ON BL. BENEDICT OF AREZZO, OF THE ORDER OF FRIARS MINOR,
AT AREZZO IN TUSCANY,
About the year 1280.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
Benedict of Arezzo, of the Order of Friars Minor, at Arezzo in Tuscany (Bl.)
BY J. P.
§ I. His cult, and the collection of the things done by the Blessed.
Aretium, commonly Arezzo, an episcopal city in Tuscany, is mentioned in many places The Blessed's cult by Leandro Alberti among those things which he writes of that same region of Italy at page 94 and following, in the Latin edition printed at Cologne in the year 1566, where he treats of its antiquity, its fertility, its calamities, and its famous men. It lies upon a mountain, and is distant a few miles from the marsh of Chiana, which a little below discharges itself into the river Arno. That Arretine vessels were held in great price among the ancients is known from the writers. This city gave Benedict to the world and to heaven. Arthur announces him thus on this day: At Arezzo in Tuscany, blessed Benedict of Arezzo, confessor: who, being appointed the first provincial of the province of Antioch in Syria by that same holy father Francis, was conspicuous for the sanctity of his life. He records more of him in his notes. Hueber in the Franciscan Menology does not seem to have dared to give him the title of blessed, writing thus: At Arezzo in Tuscany, in the church of St. Francis, in the chapel of the Sivigardi \, about the year MCCLXXX, there is preserved, religiously entombed, blessed of the Lord, Fr. Benedict of Arezzo: whom then praising, At length, he says, full of days, of merits, and of graces, he passed most holily to the heavenly reward.*
[2] is proved by us. But Peter Rodulph of Tossignano had long before been more liberal toward him than Hueber, in the Histories of the Seraphic Religion, book 1, folio 84 verso, where from a short compendium of his life I cull these things: Blessed Benedict of Arezzo, born of Sinigardo de Sinigardis and Elizabeth Petramaliscia, honorable parents … advanced through all the degrees of sanctity … And he died at Arezzo, and was entombed in the church of St. Francis, in the chapel built by the family of the Sinigardi in honor of this Saint. His head is kept in the sacristy in a certain casket … Benignus Fremaut in the General Franciscan Legend, published in the Flemish tongue, on this day indicates that the said head is preserved there in a fair reliquary, and that one of his jawbones is honored in the church of the Conventual Fathers of Bologna: where you see a cult indicated from the relics, of which there is mention also in Tossignano, as I said, and in Masini, presently to be cited.
[3] Then the said Tossignano relates that the following verses are read of him:
At Arezzo I, Benedict, offspring of the Sinigardi, A priest, and by sacred Religion a Minor. The Assyrian fathers once obeyed me as their minister, Hence I myself brought back the finger which Daniel gave. Now I live in the heavens, and my country keeps my limbs, And at my altars I bear gifts of incense.
Those verses would please me better if the poet had made another speak of the Blessed, and not the Blessed of himself.
In Bologna Surveyed by Masini, on the IV day of April these things are indicated: Blessed Benedict of Arezzo, of the Order of Minors. At St. Francis's his jawbone is preserved. An image of the Blessed, sufficiently ancient, as it seems, is represented in Tossignano at folio 84, with a circle, in place of rays, surrounding the head, as will afterwards be seen. Gonzaga calls him by the title of blessed in the Origin of the Seraphic Religion, etc., part 1, among the illustrious men, page 92, as also does Wadding in the Annals of the Minors at the year 1211, number 16, from which author I shall gather the deeds of this most illustrious Man. I shall use the latest edition.
[4] Of his entry into the Order of Friars Minor, and of his other adornments in the same, Wadding speaks thus in the place just cited from page III: His eulogy from Wadding: For the rest, the memory of blessed Benedict is the more celebrated among the men of Arezzo, whom, born at Arezzo of Sinigardo de Sinigardis and Elizabeth de Petra-Malischia, honorable parents, Francis clothed with his own tunic. He, an assiduous imitator of that same holy Father, advanced to great perfection through all the degrees of sanctity. Prudent and grave in manners, he was made minister of the March, then of the province of Romania, or of Antioch, from which he brought back into his own country the finger of the prophet Daniel, miraculously received in the city of Babylon, by whose power God wrought many miracles. He received into the Order John of Brienne, king of Jerusalem and emperor of Constantinople, as will be said more at large in its place. Bernard of Bessa relates that by his prayers his companion and two monks of St. Basil, sailing in a certain channel near Antioch, were delivered from imminent and certain shipwreck, and adds that he received this miracle from his companion himself and from other men worthy of credit. He shone also with the spirit of prophecy, and foretold many hidden things, especially to brother Thomas of Pavia, afterwards minister of Tuscany, whose doubtful thoughts, in a hard business to be accomplished, he penetrated and dissolved.
[5] After St. Francis had convoked the Brethren from every side to a general chapter, he is sent by St. Francis into the East, and had determined to appoint them to all the provinces of Europe, rectors being established everywhere, he abundantly showed how much he esteemed Benedict, as is gathered from the aforesaid writer of the Annals at the year 1216, number 3, page 248: In Picenum, he says, or the March of Ancona, (he appointed as minister) brother Benedict of Arezzo, his familiar and welcome friend, whom, after he had most holily governed that province, he sent to the Greeks and the Antiochenes. And at the year 1219, number 32, page 303 he writes this: The world being presently divided among his fellows, as if he would subject the whole to the empire of the most high God, he sent the more skilled leaders to conquer those regions, whose broader and mightier tracts he saw to have fallen away from due obedience, and which he had ascertained to be more rebellious against him. And so, a long prayer having been first made after his custom, he assigned to himself and to twelve companions the regions of Syria and Egypt. To the failing nations of Greece he destined blessed Benedict of Arezzo with other Brethren.
[6] [where he advances the Order; whether by the help of Peter emperor of Constantinople.] At the same year, number 33, the blessed Man is praised for the great fruit which he brought forth in Greece by his apostolic labor. Receive the words: Benedict straightway sailed into Greece, having laid down the ministry of the province of the March, which he had discharged up to that time in a praiseworthy manner. He was most kindly and courteously received by Peter of Auxerre, emperor of the East, by whose favor and help he received and built many dwellings for his fellows, and so enlarged the Religion that in a short time a broad province of brethren grew together, called that of Romania. The Order made wondrous progress there, and the holy Man with his companions a wondrous increase of spiritual things, the Lord confirming their doctrine and life with signs following. Of Peter, count of Auxerre, and afterwards emperor of Constantinople, Rainaldus relates many things in the Ecclesiastical Annals, volume 13, at the year 1217, in which he was crowned at Rome in the basilica of St. Lawrence outside the walls by Pope Honorius III, where at number 4 and following, among other things which he records of Peter, he weaves into that same year these: The authority of the (Apostolic) legate profited Peter nothing, nothing the imperial fillets received with so great pomp, save that, like a victim which is crowned with garlands while it is led to the slaughter, he perished with pomp. For, having entered the lands of the Greeks, he was cast into prison together with the legate by the treachery of Theodore Angelus Comnenus. The same author of the Annals at number 11 treats of his army being cut to pieces. But at the year 1218, number 20, he says that it is not ascertained by him whether he died in chains, or was restored to liberty and to the empire. How then was Bl. Benedict, who set out for the East in the year 1219, most kindly and courteously received by Peter … the emperor; how was he heaped with so many favors by him, as Wadding would have it?
Annotations\ Read Sinigardorum*.
§ II. A pious custom instituted by the Blessed; he confirms the truth of the Portiuncula indulgence; the time of his death; certain apocryphal things related of the Blessed.
He institutes an antiphon against unclean spirits: At the year 1232, number 42, the praised Annalist, treating of the convent of Arezzo, which was about this year transferred from the first place of its foundation outside the city, on that same occasion praises Bl. Benedict, then returned thither from the East, and writes that a certain pious custom was instituted by him: When this place, he says, was vexed by unclean spirits, the aforesaid Benedict appointed that that antiphon should be sung: "The angel spoke to Mary, saying," etc.; which appointment the holy Bonaventure, the General, afterwards confirmed.
[8] he confirms: Of the testimony which the Blessed gave for the confirmation of the Portiuncula indulgence, Wadding treats at the year 1277, number 17, prefacing these things: At this very time that great indulgence of the Portiuncula, or of the church of St. Mary of the Angels, began to be more widely published, which therefore had to be proved by weighty testimonies, since some doubted of it and others contradicted it. There was then living blessed Benedict of Arezzo, of blessed Francis
the disciple and companion, whose faith and judgment in this matter being demanded of him, in this very year he gave that authentic testimony, expressed there in these words: In the name of the Lord. Amen. I, brother Benedict of Arezzo, who was formerly with blessed Francis while he yet lived, and whom, by the working of divine grace, that most holy father himself received into the Order; and who was the companion of his companions, and frequently in the life of our holy Father, and after his passing from this world to the Father, held frequent conference with the same concerning the secrets of the Order: I confess that I frequently heard from a certain one of the aforesaid companions of blessed Francis, who was called brother Masseus of Morignano, who was a man of truth and of most approved life, that he himself was with blessed Francis at Perugia before the presence of the lord Pope Honorius, when he asked an indulgence of all sins for those who, being contrite and having confessed, should come together to the place of St. Mary of the Angels from the vespers of the first day of the Kalends of August until the vespers of the following day.
[9] And when this indulgence had been asked by blessed Francis as humbly as it was urgently, the Portiuncula indulgence by an authentic testimony: it was at length most liberally granted by the supreme Pontiff, although the supreme Pontiff himself said that it was not the custom to grant such an indulgence. These same things I, brother Rainer de Marianis of Arezzo, companion of the said venerable brother Benedict, confess that I frequently heard from the said brother Masseus, to whom I was a most special friend. The aforesaid conferences were read and published at the cell of the said brother Benedict before brother Compagnus of Borgo, brother Rainald of Castiglione, brother Carus of Arezzo, and several others called and asked to this, in the year of the Lord MCCLXXVII, the Roman Church being vacant, in the Vth Indiction, on the Lord's day, the last day of the month of October. I, John the Notary, was present at all the aforesaid, and by the mandate of the venerable father brother Benedict and of brother Rainer wrote and published it. Of this most celebrated indulgence we shall have to treat on the IV day of October, on which St. Francis is honored. Meanwhile those things may be seen which the Venerable and Reverend Father Matthias Grouwels of the Order of Friars Minor wrote for it in the Critical History of the same, published at Antwerp in the year 1726.
[10] It remains for us to observe some things concerning the death of the blessed Confessor. he dies about the year 1280, Wadding at the year 1280, number 2, says: In this year, or thereabouts, on the 2nd of the Kalends of September, on the VI feria \, died … Benedict of Arezzo, a holy man. In the same place he treats of his tomb at Arezzo in the sacred church of St. Francis, in the chapel built in his honor by the family of which we spoke above; likewise of the head, and of the verses, which I gave beforehand on occasion of the cult. But I judge that in both editions of Wadding it should be written exædificato, so that it may be referred not to the sacred church of St. Francis but to the chapel of the Blessed, as the sense seems to require. Rodulph also above at number 2 writes in the chapel built. Benignus Fremaut, cited before, understood Wadding in the same way: for in the Life which he gathered from him he records this: His relics rest in the chapel which was built in his honor by the noble family of the Sinigardi, from which he was sprung.*
[11] But let us return to the year of his death. Rodulph, followed by Bzovius, others wrongly anticipating it. wandered very far astray, marking that the Blessed departed from life in the year MCCXXIV. This blunder Wadding corrects at the year 1259, number 9, from which I excerpt these things: There flourished … at this time … Benedict of Arezzo, whom I know not whence Rodulph, and from him Bzovius (at the year MCCXXIV, number 9), received to have died in the year MCCXXIV, when it is expressly established from the report of the envoys of Gregory IX, which we have transcribed, that he was living at Constantinople in the year MCCXXXIII, and Rodulph himself asserts that he admitted into the Order the emperor John of Brienne: who nevertheless we have related did not lay aside the spoils of empire until about the year MCCXL (at the year MCCXL, number V). That he reached this time, and indeed lived still more years, the ancient manuscript Chronicles have more exactly. Then he calls to mind the authentic testimony which the Blessed gave in the year 1277, and which has just been produced.
[12] His likeness: Of the illustrious endowments of the Man, with which his mind was furnished, and which shine forth as in a picture through the course of this Commentary, enough has been said. Let it be permitted to add to these the likeness of his body from Rodulph at folio 84, to which this inscription is prefixed: The true likeness of Bl. Benedict of Arezzo, which our engraver has thus imitated in a smaller form.
Beneath the image is placed this distich:
As thou, Benedict, gavest her the finger of Daniel, Light was restored to thy country, peace restored to the people.
The poet seems to allude to those things which are said in the same place at folio 84 of that finger brought to Arezzo: By whose power God wrought many things in that city. Wadding at the year 1259, number 9, affirms that these verses, rude but ancient, as he calls them, are read on this matter:
He took the finger of Daniel from Syria to his fatherland; In his fatherland at last he died, about to seek Olympus.
[13] [the manner in which he is said to have received the finger of St. Daniel is fabulous:] Fabulous are the things which the Pisan relates about the manner in which he obtained this sacred pledge in the East. I recite the text at folio 77 verso: He was devout to the holy prophet Daniel, and when he had longed to visit his sepulcher, and could not, as much because of the length of the journey as because of the guard of the dragons that were at his sepulcher in Babylon, on a certain day, a huge dragon appearing to him and receiving him beneath its tail, it carried him into Babylon to the sepulcher of holy Daniel: whose tomb he opened, and took his finger out of devotion, and carried it away with him, and by that same dragon in the aforesaid manner he was set down unhurt in his former place, and the dragon straightway disappeared. Whence it is believed that it was an angel of the Lord. From what apocryphal author the Pisan transcribed this invention, I do not know. But besides that that marvelous conveyance by a dragon, and the guard of other dragons at the sepulcher of St. Daniel, is to be relegated to old wives' fables, I have indicated in volume V of July, on the XXI day of that same month, from page 123, that I have found nothing sufficiently well founded about the place of his sepulcher, although various writers have wished to determine it. Gonzaga, cited above, does not speak altogether affirmatively of this finger translated from the East: He is said, he says, to have brought to Arezzo the finger of the prophet Daniel from Babylon. Wadding above at number 4 indicated that this finger was miraculously received by him in the city of Babylon. But the Blessed could have brought this sacred relic to Arezzo in another manner and from another place of the East.
[14] he did not give the habit of the Order The examination of another fact I have deferred to this place, namely whether John of Brienne, emperor of the East, received the sacred habit of the Seraphic Religion from Bl. Benedict of Arezzo. The Pisan cited says: He … received that John (as it is said) into our Order. Benignus Fremaut, cited above, speaks more affirmatively. His words, rendered from the Flemish, run thus: Among the many illustrious works which Bl. Benedict wrought in Greece, most praiseworthy is this, that he gave the habit of the Order to John Brennus or de Brienne, count of Vienne \ in France, afterwards king of Jerusalem and emperor of Constantinople. But the history of so wonderful a change he subjoins after Wadding, at the year 1240, number 5, page 34, where, other writers being alleged, he relates it from Jornandes in the manuscript Vatican Chronicle, whose words I forbear to recite. Rainaldus, mentioned above, also narrates the matter at the year 1237, numbers 74 and 75, citing Wadding and Jordanus, and before the text of the latter which he brings forward he sets this brief compendium concerning John: That he, moreover, being admonished by heavenly visions, having laid aside royal pride and cast away the pomp of the world, a few days before he was seized with a mortal disease, joined himself, steeped with the utmost ardor of soul and sense of piety, to the Order of Minors.*
[15] to John of Brienne, emperor of the East. And presently, Jordanus's words being recited, he thus refutes this history at number 76: Thus Jordanus, whose narration someone may think not to be free from the suspicion of fiction: for as the pious manner of death of that most pious prince is not to be denied, so the things which the author sets before them wander not a little from the truth of history. For he writes that, John departing, Baldwin, left at Constantinople, lost the city; and that, when John was tormented by that sad chance, that heavenly vision was set before him: which error, to pass over the other authors, George the Logothete abundantly confutes, when he says that John lived not long after the treaty entered upon by Vatatzes and Asan against the Latins, confirmed by the closest alliance, of which we have spoken in its place, and that he left the hereditary empire to Baldwin, whose deeds afterwards and the storming of Constantinople he relates long after these times. Then at number 77 the praised Rainaldus affirms from the contemporary Richard, and from Paris, that John departed from life in the year 1237, adding that there are not wanting those who put off his death beyond the year 1240. But although it is not my purpose to dispute about the discrepancy of this date, nor about the history already related as it is narrated in Wadding, Rainaldus, and Spondanus at the year 1237 from Wadding, where no mention is made of Bl. Benedict of Arezzo; yet because the Pisan and Fremaut bring him upon this stage, it seemed good to me to gather the foregoing. And indeed, as to the garment of the Order given to John by the Blessed in 1237, how could Wadding have made mention of it at the year 1237, who at the year 1232, as we have seen, had said that he had returned from the East to the convent of Arezzo? But that he afterwards set out for the East again, I do not remember to have read.
Annotations\* The VI feria does not agree with the XXXI of August before the year 1285.
\* Rather, of Brienne.