through the whole city, yet, the cloud of the temptation lately driven off being now dispersed, he led over his thoughts from the sense of that annoyance to the care of the Order, which he resumed entire and as it were anew; and whatever others might say or think, he was seriously about this, that the public cause of the Order, enlarged by the favors and privileges of the Apostolic See, should be established. Which endeavors and zeal of his were not a little advanced by the Pontiff's favorable and kindly will toward him and by the benevolence of the other nobles.
[115] But while he was thus intent upon designating the courses of his affairs and sketching salutary considerations for what he was about, Pope Clement IV dies the supreme Pontiff dies. That unhoped-for chance, as it retarded Philip's designs, so in the whole Christian Commonwealth, and especially in the senate of the Cardinals, gave a beginning to new commotions and variety of wills: for about the same time the emperor also was lost in the war which he was waging with the Frisians a; and thus the Christian world, being orphaned, both its parents' funerals being borne forth, had to perform its obsequies amid the greatest disturbance of all things. And to the Apostolic See indeed, as an increase to its other difficulties, the ill-extinguished hatred of the emperor Frederick, not long since devoted to the curses, broke out afresh at the coming of Conradin b into Italy from Germany, and supplied matter for many defections and for the tumults of those who sought revolution.
[116] Besides this, heresy (as that plague rejoices in troubled times) was thrusting itself in at various places through Italy, amid the greatest disturbance of the times, although there were not lacking those who strenuously opposed it as it broke in. Among whom St. Peter Martyr of the Order of Preachers bore the palm of praise and of martyrdom, who had deserved excellently of our Religion of the Servants at its beginnings, as we have said elsewhere. And so, by these commotions, the very first of the Princes of Europe, roused from their seats, easily came together at Viterbo at the time of this interregnum, as Philip, king of France, and Charles, king of Sicily and Naples. Likewise Henry, prince of Britain; the other Kings and Princes, who, entangled in domestic difficulties, could not be present, sent numerous envoys. Furthermore so many external evils of the universal Church were heaped up by one domestic and internal, and that the chief; namely by the incredible and long-lasting variety of zeal and of wills among the Fathers in choosing a Pontiff: and to that inconvenience, besides other things, much of its long duration accrued from this, that in that age, otherwise than in ours, the custom was that these elections should be held in an open place and publicly.
[117] Here therefore, while some named some men to the Pontifical summit, and St. Philip, hearing the Cardinals Ottobono, Protector of our Order, and Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, and, following their authority, most of the other purpled Fathers, propose Philip; founding the reason of their counsel and judgment upon the blessed Father's highest prudence, outstanding learning, ardent zeal, and, what is the chief thing, prodigious sanctity, of which a recent proof was still thrusting itself upon their eyes and minds. Which, as they were transacted in an open place and in a great throng of mortals, easily a rumor of what was being handled flowed through the city: which, when as such it came also to Philip, affected his mind beyond what can be believed; for, as he was most tenacious of true and genuine humility, so he always held the summits of honors suspect for their dizziness and for graver falls, and it is easy to understand what the state of his mind was when this message was heard. For he who both shuddered at the beginning at the dignity of the Generalate, so much inferior to the Pontifical majesty, and lately wished with so great striving to abdicate it after having tasted it for some while, so that he had to be kept longer in his office by divine portents and terrors, with how great dread shall we judge him to have contemplated the highest eminence of all on earth?
[118] that he was being designated by some for the Pontificate, There was moreover present to the mind of that sagacious man the wretched face of those times and affairs, the violence of heresies swelling and growing strong, the corruption of manners, the dissensions of Christian Princes, and the Reason of state of the politicians (as they are called), measuring all things human and divine by their own private advantage, and prevailing everywhere in that age: whereby it came about that, comparing his own slenderness and the plans of life taken up from his earliest age with so great a mass of affairs, arguments having been drawn on either side, he determined by an inexorable decree to admit anything rather than the Pontificate. And since he feared lest, if the zeal of these nobles proceeded further, he might, as happens, be placed by force upon the Pontifical throne, he goes to the Cardinal Protector, and vehemently begs and admonishes him to desist from what he had begun, and in his prudence and care to undo what had been handled; then, as it were in place of the fee for the service he asked, he prophesies to the Cardinal with a prophetic spirit that he himself would shortly be raised to the Pontificate, but would end his life with a brief and slender enjoyment of so great a dignity and of life; all which came to pass exactly: for on the death of Innocent V, Ottobono was substituted, under the name of Hadrian V, in the year
1276 from salvation brought to us; nor did he live in the Pontificate longer than a single month.
[119] although he was not a Cardinal, It may perhaps seem strange to less fair appraisers of matters and to those less skilled in histories, by what reason it could come about that Philip, who was not a Cardinal, could be designated Pontiff. Whom in this place we refer to the writers, from whom they will learn that Urban, the successor of Alexander IV, was not a Cardinal. After him it wanted very little that Father John of Vercelli, General of the Order of Preachers, should have been made Pontiff; in whose place, account being taken of his absence, Guy Foulques was made Pontiff beyond all his own hope. Likewise Eugene, Cistercian abbot of Tre Fontane; Urban V, likewise abbot of Marseilles; Clement V, from being archbishop of Bordeaux; besides these, Urban VI, and Celestine V, from being an anchorite thinking of anything else, the Cardinalitial grade being passed over, being bidden without the purple hats to put on the Pontifical tiara, entered upon the Pontificate; as worthy of it by the designation of the Fathers, like our Philip, they were almost initiated. And as regards the matter indeed, if there is any place for conjectures and for the monuments of images and statues, where the historical truth is established: the threefold Pontifical crown, which is commonly called the Kingdom of the world, that ancient time, and the middle ages down to our own, painted and sculptured at Philip's feet, to express that it had been repulsed from his head: as the very ancient records of this matter are proof; so does honor, in whatever way, cleave even to those who flee it, as a shadow to bodies.
[120] he flees to the pathless woods of Mount Tunniato, But that our discourse may return whence it digressed: when Philip noticed not only that what he had brought forward to move the Cardinal Protector from his judgment had been in vain, but also that the business of inaugurating him, undertaken by him and the rest of the Cardinals, was being diligently and zealously carried through, he takes a resolution worthy of Philip's humility: for indeed at dead of night, without taking leave of any of those Nobles who could have hindered him, he secretly enters upon flight from Viterbo, with no one privy to it save his colleague Lotaringo and one companion, brother Victor c; the Religion being commended to Lotaringo, and orders given that he should give indication to none where he himself was, and that he should introduce the new laws into practice and use, and should proclaim the eighth of the Kalends of July as the day for a chapter to be held at Florence; at which he promises that he will be present when the present storm of zeal stirred up against him had cooled. Matters being thus settled, so far as could be done by one in haste, he casts himself upon the road with quickened speed toward the woods of Mount Tunniato, likely, as he judged, to be a sanctuary in that peril. Thus Philip's supporters, shut out from their attempts, began to look to one man and another thereafter with no equal concord. Which deed, as I consider it, as I do not indeed deny that it is a vast glory to the other families of the Mendicants to have given from their own bosoms Nicholases, Benedicts, Alexanders, Innocents, Piuses, and Sixtuses as supreme Pontiffs to the Church; so it seems a great accession to their glory that the Order of the Servants had, and even now has among the heavenly ones, a Father emulous of the humility of his Lady, who by loftiness of mind surpassed the summit of the highest dignity on earth, left beneath his virtue of soul.
[121] Philip meanwhile, having been brought to his wished-for hiding places, and there for three months lies hidden in a secret place, having recognized amid those wilds the likeness of his ancient cavern on Monte Senario, his youth renewed like the eagle of David, having begun the same, or a somewhat more ardent, striving of contemplation of divine things, besides the other afflictions of the body entered upon this manner of life — the ferias of the forty days' fast, which then were, inviting to like dainties — that he sustained life most sparingly on wild herbs only, and a little bread which the rustic neighbors from time to time brought, and a draught of cold water. But amid those untilled woods and the harshness of inhospitable crags his soul was blessed, so far as could be in a mortal body, by a foretaste of eternal happiness and by the sight of the Son of God, who in the transports of his mind, together with his most holy Mother, often visiting his Anchorite, liberally granted him his presence in such ways as, for their expressing, whatever there is of pictured eloquence in human wits must necessarily fall short.
[122] There is still seen in these times in that solitude, on the first slope of Mount Tunniato, a little level, whose memory is honored to this day. in which is situated the sacred house of Bl. Philip, and not far thence, in a solitary recess among porphyry rocks, two cells, restored by certain Fathers of our Order zealous of the solitary life, for the preserving of the memory of Philip, who first inhabited those places. Of these one was blessed Father Benincasa of Florence, who in the year 1402, shutting himself in the secrecy of that hiding place, when he had passed altogether twenty-five years in it most holily, was called from his long vigil to the eternal feasts, having gathered no slight repute of sanctity. Concerning him, besides those things which are covered by those hiding places privy to the man's holiness, it is handed down to memory that by the sign of the Holy Cross he freed a possessed man from his Stygian tenant, and that at his death the bells of the churches sounded of their own accord; and it came about that, a dispute having arisen among the neighboring peoples concerning the conducting of his funeral and the possession of his body, they agreed on both sides upon this arbitration, that, two young bullocks tamed to no yoke being yoked to the wagon on which the sacred pledge should be carried, the burden should at length fall to that people to whose borders the oxen, with no one driving, should have led: which, left to themselves, led straight to Montichiello, and there the sacred relics, being brought into an honorable tomb, found a place of burial and of veneration d.
[123] But being about to depart thence, Three months therefore having been spent in this solitude, and the time of the chapter drawing near, when Philip was preparing to depart, an unwonted desire, sent into him from God, came upon him of repaying something in turn to the inhabitants and neighbors of the place for the favor of their hospitality and their other benefits. And this indeed God performed through him not only munificently but also wonderfully, that his sanctity might be more clearly disclosed, as appeared from the memorable event of the miracle in the following manner.
VI.
[124] Before therefore Philip, leaving Tunniato to preside at the chapter, by his prayers he draws health-bringing hot springs from the rock, set out on the road to Florence, by the impulse of the divine spirit by which he was driven, he climbed that hill which is now the head of this spring of which we treat, and the source of these salubrious waters. There, after he had for some while applied himself to most fervent prayers, which he had known to be heard by the response of life which he felt within and in his soul, like another Moses, turning with vast confidence to the nearest rock and striking it with the staff which he happened to carry in his hand, by God's command, for the good of the inhabitants and of newcomers, he bids it pour forth waters. No sooner said than done. The rock, as it were melted into waves, poured forth copiously waters not only abundantly flowing but also endowed with medicinal power; which thereafter ennobled the hot springs of Mount Tunniato, and the sanctity and faith of Philip, to the eternal memory of posterity.
[125] whose efficacy and site are described, Indeed, if the modesty of not wearying the reader allowed us to digress in this place upon the connection and hieroglyphic kinship which the nature and properties of waters have with divine grace, there would here be brought forward, as a not unpleasing catastrophe, that variety of admirable things which the divine wisdom has designated by the ministry of water. But, that we may not go too far from our purpose, and passing over the rest, certainly by the working of this element the same wisdom of God seems to have willed, by a certain peculiar reasoning, to make illustrious the name of Philip and his love of solitude. Thus his first withdrawal to Monte Senario, thus this second to Tunniato, perennial fountains being drawn forth in both places, it commended to the memory of all ages, and as it were through certain fitting symbols endowed with perpetuity the purity of life won in those places. For the rest, as regards the waters themselves, it must be known that at their origin they are sweet and drinkable; but when they have passed beneath the church situated nearby (being sucked in by the hidden passages of the gaping earth) and for nearly a hundred paces have mingled themselves with the mineral beds of sulphur, natron, copperas, and alum, as, being tinged by contact with these, they cease to be drinkable, so they become by so much the more salubrious for the use of bathers. Finally, drawn through winding and subterranean meanderings, they are poured forth from the same place whence at Philip's bidding they welled up, in a copious gush of waters, which is caught in a basin set beneath of nearly ten cubits' symmetry, whose capacity nevertheless has been made narrower by the injury of the times, through the sediments which the muddy waters carry, hardening into a white and porous pumice. Then the basin overflowing, the water, poured out down the slopes of the hill, in uncertain and from time to time varied channels, is scattered into several streams, which nevertheless the bath-keepers, gathered into one head, draw off through an artificial pipe to a fountain situated in a certain hamlet, where the sick bathe. Moreover the Most Serene Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Etruria, led by religion and by the healthfulness of these waters, fortified them in a better fashion at great expense, with new works and the old ones also restored.
[126] And to pass over the opinion of certain men who confound these waters with those which burst forth from the rubble of the ancient city of Roselle and from an old Chronicle (which place nevertheless is distant a full twenty miles from Tunniato), even though we were destitute of the other light of history, which abundantly gives credit to the matter we treat, it would be fitting that credit be given to the memory of the inhabitants received from hand to hand through several centuries, who, besides this authority of their grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers, also show a very old manuscript Chronicle, which with rustic sincerity brilliantly sets forth the genuine origin of these waters in these words: "The baths of St. Philip obtained that surname from Bl. Philip of the Order of the Servants, sprung at Florence from the Patrician family of the Benizi, who, when he was General of that Order and a man illustrious both for sanctity and for learning, and in the year of Christ 1269, Clement IV, the Pontiff of Narbonne, having died, there was little agreement among the Cardinals concerning the substituting of a successor, was declared Pontiff by many of them; but he, in his great humility, to avoid so great a dignity, came in hidden flight with some companions into Tunniato of the Sienese. Where, when he had lived for some while holily and in solitude, at last, when he was preparing his departure to his brothers, he obtained by prayers from the Lord that from a certain place a quarter of a mile distant from his hermitage salubrious waters should well forth for the sick; which being obtained, and a huge rock which was on the top of the hill having been struck three times with his staff, suddenly there leapt out that force of waters which constitutes these hot springs. From which it appears that these hot springs had their origin from God, as others from nature." Thus far the Chronicle.
[127] Furthermore, as regards the medicinal powers and efficacy of the waters themselves, besides the testimonies of the bathers themselves, and are confirmed by other authors. many weighty writers have left it attested in their monuments that they are most healthful: and chiefly Andrea Bacci and Elpidianus, in the work which he dedicated on hot springs and baths to Sixtus V, the supreme Pontiff, in which he judges thus, that these hot springs, by a certain inborn miracle both of divine grace and of nature, easily surpass all the other hot springs of Italy in excellence and speed of healing. Certainly from their prodigious production and goodness a vast increase to Philip's
glory has been made: and they avail even today for the highest veneration of him among the peoples neighboring the place; from which veneration through three whole centuries now they have remitted nothing. But Philip meanwhile, the applause of the recent deed being at its height, meaning to withdraw from fame, having avoided the public road and the city of Siena, otherwise most devoted to him, and other places also where he might be known, made his way to Florence by hidden bypaths, having performed several miracles in one: for certainly, if one should estimate the whole series of the deed done by the true and just standard and not by the opinion of the common people, they are more illustrious prodigies to reject the highest dignity, to avoid the poured-out zeal of peoples and honors almost divine, than to call forth waters from a crag. Thus with us judged that best appraiser of these matters, St. Chrysostom, when he freely pronounced that the contempt of temporal goods is more wonderful than other miracles.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER XI.
The Saint's deeds on the journey which he undertook from Italy into Gaul and Germany, and God's wonderful providence toward him on the return.
VII.
After, by these journeyings, Tunniato having been ennobled for ever, they arrived at Florence, The chapter being held at Florence, the assembly of the Fathers being convoked, Philip delivered a sermon upon that text of Psalm 86: Its foundations are in the holy mountains. In it, when he had set forth, happily and with the vehement spirit with which he glowed from his recent solitude, where the kingdom of the heavens and the city of God lie hidden in the militant Church, and by what leadership and discipline the fighters of the ascetic warfare, and especially the Servants sworn to the service of the Mother of God, ought to discharge their offices and strive toward heaven (a most sweet apostrophe being subjoined concerning the most blessed Virgin and her present care and protection for her own), the rest of the Commonwealth's affairs being ordered for the time, he dissolved the chapter. This Convent of the Fathers was the first in which the laws lately proposed in the Congregation of Pistoia were carried, and were bidden to have the force and use of confirmed laws until at a fitting time the Pontifical authority should accede to them; then four Definitors were set over each of the provinces, and the provincial Chapters themselves began to be celebrated by the present-day practice.
[129] Then, the Fathers being convoked privately, Philip sets forth the necessity of his journey outside Italy for the visiting of the monasteries which were there, The Saint departing into Gaul, by the prescription of the decree of the general Chapter held at Borgo San Sepolcro a in the year of Christ 1262; and moreover that he was summoned thither by the office of Apostolic preacher enjoined upon him. Then, admonitions and orders having been given such as the matter and the time required, he chooses out of all as companions of his journey the blessed Fathers Ricovero Uguccione and Gerardino Sostegni b, whom alone surviving of the number of the seven first Fathers, and able by reason of their age to endure labors, he had destined as Vicars General for the other nations; then he adds to these two others, a German and a Frenchman, who either had not long since been initiated into our sacred rites, or had been sent by their own to be present at that general council, and, so far as could be, to conduct the General, when summoned, by their skill in tongues and in roads. These were Father Walter the German and Father John the Frenchman. To these companions Brother Victor being added, the inseparable comrade of the blessed Father, when he had named Father Lotaringo his Vicar for the meantime in Italy, and had bidden farewell to all with a great feeling of charity; and themselves and them, and the cause of the journey, having been commended to Our Lady of the Annunciation, they together begin the journey to Bologna, where, when they arrived, having crossed the Pyrenean mountains c not without weariness, the dwelling of the brothers which had been founded there from the year of Christ 1263 being visited, they pursue the journey begun toward Modena.
[130] It was that season of the year in which, at the rising of the dog-star, the sun scorching all things, the manner of accomplishing a journey through Italy is wont to be perilous and laborious: on the way he finds blaspheming dicers, yet that could not delay the course of Philip and his companions from making their way along the dusty road even in the blazing noon, until Philip, pitying his companions, wished to refresh them with some portion of rest, weakened as they were by the heat and weariness after several miles walked; and opportunely there presented itself in the open plain an elm spread out with wide branches, which by its welcome shade and by the whisper of a cool breeze seemed to invite the travelers to rest; when the Fathers came hither, they find gathered there a band of dicers and harlots from the dregs and offscouring of mankind, and of robbers lying in wait for travelers; who had taken that place as a standing camp of all crimes and impieties. These, by the license of such men, receive the new guests with virulent reproaches and jeers, which nevertheless the Fathers, in the constancy of their heightened mind, easily let pass and refuted with modest silence.
[131] But when the wicked men loosed their criminal tongues into Fescennine d tricks whom he gravely rebukes, and dire execrations of the divine Majesty, and curses against the Mother of God and all the Saints, over their dice and in their mockeries, Philip, thinking that this indeed was not to be borne, in his ardent zeal for the divine glory, with the Apostle's words, if any man speak, let him speak as the words of God, rebukes the impious crowd, and teaches that a speaking tongue was given by God to man before other living creatures for this, that he might praise the bestower of so excellent a gift and give thanks for innumerable benefits, and that therefore impiously and wickedly is it sharpened for contrary uses, that is, for the insult of its Maker; but if in hope of impunity they raged thus licentiously, that God is wont, with the heavier hand the heavier the foot, to come down to exact punishments for such horrible crimes: which, he says, he announces to them in the name of an angered God as coming from heaven without delay, unless they immediately repent, and, their will being changed, seriously consider the expiating by every means of such atrocious offenses and the appeasing of the Godhead.
[132] and foretells divine vengeance to the obstinate, At so severe a denunciation some of that band of lost men, being dismayed, promise that they will be in Philip's power: on the contrary the rest, made savage into rage, stand round about him and his companions and bid them be off thence at once; if they do not, they will depart sorely handled; and presently, the utmost reproaches against God and his herald Philip being redoubled, they were little short of offering violence. Then Philip, seeing that it was all over with the wretches, and weeping at their destruction, and, with the humility that was his, having begged pardon if he had been troublesome in admonishing, said to his companions and to those who had joined him in hope of good fruit: Come, brothers, let us hurry ourselves away hence as fast as we may: for that face of the sky (he had by chance pointed his finger to heaven) which seems to you calm and serene, I see threatening and angry, and making ready avenging thunderbolts against these unhappy men; and with the word, those victims already devoted to hell being left beneath the tree, he drives his companions before him and hastens them onto the road.
[133] which straightway followed, Scarcely had they departed, when behold, in a clear sky suddenly dread-sounding blasts were heard, and the clouds about the unhappy tree grew black and thickened, the sight of the sun was taken away, and all things bristled with redoubled darkness; then the whole force of the evil, gathered into one storm, gliding upon that elm, when it had made a horrible prelude with lightnings and flashes, at the last, a tenth-wave thunderbolt being hurled, struck the elm itself and those wicked men so mightily that the tree was burnt up root and all, and the men were in a moment reduced to ashes. But Philip and his own, who beheld everything with their eyes from close by, bloodless at the atrocity of so fearful a spectacle, stretched out suppliant hands to heaven, praising God's kindness toward themselves and his justice upon those guilty heads; and, if perchance there were any hope in a cause so afflicted, praying for the ruined salvation of the condemned.
[134] as some of them, being converted, disclosed, For the rest, those who by Philip's agency escaped that destruction and, with it, eternal ruin, entering upon a plan of life and of their affairs worthy of so memorable an example of divine vengeance, spent the remainder of their age in bewailing those things which up to that day had ill smiled upon them, and, scattered through Emilia and Lombardy, published abroad God's mercy and the sanctity and prophetic spirit of his servant Philip. The same in his own way did the Apelles of his age, Andrea del Sarto, who out of his religious piety toward St. Philip so vividly expressed this deed in colors in the portico of Our Lady of the Annunciation at Florence, that even the painted representation of the deed strikes horror into those who contemplate it.
VIII.
[135] The state of affairs at that season was very unlike in Italy and in the kingdom of France: When the Saint had come into Gaul, for the heirs of the emperor Frederick were tearing Italy, afflicted in foul fashion beneath a bitter yoke. On the contrary Gaul, with the pious Son Philip succeeding his holy father, flourished prosperously and gladly; so much does it matter for the felicity of kingdoms whether the Princes be pious or impious. That Philip, after his father's practice, embraced with singular kindness and benevolence all Religious in general, and especially those coming from elsewhere either as exiles or for the sake of propagating piety; and already before that, by the work of blessed Father Manetto, men of our Order had fixed dwellings in various places in that kingdom, and by the same increases with which they had advanced through those lands the fame of the blessed Father's name and sanctity grew far and wide; so much so that with incredible zeal of the chief cities he was both received publicly with singular benefits and honors, and privately men strove with the utmost eagerness to enjoy his conversation and to hear his sermons burning with the apostolic spirit
sought.
[136] But these so glad beginnings, and the joys of the French and of Philip congratulating one another, were somewhat darkened by a sad message; the death of St. Louis the king is announced; for in those days it is reported from Africa that Louis e, King of the Franks, Carthage f having been stormed by the utmost bravery, and the rebels conquered and the remnant of them driven into Tunis, had died in the siege of that city: namely, that he, to whose merits and fortitude Gaul could not have repaid equal honors with all her preparations, might triumph in heaven with the entire reward of glory. That loss, or rather change of fortune, because it seemed likely to disturb the face of the Christian commonwealth, and the plans meditated and brought from home by Philip for the good of the Order, which he had once determined to confer upon with the king on his return, gravely affected him, that inconvenience being heaped up especially by the death of Cardinal Rudolph, who as Apostolic Legate before the same King wonderfully favored Philip's undertakings.
[137] To Philip, wavering amid these doubtful cares, God was present, but the successor of the kingdom favoring him, the same mind being put into king Philip, the heir of his father's kingdom and of his piety, which had been in his Father; by whom, when the blessed Father had been most kindly invited and addressed, he both held Philip himself in great honor and love, and took the Congregation itself of our men in Gaul into the royal protection and care with so great a token of favor that the greatest hope shone forth of adding many more through that most flourishing kingdom, the monasteries which had been acquired being made secure. Therefore, the Convents of Paris, Toulouse, Montpellier, Vienne, Avignon, Marseilles, and those which were in the Dauphiné and in other cities having been visited, he applied his mind to building new ones: which he accomplished easily and in great number, because, as illustrious authors affirm, being held by all for an Apostle, he was approached with great striving on every side by leading men and others of the first French nobility, who begged to be clothed and initiated by his hands in the Religious habit of the Mother of God.
[138] This would be an opportune, or rather a proper, place His Order in Gaul for describing more particularly, or even reducing to a list, such admirable advances (account being taken of the times and places and their variety); but since, about the year of Christ 1389, the division of the French Fathers from the rest of the Order having been made on occasion of the schism that arose between the true Pontiff Boniface IX and the Pseudo-pope Clement (except only the province of Gallia Narbonensis, which still adheres to the rest of the Order's body), most of the monuments have either perished or been intercepted, so that, brotherly intimacy being extinguished by the dissension, scarcely any sure light could shine upon this history from those parts, we unwillingly fail in our duty.
[139] The affairs of Gaul being ordered in this manner, and blessed Father Gerardino Sostegni having been set over that province as Vicar General, and it is wonderfully propagated in other regions, Philip, having undertaken his journey through the Sequani g, who are beyond the Rhine, and the Aedui h, went into Germany; but when by fame flying before him his sanctity and his ardor for promoting piety had become known to that nation, at the invitation of the most burning zeal of the peoples he applied himself to the preaching of the divine word, and to the culture of a more amended Religion in the Convents which were there, in such a way that, no otherwise than the French, the Sequani vied in enrolling their names for our warfare. The Annals of that nation have it most positively that at that season, in Italy, Gaul, and Germany, under Philip as General, ten thousand of the Servant Fathers were reckoned, besides the Tertiary Brothers and Sisters, whom we call Mantellate.
[140] to which increase a Bull of the Pope gave occasion. Great weight was brought to so great an increase by the rescript given by Alexander IV, the supreme Pontiff, in favor of our Religion, by which he gave power of returning into favor with the Church to all who, of the faction of the emperor Frederick II, were held by the bond of anathema by the sentence of Pope Innocent IV, if by way of specimen of true repentance for the license of their past life they should take up the institute of the Servants. Whereby it came about that barons, marquesses, dukes, and princes, and other lords, in frequent number, having sent away the message of wealth and of military glory, from great masters being made Servants, swore to the laws of the Religion; or those who were not fitted to endure the severer institute of the first Order, made themselves bondmen of the third Order.
[141] While the Saint from Germany Our Giani is the author, in his Annals, that at this first coming of Philip into Germany Rudolf, count of Habsburg, the author and sower of Austrian greatness and majesty, not indeed from any share in the crimes of Frederick, but from spontaneous piety and love of the glorious service and name of the Servants of the Mother of God, received from Philip himself, together with his wife, the habit of the third Order; and that the mutual familiarity contracted on that occasion was the cause why Rudolf, being afterwards raised to the empire, sending an envoy to Pope Nicholas III, begged that Philip be sent to him, that he might use him as interpreter of the divine law and will. Others defer this to his second coming to Rudolf, now Cæsar. However that matter stands, this is held certain and ascertained, that by the labor and diligence of Philip the Order of the Servants was extended not only far and wide through Upper Germany and especially in Saxony, Westphalia, and into Lower Germany as far as Emden, the mart of the Eastern Frisians (which is at the mouth of the river Ems, discharging itself into the ocean), with a great number of men and monasteries, but also through Hungary and Poland.
[142] returns through Gaul into Italy And when he had accomplished this with the incredible swiftness of a thunderbolt darting from the East even to the West, a plan having been entered upon of going into Spain for this very end, he set blessed Father Uguccione as Pro-general over the affairs acquired in that two years' expedition: and, a journey into the Gauls being undertaken, that in passing he might establish the new colonies he had led out, he comes to Paris; where, coming again into conference with king Philip, he commends to him such beginnings as there were of the institute of the Servants in those shores, and the Vicar he had left, Uguccione, the man's merits and holiness being recounted. While these and other matters pertaining to the whole Christian cause are being handled between the two Philips, a report flows into Paris that there had been created Pontiff, from being archbishop of Liège, Gregory X, who at that time was absent at Ptolemais in Syria for the cause of the Christian Commonwealth with Edward, prince of England. Cheered by so longed-for a message after the Church's long interregnum, the blessed Father, more urgent causes calling him into Italy, exchanged his Spanish journey, deferred for the present, for the Italian.
IX.
[143] The affairs of Germany and Gaul being arranged and settled in this order, with a certain John of Frankfurt, Philip, urged both by the letters of his own and by the necessities of the public cause in Italy, sets about the way with his companions, or rather sons, as many as he had begotten among foreigners by the fruitfulness and eloquence of his spirit. In the number of these was John of Frankfurt, notable for sanctity, a youth of the first nobility among the Usipetes i, but nobler in piety toward the Mother of God and in the other adornments of his soul; who, when by chance in those days in which Philip had come to Frankfurt on the Main k he was deliberating on taking up a certain state of life, on a certain night the Most Blessed Virgin herself, conspicuous with much glory, offered herself to him to be seen, and, so far as he desired to take counsel for his own salvation and to obey the divine will, bade him go to that Father newly come from Italy, who in those days was preaching in a dark garment to his fellow citizens: that by complying with his discourses and counsels he would find sure salvation and a haven for a mind wavering amid doubtful counsels.
[144] John obeyed the heavenly admonitions, and, having met Philip on the following day (who himself also had been forewarned and informed by the same Most Blessed Virgin what she wished done with the youth), who had been called to the Order in a wonderful manner, sets forth in order the cause of his coming, and its author, the Mother of God. Philip, having received the youth most kindly, those things having been set forth which are wont to cause either delays or hindrances to such plans, as he had it in charge from their common Lady, having co-opted him into the number of the Servants of the heavenly Queen, clothed him with the habit of the Religion, in which he prolonged to the year 1345 a life admirable for its singular piety and especially for its severity toward himself. And at last, after he had presided over monasteries in various places, and especially at Lucca (whither he had brought from Germany Philip's cloak, to the great good of the sick in that city), having returned to his native land, he closed his last day at Frankfurt, illustrious for miracles both in life and after death, and always held among his fellow citizens in great honor and veneration, as long as a good mind and sincere Religion stood firm among them, as our Annals have it more fully.
[145] With this John therefore, and Brother Victor the Italian, and the other John the Frenchman, he wanders for three days in the woods, and Brother Walter the German as companions, Philip, having entered upon the journey toward Italy, when they had entered the Alps of the Allobroges, strayed from the military road, and for three whole days tracking a way through shady woods passable only to wild beasts, in their eagerness, as happens, to return into the road, being entangled from some wanderings into others, they found no means of extricating themselves from those tangled windings of the forest passes; and hunger and weariness increased the difficulty of the matter, harassed with which for three days, since they had found neither any drink to relieve their thirst nor food to allay their hunger, they were now beginning to swoon and to be destitute of strength; when Philip, turning to his accustomed support of prayer, bade his companions do the same.
[146] After he had poured forth with tears to God a prayer burning with charity for his own, and relying with great hope upon God's most sweet providence, and being fed by angels and led back into the way, suddenly certain voices like human ones breathe upon them, by which the Fathers, being addressed with festive congratulation, were invited to the lost road and to the refreshment of their strength after so many labors. Turning themselves toward these from the prayer they had begun, as soon as they could struggle out of those thorny tracts, they fall in with two men who indeed by their habit and the rest of their bodily appearance seemed shepherds; but, as afterwards appeared, they were angels. Being led by these into the nearest lodging of a hut, with much honor of words and a courtesy more than pastoral, they find there a table furnished with loaves of wondrous whiteness and savor and with a pitcher of cold water: at which, being bidden to sit down, fear laid aside, they feasted purely and pleasantly; and, infinite thanks having been given to God, with their hosts as guides they are led back into the right road. And the guides indeed, their duty being discharged, laying aside their assumed persons, suddenly vanishing from the Fathers' eyes, ceased to be seen.
[147] he returns to Monte Senario. But Philip with his own descended into Italy; where, by the virtue and diligence of his Vicar and the labor of the other Fathers, he found, to his vast consolation, that a great accession of many monasteries had been made to the Religion during that two years of his absence. Thus, having set out through the Piedmontese, and in passing visiting with pleasure on the way those new monasteries founded in his absence, having crossed the ridges of the Apennine l, he arrived at Monte Senario, where, as everywhere else, being received with incredible joy of the Brothers, he related to them, exulting amid mutual congratulations, how propitious God and the Mother of God had been to him through the whole journey.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER XII.
The Saint's care in founding or restoring the monasteries of his Order, and his labors in the council of Lyons, to which he had been summoned.
Having spent some days at Senario, as in the public dwelling and origin of the whole Order, At Florence, relating the increase of the Order, whence Philip had drawn the first-fruits of his spirit, with great pleasure of soul he went down to Florence: where, having approached the image of Our Lady of the Annunciation, he first gives thanks, as was just, to God and to his most holy Mother and his own Lady: by whose kindness and care the deeds done through that whole two years of pilgrimage had turned out well and happily: then, blessed Father Alexis and the other Religious of his own of that place being admitted to his embrace, there was a contest on both sides with the greatest tokens of charity and congratulation. That meeting was ennobled both by Philip's authority and especially by the venerable white hairs of blessed Father Alexis and his aged joy, with which he heard the series of so many glad advances of the Religion.
[149] He was then the only survivor in Italy of the seven men who were leaders of our institute; he affects Father Alexis with great gladness, for four had already passed to heaven, and the other two were doing their work outside Italy. He therefore, hanging upon the mouth of the narrating Philip, and understanding such great increases of the Servite name within and without Italy, and so many gains of souls brought into the common treasury of the same, being more than seventy years old, sang that swan song of his coeval: "Now dost thou dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word, in peace" &c.; although God deferred that wish of his for many years, whether that he might see much more ample things for the heaping up of his consolation, or that as long as possible that torch of the primeval light and fervor might shine for the Servants laboring in the service of their Lady; and that there might be a source whence the writers who began late to write our affairs might learn exactly, as from an eyewitness, and one of whom he himself was a great part, the admirable rise and progress of this Religion through a whole century. Moreover he lived altogether a hundred and ten years, and of these seventy-seven in the Order, with such zeal of humility and subjection that, although from boyhood he had happily devoted notable labor to good letters, and had learning by no means common joined with sanctity and singular prudence, he strove by every means to pass so long an age as a private person; so that to that end he seems to have obtained from God the ill health with which for the most part he was variously exercised.
[150] And so, left to himself and his own health, he so thoroughly healed the sicknesses of his soul in an afflicted body, a venerable old man, and had them in his power, that he could seem almost without passions a; for indeed he not only equaled the most robust of the young men in labors, in fasting, and in patience of chastising his body, but even surpassed them in his decrepit age. Of wine especially he was so great a hater, by no fault of a nature abhorring it, that when it had necessarily to be used for cherishing his languishing stomach, he had to be compelled to it by the command of his Superiors. Moreover, although he was always of a tranquil and placid cast of countenance, the serenity of his soul overflowing into his look, yet no one ever saw him laughing, nor on the other hand did anyone ever see him performing the sacred rites at the altar b except bathed in the most abundant tears: in coming to choir he was always the first at his station, in departing always the last, nor yet in so persistent a zeal for contemplation did he, even when sick, omit the other part of our institute, which we call the active.
[151] whose virtues are described, Diligent and exact in handling domestic affairs, in bringing his neighbors back to good fruit he was of such efficacy and sweetness of address that they were never sated with hearing him. The force of his divine eloquence was memorable both in many others brought back into the way of salvation, and in his own brother, by name Chiarissimo de' Falconieri, and in his niece blessed Juliana de' Falconieri c, although in an unlike matter. The former, entangled in a perilous traffic, had pawned his eternal salvation for gain. The latter, riches and the splendor of her lineage being left behind, sought after the Servitude of the Most Blessed Virgin after her uncle's example. To both Alexis was present: to his Brother he was the author of restoring his ill-gotten goods: and Juliana, wonderfully kindled by his salutary admonitions, first, as is believed, of the virgins took the habit of the Third Order, and in it, chiefly by Alexis's cultivation, with singular praise of piety, met her last day; these and other things having been piously and bravely done, Alexis in extreme old age ascended Monte Senario d, meaning to make a short cut from a higher place on his way to heaven, and there, full of days and merits, made a wonderful end of living. For indeed in his last struggle with death Christ was present to him as presider of the games in the likeness of a most sweet infant, who crowned his veteran athlete with a little garland of heavenly flowers while still in the arena, and heavenly spirits in numbers in the form of most white birds were seen to appear, about to escort him in triumph.
[152] and he himself glad on account of the image of the Mother of God, But let us return to Philip, who, no less than Alexis glad at our institute enlarged outside Italy, congratulated himself upon the same, wonderfully increased and adorned within Italy through that two years of his absence; and especially the evidence which was turned before his eyes in the chapel of Our Lady of the Annunciation moved him with tears flowing for joy: since indeed he saw that august chapel to have become so greatly renowned, to the highest glory of the Virgin Mother of God, by so great a concourse both of the Florentine people and of other nations, and by the frequency of miracles; and moreover from so many offerings of leading men and of supreme Pontiffs and kings, signs, votive offerings and tablets, witnesses of health obtained, he gathered the presence of the divine Godhead in the place. And indeed that heavenly image had, and today has, this proper to it and peculiar with few, from the very first trace of its existence, that with a perpetual and never interrupted tenor it keeps by daily miracles the piety and religion of its worshipers to their duty through all ages until now. This is attested both by things published in type, by the authorship of Father Master Luca Ferrini e, and by the vast volumes written by hand which are kept in the library of the same Our Lady of the Annunciation, which have been composed concerning these miracles. Which we at some time, under the auspices of the good God and of the same Most Holy Virgin (if the greatness of the miracles themselves and their multitude, which is almost infinite, do not stand in the way), think of presenting, gathered into one body, in Latin and in type. Although, even should they be written by no mortal, the consent of the peoples and the daily experiences of a most present patronage, and a certain force divinely and secretly implanted in this most holy image, will perpetuate its celebrity and its religion.
[153] Certainly in this our age it has risen to such a point of veneration to which many flock, that it cannot be shown save secretly and by night, lest some be crushed by the striving of the flowing multitude; against which inconvenience, that the providence of the princes may guard, and that all may understand that this effigy is the holier treasure of Etruria, the veils drawn before it are closed with two keys, of which they themselves keep one, and the superior of the monastery the other, and moreover are sealed with the ring of the same Princes. And none the less, if at any time, for guests who are Princes, or for the envoys of Kings and commonwealths, admitted by the back door and secretly into the monastery with a small retinue, at dead of night and with the doors of the church bolted, the image is unveiled, by no diligence is the ardor of the city so eluded but that as many as the church can hold creep in, and many more beset the entrances and doors of the church, begging with noisy knocking and with the lowliest prayers and voices to be let in.
[154] But this above all is to be admired, and what most of all proves that a certain divine force has been implanted in that countenance, among whom was St. Aloysius Gonzaga, that those thus admitted have scarcely seen the first lineaments of the Virgin's face by torchlight, when all straightway begin to melt into tears and to burst into sobs and groans, tokens of inward compunction, and to beat their breasts with their palms; and indeed even those who, as they frequently are wont to confess, run thither led not so much by piety as by curiosity and the unusualness of the thing. So full of graces is that face, that it must plainly come about by divine power and by a perpetual miracle that so great a force of moving can fall to the sight of one image, as scarcely the license of the ancient poets had leisure to feign for the aegis of Pallas, for the hardening of men into stones. Of this virtue implanted in this image there is a witness beyond all exception, Bl. Aloysius, the radiance of the most illustrious Society of Jesus and of the most serene Gonzaga family; for in his history it is reported that he was wont to profess that from Our Lady the Virgin of the Annunciation at Florence, as from the best of nurses, he had sucked the first-fruits of his spirit f.
[155] At this altar therefore of Our Lady of the Annunciation (whither the sweetness of the Virgin herself has enticed and drawn us into this digression also), after Philip had unburdened all the affections of a grateful mind, he watches over the adorning of his Order, and had consoled his own, he betook himself to the ordering of the business which had accumulated during his absence: and first indeed, meaning to comply with the zeal of the peoples and of leading men, by which he was invited in rivalry to found new monasteries for our Order among them
or to restore and enlarge those which had fallen down through the injury of the times; he began from the town of San Sepolcro, under the auspices of bishop Nicholas of Città di Castello g, who laid the corner-stone of that monastery, and thereafter, being summoned at the invitation of the people of Siena, Lucca, Pistoia, Perugia, Orvieto, and Cortona, and of other peoples, he either contracted for the making of many monasteries of the Order, or repaired those already made. Thence, having set out for Arezzo, a city most zealous for him, he there held the chapter that had been proclaimed, in the year of salvation brought to us 1273. Those things having been established in that chapter which seemed to make for the stability and adornment of the Religion, meaning to repay something in turn out of gratitude for the munificence of the benefactors, he received them and the men of the Third Order, by the practice of his predecessors and by Pontifical authority, into the communion of the good works which are done throughout the whole Order, by a public instrument.
[156] The assembly of the Fathers being dismissed thence, Philip sets out for Siena, meaning to make for Rome from there: there, that he might nowhere turn aside without some memorable deed done, and he adds an illustrious youth to it. a youth of fourteen years, sent to him by the Mother of God herself, Claromontensis by name, of the ancient family, as some hold, of the Pellacani, or, as others hold, of the yet more ancient Silvian house of Rome itself (which today is called with great license Piccolomini), he enrolled in the black-clad register of the Servants for the service of the Virgin, the sonorous name of Claromontensis being changed into the name of Joachim, the father of Our Lady. Under which name he, having grown into a holy man, having bravely and wonderfully done greater deeds than could be touched upon in a brief digression after our manner, was in our own age enrolled by Paul V, the supreme Pontiff, in the catalogue of the Blessed h.
[157] Afterwards having set out for the council of Lyons, Meanwhile, while Philip was staying at Siena, letters are brought from Cardinal Ottobono the protector; by which, when it was signified that the Pontiff, who was then Gregory X, was setting about a journey to Lyons in Gaul, whither he had convoked an ecumenical council, delaying not at all, he hastens to the City, meaning to settle the affairs of the Religion with the Pontiff before his departure. Having been brought thither, and having set about transacting those things for which he had come, he learns that it pleased the Pontiff that he himself, with a retinue of some learned men of the Order, should accompany him into Gaul to the council. The Pontiff's will being known, Philip summons to himself Friar Henry Bonicollis of Ghent i, who was called the Solemn Doctor, and others, who on behalf of the Order of the Servants (as on behalf of the Orders of the Preachers and Minors, St. Thomas, Bonaventure, and Albert the Great) might honor that assembly of the Fathers at Lyons.
[158] on the journey he exhorts the Florentines to peace, Therefore the Pontiff, having set out from Rome, accompanied by the emperor of the Greeks and the king of Naples, and by very many other Cardinals, princes, and prelates, came to Florence, to see whether he could by any means bring medicine and an end of internal evils to that ailing city, ruined by the factions of its citizens; in which so excellent an endeavor he used the faithful labor of Philip; who, kindled with love of his native land and with zeal for the honor of God and for the salvation of so many souls perishing in those butcheries, by speaking gravely and magnificently for peace, but keenly and boldly against the insolent and obstinate sowers and authors of civil hatreds, supported the supreme Pontiff's zeal for reconciling the city against the vast mass of the inveterate evil.
[159] and for the union of the Greeks with the Latins, Nor was Philip's labor of less use to the Pontiff at Lyons than at Florence. There had come together to that council of Lyons Palæologus, emperor of the Greeks k, and the Constantinopolitan patriarch of that same nation l, and moreover the legates of various Princes of Greece, concerning whose controversies chiefly inquiry was made among the Fathers, that, concord with them being established and the bilge-water of discords lightened for the Christian Commonwealth, the whole force of civil arms might the more easily be turned against the Mahometan, the sworn enemy of the Christian name, if the Latin Church should come to agreement with the Greek. The chief controversy was concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, upon which position and some other disputed matters, whereas now for the thirteenth time the Greeks had returned into favor and concord with the Catholic Church, it was ascertained that in this frequented assembly nothing had been accomplished with the Greeks by the Latins, save that they had labored to no purpose.
[160] and the concord of Christian princes That slippery condition of that nation, and the afflicted state of Western affairs, and above all of the Pontifical, kept the pious mind of the Pontiff anxious; and he desired that it be brought back to its former splendor, the disasters repaired which had been inflicted by the emperor Frederick and by Manfred; then he wished the same Church supported by a Catholic Cæsar and by blessed peace (of which for a good many years now it had been deprived), that, the common arms being turned against the Turk, the kingdom of Jerusalem might be recovered. Which things, when Philip had perceived to be exceedingly necessary and vehemently at the Pontiff's heart, first publicly, according to the dignity of the subject, he discoursed upon these matters with the utmost force and energy; then privately he approached the nobles one by one, and showed the necessity of those things which had been proposed by the Pontiff; and finally did everything by which the Greeks and the Latins might grow together among themselves, and be armed with joined resources against the common enemy.
[161] There was added that, about the time of that council, the holy man felt himself driven and impelled by a new and ampler exuberance of spirit; he pleads most eloquently in the council, whereby it came about that he was both heard with much veneration, and, with a certain divine efficacy joined to an incredible sweetness, brought force to bear upon the souls of all. And there served the ardor of his utterance the gift of tongues, namely, besides his native tongue and the Latin acquired by study, his knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, German, Spanish, and French; which he so exactly commanded that each one heard him speaking in his own tongue like a new Apostle. And opportunely in those days, and very seasonably for the matters which were being transacted in that assembly by the Pontiff and the Fathers, it happened that the seven electors of the Roman empire, after a long interregnum disastrous with various calamities, saluted as King of the Romans Rudolf I the Austrian, count of Habsburg and of the Holsatians m, a hero renowned in war, and second to none of the Princes of his age in the arts of peace and in singular piety and religion toward the Powers above. This came about entirely according to the Pontiff's wish, to the great good of the following centuries, and cheered Philip incredibly, because there had long since been between him and Rudolf, as we have said elsewhere, a great bond of intimate familiarity; which was afterwards for him the cause of summoning Philip into Germany to settle the dissensions of the princes of the empire and to put down heresies, as we shall set forth in its place.
[162] Meanwhile an end was set to the council, and in it the Apostolic heralds of the divine word were commanded by its prescription which being ended, to proclaim the Cross for the recovery of Jerusalem, to compose peace among Catholics by every means, and finally to set themselves as a wall for the house of the Lord, especially against the heresies swelling in Germany: and above all against that most foolish kind of men who, called in their most rude stupidity Flagellants, asserted that their floggings took the place of martyrdom, and that at the rise of their sect the Gospel of Christ would expire n. And so Philip, having girded himself to that work, having taken leave of the Pontiff, returns into Italy, and, having begun the office enjoined upon him with the Bolognese, although he had found that people almost cut to pieces by party zeal and by mutual slaughters, yet shortly left them at peace; and to attest that gratitude to posterity by some monument, the senate of Bologna at public expense saw to the building from the foundations of a great part of the monastery of the Servants.
[163] The tumults of the Bolognese being settled, he goes on thence to Florence with the same spirit and confidence; he returns to settle the tumults of Italy. but to a more laborious mass of affairs; for at home the city, breathed upon by the common plague of that age, was fighting with its own forces against itself, and abroad, along with a foreign enemy, was waging war with the neighboring peoples with almost the same hatreds. There was added to the sum of manifold evils that, being now for twelve years destitute of a shepherd and bishop, they practiced their quarrels and their other evil arts the more securely, the party zeal of both sides being at variance on a matter salutary for both, and neither approving him whom the other of the parties had named to the Apostolic See as bishop, for this very reason, that he was approved by the opposing faction. Meanwhile Gregory X, returning from Lyons, passed from the road and from life to the heavenly Rome; and Innocent V was substituted for him in the Pontificate. When he had bidden the Florentines, who were moving their army against the Pisans, to depart from arms, and they had obediently obeyed the Pontiff's command, being received into favor and trust, they were endowed by the same with many and great gifts of spiritual munificence for the relief of their souls. That unwonted readiness of that people in laying down arms once taken up was the fruit of the sermons of Philip publicly delivered in those days at Florence.
ANNOTATIONS.
of the Order of the Servants, if we believe the Chronicle of the Servants, then archdeacon of Tournai, commended by Scotus on account of his notable learning, and in the academy of Paris called the SOLEMN DOCTOR, published a Summa of Questions &c. Others deny that that Henry ever gave his name to the Order of the Servites. See nevertheless Archangelo Giani, Century 1 of the Annals, book 5, chapter 14, where he claims this outstanding man for his Order by various arguments.
CHAPTER XIII.
The Saint's flight to the people of Pistoia on account of the chair of Florence offered him, the peace reconciled among those citizens, a perilous storm arisen against the Order of the Servites, and dispersed by the patronage of the Mother of God.
XI.
And so Philip, using that lucid interval of his fellow citizens, The Saint demanded as bishop by the Florentines, for the composing of the other part of the Commonwealth, which labored from the want of a bishop, an assembly having been summoned, in a weighty discourse demonstrates the losses and inconveniences of their inaction and of their discord in choosing a shepherd; and presently, pleading against that ruin with the utmost force and with an Apostolic spirit joined to singular moderation, he exhorted the people and the Clergy (for to these also the common taint of the factions had come) that they should with concordant minds and votes appoint a shepherd for the Florentine flock, now almost in peril within the jaws of the wolf of hell; when suddenly a unanimous shout of the people, undoubtedly moved, willing and commanding, arises in these words: Let Father Philip be our Bishop. Philip, struck by the unexpected decree of the multitude, at these voices not only shuddered, but blushed and even fell silent, and thereby all that brilliant ardor of his utterance languished throughout the remaining epilogue. Yet, the discourse being somehow concluded, a little afterwards he withdraws from Florence as secretly as possible.
[165] he flees to the people of Pistoia, The Florentine people meanwhile and the whole body of Ecclesiastics persist in their judgment with the same zeal as in the assembly; saying that a man of the first nobility of the city, of outstanding prudence and known sanctity, born to conduct and arrange all the highest matters, and whom the prerogative of the Cardinalitial college a few years before had judged worthy of the Pontificate, was assuredly to be preferred to a stranger, who would be imposed on the see of Florence by the Pontiff unless agreement were reached; and they exchanged publicly and privately many other things consonant with the holy Man's merits with an unwonted concord: from which it sufficiently appeared that the acclamation for Philip had not been rash and from the fickleness of the common people. But Philip, long since taught in like and even greater perils to trim sail for his humility, having escaped by flight to the people of Pistoia, since there was not sufficient agreement upon another bishop, left the approach to that honor to a stranger (as was not absurdly conjectured would happen), namely to James of Perugia a, of the Augustinian family, who was chosen by Honorius IV, the supreme Pontiff, as bishop of Florence in place of Philip. And by these successes indeed Philip's virtue and diligence displayed themselves at Florence.
[166] whom he with difficulty brings to concord, For the rest, no easier things remained for him to smooth out at Pistoia by the decree of the council praised a little before. Since indeed that city, if any other, with the most savage spirits and minds nourished the factions of the Guelphs and Ghibellines even to the stripping off of humanity, by daily examples of civil wrath; which madness of theirs, as it was common with the other peoples of Italy through the unhappiness of that century, so was harder to cure in them, because a people factious by its own disposition, but otherwise generous and shrewd, spurned every medicine save the letting of blood. Of which matter it can be a proof that the names of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, devised for the ruin of the human race, being extinguished in that city, revived after a long interval under the appellation of the Blacks and the Whites b.
[167] and one of the chief leaders of the factions And so Philip had to sweat with vast labor for the healing of an evil so grown up and so deeply implanted. He nevertheless, holding the difficulty of the matter beneath the ardor of his soul, trusting in God undertakes it with a great and brave heart, and completes it with no less fruit; for when from a raised place, before a most crowded audience of the people of Pistoia, he had begun a discourse burning with the divine Spirit and weighty with terrors, from that verse of the Psalm, "Upon the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, when we remembered thee, O Sion," he so vividly and to the life set their deplorable state before their eyes, that most of them began first to be ashamed of themselves, and presently even seriously to repent. Of the number of these a certain man of excellent nobility, whose name was Bonaventure, son of Vannius de Bonaccuro, was by his sudden change a spectacle to both his own and the heavenly citizens. He was the leader and standard-bearer of the Ghibelline party, a youth fierce of soul, and one who had obtained from an evil cause the famous name of a great warrior. He, who knew not how to fear armed hosts, struck by his conscience and by Philip's sermon, having condemned his wicked arms and arts of raging against his fellow citizens, prostrate as a suppliant at Philip's feet, begs with the lowliest prayers that he would not think it burdensome to add him, returning to God from his heart, to the number of the Servants of the most merciful Lady.
[168] he admits into his Order, To which Philip said that he indeed was ready to comply with his good and pious will, if he had returned into favor in good faith and with a better humility with all his enemies, and particularly with the opposing faction, and had thereafter wholly restored to their lawful owners all those things which he had turned to his own uses, gotten in a wicked and unjust war. By these conditions the holy Man wished both to take a trial of his exceedingly fierce spirit, and to lay a road for those who should emulate so noble an example, by which, as a short but necessary way, they might be joined to God and to justice. Bonaventure exactly performed both, and thus at last became possessed of his wish. Philip, congratulating himself and the Mother of God upon this so rich spoil of this leader, arms the new recruit of the new warfare with admonitions drawn from the sanctuary of ascetic philosophy, and teaches him how he may pursue without stumbling what he has well begun. Which admonitions Bonaventure sank so deep into his breast that, reckoned among the Blessed of the Order of the Servants, he did such deeds and so lived that he matched that title and name by his deeds without controversy c, as is clear from the history of his life published in Italian.
[169] But the force and efficacy of Philip's sermons and private admonitions did not stop here: by whose example both men, for very many of both sexes of that city, flowing to him as to a mediator for entering upon peace with God, committed themselves wholly to his judgment. Philip, having arranged them into two classes or confraternities, one of men and the other of women, teaches them what they ought thenceforth to do and what to omit. And the men indeed, who, with Bonaventure's example shining before them, had devoted the rest of their age to bewailing the crimes of their past life and to avenging them by the sharpest penance, because they were of those bloodthirsty men, either enemies or fellow soldiers of Bonaventure, lest ever any forgetfulness should weaken the mind of repentance divinely put into them, he willed to wear red sacks and to carry about perpetually the memorials of the slaughters they had wrought; whence they obtained the name of Penitents, and, because they were accustomed publicly to yield themselves to much blood, of the Flagellants d of the Order of the Servants of the Most Blessed Virgin. Thus both by their very garb and by their own gore, in place of another's once shed, nobly clad in purple and gloriously defiled, they were by their vast example both a salvation to themselves and to their fellow citizens, and advanced with daily increases in Christian piety, chiefly under the leadership and discipline of blessed Father Bonaventure, who, being afterwards set over them, no less briskly than once toward slaughters and burnings bore the torch before them toward all the honors of Christian virtue.
[170] Nor was the piety of the women of Pistoia less illustrious than that of the men, and women, are stirred up to penance. and perhaps the more illustrious for this, that, with no slaughter or public crime committed, they entered the arduous way of virtue with manly spirit at Philip's exhortation; for indeed at the same time at which the men were contriving their metamorphoses, some of the chief and noble matrons, with others of middling fortune mingled, with concordant minds and vows of pleasing God, received from the blessed Father the habit of the third Order of the Servants. And thus, being clad and veiled after the manner of nuns, the name of the cloaked women e (commonly Mantellate) was given them from this philosophic mantle they had assumed, and, growing together into a regular congregation, in course of time it gave very many virgins of approved virtue, as our Giani demonstrates more fully in the Annals.
XII.
[171] While these things are being done by Philip at home and abroad, While a grave adversity arises, and all the houses glow with his discipline and with their first spirit, and on that account, and for Philip's excellent deeds, the Order of the Servants is in the affections and conversations of all — lest namely by successes so glad it should either be lifted up in spirit, or through harmful security should sink into idleness or sloth — there arises against it by divine permission such a storm as that in which both Philip's fortitude and the firmness of the Order itself, and the present protection of the Virgin Mother of God over her Servants, were not obscurely seen. Of that matter the account was of this kind. Gregory X being dead, Innocent V, having gained the government, held nothing more venerable than that the decrees of the council of Lyons should as soon and as exactly as possible obtain the end and effect proposed by the Fathers; and among the first that (which agreed with another decree of the Lateran council) by which provision was made concerning the too numerous variety of Religions in the Church: that, if anyone understood himself to be called by God to the state of the Religious life, he should join himself to one of those families approved and reduced to a few, and found no new one; and if any had been founded by this unseasonable license of men, they should by the prescription of this decree be abolished. And this indeed was salutarily and providently sanctioned according to the necessity of those times; for, as superstition is a certain ape and shadow of true Religion, among various peoples men of ill-spent leisure, in imitation of the most illustrious families, were daily devising new ones, with one and another fashion of garments, with one and another name and laws, and on their own authority, with no one's approval, were propagating them. Which thing the Pontiffs not absurdly feared and judged would one day give rise to disturbances in the Church of God, as it had already begun to do, and that a measure and a barrier must be set to that caprice.
[172] which threatened ruin to the Order of the Servites, For the rest, the calamity of the Order of the Servants turned upon this, that it was cast into the class of these ill-omened Orders; as it seemed to Pope Innocent should be done. Who accordingly
gives orders to Cardinal Ottobono, the protector of the Order, that he should cite the General of the Servants to Rome to plead his cause and render an account concerning his Order. Philip meanwhile was presiding at Pistoia over the chapter of his own men, more solicitous for the adorning of his religion than for vindicating it into the lot and number of the approved Orders: when behold, the Cardinal's letters come; by which not only was a day appointed for the Father General, but meanwhile also, by force of the decree, it was commanded that neither he nor any other Superior of our Order should thereafter admit anyone either to the habit or indeed to profession, nor should they dare to receive the confessions of externs or to bury their bodies with them; finally, that they should not on any account alienate or sell immovable goods (as being already devolved to the Pontifical treasury), under penalty of anathema and curses. By all which it was intended that, as though the case were prejudged, all should understand that, in the Pontiff's mind, the Order of the Servants also was reckoned among the Orders struck out by that decree.
[173] St. Philip consults his other brethren, That message struck the holy man in no small measure, but yet in such a way that he was present in mind, and measured the greatness of the difficulty by no human considerations, but by the strength of the Queen of the heavens, the Foundress of the primeval Institute. But that meanwhile nothing of human providence, so far as depended on him, might be found wanting, he summons the chief of the Fathers to Monte Senario. And by chance in those days most opportunely blessed Fathers Sostegni and Uguccione, who alone survived of our seven men, worn out by age and labors, had arrived thither from Germany and Gaul, that they might prepare themselves for a happy death. To these and to the other Fathers, being gathered, Philip reads out the protector's letters, demonstrates in what case the matter stands, and then, the opinions of each being asked, inquires what needs to be done in a matter so arduous and doubtful. The Fathers, who saw that the sum of their affairs was at stake, wavered in mind anxiously and variously between hope and fear. On the one side, several confirmations of the Order by Pontiffs, Philip's diligence proved in straits and difficulties, and the sweetness of divine providence toward its own bade them hope well; on the other, the authority of two councils, the supreme Pontiff's prejudgment, and the greatness of the matter at issue sharpened their fear and anxiety.
[174] At length, since straits pressed on every side, it was resolved by all opinions and by their counsel takes refuge with the Mother of God, that refuge should be taken with the Protection of the Mother of God, the sole Foundress of the Order. And so in all the churches of the Order perpetual supplications, with the singing of the Antiphon Salve Regina, from the choir to the chapels of the same Virgin, a vow having been conceived, were decreed for the averting of this present peril, destined to be a perpetual monument to posterity that this Order, founded upon the protection of the Most Blessed Virgin and resting under her patronage, could be overthrown by no attempts either of men or of the powers below. Then, turning to Philip, the Fathers ask and exhort him that in his wisdom he take care that the commonwealth suffer no harm. And these and other things having been done in that assembly of the Fathers according to the time and the crisis, Philip, sacrifices and other entreaties besides those votive ones having been proclaimed for the propitiating of the heavenly Godhead, and Father Lotaringo being bidden, while he himself was absent, to take care and be present everywhere, especially against the violence of outsiders and of prelates, if any should press while the case was pending, himself hastily takes the road to the City.
[175] When behold, scarcely had he set out when it is announced that Pope Innocent, and it is dispersed by the death of Pope Innocent IV with a slender enjoyment of five months, the Pontificate having been tasted rather than exercised, had been carried off by death. Which chance, as it seemed for the present to have somewhat lightened the anxiety of the Order of the Servants, so it was believed, and not rashly, that the Pontiff had been punished with that penalty by divine power because he had purposed to destroy the same Order (to which, as weighty authors testify, before attaining that summit he had shown himself little favorable). Meanwhile nevertheless, as adverse things arise more easily than they set, the calamity of the Marian Religion survived its author, although, he being dead, somewhat more even. But a certain admirable change of affairs, which happened at Rome in those days, had raised the hope of all, and especially of Philip, in a greater degree; for as soon as he arrived at the City, he learns that Cardinal Ottobono had been created Pontiff under the name of Hadrian V. Nor did he doubt that he who for many years had acted as patron of the Order of the Servants with the utmost fidelity and the utmost care would be as favorable and ready to preserve the Religion and vindicate it from destruction as he had a little before found Innocent zealous to overturn it.
[176] There was added moreover to these grounds of dawning hope and by the favor of his successor is dissipated; that Hadrian, from his long practice of the protectorship, thoroughly knew the origin, progress, and state of the Order, and held in present memory those things which he himself had obtained from the supreme Pontiffs his predecessors for the firmness of this Institute. Besides this, the opinion of the same Pontiff concerning Philip's sanctity — worthy, as he had once judged, of the Pontificate by him — by which he had foretold to him nine years before this very Pontificate, and had excellently accomplished arduous affairs for the common good of the universal Church and for the private good of his own Order; all this promised that things would fall out according to the wish of the Religion laboring in doubtful crisis; so that the afflicted Religion seemed to have obtained in one Pontiff both a patron and a judge. Nor was that reasoning absurd. For when Philip, being admitted to his first audience, had discoursed more brilliantly, before one sufficiently privy to the truth of the things brought forward, concerning the immunity of his Order from those decrees of the two councils, he found the Pontiff agreeing in all things.
[177] but he dying not long after, But it pleased God the Best and Greatest, and his greatest Mother, who willed that the constancy of their Servant Philip should be made illustrious, and the endurance of the other Servants exercised, and that by these very ways the Servite cause should be more and more established, to set up an example by which it might be demonstrated that those things to which they had decreed eternity neither fall by anyone's hatred, nor stand by human favor alone. And accordingly, as lately Pope Innocent, having meditated the destruction of the Order, was carried off after the fifth month, so Hadrian V, inclined to everything else, dying within a month from the beginning of his Pontificate, left divine providence its own course as regards our difficulties: a great man indeed and most worthy of the supreme honor, as one who, having discharged the most difficult legations to the Germans and the Britons, restored in those kingdoms the Christian discipline that had wretchedly fallen. Worn out by these and very many other labors and by his advanced age, and having deserved excellently of our Order, he passed over to the more splendid priesthood of eternal happiness.
[178] The Saint orders the matter to be examined juridically, That chance, at so unfavorable a time, although it somewhat affected Philip, yet did not cast him down from his state, but rather, pursuing what he had begun with a greater spirit, he sought out every approach to the new Pontiff John XXI for conducting the matter well. And so he approaches John Orsini, a Cardinal who had very great weight with the Pontiff in favor and authority, and makes him his own: and then, by his agency, being kindly heard by the Pontiff, and proofs having been produced both by voice and in writing, by which he proved that his Order was by no means aimed at by those two decrees of the councils, he pleaded the cause of his own solidly and weightily; and at length brought it about that the Pontiff gave the apologetic pamphlet presented on that cause to be examined by the Consistorial advocates, the men most learned in law before the Pontiff; and bade them faithfully report to him what they should judge to be the law. But Philip, although those beginnings seemed glad enough, and he hoped that, the suit being once joined, if it were not hurried, all would be safe; yet, such was his solicitude and prudence, he thought that besides these, other jurisconsults in the City most knowing in such matters should be employed in the cause, that by as many votes as possible the Order of the Servants, acquitted in a most perilous cause, might triumph both more easily and more gloriously.
[179] and by the judgment of the supreme Pontiff Nor did his hope deceive him; for both the jurisconsults appointed by the Pontiff and those engaged by Philip himself determined with concordant judgments that those two decrees of the two councils availed nothing at all against the Order of the Servants, as resting and founded upon the authority of the Apostolic See, and to that effect also they reported to the Pontiff, as they had been bidden. Moved by which, having heard the things which had been submitted to the question on either side, he at last determined thus: Since the Religion of the Servants was by no means comprehended in the number of those Institutes which were struck by either council, it pleased him that that Order should live by its own laws and flourish as hitherto, undisturbed, for the variety of the beauty of the house of the Lord and for the common profit of the Church.
[180] And this was the outcome of the most perilous storm that had ever to that day been stirred up against this Order. he wins his cause. Which having thundered itself out harmlessly in this manner by the goodness of the Powers above and Philip's utmost moderation, thanks having been given to God and to the Preserving Virgin, and leave taken both of the Pontiff and of Cardinal Orsini, the blessed Father sets out for Montepulciano; where the Fathers had assembled at his bidding for a chapter. When he arrived thither, he both consoled the Fathers, held in suspense by the expectation of a doubtful outcome at the Roman court, by the victory of the common cause, and repressed by the Pontifical rescript those who insulted them with importunate outcries as though they were now annulled and cast out of the number of true Religious; and, that thereafter that kind of insolence might be met, besides other things making for the honor of the Religion, he decreed in that chapter that Religious should, publicly in sermons and privately in familiar conversations, inform their hearers concerning the privileges of the Order, and the repeated confirmations of the same by Pontiffs, and finally concerning the decisive sentence of Pope John XXI, the suit being removed. Which having been briskly performed, that opinion rashly conceived concerning our Order vanished more quickly than it had grown strong.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER XIV.
The peace between the Guelphs and Ghibellines confirmed at Florence by the Saint.
XIII.
Therefore the bark of the Servite Religion, having gone through so perilous a tossing, Nicholas III having been elected Pontiff, came near, its tackle being scarcely yet sufficiently refitted, to being caught again by new waves out of harbor to toss on the deep: for when Philip, having gone aside to complete the chapter, was returning to the court to strengthen what he had well begun, meaning to use the time and the Pontiff's favorable will for the affairs of the weakened Religion, he is informed to his great grief that Pope John had died a. But when, after an interregnum of six months, there had succeeded the deceased John, having taken the name of Nicholas III, that very Cardinal John Orsini, by whom, as we mentioned a little before, the approach to pleading his cause before the Pontiff had been opened to Philip, then indeed the afflicted Order was permitted to breathe again and at last to raise itself up wholly: for besides the inborn and perpetual benevolence of the whole renowned family of the Orsini toward our family, from his recent familiarity Philip became so dear and acceptable to the Pontiff that, when he had created his sister's son, Friar Latino Malabranca, a Cardinal, he joined Philip to him as helper, under the name of theologian, and in turn gave that same nephew to the Order of the Servants, long since bereaved of such a safeguard, as protector: which availed very greatly for the recovery of the Religion's dignity, and against the force and violence of many by which it was frequently harassed.
[182] Philip receives an excellent youth into his Order, Meanwhile, the time of the chapter drawing near, with the good leave of the new protector he betakes himself to Borgo San Sepolcro, the place appointed for that work, and there after his manner delivered a brilliant discourse to the people of that place; in which he expounded that saying of Christ our Savior, Luke 14, "He that renounceth not all that he possesseth cannot be my disciple," with such and so divine eloquence, that one of the hearers, whose name was Andrew, born in a good station, having bidden farewell to his parents and to riches, prostrate as a suppliant at the knees of the Apostolic Preacher, begged to be co-opted by him into the number of the Servants of the Queen of the heavens; who, having obtained his wish, after he had made great advances in virtue, especially in the harshness of solitude and of life, and when from likeness of pursuits, as happens, friendship and dealings and intimacies concerning matters of eternal salvation had arisen between him and a good many hermits of the Apennine, he brought them all over from that wandering life, though rigid yet in our times little safe, to the following of the institutes of his Order in the year 1294, and did many other excellent things; by which, having deserved a place and the name of Blessed b among the seven disciples of blessed Philip, he is celebrated by our Annals.
[183] and being summoned into Germany by the emperor, Meanwhile, Vicars General having been destined for Germany and Gaul, who should raise up and console our men there, alarmed and anxious about the outcome of the war lately stirred up against the Religion, envoys from Rudolf Cæsar are present before the Pontiff, who among other things, in the name of their emperor, earnestly sought from him that, since various and harmful sects were ranging through the empire, and that evil crept more widely day by day, and since the emperor trusted that by the proved virtue and Apostolic spirit of Philip, General of the Servants, that plague could be met, the Pontiff would be pleased to send him to him at the first opportunity. To the other matters the Pontiff replied most kindly to the envoys and according to the emperor's wish; concerning Philip, although he denied nothing for the present, he was a little more difficult; because the Florentine and Bolognese people, at that very time, wearied and broken by the domestic evils of their factions, having sent envoys, sought from the Pontiff as from the common parent of the human race that, his authority being interposed, he would compose peace between the parts of their torn commonwealth. Which province, as extraordinarily and once, when the strength and hatreds of the parties were unimpaired, Philip had well administered; so the Pontiff had again designated him as minister for that necessary work.
[184] But the head of the difficulty was that he wished Philip joined to Cardinal Malabranca, his nephew, he is first sent to Florence by the Pope, who was sent as legate to reconcile those peoples and to receive from the Bolognese the lordship of Emilia: whose sanctity and authority among those peoples was, from his recent deeds, in the highest repute, so that in consideration of these that people might more easily admit salutary counsels to their ears and to their minds. Nor did the Pontiff's expectation deceive him: for the Bolognese both handed over Emilia to the legate, and the chiefs of the factions, moved by the legate's authority and by veneration of Philip, in good faith remitted their private hatreds and enmities for the commonwealth. Which having been happily accomplished, and the city and the rest of the province ordered, the legate with Philip crosses over to the Florentines. Such indeed was the inveterate force of the evil, drunk deep and wide into all the veins and vitals of that wretched commonwealth, from the most empty cause of two names, the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Of which, since mention has hitherto been frequent with us and will be so hereafter, I hope it will not be foreign to our purpose to recall in this place, for the reader's sake and for the clarity of the matters we treat, the origin and fountain whence names ennobled by so many disasters flowed.
[185] Authors vary in setting forth the origin of a matter so much sung of; that he might reconcile the two factions, whose origin which very difficulty of finding it out seems to disclose that those fatal names were devised among the powers below for the ruin of the human race, and brought into the lands by some one of the Furies to confound the nature of things. Yet that seems of all the most likely which some review in this manner. Roger, king of the Sicilians, nearly a hundred years since, fearing lest, if Conrad III Augustus should come into Italy, he would be driven from his kingdom by him (the arms of the Cæsars being always hostile to the dominion of the Sicilians), having sent envoys into Germany, stirred up against Cæsar his enemy Guelf, duke of Bavaria, and, war having been kindled there, he sent from Italy vast auxiliaries in the name of the Duke, and of himself, and (to add an appearance of holiness to his forces) of the supreme Pontiff, whose beneficiary he professed himself. With these Henry, Cæsar's son, joined battle, born in the town of Ghibellino, in which name also he rejoiced, as in a clan surname, in memory of his birth. In this battle line therefore was shouted Io Ghibelline; in the other, Io Guelfo; and from that day it was kept that the Guelphs should be called the party of the Pontiffs, the Ghibellines that of the Cæsars.
[186] But those names, now almost extinguished and blotted out of men's memory, and progress are explained, broke out afresh by the crime of Frederick II, destined to be a watchword of slaughters and burnings. For he, devoted to the curses by the just anger of Pope Gregory, was so exasperated by that matter that through the Frangipani, Roman citizens of the highest power, he saw to it that the Pontiff was driven from the city, and set about waging open war with him and with the Church and with those who defended the Church's party. And so from that time Italy began to be drawn apart into two parties, some following the resources of the empire, others of the Church; of whom the latter were called Guelphs, the former Ghibellines. Which factions held Italy for many years afterwards, and reduced it to the utmost destruction, raging cruelly especially through Etruria, Lombardy, the Romagna, and the March.
[187] and which burned with long-standing hatred, Nor indeed did only some cities follow the emperor, others the Pontiff, and contend among themselves with hostile arms and minds, but in the several cities themselves also they advanced to such fury and madness that some favored the emperor, others the Church, and strove, an inexpiable hatred goading them, to drive one another from the cities and to despoil them of their goods. As therefore that plague weighed especially upon Etruria, so it disfigured its metropolis Florence, luxuriating in nine years of peace and felicity, with every disaster, the two chief families of the Buondelmonti and the Amidei having clashed together. Following whose auspices, or rather fury, seventy-two other patrician families went over into parties. Thirty-nine joined themselves to the Guelph side with the Buondelmonti, the rest to the Ghibelline with the Uberti. Nor was there less briskness in party zeal than in tragic disasters. Of which there was then first an end, when, the strength of the city having been cut down on both sides, satiety of mutual slaughter of its own accord proclaimed for their arms either a truce or a cessation.
[188] he might reconcile among themselves. Thus the Florentines, awakened from a long lethargy, at length learned to decline c the emptiness of their contests and the names of Guelphs and Ghibellines, being grammarians taught by their own hurt, when the shipwreck of their native land and of their private fortunes had been made. For the rest, beneath those masks of names the ambition of the nobles and of the plebs, masquerading and drawing to itself the first parts in the commonwealth, ran riot. The nobles, by the inborn evil of nobility Ghibelline with the emperor, wished that commands and honors should be in their own hands, that is, of a few, the plebs being excluded, coasting as near as possible to the shores of tyranny. On the contrary the Guelph plebs, supported by the Church's forces, urged strongly for the field and for popular assemblies (in which brave men, whether plebeian or patrician, might on equal terms attain and hold honors). But when there was no end of the contests, and both the Ghibellines and the Guelphs themselves saw plainly that without an arbiter nothing could be accomplished toward peace, concord being unwilling, as I set out to say, they invoked the good faith and authority of the Pontiff.
[189] Although that matter at first succeeded but little, But indeed, as men mortally wounded, terrified at the sight of their wounds, warned by their peril, do indeed straightway implore the physician impatiently; but when he comes and begins to handle the evil, to get out the knife, and to apply his healing hands, he is repelled with a greater impatience than that with which he had been implored; so the Florentines, although, afflicted by mutual disasters, they sought physicians for their wounded and almost undone city, yet at the very first treatment repelled the most skilled ones offered by the Pontiff, the legate a latere his nephew, and Philip their own fellow citizen. For although the beginnings of things promised everything favorable, since the legates were received with great preparation and with great tokens of common gladness, and the Cardinal, as though laying the foundations of peace and concord, for the building of an eternal monument of so happy a matter at so welcome an arrival, laid with his own hand with the greatest solemnity the first stone of a church of magnificent workmanship to the holy Virgin who is called Novella; yet afterwards, turning to accomplish the rest, he found the parties so tenacious of their most evil practice that, the matter being unaccomplished, he was compelled for the present to desist from what he had begun, and, as Philip advised, to put off the settlement to another time.
[190] Meanwhile Philip enjoined both upon himself privately and upon all the monasteries and confraternities of Etruria yet the Saint little by little advances, those things which seemed opportune for appeasing the divine anger and for bending so great an obstinacy of men. Then he himself went about the houses of the more powerful citizens, exhorting, beseeching, terrifying, appeasing, and finally leaving nothing undone which could bring either some light to minds obstinate in so doubled a darkness,
or bring salutary force to bear upon them, until, having overwhelmed them with the weight of arguments, convicted them by their consciences, and struck them with the fear of impending evils (if they should resolve to persist in their purpose), he drove them so far as to give in their hands and to promise without evasions that they would be in the power of the legate and of Philip. Wherefore, God helping well, that which a little before seemed incredible to surmount was, by Philip's divine efficacy and by the veneration in which he was held, altogether smoothed out and accomplished according to the wish of the Pontiff and the legate.
[191] Nay, for an increase of so great a matter, not only were the minds of the citizens bent to peace and Christian kindness, the leader of one party being admitted into his Order, but many also, being more deeply breathed upon by Philip's thunderbolts, sent back the message to human affairs, having seized upon a stricter manner of life. Among whom, as Philip's second rich spoil in this kind of warfare, Ubaldo, of the most noble family of the Adimari, leader of the Ghibelline party, being converted to God, afforded a noble spectacle of himself, and one which provoked the minds of many to the same distinction. Concerning whom, having been enrolled by Philip in the register of the Servants and then also of the Blessed d for his excellent merits, we would bring forward in this place the things worthy of memory that were done by him, were it not our mind to do so in another place more opportunely and more fully.
[192] For the rest, the controversies of the parties having been settled by this success according to what is fair and good, and he at last confirms the peace by mutual marriages. that no Florentine citizen might be without share in the salvation that had suddenly arisen, action was taken with the same felicity concerning the restoring of the exiles to their native land. Sixty families, chiefly of the Ghibelline party, returned, and to them their goods, which had been confiscated when they were cast out of the city, were wholly restored. Furthermore, that that peace might be not only ratified but also firm and perpetual, and that it might not at some time be shaken by the recurring memory of past quarrels, Philip thought that this peril must be guarded against by marriages and alliances among the nobles; and he brought it about, with the same course of diligence, that the Uberti with the Buondelmonti, the Adimari with the Tosinghi, the Pazzi with the Donati, and the other chief families of the factions grew together by the sanctity of these covenants. For all which things piously, bravely, and happily done, the Senate and People of Florence judged that, because Philip Benizi, General of the Order of the Servants, had saved the commonwealth as it was rushing to destruction, and had brought back peace and the citizens to the city, a very large sum of money should be decreed for the completion of the church of the holy Virgin of the Annunciation, and, this having been paid out by decree of the senate, he set the crown upon that magnificent work. Nor did the Cardinal yield to the Florentines for the same reasons either in benevolence toward Philip or in reverence toward that basilica: for indeed he both of himself imparted with large kindness indulgences to those piously approaching that church, and was the author to the Pontiff his uncle of imparting greater ones.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER XV.
The Saint's repeated journey into Germany, his deeds there, the benefits received, his return into Italy, and the chapter held there.
XIV.
And these things having been done at Florence in the winter of this year 1280, The Saint having set out to the emperor, and reported to the Pontiff through Cardinal Latino with an honorable commendation of Philip and the highest praise of his diligence, the Pontiff, rejoicing at so prosperous an outcome of a most difficult matter, the more gladly gratified the long-standing desire of Rudolf Augustus by sending Philip, the more clearly he had now so often made trial of the man's exquisite prudence. And so in the eightieth year of this century a Philip, meaning to comply with the Pontiff's commands and with Cæsar's will, Father Lotaringo being meanwhile set over the affairs of Italy with vicarial power, himself undertook a second journey into Germany; and having been brought thither and led to Rudolf, by reason of the close bond of their old friendship and the long duration of his expectation, he was received by him most honorably and most kindly. Then, the duties of salutation being discharged, they come into familiar conversation. In it Cæsar opens to the holy man his whole mind and all the plans of his counsels in administering the empire, for his judgment: and presently, because he had designated him leader of all the Religious soldiers in this Catholic expedition, he sets forth fully and gravely how much he hopes from him, and what he wishes performed, in restraining the sectaries and bringing back to duty the princes of Bavaria and Bohemia, who were refusing his sway.
[194] he foretells to him a happy outcome of the war, To which Philip: that besides other things he had been sent by the Pontiff for this very purpose, that, so far as the slenderness of his strength and remaining ability might bear, he might be at hand and a safeguard to his majesty; accordingly let him use such labor as his was in what way he wished; for there was nothing which he did not desire to undergo for so just a cause of his and of the Church. For the rest, let him be of good courage; that he trusted the present help of the divine Godhead would be at hand to so good a mind and to undertakings so salutary. Nor was that prophecy vain; for indeed, two regular armies having been prepared, Rudolf, the duke of the Bavarians having shortly been vanquished, led his forces against Ottokar, king of Bohemia; who, exulting in pride and in confidence of his resources, even to the point of contempt for Rudolf, had made Austria, which he had invaded, part of his dominion. But Rudolf, having conquered him in battle, routed and put him to flight at Niederspurg, and at last compelled him to come to him as a suppliant b.
[195] While these things are being done in the battle line by Rudolf in his war cloak, by Philip in his gown the titles of Pontifical and imperial preacher are fulfilled not perfunctorily; and he advances his endeavors by sermons, for by his own sermons and those of the men whom he led, and by private counsels, he brought it about that some laid down the impious arms taken up against Cæsar, others begged peace and pardon for the sway they had refused; others, heresy being abjured, returned into favor with the Church; finally very many also, having condemned the fleetingness and deceitfulness of present things, embraced the Religious course of life in various families and especially in ours of the Servants of the Mother of God. Thus the rebels against the empire and the Church, subdued by arms and by the arts of peace, thereafter did what was commanded.
[196] For the rest, the emperor esteemed so highly these merits of Philip and the dignity of his Order of the glorious Servitude and he is endowed with various benefits, that he not only lavished upon all our houses throughout his whole empire the most ample privileges and immunities, but himself also, having received together with his Augusta and wife, and worn beneath the purple and the general's cloak, the habit of our Third Order, willed to be called by our men — nay rather, willed even to be — altogether a Brother of the Order of the Servants c, and a Servant of the Mother of God. For my part, when I consider this benevolence of the supreme emperor, exercised almost beneath his majesty, and these very things which were done between him and Philip with so great familiarity and token of an intimacy entered upon, at these beginnings of our family in Germany, and when I compare them with our return now into that same Germany (whence we had been driven by the sectaries out of hatred for our Lady and our name), it is wont to seem that it came about by a singular benefit of the Queen of the heavens and our Lady, that by a certain hidden prompting of the divine Spirit this most renowned Austrian house is borne toward this Order with a certain peculiar and deeply implanted tenderness of love and piety.
[197] For indeed, that what we have thus far reported may suffice concerning Rudolf and those ancient times to which the biographer adds (although no discourse of ours will ever match that vast mind of that Prince of August memory in gratifying us), and that we may speak of these our own times, in which our Religion was restored and reestablished in Germany by this same Most August house: such was the piety of the Most August and most religious emperor Ferdinand II (whose memory shall be in eternal benediction) toward our Order, that, contending on equal terms with the piety of Rudolf I, he seemed either to equal or to surpass the striving of that benevolence. For certainly not only did his own Cæsarean majesty, together with his Most August consort Eleonora and all his August children, with a vast example of reverence and service toward the Empress of the heavens, put on nearly fifteen years ago the habit of our confraternity, and was the author to very many of his Cardinals of taking up the same kind of service; but he also assigned several monasteries, and to those assigned gave such privileges and prerogatives of honors as will most eloquently attest to posterity the piety and mind of his sacred Cæsarean majesty toward our family. Concerning the Most August Ferdinand III, the heir no less of his father's virtues than of his power, and concerning the Most Serene Empress Maria, infanta of the Spains, his most pious consort, since we have wearied their modesty in another place, we shall here refrain from saying more.
[198] many more recent things, But concerning his Most Serene sister, Anna Juliana Gonzaga, widow of the Archduke Ferdinand, Prince of Tyrol, who made the beginning of recalling our Order into Germany, since we have begun to give some account of the Austrian munificence and love toward the family of the Servants, so much the less must silence be kept, because, being freed from concern for her humility, we can both write more freely and more safely praise her who has been borne to heaven. She, when she had poured out her own royal dowry and that of her Most Serene daughter, sister Anna Catharina (three monasteries having been magnificently built and founded: one of cloistered nuns of the first, another of Tertiary nuns of our third Order, the third of the Servant Fathers, at Innsbruck), with a liberality plainly Austrian; after all her possessions had been spent on those works, at last consecrated herself and her Most Serene daughter with her in our Order to the service of God and of his most blessed Mother. In which the mother, her daughter still surviving (and O may it be as long as possible), her servitude being well served, closed her last day nearly twelve years ago, not without a just repute of approved holiness, as may be established from the Work which her confessor published in type concerning her deeds d. We omit in this place what the daughter of this heroine, Anna the empress, August consort of Matthias Augustus, of glorious memory, having likewise taken our habit, both did and had determined to do after her mother's example, a great weight of gold having been consecrated to the foundation of three monasteries, if she had survived her sickly husband. Which salutary and honorable designs of hers toward our Order (whose institute she had resolved to profess) though an untimely death scattered; yet by her will she sufficiently declared, by the munificence of her legacies, what her mind toward us was.
[199] which the House of Austria But what of the Most Serene archduke Leopold of memory to be celebrated, brother of Ferdinand II Cæsar, and his rival in cherishing the Servite race? Whose kindness while he lived was so great, not only
but his care also and solicitude for us, that he seemed altogether to be transacting his own affairs when he transacted ours. Of whose benevolence and beneficence the archducal monastery in Tyrol, at Mount Waldrast, built and furnished liberally by him, renowned for the most present patronage of the Most Blessed Virgin and for frequent miracles, stands as an eternal monument to us and to our posterity. And that inclination of his benevolent and beneficent mind toward us the Most Serene Archduchess Claudia de' Medici strenuously and kindly pursues, both of her own native accord and by the example of her Most Serene consort. But let this beneficent line of Austrians, worthy of eternity of memory, be closed by the Most Serene Archduke Leopold William, son of the Emperor Ferdinand II and brother of the third, singular protector of our Order in Germany, and likewise by the Most Serene archduchess sisters, Maria Renata queen of Poland, and Maria Anna, electress of Bavaria; who, although they have not yet declared by the monuments of monasteries built the piety and inclination of their minds toward our Marian Servitude — more by the unfairness of the times than by any failure of will — yet pursue our Order (whose habit, like all the other Austrian Princes in Germany, even the infants, they wear beneath their purples) with such and such abundant favors and benefits, that they brilliantly and serenely display, to our great profit and consolation, the piety which they bear beneath the same habit.
[200] To this Most Serene Austrian house, akin no less in blood than in piety, and Bavaria have conferred upon his Order. the Most Serene House of Bavaria is borne with the same reverence toward this same Servitude of ours and with the same care for advancing it. Which the Most Serene Ferdinand, Elector of Cologne, willed to be attested to those above and to those between, by giving to our Order and liberally endowing the monastery of the Holy Cross near his city of Bonn. Nor with less favor and fervor does the Most Serene Elector Maximilian, his brother, his authority as a most wise and most powerful Prince being interposed before the supreme Pontiff, advance that work which for some centuries now has been among our Order's first wishes, namely the canonization of this very blessed Father Philip. And moreover, being himself long since consecrated, he offered and consecrated to the Most Blessed Virgin as servants his two Most Serene sons of promise, like another faithful Abraham, by their reception of our mourning habit. Which his Most Serene brother Duke Albert did concerning himself and his Most Serene Son Albert Sigismund. Our Religion therefore, supported by so present a safeguard and favor of the two greatest Houses in the Roman empire, has ground to hope that there will be restored to it those things which for two centuries now it has missed, taken away by the violence of the non-Catholics and by hatred of its name.
[201] But that we may return to the series of the history we have begun, from which the abundant zeal of Rudolf Cæsar toward the Order of the Servants compelled us to digress: St. Philip having returned into Italy, Philip, two years having been spent in this German expedition, and singular proofs of his sanctity and prudence having been given to the highest consolation of Cæsar and profit of the empire, having sought and obtained his dismissal from the emperor, returns into Italy, meaning to be present at the general chapter proclaimed for the Kalends of May at Viterbo. And because in that assembly decision had to be made concerning weighty matters and concerning fortifying itself for the future against calamities of that kind (such as those with which the Order had for some while hitherto been tossed), it pleased him to summon thither also the blessed Fathers Uguccione and Sostegni, though very aged, that by the prudence of a purified spirit, gathered from aged and many years' experience, they might take counsel together in common.
[202] After they had assembled, counsels and opinions having been compared, he summons two old men to the chapter, it was agreed among them that blessed Father Philip and blessed Father Lotaringo della Stufa and Bonaventure of Pistoia should take upon themselves the sum of the matter and of the decisions, and should set out for Rome, and should ask and beg from the new Pontiff, Martin IV (who had succeeded Nicholas III, deceased), after they had congratulated him in the name of the whole Order upon the honor he had attained, that he would order the Privileges and confirmations granted to the Order by several of his predecessors, and especially the decisive sentence of his immediate predecessor Nicholas III concerning the recent controversies, to be ratified and fixed for the future by a rescript given; and until that should be accomplished, the Fathers should stay at Rome, intent upon the transaction of affairs.
[203] Meanwhile the blessed Fathers Uguccione and Sostegni, having returned to their Senario, who die a little afterwards, where they awaited death according to their wishes, in which they desired to be dissolved and to be with Christ; when along the way they were conversing among themselves concerning the rise and progress of the Order through a space of fifty years, and its present state, extended far and wide through the world, and concerning the other prodigies of divine providence toward its safety and glory, and then, one conversation arising from another, as happens, were slipping into the recalling of the memory of their colleagues and their happy migrations from this vale of tears to the blessed seats, and at last, melted into tears at the prolonging of their sojourning and by desire of the heavenly country, bewailed the long duration of their exile: behold, from close by they hear a voice consoling them with distinct and articulate words to this effect: "O Servants of God and of Mary, spare your laments; shortly you shall rest from your labors": and the blessed old men, wonderfully refreshed by that heavenly oracle, a little afterwards, being gathered on Monte Senario to their fathers in a good old age, full of days and merits, on the same day and indeed at the same hour, rested in a placid death.
[204] and whose happy passing he saw while absent. By chance in those days Philip had returned from Rome to Florence, the public business having been advanced before the Pontiff, and on that night, which was the last that that blessed pair of Fathers spent on earth, a vision was presented to him in a certain transport of mind, in which he seemed to himself to see two white lilies cut down from the earth, and the same offered to the Most Blessed Virgin in heaven; and by that portent, the divine Spirit illumining his mind within, he straightway understood that those two lilies were Uguccione and Sostegni, invited by the Virgin Mother of God to live for ever in the pleasantness of an eternal spring. And so early in the morning of the following day, the assembly of the Fathers of the Florentine monastery being summoned, and the series of the vision presented to him being narrated, he informs them of the precious death of these forefathers: let them therefore rejoice and congratulate themselves that those two lilies, translated from the present valley of hardships and planted in the gardens of a paradise of perpetual verdure, enjoy eternal happiness and will enjoy it eternally e. Accordingly, he said, sons, call with me into your prayers those our beloved blessed Fathers, who labored with us and before us in the Gospel, and paved the way of life for you by their example, and showed it by the light of their innocence and merits, that, being propitious and willing, they may bring it about with our common Lord that we may safely and happily follow that way to eternal glory which they went before us by their deeds. The noble knight Niccolò Borghesi f is the author, in the Work which he left written concerning the deeds of Philip, that besides the other heavenly charisms with which God most abundantly adorned him by the unction of his Holy Spirit, there was a notable communication of heavenly secrets through frequent ecstasies: in which, when he was for the most part most deeply absorbed, on returning to himself he poured forth in that glow of mind many things with a prophetic spirit concerning future and absent matters, which, as they were foretold, came to pass most faithfully. Of which it has pleased us, for the sake of example, to adduce this deed in an opportune place, the rest being passed over.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER XVI.
Most of the things which the Saint, foreknowing his death, did at Forlì, Florence, Siena, and Todi.
XV.
Meanwhile, when by this same presaging spirit Philip understood The Saint received with blows at Forlì that that most longed-for time was at hand, and indeed was now near, at which, the burden of his body and of his office being laid down, he must happily pass over, that he might both console his own and duly settle all things everywhere for perpetuity, he thought that most of the monasteries of the Order must be visited by him for the last time. And so, having gone about most of the cities of Italy, he came to Forlì, not so much to visit his own, as (as some authors hold) by the command of Martin IV, supreme Pontiff, that he might bring back to duty and to sounder counsels that city, which at that time, while all the rest of Emilia obeyed, was refusing the Pontiff's sway. Philip (already happily practiced in composing like disturbances) undertakes the province with a great spirit, and, the whole city flowing together at the fame and repute of his sanctity, he delivers a sermon after his manner ardent and weighty; and in it with Apostolic freedom he reproves the internal hatreds of the people of Forlì among themselves, and their impiety and perfidy against their most sacred Prince, and denounces all the present and impending evils which are wont to follow defections, if they should refuse to turn their minds to sounder counsels.
[206] But that discourse of his produced diverse and dissimilar motions in the minds of the hearers: prays for those who struck him, for those whose mind was more present and whose heart was mindful of religion, turned to laments full of repentance and to the service of God and of the Pontiff, seemed likely to do what was commanded: but others, and especially a band of savage youths who were imbued with the madness of the Ghibelline faction, no account being taken of what was holy or honorable, having made a rush upon the preacher, seize him, and, having beaten him and lashed him with scourges in a pitiable manner, with equal indignity of words fiercely drive him out of the city: but Philip, incredibly glad at so notable an insult, was as much distressed in mind lest that violence should be a hurt to its authors, as he congratulated himself upon the injuries endured after Christ's example. Therefore, ill-handled as he was, and wretchedly bruised in all his poor body, he raises himself upon his knees, and first gives thanks to Christ and to the Most Blessed Virgin because for their sake it had fallen to him to suffer whatever that hardship was, and presently applies himself to prayers as ardent as possible for those who had outraged him.
[207] Those prayers were not in vain: for indeed of that band of injurious youths one, one of whom he adds to his Order, foremost in nobility of birth and in fierceness of spirit, who besides the common effort spent in casting out and maltreating Philip, had struck him
with a notable blow dealt upon the face, being struck by the atrocity of his crime and by repentance, hurried off to the chief church of the city, and there, sinking upon his knees before a certain effigy of the Virgin Mother of God, of whom he was otherwise a singular worshiper, suppliantly begs pardon from his Lady for the injury inflicted upon her Servant; and prays that (since it was fixed to order the plan of his life otherwise thenceforth) she would willingly and propitiously deign to direct and guide that resolution of his. Scarcely had he made an end of praying, when the Mother of mercy, after she had offered herself to be seen by the youth, steeped in a wondrous sense of repentance, bids him go to her Servants. Which, meaning to carry out briskly, without delay he casts himself upon the road, and, having overtaken Philip not far from the city, throws himself at his feet, amid tears and sobs, ingenuous tokens of his grief, having begged pardon for his atrocious offense, and sets forth in order what he had received in charge from the most blessed Virgin: that accordingly he begged that, though undeserving, the habit of the Religion which a little before in the utmost madness he had outraged might be imparted to him.
[208] who afterwards was renowned for sanctity, To this Philip, suffused with glad admiration at so sudden a change, having kindly received the youth, bids him go before him to Siena, where on occasion of the chapter he should be bound to his vow. Which when he was accomplishing, having taken the road into Etruria, an angel, without doubt his guardian, joins himself to him in visible form as guide of his way, and leads him glad and unharmed as far as Siena. This is that Peregrine who, after he was admitted into the Order, entered upon a manner of life so illustrious both for works of penance and for the lights of all the virtues and for miracles, that (such was the efficacy of Philip's prayer) he might seem the Paul of a Stephen. For which distinctions and known proofs of singular holiness he was at last in our age enrolled by Paul V, the supreme Pontiff, in the number of the Blessed a.
[209] and at length he subjects the people of Forlì to the Pontiff; The rest, as each thing was done by him, since we shall perhaps pursue it in another place, we shall now follow Philip as he departs from his province to his triumph. When therefore not only Peregrine, but all the people of Forlì also, had returned to a sounder mind, first by Philip's sermons and presently by his prayers, and had received the Pontifical garrison, Guido of Montefeltro, the leader of the opposing faction, being cast out, and a certain John, a French Duke, and thereby all Emilia had been reduced into the Church's dominion, Martin IV, the Pontiff, having heard of the labor which had been bestowed by Philip upon that expedition and upon several others of that kind, resolved to reward him according to his merits.
[210] meaning to reward which labor, Martin IV, And because he sufficiently understood how greatly it was at his heart, and how much labor and care he had spent upon it before the earlier Pontiffs, that his Order, for some years now perilously assailed by those two often-mentioned decrees of the councils, should remain covered and unharmed; and moreover because he had known and examined the firmness of those things which had been brought forward both by Philip himself and by the Consistorial advocates for the defense of the Order, he judged that he would in nothing gratify Philip more acceptably than if he should free him and the whole Order from this peril and care which had now long and troublesomely harassed them, by giving a diploma to end the matter. And so, Friar Henry of Ghent, who at Paris was called the Solemn Doctor b, and had been summoned by Philip as colleague and helper for the defense of the common cause, having been called to Perugia, where the Pontiff then was staying, he gave him power to speak in the public assembly of the purpled Fathers upon that cause, the arguments being brought forward.
[211] Henry, that he might comply with the Pontiff and might not fail the opportunity of accomplishing the wished-for matter, Henry of Ghent pleading, having comprised the sum of the arguments in a notable discourse, after the senate was granted him, spoke with such splendor and dignity, with the highest learning and copiousness of speech that was his, that, all being carried away into admiration of him, he doubtless persuaded them of what he wished. Which when, as a shrewd diviner, he had noticed during his speaking from their eagerness to hear and from the silent approvals of the faces turned toward him, using a peroration most apt for moving compassion for that most holy Institute, the minds of all being moved and convinced, he insisted with the most lowly supplication that the Pontiff and the Fathers would at length have regard to the Order of the Servants, founded from heaven by the most blessed Virgin herself, named with a new name in a new way out of the mouth of infants and sucklings, approved by so many supreme Pontiffs, protected by so many Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, received into their dominions by so many kings and princes, and cultivated with all veneration, and extended far and wide through the Christian world; and would raise it up, worn out with sorrow and anxiety, traduced by sinister opinions, harassed by the injuries of unjust men, and finally, from this suit stirred up against it, liable to anyone's violence; and would restore it to its former glory and dignity, won from so many miracles and from deeds bravely and wonderfully done by its men. For the rest, that he, as one who was pleading not his own cause but that of the eternal Virgin Mother of God, was of an even mind concerning the outcome and trusted that, all human diligence being spent, she would by no means fail him and her cause, and that whoever should choose rather to stir up an impious suit against her than to defend and uphold her cause, would feel it to his own hurt.
[212] Which things being heard with the deepest silence and with the favorable wills both of the Pontiff determines to confirm his Order, and of the Cardinals, and it being sufficiently apparent to all that true and solid things were brought forward, he approved, with the common assent of the whole august senate, the sentence of Pope John XXI, by which he had excluded the Order of the Servants from those twin decrees of the councils, and pronounced it ratified and true; and decreed this to the perpetual memory of the matter, a most ample diploma being given, and new privileges moreover being granted for the consolation of the afflicted Religion and for the greater splendor of it, a little before depressed. At which so lavish zeal of the most holy Pontiff, Friar Latino the Cardinal, being glad, straightway sent letters to Philip, by which he bade him be present at the Curia, which was then at Perugia.
[213] He, having received these, sets out on the journey as soon as possible, his poor body being weakened by the labors of journeys and of penance, seated upon a little ass, whereas up to that day he had accomplished all his journeys on foot. Meanwhile, for the exercising of the Religion and of Philip, the death of the Pontiff again intervened in this matter, almost accomplished, to the great grief of Philip and of all the Servants. But when in his place there had been chosen as Pontiff Cardinal Jacopo Savelli, who was afterwards called Honorius IV; and when he had as soon as possible made for Rome from Perugia, Philip followed him, and, Cardinal Latino acting, urged with great earnestness before him the cause of the Order which had been begun. The Pontiff, having received him most kindly, bids him hope well that the business begun in favor of him and of his Order would shortly be given accomplished by him.
[214] At Florence he foretells his death Somewhat refreshed by which answer, Philip, the Fathers being left at Rome to attend to the cause, himself set out for Florence to the chapter which had been proclaimed for the V of the Ides of May. When he arrived there, after he had himself received Bl. Juliana de' Falconieri c and many others of both sexes of the third Order to their solemn vows, and had given his last and most careful attention to the general chapter and to the other public affairs of the Order, all being duly ordered and settled, a council of all the Fathers being summoned, he is said to have spoken in this manner: It is now nearly eighteen years, Sons and Brothers most beloved in Christ, since by the command of our common Lady and Mother, and by the consent of your wills, I have somehow borne this burden of your supreme government, unequal to my strength; and, the time of my dissolution being at hand (as God by his immense goodness has deigned to signify to me), I sufficiently understand that I have come to the goal of my course. Wherefore I see it to be fitting that you also suffer something to be obtained from you, if not according to my merits, certainly according to my utmost need, and that I leave to you, according to the slenderness of my ability, as to most pious sons whom I address for the last time, those things by which you may be able to live and to sustain your state, and to hand it on to posterity with dignity.
[215] And as regards myself indeed, since a day has been appointed me for the rendering of the accounts of my administration, which cannot be adjourned beyond the fixed day, in a sermon delivered to the Fathers, I judge it fair that so much time and leisure be granted me as may suffice for rendering the accounts of what has been received from heaven and expended. For the rest, it is sufficiently established with you that it belongs to any faithful and prudent servant to anticipate the coming of his Lord, so that, when he shall have come and knocked, he may fearlessly, by the testimony of a good conscience, straightway open to him. Therefore, before this vital light sets, and the day given for working hides itself, having borne so long the care of your souls, that I may spend what remains of time upon my own, I have determined, with your good leave, to withdraw into the solitude of our Senario, that I may there by some days' exercise prepare myself for the last struggle and departure. To you meanwhile, whom I leave behind, I bequeath by way of inheritance one thing, in which the fullness of all is contained, and that very thing indeed which our Savior, about to pass from this world to the Father, bequeathed to his disciples; namely, that you love one another: which commandment, since all things depend upon it, and it has in itself all the happiness of both lives placed within it, and holds the whole sum of every advance, public as well as private, and embraces all commandments, counsels, virtues, and finally the whole law and the prophets, is assuredly by its own excellence and by the commendation of Christ the Lord too august to need to be commended to you by me. If nevertheless it seems to you that something should be granted to me, I beg and adjure you for the last time, by him who loved us and gave himself for us, that you grant this.
[216] and substituting a Vicar for himself, Having spoken these and other things to this effect upon this subject, on his knees and with his eyes fixed on heaven, first with a most ardent prayer he begs pardon for the errors committed in his office; then with tears he commends his chosen flock to the providence of the divine Godhead, and earnestly prays that his divine goodness may not permit that after his departure it be assailed or terrified by the wolves of hell. Wherefore, having begun to treat with the Fathers concerning the substituting of a shepherd for himself, he proposes to them Father Lotaringo della Stufa, a man of approved prudence and diligence, as one to be General and Procurator of the Order before the Pontiff. The provident counsel pleased all, although the necessity of taking it displeased them: for concerning Philip such an opinion was implanted in the minds of all, that they believed all things to be done and made by him under the mastership of the Holy Spirit: and Father Lotaringo's virtue, examined in arduous matters, added the votes of all the rest to Philip's prerogative.
[217] Him therefore having been thus elected Vicar general and Procurator of the Order at the Roman Curia, he betakes himself to Monte Senario, and instructed by Philip with salutary lessons suited to the time, his discourse being turned to the other Fathers, the blessed Father enjoined certain and fixed prayers for the safety of the Religion, never to be omitted, and among others especially those short ones which we use after Matins and Compline:
namely, Sub tuum PRÆSIDIUM etc., with the little prayer attached. Then, the chapter being completed, after he had bidden a last farewell to the Brethren and to the Florentine senate and to the rest of his intimates, he sets out for the solitude of Monte Senario and for that cave in which formerly, as has been said in its place, he had passed two years in the habit of a lay Brother; and after he had lived there two months in the sweetest contemplation and in a bitter manner of living and of chastising himself beyond his custom, in the company of Father Lotaringo and of the foremost of the Fathers of Etruria, he hastens to Siena, intending to go thence to Todi.
[218] As he entered Siena a boy of twelve, Francis by name, and then at Siena he enrolls a boy in the Order, born of noble stock, presents himself, and with a fervor in so tender an age more than veteran, begs with the lowliest entreaties that he would deign to grant him the habit and the fellowship of the Servants of the most blessed Virgin. Philip, weighing both — on the one side the tender age, on the other the ardor of the youth — each in its own scale, since it seemed neither prudent to admit him nor safe to reject him in the manifest evidence of a divine calling, using a middle way to console and to preserve him, clothed him in the habit of the Third Order; in which, being bidden to live among his parents until a firmer age, for a whole decade, with God for his master, he passed as a novice in the world with such integrity and innocence that his future sanctity might easily be conjectured from it. And this indeed proved most worthy both of admiration and of imitation, as well by the multitude of miracles as by the very plan of the life he had adopted.
[219] And not to pursue everything in this place (which Giani does at length in our Annals), this is memorable in this Francis, who afterward shone with miracles, that besides five dead persons recalled to life, by a perpetual miracle through three centuries of years and more, even today his body is beheld incorrupt at Siena in Etruria. Nay more, a few days after his death a white lily budded forth from his mouth, on each of whose leaves was seen an Ave Maria inscribed in golden letters. This lily, sought by the king of the Franks through a legate, and obtained from the Fathers and the senate of Siena, is preserved down to our own age at Paris: from which flower much of the sanctity of Francis and a good odor is fragrant among that nation. It is credible that the cause of that miracle was that this angel, a virgin his whole life long, was accustomed to salute his Lady five hundred times every day with this Angelic salutation d.
[220] This youth, therefore, destined to turn out as great a man as he afterward became, Then coming to Todi having been joined to the Religion so far as was permitted, Philip, having consoled the Fathers of Siena, who were grieved at his departure, determined to go to Todi; and turning aside from the road to Perugia, he commends the Religion with the greatest care to Honorius IV, who at that time bore the Pontificate, and to Cardinal Latino, its protector. Then, having received the Pontiff's blessing and having saluted the protector, he goes on with the journey he had begun toward Todi; but in such a way that, so far as could be done, he might avoid the public roads and the throng of men coming out to meet him and following him respectfully, by seeking out footpaths and the most hidden of ways. Even in these last days of his life he was with a certain singular zeal so given over to solitude and to tranquility of mind that he already seemed to be in that heaven to which he was shortly to come.
[221] he is received with great honor, But the more earnestly he fled these honors and venerations of men, so much the more closely and lavishly did they everywhere follow him, the divine providence contending with his humility in exalting him: for scarcely had he come down to the foot of the mountain on which is situated Todi, an ancient and noble city of Umbria, when, the whole city being suddenly stirred, with one purpose and that not concerted among themselves, all the Orders, the Clergy, the nobility, men, women, boys and girls poured themselves out of the gates to meet him, just as if to some commander returning after a great victory won; and plucking olive branches and other green things and flowers, scattering them from full baskets in rivalry, they strewed his way, with auspicious acclamations (resounding, Blessed is the Servant of the Lord who comes), meaning to lead into their city a Saint not merely safe but health-bringing. Philip, catching sight of these and of their preparations from afar, and, by the humility familiar to him, turning away from so applauded a show of triumphal pomp, at once, his route being turned another way, withdraws from the road before those who were coming, repeating over and over, To God alone, to God alone honor and glory. And so, avoiding the stalls of the new suburb and the gate of the city which takes its name from Holy Cross, through various windings for the sake of hiding himself and eluding his pursuers, he hurries himself off swiftly toward the road to Orvieto, reckoning that there he could enter the city unrecognized through the back gate of the Valley.
[222] and on the road two harlots But upon him as he hurried a salutary delay was cast by the meeting of two women who, at the persuasion of poverty and lust, two evil counselors, were sustaining life by the infamous traffic of the body. Philip easily knew these, when they met him, to be what they were, harlots, from their shamelessness and their over-soft gestures, and at the same time he takes counsel about snatching them from the demon and making them over to Christ. It happened that they first had greeted the Blessed Father and his companions with wanton jests and taunts, asking whether the little saints had brought anything with them. To which Philip, as one who was bringing them salvation, having assented, began to bring forth from that Seraphic breast the warnings of salvation, and having begun loftily and gravely, he set before the eyes of those wretched slaves of Venus, so vividly, the enormity of their crimes and the present danger in which they were engaged if they did not come to their senses in time, that they, dismayed and turned from jests to laments, from laughter to sobs and tears, and at last turned also to God, cursed a life so shameful and destructive with great horror at their own peril; and finally, covered with tears and shame, having laid some blame on poverty, which had led them by the hand to the rest of their evils, they most humbly beg peace and pardon of Philip. These he consoled with a great sense of compassion; then, having bidden them hope well, he saw to it that they were given as much money as was needful to support them honestly for three days.
[223] he brings to penitence; Meanwhile he bids them appease God with all their strength and effort, by a just sorrow for their sins and by a purpose of salutary amendment, and prepare themselves for an exact confession of their past life; and then that provision would be made for them whereby they might piously sustain the remainder of their life; nor did he doubt that the good and merciful God would supply the other things which are required for completing a conversion. Refreshed by this consolation, they promise that they will accomplish everything, so far as lay in them, with God's help, according to Philip's prescription; and thereupon, having parted from him into the city, having been made better after the manner of the old Samaritan woman, they vigorously proclaim everywhere Philip's sanctity and charity, and then, the three days being past, they expiate their sins by confession before Philip. These afterward, at his instance, shut themselves up in a certain house near Acquasparta in a little town whose name is Arnolfa, to wash away the stains of their soul with the tears of penitence. In that place there was afterward founded a monastery of nuns of our Order, which is visited even in this our age, and refers its origin to these two women. One of them was called Helen, the other Flora, and living in this place until their last day with a great example of penitence and holiness, besides eternal happiness they merited to be entered when dead in the register of the Blesseds e of our Order.
[224] but strives in vain to check Thence he enters the city by the gate of the Valley, as has been said, illustrious with the spoil of these two souls and of an ambitious honor avoided. And not even thus did he elude the diligence of the obsequious city; but he was not merely received by an immense throng of the people, but even against his will was escorted home by those who congratulated his arrival with auspicious acclamations: that he was truly the man of God, he the converter of sinners, he the heavenly healing of the sick, and the friend of God, blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord. Philip's humility, incredibly offended by these outcries, having with difficulty obtained the favor of a brief silence, said with most modest indignation: If we bring you peace, men of Todi, and pray for every blessing from heaven, what is it, I pray you, that you repay us with annoyances? that upon a wretched little man, and an unprofitable servant of the Mother of God, you heap up those untimely applauses which are by no means fitting for a sinful man? Therefore, if you have undertaken these attentions with a mind to gratify us, I beg you, by our common Lord and God, that you go away to your homes, and permit us to go to ours: this will be to me for a chief honor and a token of your goodwill toward me. And you will grant this the more justly, in that it is the more abhorrent to your humanity that I should bear from you a refusal of the very first of all my requests.
[225] But he accomplished nothing, the zeal of the multitude being kindled to the highest pitch, the applause of the men of Todi, which in every great affection it is exceedingly hard to moderate. Therefore from every side all flow together in troops, some from a desire of hearing, others of seeing the Man, others of touching his right hand or his garment; all, that they might be blessed by his benediction. Finally, in addition to all this, by the consent of all the orders they name him Standard-bearer with supreme power; which magistracy in that age was in the free cities of Italy the highest, and almost dictatorial.
[226] Thus, with all the nobility and the common people escorting him, he proceeds to the church of his own monastery, among whom he foretells that he will die. and there before the high altar, after prayer poured out for some time in an ecstasy of mind, when he had collected himself, he bursts out into these words, as though awakened from a deep sleep: "I give thee thanks, O Lord, because this is my rest for ever and ever, here will I dwell, for I have chosen it." And by that presaging of the future, as by an epitaph, he himself marked out for himself a glorious and celebrated sepulcher, since he was to have his perpetual dwelling in that city, however much it might be contested by the Blessed Father's native place, which was covetous of his relics. For the rest, what remained of his days until his departure, Philip spent in an exact preparation for the near and foreseen death, and in promoting the salvation of the people of Todi. And so, having loved his own who were in the world, whom he was leaving, he loved them unto the end: and by that love, as by the rush of a river toward the city of God which now made him glad from close at hand, he swept all things with him into God. Hence he warned many publicly in sermon, many privately; he composed the discords of the nobles and the enmities of all the orders; he heard diligently the confessions of those who were returning to right living (among whom were those two women lately converted); and he pressed on to heal thoroughly the remaining vices and sicknesses of the afflicted city with such zeal and fervor that the city could now scarcely recognize itself; so great was the change and amendment of manners that had been wrought.
ANNOTATIONS.
b. I could wish,
that these public deeds of Henry of Ghent, about which even Raynaldus was silent in his Ecclesiastical Annals, might be read in the ancient authors.
CHAPTER XVII.
The Saint's last illness, his pious admonitions, his happy death, and the honorable exposition of his sacred body.
XVI.
The city of Todi having been duly surveyed in this manner, After the sermon delivered to the men of Todi namely so that the blessed Father in dying might be received by the purest possible ground, on the very feast day of the Assumption of the Virgin, the Sacrifice having been performed with an unwonted ardor of spirit, just as he was, glowing and burning with divine charity, he mounted the pulpit, with a most crowded assembly of the whole people; and first indeed he gladdened them all by this abundance of himself, and soon began a discourse which, as it was his last, so could seem the epilogue of all those he had ever delivered, with such fullness and such ardor did he speak, and with such emotion and consolation of his hearers.
[228] A little after the assembly was dismissed, when the blessed Father had betaken himself within the monastery, he began to be assailed by illness, he at once began to be assailed by the sickness of a slight fever, but lightly: he, however, understanding well enough that it was the forerunner of near death, congratulated himself, with many standing by, that that most happy time had at last come in which his spirit, loosed from the bonds of the body, should fly free to God. Then, as the illness grew heavier and now little by little inclined toward the fatal, at the urging of the bishop of the city and of the physicians he withdrew into a more private chamber (which is shown even today, and is held in great veneration); where he suffered himself to be persuaded to lay his poor body, broken by the recent illness and by the old and unceasing practice of penances, upon a woolen mattress, of which we shall speak elsewhere, lent to him by a certain James, a citizen of Todi.
[229] But that he should put off the hair-shirt, most harsh, with which he was girt, in which he refuses to lay aside the hair-shirt, this indeed could be obtained from him by no entreaties: since he judged that a Religious soldier ought to fall rather in the arms of his warfare than unarmed. Thus the holy Man, like a lily or a rose among its thorns, sought a death befitting a most holy and most austere life, with such constancy and patience that he seemed to lie amid those afflictions of body and mind not a mortal man but some heavenly spirit. These afflictions were increased in a greater degree also by this, that by the piety of the citizens, who visited him in rivalry, that solitude of his in that agony was disturbed which he zealously sought after in order to fix his mind on God, as we said a little before. But such was his perpetual love toward his neighbors that he nevertheless divided those last hours of his life in the exercise of both loves.
[230] But when he was warned by the more frequent symptoms of faintings that it was time, and that indeed a brief time, to pack up and bid farewell to human affairs, having called all the Brethren to himself he addressed them in these words: and he admonishes the Brethren, Most beloved Sons and Brethren in Christ; the cause of my calling you all together into this place has been the present necessity of entering the way of all flesh, and the time of my dissolution, which is at hand on the next day consecrated to the octave of our Lady, as the Lord Jesus has signified to me; which most happy message has not so absorbed me with its blessedness as to take from me the memory of you, but rather I judge it just, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by admonition, and that indeed the more earnestly because I am certain that the laying aside of my tabernacle is swift; nay, I shall take pains, with the Apostle Peter, that you should have these things often even after my death, so that you may make memory of these things which I lastly enjoin.
[231] Wherefore I beg and adjure you this present day, that they should bury his body without pomp, and by what authority I have over you I even command, that this poor body of mine, when it shall have been left by the soul, you bury, borne to its earth with no notable pomp, with only a common and humble burial according to the institute of our poverty; whatever this city, zealous for us, may contrive to the contrary out of its piety. For you hold in memory that I, although by your perpetual will I was compelled to act as General, would nevertheless more gladly have acted, and have died, as that lay brother whose habit I had put on at my first entrance; since this very agony, in which I now sweat, has been perpetually before the eyes of my mind with a living certainty, that a most humble life is discharged by a most safe death. Let it suffice, therefore, that I have granted this consolation of mine, in life, to your obedience: now you will concede, out of your fairness, at least in my useless corpse, that it may be permitted me to enjoy that consolation through you.
[232] and having exhorted them to charity The other thing, and truly the chief and greatest, is that which not only I beg and beseech of you by all things pious and holy, but which the Lord Jesus, about to pass from this world to the Father, commanded to all: namely, that you love one another, and bear one another's burdens and infirmities; for this is the lawful token of the true disciples of Christ; he himself, who is the faithful witness, attesting: "In this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another." Which things being said most lovingly and at length, and heightened by the exuberant ardor of a charity nearing its own sphere, tears so copiously arose in all, that there was no one among the bystanders who could answer that honey-flowing and flame-breathing Seraph, for tenderness and grief at the loss of so divine a teacher.
[233] and to fortitude, When the most loving Father perceived this in the midst of his own struggle, turning to them with failing voice he bids them be of good cheer; since this journey to the Father was expedient for himself and for them: which, if — as he hoped in God's mercy — it should turn out according to his prayer, they would have a Father and an advocate with the Father; just as, while he lived, they had had him everywhere an advocate before the greatest heads of the world. At which words, failing as his spirit left him, he was silent for a while; but as the violence of the illness increased more and more, and by the same increases Philip's constancy of soul unconquered by evils, he was consumed by a twin flame, the one of the immoderately raging fever, the other truly of the ardor of the desires by which he sighed without measure to be dissolved and to be with Christ. But amid these pains a mind always present and an entire judgment remained in him, whenever he was found.
[234] he is fortified with the last sacraments of the Church, As evening came on upon the twentieth day of August, in the year of Christ 1285, he again demanded the Sacraments of the Most Sacred Body of Christ and of Extreme unction; and when this had been done, and the priest was at hand with the adorable Eucharist, love bringing force to his forces, he raises up from the hard little bed his limbs now almost worn out and stiffening in death, and, just as he was, clothed in the hair-shirt and in his whole habit (which for the honor of the Most Blessed Virgin and for penance he had never been accustomed to put off), prostrating himself most humbly on the ground amid the most ardent acts of penitence, sobs, tears, sighs and beatings of an innocent breast, and other proofs of self-knowledge, having taken that life-giving provision for the journey, about to enter upon the roads of eternity, he commends to God with a most fervent and most ample charity the Church of God, himself, the Religion, his native land, the city of Todi itself, and finally all who are in need of divine help; and thereupon, as though he had sufficiently provided for all who were dear to his heart, these having been commended to his Savior, he penetrates himself the more deeply into God, the more ardently he had committed to divine providence those who had been his care. And so, laid back upon the little bed, with the Beloved burning within, the soul of the blessed Man was so melted that he burst forth into the mysteries of a most profound discourse; from the loftiness of which it sufficiently appeared that this most blessed swan was even then beginning the song which through all eternity he was most happily to sing.
[235] and for three hours he is estranged from his senses. But now having come nearer to the last line, by a provident alternation he leads his mind from heavenly delights to the care of penitence, and after the example of the divine Augustine applies the penitential Psalms to weeping over whatever faults; and soon he begins the Litanies of the Saints, whom he thought must be laid hold of as present and propitious in the supreme crisis for the sake of the eternal triumph. These having been duly and ardently called upon in his prayers, it happened, when it came to that formula, We sinners, we beseech thee hear us, that the Man of God was so estranged from his senses that for three whole hours he was held for dead by the bystanders, and that indeed not rashly, since no sign appeared in him but that of death. Meanwhile there arrived, roused by God's warning to that very thing which was going on, Brother Ubald Adimari, who, relying on the certainty of his heavenly oracle that Philip had not yet passed the borders of life, rouses him by calling him by name.
[236] Philip, restored to himself at his voice, said, Then restored to himself he tells of his conflict with the demon, Ah, Brethren, how horrible is the conflict of this last contest! Know that I, set before the tribunal of Christ, have gone through no common peril; since that crooked old trickster and hater of human salvation, Satan, having cast my sins in my teeth and exaggerated them beyond measure, plied and busied himself with all his arts of harming, that I should despair of the divine mercy through desperation. And the battle, full of peril, hung in the balance, until my most kindly Jesus coming to my aid, and my Lady his Mother, rebuked, drove off, and routed the antagonist: then, as if it were not enough for their immense mercy to have driven off so fearful and so present a danger, they added an immense consolation by showing the crown which they have prepared for me, a useless and unworthy servant, unto eternity. Come then, my Brethren, be present in spirit, and awake to detect the cunning, the frauds, and the snares of this lethargic enemy: he sees himself, by his great desert, stripped of all divine gifts and goods, and given over to madness by the sting of envy, he labors with all his powers and arts to drag us along with himself into the same miseries. But arms are not lacking against his assaults: by abstinence, by humility, by patience, and by that which is the greatest of these, charity, his attempts are shattered.
[237] These things said, as the ecstasy grew strong with new increases, and having asked for an image of the Crucified, he first fixes his eyes on heaven, then anxiously carrying them about in various directions, he repeats over and over for his book: Give me my book, give the book, he says, who has snatched it from me? Let it be returned as quickly as possible. O the book, which contains all my goods, seek it, Brethren: for without it I cannot draw out my life any longer. At which the anxious Brethren offered him now one volume, now another; but in vain: he rejecting whatever were offered, and vigorously his own
demanding his book: that it was this he wanted and no other, that it alone was in his last desires. At length, while all were perplexed and ignorant what book he could mean, he was understood by Brother Ubald Adimari, in whose lap he was resting. And so he bids them hand him the ivory image of Christ hanging from the cross, which the holy Man had always been accustomed to carry in his hand, and on which Adimari had noticed him clinging with fixed gaze. This being handed to him, Philip presses it to his breast, and having sweetly kissed it, he says, This is my book, this is it, in which I read written the innumerable benefits of my Redeemer, who, having poured out all his blood for me, left this spoil of his body hanging from the happy tree.
[238] Then thereupon he set himself to read and read again all those benefits, he dies most peacefully and especially the particular ones received throughout his whole life, and to meditate on the various mysteries of the life-giving Passion; and a little after, with the joy of his spirit as it were triumphing, he recited the whole Canticle, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, etc. And here at last the final line was reached. By no means unaware of it, a man as much Apostolic as prophetic, with a low and feeble voice he pronounces Psalm 30, In thee, O Lord, have I hoped, etc., and clinging to its last verse, with his eyes darted toward the image of Christ crucified, with his last words, in the silent jubilation of an exulting mind, as like as possible to the whisper of a gentle breeze, he said: Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. And at that word, his body and its garb being composed as decorously as possible, failing, he rendered his heavenly soul to heaven. And that the heavenly ones might show how greatly they congratulated themselves on receiving it, at once, while the Brethren were chanting for the sacred funeral, they suddenly interrupted the dirges with a most sweet harmony, of which this was the burden: "Well done, good and faithful Servant, who wert appointed by the Virgin over her household, enter into the joy of thy Lord." The inexplicable sweetness of those voices was followed by the fragrance of an incomparable odor, which filled the whole place where he had been laid; and by a third miracle so great a force of heavenly light flashed out from the face of the holy Father as he lay, that whatever was around him glittered with a most bright radiance. Turned by this threefold prodigy from amazement into gladness at these admirable things, the Brethren who beheld it, the funeral rites being left off, exulting in spirit, gave glad and festal jubilation.
[239] in the year of Christ 1285, This departure of Philip fell in the year of Christ 1285, and in the fifty-second year of Philip's age, on the eleventh of the Kalends of September a, which is sacred to the octave of our Lady's Assumption, when at sunset the signals were being given through the city, according to the custom of the Church, with the bronze bell for the Angelic salutation, exactly as he himself had foretold. But because he expired with the day, and after Vespers and Compline had been finished, perhaps also that there might be room for celebrating the octave of the Most Blessed Virgin, it afterward seemed good to Leo X, Supreme Pontiff, to put off Philip's feast to the following day, the 23rd of August; and this, sanctioned by a diploma he issued, we observe.
[240] and at once he works a miracle, This so precious and so prodigious death of Philip being spread abroad through the city, at once a concourse of every order and age takes place to St. Mark's, whither rumor had reported that his body had already been carried; and in rivalry they attend his sacred body, as the dwelling-place of a true and entire sanctity, with every veneration, his own last commands, by which honors of this kind were forbidden, rather spurring on the people's piety than standing in its way. Whence it came about that by the brethren, together with the bishop and the senate of Todi, who were bound by the religious force of his last will, the burial of the sacred body was hastened. But a miracle intervened upon their diligence. There was at that time in the city of Todi a maiden, Agnetula by name, daughter of the notary Paul Guito, a citizen of Todi: she, when the bells sounded for Philip's funeral, felt within her something of a more efficacious invitation, moved by which she begs her father to see that she be carried to the sacred body: (for neither could she walk on her feet, nor stretch out or draw in her right hand, nor move herself anywhere at all with her immobile mass of body). The father complies with his daughter's piety, and having brought her into the church, a way being made by force through the wedges of the people, sets her by the bier on which the body lay. She, with great confidence having grasped or at any rate touched Philip's hands, immediately grew strong, stood, walked, praised God in his Saint, and returned home with no one carrying her b.
[241] The Fathers, judging themselves now released by that miracle from their religious obligation, and therefore his body is honorably exposed. compelled also by the zeal of the people, resolved to leave the body unburied for six days c, exposed in the same place where it lay, to the outpoured honors of the people. There meanwhile the lineaments of his countenance, dead though it was, were taken by the labor of modelers and painters. To which diligence of the Fathers we owe it that even today there exist very ancient images, and recent ones drawn from those, which do not greatly depart from the character of his own face d. For the rest, he is said to have been of an appearance which breathed his ancestral nobility not without some majesty, mixed with humility. And he was of just stature, of a pleasing face, and of a faultless comeliness, with somewhat fair hair, but with lively and gray-blue eyes; so far as I have been able to gather from a certain image of him which I saw in Italy, which they called nearly the archetype of the rest. But it would be a more laborious task to delineate that image of him which God, the Artificer of all things, perfected — that is, to represent the inward man, and to set him before the eyes in his own colors. That is not a work for the slenderness of our talent or spirit, but for some heavenly genius; nay rather, he himself will have drawn those lines who laid upon that happy soul, with the brush of his omnipotent finger, the heavenly lights of the greatest virtues, and who after death illustrated those same lights brilliantly by many and great miracles (as will be plain from the following book).
ANNOTATIONS.
Now this blessed death befell this Servant of the Mother of God (whatever may have seemed good to others) on Wednesday the 22nd of August 1285, after sunset, when the whole city was ringing the bells according to custom to salute the glorious Mother of God on the Octave of the Assumption. Our biographer followed Giani, when he asserts in this place that the Saint departed from this life on the eleventh of the Kalends of September, although in the same place he adds that by the decree of Pope Leo X his feast is to be celebrated on the following day. But the bull of canonization, which we transcribed in §2 of the preliminary Commentary, in the same place at number 15 expressly asserts that he died on the 23rd of August, since it reports the Saint's death in these words:
He passed to the Lord in the year of salvation one thousand two hundred and eighty-five, on the tenth of the Kalends of September, while the solemnities of the Octave of blessed Mary the Virgin assumed into heaven were being completed, on which he had come forth into the light. Whatever be the truth about the day of his death, we with the Roman Martyrology have assigned his festivity to this day.
For to very many, not only in the THREE DAYS in which the body remained in the middle of the church, but also at other times, health was restored by the good and great God through his merits and prayers. The bull of canonization, however, in the preliminary Commentary at our number 15, affirms that his body was openly exposed for six days.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The ancient miracles which were wrought after the Saint's death.
Book III. Chapter I.
Although in the two preceding books various miracles have been recounted in their places, so vivid that they might sufficiently prove Philip a saint while he lived, God, in order to demonstrate the sanctity nevertheless in this third book it has seemed good to bring forward those miracles which occurred after his death in testimony of his holiness, so that all may understand how much he could do, and can even now, with God, both living and dead. For that opinion of miracles has grown up among mortals, that they pronounce him at last a saint and blessed whom they have found to be a worker of wonderful things either in themselves or in others; so that hence Pope Gregory IV * skillfully and elegantly declared a that for testifying to the completeness of a sanctity perfect in all its parts, two things are for the most part required: namely, virtue of manners, and the truth of signs (in two words) Merits, miracles: so that, to be sure, these two by a kind of reciprocal attestation may assert him to sanctity in whom they have been found in a certain equality, according to that saying of the divine Evangelist Mark: "But they going forth preached everywhere, the Lord working withal, and confirming the word with signs that followed."
[243] and to increase the glory of his humble Servant Another reason for this assertion, aptly adduced by us elsewhere, could also be adduced here, namely this: that between God and his Servants who desire to lie hidden a pious and friendly contest is wont to arise, in which, the more anxiously they for their part strive to keep their glories in obscurity and to hide them, so much the more earnestly in turn does God love to draw forth the glory and splendor of their virtue by the wonderfulness of prodigies into the public light and the sight of those men who, in their afflicted affairs, seek protection in their protection. Hence, from the very point at which Philip sought security by carefully burying his own affairs, from that point God determined to begin the greatness of his merits and to make it openly attested: namely, that the virtue of his manners should be proved by the truth of signs. Of these we shall pursue in this third book the chief proofs, gathered from the processes instituted at Florence and at Todi b concerning Philip's sanctity, preserving in the names c the simplicity of those times, free from all disguise, in which they are set forth in the said Processes.
[244] not long after his death Of which let this be the first, that to a certain Andreolus son of John, a native of Todi, so destitute of all use of hands and feet that if he had to go anywhere he could do it no otherwise than by creeping and crawling, upon the aid of blessed Philip being implored, his hands and feet at once so revived that he could walk and work without hindrance. Julittina Martinelli of Monzione declared that she had received a second favor, in the portico of the basilica of St. Mark (where blessed Philip's tomb had been), in the presence of
twelve or more witnesses; namely, that she, long and much inhabited and vexed by resident evil demons, was by the prayers and merits of Brother Philip of the Order of the Servants of the Mother of God entirely freed from their violence and rage.
A third grace is owed to Philip by Jacobuccius Camutianus, who, when he was falling every day, and not seldom several times in a day, by the force of the falling sickness, and was shaken in a foul manner, himself pitying his afflicted lot, invoked the helping hand of Philip, which at once so raised him up that thereafter he never fell down with that disease.
[245] No less did Margaret experience Philip's ready help, permitted very many miracles to be done, wife of a certain Venturella of Bevagna in the territory of Foligno, racked with frenzied pains, by which it came about not only that her stomach was relaxed to a kind of feebleness, and that all the rest of her limbs so grew numb with a certain torpor that she could perform none of the duties of the healthy; but even that the woman could not bear to look upon the sign of the health-bringing Cross. And the fury of the disease had grown so strong that, had not men set to guard her prevented it, she would often have thrown herself headlong into the whirlpools of flame and of water. She, thus oppressed by so many calamities, when she had cast herself as a suppliant at Philip's tomb and had confidently commended herself to him, being relieved of that whole ball of diseases, testified that a heaped-up soundness and health had befallen her by the merits of the divine Philip.
Angeluzzius Lilius of Collazzone came next in the cure; from whom an unwonted pain of the head had taken away all use of himself, and especially of his eyes, by reason of its extreme sharpness. When he had come to the church of St. Mark, clothed in a troublesome tunic of bristles and barefoot, and had there devoted himself to God and to the Saint, upon Philip appearing to him all that pain whatsoever, and the blindness, were driven off, light and health arising.
[246] A certain Accoribanus son of Bernard of Castelnuovo also praised Philip as an Aesculapius; by which many men, he had been so deprived of the use of his left foot that he could not walk save with the support of a staff. Being somehow brought to Philip's tomb, after he had implored his patronage, restored to entirety he walked freely.
Likewise Paul Monticellius, from the County of Todi, tortured for ten whole months with arthritis, was so weakened that he could not raise himself from the bed or move anywhere. When, carried to Philip's sepulcher, he had earnestly commended himself to him with pious confidence, all his pains at once vanished; and a lively force, poured back through his limbs and sinews, brought it about that he who a little before could not move himself could that same hour return to the far side of the city and thereafter perform all the offices of the healthy.
Nor was Philip present only to those who supplicated for themselves, but also for persons joined to them. For a certain woman, Andrea by name, wife of Simonucius from the town of St. Silvester, testified that when a great stone, which a right strong man could scarcely lift from the ground, had fallen upon the leg of her little son, it had crushed it entirely. But when on the following night the grieving mother had commended her endangered son to blessed Philip, she found him sound and whole; and by a twin miracle the infant, still at the breast, God alone teaching him, uttered these words: Saint Philip has freed me.
[247] So too Jacopuccius son of Benevenutus, from the town of St. Praxedes, publicly attested that a son of his, Reinerus by name, oppressed with various diseases, was born with a huge swelling hanging from his neck. When he had devoted him, thus deformed, to God and to blessed Philip, and had brought him to the Saint's sepulcher, and had had him purified with the Saint's inner tunic, which is kept in that place with veneration, at once, that monstrous appendage of the neck having been driven off by the present divine power, he received him back with a level and sound neck.
Philip's command is powerful also against sorcery. For Angeluzzus, son of a certain Stephana, blasted by an evil enchantment under which he had wasted away for two whole months, being commended, after God, to Philip's patronage, at once, the force of the charm being blown away, grew well again; the continued health of some months following bearing witness to the miracle.
That Philip is powerful also in the surgeon's art, a certain woman by name Imilia, wife of a certain Benincasa of Monte Molendino, perceived. She was so afflicted with an affection of the right leg and of the tongue, a twin evil, that she could neither hear nor return any words, not even, when religious practice and necessity demanded, the words of sacramental confession. When, placing herself at Philip's tomb, she as a suppliant sought from God, in what way she could, a remedy for her double distress through the prayers and merits of his servant Philip, immediately, and with no delay interposed, not even a brief one, she was heard; and having received back both faculties as of old, she returned glad and speaking to the place whence she had come.
[248] or afflicted with misfortunes, Nor was our physician Philip less happy in the cure of the stone. For Jacopuccius, son of Benevenutus Logus of the domain of Todi, when he was being racked with the pains of the stone even to a stubborn obstruction of the natural passage, being devoted by his mother Sabina to God and to Blessed Philip, with the added promise that if he were delivered from his torture by the Saint's suffrages she would light up his altar with many lights and would perform other pious works of service to him, at once from the moment the form of the vow was conceived he voided the troublesome stone; and thus, the stones being drawn off, he thereafter through his whole life reckoned no like pains.
Likewise another, Mattivola by name, wife of a certain Bartholomew of Benevento, tormented with the most bitter torments of the stone, the remedies of medicine being now exhausted, when she was brought to Philip's sarcophagus and both hoped for and demanded from his patronage the last help, was relieved of a stone of a size monstrous in its kind; and it was fastened up at the Saint's tomb for a spectacle, and the woman thereafter never suffered from that malady, which is nevertheless wont to have roots in a body once affected.
Yet another, Illuminata by name, given up by the physicians because of the cruelty of the stone, when she had implored Philip's patronage in so present a danger, had scarcely made an end of praying when she poured out a stone, which with a wax votive offering she hung up at the same tomb, confessing before witnesses who were present that she had escaped the peril by the Saint's merits.
[249] the patronage of this Saint But not only with diseases, but with the Stygian tenants themselves, did Philip fight for his suppliants more than once, and conquer. A certain woman, Ludovica by name, was held by so great a tyranny of the demon that with continual gnashings, forced out by that Stygian sting, she became intolerable to all about her; nor, entangled in so great an evil, was she permitted to stretch out suppliant hands to heaven for the sake of imploring help, nor to form the health-bringing sign of the cross, nor to recite the Lord's prayer and the Angelic salutation, nor finally to hand out an alms to a beggar. To her, thus exposed, Philip offers himself to be seen and beheld, and says, Come to my church, and you shall be freed from your infirmity and from the demons that harass you. When the woman had obeyed and had come to Philip's sepulcher, and had fallen asleep at it, in that sleep she felt herself raised and roused by Philip, and at last freed and snatched from all the violence and illusions of the evil demon.
Nor did Philip's power so greatly dread the royal disease. A certain Ugolinuccia, daughter of Petruccius Scopellus, was so powerfully afflicted with this evil that in its paroxysms she seemed dead: so entirely did no motion, no vital signs, appear in her. Her grieving Mother commends her to the divine Philip, and promises that if he brought help to her desperate case she would come together with her daughter as a suppliant with grateful veneration to his tomb. She said this, and at once all the disease vanished, nor did it ever return to the daughter.
Gout of the hand also, held by the school of physicians for incurable, this our Hippocrates cured. A certain Joannula Rigalascha, most tightly contracted with it for a good many years, having invoked Philip's help at that same sepulcher of his in the church of St. Mark, with many who were present looking on, freely extended her freed arms, and enjoyed the use of them as long as she lived.
[250] Moreover he gave to the blind and the lame sight and the power of walking: imploring him in their need for Consita, daughter of Uguccio, a native of Perugia, deprived of the ability of her feet and besides blind from birth, when she had run as a suppliant to the Saint with an equal confidence — with the steps and the eyes of her mind, that is — found a remedy for both calamities, so that thereafter she needed neither support nor guide for walking.
The same enjoyment of the public light a certain blind beggar obtained by Philip's intercession with God, who, being brought to his feet while he still lay on the bier, before he was buried, when he had reverently and piously kissed them, marveled at Philip's sanctity and at the brightness of the light that suddenly arose.
By an equal or a greater miracle, the son of a certain man, a tenant farmer of the Orvietan dominion (born into this light without light, and blind), having scarcely been introduced to the cure by his father with efficacious tears of singular confidence, illuminated by a sudden light which he enjoyed until the darkness of death, looked round upon both his helping Fathers.
[251] Meanwhile after his funeral Philip was as keen an avenger of himself against those who despised him as he was kind toward suppliants. (a saucy woman who despised him was punished) A certain woman, infamous for the gain of harlotry (whose name is therefore passed over in silence), after the license of persons of that sort, having sharpened her impious tongue for the Saint's insult, had rashly babbled many things; but not for long: for suddenly she became dumb; whence it came about that she was compelled to sing another tune within and to speak better. And so, having confessed and deprecated at the feet of the holy corpse, with a most eloquent silence, the nefarious crime of her impious mouth, she recovered a more religious speech than she had had before.
[252] Philip's power knew how not only to gather up scattered members of the body but also to give them life. It happened not far from Todi their former health that a wolf fell upon an infant ill-guarded and straying through carelessness, which, fiercely and savagely attacking the throat of that harmless lamb thus offered to it, had sucked out from thence all its life together with its blood. The infant's mother came upon the butchery, who was anxiously seeking him everywhere, but not here, and before he was wholly torn apart by the beast she recovered her lifeless son. Whither the unhappy woman should turn, or what she should do, her little son being dead, she could not sufficiently find, until, remembering Philip, a little before received into heaven not without prodigies, she laid the little son's corpse in her lap and brought it to the Saint's as yet unburied corpse; and prayers being poured out such as hope and grief had kindled, the infant came to life again.
You would say that no small power had flowed even into Philip's sandals; so much did even these avail against calamities. A certain good and pious man, and therefore well named Benedict, an intimate of blessed Philip, had received from him while he lived, as a gift, a single pair of shoes woven of river rushes with simple workmanship, which he kept with no common reverence. And so, a fire having arisen in his house, he threw the rush shoes, now quite dry, with a great hope and confidence of certain protection in his Benefactor, into the raging whirlwinds of the flames; to which the flame yielded more quickly than it would have seemed likely to yield to the river from which the rushes had come.
[253] recovered in a wonderful manner, Philip also retained life as it fled with the blood in the tender limbs of a little infant. Berardellus, the infant son of a certain Joannellus Ventura from the region of the hill, being carried in the arms of his nurse and bearer Margaret, was leaping about gladly and merrily, when suddenly, made bloodless, in the manner of a corpse
he so grew pale and was disfigured that, before a public notary, both the father and the nurse affirmed on oath that, since he gave no sign of living vigor, he was held by them for dead, and that as such, being commended by them to the divine Philip, he was restored either to life or to health (certainly to health); and that thereafter, in acknowledgment of so great a benefit, as they had promised beforehand, they fastened a waxen image of weight equal to the boy to the dome of the chapel where Philip's sepulcher was: and by vow, every year as long as Berardellus lived, four of Christ's poor were entertained with a pure and pious meal on the returning anniversary day of the miracle.
[254] or escaped threatening dangers. But by as much as there is a difference between the half-dead and the dead, by so much more manifest a miracle was the bereavement relieved of a certain widow, who, lamenting her only son dead of a long and most troublesome illness, when she implored Philip's sanctity for his raising, saw her son on the spot restored to life, who openly and vigorously professed before those who were present to soothe his mother's grief that he was living a second life by the divine kindness obtained through the help of blessed Philip.
Finally, that it might be established that no kind of disease escapes this Physician's art, he applied his medicine after his death even to the most burning fevers. Ciuccius Polus of the Cammuccian quarter of Todi, burning with a continuous fever, having invoked Philip's healing, grew strong again at that very moment.
Moreover a certain Reginald Gualterus of the quarter of St. Silvester, when he was being shaken beyond measure by a tertian fever, having heard the fame of Philip, not yet buried, celebrated for miracles, when he had commended himself to him and had reverently touched his sacred remains, suddenly felt himself free of all fever.
ANNOTATIONS.
* read Gregory IX
CHAPTER XIX.
Other miracles, which seem to have been done in the fourteenth century, in which his sacred body was first translated.
Other miracles being omitted, Of these and of signs like these, which occurred in the healings of fevers, of abscesses, and of other diseases, with Philip as patron, there are very many in the processes of canonization and in ancient manuscript Codices a. These being passed over, we shall report here two memorable signs, of which the one pertains to the reverence and veneration of Philip's sacred body, the other to the evidence of the present care and protection with which that same Father cherishes and guards, by his kindness and patronage, those devoted either to the divine Virgin or to himself.
[256] And of the former, indeed, the unheard-of miracle can be a proof which took place in a great crowd of mortals in the Christian year one thousand three hundred and seventeen, that is, in the thirty-second year from Philip's precious death. In which year, when for various and prodigious causes our Fathers had determined to translate the Saint's body and to lay it in a more august tomb, that body, as while living he was always the good odor of Christ in every place, so, being taken out of the wooden coffin, first breathed forth a certain heavenly fragrance b, which, gliding into the senses and minds of the people present, stirred up in their souls great motions of reverence and veneration toward Philip.
[257] Then, as if that were too little, the votive offerings and statues of wax and of other materials, and the wondrous turning of the votive offerings, which were seen fixed in great number about the sepulcher by the faithful who had been helped — trophies over death, diseases, demons, and the various other dangers of mortals conquered by Philip's holiness — just as if, animated by the breath of that fragrance, they had drawn in life and motion, and with these piety and reverence, raise themselves from their dust, and, their faces turned toward the altar on which the sacred body was displayed, venerated it wonderfully and as though alive.
[258] But as to the presence of his care and solicitude for his clients, whether his divine Lady's or his own, and the prodigious cunning of a demon, this became widely and evidently known, marvelously asserted by a memorable event in the following manner, which was thus. A certain soldier, with a certain fellow-soldier of his whom he had cherished as a brother and as a second self, leaving at home his wife and only little son, forgetful of his own, mindful either of glory or of plunder, followed the camp. As often happens to such wanderers, his return to his own was not so ready as his departure had been: for, dying in the battle-line together with his fellow-soldier, he passed from the many to the more. Meanwhile his wife, who had remained at home, such was her exceptional piety toward the Mother of God, was passing that solitude and bereavement of hers in the cultivation of virtues and other good arts. And especially indeed she was forming her little son for the Queen of heaven into a youth, with such happy success that, the boy's docility answering to the mother's diligence, the boy seemed liker to some heavenly spirit than to a mortal boy.
[259] who calls away the son of a pious widow The Stygian envy of the evil demon grieved at these successes, and turning to his known arts of harming, to see whether he might in some way, by his company, call away mother and son from the pursuit of prayer and of the veneration of the Mother of God, and stop and destroy them in the midst of a praiseworthy course of life, he contrived this trick. He puts on the body and form of the fellow-soldier whom we have already recorded to have died along with the matron's husband in the war, and as though returned from the war he enters the house, and says to the matron: I grieve indeed vehemently that I have lost a most choice and most friendly brother, and you a most sweet husband; he fell indeed fighting bravely in the line; but as at his departure he commended to me with his last words the care of you and of your son and your bereavement, so I shall not allow that my duty or any part of my diligence toward you should be found wanting. Be therefore of good courage, and, moderating your grief, keep yourselves for a better lot. At this the widow, sorrowing with wifely piety, although she wept vehemently at the mournful news, nevertheless, whether by strength of mind or because she believed that sincere consolations were being brought, set an even measure to her grief.
[260] away from the worship of the Mother of God; Meanwhile the Tartarean impostor, lurking under that mask which we have described, having now become a kind of little household god of that house and a familiar spirit, played earnestly, to all appearance, the guide and leader of the youth to piety (if it please the Powers above). Wherefore, that he might throw dust in the mother's eyes, he was accustomed to call out to him, Son, let us go to the church; meanwhile he was leading the youth away to everything else rather than to churches (which he hates worse than the cross, and the Mother of God herself). And so by this education and this tutorship of his it came about that the unhappy youth, now wholly changed from what he had been, could not bring himself either to attend or to hear sacred sermons, nor the sacred rites of the Mass and the offices of the other divine praises: nay, even, all filial fear and reverence being blotted out and driven from his breast, he insulted his mother wantonly and petulantly when she admonished him well and invited him to the accustomed services of the Mother of God. That mother, perplexed at her son's metamorphosis and sick at heart, betakes herself to the sacred church, and there before the image of the divine Virgin, the consoler of the afflicted, sorrowfully laments the tumult of her breast, her son's danger, and the household management and unskilled discipline of the preposterous guardian whom she had admitted into her house, and implores as a suppliant, for so manifold and so doubtful an evil, the present help and deliverance of the most merciful Mother of God. Her cause having been pleaded not unsuccessfully, when the woman had returned home and had settled down, she hears at her doors the knock of one asking to be admitted; but she, fearing everything even when safe, did not stir, until, the guest knocking a second time more imperiously, she at last unbarred the house to him.
[261] but the Saint, appearing to the widow, Greeting therefore being given and returned, and conversation entered upon, the guest bids her declare why she is so sad, or what burden she bears in her mind. To this the matron replies that if she must reckon up the accounts of her calamities, some whole days would sooner pass away than the greatness and bitterness of her grief and sorrow would find an end of speaking and complaining. But if nevertheless he wishes to know the matter in brief, let him know that the sum of her unhappiness is this: that the fellow-soldier of her dead husband, returned from the war, whom she received into her house, to whom, as the most faithful of friends, her dying husband commended her youthful son and herself the mother, together with the care of the bereaved house — that she finds him such in the guardianship and discipline of her son, that he, from being pious, obedient, and chaste, being perverted by him to everything else, has turned out the worst and most impious of the whole city. Hereupon the guest says, I condole with your lot, but see to it that word be sent him that, by God's command, he present himself to me as soon as possible. There happened to be standing by the speakers a certain little boy, who of his own accord, without anyone's voting for it, made himself the summoner, runs to the masked guardian, and taking him by the hand bids him walk with him to God's judgment at the command given.
[262] The impostor obeys at once, feeble though the summoner was, uncovers the demon, and puts him to flight. and wailing and howling says, Why do you harass me, Philip? why do you torment me, my veteran enemy? Then Philip, who lay hid under the guise of the matron's consoling guest, says, By God's authority I command you: come, declare who you are, why you have come, what business you have in this house. Here the water — or rather the flame with which he burned — stuck fast in the impostor's throat, and turning himself with all his serpentine slipperiness into every coil and fold, he sought means of escape; but in vain, since the authority of Philip pressed him, who held the wolf by the ears. Compelled by which he says: Since you so command, and hard necessity wrings the thing from me: I confess that I am an evil demon, I confess that I feigned to be this woman's husband's fellow-soldier; so that, if she should at any time omit her accustomed and familiar religion and worship of the Mother of God, I might by that opportunity roll her, made liable to me, down to Tartarus, torn asunder together with her son. Then Philip: Be gone hence as quickly as possible, Tartarean firebrand; nor hereafter ever dare to molest anyone of this family: and at the word the demon, having given forth such a crash as the sky is wont to give when it seems to be falling, routed and put to flight, vanished into the darkness, leaving in the midst the foul and stinking burden of the corpse which he had been carrying. The matron, spectator of so admirable a drama, having poured out praises and thanksgiving to God and to the Mother of God, asks the guest's name. He, confessing what the truth was, answers that he is that Philip,
whose body rests at Todi, and that he had been sent as a ministering spirit by the Mother of God, that in consideration of her pious services he might rescue her from so doubtful a peril of the Stygian robber's snares c.
[263] This Philip did for his Lady's honor; what follows he did for his own; which the public Acts praised above subjoin, keeping the order of time rather than of matter. Before, however, we pursue these, this must first be recorded, which has been handed down to memory concerning Philip's outer garment and the scapular which we wear. Various sick persons Namely, that a little after his death it was carried about in a public procession of a crowded populace of Todi, and dispelled a fierce storm that had arisen from an angry sky, calming it, serenity being suddenly restored.
In the same translation of Philip's relics (of which we spoke a little before) a certain man, his feet dead, overcome by the sweetness of the fragrance evaporating from the Saint's coffin, was lulled to sleep, and in that rest saw Philip offering him helping hands; and so, restored to himself, he felt a little after that the living use of his feet had also been restored.
Moreover a certain Girl, deprived of her right eye, penetrating as she could through the crowded throng to Philip's tomb, and having complained to him of her want of sight, at once obtained also the right-hand power of seeing.
Nor did a little boy, subject to the falling sickness, find Philip less beneficent at the same time: for when he had implored from Philip a stable help for his miserable and slipping lot, he never thereafter fell down with this affliction.
The demons too felt the hard hand of Philip, their veteran antagonist. A certain possessed woman, tortured in a pitiable manner by those Stygian inhabitants for six whole years, when, being led to Philip's sepulcher, she rested there, during that rest saw Philip, like some divine exorcist, driving the nefarious spirits from her body, and awaking, rejoiced that she was free and empty of those hostile tenants.
[264] are restored to their former health In the same translation of the body of the blessed Father Philip the earlier coffin, although it yielded its treasure to a more precious sarcophagus for the Saint's honor, nevertheless retained the power of healing: for a certain poor and pitiable girl from Montecastello, contracted in hands and feet, and besides racked with a savage pain of the kidneys even to an incurable bending, being placed in Philip's old sepulcher, whence his bones had lately been drawn out, on the spot raising herself upon her feet, went forth upright and nimble.
Nevertheless the salutary force of healing left in the earlier tomb showed itself most of all in the second and more honorable one, as the following and many other miracles taught. A certain infant, blazing with a violent fever, given up by the physicians, was at his last gasp. Whence his grieving mother, to keep the dart of death from her little son, fled to Philip's sepulcher and laid her son by it. While on the following day our Fathers were performing the sacred rites in Philip's honor, they perceive that the boy, who had almost closed his eyes upon eternal night, at once, from the prayers poured out by his pious mother, being entirely healed, had escaped certain death, Philip protecting him. Again, another man devoted to Philip with a familiar reverence (which also the nearness of the church of St. Mark encouraged), having fallen from a very lofty place, his shin bone broken, limped for two years not without very sharp pains. He, thus afflicted, being brought to the said tomb of Philip, suddenly growing well, thereafter walked with even steps.
[265] through the Saint's relics or body, No different a readiness in Philip's curing was experienced by this same man's son, not unlike his father in piety toward the holy Man, Benedict by name, whom we recorded above to have been an intimate of Philip while he yet lived, and to have been given by him those rush shoes that tamed the flames. He, by the force of a disease of the joints which had seized his knees, was so violently fixed and clinging to his little bed that from the greatness of his pain he was unmanageable and immovable: when he had heard of Philip's translation and of the prodigies which were occurring on its occasion, those shoes came into his mind, and having earnestly sought them and had them brought, he fits them to his knees, by an inverted but salutary use. On the following night Philip showed himself to be seen and heard by him who was thus piously shod; and having sweetly consoled him, all the pain with which he burned being wiped away, as he had turned the devastation of fire from his house, so he turned that slow-creeping plague from his feet and from all the rest of his body. Wherefore on the following morning, leaping from his bed, he goes to Philip's sarcophagus, and sets up to the Saint a trophy of his pains for the eternal memory of the benefit d.
[266] which the Florentines vainly attempted to steal away; Nor yet did every piety altogether persuade Philip to concede everything; but only that which was in accord with the divine will. For not so very long after Philip's death a pious desire came upon the Florentines of gaining possession of the body and relics of so illustrious a citizen of theirs: and the matter having been communicated with the Supreme Pontiff Honorius IV, and concluded, when the people of Todi, more difficult than the Pontiff, had refused to give so noble a spoil to anyone, the Florentines, turning to pious frauds and thefts, steal away that golden fleece, guarded by more eyes than were in Argus of the people of Todi, and, having laid it upon a beast of burden, lead it out of the city, eluding the vigilance of the whole city. When they had come into a certain field situated on the plain of the territory of Todi (which today belongs to the canons of its cathedral church), they urge themselves and the beast that bore the sacred burden upon the road: but with no other reward for their labor than that, while they supposed they had already by their speed accomplished many miles, wandering about in that field as in a kind of labyrinth, the dawning day and their own confession of their error (for which they were begging pardon of the men of Todi) betrayed them. And the men of Todi indeed, pouring out of the city, freely and willingly pardoned that error to their suppliants, and having received back the sacred litter and led it in solemn pomp, joyfully laid it up in the mausoleum of their church. A memorable trace of that miracle flourishes even today: for where through that field the Florentines had wandered all night with the sacred remains, although the field is everywhere cultivated with the same tillage and care, not only by the color of the crop but even, where there are shrubs, by their lowness and thinness, the bendings and turnings of the paths worn by the nocturnal wanderers are formed e. For the sake of attesting this, some years ago the senate and people of Todi set up in that same place a monument at public expense, setting forth the deed by a painting and an inscription.
[267] There was at that time in the same city a certain informer of satiric license and a certain detractor is punished. and of a brazen-faced boldness in blackening the good name of good men: he one day, in a place of public resort, blathering many things against the many good works of Philip, made a mockery of his fellow citizens' devotion to the Saint, and labored the more greatly to turn away and pervert, if in any way he could, the people's zeal from the worship of Philip; but that wickedness did not so pass off with him for long: for suddenly God the avenger is at the proud man's back, and, to the horror of the very crowded assembly standing about, dashed him to the ground, disjointed in all his limbs, his impious voice taken away, and compelled him to plead his unhappy soul's ruined cause of nefarious detraction. But how should he plead it? There was neither voice nor sense. Carried therefore on shoulders or on the joinings of arms, he is borne by the religious citizens to Philip's life-giving sepulcher; upon which being laid, from his impiety and from his now almost decisive and final punishment he at once revived by the life-giving power of the Benizi tomb, and he fastened a monument of so great kindness, sketched out in letters and colors, to the dome of the church where the Saint's sepulcher is: and thus, from a slanderer becoming a eulogist of Philip, he afterward said everything other than what he had before been accustomed to say f.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER XX.
More recent miracles, with which are mingled those which occurred in the third translation of his body.
II.
Our physician Philip would never have cured so many after his own funeral, An asthmatic is healed, if, despising the Virgin's call, he had wished to cure. But while from a physician he becomes the Virgin's Servant, he received from her, the healing of the infirm, that power, that now for four whole centuries he brings a present medicine to all his clients. Of this matter we adduced in the preceding chapter the older proofs; in this we shall adduce the more recent, and those only a few out of many and the better established.
John Andrew Amidei, of the village Coldiscipulo in the territory of Narni, in the Christian year 1591, reduced to extremity by an incurable asthma, the physicians bidding him farewell, was already entering upon the roads of eternity, and, anointed with Extreme Unction, had prepared himself for the last struggle. His granddaughter Catherine, a Religious Sister of our Order in the convent of the town of Arnolfa, learned of it; and having entreated Philip's help together with some of her fellow virgins, and a vow being conceived, they promise that, if her grandfather recovered, they would bring it about that the holy sacrifice of the Liturgy — the highest thing which the divine wisdom devised for propitiating and honoring the Powers above in necessity — should be offered in honor of the divine Philip. Scarcely had the virgins pronounced the vow when John, as though roused from a deep lethargy, calls again and again upon his Epiphania (for so his wife was called); and, Hark, he says, do you not see blessed Philip of the Order of Servants, who, coming as my helping chief physician, has bidden me be of good courage and be from this moment sound and safe? adding,
that the Religious women of Bulgaria had stood as faithful intermediaries of the grace obtained. This Philip attributed to necessity, that to the delights of his worshipers.
[269] And when in the year from Christ 1599 the translation of blessed Philip from the church of St. Mark and at the fragrant translation of his body to that of the divine Virgin of the Graces was being prepared a, and the chest was being opened out of which the wooden case containing Philip's bones was to be drawn, the crowded people who were present perceived it almost sooner with their nostrils than with their eyes: for so great a diffusion of sweetness suddenly arose through the whole church that, all being carried away into wonder, they who were present swam in unaccustomed delights, and, smelling the sweetness of God, gave him heaped-up thanks for the condescension by which they had been admitted to the experience of so heavenly a breath. Another like diffusion of fragrance was granted to the people on the eighteenth of September of the same year, when Philip's bones were being taken out of that same case and received into another more sumptuous and more august, in which they were to be translated.
[270] And the twenty-first day of the same month of September had been appointed for the work of the translation, an obstructing storm is dispelled, and now all the confraternities, all the Religious Orders, and all the Clergy with the bishop and the people of Todi had assembled at St. Mark's, and the procession had even now begun to be led: when suddenly, the sky blackening and thundering, a huge squall of turbulent rain rushes down, which not only broke up the order of the religious triumph, but also, since the squall seemed likely to be no less violent than persistent, brought it about that thought was taken of omitting the translation for that day. But nevertheless they proceeded; and as soon as the sacred litter, carried out of the aforesaid church of St. Mark, stood beneath the open sky, while all were amazed and applauding, quicker than can be told all that fury of the storm, serenity being restored, laid itself down and was stilled. Thus with a troubled sky Philip dead not only fought for his own honors (so great a hater of them among the living) but even richly rewarded those who congratulated his procession.
[271] For when in directing the course of this procession it had pleased the bishop of Todi that it should proceed toward the Borgo gate of the city, so that the enclosed Religious virgins of our Order at the church of the divine Annunciation might conveniently behold the array and solemnity of the procession, and, when it was not otherwise permitted, might accompany and follow it with their eyes; there was at that time in that convent a certain Religious virgin, Sister Ludovica Montenigra by name, of Perugia, in whose left side a cancer, foully creeping for four years now, had eaten away her breast, and it had so raged in the last two years that, all use of all her limbs being taken from her, she could neither move herself when the little bed had to be made, nor, when food had to be taken, bring her hand to her mouth, so that on that account she had to be carried and fed by another's help. She, when she had heard of Philip's conveyance, desired in the highest degree to be present with the rest of the Sisters to see it; and when this was not granted her because of health so afflicted, she invoked Philip and prayed that by his sanctity he would bless her with the health of even one arm. Then she followed with these wishes the Sisters who were going to look on: Thrice happy you, she said, to whom it has been given to be able to see, and to be a part of, this translation; and at that word she settled down. On the next morning one of the Sisters, Dorothea Florida by name, enters her cell for the sake of visiting the sick woman, and Ludovica joyfully says to her: Do you not see, Sister Dorothea, our Philip's kindness toward me? He this night in my sleep laid this right arm of mine upon the crown of my head, and, found so by me when I awoke, I now move it with the agility that you see. And the benefit of that agility lasted until the virgin's death.
[272] Several others, Nor is that less wonderful which the same Philip conferred as a benefit upon a certain Vincent, son of Raphael Pezzini, a citizen of Florence. This little boy had suffered so idly in his right foot that he always had to cling to a certain chair, since he could not stand, not without the troublesome grief of his parents; one of whom, Dianora by name, on the twenty-sixth of July in the year of restored salvation one thousand five hundred and ninety-one, having gone to the church of the divine Annunciation, and having there adored the most sacred Divinity of the Eucharist, after she had paid honor to the great image of the Mother of God, visited also the chapel of blessed Philip, and, stirred by a twin incitement, namely a mother's love toward her son and confidence in the Saint's great merits, prays for strength for her son's dead foot, and obtains it at once: for as the mother was returning home her son, glad and dancing, comes to meet her with new steps; nor in his footsteps did any trace remain of that fetter by which he had hitherto been bound to that chair.
[273] both men, A certain nobleman, John Baptist Guazzaronius, also acknowledged that he owed his health to Philip, who was being killed by a most acute stone, and by the gravel grown to the stone, and also by pains of the sides. And the physicians had already cried out that in curing him they had wasted all their oil and labor. John, understanding this, began to look to heavenly physicians and medicines, and having implored the help of the Mother of God, by whatever his servant Philip had ever merited in her service, he had scarcely made an end of his prayers when all his pains and the threefold cause of the pains vanished. On the same morning on which that sudden healing occurred there comes an early caller, Octavius Cortesinius, cousin of John who had been in peril a little before, and marveling at the novelty of so entire a health going about, the bed being now condemned, asks what portent this is. John replies that Philip's sanctity and patronage had been the great cause of this (as of many other) miracles; let Octavius therefore go and procure what was necessary for undertaking a journey to Rome with two Fathers of the Society of Jesus, who were in readiness for the same in the episcopal palace. Octavius obeyed quickly, and, everything necessary for the road being brought, John, not without the amazement of his friends and of the physicians who scarcely believed their own eyes, both entered upon and completed the journey with those same two Fathers. Nor was he ever afterward even assailed by the said diseases.
[274] and women, The nephew of the same Horatius b Cortesinius, Charles by name, a boy of seven years, for twenty days, with no sign of relief, was, in the judgment of the physicians, being scorched with the heavy burnings of a fever with present danger to his life. And so, thinking his life was done for, his patron and his mother devote the boy to the divine Philip, and, with no delay interposed, the boy thus devoted grew well again, and that same day, leaping from his pyre, that is, his bed, was able to walk about, and then to walk to Philip's life-giving sepulcher: where his mother, since she was bound by her vow, had her son clothed in the habit of our Order.
Another man, a leather-worker by trade, Cintius Moscatellius by name, when he was suffering severely in one arm, could work with neither; but since his whole means of livelihood and income lay in the labor of his arms, and therefore he saw himself caught in a strait, he promises that if he were delivered from his peril, with Philip as patron, he would always hold his birthday sacred and festal, nor profane it by any work of his craft, and would besides fasten to the Saint's monument, in memory of so great a benefit, a silver arm. He vowed, and obtained: for on the day after that same feast he worked in the quarry of Ponte dei Conti, no longer painfully but profitably, his arm being restored.
[275] Philip knows how to hold back even a soul now fleeing from the body, afflicted with various evils, not by the casting on of hands or fetters, but only of his cloak. Of the nobility of Todi, a certain Jerome Leonius attested in good faith that in the year from the bringing of salvation one thousand five hundred and ninety-seven his mother, Hortensia by name, reduced to the last necessity of packing up her baggage and departing, began to be at her last gasp and to be commended finally to God; and having been anointed for that struggle, on whose victory eternity hangs, with the sacred Oil after the Catholic custom, being occupied in a grave business with death, she had ceased to be able to speak to mortals. That doubtful struggle held for a good many days, in which she not only took nothing of food or drink, but did not even give forth any vital motion or sign of life, though burned with a white-hot iron. The physicians, who accordingly were now present in vain, and seeing that it was over with her, and because they are wont to contend with disease, not with death, went away bidding her an eternal farewell. But the others, passing through the chamber, made the sign of the cross over her after the custom and prayed for her as for one dead. At last, whether she was dead or on the border of death, it seemed good to her brother and to her son to have Philip's cloak, which by the custom of the city of Todi is wont to be laid upon the dying, brought and laid upon her, dead or dying. While this is being done, Jerome was returning from his suburban estate, whither he had gone the day before because of pressing business, certain that he would find his mother dead; but Philip's cloak deceived him, for when it had been applied, she, while he looked on, took food, and left her bed without any difficulty.
[276] The third translation also of the blessed Father Philip the Saint's help being implored, two memorable events made worthy of the memory and veneration of posterity. The one, that when the workmen wished to draw out the wooden coffin in which Philip's relics had been laid up from the altar in which they had been sunk and encased, by no art or exertion could they even move it from its place. But when Eustachius Desiderius, archdeacon of the cathedral church of Todi, applied his hands as helpers, the stubbornness of every obstacle suddenly ceased; and it appeared that sacred things are duly and fitly handled by sacred, not by profane, hands.
The other was that (while most supposed that the body would not suffer itself to be translated out of that church to which at another time, though secretly carried off with great reverence and piety, it had nevertheless brought itself back) a huge stone (the table of that altar), set upon two supporting posts and thrust with a very slight push, fell with such speed, to the great wonder of the onlookers, though they judged that twice the number of workmen would not suffice to move that mass, that the mass of stone seemed to flee after the manner of a living body; so that it appeared that the blessed Servant, that obstacle being driven off and removed, was passing gladly and willingly to the church and altar of his gracious Lady.
[277] But although Philip changed his place, as we have seen, with so great eagerness, or a vow being made yet he did not change his will to help the wretched, but rather increased it from his dwelling with his Lady; as is proved even by the daily experiences of his benefits down to this present day. We proceed with those which the often-praised public records supply. An infant eighteen months old, carried in his father's arms before the window of his house, which lay opposite the church of St. Mark, as infancy is slippery and given to falls, had fallen from his father into the square, a fall of twenty feet; and, as the infant's mother Claudia Ceonellia, a noble matron, testified, he was held by all for dead, since no breath of life could be noted in him: but being carried into the church and laid upon the altar in which Philip's urn was enclosed, he grew well again; and shortly after not even a bruise from the fall remained: in memory of which benefit his parents wished the infant thereafter to bear the name of Philip his preserver c.
[278] at his sepulcher, The same Philip whom he had been
still to be, a certain woman, Belisandra by name, wife of Joseph Catarinus, a citizen of Todi, experienced; who, when, caught in the most bitter pains of childbirth, and destitute of all her powers and senses save the faculty of hearing, she seemed to have perished together with the child, the midwife and the other women who were present, a vow being pronounced, promise that, if by Philip's faithful help she escaped the danger, they would present themselves with the boy and the mother at the Saint's tomb with oil for his lamps at the first opportunity, and would mark the boy with Philip's name. And at the promise and the prayer the infant was brought forth into the light, of whom nevertheless it seemed that he had drawn no vital breath, so that on that account the midwife and the rest redoubled their vows and prayers. These being conceived, the infant began to breathe and to move his little lips, and this sharpened the diligence of the pious women in paying their vow.
Into the register of Philip's clientage there was also entered a certain noble matron, Cleria Guazzaronia by name, who, being reduced by a flux of blood to the last extremity of life, when she had fled to Philip's protection as to a sure asylum for preserving life, on the day after help was there sought, condemning the little bed she had long kept, felt herself freed from all that inveterate malady and from the present danger of death, while the town physician Octavian Taramanus asserted that by no human help could she have escaped death.
[279] obtain what they desire, Nor yet did this our Patron reckon in the register of his own only those sick with diseases, but also those relieved when in need of the necessities of life. A certain Faustina, wife of a certain Sebastian Tardinus, her husband having gone abroad, when there remained to her nothing of provision for feeding herself and her four children but a very little flour, with which it was not possible that she should be sustained until the return of Tardinus the father, the destitute woman, fleeing to Philip's kindness, begs him that, as once while living he had relieved the poverty of two sinful women (of whom in the preceding book), so he would succor her and her little children with an increased store of grain. There was no delay to her prayers: for Philip, having made flour out of a pinch of flour, sufficient for the nourishment of fifteen days, abundantly supplied the slowness of Tardinus the father in returning.
But Philip nobly supplied also the offices of a surgeon, where all mortal surgeons despaired. Sister Paulina, a Religious virgin in the convent of the divine Francis at Todi, testified in good faith that in the year from the saving childbearing of our Virgin one thousand six hundred and six a certain other Sister in that same place, Laura Salvena by name, contracted from a certain grave burn of the left foot a gaping wound of no small danger: which had fastened her to her little bed for four whole months, and had afflicted her with most savage pains, to which no medicine could set a limit, so that accordingly two household physicians determined that the leg should be cut and the infected part cut away, lest the sound parts be drawn in. When the sister and Religious Sister [n] of the endangered virgin, Domitella, learned this, she exhorts her sister, warned of the impending danger, to set against the tormenting and doubtful business the redoubled help of the divine Philip. And when she had vigorously done this, and, a silver leg being fastened to a certain image of Philip (which they venerated in the choir of the convent), had promised that she would attest to posterity the grace of her leg preserved; the vow being pronounced, health, beginning to return, stood in the way of the amputation, and after four days she left her little bed and began to walk about the chamber, and twelve days later, being wholly healed, she could walk as she had been able before she was burned.
[280] Not only did Philip himself declare his sanctity by these and other signs of miracles, and a man about to work on his feast is frightened off. but the Virgin herself more than once took thought for his honor. In the same records a certain Marcellus Valentinius, of the nobility of Todi, reports that a certain Pasquinus, a tenant farmer of one Felician Armenius, on the twenty-third day of August (which is sacred to the divine Philip), going out to the country to do country work, came upon a heroic woman of admirable beauty, in a white garment, standing on the top of a certain slope, who, having asked the man what he was about, when he had replied that he was about the task of his day's work, said (the woman being believed to have been the Virgin Mary): Do you remember that this day's light is a feast for blessed Philip? Beware of working today, unless you wish to work an expiation for future guilt. She spoke, and with the word ceased to be seen: and the tenant, leaving off the profane work, was busied with the sacred; and being afterward offered for examination, on the thirteenth day of January, in the year one thousand six hundred and twenty-one, in it he related the course of the matter in good faith, the public notary of Todi, Quirinus Quirinius, taking down the words of the man under oath, who endowed the deed, duly examined, with public credit by an instrument lawfully drawn up.
[281] Next this same Patron of ours is related to have cherished the weak age of earliest infancy with various benefits. The Saint especially For another man, Rutilius Poltius, a painter, publicly declared that his little son of two years, by name Agnulus, had been drained for a whole month by so impetuous a flux of blood that the physicians engaged that he would pour out his soul along with it. And the physicians, rising up before a death now either present or now coming, had bidden a long farewell to the boy and to his parents. Nor did they draw their fear of danger from nothing: for the little boy, thus drained, admitted no nourishment at all through his little mouth, unless it were opened by force and with torment; and even that, however little it was, he threw back up, his stomach turning. The anxious parents, and pitying their own lot in the lot of their pitiable boy, all human help being exhausted, turn to the divine, and choose Philip as patron for entreating it. And for the sake of gaining his favor, while they carry the little boy, dressed in black in our habit, to Philip's tomb, on the way a baker's shop presented itself, in whose wares for sale children's little cakes were displayed; and when the little boy had asked for one of these, his father, having bought it at no regrettable price, hands it to the boy. He at once began to lick up the gift he had put to his lips; and when they had come to the church, and the Religious Fathers had applied Philip's cloak to the boy, and the boy had pressed a kiss upon it, without any delay interposed he was restored to his former health.
[282] Likewise another infant, Bernardinus, son of a certain Cyprian Joannius of the village of St. John, succors infants had for three days now ceased to be able to draw from the nurse's breast. While he was at his last gasp, his father, by the advice of a certain matron (who not long since had obtained by Philip's merits the safety of her own endangered offspring), was carrying his son to Todi, and repeatedly, because he seemed to have expired on the way, was looking at him. When in the church where Philip's monument is the priest of the place had purified him with the aforesaid cloak of Philip, seizing the nurse's breasts with wonderful gladness and eagerness, he grew well again, sucked, and prolonged his life.
Like this too is that of which Fulvia Armenia, a matron of Todi, gave assurance; namely that her daughter-in-law's little son suffered from the viscous obstruction of heavy defluxions falling from the head into the chest, with the greatest danger to his life (since the infant had not yet passed the sixth month of his age, and therefore was unequal in strength to drawing off that suffocating mass through the passages and ways laid down by nature). On the day when the crowded city of Todi, having chosen Philip as its tutelary saint, was adorning that nomination on that account with wonderful solemnity, the infant's mother Dionora, unmindful in her private grief of the public gladness, when she was informed what was going on, invokes Philip as propitious to her son. Scarcely had the woman made an end of praying when, as soon as the boy sneezed, he at once began to obtain that health which we are wont to wish for those who sneeze, and a few days after he grew well.
[283] (besides these, however, to a feverish person of greater age) From infant age Philip returned to curing a confirmed age. Ludovicus Fantolinius of Perugia, when he had burned for some weeks with a continuous and stubborn fever, had now so succumbed to the violence of the disease not only in body but also in mind, that with a dying voice he spoke mere ravings; and accordingly his sister Jacoba was warned by the physicians that, since it had been proclaimed concerning the health of his body, she should look to his soul with the protection and viaticum of prayers and Sacraments. She began to exhort her brother to expiate his sins through sacred confession: but he, disturbed by the horror of present death, made no answer to the point. Whence the pious sister, fleeing to Philip, begs him as a suppliant to obtain for her brother from God at least so much of a lucid interval as should suffice for unburdening his conscience by Sacramental confession. Scarcely had she ceased praying when what she had asked in a narrow way she obtains in an august way: for her brother not only was able to confess to his satisfaction to the priest who was summoned, but also by one and the same working of God for Philip's favor, being freed from the disease of body and of soul, recovered entirely. This happened in May of the year one thousand six hundred and twenty-one.
[284] who, exposed to the danger of death But soon, in the month of July of the same year, Philip again extended his liberality to infants, and first indeed to that same family of the Fantolini, in the following manner. That same Ludovicus, wholly healed, had a daughter of three years, Constantia by name, who while playing had driven a wheat stalk into her tender little eye, so that blood and a notable inflammation of the eye followed the wound struck. The girl's mother, Margaret Mellinia, and a certain relative of hers, Jacoba, were not equal to drawing out the stalk; so deeply and so tenaciously had it worked itself into the eye; when, while they were destitute of counsel and did not know what to do, the girl's grandmother came upon them, and falling on her knees and stretching suppliant hands to heaven with burning confidence, said, O blessed Philip, I commend to you this little infant; and these words said, raising herself and looking at the infant's eye, she could no longer see or find anywhere in it, even with the eyes of the other women present, either blood, or the redness of inflammation, or (which was the crowning wonder) the stalk itself, which suddenly vanished.
[285] or harassed by diseases With no unequal benefit was another infant of two months affected, John Baptist Baldeschivus, who on the very Natal day of our Savior, in the year one thousand six hundred and two, began to be burned by a certain affliction (which they commonly call a rupture d), and the force of the evil had so increased that, besides the use of a tight bandage, several times a day by the household, with his head and the rest of his body turned downward from his feet (to see whether by any means his bowels, poured out from their bounds, might be put back), the diligence of thirteen months accomplished nothing; until at length the infant was carried to the sacred church of the Servants of the Mother of God at Perugia, called St. Mary the New, and by the touch of Philip's garment, which is kept in that convent in great honor, his intestines were restored to their seats and shut in, all the bandages being thrown away as no longer at all necessary.
Again, a certain Faustina, seven-year-old daughter of Salvator Batilorus by name, was tossed about by a disease unknown to the physicians, by which she could not stand on her feet without either falling, slipping now to this side, now to the other, or wearying those who stood in her way on either side as she fell. After long inquiries into the matter her mother had her purified with a certain garment of Philip, and she was suddenly cured, in the month of October of the year from the Virgin Mother one thousand six hundred and twenty-two.
[286] To this is subjoined in the same Acts Camillus de Penna, a boy of four years, and blasted by sorcery who, blasted by a deadly enchantment, was at his last gasp, his soul all but gone; when a certain sister of the Third Order of the divine Francis, Ursulina by name, sacristan of the confraternity of our Servite habit at St. Mary the New, vows the boy to the divine Philip, to be clothed in our habit for a whole half-year, if it should please his parents:
(and that it would please them the known piety of Octavius de Penna, the boy's father, had persuaded her, a piety which he shared with his wife Adriana Asidea and her mother Olimpia). From the pronouncing of the vow the little boy began at once to recover, and a little after even to be quite well; and this in the Christian year one thousand six hundred and twenty-three.
At length another girl, Constantia Cantuccia, of three years, was by that same plague of sorcery already held for dead so evidently that, when it was urged upon her parents Joseph and Hieronyma Bontempia that they should commend their daughter to Philip, they replied that they were being advised too late. Nevertheless, afterward, induced by the salutary counsel of a certain matron, Atalanta Benedictia, they consented; and at once both they and the infant, restored to her former health, felt the force of that commendation.
[287] Let the train of Philip's little clients in this book be closed — not in the benefit itself — by a matron of the city of Piacenza, an angel by name and by her piety toward Philip. experience his help. She was lamenting her nine-year-old little daughter Joanna, whose eyes were suffused with a certain bloody defluxion (by which she could neither see herself nor patiently be seen, because of the deformity). But a Sacrifice being offered on the altar sacred to the divine Philip in the church of the Servants at St. Anne's, and two eyes chased in silver being offered as she had promised, with no delay interposed, not even a slight one, bound by her vow according to her prayers she saw her daughter seeing in such wise that both could see everything, save any trace, even the least, of the blindness just now wiped away and driven off. And thus far indeed concerning the admirable things wrought by God's power, as proofs of Philip's sanctity. He who shall wish to learn more in number, let him consult our Annals and the ancient Processes of Canonization, published in print; and he will find God wonderful in his Saints, and Philip venerable in his deeds.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER XXI.
The public opinion of his sanctity, before he was solemnly enrolled in the catalogue of the Saints.
III.
Although such things have hitherto been reported of our blessed Father Philip, The biographer, from the deeds of Blessed Philip, from which his sanctity, mortal still while he lived and immortal after he died, has been so illustrated by many splendors of wonderful virtues that it might seem that a goal ought to be set at this place to the glorious course of his life, nevertheless, because some things no less honorable than those reported have been put off to the end of this history, lest by the commemoration of them in their own places the series of the deeds should be interrupted, it has seemed good to set before the reader some taste of them to be sipped; so that, drawn by their heavenly allurement, he may run after the odor of the ointments with which God anointed Philip, and by running and ascending through the steps of imitation may attain his virtue and holiness. With how great and what sort of ornaments of virtues, approved even by miracles, Philip's boyhood and youth were made illustrious, and how greatly his sanctity was esteemed by the seven first chief men of the Order, who believed that the novitiate of our Sienese youth was to be kindled by the ardor of his spirit while he still lay hid under the guise of a lay brother and was almost a novice himself, we have already recorded above in the first book of this history. Which office Philip discharged with so great good to our Order that, if the happiness of that first century and the abundance of holy men had not stood in the way — the very frequency abolishing the novelty (which is generally the cause of handing down deeds to posterity) — we should be reckoning many other saints in the Order, besides those seven blessed disciples of his praised in the preceding book, advanced by Philip's discipline to the great beatitude of divine friendship.
[289] from the devotion of the men of Todi toward him, For the rest, although in the preceding book we have intimated in how great honor and in how great a repute of sanctity Philip was held among the supreme Pontiffs, emperors, kings, and the remaining nobles of the Christian world, nevertheless in this place the piety of the men of Todi toward Philip deserves to be brought up as a reinforcement; who, when they had conferred upon him living the dignity of Gonfalonier, that is, the perpetual consulship of their city — the eminent sanctity of the man overshadowing the condition of a Religious person, incapable of a like honor — through which they promised themselves from God all prosperous and happy things, Philip having control of their affairs, prolonged that magistracy for him even when he had been received into heaven, no successor being ever thereafter substituted for him, because they judged not rashly that their Commonwealth would never be otherwise than well counseled, with that man as consul to whom a little before God the Best and Greatest had decreed an eternal triumph and consulship in heaven for his deeds well done. For the sake of propagating to posterity the memory of this decree of the senate the men of Todi willed a coin to be struck (of which kind a certain lord of the first nobility at Piacenza preserves a piece), bearing on one face a pyramid, on the point of which stands a cross adorned with curved lilies, with these letters R. S. B. M., that is, Religio Servorum BeatÆ MariÆ; but on the other face it has these letters with a cross: F. P. O. S., that is, Frater Philippus Ordinis Servorum a.
[290] But the healing hot springs of Mount Tuniatus also (which we have learned befell St. Roch [b] on account of other healings) took the name of a Saint from Philip while he was yet alive; his relics being carefully preserved, from their very beginnings called the Baths of St. Philip. But after his death so great was the celebrity of his sanctity throughout Italy and elsewhere everywhere, but especially at Todi, that all the orders, sexes and ages of the city, and all the inhabitants and neighbors of the whole territory of Todi, flowed together at the first report of his death with rites and manners ever various, and, venerating the Saint's body in rivalry, brought to it rings, garments, garlands, coins too and bread and the like, so that these things might obtain from the touch of the sanctity which he breathed while living force and efficacy against whatever human calamities. Which was the reason for Father Lotaringo Stufa, then vicar general of the Order, giving orders to the Fathers of Todi that they should attend with care to his sacred remains, and should deal with the bishop of the city that by his authority and attestation he should make authentic the miracles which were being wrought at his relics, and that they should keep them: and moreover that they should carefully preserve his garments, images, psalter, Breviary, the Index or Register of the Order, and all the rest of his simple and Religious furniture c.
[291] On the day after that on which his blessed soul was borne to heaven, the concourse of the people to his tomb, in the presence and with the approval of the bishop of the city and the magistrate, the divine Sacrifice was solemnly chanted, not after the manner of a funeral but of a festival, with the canticle of the angels, Glory to God in the highest; and the Symbol of the Apostles, I believe in one God, etc.; with the Introit, Let us all rejoice in the Lord, celebrating a Feast day in honor of blessed Philip the Confessor, etc. And that manner of celebrating held until the sacred body was buried. But after all the honors and pomp of burial had been paid to him with such ardor that this itself was for a miracle, the people of Todi nevertheless could not be torn from the sepulcher, nor be restrained from following the now-buried relics, after the manner of the primitive Church, with a vigil of several nights, with psalms, canticles, praises, and fastings. That devotion toward Philip which then arose, increased and propagated down to this our age, flourishes and is in use, not only through the ardor of neighboring peoples but even of those far distant, whose princes, both ecclesiastical and secular, in order to pay honor to Philip, for religion's sake piously and frequently visit this monument of his in crowds, and with their peoples adorn and venerate it with lamps, lights, votive offerings, and other images, witnesses of graces received from God by Philip's patronage.
[292] certain more recent miracles For the rest, that life-giving and health-bringing power derived from the divine might is not only in the whole body in this place where it is honored in its burial, but parts of it also, and other relics from his furniture, distributed here and there among princes and cities and the dwellings of Religious d, offer the same virtue to be felt. A recent and memorable proof of this thing occurred at Rome in the Christian year one thousand six hundred and sixteen, in a sacred bone of Philip, which for many other signs of divine graces is honored there in our church of the divine Marcellus: for John Baptist Rebiba, a man of the first nobility, was being urged to depart by the force of an acute fever (which, all the labor and industry of the physicians being now baffled, had brought him to the last line). Whereupon his grieving mother, understanding that all the remaining treatments were labor lost, and fleeing to the asylum of divine help for her son, sent someone to ask the Father sacristan of the church of the divine Marcellus that he would bring that portion of the sacred bone. And when this had been done, and she was burning with all confidence and piety toward Philip, the sacred bone had scarcely touched one of her breasts, where the seat of the deadly pain was, when, liquefied after the manner of tenacious wax or glue, it clung tightly to the breast, and, as though the whole plague had been sucked out and pressed from it, relieved the sick woman with wondrous consolation, and in a short time, to the amazement of all, entirely healed her.
[293] wrought at Rome, Attracted by this example of that deed, Pompeius Maximus, a Roman frontier commander, or, as they now call it, Marquis, of the ancient patrician Fabian family and of the stock of that dictator who by delaying restored the state; in the greatest crisis of his life, brought on by a most burning fever, named and invoked the divine Philip as dictator; and at once, not by delaying, Philip restored the state and his health: for this same sacred bone being brought by that same Father sacristan, and applied to him, Pompeius escaped the Hannibal of the funeral goddess, and on the fifth day after went forth from his bed glad and vigorous. This happened on the seventeenth of August of the same year. No less wonderful was what afterward happened on the twentieth day of the same month to Clelia Rebiba, the wife of that same Marquis, who, being now eight months pregnant and seized by the most bitter pains of childbirth (the sum of which had gathered itself, as though in a formed column, in her left breast), when she had laid this same holy bone, brought to her, upon her side and breast, all pain being suddenly stilled, brought forth with an easy and happy delivery, and was restored to entire health e.
[294] and at last, from Pope Leo X's There would be at hand here besides, for asserting the fame of Philip's sanctity, the statues erected in that great number, the images set up, the chapels built and dedicated, and various confraternities besides, and gatherings of pious persons, under his auspices and patronage as their Saint, through the utmost fortitude and abstinence of Christian philosophy
warring for God; from which it could easily be gathered by conjecture how greatly Philip, both mortal and immortal, was esteemed. But because, just as Phoebus is not made brighter either by stars or by torches, so these monuments, pious indeed but inferior to his merits, do not so illustrate Philip's glory that it should seem worth the labor here to weave the series of them and to enter upon their number; and we should the more fittingly forbear, since we have the more sure prophetic word of Christ's Oracle on earth, which in a judgment of this kind can neither be deceived nor deceive; to which accordingly we do well in attending, as to a lamp shining in the dark place of inquiry: which authentically constitutes a Saint, perfect in all his parts.
[295] That word is of Leo the tenth, Supreme Pontiff, who, Philip's holiness having been ascertained through various examinations, and those, as in a matter of the greatest moment, careful, and by the letters of other Pontiffs proves with certain premises about it, by a Rescript or Apostolic Brief permits his public solemnity to the whole Order in the following manner: "To you (until it shall have come to the canonization of that Philip, for which at present, hindered by various arduous affairs, we cannot have leisure) in whatsoever churches, houses, monasteries, oratories of either sex, of your whole Order both in Italy and outside it, existing in whatsoever places, let it be lawful, without any note of superstition or of quasi-idolatry and without scruple of conscience, to venerate him, and in the churches of your houses to pour out prayers to the same Philip, that he may be an intercessor for you, in prayers, Offices, and the solemnities of Masses, both publicly and privately or secretly, and to commend yourselves to his prayers; and also that from first Vespers to second Vespers inclusive of the day of that Philip's death, which will be on the twenty-third day of the month of August, under a double Feast of a confessor, with candles, bells, Antiphons, Versicles, prayers, and the other ceremonies accustomed to be used on a double feast, you may be able and have power to celebrate, we grant by Apostolic authority," etc. Thus the supreme Pontiff Leo X.
[296] But Paul the Fifth, his great successor of glorious memory in the supreme Pontificate, the common report of his sanctity, not only held this same thing ratified and pleasing, but also granted to the whole Order and to all the Clergy of the church of Florence proper lessons, embracing in a compendium the history of his life, duly weighed in their moments by the sacred Congregation of Rites and approved by his Apostolic authority, to be recited and chanted in the public offices of the divine praises, to the singular consolation of the great Dukes of Etruria and of the citizens. This also he granted to the church of Todi with equal or greater amplitude, because of the presence of him resting and giving patronage there. Under the same Pontiff, the sacred Congregation of Rites gave power, by a diploma given on the twenty-second of December in the year six hundred and twelve above a thousand, that secular priests also might perform sacred rites of blessed Philip and of the other Blessed of our Order in the church of the monastery of our nuns at Innsbruck, the metropolis of the Tyrol. At last, finally, in the year from the Virgin's childbearing one thousand six hundred and twenty-five, Urban VIII, Supreme Pontiff, opened a greater and wider field to Philip's glory and merits, out of his exceptional devotion toward him, when, an Apostolic Rescript being given in the form of a Brief, he granted broadly and everywhere to the bishoprics of the old Florentine dominion the fullest faculty of celebrating the divine offices of blessed Philip, using his proper lessons — not without a great increase being made to the veneration of the blessed Father among those peoples.
[297] And so not only do those two requisites for establishing genuine sanctity, with the heretics of our age rebuked in passing, which at the beginning of this last book we cited from the mind of Gregory IX, Supreme Pontiff — that is, Merits and miracles — abundantly belong to Philip and support the evidence of a perfect sanctity, but the ready and prompt will of three supreme Pontiffs toward his canonization sufficiently attests that all other things have been wanting hitherto save those which are required in the one to be canonized and in the one canonizing: namely, that those things which the Church militant is wont to employ, in imitation of the triumphant, for adorning so great a solemnity, have hitherto been lacking through our poverty. In which we neither blush for our poverty, because it is the virtue of Christ, nor do we mind the raw non-Catholics, who call such expenses (impiously and impudently lying against heaven) the prices of canonizations, nor the half-raw Politico-Catholics, who say that the delays of canonizations are due either to a want of the favor of worldly princes or of money to be distributed among ecclesiastical princes: for, as animal men, not grasping the things that are of the Spirit of God, are deluded in producing these things out of the vanity of their own spirit, so it pleases us to cast the cause of the delay of the canonizations of our blessed ones upon that reason which we have brought forward: that in the humility of the Mother of God our Lady and in the spirit of her who founded our Institute we might glory before every other solemnity.
[298] he sets an end to his labor. And let this indeed thus far be the sum of those things which we have learned to have been done by Philip as a youth before he undertook the servitude of the Queen of heaven, and after undertaking it, as a private man and as Prior General of the Order, and finally as a Saint now received into heaven. In the handling of which matters, on account of their supreme dignity and sublimity, and the reverence arising thence, we do not allow ourselves to be seen to have been engaged otherwise than as those who reason from the abundance of smoke to the greatness of some huge pyre of flames: for if anyone should undertake to attain by writing all the glory of the King's daughter (the happy soul of Philip), surrounded from within with that variety by which either among the living she was irradiated with the splendors of heroic virtues of every kind and of anagogic ecstasies, or by which she now flashes in heaven with majesty, adorned upon the throne of an eternal glory inaccessible to mortal divinations, it would surely be a thing for him to fear lest, having become a searcher of so great a majesty, he should be overwhelmed by the greatness of the glory, and be swallowed up by the ardors of that same fire; in shadowing forth some smoke of which he will have been blinded by the inequality of eloquence to the deeds; and even in those things which can somewhat be ascertained and expressed, stammering, he has been compelled to be ignorant of the greatest and chief part of the glorious exploits: which either the diligence of Philip's humility in concealing glorious matters, or the sublimity of the deeds themselves, hard to grasp and to explain, has intercepted, withdrawing it from all knowledge and notice.