Henry the Hermit in England

ON ST. HENRY THE HERMIT IN ENGLAND.

Henry, Hermit in England (Saint)

Year of Christ 1120.

Philip Ferrarius, in his new catalogue of Saints, celebrates St. Henry the Hermit on this sixteenth day of January as follows: "In Northumbria, St. Henry the Hermit." The English Martyrology has a more prolix eulogy. We give the Life from the Legend of the Saints of England by John Capgrave.

LIFE FROM JOHN CAPGRAVE.

Henry, Hermit in England (Saint)

BHL Number: 3806

From John Capgrave.

CHAPTER I.

The solitary life, abstinence, and patience of St. Henry.

[1] Henry the Hermit drew his origin from the illustrious race of the Danes. For Coquet is a certain island in the eastern part of Northumbria, situated sixteen stadia below the Ocean, deriving its name from the river Coquet flowing not far from it, which in ancient times was renowned for a great community of monks. When, arriving at the years of adolescence, he was urged by the counsel of friends to marry and consent to matrimony, Blessed Henry, by divine warning, abandons his bride and homeland. on the day before the nuptials, the conjugal union was forbidden to him by the Lord through a vision: he was ordered to keep himself chaste and immaculate from this world and to set out for an island in England, named Coquet, divinely prepared for him, to serve God all the days of his life.

[2] He immediately left behind all his parents, friends, and whatever he appeared to possess in the world; and landing by ship at Tynemouth, twenty miles distant from the aforesaid island, He lives on the island of Coquet, having obtained the Prior's assent, he went to the island: and having built a small dwelling, he began to serve God in great abstinence of life; for some years tasting a small piece of bread and water each day, he at last took food three times a week: Extraordinary abstinence. and three times he opened his mouth to speak. For during the four years before his death, he ground barley into flour with a millstone, sprinkled it with water, formed it into round loaves, dried them in the sun, and was accustomed to moderate his hunger with these.

[3] When, traveling by way of pilgrimage to Durham, he could not find He crosses a river miraculously. a boat ready to cross the river Wear, after pouring out a prayer to God, a small boat, its tethering rope having come loose, approached the bank on which he was sitting from the other side of the river; entering it with a certain companion, he was immediately conveyed across without an oarsman.

[4] At the instigation of the instigator of all evil, a very great temptation of his flesh grew so strong against him He suffers temptations of the flesh, that he would rather die than struggle so laboriously against the pricks of the flesh. Moreover, a monk who had charge of the island did not cease daily to heap harsh words, insults, and reproaches upon him. At length, however, admiring his immense humility, holiness, and injuries from others. and continual devotion, he prostrated himself at his feet and humbly implored pardon with prayers and tears. He, raising him from the ground with great joy of heart, cheerfully pardoned whatever he had committed against him; and as if having become of one mind, they were from then on joined together in spiritual affection.

CHAPTER II.

Constancy proven. The gift of prophecy.

[5] Among these events, envoys sent by his parents and friends asked him to deign to visit immediately the land of his birth, his parents, friends, and homeland. He, by no means acquiescing, asserted that for the sake of eternal life and Christ he had utterly abandoned his temporal homeland, kinsmen, and the world. Invited by friends to return home, But they said that certain solitary and deserted places in his land, more suitable and ready for his wishes, awaited his arrival. He, allured by the natural love of his own land, inclining favorable ears to the messengers and nearly acquiescing to their counsel, nevertheless promised that on the morrow he would do what might please God. On the following night, turning many things over in his mind and not knowing what would be more useful for him, turning to the cross erected in his oratory, he began to pray with tears, saying: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who, repairing the fall of the first man by the price of your glorious blood, He seeks to know the divine will; deigned to descend from the heavens above to earth, and taking flesh from the Virgin, offered yourself as a sacrifice for the redemption of the human race; I adore you, I invoke you, that the support of your piety and mercy may not be lacking to me, a sinner and wretch; and that what shall be acceptable to your goodness, may your Spirit deign to inspire my rashness."

[6] He is warned by the image of the Crucifix not to go. As he continued these and other things with groaning and tears, the image of the cross, breaking into human speech, answered, saying: "My beloved, long ago in the land of your birth, when the beauty and nobility of a woman enticed your mind, mercifully calling you back from the nuptials, I planted a heavenly desire in your heart. For from that day you have been predestined to the blessedness of eternal life, and your name written in the book of life shall not be blotted out forever. Act manfully and let your heart be strengthened; persevere in what you have begun; and by no means abandon the solitude of this place until the end of your life." When the image uttered these words, the lips seemed to move as those of a man speaking.

[7] The man of God, prostrate on the ground with tears and thanksgiving, began again to invoke, saying: "Lord Jesus Christ, my salvation and redemption, my only hope, He prays that he may not be able to leave even if willing. command also that I may not depart from this island even if willing." Without delay: wearied by the earnestness of his vigils and prayers, when he surrendered his limbs to sleep, he was immediately struck as with the terror of a sword and forced to break off his scarcely begun slumber. Laying his hands upon his knee, he perceived that he was touched there with a most grievous affliction of illness, He is afflicted with a fetid ulcer, which, growing worse from day to day, increased into a very great ulcer, and no small amount of matter flowed from it daily; finally putrefying inwardly, it exhaled an intolerable stench. Nevertheless, living by his own labor and applying himself to daily work, he cultivated his small field, opening the earth while supported by a staff. When, wearied by the earnestness of his labor, he wished to rest a little from his work, sitting upon a stone, he would expose his diseased knee to the sun. Whence worms issue forth; Then the depraved offspring of the lurking putrefaction, namely an abundance of worms, began to issue forth to the exterior against the heat of the sun. And when they fell creeping to the ground, he would gather them up and say: "Return, return, and consume the unclean origin of your nature, always cheerful. which shall inherit you." But the Lord gave to his agriculture in sterile soil an incredible increase of fruits: and however more sharply and wretchedly the force of illness pressed upon the weakness of his body, he always remained cheerful and giving thanks to God in every distress of tribulation.

[8] He shines with the gift of prophecy. For this man was accustomed not only to see and predict things present and near at hand, but also things future and absent, taught by God. It happened that the monk who was the island's guardian, entering his oratory, found him weeping most bitterly before the altar. He knows of his brother's murder, though absent. When he inquired about the cause of such great weeping, the man said: "My full brother, by the cruelty of wicked men, has been slain in his native land; and it has been granted to me by the Lord that I may do penance for his soul. Therefore, through you, my beloved Lord, let the death of my brother be made known to religious and laity, so that, aided by the support of alms and prayers, he may be absolved from punishment and the snares of sin."

[9] When on a certain day he beheld ships laden with merchandise passing swiftly, he predicted to those standing by that shipwreck was imminent for them. "Do you not see," he said, "that monster that pursues the sailors?" They confessed that they saw the figure of a woman rising above the sea behind the ships. "This creature," he said, He predicts shipwreck for some. "in a short time, churning the sea and raising a great storm, will sink the ships you see, with few escaping." Without delay: winds were suddenly stirred up, the crashing of waves arose; a violent storm grew strong; by its force the ships, dashed against the sand and rocks and completely shattered, were scattered with their cargo along the shores.

[10] He knows of a woman's quarrel. Someone brought him a single hand-towel; and after some days had elapsed, he came to him again, to whom he said: "Have you not yet calmed the anger of your wife, who was troublesome to you because of the small gift you gave me? Here, let her have the gift, so long as she may be peaceful toward you henceforth."

[11] He reproves many concerning their secrets. He was accustomed to reprove sharply many who came to him from remote regions, casting in their faces their hidden and secret matters, as though he had clearly perceived them with bodily eyes. He began to reprove a certain monk from Tynemouth who came to visit him, saying: A monk for his carousing. "Take heed, Brother, that you conduct yourself more circumspectly and more soberly. See that your heart be not weighed down with carousing and drunkenness, and that you offend your God, as you recently offended when drunk." And he designated for him the place and the hour of the night when, surfeited with drink, he had behaved shamefully.

CHAPTER III.

Death, burial, miracles.

[12] He dies while Angels sing, When, with the affliction of his pain increasing, he was ill, alone in his little dwelling, having sought no one's assistance, he passed through the cold of the day and the tedium of the long night. And when the hour of death approached, a certain man heard in the air a harmony of wondrous sweetness of voices alternating "Te Deum laudamus," until the entire sequence of the hymn was fully completed. A candle lit from heaven. Meanwhile, the monk, running up at the sound of the little bell, found him holding a rope and sitting upon a stone, and he saw a candle burning that the man himself, devoid of fire, had divinely kindled before death. When he was found to be dead, the hairshirt in which he was clad having been removed and his body washed clean of worms and filth with water, suddenly it shone like snow, and no trace of a scar nor of the former illness could be detected on the surface of his flesh. The body radiant after death. His face was of such beauty and splendor that, as if transformed, it could not be recognized; and he appeared much more like one sleeping than one dead.

[13] Those wishing to seize his body are divinely prevented. When the monks of Tynemouth, having assembled to bury his body, attempted to transfer it to their monastery, the neighboring parishioners, fearing to lose so great a treasure, having gathered a multitude, strove by agreed counsel to use force against those carrying it and to bury the servant of God in their own church. And behold, the spacious sea suddenly exhaling a mist, producing palpable shadows and darkness, forced the assembled people to wander through trackless places to where they knew not. When they were celebrating vigils with the body of the servant of God in a certain church, He appears to someone. the man of God, appearing in dreams, warned someone to seize a hastened flight with the body at dawn, on account of the people who would come. He is honorably buried. Which being done, with great honor, he is buried not far from the body of St. Oswin, King and Martyr, toward the south, in a vaulted recess of the wall.

[14] It happened, while the servant of God was still alive, that a certain Priest, oppressed by a very great illness, was brought as it were to his last breath of life. As he lay there as though lifeless, the man of God saw a horde of evil spirits, horrible in appearance, He keeps demons from a dying man, weighing against his vices a single good work. prepared to seize the Priest's soul, flying all around the house in which the sick man lay. Rising from his cell, he hastened with swift step to the house of the sick man. Beholding the squadrons of spirits, he asked them why they, most wicked, had so assembled. They, responding most shamelessly, said: "To seize immediately with us to hell the soul of this man who has hitherto performed the works of death." Then the servant of God commanded them, in the power of the holy Trinity, to hasten to set forth to him in order their works worthy of hell. They, crying out horribly, brought forward into the open many crimes and innumerable offenses, accusing him. But the man of God, objecting a certain work of virtue that the sick man had once performed, ordered what the demons had reproached to be weighed in a balance; and that small good outweighed immensely in the balance all the evils that had been objected. The demons, moreover, exceedingly disturbed and as if confounded through the merits of the servant of God, vanished through the air like flies. The sick man, swiftly recovering, published the miracle everywhere, and reforming his life for the better, yielded up his spirit in the fear of the Lord.

[15] When certain people were sailing on the sea and a storm of the air was pressing in, the waves of the sea were so stirred up that they threatened all with death rather than life. He frees a man from the peril of shipwreck. Among them a certain man, formerly intimate with and very dear to the man of God Henry, began to invoke him with devout cries, saying: "O my Lord, servant of Christ, in whose service I have so often labored, do not delay to come to my aid in so great a peril of death." And behold, immediately standing by him, he burst forth in these words: "Truly, you who once clung to me pleased me by your familiar service: I have therefore obtained from him who commands the winds and the sea your safety and that of those with you." And when the sea was calmed, they arrived prosperously at the desired port.

[16] A certain man was reproved by him because, during the Lenten season, withholding the conjugal debt from his wife, He reproves one who inconsiderately refrained from his unwilling wife. he had resolved to refrain from her; and the secret that he had revealed to no one, the man of God disclosed to him when he came, saying: "Because you disdain the bed of your wife with less than due discretion, you will soon find yourself in a contemptible and sordid place." On a certain night, that man, waking, found himself naked in a foul stable, lying beneath the feet of horses. Afterward, the servant of God reproved him because he had presumed to abstain from the bed of his wife without the counsel of a spiritual Father. For he said that it was not from the Lord, but at the suggestion of an unclean spirit, that this presumption of rashness had wickedly befallen him; and therefore such power had been given to unclean spirits over him, that they might transport him sleeping to unclean places. The servant of God Henry died in the year of the Lord 1120, on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of February.