ON ST. BARTHOLOMEW OF VICENZA
In the year 1271.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Bartholomew Bishop Confessor, of the Order of Preachers, at Vicenza in Italy (B.)
BY J. B. S.
§ I. More recent writings about the Blessed one, his cult, miracles, translation, epitaph, a column erected in his honor.
About this illustrious offshoot of the Dominican family there has already once and again occurred talk in the Acts of the prior months; for in the index of Things Passed Over on May 21, there is a reference to June 1, but there again he is said to be transferred to his natal day, The Acts were compiled by more recent writers, hitherto not sufficiently certain, but from Barbarano the historian of the church of Vicenza supposed for a while, this day July 1. More things about the same B. Bartholomew Papebroch had to examine, when from the opinions of writers of a later age he reckoned that he was to be added to his catalogue of the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, as see in volume 7 of May in the appendix from page 703, where he seems to have had this uniquely before his eyes, that he should place B. Bartholomew, if in any way he could, at least aptly among the aforesaid Patriarchs, on which matter it will have to be treated more fully in the course of this commentary. Meanwhile I find there a promise that the Acts of his life are to be given by us on this day, those which Papebroch himself had received in manuscript from Vicenza from our Father Octavius Zenobrius, Rector there of the college of the Society of Jesus; namely the same which M. Antonius Thienaeus wrote about B. Bartholomew in his catalogue of Saints and Blessed, or more truly history, arranged in books, and left unpublished to his heirs, to be collated with the commentaries of Barbarano, who, as is presumed, used those writings very much.
[2] So indeed Papebroch had then designed in mind, reckoning that he had got a treasure from Vicenza; among whom the first Leander Alberti; but after I more diligently unrolled, collated, and discussed both the commentaries of Barbarano and the writings of Thienaeus, so many things occur, at the least uncertain, doubtful, entangled, ill ordered and arranged, besides that they are most recent, that it seemed to me far safer to consult older monuments, which would approach a little nearer to the age of the Saint. And Thienaeus indeed I used by no means, because he, rather confused, rashly divides both matters and times, and equally unskillfully associates disjoined things. Meanwhile it must be confessed that no life of B. Bartholomew, who it is established flourished under the beginnings of the Dominican Order, and so in the thirteenth century, was once written: whence it follows that the things which we know handed down three centuries after are not of such great faith, that they must at once be admitted as certain, just as from the collation of various writers it will shortly more openly appear. He who first composed any series of the life, I find to have been Leander Alberti, of the most distinguished Order, a writer certainly celebrated under the beginning of the sixteenth century, in the volume on illustrious men book 3, page 115, whose compendium Seraphinus Razzius rendered in Italian, among the lives of the Saints and Blessed, published at Palermo 1605, page 67.
[3] others augmented it immensely. There followed of the same family John Michael Pius, in four Italian books, on the illustrious men of the Order of Preachers, printed at Bologna 1620; but before all the rest who are at least known to us, most copiously Dominic Maria Marchesius in the sacred Dominican Diary, likewise written in Italian in six volumes and published at Naples from the year 1668 to 1681, in volume 4, which came out in 1676, on the day July 1. These things it has seemed good to review thus in order, that the erudite reader may perceive of how much authority all these writers, as well as Barbarano in his ecclesiastical history of Vicenza published in the year 1649, are in matters so ancient, how cautiously they are to be weighed, since without an older witness or trustworthy surety, they heap up as it were in a pile many things about B. Bartholomew, which, exacted to the rules of just criticism, are rather encomiastic orations than histories, resting on their own true and certain foundations. And although I prefer Leander to the rest, yet I do not think his testimony so much to be esteemed, that it too is not altogether to be called to examination, inasmuch as it is two centuries and more later than the death of the Blessed one. Moreover, for lack of older ones, from him we have taken the substructure of this our commentary, where it is solid, to be raised a little higher from other approved monuments, so that we shall neglect nothing which we shall reckon to conduce to the true and solid glory of our Blessed one; when first we shall have shown that he enjoyed a Catholic cult, due or lawful to the Saints, from time immemorial, as we commonly speak.
[4] By many arguments the praised Barbarano tries more laboriously to demonstrate this, Barbarano proves the cult, mixing very many things about B. Bartholomew into his ecclesiastical history of Vicenza in book 2, from page 97 to 151, through seventeen whole chapters. He there cites on page 149 some Index of the Blessed of the Dominican Order, subjoined to some Martyrology I know not which, in which it is thus read: Brother Bartholomew Bishop of Vicenza, celebrated for innocence of life and miracles, buried at Vicenza, is greatly honored by the veneration of the people. The age of that Index and Martyrology I have nothing from which to conjecture, but from others it is plain enough that from the very death of the Blessed one the fame both of holiness and of miracles continually grew, if indeed miracles were not wrought even while he lived, one of which, about a horseman saved from the whirlpools of a most rapid torrent, Marchesius attributes to the Blessed one himself, another Thienaeus adds; which by Barbarano are ascribed to the Sacred Crown of the Lord, or rather the Thorn, which B. Bartholomew had obtained from holy King Louis, which last we evince below from various instruments; which, undoubted among the people of Vicenza, will be so reported by me, that from those very ones, by an argument, as they say, ad hominem, I shall refute many things too easily received; and establish others a little more clearly. Meanwhile I note that Castellanus in his universal Martyrology, from the opinion of the common people, writes thus on this day: At Vicenza, the Venerable Bartholomew de Braganza, Patriarch of Jerusalem, who, being at Paris, received the sacred Thorn from the hand of St. Louis, whence at Vicenza he founded the church of the Holy Crown. Other Martyrologies are silent about him; but from elsewhere I pursue the proof of the cult.
[5] A more certain and more manifest reason is sought from the elevation and translation of the sacred body, from the solemn elevation which Jacob Marzari in book 2 of the history of Vicenza page 128, in Barbarano chapter 54, asserts was made in the year 1348, by reason of the many miracles and benefits which were frequently obtained at the intercession of the Blessed one; wherefore, a solemn procession being instituted, in the midst of the church opposite the altar of the B. Virgin Mary, with the highest veneration and the concourse of almost the whole city, it was laid in an elevated marble chest, where, says Marzari, it is still kept whole and incorrupt. The aforesaid elevation all adorn in rivalry, especially Barbarano, yet disagreeing with Marzari in the year in which it happened. For he says that by some others it is referred to the year 1351, against whom and Marzari he himself contends for the year 1354, in which, May 21 falling on a Saturday, he maintains the translation was made, and so, by his reckoning, eighty-three years after the death. But the good man did not notice that that concurrence of Saturday with May 21 coincides not with that year 1354, but plainly with the opinion of his adversaries, that is with the year 1351; whence, if the said notes are rightly marked, both Marzari and Barbarano stray equally far from the truth, the one by defect, the other by excess of a whole three years, since the confluence of the notes could not be had for the years already assigned, except when Easter fell on April 17 under the Dominical letter B, which plainly happened in 1351; unless you wish to defer to the year 1356, Easter falling on April 24, in which an equal concurrence will be found, but nowhere the determinate number of 83 years, unless the death of the Blessed one be anticipated or deferred.
[6] and the subsequent translation, But whatever be of the said error, easily to be pardoned to men not sufficiently skilled in chronology: to the matter in hand, I think greater faith can be given to Barbarano and the popular writers, in that which they concordantly assert, namely, that the Bishop of Vicenza at that time, Aegidius, with the Clergy, the chief men of the city, and all the multitude of the people, having proceeded to the church of the Holy Crown of the Fathers Preachers, in the presence of Father Romanus Vello, Prior of the convent, and Father Francis of Belluno, Provincial of lower Lombardy, opened the ancient venerable deposit, in which was found the sacred body incorrupt and solid, dissolved in no part of itself, and so whole, as they will, as if it had been buried on that very day, with the ring, pastoral staff, and other episcopal garments, equally unharmed and fresh; which spectacle suffused all the bystanders with incredible delight, and instilled into the minds of all a singular sense of piety. Thence therefore the sacred remains being drawn out, with due reverence they were laid up in the marble chest mentioned above, skillfully made, and raised seven feet from the earth, on which was inscribed this epigraph:
B. BARTHOLOMEW BISHOP OF VICENZA.
[7] with the title of Blessed appended, Now on the said marble tomb was placed an image of the B. Bishop, expressed to the life with the brush, decorated with shining rays, to which a similar one was placed in the choir, nor from that time was it doubted by anyone that the title of Blessed was due to him, by a kind of popular apotheosis, just as at that time we find done in six hundred places. The lower part of the new sepulchre was occupied by a larger stone, on which either then, or perhaps later, was carved or inscribed a metrical elogium, expressing the virtues and deeds of the Blessed one; which gradually by the antiquity of age was so corroded and worn that scarcely some whole verses could be transcribed, and some words of others with difficulty restored or composed. Wherefore our author rendered in cursive or Italic character those things which had not utterly escaped the keenness of the eyes: the rest he supplied somehow, some Capuchin religious of the same institute with Barbarano, which are expressed in Roman letters, in the manner and order in which here the whole epitaph is set before the eyes of the readers. Here in a fabric of stones lies the venerable Bartholomew, shepherd in this city, giving doctrines to the throng. Once these altars rejoiced in their holy dust, broad, where now the stair of the choir is built. Here he broke evils, buried he drove away diseases. The long day itself could harm nothing the Kindly one, that as he was, so neither did his appearance lie hidden. He had his body translated whole in the tomb, the year was thirteen hundred fifty-four. Endowed with ample means, he built a church set in the city. He translated hither the Thorn, the King of the Franks, and the sacred wood of the Cross, Louis giving it: whence given by the people, and venerated by various comers, both by these Fathers in this far church, and by the people and the sacred things. High in this church he is borne. But while Aegidius then held the rights, his life was written by his command. Here he gave faith such a name, that as Nuncio he pressed the English and the French, and the French phalanxes. In the city he lived equal to a father, here he erected the school of this Order of the Gaudentes, and of those protecting widows. He was Patriarch of Jerusalem, and loved all. These lofty things it befitted the servant of the Lord to be laid in the cloisters. And he confounded the schismatic Gaul by his doctrine. Our city marveled at him, such as the erroneous crimes felt him, to whom Titan bore the ages. For then the piety of men, giving him vows, flourished.
[8] It will be useful to subjoin from the same Barbarano another elogium of the Blessed one, likewise composed in Latin verses, in which also his whole life, as it is wont to be circulated today, is comprised. Here lies he who was Bishop of Jerusalem and of his fatherland, and Nuncio to the English and the French, Bartholomew. Whose limbs, once where the stair of the choir is, now are borne whole from the tomb where they long lay. The year was thirteen hundred fifty-four, Aegidius ordered the deeds of the Father to be written. He built a church, confounded the Gaul by his doctrine, instituting the Gaudentes he profited the wretched. To him the kindly King Louis the Gaul, as to a friend, gave the Thorn and the wood of the Cross, and bore it from the city. Hence his sacred body is venerated, so everyone obtains salvation, whence he proves himself to be a pious father.
[9] The same opinion of both elogia appears, but briefer the latter, mixing true things with doubtful, and a little more neatly explained. More happily afterward, though not more truly, the epitaph inscribed on the marble was polished, or rather renewed and augmented, fourteen years after the publication of Barbarano's annals, as it was described from the tomb itself and sent to Papebroch in the year 1681 by the praised Octavius Zenobrius then Rector of our college of Vicenza, and inserted into the appendix of May cited above, which here again deserves to be represented to the glory of B. Bartholomew.
To God Most Good and Great.
In this tomb is enclosed the venerable Bartholomew, once Bishop of Vicenza, of the stock of Breganza. From the hands of Dominic he took the habit of the kindly Order: Rome venerated him as master of the sacred Palace: thence let him be Bishop of Paphos, of Nemonicum, and of Vicenza, his fatherland applauding, he is created. He gave holy doctrines, did very many miracles living, and buried drove away grave diseases. Sent as Nuncio to the wavering French, and confirms the English in the faith, like another Apostle, and breaks the heretical phalanxes by his writings and turns them; and confounded the schismatic Gaul by his doctrine. He was Patriarch of Jerusalem, restoring the holy places. He visits Louis King of the Franks, and the King gives him a particle of the holy Cross and the holy Crown: he returns carrying the holy treasure. Then he built this ample church for the honor of the Thorn, which had been dyed with the precious blood of the Lord, and adorned the cathedral edifice with the wood of the Cross. He restores Bassano, snatched from his fatherland, without blood, and joins Padua to his fatherland with a treaty of peace: and founds the school of the Gaudentes and of those protecting widows. After eighty-three years he is translated, and behold the body was seen whole with its garments. His grateful fellow-citizens placed a perennial statue, that he may live forever, flourish, be praised, be loved.
The monument, almost collapsed with age, Brother Bassanus of Brescia, Master of Sacred Theology, Prior of this convent, restored to this form, to this marble, in the year of the Lord 1663.
[10] which if they be weighed, This paraphrase of the old epitaph supplied by conjecture (I here use some words of Papebroch), if you compare it with the other Barbaranian one, the old words which survived, each exhibiting them in their own native order and rude wit, you will find that the author, a younger poet, took care of this alone, that he should give the old sense, where he could; where he could not, he substituted something new and apt to his proposed argument, I think from the history of Vicenza of Barbarano or similar traditions, which he amplified according to his genius. For there is nothing in the old one about the mastership of the sacred Palace, nothing about his bishopric in Cyprus, much less about the other of Paphos, which is added; nothing about Bassano recovered, Padua reconciled, and the erection of the statue. You will find also the order of things changed, and the finding of the whole body, there in the beginning, here at the end so placed, that although it is here said to be translated after eighty-three years; there it appears that the number of the year of Christ was partly noted, in which this was done, Thirteen hundred: but for the other numbers worn away by age, there are suggested in Barbarano the words to be supplied, fifty-four, for the year which equally, and perhaps better, would be written fifty-one.
[11] they do not sufficiently stand Although this little digression may seem rather long; that we may cursorily weigh the aforesaid epitaphs, it is sedulously to be noted that all these poets roundly called Bartholomew Patriarch of Jerusalem, Here lies he who was Bishop of Jerusalem and of his fatherland, that you may once observe that from these words, at least from the older ones, flowed that inveterate opinion about the patriarchate of our Blessed one, which it is wonderful that Leander Alberti, displayed on a public tablet, did not read, since he testifies that he was present at Vicenza toward the end of the fifteenth century, or the beginning of the next; to be charged certainly with supine negligence, who did not consult the epitaph of the Blessed one, whose life he meditated to publish. I shall say candidly what seems: either I am much mistaken, or that patriarchate such as it was will most probably have to be reduced to the time in which our Blessed one was Bishop in Cyprus. For the makers of the two former elogia seem to have been utterly ignorant of the church of Nemonicum, and much more of that of Paphos, which, that they are to be taken for one and the same, neither the people of Vicenza nor the Fathers Preachers themselves can deny. Hence a vehement suspicion urges me indeed, that among those men, scarcely moderately learned, it seemed the same thing, to be a Bishop in the East, and Patriarch of Jerusalem: and that this prevailed the more easily, I should believe, because it was widely known that he had been in Palestine with holy King Louis, indeed had been his confessor. Certainly no one hitherto has been able to assign even a probable time in which B. Bartholomew administered the patriarchate of Jerusalem, for however short a space.
[12] These things were disputed in passing and incidentally, on the occasion of the sepulchral encomium, Other signs of cult from the burning lamp, which we have adduced for this, that it might more openly be established about the immemorial cult exhibited to our B. Bartholomew. To these, from the life written by Leander Alberti, which we shall soon subjoin, it will be plain, that in his time before the aforesaid sepulchre a lamp burned, at the expense of a certain patrician of Vicenza, as a token of a grateful mind, on account of a singular benefit obtained from the Lord, the Blessed one being propitious. Castilius in Barbarano mentions several silver lamps hung up, and other votive offerings of that kind affixed to the tomb, as undoubted witnesses of miracles, wrought there by the merits of the Blessed one. He cites besides John Michael Pius, as one who reports that on the vigil and feast of the Holy Crown, the day itself he omitted to indicate, unless he supposed Good Friday is to be understood by us, on that vigil, I say, and festivity, many lights are lit at the sepulchre of our Blessed one; which indeed I have not found in the cited author: but, even if that were lacking, the testimonies and documents hitherto adduced leave no place at all for doubting about the cult of B. Bartholomew.
[13] His last argument in chapter 55 Barbarano takes from a marble column, from a marble column erected to the Saint, erected in the cemetery of the often-mentioned church of the Holy Crown, on which was placed a very large statue of B. Bartholomew, likewise wrought of marble; a notable monument of the piety and veneration of Francis Trissino, a noble of Vicenza, toward the sacred Thorn and our blessed Bartholomew, which was placed there in the year 1492, adorned with French, Trissinian, and other shields and family insignia, but what makes especially to our purpose, with this metrical inscription drawn around the column: To thy most holy wounds I flee, O Christ, grant me to be able to enjoy perpetual light. Thou who didst adorn thy fatherland with the divine gift of the Thorn, Bishop, for this thou art called to be father of thy fatherland. Guard this city, Father, through the garlands of the Thorn we ask, drive away famine and the savagery of plague. King of Kings, Louis, for so great a gift may he bear to thy head equal things, who bore these to thine.
[14] About the ancient religious cult of B. Bartholomew among the people of Vicenza let what has been said suffice; and the constant veneration of the people of Vicenza. they do not seem to have persevered constantly enough in that veneration even to this day; at least I have not hitherto found a certain day of festivity established for him, much less this July 1, as my irrefragable witness is our Octavius Zenobrius praised above, writing to Papebroch on July 26, 1681, whose words I exhibit from the autograph letter itself: Moreover at the same sepulchre I saw only a single little tablet affixed, as they call it, from a vow in the year 1672. No feast or peculiar honor is exhibited to the same Blessed one through the year, perhaps because his body has been removed from the tomb into which it was once translated: yet it is not known when this happened and by whose fraud; which however was only known not long since to the Fathers Preachers, but this I do not believe to have been divulged through the city. Thus far the letter of Zenobrius, sincerely and candidly setting forth the present state of the matter, just as in things of this kind happens all too often from the carelessness of superiors. Yet far be it that these things should be able to harm anything of the veneration due to the Blessed one, wherever finally his sacred body be deposited, unless the Apostolic See, whose decisions are oracles to us, judge otherwise. Now let us weigh in particular those things which pertain to the deeds of the Blessed one.
§ II. The Life by Leander Alberti drawn out in a compendium, illustrated from others up to the Bishopric of Vicenza.
[15] The confused encomium of Leander. We have already noted above that this is the most ancient life of our Blessed one, which we at least know to have been written; where I would have you observe, that he himself died in 1271, but this was not published before the year 1517. The praised author begins thus in the cited book 3 on the illustrious men of the Order of Preachers page 115: Bartholomew of Vicenza, a Man both distinguished in literature and endowed with honesty of morals, on account of his huge learning called to Rome, and made Master of the sacred Palace, began most excellently to unfold the books of the divine Dionysius the Areopagite before the whole curia, and to adorn them with scholia and glosses; whereby it came about that, his condition being seen, the supreme Pontiff declared him Bishop of Vicenza. In which height he so bore himself, that his name was spread far and wide. Further all asserted that there was one Bartholomew, who far surpassed the other Bishops in prudence, genius, and literature. Wherefore all worshipped and venerated him as a deity, or someone fallen from heaven. Which when Innocent IV the supreme Pontiff observed, he sent him as legate into Gaul to King Louis, who afterward was reckoned among the Saints, on account of his distinguished deeds. In which legation Bartholomew so bore himself, that in Gaul he procured for himself the greatest name. Whence Louis, perceiving the integrity of his life, bound him to himself by a special intimacy. Thus Leander, whose compressed and not a little hyperbolic narration is to be examined in a longer commentary.
[16] it is studiously adorned by others. It is plain in the first place that these things were received by Leander rather from hearsay than from any certain relation of Acts, and drawn out in inflated oration, since he so confusedly involves all things, that no certain note is appended, whence even a single fact might be explored according to the just rules of chronology. In this however this author excels the rest, that he passed over many other things, which by more recent writers are more piously devised than solidly proved. Among these John Michael Pius calls B. Bartholomew a noble of Vicenza of the stock of Braganza or Bregantina, named from a castle of this name. In Barbarano and from him in Marchesius the oration grows, since they deduce the family of Breganza from a certain Adrian I know not whom, Count of the aforesaid place, who already in the year of Christ 150 plundered the territory of Vicenza. I wonder they did not ascend to Antenor, the founder of neighboring Padua. Other things found by the same zeal for antiquity and adopted by Marchesius there is no leisure to run through; he who was contemporary with B. Bartholomew, Nicholas Smeregus, Notary of Vicenza, in his chronicle in Albertinus Mussatus, for the year 1260 simply calls our Blessed one his Bishop Bartholomew of Vicenza; which Leander above called Bartholomew of Vicenza. Those things which pertain to the Blessed one's entrance into the Dominican Order, his singular virtues, his skill in philosophy and theology, his zeal in preaching the word of God, the office of Prior and other things discharged by him, are handed down by the aforesaid Barbarano and Marchesius, amplified in a similar, if not the same style, and adorned with I know not what embellishments, freely shall I say or liberally.
[17] That he was called to Rome and made Master of the sacred Palace, The mastership of the sacred Palace asserted by Leander, by the testimony of Leander, our encomiasts embrace with both arms, although to no one hitherto has it happened to be so fortunate as to determine rightly the certain time in which it is sufficiently established that our Blessed one discharged such an office, the older epitaph itself, otherwise a fruitful spring of many uncertainties, being silent, as we observed above with Papebroch. More strongly also seems to fight against it, that in the testament of B. Bartholomew, or its fragment, alleged by Barbarano (he ought to have produced the whole) chapter 52 page 142, where the holy Man says that he had endowed the convent of the Fathers Preachers with the Thorny Crown of our Lord Jesus Christ and other relics, he subjoins; in which Order from infancy we were nourished, and instructed and informed in discipline and morals under the observance of our institutor of the Order B. Dominic, and in it by the mercy of God promoted to the bishopric of Nemonicum and Vicenza; about the aforesaid mastership of the sacred Palace deeply silent: unless perhaps he reckoned that dignity too small to be numbered among the other ornaments of his virtue and merits. This same argument will recur below against the pretended patriarchate of Jerusalem, which at least in that place he would not have omitted to indicate, if he had ever truly been raised to that church, especially since he is supposed to have made the said testament on September 23, 1270, that is in that year which preceded the last of his life.
[18] As it is probable that Leander exceeded in the office of Master of the sacred Palace, the bishopric of Nemonicum being omitted. which from him flowed down to the more recent writers of the Order and of the fatherland, so it is certain that he labors with a defect in that he neglected to note the bishopric of Nemonicum, of which we have already heard the Blessed one himself speaking in such express terms; and the same he further left attested in another instrument about the Thorn of the Lord's Crown, in Barbarano chapter 44, and in Ughelli on the Bishops of Vicenza, related in volume 5 of Italia sacra, in which it is thus expressly read: After these things the most Christian King with the Queen and almost the whole Royal house, for the love of the Christian religion, crossed the sea, at the time when on us, though unworthy, the Apostolic see conferred the pontificate of the city of Nemonicum, which is in the kingdom of Cyprus. I freely and candidly confess that I am ignorant what that city Nemonicum, Nemovicum, Nimonitum, Nimonivicum, or in whatever other not dissimilar manner you may inflect it, is, whence, lest in investigating names of this kind unknown at this time I should be wiser than my Master; I ask the reader to consult volume 7 of May page 704 column 1 at the beginning, where Papebroch tried probably enough to derive and combine the name Nemonicum. Moreover, however that place does not today appear among the Geographers, the blessed man, naming his first episcopal see so expressly, is at any rate to be believed, lest we be otherwise compelled to confess that all those things are supposititious, which as ancient and undoubted instruments are obtruded in Barbarano and others.
[19] The Catalogue of writings from Barbarano. What Leander interposes about the books of Dionysius the Areopagite most excellently unfolded before the whole Roman curia, which likewise he adorned with scholia and glosses, I fear too whether they are sufficiently exacted to the truth. It does not escape me that those very commentaries are celebrated by others, but in what place or time they were wrought, there is no one who has transmitted it to posterity with sufficient certainty. If Barbarano is not deceived, there are many other works of the blessed man, and indeed at Vicenza in the library of the Holy Crown still in manuscript, which he thus reviews in chapter 55. He wrote, he says, glosses and postils with his own hand on Job, Jeremiah, Daniel, Matthew, Mark, John; the Acts of the Apostles, the Canonical Epistles, Genesis, Leviticus, Isaiah, Ezekiel, the books of the Maccabees, the book of Wisdom: the Authentic, three books of the codex, one digest, and certain other books of Canon and civil law. Others will doubt with me whether Barbarano ever saw those codices, which he enumerates in so preposterous an order. There follow in the same: Very many quires of sermons, which the said Bishop made and noted with his own hand. A book on the return of the soul into itself: of the same a book on the natural appetite of dominion. One book on the formation of the Royal offspring, to Margaret, the illustrious Queen of the Franks. Three quires containing the Chronicles of the ages. Some notes upon the Canticles, or a commentary. Likewise a commentary upon the Canticles abridged. Contemplations with rhythms and verses of various festivities. A book on the suspension of the mind into the divine ray. A book on the natural appetite of the Divine species. A book on the hunting of divine love. Natural books. The new and old art. A book on animals composed from many. An exposition on the Canticle of Canticles of Brother Bartholomew Bragantius, Bishop of Nemonicum, to the most illustrious King of the Gauls Louis.
[20] Such is the catalogue of Barbarano, in which about the scholia and glosses on the Areopagite, not a word; doubtless because they do not exist in manuscript at Vicenza. If the works here described be discussed a little more studiously, I fear lest some are to be sent elsewhere; someone might smell among them something Lullistic. But to examine those things is not of this place; let us return to those things which, done by B. Bartholomew before the Bishopric of Vicenza, we learn from the instruments praised just now. Thus the holy man narrates about himself, after the words recited above: Sailing therefore (from Cyprus) into Syria, we visited the King and Queen, and at Joppa and at Sidon, and last at Acre we were most benignly received by them, and beloved with so great love, that, being about to set out for France, they earnestly asked us that we would take care to visit them at Paris; giving us hope that there they would communicate to us the sacred things of God. When therefore from the kingdom of England, whither we had set out for the affairs of the faith, we had come to Paris with the king of England himself and the Queen, our hope received its desired effect. I omit very many things which our cited writers, more pious than truthful, have invented about the Apostolic legation discharged in Syria with St. Louis, about the office of Royal confessor, and I know not what others. To our matter, from these words of the blessed Bishop the whole reckoning of chronology up to the bishopric of Vicenza would have to be fixed, if those things which B. Bartholomew is supposed to narrate here about himself could conveniently be composed with the histories of that time.
[21] First indeed from these words, being about to set out for France, having then discharged the English legation: someone might wish to conjecture that the blessed Bishop was in Syria with holy King while the latter meditated his return to France, and so most probably in the last year of the Louisian expedition, 1254. Whence it would follow that thence he returned to his church of Nemonicum in the same year, and perhaps dwelt there another year, until, translated to Vicenza by the command of the Pontiff, but prohibited from going thither by the impious Ezzelino, he was destined for England for the affairs of the faith, whence with the King of England himself and the Queen he came to Paris. And hence a further conjecture would be made, that B. Bartholomew undertook a journey to England about the year 1256, and not long after set out with the King and Queen for Paris. But here is the Rhodes, here the leap, to surmount which I confess myself unequal, however laboriously I have scrutinized all the corners of English history, that I might find a time into which I could anywhere ascertain these things aptly to fit. It is certain that Henry, setting out from England on the 8th of the Ides of August 1253, landed at Bordeaux on the very feast of the Assumption of the Mother of God, Count Richard and the Queen being appointed guardians of the kingdom; so that the Queen only in the following year 1254, on the 4th of the Kalends of July, namely on the Friday before Pentecost, followed her husband the King, the precept by which she was prohibited from crossing in no way pressing. All which Matthew Paris expressly hands down, otherwise denounced an enemy of the Roman Pontiff. From which you may easily evince that at least at that time the B. Bishop of Vicenza could not accompany the King and Queen from England into France, and afterward to Paris, since on that hypothesis he was then still detained in Cyprus.
[22] Pursuing the English history even to the end, whence he is said to have come to Paris with the king and queen; namely to the year 1259 (for here the excellent web of Paris ends) there is nowhere talk of King Henry's crossing into France. But at the very beginning of the Continuation, it is thus read: In the same year (1259) Henry III King of the English, from the conquest, in the 43rd year of his reign, crossed into Gaul. About the Queen or the Pontifical legate deep silence. That Henry was at Paris at that time, and transacted many things with St. Louis, there is unanimous consent of the historians both French and English. Nevertheless neither then could B. Bartholomew come to Paris with the King of England himself and the Queen, since he is by no means found to have been then in England. For while from the year 1250, year by year he scrupulously enumerates, indeed odiously depicts in the basest colors all the Pontifical envoys, the English historian, and indeed in the year 1258, on my page 650, collects all the Papal Nuncios, at least of any name; namely the Bishop of Bologna, the Archbishop of Messina, John de Diva, Bernard, Senisius, Rustand, Herlot, who in those years had been successively sent into England; while he augments the number invidiously rather than diminishes it, he certainly seems to leave no place for B. Bartholomew, in which he might there discharge a legation, and from England, with the King himself and the Queen, come to Paris. This knot the writers of Vicenza and the Dominicans had to examine and untie; but to those encomiasts nothing is more important than to heap up many things, about composing them aptly to care nothing.
[23] It was their part to seek and accurately define at what time he was promoted to the see of Nemonicum, how many years B. Bartholomew held it; when he passed to that of Vicenza. Barbarano answers, things which to right chronology, chapter 52, that he occupied the first chair for ten years, that is, he says, from the year 1246 to the year 1256; but the other for fifteen years, namely from 1256 to 1271. As these things are resolved with a light pen, so they can easily be denied, and no less conveniently pulled apart, the truth of the instruments being always supposed, of which Barbarano did not doubt; would that he had so sedulously shaken them out. About the beginning of the first see this alone seems able to be asserted, that B. Bartholomew was Bishop of Nemonicum when St. Louis landed in Cyprus in the year 1248. But if the words related above are truly and properly taken, at the time when on us ….. the Apostolic see CONFERRED the pontificate; it will have to be said, as Barbarano is somewhere compelled to confess, that in that year our Blessed one was first created Bishop. Then, that I may bestow some effort on explaining the text of the blessed man cited above, I plainly reckon that before the year 1254 he left Cyprus, in that very year 1254 deputed to the King of the English; yet so that he most probably never saw England: but his words are so to be understood, that he was sent to Henry in the aforesaid year now full grown, while he dwelt with the Queen in Aquitaine, whence toward the end of the same year he came to Paris with the King himself and the Queen; not from the British island, but from the domains subject to the King of the English in Gaul.
[24] as far as can be done are reduced And this is the most celebrated meeting of both Kings and Queens, most expressly consigned by the historians of both nations to the year 1254, in that very year in which St. Louis returned from Palestine, about which our writers are perpetually deluded. To whom there is no leisure to unroll or consult many volumes, let them read the most brief annals of our most erudite Philip Briet, most widely published throughout all Italy, for the said year 1254. Nor would you believe this our opinion arbitrary, since it is most openly confirmed by him whom we proposed for ourselves to follow as older, Leander Alberti, although he passed over many things in silence either by design or from ignorance. For thus in the words cited at the beginning of this §, he clearly pronounces: Which when Innocent IV the supreme Pontiff observed, he SENT him AHEAD as legate into Gaul, to King Louis, who afterward was reckoned among the Saints, on account of his distinguished deeds. I am mistaken, unless from the word SENT AHEAD anyone whatever altogether understands that B. Bartholomew was in Gaul before St. Louis was returned from Syria. Nor will anyone doubt of this, who remembers that Innocent IV departed from the living on the 7th of December of the same year 1254; certainly then most certainly the Blessed one must have been present at Paris, when the Gaul and the Englishman with their Queen wives undoubtedly met.
[25] against the inelegant order of others. This foundation being laid, on which it is permitted in most obscure matters by probability, there fall very many things which they will find rashly narrated by Barbarano and others cited above, who shall have wished to deem their histories worthy even of a light glance. For a while therefore (at least until they themselves bring forth better things) it must be supposed that our Blessed one was at Paris with the King of England himself and the Queen, in the said year 1254; whence it is necessarily consequent that, the year 1253 at least drawing to a close, he left the church of Nemonicum, that, having returned to Italy, he might undertake the English, or Gallic-English legation, and the affairs with Henry King of England being completed in Aquitaine, thence with him and the Queen proceed to Paris. These things will seem strange, especially to those who, accustomed to their Legends, or to elogia scraped together from everywhere, prefer to compile many things or in a manner to cast them into a heap, than to weigh the matters themselves by the rules of right reason. The opinion conceived from Barbarano and Ughelli also deceived Papebroch, adhering to which, he so established the chronology of the life translated by B. Bartholomew, that he thought that only in the year 1254 Syria was visited by him; that he was made Bishop of Vicenza in the year 1257, discharged the legation with the Englishman and the Gaul in the year 1260; was made Patriarch of Jerusalem in the year 1263; and arranged other things there, which, that they can by no means stand with this chronology, will at the very first glance at once become evident.
[26] It does not please here to report in particular, much less to refute, He could have been named to the church of Vicenza in 1256; those things which we have said some invented more speciously than truly, about the Apostolic legation of B. Bartholomew to St. Louis in Syria, of which neither he himself nor the Writers of those times made a word: for he only asserts that he sailed into Syria, and there visited the King and Queen. Nor do I seek nor divine for what cause he left the bishopric of Nemonicum; whether he exchanged it with Manfred bishop of Vicenza, whom those men imagine a Cypriot; in which manner Paul would have to be excluded, who by Ughelli is set as the fortieth in order and the immediate predecessor of our Blessed one. Nor is it more obvious to define in what year he was destined, named, or promoted to the mitre of Vicenza, unless perhaps Ughelli has happily found this, citing the Vatican Register epistle 741 folio 10, where it is said that he, from Bishop of Nemonicum in Cyprus, was translated by Alexander IV to this church of Vicenza in the year 1256, on the 15th of the Kalends of February. Which if it is true, it is most easily reconciled with our series of matters: for he could, while he tarried in Gaul, be promoted to the see of Vicenza, another Bishop being substituted at Nemonicum in his place, which church meanwhile was administered by a Vicar, as it is most well known to happen everywhere and to have happened long ago.
[27] Our more recent writers will have it that the Blessed one, before undertaking the English legation, whither at length he came in 1260; came to Vicenza, in the year, as among others Thienaeus notes, 1258, others 1256; then, the words are Ughelli's, in that administration overcame the upright by example, broke the wicked and those averse from the catholic faith by doctrine; circumvented by the frauds of heretics, suffered many things, and at length was driven into exile by the most savage Ezzelino. All these things Barbarano and Marchesius amplify, but on what ruinous foundations those pious little fables rest, the Blessed one himself demonstrates more clearly than the sun, who testifies that he first came to Vicenza when he carried the sacred relics thither in the year 1260, namely then when, Ezzelino being dead, he returned from Gaul into Italy, as from his very own words you will understand below. Many other things of that kind plainly entangled I find, which I sincerely confess I prefer to be ignorant of, than to flee to frigid conjectures, to which the whole confused history of Vicenza of that time, as Papebroch observed before me, and the penury of certain monuments among the Reverend Fathers Preachers, would otherwise compel us, of which monuments, he who first reviewed the deeds of B. Bartholomew, Leander Alberti, is found to have been ignorant of those things which ought to have been known to him before he thought of weaving his encomium, and which he could have obtained with no trouble, since he testifies that he was at Vicenza, and saw the burning lamp, of which we spoke in §1.
[28] Let no one therefore expect from me a deduced series of the life, which it has nowhere hitherto been permitted to find. We know that B. Bartholomew was a native of Vicenza, whence some series of the life is woven, nourished in the Order of Preachers from infancy, and instructed in discipline and morals under the observance of the Institutor St. Dominic; We know that in it he was promoted to the bishopric of Nemonicum, and that this we believe was most probably done in the year 1248, at the time when on us ….. the Apostolic see conferred the pontificate, St. Louis dwelling at Cyprus. With what offices before in the Order itself he was occupied, whether Lector and Prior, as Thienaeus says, or a great sower of the divine word, as others mention; it is not free to assert, but neither to deny. We know besides that he sailed from Cyprus into Syria, to visit King Louis and the Queen, and that before the year 1254. From the bishopric of Nemonicum to that of Vicenza he was perhaps destined or designated by Innocent IV, but the tyranny of the most impious Ezzelino disturbing all things, he was meanwhile sent for the affairs of the faith to the King of England, and also to St. Louis, in the year, as we said, 1254 returned to his France; after two years raised by Alexander IV to the see destined before, as we noted just now from Ughelli. Further, he tarried with the holy King until Ezzelino, while he plotted against Milan, compelled to flee, intercepted by the confederates, wounded and captured, made an end of his life and at the same time of his monstrous vexations and crimes in the year 1259. And these are the things which we learn from the other monuments to have been done by B. Bartholomew before he undertook the church of Vicenza.
[29] the words of Leander also being adapted, But now there can be subjoined here those things which follow in Leander, when he mentions the legation of the Blessed one to St. Louis, in these words: In which legation Bartholomew so bore himself, that in Gaul he procured for himself the greatest name. Whence Louis, perceiving the integrity of his life, bound him to himself by a special intimacy. Matters being settled, when it behooved him to return to Italy, he was compelled by the King, for their mutual love, to receive gifts. Who, seeing that he could not depart from Gaul except endowed with a royal gift, asked, the temporal gifts being rejected, that one of the thorns of the most holy Crown of the Lord, kept with diligent custody and honor in the royal treasures, be given to him. But Louis, desiring to render him partaker of his wish, with his own hands, before the heroes of Gaul, bestowed on him one most precious thorn. In what order or with what apparatus he conferred so great a gift on him, can be seen in a certain book of the convent of Vicenza, of our Order. For I did not think that all things were to be narrated here, otherwise I should weave a huge volume from incidents of this kind.
[30] in which Barbarano carps at something. It is most true, that if not a huge volume, at least a fairly long commentary could be woven, about the sacred treasures which, obtained in Gaul, the blessed Bishop set in the highest honor among his people of Vicenza, as we shall report at greater length in the following §, since those are nearly the only things, about the deeds of his whole episcopal time, handed down to memory, at least with some appearance of truth. One thing Leander here narrates, which did not please Barbarano; let us hear his following words: Having therefore received from the most holy King the faculty of returning into Italy with the most precious treasure, with a certain venerable father of Ascoli of our Order, in most malignant times, and through dangerous places, he returns to Italy: and the treasure being so divided, he gave part to the venerable father of Ascoli, and carried the other part to Vicenza. Further the people of Ascoli received that part with great honor, which they keep even to the present day. Barbarano denies this in chapter 42, and from the response of some Guardian of his Order, given on August 28, adduced there on page 106, tries to evince that it is not part of the Thorn of Vicenza that is honored among the people of Ascoli, but another thorn, different from the former, which was given by King Philip, son of St. Louis, to the General of the Dominicans, as it were in exchange for the finger of St. Dominic, as the reader will find there attested. Neither part do I undertake to defend, let those whom it concerns dispute. Now we must approach more nearly to the bishopric of Vicenza.
§ III. The remainder of the life, from the year 1260 to his death.
His solemn entrance into Vicenza with the Holy Thorn We go on with our Blessed one, bearing testimony thus about his own deeds, in the instrument now cited more than once about the Thorn received from St. Louis at Paris: For the most pious King of the Franks, he says, caused one thorn to be drawn out from the Thorny Crown of the Lord, and devoutly, with royal knee bent, ours bent on the opposite side, and from his own sacred royal hands, enriched our pontifical hands. What more? a kiss of love being given and received alike, mutual commendation being made on this side and that, he permitted us to depart. When therefore in the year 1260, the perfidious Ezzelino being dead, we approached the city of Vicenza, the Clergy and all the people came to meet us, crying and saying, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hence therefore, doubtful circumlocutions being rejected, hence, I say, and not from elsewhere, must the beginning of the bishopric of Vicenza be taken; as the Blessed one again testifies in the donation of relics, in Barbarano chapter 43, made in the year 1261, Indiction 6 (read 4), on the 14th day, March beginning. Where in express terms he asserts that he CARRIED the relics received from St. Louis TO HIS BISHOPRIC, WHEN HE FIRST CAME TO IT. Add the chronicle of Smeregus, in which the first memory of B. Bartholomew is set in 1260, in these words: In the third Indiction, the Podestà of Vicenza was D. Marcus Quirinus of Venice, who was Podestà of Padua in the year 1259: and D. Bishop Bartholomew of Vicenza, who was in spirituals and temporals Lord of the city of Vicenza, caused him to be elected Podestà. Again, in the following year 1261, Indiction 4, D. John Gradenigo of Venice was Podestà of Vicenza: and because he offered a thousand pounds of small pennies for building the place of the Holy Crown, D. Bishop Bartholomew caused him to be elected Podestà of Vicenza.
[32] Nothing in the whole encomium of Leander is more clearly expressed than that it is not badly described by Leander. the most holy Thorn of the Lord was carried to Vicenza by B. Bartholomew, in the year of the Lord 1260, whose triumphs he describes thus: But when Bartholomew approached Vicenza (report had already spread that he was bringing the sacred Thorn) he had the whole city to meet him, garlanded with chaplets, and holding lit torches in their hands, about suppliantly to adore the holy treasure, and crying; Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And since our Fathers had no convent (although they inhabited the city and dwelt in a certain little house), he obtained from the whole people that magnificent buildings be built in a profane place, which men infected with the stain of heresy had inhabited for a long time, that where once malice had superabounded, the goodness and grace of God might superabound. Therefore, the place being cleared, a huge church was constructed, dedicated to the Crown of Christ, and an altar set up for the most holy Thorn, laid up in a silver vessel, made for it, adorned with gold and pearls, in which it is suppliantly adored even to our age by the senate and people of Vicenza. Every year also, the city being surveyed with lit torches, most beautiful virgins preceding, adorned with chaplets and with loosened hair, and all the Priests, it is carried around through the whole city, then the aforesaid church is presented by the city with a silver crown of huge weight, and with several other vessels, adorned with various colors and images.
[33] As everywhere obscure and doubtful are the things which pertain to the life of our Blessed one, so certain are the things which Leander narrates about the sacred Thorn, excellently confirmed by the Blessed one himself, in the testimony already often praised, whose last part I here subjoin: He gives the Holy Thorn to his Order, There was in the city a place which was called the Neck, where had been the seat of Satan, and men attending to the spirits of errors and the doctrines of demons, in which place, the community of the city favoring, to the honor of the Lord's Crown we founded a church of the Order of Preachers, of which we were foster-children, and there the sacred things hanging at our neck, which we had brought, we devoutly laid up, and cheerfully bestowed. So therefore the city of Vicenza, once of perfidy, was made a city of faith and grace, enriched with a sacred gift. Let all Italy therefore applaud, let the March of Treviso exult the more, but do thou applaud more, Vicenza, enriched with the grace of so great a gift. But he who freely conferred his gifts on thee, Jesus Christ, so make thee grateful, that from grace he may lead thee to glory, in which he lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Praise to God Most Good and Great.
[34] which he had received from St. Louis. Nor is it to be passed over in this place, the very instrument of the donation of St. Louis, which I describe word for word from Barbarano; Louis by the grace of God King of the Franks, to Bartholomew beloved to him in Christ, by the same grace Bishop of Vicenza, salutation, and the affection of sincere love. At your instant petition, of the precious wood of the Lord's Cross, and of his most holy Crown one Thorn we confer on you, in sign of love, asking your love attentively, that you keep it and cause it to be kept with due honor, and be willing to pray for us, and cause special prayers to be made. Given at Paris in the year of the Lord 1259, on the Thursday after the feast of St. Nicholas in winter. In perpetual testimony of which thing we have ordered the present letters to be fortified with our seal. You have there from page 113, other testimonies pertaining to the same matter, of the Patriarch of Constantinople, of the Patriarch of Grado, with the Bishops of Padua, Treviso, Feltre, Torcello, and Caorle, and finally of the Doge of Venice, which I did not reckon should be transcribed, since no controversy seems able to be moved in these; would that the deeds of the Blessed one himself had been so accurately described! Nor would I be unmindful to cite again the very donation made by the Blessed one to his Brothers of Vicenza, whose instrument exists in the praised Barbarano chapter 43, from page 109.
[35] Let there now follow what remains of the encomium of Leander, from which again it may be plain, what has been by us more than once truly pronounced, The remainder of Leander's elogium. that nothing was once written about the whole bishopric of Bartholomew, besides what has been said. Behold the last words of Leander: While Bartholomew was in Gaul, he read certain books of D. Dionysius. Therefore after he had governed his clergy and city for several years, he died most holily, and by his command was buried in the church of the Preachers of the city of Vicenza, in a sepulchre, as was fitting, worthy of so great a man, which is still seen fixed in the right walls of the church, in a carved stone. While I myself was in the same convent, in the year of the Lord 1495, by the command of a certain citizen of Vicenza a lamp was hung, which, continually day and night supplied with oil, remains lit before his sacred body, he relating that by his merits he had deserved a certain benefit from the Lord. After the glosses on Dionysius, Bartholomew comprised the lives of the Saints in a brief epitome. He carried the most holy Thorn of the Lord in the year of the Lord 1260.
[36] Here again he mentions the books of Dionysius, which at the beginning he had said were unfolded before the Roman curia; The institution of the Order of the Gaudentes, but then about the lives of the Saints comprised in a brief epitome, but we have treated abundantly above about the writings of the Blessed one, so far as it makes hither. There would remain to be explained the other deeds of his whole life, if they could be drawn out from somewhere. We shall gather here and there those things which seem proved enough. Hither pertains especially the equestrian Order, which I observe is commonly called of the Gaudentes, otherwise of the Blessed Virgin, or of Mary the glorious, of which Barbarano mentions more fully in chapter 40; I shall transfer hither in compendium a few things conducing to the glory of the B. Bishop. He says therefore that blessed Bartholomew cast certain seeds of the aforesaid Order, then first confirmed when he occupied the chair of Vicenza, since about the year 1231, the city of Bologna, at that time most afflicted with various calamities, he led with B. John of Schio, a man likewise Apostolic of his Order, to appease the divine mercy by works of penance. So great namely was the fruit of the most illustrious Order of Preachers in preaching the word of God, that thence our author reckons that the various confraternities or sodalities, which we see today, under the invocation of various Saints, with most abundant profit of souls, drew their origin. Bologna was then split and torn apart with contrary studies, discords, enmities, and civil hatreds, to extinguishing and pacifying which no one anywhere attended. Hence our Blessed one, impelled by ardent zeal, in the year, as they will, 1233, meditated that society, under the auspices of the B. Virgin Mary, whose care this should especially be, that, as advocates, arbiters, and peacemakers, they should of their own accord and most earnestly watch over composing quarrels, lawsuits, and the minds of those at variance, the patronage of widows and orphans being undertaken with equal sedulity. See Carlo Sigonio on the Bishops of Bologna page 125.
[37] These few of many, but the chief, are the characters proper to this Order of the Gaudentes, about which the opinions of writers. which the curious reader will find described in particular in our Philip Bonanni's catalogue of equestrian and military Orders, published at Rome in the year 1711, number 75 from Sigonio, with this difference, that Barbarano asserts the sodality was approved by Pope Urban IV in 1261, the year after B. Bartholomew's entrance into Vicenza; but Bonanni designates the year 1263. The same in both is the lawgiver Ruffinus, the Pontiff's penitentiary, in Barbarano of Piacenza, in Bonanni called by his proper name Gurgo: of which congregation the first Master was constituted Loderengus Andalo, a man to be praised on many titles. In a few other things the aforesaid writers do not altogether agree, but to discuss them more laboriously there is neither leisure nor need. Bonanni thinks the Brothers Gaudentes were so surnamed from Villario and Salimbene, because each led his life in his own house with his wife. That they had monasteries and instituted a life after the manner of the Religious, Barbarano says, which is at any rate not improbable, since Bonanni confesses that, knights of this kind afterward gradually failing, Sixtus V assigned to the college of Montalto the goods which they possessed. About the habit and the rest of their obligations, see the cited writers; for me it is enough that the great fruits which proceeded from that Order are to be referred to our Blessed one, and further also, after its extinction at Vicenza, are seen to flow forth, in those whom the nobles are wont every year to elect, who endeavor to supply the place of those Knights in composing quarrels.
[38] He restrains the heretics and builds the church of the Holy Crown. To these times also must be referred, if they were ever done, those things which Barbarano has on page 104, about heretics led back by B. Bartholomew to the orthodox faith, and among them a certain standard-bearer, by name Gallus, from the region of St. Peter, who in §1 is depicted in the epitaph of the Blessed one. Other heretics, with a certain Jeremiah a pseudo-bishop I know not, drawn back by our Blessed one to the bosom of the Church, Marchesius suggests on page 5, but others intruded with Bishop Vivianus, driven from the city by the work of the Blessed one, which, as I should not difficultly admit; so before I assert it, I would wish it proved by older authority. The building of the church of the Holy Crown of the Fathers Preachers can be called the chief work which B. Bartholomew brought to completion in the time of his bishopric; for if we believe Barbarano, begun in the year 1260, it held for a whole decade, only in the year 1270 finished in all its numbers, however great was then the liberality both of the blessed Bishop, and of the clergy, and of the other townsmen, for promoting the perfection of the work, about which matter see the praised Annalist of Vicenza chapter 43, in the whole four following chapters more at length setting forth the innumerable goods and benefits which with the Thorn and the other relics procured by the blessed Man redounded to his fatherland.
[39] His other deeds at Vicenza. Next thence in chapter 49, Barbarano weaves a very long history of the disturbances, tumults, and wars between the neighboring cities, with this view only, that he may show that by the authority and industry of B. Bartholomew various dissensions of the people of Vicenza and Padua were extinguished, so that these, after mutual disasters, raids, and devastations, restored to the people of Vicenza the town of Bassano, the cause of more than one war: to which several other discords of either Religious or secular persons composed, the so-often-cited Barbarano and Marchesius reckon; but these and all the rest, more fully set forth in them, we will leave to be read, until clearer fountains be assigned, whence they drew their things, to which it may be permitted us too to come and consult. Minutiae besides, no more proved, I deliberately pass over. These are the chief things which at least became known with sufficient certainty, done by B. Bartholomew in the time of the bishopric of Vicenza, even to the year 1267, in which he must have been present at the translation of the body of St. Dominic at Bologna, if indeed those things are true which about that celebrity John Michael Pius most sharply maintains, as we shall soon say. These, I say, are the principal actions of the Blessed one, for that the B. Bishop lived at Vicenza for nearly the whole six years would scarcely be authentically ascertained, had not Smeregus mentioned him for the year 1264; whose testimony is to be esteemed the more, because he seems to have lived at the same time as the Blessed one.
[40] But that B. Bartholomew was present at the aforesaid translation at Bologna, that he was present at the translation of St. Dominic in 1267, the instrument does not allow to be doubted, distinguished by its own true notes, which is reported by John Michael Pius and by Barbarano, and which it pleases here to set forth to the eyes of the readers: To the venerable faithful of Christ who shall inspect the present letters. Brother Bartholomew, by divine mercy Bishop of Vicenza, salutation and eternal charity in the Lord. The just and pious Lord, of whose gift it comes that he is worthily and laudably served by his faithful, repays to those serving well rewards much greater than they can deserve. Since therefore in the general Chapter of the Order of the Brothers Preachers, celebrated at Bologna, the most holy body of the most pious Father Dominic, the institutor of the same Order, in the presence and sight of the venerable Father Brother John of Vercelli, Master, and the Brothers of the said Order gathered in the said Chapter, in the year from the nativity of the Lord 1267, Indiction 10, on the day of Pentecost, the 5th of June; the Venerable Father Lord Philip, by the grace of God Archbishop of Ravenna, in the presence and assistance of the venerable Fathers Lords by the grace of God Octavian of Bologna, Tommaso of Imola, Brothers Arnulf of Osimo, and Aegidius of Torcello, Bishops, and ourselves; and also the noble men Lords Yrach de la Turre, Podestà, Gniestus de Fonte Carali, Captain, and the Elders of Bologna, transferred it from the stone uncarved tomb to a marble and carved one with due reverence and due devotion, and the precious head, first reverently exhibited to the devout kisses of the said Bishops, Master, and Brothers, subsequently in the corner pulpit of the church of the said Saint, in the outer square, a praiseworthy multitude of the faithful being present, to remove from the conservation of his body, solid and whole in the said church, the scruple of any doubt, which perhaps resided in the hearts of some, by us there, a solemn sermon being premised, showed it, with devout hand bringing it back into the said carved tomb, and laying it up in the structure of his body with a holy kiss.
[41] We, by the authority of the said Lord Archbishop and the concession of the Bishops, the instrument given in his name proves it. desiring that the said body in the said church be every year visited with festive honors, to all truly penitent and confessed, to whom the jurisdiction of the said Lord Archbishop, of the Bishops, and ours extends, who shall take care devoutly and laudably to visit the aforesaid body, on the feast of its translation and even to the octave, yearly, on the part of the said Lord Archbishop, two years each, trusting in the mercy of the Almighty and the merits of the glorious Virgin Mary his mother, and the suffrages of all the Saints, of the penances enjoined on them, we have thought should be mercifully relaxed in the Lord, the present to be valid in perpetuity. In testimony of which thing we have caused the present letters to be made, and fortified with our seal. Given, etc. The praised John Michael Pius heaps up very many things, that he may show this other translation of his Patriarch to be certain, setting forth at greater length its peculiar causes, touched on here in passing, and strongly confuting the arguments of his adversaries; which can be of use to us in illustrating the posthumous glory of St. Dominic, on the day August 4. Let it now be enough to have carried out the life of B. Bartholomew thus far.
[42] How long he survived after making his testament, There remain by the more common reckoning four years, in which what he did I attain by no probable enough conjecture, except that in the year 1270 he made a testament, which no one has hitherto produced entire; a fragment Barbarano has in chapter 52 of this tenor: 1270, September 23, in the episcopal Caminus (understand the chamber or room) in the presence of, etc. The Venerable Father Lord Brother Bartholomew Bishop of Vicenza made his testament, saying thus: We Brother Bartholomew, by the grace of God and of the Apostolic see Bishop of Vicenza, the authority of testating having been received from the most holy Father Lord Clement, by divine providence supreme Pontiff of the most holy universal Church; first to the place of the Lord's Crown, of the city of Vicenza, of the Order of Preachers, which by Christ's authorship we founded, to the honor of God almighty, of our Lord Jesus Christ crucified, for the defense of the faith, and for the salvation of the Christian souls of the city of Vicenza and the district of Vicenza; and which we endowed with the most holy relics, benignly bestowed by the most pious Louis King of France, of the wood of the holy Cross and of the thorny Crown of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in which Order from infancy we were nourished, and instructed and informed in discipline and morals, under the observance of our Institutor of the Order B. Dominic, and in it by the mercy of God promoted to the bishopric of Nemonicum and Vicenza, we choose a sepulchre between the two altars and pavements, which we have decreed to be made, between the altar of the B. Virgin and of the Lord's Crown, so that it can be seen in the choir within and by the laity without, that they may have material and cause of praying for us, whenever they shall see the sepulchre itself, etc. Thus far the aforesaid fragment: the rest which pertains to his death, burial, elevation, miracles, and cult we gave above in §1.
[43] on what day he died, is uncertain: How long after making his testament B. Bartholomew survived, in what year, month, or day he put off mortal life, Barbarano indeed teaches according to his liberty, doubting nothing that he departed from the living, not on June 1, as Papebroch repeatedly read wrongly, but on this day July 1, 1271; let the faith rest with him, since others either mark another day altogether, or dare to determine none. For if the note of the elevation made is true, of which we treated above, so that it must have fallen in the year 1351; but this happened eighty-three years after the death of the Blessed one; it would altogether have to be held that he departed from the living in the year 1268; which seems able to be drawn from the chronicle of Smeregus, when at that time he mentions disturbances on occasion of the question of the bishopric of Vicenza, which slaughters and wounds followed: which indeed argue that the episcopal see, for which there was contention, was widowed of a shepherd. But in that case, the testament of the Blessed one already described would have to be rejected as fictitious. Hence I see Scylla, there Charybdis. Barbarano indeed accuses Smeregus, that he consigned those things to years not their own: but indeed, with his good leave, the erudite readers would easily allow greater faith to be given to an eyewitness and contemporary, than to the Annalist of Vicenza, deluded more than once in several things nearer to his age. I confess that I here stick doubtful, and offer this knot also to the people of Vicenza to be untied or cut.
[44] No less obscure and involved is the controversy mentioned above, about the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, nor about the patriarchate of Jerusalem, to which the more recent writers affirm B. Bartholomew was raised, as securely as they are little solicitous to find at least an opportune time in which he shone with such a dignity; for to have recourse to the time in which he stayed with St. Louis in Palestine, as Barbarano and Marchesius will, is almost the same as to confess ingenuously that the pretended patriarchate was imaginary, otherwise suspect on so many titles, as we have insinuated above not in passing, suggesting a manner in which that patriarchate can be confused with the first bishopric. Another way Papebroch tried to enter in the cited appendix of volume 7 of May toward the end, pages 704 and 705; but since he was in darkness, it is no wonder if by conjectures he could not explain what most probably was never done. We give to our Blessed one two bishoprics successively, of which he himself made mention in his testament, made in the year 1270, immediately preceding the last of his life, by no means about to pass over the more illustrious mitres, if he had ever been raised to them. To me indeed this will not seem probable, unless the writers of Vicenza or the Dominicans adduce graver witnesses than little verses, composed in I know not what century or by whom, while Leander Alberti, Razzi, John Michael Pius, and all the older ones, so far as I know, are silent about that patriarchate.
[45] nor is anything established about the vicariate in Italy. That I may at length extricate myself from all these tangles, I subjoin the last dignity of B. Bartholomew, namely the vicariate of Caesar in Italy, which Ughelli attaches to the year 1262, when together with the Patriarch of Aquileia by the choice of the Emperor Rudolf he was vicar of Italy, and in the immediately following times, Apostolic Nuncio in Gaul and in England. How ineptly and unskillfully these things are composed by an erudite man! Who, I pray, was Rudolf Emperor in the year 1262? Who dreamed that B. Bartholomew after the year 1262 was Apostolic Nuncio in Gaul and in England? Others prefer to refer the vicariate, such as it was, to Richard the Englishman, whose election and that of Alphonso King of Castile is most well known; but how safely, let them see. With similar errors is besprinkled the whole last paragraph of Ughelli, both where he mentions the death of the Blessed one, and where he mentions the elevation of his sacred body. Nor are those things any more to be heeded which Papebroch adduced from him. I remember, he says, that I read in an old codex, made of parchment, of the library of the convent of St. Salvator de Septimo, of the diocese of Florence, that a certain Rudolf Bishop of Vicenza in the year 1264, on the 3rd day of the month of October, reconciled the church of Castrocaro in Etruria, which has the title of St. Reparata. Either Ughelli read wrongly, or the writer of the codex plainly erred: for if we have anything certain, that is most evidently established from Smeregus, that B. Bartholomew in the year 1264 presided over the church of Vicenza. Other things I do not pursue, since all is full of thorns, brambles, briars, and prickles, but we reckon that we have selected thence those things which about the deeds, virtues, and holiness of our Blessed one could be commemorated and proclaimed with some certainty.