Gamelbert

CONCERNING S. GAMELBERT, PARISH PRIEST IN BAVARIA.

Toward the end of the eighth century.

Gamelbert, or Amelbert, Parish Priest in Bavaria (S.)

[1] Michelsbuch is a town of Lower Bavaria, not far from the mouth where the river Isar empties into the Danube. Here S. Gamelbert, or Gamulbert, or Amelbert, or, as Aventinus writes, The feast of S. Gamelbert, Amalbert, served as Parish Priest and is still venerated. His feast day, as the manuscript life has it, is observed on the sixth day before the Kalends of February; according to Wolfgang Selender, on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of February; but on neither day do we find his name in our Martyrologies.

[2] "The Life of S. Gamelbert, or Gamulbert," says our Matthaeus Rader in volume 2 of his Holy Bavaria, Life, "is preserved at Regensburg in the monastery of S. Emmeram on parchment: in that same codex, that is, from which the Life of S. Severinus, Apostle of Noricum, was taken and copied and published by Welser." In the Charterhouse of Cologne there is preserved a manuscript codex whose title is: Selected Antiquities concerning the Lives of Saints from Manuscripts of the Charterhouse of Gamnitz in Thuringia, by the work of Brother Jacob Bilagius of Erfurt, a Carthusian. From this source our Johannes Gamansius copied the Life of S. Gamelbert for us, agreeing in sense and order of events, though not in words, with the version that our Rader published from the autograph of Wolfgang Selender.

[3] The following is what Johannes Aventinus writes about S. Gamelbert and Blessed Utho (of whom we shall treat on 3 October) in book 4 of his Annals of the Bavarians: Things wrongly written about him by Aventinus: "There were two priests" (at the time when Charlemagne defeated Tassilo, Duke of Bavaria, which the Annals of Fulda testify occurred around the year of Christ 787) "There were, therefore, two priests, the holy Amalbert and Uto, in Lower Bavaria; they surpassed the rest in piety and learning. For these men and their fellow ministers, Magnus magnificently constructed a church above the mouth of the Isar, where the stream Mettena, which gives its name to the monastery, flows into the Danube. They are still reverently venerated there." But at whatever time that monastery was in fact founded, it was not founded by S. Gamelbert, who always dwelt on the right bank of the Danube, but after his death, by Utho.

[4] Our Andreas Brunner treats of Utho and the monastery of Metten in volume 2, book 6 of his Annals Other things from others. of the Bavarians, under the year 799, where he briefly commemorates the deeds of S. Gamelbert, but faithfully.

LIFE BY AN ANONYMOUS AUTHOR,

Transcribed from the manuscript codex of the Charterhouse of Cologne by Johannes Gamansius of the Society of Jesus.

Gamelbert, or Amelbert, Parish Priest in Bavaria (S.)

BHL Number: 3260

By an Anonymous Author, from manuscripts.

PROLOGUE OF THE AUTHOR.

[1] I would have begun a certain little work long ago, had I not been afraid of the dryness of my still uncultivated talent; The writer excuses himself for undertaking this work despite his lack of skill, but I dare not delay any longer, on account of the many servants of the Lord who demand this petition of me. This, then, is that I should, by writing, make known to all who wish to learn the life of S. Gamulbert, the outstanding helper of all the anxious, which has hitherto lain hidden most inconveniently. For it will be a disadvantage if the accused should not know his advocate, who will have the greatest influence with the Judge. I fear, however, that some readers will hold their own profit in disdain on account of my worthlessness, who was the writer; yet it is unbecoming for a wise man to regard with envious eye one who speaks good things, even if not well. Wherefore, if there are any such--God forbid--I wish to remind them not to attend so much to who or what sort of person the author was, as to what he wrote and about what sort of person he composed it. Sent forth by others: And if anyone shall accuse me of being a presumptuous author of impossible things, I truly lay open to him my intention from the core of my heart, which I have held for this entire three-year period, since I was persuaded by frequent entreaty to begin; though I distrusted my own ability to complete it. Who, I say, am I, so insignificant, entangled in so many snares of sins, and seasoned with no salt of wisdom, that I should be able to set forth in worthy writings the deeds of any Saint, which I well know outweigh my powers? Even the most illustrious men have feared to take upon themselves such a work; and for no other reason has this same material been left untouched by many of our predecessors until now. The saying of the truthful word also terrified me: "Praise is not seemly in the mouth of a sinner." Ecclesiasticus 15:9.

[2] By what reasons he was moved to do this. Since, therefore, this meditation was continually in my mind, another thought entered, contrary to the former: namely, that such fear was altogether to be rejected, which would persuade one to avoid beginning anything good on account of its difficulty; especially since the assistance of God's powerful and good will alone is most ready and voluntary for all good works. Our predecessors, as is said, saw the pearl of God lying filthy on the dung-heap of ignorance, but when they wished to cleanse it with knowledge and polish it with learning, perhaps they left off through either sloth or injury. Since, although they were not able to do as they ought, they ought to have praised the Lord in His Saints as best they could. When these men perceived the end of their life approaching, how much would they then have wished to have labored over this or something similar? How will you, then, be more excusable when you appear before the Lord with empty hands? What if those same petitioners whom you mentioned were sent by the Lord as testers of your zeal and fraternal obedience? Wherefore, if any adversary shall hurl at you the objection of ignorance, do you set before him as a shield the protection of devotion and obedience. And against whatever charge he shall raise, he will be able to find a sufficiently fitting refutation in what has been written above.

CHAPTER I.

His deeds before the priesthood.

[3] Another, mutilated, prologue. When the human race, made in the likeness of God, had fallen from the state of the dignity entrusted to it, and with the coming of the fullness of time God the Creator willed to restore it to its former rank, He sent His Word, that is, His Son, whom He had long had as cooperator in creating all things, into the world by the common will of both, for the redemption of mankind; so that we who through diabolical captivity had been slaves of sinners might receive the adoption of the sons of God; who, just as without carnal concupiscence, with the Holy Spirit coming upon her, He was placed in the womb of His mother, etc.

[4] This holy man of the Lord was born in Bavaria, from a village which in Latin translation is called Fagetum, not far from the confluence of the Danube and the Isar rivers. The homeland of S. Gamelbert, He came from a good and noble family, at a time when the Catholic faith had already flourished throughout the German kingdom. His parents lived from their own property and from sufficient estates, his lineage, which they possessed, making not extravagant but moderate expenditures, passing their life--which is called secular--in just and holy actions. The Saint completed his first age, which is infancy, so blamelessly and so innocently that he harmed neither his own soul nor any living creature by his own will. His holy childhood, Boasting never seized him, nor idle play, nor the petulance that is the companion of boyhood; anger and quarreling, which sometimes goad people of that age without cause, rarely and only under compulsion entered his soul. Truly, according to the Apostle, he was a child in malice, but perfect in understanding. 1 Corinthians 14:20. And since God had foreordained him to be a vessel of election, he was unable to be subjected to the human impulses of wicked action.

[5] His father, however, since he wished to raise him as his heir and son, contempt of arms, and, as was the custom, to train him for military service, sometimes made him his armor-bearer, and either hung or girded military arms upon the boy: but these could never adhere to him, even for a moment, and fell off as soon as they were placed around him. Wherefore his father and brothers, indignant, thinking this was happening through his slothfulness, reproached him with every harshness, calling him sluggish, inept, and foolish; nor did they perceive the divine providence, which had pre-elected him for spiritual warfare.

[6] At length his father, wearied of these things, not without the will of God, set him as a shepherd over his flocks. The care of feeding sheep. A fitting arrangement indeed, that like David he should become a keeper of sheep, who with Peter was to be a shepherd of souls. He, moreover, who had given himself wholly to humility and obedience, eagerly fulfilled everything which his furious father had commanded him, as if to his disgrace.

[7] Pursuit of learning, It happened, however, on a certain day in the pastures, that a divine slumber weighed upon the limbs of his body; and when he awoke from his rest, he found a written booklet placed upon him, which he took up and went around to men learned in ecclesiastical matters, asking that, beginning from this writing, they would take care to instruct him in the discipline of divine law. Because this beginning had been sent by the Lord Himself, he progressed in a short time as far as was fitting. Nor did merely bookish learning grow in him, but also the discipline of all virtues. And because he heard his teachers recite that death and life are placed in the power of the tongue, restraining his tongue from speaking evil and his lips from speaking guile, guard over the tongue, he abstained not only from harmful speech but also from every idle word. He strove with such vigilance to observe the Apostolic Scripture which says "Do not swear," that he made every affirmation solely by "Yes and Yes," and every negation by "No and No." Matthew 5:34, 37. If he heard from anyone's mouth a curse, or base and impure speech, he admonished such a one to restrain his mouth from such evil speech, since it would have to communicate with the body and blood of the Lord.

[8] Occupied with these and similar pursuits, he had now reached the strength of full youth; and as he grew more and more in the virtues which the Lord daily increased in him, he grew no more in body and age than in righteousness and all piety. Seeing this, the devil, the ancient enemy of the whole human race, was grieved that he was so free from mortal sins; and he could not easily find a hook with which to catch him, since he perceived that he thought little of all the allurements of carnal pleasures. His chastity tested by an immodest woman, For he had completely removed from himself every path of iniquity and had chosen the path of truth. He regulated food and drink not so much for the pleasure of the flesh as for the necessity of his frail nature. He desired nothing that was worldly, even though he lived in the world more out of obligation than by choice. Whence the venomous serpent, trained in a thousand arts of harm, was distressed, and not knowing where to turn or what to undertake, shifted about on every side. At length, reviewing his memories, he recalled a certain victory which he had once won over the First Man through a woman, judging no person more apt through whom to direct the assault of his persuasion; he invaded the lustful mind of a certain woman and incited her to entice and solicit him. She, inflamed with the furies of Venus, when slow love had coursed through the depths of her heart, approached the servant of God alone and unattended, desiring to make him a sharer of the fire which she suffered, and which by the accustomed manner of men he might more fittingly endure; casting aside shame, the immodest woman attempts to make her plea: "Come now," she said, "most beloved of young men, most delightful to me above all things, long have I awaited such a place and time, long have I desired a conversation of such great opportunity: only consent to me, that we may enjoy the desired embraces and delightfully intermingle with each other. No one will be able to see us The memory of the present God set against her: who could reveal this deed." He, hearing the persuasion contrary to his undertakings and profession, and understanding it to be a diabolical mission, said: "Do not, woman, try to persuade me, for I neither wish nor dare to listen to you. If you suggest the absence of all men, I know that the divine presence is everywhere at hand, whose judgment I fear more, because, truly knowing all things, it has no need of the presence of witnesses. Solomon says: 'The lips of a harlot are a dripping honeycomb, and her throat is smoother than oil; but her end is as bitter as wormwood, and as sharp as a two-edged sword.' Proverbs 5:3. What is the sweetness of the smallest moment to me in comparison with everlasting torment?"

[9] Yet the woman's astonishing desire could not be softened by salutary admonitions, flight, but, making her words smoother, she began to flatter him more, showing him the nearby thickets where her unjust desire might be fulfilled. He, seeing that he could cure her with no remedy of counsel, and also fearing, on account of the weakness of the flesh, to incur the crime that was being offered, threw himself with all his might upon his feet, and fleeing at the most rapid pace, he escaped. Therefore the strong athlete of the Lord, because he won the victory in this contest, was enriched with the reward of an everlasting gift from the King of heaven, namely, that on account of this struggle for chastity, he should maintain his virginity inviolate until the end of his present life.

CHAPTER II.

His priesthood. His virtues.

[10] Since he had turned all the powers of his mind and body to learning and performing the service of the Lord, from the very day on which he entered the clergy, he merited receiving all ecclesiastical orders, even the priesthood. When the father who had begotten him died, and the inheritance was divided among the brothers, as was fitting, the church together with the village from which he had been born fell to his portion, Priesthood, which he himself governed by right of the priesthood and spiritual patronage all the days of his life, conducting himself without complaint, defending his subjects with the protection of both their souls and their bodies. From the day of his ordination, reflecting that the Lord's grace was more abundant in him, he began to add to himself the rigor of abstinence more than he had been accustomed to before; thereafter he spent fifty years at home, during which time he never tasted food of any kind of meat. Abstinence, He had sufficient substance, but distributed it in every way to relieve the want of the poor; he fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, mercy, clothed the naked, because he perceived his own flesh in them. He was an eye to the blind and a foot to the lame; his door lay open to wayfarers, for he was of the greatest hospitality. To the sick and the afflicted he showed every care that he was able; for the dead he offered prayer with all devotion and due burial.

[11] When the fifty years which we have described above were completed in these and similar works, he journeyed to Rome for the purpose of prayer, with every disposition of innermost devotion. How many prayers he sent to the Lord during this journey, how many acceptable tears he shed, Roman pilgrimage: both in that very city and throughout all the places he visited, what man could worthily or fully narrate? During that same journey, when he had turned aside to a certain inn, by chance they brought him a certain infant to baptize; and since he was always ready to do good, having said the Creed, he baptized him and, himself lifting him from the holy font, named him Utho. And foreseeing in the spirit that he would become great and would possess his inheritance after him, he instructed his parents to raise him with zeal for holiness Prophecy concerning Blessed Utho, and, when he had become a man, to send him to his home. He indicated his homeland, named his province, and showed them the village and the place with clear signs; and so, resuming his begun journey, he completed it.

[12] When, with the grace of God accompanying him, the journey was completed and he had returned to his own home, he then bound himself with the rule of an even stricter resolution; namely, since he had already long since held the other parts of his body in restraint, he here also set a fixed limit upon his footsteps. And first, with the greatest diligence considering how much of his courtyard was necessary for performing the divine office and for the needs of his own body, he then set up four wooden crosses at the four quarters of the sky, whose boundaries he never afterward passed beyond, except once. This, however, was brought about by the customary fraud and snares of the devil, when certain men raised a tumult not far from him, almost to the point of bloodshed. There the holy Father, voluntary self-enclosure, knowing it to be dearer to God to make peace among the quarreling than to persevere stubbornly in one's purpose while being idle from necessary work, seizing his staff and rushing out at full speed, did not dismiss the resisters until he had brought about a most firm peace among them. And this was a remarkable miracle, that he was able to bring furious and deranged men to a calm spirit; but from the Lord, for those who act with Him, all things are easy which seem impossible to those who live in the human manner. Truly the peacemakers shall be called sons of God, Zeal for reconciling those at odds, possessing by inheritance the works of the Lord, He Himself saying: "He who believes in me, the works that I do, he also shall do." Even when his own servants quarreled with one another, if he was unable to settle them with salutary admonitions, he gave them his garments and other money, or permitted them to be free together with their children, saying: "It is better for me to grant you liberty, however undeserved, than to offend God in correcting you." He himself had peace with all. Moreover, he strove to restore all who were at odds to favor.

[13] He was, moreover, so watchful a guardian of humility, the mother of virtues, that he was affable in conversation even with all his inferiors, humility in clothing, and not only pronounced himself inferior and more worthless than all by his own tongue, but also esteemed himself so in the intimate affection of his heart. Great humility was shown also in his clothing, because he more willingly used such garments as he could buy more cheaply, being rougher and stiffer, than those which he would have to acquire at a greater price. He observed patience, the witness of humility, to such a degree that, according to the Apostolic precepts, he blessed those who cursed him, patience, and to those who inflicted injuries upon him or his property, he did good with rewards and gifts. 1 Corinthians 4:12. He displayed piety and mercy not only toward human nature, kindness, but also, on account of God the Creator of all things, toward every creature that was made by Him; to such an extent that if he saw some little bird carried away from its nest by anyone, he would redeem it from captivity at a price and restore it to its native freedom. He also forbade his own servants from laboring outside in cutting and carrying wood or in any heavy service when the sky was gripped by a severe storm. He loved quiet and meekness above all, so that he did not wish to remain in his own house, which had been large, costly, and full of the tumult of servants, love of quiet, establishing for himself near the church a certain chamber in which he could more freely devote himself to calling upon the Lord. For himself alone a poorly furnished bed was set up there, in which he rested through the nights, solitary. And rising in the silence of the dead of night, when all thought he was resting, he would call upon God, the hearer of prayer, by kneeling, mourning, and weeping.

[14] He was moderately learned; but in the Lord's service he expended everything learning, that he knew. During the annual days of Lent he shut himself in day and night, neither permitting anyone to enter to him nor himself going out anywhere, except to the most sacred altar, at which he did not fail to offer the saving victim daily. He himself was seen by none of the laity, hidden by a veil which was customarily hung before the sanctuary. The deacon, however, who ministered at the altar, gave the sacraments of the Lord's body and blood to those who sought them. Whichever of his parishioners wished to make confession of sins, Lenten fast, he heard this person's words at the window of the cell in which he was concealed, and indicating the manner of penance, he reconciled him to the Lord. During these days of enclosure he never ate before the evening hour; and then he tasted nothing except dark and coarse bread, which is the food of servants, with salt and water. With his mouth he chanted psalms all day, and in his mind he said to the Lord with the Psalmist: "To You my heart has spoken, I have sought Your face; Your face, O Lord, I will seek." He led such a life during the days of Lent that he might appear purer and holier at the time of the Easter feast.

CHAPTER III.

His prophecy, death, and burial.

[15] The gift of prophecy, As the Saint of the Lord had burned from the years of his boyhood, through continence and the other virtues, as we have described above, toward the love of the heavenly homeland, he merited being advanced by God with a prophetic spirit, so that he was himself able to foreknow and foretell to his people the heir of his possessions before his death. For when the course of the present age had run its span, and his flesh was now declining toward its setting, and when his intimate friends and neighbors perceived that his passing was drawing near, they came together from all sides to him and began to address him with such words: "Until now, holy Father, we have been cherished by divine protection, since we have had the benefit of conversation with your counsels; no enemy has been able to crush us, nor the ancient enemy of the human race himself. We know that you are now asking the Lord for your discharge from service, so that you may receive in heaven the reward for which you have always labored with a longing spirit. But first see to our needs and provide us with a suitable Pastor. You know all the ecclesiastical men in your neighborhood, prophecy concerning his successor: and therefore you yourself are not unaware who is most worthy of your inheritance." "Do not, my children," he said, "be saddened by my departure, because the Lord, as He has begun, will not cease to console you, and He has already deigned to show me whom He wishes to install as heir of my possessions. Indeed, in the coming year, he who must possess this place after me will arrive."

[16] In accordance with the man of God's prediction, when the circle of the year was completed, the man who had been promised by the Lord arrived--the one whom this Saint had long ago baptized on his Roman journey, and had ordered to come to his house, as we said above. Then, having summoned his friends and subjects, S. Gamulbert addressed them with these words: "Now, dearest brothers and children, we have received what the Lord promised. Know without a doubt that this is the man whom I predicted to you the previous year would come; the Lord has given him to me as heir; He wills him to be your Pastor. Having established him, He shall succeed me by a just law, for I begot him as a son to Christ and the Holy Church through baptism. Attend to him with the greatest diligence; lend the ears of your body and soul to his admonitions, for he will be able to lead you who obey to the kingdom and to the rest which shall have no end." Having said these things, he handed over all his possessions to him and called all who were present as witnesses of this transfer. And not long afterward, overtaken by a grave illness, he fell into his bed, blessed death, about to send his veteran soul to the Lord after its worldly contests. Summoning, therefore, the clergy, he made confession of his human failings, and receiving the communion of the divine sacrament, he departed with a joyful mind to Him whom he had lovingly desired throughout his entire life, on the sixth day before the Kalends of February.

[17] No man can express how great was the joy of the heavenly hosts when they received him into their fellowship, stained by no filth, who returned the talent of a well-administered priesthood, whole and entire, to the supreme Priest and the angelic spirits. The people, however, obsequies; who had assembled and were present at his funeral, attended to the funeral rites with fitting decorum, with all the reverence they could muster, with frequent sighs and sobs and a flood of tears, imploring the Lord's clemency to be present to them, from whom He had taken away the presence of so great and so necessary a Patron. For although they believed him to be their helper in heaven, they nevertheless bore his bodily absence grievously.

[18] On the day, however, on which his holy little body was to be committed to the earth, rains and winds divinely restrained for a time; the Lord wrought a great and memorable miracle, both to gladden those who were so saddened and to demonstrate how great the merit of that man was in His sight. For at that time there had burst forth such a violence of winds and rains that most of those who were present at the funeral rites despaired of being able to bury him. And so the pain of the atmospheric disturbance increased the magnitude of the grief already implanted on account of their bereavement. Certain persons, however, trusting by a higher counsel in the Lord's mercy, and advising their companions to do the same, began what needed to be done: they lit candles and raised the bier. At that very hour the rain subsided, suspended in the meantime by divine power, and ceased until the body was carried into the church, the saving victim was offered for him by the priests, and the holy little body was committed to burial. When the funeral office was completed, the crowds that had thronged together from every side with all eagerness dispersed, and immediately the tempest, its reins released, returned as great as it had been before the burial. All who saw these things, gladdened by so great a miracle, returned immense thanks to the magnificent Trinity, who fulfills the will of those who fear Him and hears their prayer.

CHAPTER IV.

Miracles after death.

[19] That same church, after it received the most holy clay, the church illuminated by heavenly light, obtained divine grace in full: namely, it was honored with frequent angelic visitations and illuminated with the splendor of heavenly light, sometimes indeed around cockcrow, but very often at midnight; and afterward candles arranged throughout the chapel in every direction were seen to be all lit at once, with no person entering. The people standing about from the surrounding region, suffused with fragrance, not presuming to approach with any confidence, drew in from a distance the fragrance of a wonderful odor, and proclaimed with praise the divine omnipotence and clemency alike, and the piety of the most holy man.

[20] Miracles wrought there: Not long afterward, the Lord began to work many miracles to display the merits of His servant: so that the mute might recover there the function of the tongue, the feeble the vital movement of their limbs, and those languishing from all manner of infirmities the gift of health.

[21] There was a certain very poor man named Reginher, of slender means, and so feeble in all the members of his body a cripple healed, that he was utterly unable to move forward anywhere unless he crawled on his knees and elbows, like a four-footed beast. Having heard of the signs which the Lord continually displayed at the tomb of His faithful minister, he pondered how he might reach that place. For he had languished for nine continuous years with the most grievous infirmity, and had consequently wasted away with such great debility. With whatever effort he could, he began to move himself, and trusting in divine assistance, he managed to arrive by crawling; and with inmost devotion he lay for some period of time at the tomb of the most holy Confessor, continually awaiting and faithfully beseeching the health of soul and body. On a certain night an excessive shuddering with trembling seized him, which shook all his limbs at once. When the terror withdrew, the man rose up healthy, for all his debility had completely departed at the same time.

[22] At another time, again, a certain man was so terribly disabled that, resting only on his hands and arms upon a stool, he dragged his body behind him likewise another, like a foreign weight, because his remaining limbs were immovable and useless for the function of nature. Hoping, therefore, to be restored to health through the merits of the most holy man, he desired to hasten to his shrine; but he did not know how he might arrive or what he should begin. The people, however, who knew him, hearing his faith and desire, and sympathizing with the miserable suffering which he endured, wished to transport him in vehicles; but he preferred to complete the journey by his own effort, as best he could. Setting out upon the road, therefore, with his accustomed motion, creeping rather than walking, he arrived at the place which he thirsted for more ardently. Coming, however, he obtained from the guardians of the church that he might be permitted to keep watch at the tomb of the man of God day and night, in case God should deign to glorify His Saint in him and to hear him crying out for health. Nor was he frustrated in that confidence by a vain hope. For while he remained there for some time, he was restored to complete health.