Willibald

ON ST. WILLIBALD, BISHOP

OF EICHSTÄTT IN GERMANY.

ABOUT THE YEAR 786.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Willibald, Bishop, at Eichstätt in Germany (S.)

BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.

§ I. The Saint's name, fatherland, race, cult, writings.

Of Eichstätt, by others Eystetum, Eystettum, Eichstadium, or Aichstadium, in the expression and inflection of whose name we shall follow Gretser, Henschenius treated cursorily, after our manner, on the life of St. Walburga the virgin, the twenty-fifth of February page 511, Various things of the city of Eichstätt, rightly observing that from the monastery built there by St. Willibald it began to be inhabited, until it grew into a town and then into a notable city. Gretser had gone before in the preface to his commentary on the life, written by Philip Bishop of Eichstätt, where he has thus: We have also explained the origins of Eichstätt, where it is to be seen from what slender beginnings, that is, from a Benedictine monastery, both the city itself, and the most noble college of Canons, and the most ample episcopate itself arose. But the rest pertaining to the origin, cradle, amplitude, and present-day magnificence of the city, you have in him chapter 18 and following from page 237. It is not pleasing here to repeat what we too have discussed at length on a similar subject on the Acts of St. Rumold. Whether Eichstätt was named rather from felled than from flourishing oaks, as it were Quercopolis, by some who Grecize Dryopolis, who could sufficiently divine? But whether once the same city was called Aureatum, Chrysopolis, and Nessofelsia, let those inquire whose interest it is, or who are pleased to draw out nobility from unknown ruins; for us let it suffice to have noted these things cursorily on the occasion of St. Willibald, if not the first founder and builder of the ancient Aureatum, such as it was, yet certainly of the present-day most flourishing church and of the whole city.

[2] That there is not one formation of the name Willibald in ancient and new writings you will without doubt have observed, and the inflection of the very name of the Saint. so that you may sometimes doubt whether appellations not a little different belong to one and the same Saint, such as are Willibald, Wilbald, Bilibald, Bilbald, Willibold, Willebold, concerning which the praised Gretser disputes at length and accurately in chapter 2 of his Observations, refuting Aventinus and others, who seem to have played childishly on the etymology of that name, having digressed I know not into what woods or forest-glades. Let one consult Gretser himself, who takes a little more delight in investigating and unraveling originations of that kind; and let him devise various roots taken from Wald for a wood or another meaning. Most rightly, I think, in the obvious and native sense, Philip, Prelate of Eichstätt, compiler of the last and greater life, drew out the name of St. Willibald from its German origin, when in chapter 4 he interpreted the nomenclature of our Saint as prompt will; for Will in German is called will, bald quickly or promptly, so that joined together they altogether signify Willbald, promptly willing, or prompt will. Whatever therefore other etymologies reported by Gretser may please someone, this Philippine one will be more pleasing to us, until some be brought forward at least better than those which are ascribed to Aventinus or others, too scrupulous, shall I say, or laboriously smattering investigators of matters of this kind.

[3] In what sense St. Willibald a Saxon by race, From the radical meaning of the name itself it is clearly shown that St. Willibald was of Saxon origin, not in the modern Saxony of Germany, but among the West Anglo-Saxons, born and educated in the very fatherland of St. Boniface (to whom, as is in the Life of St. Wunebald number 7, page 180, he was associated and glued by carnal propinquity and the coupling of blood), perhaps in Hampshire, or in the present-day county of Southampton or in the county of Devon, as Mabillon suspects fittingly enough; concerning which, however, the ancient monuments have handed down nothing certain. The Saxon nation the author of the first and purer life or Hodoeporicon, a Nun, plainly indicates, when at number 6 she cries up the custom of the Saxon nation, by which the sign of the holy Cross was wont to be erected before the doors of the noble, to which St. Willibald, three years old, was carried sick. Further, that that Saxon nation fixed its seat not in Germany, but in modern England, even if other things did not prove it, would thence most certainly be proved, that the Hodoeporicon hints also at the British port of Hamwich (of which termination there are several there), whence with his father and brother St. Willibald set sail, about to cross into France, and landed in the Seine near Rouen, which crossing can belong to none other than the English going into Gaul. If anyone should wish to feign our Saint a Swabian, a Scot, or an Irishman, let him not expect an answer from me; nor do I see that we should tarry longer on these things, since they were long since placed beyond all controversy.

[4] Would that with like arguments the people of Eichstätt had elucidated the things which have long been agitated concerning the parents of St. Willibald, and born of royal blood concerning their dignity, and progeny, and royal majesty. And first indeed concerning their very names there was doubt, since in the most ancient monument, and that the only one which bears the characters of authentic truth, the parents of the holy brothers are nowhere made known by name, where nevertheless so many occasions of expressing them recur. The writer of the second life, an Anonymous one, first brought Richard into the light, and that opinion is now so received that to gainsay it is a sin, after Henschenius on the seventh of February so distinctly discussed and illustrated all things pertaining to St. Richard. Let St. Richard therefore be the illustrious parent of the three holy children Willibald, Wunebald, and Walburga, who, buried at Lucca by his sons, is there still today honored with singular veneration. But the name of the mother, whence it was drawn out, I confess I have thus far not sufficiently detected, nor further conceive why some writers so greatly vex themselves, that after so many centuries they may sell us uncertain nomenclatures. They attribute the appellation of Bona or Bonna, Wunna or Bunna to the more recent, nor do they hesitate to make her a sister of St. Boniface, but without any ancient guarantor, whom they ought first to have sought, before disputing about its etymology. That she was good, pious, and if you please holy, I shall easily admit, who was the mother of so many Saints; but that she was called by such a name, and had so many Saints as brothers or kinsmen, there is no reason why I should be induced to believe. More may be seen in Gretser, explaining the kinship of St. Willibald in book 2 of the Observations chapter 10, and others who followed Philip, the chief artificer of the genealogy.

[5] Various writers have feigned many things, that they might claim for St. Richard the duchy of Swabia or the kingdom of England, it may be said; or even both; but content with the vague appellation of a kingdom, at least at that time, I think, of the anonymous writer, with Adelbert, the Lucca epitaph, and the history of Philip. To establish somehow a tradition of this kind the often-praised Gretser sweats most laboriously, in three long chapters 4, 5, and 6, from page 166 to 178. At the very beginning he most learnedly refutes many empty inventions concerning the duchy and kingdom of Swabia, inclining at last so as to make it seem probable to him that the ancestors of St. Richard were Dukes, if not of modern Swabia, at least of some other place. Then he sets forth arguments, and those indeed very urgent, by which it is shown that St. Richard was not King of England, nay, did not obtain any place in the whole heptarchy, which whether he has solved sufficiently by historical method and faith, I would not here professedly discuss: that task Henschenius long since forestalled, in the place where that most intricate knot was to be dissolved. Do thou see, if thou please, his Commentary on the cited seventh of February, §4, where he weighs, after his manner, most diligently the nobility, riches, and royal dignity of St. Richard, concluding at last that St. Richard can be reckoned among the subkings, then more frequent in England.

[6] whatever some learned men object. It is not my mind, on that head, to oppose the most learned Master, although concerning the royal title to be ascribed to St. Richard, I find no one who thought of it older than Adelbert, abbot of Heidenheim, whom it is established to have written in the time of Pope Eugenius III, and so four hundred and more years after the death of St. Richard, whose Lucca epitaph, so often wont to be alleged, what age it savors of, there is thus far no one who sufficiently dares

to determine. Baronius, who in volume 9 at the year 750 had in good faith admitted the aforesaid epitaph and all the most commonly received things about the kingdom of England of St. Richard, afterward, having read in Canisius older monuments, in volume 12, page 912, in the Addenda and Corrigenda, retracted everything not obscurely. Pagi at the same year 750, page 277, did not fear to relegate that kingdom to fables, in some points also convicting Le Cointe: but the latter grants St. Richard, not illiberally, the title of subking, which Henschenius had shown him. Mabillon likewise passes over the royal name frigidly enough; it does not please me to unweave the controversy, however great a nobility, however great riches be attributed to the parents of St. Willibald I shall easily suffer.

[7] His greatest nobility from his sanctity, But indeed his greater and only nobility was virtue and the true glory of sanctity, by which he shone forth most, even from a boy, scarcely five years old being ascribed by the vow of his parents to the monastic life, where, excellently exercised in letters and in works of piety, he was gradually kindled with that fervor of charity toward God with which he did not cease to burn through all the rest of his life, up to old age and senility, as the Nun described clearly enough in the Hodoeporicon, although she follows out rather the various and long journeys than the particular deeds of the Saint. Nor indeed did she herself hand down his most pious death, most probably having died before the Saint. But that St. Willibald began to be venerated with singular veneration at Eichstätt not long after his death, equally with St. Wunebald and St. Walburga at Heidenheim, the native monuments and ecclesiastical Offices testify. None indeed of these exist among us, but from the elevations, translations, and other Eichstätt monuments, to be produced below, it will be established enough. Of the Saint's present-day feast and cult Gretser thus mentions chapter 22, page 270: The feast day of St. Willibald is kept, not on the eighth of the Ides of July, as Trithemius writes, but on the Nones, that is on the seventh day of July, with the Octave, which falls on the fourteenth of the same month. At Eichstätt, as also in some other places of that diocese, it is a feast day not only in the choir, but also in the forum.

[8] although he was not known to the ancient Martyrologists. The ancient classical Martyrologies, which pertain chiefly to the ninth century, and are so later than St. Willibald, nowhere mentioned him; which indeed is not to be wondered at, since in them very rarely recur Saints who put off mortality in the eighth century, at least toward the end of that century. In the Hieronymian of Augsburg there is an addition: N. or the birthday of St. Willibald, bishop and confessor. Baronius cited the fuller Ado, to whom a second hand had wrongly ascribed things, which, found in the edition of Mosander, Rosweyde deservedly expunged. Among our Usuardine codices not a few are found to which the commemoration of St. Willibald was added: the most ancient exemplar is the Utrecht, to us the Rosweyde, of the twelfth century, in which it is thus read: At Eichstätt, of Willibald, Bishop and Confessor. In which codex, for an unknown cause, on the sixth of November is read: Of Willibald, Bishop and Confessor. You have besides in our edition the Hagenau, the Strozzi, the Lübeck-Cologne edition, Belinus, Greven, and Molanus, in which scarcely any notable diversity is found, except in the expression of the name, of which we treated above. From these took others, Maurolyco, Galesini, Felici, whose announcement is simple; Canisius wove an elogium, as also Ghini and other monastic writers, especially Wion, in several points purged by Gretser; and among the monastic encomiasts the chief is Bucelin; whose words to recite or to unfold their hallucinations one by one here would profit nothing at all, since from the very Lives as the genuine sources everything is to be reported more purely. The Viola Sanctorum has this singular thing, that it writes: Likewise the feast of St. Willibald the Bishop, who is both patron of the diocese of Eichstätt, and solemnly buried in the same city. I do not appeal to Dempster or Camerarius. The writings and errors of Trithemius and others were long since also repudiated by Gretser, so that I need not do a thing already done. The Florarium erred, when it referred the translation to this day.

[9] Often noted and certainly to be noted is the announcement, or rather the placing of the place, of Baronius: On the placing of the Roman Martyrology. In Saxony, St. Willibald, first Bishop of Eichstätt, who, laboring in the Gospel together with Boniface, converted many nations to Christ. The said placing, in Saxony, strikes the Germans somewhat, which nevertheless Ghini preferred to imitate, in the margin, for East Francia, wishing Saxony, which perhaps he did not know, to be intruded. The improper expression in the Roman Martyrology our Stefano Vito, elsewhere more than once praised by us, observed a hundred and more years ago, writing to Rosweyde on the third of March 1615 in these words: On the seventh of July, he says, Baronius places St. Willibald, first Bishop of Eichstätt, in Saxony. It is an open error, since for Saxony, Franconia ought to be said. For the city of Eichstätt, where he lived and where now the bones of Willibald rest, who while he lived was in no Saxony, unless that which today we call Westphalia (and this indeed Vito plainly concedes gratis), is scarcely distant from Ingolstadt a journey of three hours … and hence Dillingen in Swabia is seven miles distant, from which nevertheless Saxony, whether the old, which is Westphalia, or the more recent Saxony which Luther corrupted, Eichstätt is distant … beyond sixty or seventy miles. Nay, our Germans smile, when they read in Baronius In Saxony, of Willibald, etc., and when they translated Baronius's Martyrology into German, they omitted that Saxony. These things incidentally; concerning the memory of our Saint reported into the sacred fasti, enough has been said.

[10] Into the writings of St. Willibald Gretser inquires chapter 22, St. Willibald is not rightly said from page 264. That we may dissolve this knot too with our usual brevity, the one and chief question is, whether St. Willibald was the author of the life of St. Boniface, who in the preface to Lull and Megingoz, fellow-bishops, called himself not Bishop or fellow-bishop, but Willibald the presbyter. The people of Eichstätt seem not to have doubted that that writer was the very Bishop of Eichstätt, until our Christophe Brouwer, acute and perspicacious in discussing matters of this kind, in his Stars of illustrious and holy Men who once adorned Germany with their deeds, opposed many things learnedly; and seems to have demonstrated not obscurely that Willibald the presbyter was different from St. Willibald the Bishop, from which, in my judgment at least, Gretser did not wholly extricate himself, nor did Mabillon, who followed him, himself too weighing Brouwer's arguments in the preliminary Observations on the life of St. Boniface in the third century, part 2, number 2, where he sufficiently betrays that he was deceived by the faulty addition of Wicel, I Willibald the Bishop, which Canisius had stitched to the life published by himself, not found in the manuscript codex.

[11] to have written the life of St. Boniface or of St. Walburga. But if anyone should nevertheless undertake to defend that added tail, he must embrace the whole, from which he will not easily extricate himself, as Pagi shows at the year 755, number 19. Gretser plainly confesses, page 270, that the Wicelian addition concerning the place of writing is fictitious; you would say as much of the name, I Willibald the Bishop: Indeed, the responses of Gretser and others being accurately discussed and weighed, Henschenius was by no means deterred from defending and confirming the opinion of Brouwer, from which why one should recede I altogether do not see, as anyone will perceive with me, who has judged that one should obey not prejudices or the number of writers thinking the same, rather than reason. Let our Acts be seen on the fifth of June concerning St. Boniface, §1, numbers 1, 2, and 3. There are besides those who affirm that the life of St. Walburga was committed to letters by St. Willibald, but that this was brought forward with even less foundation by Bale and the Centuriators in Gretser, nothing forbids us to think; for my part I have never believed that praise was to be fetched for St. Willibald from writings of this kind. But of these thus far; now let us come to the various writers of the Acts, to be reviewed and weighed in the order of their age.

§ II. On the writers of the Life of St. Willibald.

From five various Legends The Life of the Saint, or a history of his deeds drawn out in order, if we wish to speak properly, no one wrote: the chief part of his acts, which embraces his pilgrimages, a Nun of Heidenheim reviewed with a style accurate enough, though rude and unpolished, a fellow-countrywoman of the holy brothers Willibald and Wunebald, who with equal discourse followed out chiefly the journeys of each, herself contemporary in age with each, and kinswoman of each. Her work, as far as it pertains hither, Canisius long since rightly called the Hodoeporicon or itinerary, since it plainly insists on describing the pilgrimages of St. Willibald. The aforesaid Hodoeporicon some Anonymous writer, perhaps a monk of Heidenheim, rendered in a somewhat more polished discourse, some things being cut away here and there, others interpolated; yet in such wise that from the sense and sentence of the first writer, if it be lawful so to speak, he rarely deviates, which the praised Canisius did not hesitate to call a notable monument, in a brief note at the end of that life, which we shall call the third, elaborated, as is commonly reported, by Reginold, Bishop of Eichstätt, which in the Canisian edition, volume 4 of the Ancient Reading, is the middle between the two Hodoeporica. Fourth in order can be called Adelbert, abbot of Heidenheim, not so much a writer of the life as an abridger, on the occasion of a work which he meditated for his monastery. Let the last be Philip, likewise Bishop, interpolator of the ancients, whom Henschenius described plainly in the Commentary on the Acts of St. Walburga volume 3 of February, number 10, page 512. Of the several I shall subjoin a few things in order; about to give the reason why I have preferred the ancient to the more recent. The three first, the Nun, the Anonymous, and Reginold, I have already said were published by Canisius; Adelbert and Philip Gretser gave, in the work on the Tutelary Saints of the church of Eichstätt, published at Ingolstadt in the year 1617.

[13] Canisius began to illustrate the Hodoeporicon, an inquiry into the author of the writing being premised, the Hodoeporicon of the Nun of Heidenheim is preferred, hesitating in doubt whether it was St. Walburga, or another nun of Heidenheim. For the rest, from the prologue, where at number 1 she professes herself unworthy, the last of those coming thence of the Saxon nation, and in comparison with her fellow-tribespeople as it were a little manikin, moreover a woman corruptible by the frail weakness of her sex, supported by no prerogative of wisdom, it is most rightly inferred that it was written by an Anglo-Saxon woman and a fellow-countrywoman of St. Willibald. But since at number 42 she has thus: And not found from another, but heard from himself (St. Willibald), dictated from his mouth, we have written down, in the monastery of Heidenheim, witnesses being present, etc., it is no less manifest that the Nun was contemporary, who in the prologue number 2, reporting the same things, had not expressed her condition. But now at number 3, speaking thus: But because I knew that I, unworthy however, of the stock of their genealogy, not propagated from elsewhere, was perhaps of the extreme little shoots of the branches, she most openly shows that she was a kinswoman of the holy brothers. I shall not use a long digression to find the women who have left to posterity the Acts of the Saints. To be silent of others, you have the life of St. Rupert the Duke and of Bertha his mother, written by St. Hildegard

on the fifteenth of May, volume 3, page 504. Of the same are the Acts of St. Disibod the Bishop; the Acts of St. Radegund the Queen by the nun Baudonivia; of which the former we shall give on the following day the eighth of July, but the latter exist in the Supplement of the first century of the Benedictines page 326, for the thirteenth of August. Concerning learned women there are well-known commentaries; the century just past was fruitful of such.

[14] There remains the question, whether this adorner of the Hodoeporicon not to be confounded with St. Walburga. is to be called a sister of St. Willibald, and so St. Walburga? This Adelbert not obscurely indicates, an inventor of many new things, in Gretser book 2 of the Observations, page 320. Whoever therefore, he says, shall wish to know the race and life of St. Willibald and St. Wunebald, from the writings of St. Walburga, who was their full sister, he will be able fully to learn it. For she writes that Richard, King of the English, was their father. Many things Adelbert here builds up in few words, which he has supported by no suitable monuments. That St. Walburga wrote anything of St. Willibald I would not so easily admit, but that least of all, that St. Richard, King of the English, was their father; which no one older than Adelbert, at least who has anywhere become known, dared to bring forward: certainly if St. Walburga handed this down in the life of St. Willibald written by her; that life has not come to us, since in the whole Hodoeporicon neither the parents of the holy brothers nor their dignity is anywhere expressed: therefore St. Walburga was not the author of the Hodoeporicon, and of her brother St. Willibald she herself, more probably, committed nothing to letters. The reckoning is not the same concerning St. Wunebald, for our Nun, in Mabillon number 21, page 186, clearly sets forth that the life of the blessed Wunebald, confessor of Christ, was ascertained and written and run through in brevity by his sister, and so by St. Walburga, whom alone we know to have lived with St. Wunebald in the convent of Heidenheim. But since it is undoubted from elsewhere that the very same woman who composed the life of St. Wunebald also wrote the Hodoeporicon of St. Willibald, it is consequent enough openly that neither work was elaborated by the sister St. Walburga, but by another nun, who, however a kinswoman, since she herself too elsewhere cites St. Walburga, cannot, I judge clearly enough, be called their sister.

[15] Further, the things heard from St. Willibald, and dictated from his mouth, The second life somewhat contracts the former. cannot but merit the highest credit, however much the style be a little ruder and rougher, perhaps also vitiated here and there by the unskillfulness of the copyists, as can be gathered from this, that Canisius used a most faulty copy, Gretser being witness page 205, who moreover disallows that our life to St. Walburga, in chapter 1 of his Observations. The next writer in authority is the Anonymous, though inferior in age; he polished his own with a somewhat neater phrase, so that he seems only to have lent a style, agreeing with the Nun in all things, except that he passed over a few things, and mingled some singular things of his own, as we have not omitted to indicate in the notes. And in the very beginning he stumbles, when he makes St. Walburga a companion of the Roman journey with her father and brothers. He mentions the Galani at number 6, whom the Nun did not know. Wholly his own is, at number 10, the inserted history of the Gospel woman laboring with a flux of blood, whose statue was placed at Caesarea, etc. Likewise the things which at number 12 he more scrupulously stitched on, in a manner correcting the Nun, concerning the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and other things of less moment, which are noted in their places. For the rest, I judge that one should cling uniquely to this and the former life, as monuments venerable by their antiquity and credit, such as cannot be esteemed those which were collected by the more recent, Reginold, Adelbert, and Philip, many centuries after the death of St. Willibald. Those two lives therefore, and them alone, I have undertaken to illustrate, about to receive from others the elevations of the sacred body, the translations, and the cult of the relics, in §6 of this Commentary.

[16] The third, more inflated, ascribed to Reginold, The author of the third, shorter life we said was Reginold, Bishop of Eichstätt, eleventh in order, as Canisius advises in his preface to the reader. In the manuscript, he says there, no name of the author was set down, but the conjecture to me is nearly certain that it is Reginold, who, Molanus, Bruschius, and Baronius being witnesses, wrote the life of St. Willibald … Moreover, since Bruschius says that Reginold was a most learned man; certainly this style is learned and elevated; by that turgid manner of speaking which the more learned of that age affected, it shows its author. If judgment be made from the manner of writing, Canisius judged rightly, although it is not explored enough that Reginold composed any life, who nevertheless, an unknown writer being witness, in Gretser page 153, composed historical poems concerning St. Willibald, and other things there reported at length, of which the praised author found that nothing today survives. However it was, it is of no great interest whether he or another be called the compiler of that life; for whoever he was, he plainly mutilated the series of the pilgrimages of St. Willibald, and cut away other things too freely, having scarcely anything worthy of note. From one specimen you will understand his manner of writing, in Canisius page 699: Moreover, the hour of the desired time arriving, on which he received the fleet on the sea with its calm waves, the fare being paid, to ascend the feathered pinnace, the northwest wind blowing, the oars crackling, now glad furrowing the untrackable veins of the wrinkled deep, etc. The reader will easily suffer that place is not here given to so inflated a discourse, which for the rest can be seen in Canisius.

[17] He whom we named in the fourth place, Adelbert, and the relation of Adelbert are here passed over, did not professedly meditate a life of St. Willibald, but a relation of the manner in which, under Eugenius III the supreme Pontiff, the monastery of Heidenheim returned to the Order of St. Benedict, not a few things being premised concerning the life of the holy Willibald, Wunebald, and Walburga, yet in such wise that in those premises he forged many new things, unheard-of before his time, of which sort are, that he probably first ascribed to the aforesaid Saints royal parents, St. Boniface as uncle (he could have added St. Willibrord as cousin), and to St. Walburga two little books on the life of St. Willibald and St. Wunebald, the brothers, swearing in many places again and again by the words of that holy Virgin, in a manner declaring her the surety of his assertions. But you will note that Adelbert contradicts the Nun, when he brings in St. Richard the father, as if he had been the author of the pilgrimage to be undertaken, and, having taken his own with him, had abandoned his kingdom and country, where the Hodoeporicon plainly asserts that all these things were done by the persuasion and counsel of St. Willibald. Another opposition exists page 322, when he says that St. Willibald crossed to Rome a second time from Monte Cassino, with certain honorable brethren hastening to the Lord Pope for the sake of ecclesiastical utility. Many other things in this writer displease, which although I would not forthwith accuse of falsehood; certainly no prudent man will judge they should be rashly admitted, so long as they are destitute of an older witness. This I seem plainly to have observed, that that Adelbert paved the way for Bishop Philip, that with a freer style he might wander in adorning and amplifying the affairs of St. Willibald.

[18] The extended work of this Bishop Gretser had sent in manuscript to Rosweyde in the year 1608, as also the greatest Legend of Philip, who afterward published the same, learnedly illustrated with two books of Observations. Philip was Bishop of Eichstätt, thirty-ninth in order, from the year 1306 to 1322, and on the occasion of health received by himself through the merits of St. Willibald, he undertook a new commentary in memory of his deliverer; the other characteristics I have already said are to be sought from Henschenius. He had before his eyes the life not of St. Willibald alone, but of the Tutelary Saints of the church of Eichstätt, namely of the holy Richard the father and of the threefold offspring. But he prefaces that he had, with a more emended style, more solicitously gathered into one little work the things which he had found written of him (St. Willibald) scatteredly and diffusely in various codices. What diffuse codices he here names, I for my part do not know; no one wrote more diffusely than he, no one of the ancients clung less closely to his sense: he frequently followed Adelbert, extending many things with verbose amplifications, digressions, and episodes. I have not thought it worthwhile to weave an analysis of all the chapters; in few words Mabillon noted that he not only attributed a royal race to St. Willibald, but made the father Richard, a Teuton by nation, Duke of Swabia, and finally, after Offo, I know not whom, King of England, supported by no suitable witness at all. He could have added that that whole genealogy, which is described in chapter 1, rests on no greater authority. Certainly he did not believe that life worthy to occupy a place among the Benedictine Acts, just as neither do I judge it such that it deserves to be inserted into our work; besides that the edition of Gretser is everywhere long since sufficiently well known.

[19] Let it be lawful to touch cursorily a very few things, which seem altogether to be rejected. When he makes St. Walburga a companion of her father and brothers in the Roman pilgrimage, he had as guide the Anonymous writer; but whence he drew the tempest, in which several things displease. by which the Saints were tossed in the crossing from England into Gaul chapter 9, it is not easy to divine. He errs, when he asserts that the holy brothers came to Rome in the time of Gregory III chapter 13. There was no reason why he should contract the pilgrimage to Jerusalem chapter 16: the tempests which are there again mingled are gratuitously invented. Chapter 20, he assigns only five years to the stay at Monte Cassino, and chapter 22, among many things ambiguous enough, he plainly hands down that after a lustrum of time (from the Saint's coming to St. Boniface) the latter appointed him Prelate for the people of Eichstätt, which cannot be reconciled with the Hodoeporicon. He will have it that St. Willibald straightway gathered Canons regular in his church, where the Nun most plainly mentions that monks were there collected. In few words I will say, the reckoning of the times was so inverted by him, or by I know not what Eichstätt tradition, that he set a stone of stumbling for many, even most learned, true men, against which up to today very many dash themselves. The seeds of those errors he casts in chapter 37, when he contends that the Saint died in the year 781, of his age 77, after he had been bishop thirty-six years; for from that reckoning arose the other slips: namely that he did not receive the episcopal fillets before the year 745, in which, since he numbered forty-one years, it necessarily had to follow that he was born in the year 704, all which Gretser defended, and after him Henschenius on the seventh of February; but the latter, afterward overcome by more solid arguments, went over to that opinion which we here are compelled to embrace, about to bring back the whole series of Willibald's life to chronological reckonings, with as much diligence as can be.

§ III. The foundation and basis of the Willibaldine chronology is established.

Henschenius, who had deferred the ordination of the Saint to the year 745, The just-praised Godfrey Henschenius, the other parent of our work, on the seventh of February, as I had already begun to say, illustrating the Acts of St. Richard, too much trusting Philip of Eichstätt and his commentator Gretser, thus in §2, numbers 10 and 11, page 70, disposed the times of the father and the sons, that St.

Wunebald, brother of our Saint, elder by birth according to the persuasion of the people of Eichstätt, he establishes as born in the year 701, but St. Willibald in the year 704. The departure of the father and sons from England he attaches to 721, the death of St. Richard to 722. The years of Willibald's pilgrimage he gathers not amiss, yet determining nothing about the several, because that was not then his design. From Monte Cassino he brings the Saint to Rome for the feast of St. Andrew 740, and in the next following 741 into Germany to St. Boniface, by whom he establishes that he was initiated into the priesthood only in the year 744; ordained Bishop, when he was forty-one years old, in the year 745. That year is handed down by Philip, he says, in his Acts, which the common persuasion of men and ancient monuments confirm, Gretser being witness; namely of which none older than Philip has thus far been shown; so that here you may not doubt that Henschenius manifestly followed Philip and Gretser; from whose opinion again he conjectures the death of St. Willibald in the aforesaid year of Christ 781, of his age 77, of the administered episcopate 36: which, says Henschenius again in the place already cited, until more certain monuments be brought forward, we shall follow.

[21] And there indeed he followed the Gretserian monuments, for when he wrote these things he had not read, certainly had not yet professedly weighed, [in the Acts of St. Boniface he perceived more clearly that Willibald was bishop in 742,] the things which many years after he more maturely discussed and with more laborious care illustrated, the Acts of St. Boniface, Apostle of Germany, Archbishop of Mainz and Martyr, which being then more accurately considered, in volume 1 of June page 454, toward the end of number 9, he thus rightly and truly wrote: So afterward (St. Boniface) about the year 741 gave to Eichstätt and Würzburg as Bishops the holy Willibald and Burchard, from which single epoch it is necessary that everything be plainly overthrown which he had arranged on the seventh of February, being then destitute of surer monuments. Namely from the life written by Othlo and published by Canisius, he clearly perceived that the most open text of the Germanic Council, celebrated on the eleventh of the Kalends of May 742, today undoubted by the votes of all the learned, and reported in Baronius in the Annals at the said year 742, in Mabillon century 3 of the Benedictines part 2, page 48, and in Labbe volume 6 of the Councils column 1534, cannot at all be denied, where among the Bishops who were present with St. Boniface at that Council, held at Regensburg or Augsburg or perhaps elsewhere, the name of St. Willibald is most plainly expressed, so that consequently it is not to be doubted that in that year 742 he had attained the episcopal dignity, and so must have received ordination in the year 741 at the latest, which in the cited later place Henschenius most rightly noted, then more probably thinking little of the things which from the more common opinion of Philip and Gretser he had established on the life of St. Richard.

[22] This, however, he had there excellently noticed, that on the epoch of the episcopate depends the whole chronological series of Willibald, The ordination is to be fixed in the year 741, inasmuch as the Hodoeporicon of the Nun assigns no other certain chronological mark than the age of the Saint when he was adorned with the episcopal fillets, which he then, in our text number 42, she says, had forty-one years, and in the following number, then, at the age of forty-one, already skilled and aged, he received the grade of the sacred episcopate. This at any rate is the only basis on which the whole series of the deeds of St. Willibald must rest, namely the fixed epoch of that year in which he was consecrated to the episcopate, which from the cited Council could not have been the year 745, nor 746, nor 747, nor any of those which various Writers, each nearly at his own pleasure, have consigned, Gretser contending sharply from chapter 12 of his Observations for the year 745. Page 210: The common tradition, he says, and persuasion holds that St. Willibald was exalted to this summit of honor in the year of the Savior 745. Again page 211: one must persist in the year 45 … as the Hodoeporicon of Willibald has, and the common persuasion of the people of Eichstätt. What the persuasion holds does not greatly concern me; but in what sense Gretser affirmed that the Hodoeporicon has thus, I altogether do not understand; unless he draws it out from somewhere by consequences, namely by supposing Philip's opinion true, that in that year 745 the Saint first numbered forty-one years, which is plainly to beg the principle, for the year of his age indeed the Hodoeporicon expressed; but any year of the Christian era marked in it you will seek in vain.

[23] I would have the readers advised in passing that I have not here undertaken to confute all the writers who, concerning the departure of our Saint from England and of his companions, concerning his coming to Rome and his stay there, the epochs of others being rejected: the pilgrimage to Jerusalem thence undertaken, the time of his return into Italy and his monastic life at Monte Cassino, his journey into Germany, his reception of the priesthood and episcopate, and other things pertaining to the Saint, have fallen into grave errors, since the praised Gretser has filled those parts well enough, discussing the Pseudo-Marcellinus on the life of St. Suibert at length and learnedly in the whole of chapter 9, from page 188 to 198; in the following chapter 10 attacking Othlo, who also heaps up many things wrongly concerning the holy brothers and sister. To name others would profit nothing; nearly our only controversy will be with Gretser himself, too trusting the opinion of Philip and the received tradition, to be disputed amicably, and to be taken in good and equal part by the people of Eichstätt themselves, when they shall have deigned to weigh more attentively the things which we here shall bring forward with the sole zeal of drawing out and defending the truth, about to oppose to the not great authority of Philip, erring in several points, those things which can be rejected by no one, especially that Germanic Council, which if Gretser had rightly and to the just balance of history weighed, not attributing too much to more common persuasions and traditions in a matter merely historical, he would have receded from the opinion of his author, which elsewhere he is more than once compelled to do, in this part too not unwillingly.

[24] nor is the consecration of St. Burchard later than the year 742. This therefore I set before myself as an immovable foundation, that unless the most open violence be done to the Acts of the Germanic Council, the ordination of Willibald as Bishop can in no way be deferred to the year 745. Gretser acknowledged a knot scarcely soluble; he could have said, altogether insoluble, so long as Philip's computation is not deserted. But the things which there he twists and re-twists concerning St. Burchard of Würzburg, whose name is also found in the aforesaid Council, as if he in the aforesaid year 742 had not been Bishop, being appointed many years after by Zacharias, Mabillon long before me solved, century 3 of the Benedictines part 1, page 699, whose words I here transcribe: The time of this (Burchard's) ordination, not in the year 746, as it seems to Lambert, Hermann, and Sigebert, not 750, which pleases Marianus, or 751, which pleases Egilward, but in the year 741 it seems most certain it should be placed: both because he was already Bishop and present at the Synod of Germany, on the eleventh of the Kalends of May in the year 742, in whose acts, in book 1 of the Life of Boniface chapter 34, reported by Othlo, Burchard is numbered first after Boniface; and because the confirmatory epistle of Zacharias, written to Boniface, and another to Burchard himself concerning his ordination, were given in the eleventh indiction, the Kalends of April, that is at the beginning of the year 743: and finally because Pope Zacharias, in the encyclical letters directed at the beginning of his pontificate to the Bishops of Gaul and Germany, inscribes them also to Burchard, Bishop of Würzburg, which epistle is among the Bonifacian ones the 136th in order. I pass over the many things which are there adduced, which now given render us secure concerning the episcopate of Burchard before the year 742.

[25] Where, when, and by whom St. Willibald was ordained. In vain therefore are subterfuges sought, in vain is the Eichstätt tradition, resting on the weak authority alone of a writer of the fourteenth century, thrown back, against the most ancient and most open testimony of the Germanic Synod, which the aforesaid Mabillon also inculcates in the other part of century 3 of the Benedictines page 390, where, the opinions of others being reported and deservedly rejected, he insists uniquely on the epoch of the Germanic Council, which we, after the opinion of Henschenius, nay after that of whatever men today are famous for any repute of erudition, do not hesitate to admit. The praised Mabillon there concludes that the ordination of St. Willibald was celebrated in a place of Thuringia which is called Sallpurg, by no means to be confounded with the metropolis of Salzburg, in the year established by us of the eighth century above the forty-first, which was also the first and fortieth of the Saint's age, in the autumnal season, three weeks before the birthday of St. Martin, which are the words of the Hodoeporicon: that is, says Mabillon, on the twelfth of the Kalends of November, which day was a Saturday, although the ordinations of Bishops were wont to be made on the Lord's Day. But I do not see that those three weeks are to be taken so rigidly, that the ordination could not have been made on the eleventh of the Kalends of November, which day was a Sunday, most apt for consecration, which St. Boniface himself instituted, Burchard of Würzburg and Wizo, perhaps of Erfurt, Bishops, assisting, unless perhaps, the words are Mabillon's, one should think it should be read Witta, who then presided over the church of Büraburg in Hesse. Hear the text of the Hodoeporicon number 41: That was the autumnal season of the year, when St. Willibald came into Thuringia; and straightway after he came thither, St. Boniface the Archbishop and St. Burchard and Wizo, by ordaining, consecrated him to the sacred authority of the episcopate. Better, unless I am mistaken, Le Cointe found the see of Wizo at the year 742, number 15, namely that he was Bishop of Augsburg, by another name called Wicho.

[26] Error thrusts on error: besides the tradition of the ordination for the year 745, whose death is also wrongly marked in the year 781, Gretser brings forward another concerning the time of his rule and the year of his death. This he fixes in the year 781; but since from the year 745 to 781 there elapsed thirty-six years, the consequence for him with his Philip is that the years of the episcopate must be restricted to that time. The reckoning fails again, for neither does this persuasion concerning the Saint's death at all stand, since Mabillon page 391 demonstrates that the years of the episcopate of St. Willibald must be extended even beyond the year 781, by which that other foundation of the Philippine epoch is utterly enervated. Behold his argument, historically, in my judgment at least, irrefragable. For he produces from book 2 of the Traditions of Fulda this instrument: The Tradition of Willibald the Bishop in lands and serfs; Tradition 25, in these words: In the name of the Lord our Jesus Christ, I Willibald, by the grace of the divine Majesty granting it, Bishop, nay also a servant of the Catholic Church … for my alms and the remission of my sins, hand over to the monastery of St. Boniface, which is built upon the bank of the river which is called the Fulda, where the religious and illustrious abbot Baugolf, with a great multitude of monks, is known to serve God, after my death, that is in the aforesaid place, I hand over nine entire farms (these are hobunnae) with all their appurtenances and boundaries, etc. Done in the monastery of Fulda in the eighteenth year, Charles the most glorious King of the Franks and Patrician of the Romans reigning, on the eighth day of the month of October, which year corresponds

to the year of Christ 785.

[27] There seems to be no place open for any subterfuge, in the characters of such an instrument, who is shown to have survived in the year 785; which plainly settle the matter. The aforesaid tradition exists in Pistorius, in our volume three page 503, where it is deduced entire and so a little more fully. The Abbot agrees, who after Sturm presided over the people of Fulda for twenty-two years, ceased in the year 802, surviving after the abdication of his office up to the year 815. But that it may not seem a wonder that St. Willibald could hand over so much to the brethren of Fulda from the revenues of an episcopate not so long since received and barren; let one observe that in the course of forty and more years much had accrued: and let him remember that the episcopate of Bavaria, from a certain quasi-debt, had decreed lands and annual pensions to the abbey of Fulda, where the blessed Boniface rested, for the sake of gratitude, as Gretser will teach you from page 218. What of this? that the same Gretser reports the tradition more expressly page 224, from the Fulda Antiquities of the above-praised Brouwer book 3, chapter 11, by which Willibald, Bishop of the church of Eichstätt, offered to God and to St. Boniface as an oblation one estate, situated in the district of Sualafeld, called Kuchese, which estate it is not improbable is designated above. And lest anyone suspect that an error crept into the chronological note, there exists in the same book, in our copy page 509, Tradition 37, given in the year of the Incarnation of Christ 783, and in the sixteenth year of the reign of the Lord Charles, King of the Franks, on the twenty-fifth day of the month of March, where is set the sign of Willibald the Bishop, who subscribed this donation of the abbess Einhild. From which it is plainly gathered that the death of Willibald did not happen before the year 786, and consequently that five years at least above forty must be attributed to the years of his pontificate.

[28] and older in age than his brother Wunebald. A third persuasion of the people of Eichstätt, everywhere admitted, contends that St. Wunebald was older than our holy Willibald, which whence, or by what argument, they prove, I for my part do not grasp. They say it is a tradition, for which, after Carlo Stengel and others, Gretser too stands, in chapter 7 of the Observations. I acknowledge the consequence from the year of ordination 745 wrongly asserted: for since he was then forty-one years old, from one thing wrongly placed follows another, namely that St. Willibald was born in the year 704. But from elsewhere it is established that St. Wunebald died in the year 761, when he was sixty years old, and therefore he must have been born in the year 701 and have exceeded his brother in age by a whole three years. But I would wish that this could be deduced from the ancient life of one or the other, written by the Nun. She mentions in the life of St. Wunebald in Mabillon, cited part 2 of century 3 of the Benedictines page 178, and when that illustrious and most famous worshiper of Christ was advanced to the age of nineteen years. This is the determined age of St. Wunebald when he set out from England, which is very badly explained by Le Cointe at the year 738 from number 7, as from the said year of his death it will be evidently demonstrated in the following paragraph. Of St. Willibald the same writer says that he had reached the down of the beard and the adolescence of puberty; which certainly do not indicate a boy of fifteen, such as he ought nearly to have been at the beginning of the pilgrimage, if his brother preceded him by a whole three years and more. Nothing of the sort does the Hodoeporicon suggest, in which St. Willibald, already endowed with manly virtue, the first author and mover of the pilgrimage to be undertaken, is most clearly depicted, not as a boy, but as a youth of at least twenty years. These things being set down, we undertake to set forth and prove the series of the pilgrimages in order.

§ IV. The ordered series of the life and pilgrimages.

St. Willibald was assuredly about twenty years old, Having left England in the year 720, when with St. Richard his parent and St. Wunebald his brother he set out from his country, namely since he must have seen the light about the year 700, who in the year 741 numbered forty-one years. And so he began his pilgrimage in the year 720. Which that it may not seem gratuitously assumed, from the life of St. Wunebald it is thus demonstrated. In Mabillon century 3 of the Benedictines part 2, page 186 number 20, it is thus read in express words: And so he (St. Wunebald) rested one week before the birthday of the Lord: and then it was Saturday, after vespers, the fourteenth of the Kalends of January, and then he was sixty years of age. The Saturday falling on the fourteenth of the Kalends of January, or the nineteenth of December, most clearly designates the year 761, the Dominical letter D running, Easter falling on the twenty-ninth of March. Since therefore St. Wunebald was then sixty years old, it is necessary to conjecture his birthday in the year 701. But now we have noted above from the same life that he was nineteen, or in his nineteenth year, when he undertook the Roman pilgrimage with his father and brother; it follows therefore that the departure from his country most rightly fits the year 720, which is a most certain chronological and historical demonstration, to which if Le Cointe had attended, he would not have erred so monstrously from the truth. That you may rightly connect the several things, say that two years had to be spent in the first journey to Lucca (where St. Willibald buried his parent) and then to Rome, and the stay there following, until, his brother being left there, he himself with his companions set out for Jerusalem in the year 722.

[30] But this too is easily proved from the Hodoeporicon. There at number 11 they are said to have first begun the journey from England, From Rome he departed into Palestine in the year 722: when the season of summer was already imminent, namely in the month of May. They came to Lucca while the Dog-star burned, where the noxious heats carried off St. Richard to the better life. They certainly reached Rome in mid-autumn, inasmuch as they stayed there from the nativity of St. Martin up to another solemnity of Easter, as you have at number 13, by which the Easter of the year 721 is plainly marked. But then, the summer heat increasing, they were wearied by a fever, which held them ill perhaps that whole year 721. In what manner in the time of their sickness the holy brothers helped one another, with what exercises they cultivated their minds, the Hodoeporicon teaches, of which finally at number 15 it is handed down that, the solemnities of the Paschal Lord's Day being past, St. Willibald began to proceed with two companions; and so after another Easter, celebrated at Rome, and consequently in the year 722, nearly two years after he had departed from his country. That that pilgrimage into Palestine took a whole seven years is undoubted from the Hodoeporicon number 35: And then it was seven years (when he returned to Monte Cassino) since he began to depart from Rome. All admit this, but no one thus far has tried to work out the reckoning of those years or to distinguish them more accurately. Have therefore also the chronological arrangement of that journey deduced from the Hodoeporicon itself, examining not the events themselves, but only the reckoning of the journey.

[31] From number 15 the author leads the travelers by Gaeta, Naples, Reggio, where he was in the years 723, 724, and 725; Catania, through the Archipelago, to Ephesus. At number 16 they tarried at Patara until the horrid cold of winter should pass. Afterward, sailing, they came into the island of Cyprus, in which (the Anonymous being witness number 6) they kept the Paschal feast at the city of Paphos in the year 723: from our writer it is certain that they stayed at Constantia up to after the nativity of John the Baptist. Thence, having advanced into Syria, St. Willibald and seven fellow-countrymen, seized at Emesa by the Saracens, stayed long enough in prison, as you have at number 18. Further, freed from captivity by the help of a Spanish merchant, they traversed many places during the rest of the year, numbers 19 and 20, until at number 21, on the solemnity of the Epiphany, and so in the year 724, our Bishop Willibald bathed himself in the Jordan. At number 22 he came to Jerusalem, and, as the Nun explains, he came there on the festivity of St. Martin, and as soon as he came there, he began to be sick and lay ill up to the week before the nativity of the Lord. And so we enter the year 725, when, being somewhat recovered and having attained his wishes, he did not so much survey all Jerusalem and the other neighboring sanctuaries, as often bedew them with the tears of his kindled piety.

[32] Thence again proceeding elsewhere, a little after he lost the light of his eyes and was blind for two months, where in the years 726 and 727; from number 27. In the same place his eyes were opened. At number 28 he came a third time to Jerusalem and was there the whole winter. And thence he came to the city of Ptolemais … and there he was the whole time of Lent sick, etc. On minutiae I shall in vain dwell; it is plain enough that here the Lent of the year 726 is designated. And tarrying there together at Ptolemais, until it was one week before Easter, they meditated a return into Italy, for which, while they await an opportunity, they walked through the nearest places, and afterward, number 33, then they sailed the whole winter from the birthday of St. Andrew the Apostle up to one week before Easter. Then they came to Constantinople. Therefore about Easter of the year 727. Here again the Saint indulged his piety, for a whole two years nearly fixed to the sacred places, so that he even ran out as far as Nicaea, to contemplate the place of the first and most famous Council in the Church. And after two years they sailed thence … into the island of Sicily, in the year 729. The rest of the journey is explained enough in the Hodoeporicon itself; they are led through Sicily, Calabria, the isle of Vulcano, Naples, and Capua: and at last at number 34, when it was autumn, they happily landed at St. Benedict's on Monte Cassino, and there St. Willibald chose his dwelling.

[33] He came to Monte Cassino not in the year 728, but 729, It could not, I think, be more clearly and distinctly divided into its years, that whole seven-year visitation and survey of the holy places, whence not a little light is shed on the Willibaldine Chronology, and it is plain to the eye that not in the year 728, as Mabillon reckons, but in 729 in the autumnal season they came back to Monte Cassino. And then it was seven full years since he began to depart from Rome, St. Willibald, and it was about ten years since he departed from his own country, and the order of events plainly proves this, so that you may deservedly doubt whether the correction applied to the text at number 34, altogether ten years, stands, where perhaps it would be better read and it was in all ten years, namely nearly completed, as you will find also observed in the Notes. He came therefore then to St. Benedict. And in the first year, coming thither, he was chamberlain of the church, and in the second he was dean; and afterward for eight years porter, and there so for ten years he lived up to the year 739, in which, returned to Rome on the nativity of St. Andrew, he stayed there up to the Easter of the next following year 740, when by the order of Pope Gregory III he went into Germany, initiated into the priesthood in that very year 740, and consecrated Bishop in 741. The termini of his coming to and departing from Rome the Hodoeporicon plainly noted number 39: After this, the tales of the oracles being finished, St. Willibald proceeded thence (from Rome) at Easter, who had come thither on the nativity of St. Andrew. If Le Cointe had observed the whole series of the journeys, he would not so easily have deferred everything to one year, nor on the nativity

of St. Andrew in the year 740 would he have found St. Willibald at Rome. Him therefore in the rest we shall not greatly delay over.

[34] Nor did Mabillon more happily attach the German journey to the year 739, and after a decade he returned to Rome in 739, and in 740 went into Germany. which from the Hodoeporicon you will clearly understand. For since the Nun at number 38 openly indicates that Pope Gregory intimated to the blessed Willibald that St. Boniface was asking him to have St. Willibald himself brought and made to come from St. Benedict's, it is certain that St. Willibald did not come to Rome while St. Boniface still tarried there: but he, as Henschenius rightly observed, had come to Rome in the year 738, and departed thence in the next 739; and so if St. Willibald went into Germany in the year 739, he must have set out thence at Easter, and so have come to Rome on the nativity of St. Andrew of the year 738, and, what evidently follows, have found St. Boniface at Rome, who certainly stayed there toward the end of the year 738 and the beginning of the year 739. In our reckoning the reasoning both of events and of times flows much more rightly. St. Boniface had heard that St. Willibald was living on Monte Cassino, and had asked for him from Pope Gregory, but, anticipating his coming, had hastened his return, about to await his destined companion in Bavaria, where he had already then designated his episcopate. And when St. Willibald had come thither toward the end of May or the beginning of June 740, straightway all those things were done which are narrated at numbers 39 and 40, and he himself on the feast of St. Mary Magdalene of the same year 740 received the priesthood, and in the next 741 the episcopate of Eichstätt, and in the next 742, as after Baronius, Labbe, Henschenius, Mabillon, and others Pagi most recently holds, against Le Cointe, who obtrudes the year 743; in the year, I say, 742 he himself, a Bishop among the Bishops, was present at the Synod of Germany.

[35] To the evidence of the whole matter it conduces not a little, I think, The series of events proved through the several years. the chronological order distributed into its years, and by us here established a little more certainly than the vague table of Carlo Stengel did, prefixed to the Acts of St. Wunebald, in which he sends St. Willibald into Germany to St. Boniface in the year 744, in the same ordains him a presbyter, and in the next following a Bishop, which cannot at all stand, from what has been said, unless I am much mistaken, most manifestly. Nor now is it free for our adversaries to retard everything by four years, since in the series thus far demonstrated the Saint's deeds are so linked each to each year, that in the whole rightly combined connection neither a year can be added nor taken away, so that it is indeed a wonder that men, even learned, forestalled by their persuasions and traditions, attended with neither eyes nor mind, to work out accurately the reckonings of the years and deeds. A little more diligently in disposing the reckoning of the times had Mabillon been engaged, defending the chief point of the matter with us, but erring in the earlier things, when he anticipates nearly everything by one year. Nor did Le Cointe contribute much to the matter, examining some things indeed even to our standard, but often hallucinating in others; certainly the departure from Rome to Jerusalem in the year 723, and the other deeds consequently, cannot at all be deferred, from the whole concatenation I judge it clear, unless one, with him, contend that the Germanic Council is to be deferred to the year 743, on which hypothesis equally is overthrown all the persuasion and tradition of the people of Eichstätt thus far received there.

[36] It is altogether to be lamented that the illustrious deeds of the Saint in his episcopate are nearly unknown. The rest of the chronology of his life, which we cannot draw from the Hodoeporicon, we sparingly supply from elsewhere. What survives of his deeds in the episcopate, That he subscribed the Placitum of Attigny in the year 765 and was present at the ordination of Bernwelf of Würzburg in 769, Le Cointe shows. Two other more notable things Mabillon so disposes as to say that he translated the body of his brother St. Wunebald, who had put off mortality in the year 761, to a more becoming place in 777, namely 16 years after his death, as is in his life in Mabillon page 188: then that after some years he committed to burial the body of his sister St. Walburga, and at last completed his life, not before the year 786, since it was demonstrated above that the Saint was still surviving in the month of October of the year 785. But what if the life of St. Willibald be extended two years further, and he be judged consequently to have died in the year of the century and of his life 88. So it may somehow seem to be suggested from the Acts written by the Anonymous, in which toward the end it is thus read: After therefore he had for seven years most worthily informed his episcopate with the institutes of a sound life. It is evidently plain that there is an error in the number: for he who from the year 741 to 785 held the sacred fillets, informed his episcopate more than seven years, nay more than thirty-seven. There is no great scruple, if the error be so corrected that with seven be joined forty, so that the sense is that St. Willibald for as many years most worthily informed his church with the institutes of a sound life, and, full of good days, then flew away to the palm of his labors, his episcopate being nearly completed at forty-seven years, if indeed he truly died on this seventh of July, of which whence it can be established, I have not yet ascertained.

[37] and concerning its duration, These things be said by conjecture concerning the long duration of his episcopate; for Mabillon thinks that the Anonymous, author of the second life, or of the Hodoeporicon composed a little more neatly, took occasion for erring from number 42 of the Nun, where she thus speaks: The prolonged course of the journey of St. Willibald being passed and finished, which that sagacious man went through in surveying in the truce of seven years: Mabillon thinks, I say, that from this period of seven years the Anonymous made out that St. Willibald informed his episcopate with the institutes of a sound life for only seven years; which I for my part would not so easily dare to admit, since in other things the Anonymous did not recede so far from the sense of the Nun. For the rest, that the Anonymous was a little more unhappy in noting the number of years is plain from his penultimate number, where he says that St. Willibald, having set out into Thuringia, had lodging with his brother St. Wunebald, in the eighth-and-a-half year after they departed at Rome, not seen; where at least he ought to have read in the eighteenth, nay the nineteenth-and-a-half year, namely from the Easter of the year 722, when St. Willibald began the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, as the Nun noted number 15, where you see from the compound number that even the first part is omitted. I would not, however, draw the rope of disagreement; prefer whatever explanation you will; for us no other purpose was set here than to bring the Hodoeporicon of the so often mentioned Nun to the right standard of chronology. Now let us cull in few words the things which Philip mentions concerning the Saint's deeds in his episcopate.

§ V. The deeds and death of St. Willibald in his episcopate.

Since we have shown above that no one wrote the Acts or the series of the whole life, but nearly only the pilgrimages, dictated from his mouth, No one wrote a history of his deeds in the episcopate: which the Nun handed down to memory, it is no wonder if of the things which were done during the whole time of his episcopate very few survive. The Anonymous, Reginold, Adelbert, and Philip would have deserved excellently of the Saint, if in solicitously investigating them they had spent their labor, rather than in mutilating, interpolating, or amplifying the Hodoeporicon with a longer phrase and inserted digressions. The epilogue of Reginold offers not a history, but a verbose oration. Who therefore, he says, of the pilgrims coming to our patron, about to seek solace of food or covering, ever passed on empty to others? Who of the needy, defiled with the squalor of hunger, did not find nourishment? Who, weighed down with the burden of sins, when he showed him the wound inflicted, approached burdensome? To him therefore it was not to think of the morrow, that avarice might extinguish charity in him, and cupidity overcome mercy, but, ever turning the Gospel of Christ in his breast, all that he had he laid out in the solace of the brethren and the poor, and, himself poor, ministered to the poor. Of this kind is the rest, in which Philip suffered nothing to be lacking, who, five hundred whole years later than St. Willibald, would not make great credit, even if he had composed a conjectural series of the Saint's last deeds. But he did not even attempt this, for after in the first twenty-two chapters, through various windings of style and matter, he brought St. Willibald to the episcopate, in the two next following he gathers a few things in many words, if not true, at least probable, adorned in some places with commonplaces, from which we shall cull the less ambiguous and those conducing to the more solid praise of the Saint: for the things which in the Hodoeporicon the Nun contracted into few words, since they can be read there, it was not necessary to draw back hither.

[39] I said in paragraph 2 that Philip asserted, against the credit of the more ancient, this is certain, that he instructed the whole region through his monks. that St. Willibald, a monastery being founded upon the bank of the river which is called Alimonium (in German Altmühl), there gathered clergy of a regular life and reasonable obedience, since these things are refuted from chapter 43 of the Hodoeporicon, where the Nun most plainly asserts that he practiced the sacred discipline of the monastic life, in imitation of his former life, which by seeing at St. Benedict's … he had explored, according to their norm, showing in himself a conversation of venerable life. And here indeed Gretser in vain tries to excuse Philip, Observations chapter 17, maintaining that clergy afterward succeeded the monks, concerning which there is no controversy. This is true, that the solitude of Eichstätt was excellently cultivated, and that there men, instructed under the discipline of so great a Bishop, without doubt diligently imbued that whole region and the neighboring places with Christian precepts, and, driving the plows far through the vast province of the Bavarians, sowing the crops, reaping the harvest … culled gifts worthy of the Lord, and kindled the peoples by words and examples to the love of the heavenly fatherland. Nor is there to be doubt concerning the austerity of his life, nor concerning the other virtues of St. Willibald and his companions. And this we readily admit; That he joined to himself all his fellow-provincials, rich and poor, with so great sweetness of familiarity, that from all the borders of that region they fled to him, and sought from him counsel and help for the saving of their souls.

[40] The prerogative of the see of Eichstätt. Philip goes on in the cited chapter 23: So it came about that, the fame of his goodness increasing, St. Boniface ordered him to come to him more frequently, and by all dwelling in the metropolis of Mainz he was held most acceptable: and therefore in counsels, in judgments, and in consecrating churches, or persons of whatever condition, and in the other gifts of graces, he obtained the first place after the Metropolitan, God favoring and his merits requiring; and it was granted to him, with the attestation of a privilege, that in conferring ecclesiastical benefices and fiefs, and in doing other things worthy of God, he himself and all his successors, pontiffs of the church of Eichstätt, when the necessity of a widowed church, or the time otherwise required, should specially before the other Suffragans of the holy see of Mainz discharge the office of Archbishop, and in the celebration of a Council should, as the true Chancellor and prolocutor of the Council, sit on the right, next to the Archbishop. In evidence of which dignity, a vesture of great ornament and holy

figuration was granted to him; and also to all rightly succeeding him, before all the Bishops who are reckoned of the line of the Mainz derivation. But that garment is called the Rationale, with which also the supreme Pontiff, coming forth from the holy of holies, was once over-vested. For the supreme Pontiff had the Rationale in the Old Law, in prefiguration of much perfection; and it is granted to certain Pontiffs of the New Testament in exhibition of consummated virtue, which is perfected by grace and reason, from which it is called the Rationale.

[41] The panegyric of Philip Philip could here seem to plead for his own house. For the rest, concerning that prerogative of the church of Eichstätt, whether persevering to this day, or controverted, or abolished, it does not please to dispute. Gretser treats of these things at greater length in book 1 of the Observations from chapter 15, after Serarius, whom it is open to anyone to consult; let us run through the rest from Philip. He in chapter 24 proclaims our Saint made all things to all, and to have pleased all, so that he was frequently summoned to the Councils of Kings and Princes. Then, that to the works of mercy, wherever he was, he always offered himself most officiously and very liberally. That he was by no means delighted by the pomps of the world: for whatever in any way pretended worldliness or scurrility, he spurned in every manner, and then hastily hurried to his spouse, committed to him in faith, kindled with the zeal of most chaste love, that he might enjoy her chaste embraces, and that, made fruitful by the Holy Spirit, with him co-working, he might by word and example bear offspring to the salvation of eternal life. For it is to be known that Baptism is the spiritual womb of the Church, from which he regenerated many, as a minister of Christ, in the Holy Spirit; for according to necessity or becoming fitness he baptized, preached, heard confessions. The ecclesiastical Sacraments, as also the Sacramentals, he dispensed with his own hand, consecrated churches, and also ordained the ministers of the Church, at appointed times, as urgent necessity or evident utility demanded, most reverently. Thus Philip could set forth all the episcopal offices one by one, determining nothing separately. Of the councils at which the Saint was present, and of the burial of his holy brother and sister, it was said above in the preceding paragraph number 36.

[42] Hence, through eleven chapters digressing to the holy Wunebald and Walburga, Philip, concerning the Saint's virtues, in the thirty-sixth chapter first returns to St. Willibald, enumerating his other gifts in no brief nor uncultivated oration: For he was lavish in alms, diligent in vigils, devout in prayer, perfect in charity, profuse in humanity, distinguished in doctrine, ready in speech, most holy in conversation; the sincerity of his mind he showed by the serenity of his countenance, and the piety of his most clement heart he displayed in the gentleness of his speech: whatever could pertain to eternal salvation, the most Blessed one fulfilled no less by work than he taught by the preaching of speech. O man in all things worthy of God! For in his very countenance shone the beauty of his soul, in the appearance of the exterior man, so that you would think it the very expressed image of sanctity. He was terrible in aspect to the irreverent, reverend in gait, to be feared for severity, to be venerated for benignity. The censure of authority in him was tempered by the meekness of humility, and when the authority of his brow threatened the offenders, the serenity of his heart soothed the same. Toward the well-doing, Peter appeared in his countenance; toward the offenders, Paul in spirit; and so, a diversity of graces meeting in him, of the piety of the one (namely blessed Peter), of the strictness of the other (namely blessed Paul); so far that anyone scarcely endured his presence, but could by no means long bear his absence. But the forms and species of his inner goods no one suffices to explain … He was also a neglecter of his own quiet, a fugitive from his own will, a seeker of labor, patient of abjection, impatient of honor, poor in money, rich in conscience, humble toward merits, proud toward vices … For food and drink he incessantly ruminated this with himself: My tears have been my bread day and night, etc.

[43] These things, I think, taken by way of specimen from that long oration, will suffice; with a most happy end, the rest are plainly of the same kind, an inflated and encomiastic panegyric, in no way reducible to a historical reckoning. The glorious end of St. Willibald receive from chapter 37: But after the aforesaid and many other virtues, which God deigned to work through this his Saint, hearing his groanings and sighs, by which he said: When shall I come and appear before the face of God? And I shall never be satisfied, until thy glory be manifested: the Lord revealed to him, consoling him, that the day of his death was imminent. At which showing indeed he rejoiced, and with his whole heart panted for that inheritance, of which the Prophet says: When he shall have given sleep to his beloved, this is the inheritance of the Lord. Because the elect, after they have come to death, then find in the land of the living an inheritance. And not after a long interval of interposed time, knowing that the day of his death was at hand, through the celebration of Masses and the largess of holy Communion, bidding farewell and giving peace to his sons, after he had been bishop for thirty-six years, and in the pontifical office most religiously, as a faithful and prudent servant, had ministered to the Lord, in the seventy-seventh year of his age, the course of his combat being consummated, the faith being kept, with the manifold fruit of good works and the gain of souls, by a happy passage he departed to the crown of justice laid up for him; he rendered his body to the earth, receiving the first robe; namely the everlasting beatitude of his soul, until in the resurrection he receive the other robe; namely the blessed immortality, together with the soul, of the resumed and to-be-glorified body.

[44] and his burial. Lest a longer oration be tedious, let us with Philip impose this crown upon a most holily-run life. Thus therefore the blessed Willibald, a triumpher among the nations, an excellent confessor by office, a martyr by zeal, unconquered in the combat, seeking the palm by blood, a blessed athlete of God, whom, if the sword of the persecutors did not touch, yet he did not lose the palm of martyrdom. Whom, because it happened that he lived long in the body, it was necessary that he should also endure the longer temptations of the combat and of the devil and of wicked men. For because, with the Lord helping him, he strove bravely to keep the virtue of patience, although he lived in the peace of the Church, yet the dignity of martyrdom by much labor of time he procured for himself: and so by manners and life, by word and example, he plainly showed the way of human salvation to all who heard and saw; and, his course being happily consummated, to the fellowship of the holy Apostles, Martyrs, and Confessors and Virgins of the Lord, a precious Confessor, after the death of his body, he gloriously came, in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord seven hundred and eighty-one, on the Nones of July, and was buried in body on the seventh of the Ides of July. And he was reverently entombed in the crypt which is beneath the choir of the blessed Virgin in the church of Eichstätt. Nothing in the reckonings of the times was it permitted here to change, a more probable chronological arrangement we have very lately given. Now let us pass to the honors exhibited to the sacred body after death with religious cult.

§ VI. The elevations and translations of the sacred body.

Of what sort the Saint's canonization is to be called His thirty-eighth and last chapter Philip thus begins: In process of time, he being canonized, by the authority of the supreme Pontiff Leo VII, who, on account of the merits of his life and the evidence of the miracles which he had heard of him, and also had most diligently examined, and on account of the acclamation of the people of the whole country, had laudably inserted him into the catalogue of the Saints, he was translated behind the altar of the blessed Vitus, which was in the same crypt, in the year of the Lord nine hundred and eighty-nine. That solemn canonization by Leo VII, asserted in such express words, but the first elevation of the sacred body deferred to the year 989, offered a knot to Gretser, which it is not so easy to solve clearly, especially for him who, entangled in saving the canonization, would strive with all effort to claim it in any way for the people of Eichstätt. Whether the beginning of that tradition is much older than Philip, I vehemently doubt; from him it probably passed into the Pontifical of Eichstätt, from whose opinions to recede would seem a sin. But since Leo sat from the year 936 to 939, but the elevation is said to have first been made in the year 989, it would follow that St. Willibald was canonized fifty years before he was elevated from the earth, which how alien it is from the institutes of those times, they know who are even moderately versed in ecclesiastical antiquity. The solution of Gretser consists finally in this, that the business of ascribing St. Willibald to the sacred fasti began under Leo VII, but the work, begun, remained imperfect, until at last Megingoz began again to urge the matter, and happily completed it, in the year, as Philip said, 989, as Gretser prefers, 1014, or, not at the beginning but at the end of the episcopate of Megingoz.

[46] These things, with Gretser's good leave, seem to me weighed too scrupulously, and by the present-day norm of declaring Saints, how many miracles were wrought there, whereas more probably the whole canonization of St. Willibald was accomplished no otherwise than by the custom of his age, by the sole voice of the people flowing to his tomb and publishing the benefits received, or, as is established by innumerable examples, by the sole elevation of the sacred body from the earth, which in what precise year it was accomplished, I would wish to explore from the tables of Eichstätt a little more clearly. The year 989 the Pontifical notes, compiled nearly, as we believe, from Philip; Gretser defers it to the year 1014, so that you may plainly perceive that approved monuments are not at hand from which you may elicit the certain truth. Add that it must be undoubted that long before the year 989 St. Willibald was celebrated among the people of Eichstätt with sacred cult and an annual festivity, which the anonymous writer of Hasenried plainly testifies, in the Catalogue of the Bishops of Eichstätt in Gretser page 428, where, treating of the amplification of the temple made by Reginold, he adds: From that time gradually ceased the signs and prodigies which formerly were done there very many. For as I have often heard our elders say, as the festivity of St. Willibald approached each year, so great a multitude of the blind, the lame, the maimed, the demoniacs, and the manifoldly disabled flowed together, that that great portico at St. Martin's could by no means hold them; and so great a din was made by them on the vigil of the Saint, that they somewhat hindered that most pleasant evening. Yet before the Mass on the holy day was finished, nearly all, being healed, rendered due thanks to God and to St. Willibald.

[47] Since these things manifestly are referred to the times of Reginold, which was the first elevation and translation. either I am much mistaken, or in the course of the tenth century, and without doubt also the ninth, there was great veneration of St. Willibald among the people of Eichstätt, by which perhaps induced, the aforesaid Reginold, in Gretser page 274, in the year 186 of the deposition (of St. Willibald, which for us is 972), the monastery, that is the temple, being more magnificently equipped, thought to translate the body from the middle of the choir into the crypt, with an issue not happy enough, which is there so doubtfully explained that you do not altogether understand an elevation truly made. The tradition of the Pontifical stands for the year 989, in which, on the tenth of the Kalends of May, he was first elevated from the earth into the crypt, and there behind the altar of St. Vitus placed in a sarcophagus [*], where he rested for 67 years. In those times St. Willibald manifested himself many times, doing many signs and miracles. In the necrology is marked also

the memory of the first elevation on the said day and year. The words are: The first elevation from the earth of the body of St. Willibald, confessor and Bishop, in the year 989, which all proceed from the same source. The same Bishop Megingoz caused a lamp or orbicular or circular chandelier to be made in the middle of the cathedral temple in honor of St. Willibald, such as still today are everywhere seen in churches with a certain number of candles: he calls it pharos, says Gretser, from whom we received these things. Of the pharoi and chandeliers see what is said in volume 7 of June from page 129.

[48] The things thus far narrated pertain to the tenth century, in which the first elevation and translation was made: Three other translations are said to have been made, we inquire, how many other translations followed and at what time? Hear Gretser page 274: Four translations of the relics of St. Willibald Philip sets down in chapter 38. The first is behind the altar of St. Vitus. The second to the middle of the church. The third to the choir of the blessed Virgin. The fourth to the choir of Willibald. Others establish only three, that to the middle of the church being omitted. Of which translations you will find more in the history of the Bishops, where, by whom each was accomplished, will be explained one by one. Gretser proclaims true things, for in Philip the various translations are thus mentioned. After the words cited at the beginning of this paragraph, he soon adds: After these, for the honor and reverence and manifestation of the holy body, he was venerably translated to the middle of the church. And this he rightly called the second, but concerning it and the third not sufficiently distinct monuments are found in the Catalogue of the Bishops. Thus Philip goes on: Then he was placed over the choir of the blessed Virgin, where sometimes, on account of the too great throng of peoples of diverse tongues and nations, he was shown at the high altar; but sometimes he was laid away before the altar in a sarcophagus; sometimes, the whole city [*] being astonished at the multitude of men coming to the thresholds of the most blessed Confessor, he was most cautiously and most diligently, and no less reverently, kept, guarded in the cupboard of the aforenamed church.

[49] but whose times are not explained. The order of the times Philip is not wont to designate happily enough; here of the second and third translation he distinguished none at all. For the rest, from the Pontifical of Eichstätt the second seems to be assigned to the sixty-seven years, to be numbered from the year 989; which therefore lead us to the year 1056, which it is a wonder Philip did not express, writing of matters nearer to himself more confusedly than of those which had been done many centuries before. Nor was it granted to Gretser to be happier; for citing the Catalogue of the Bishops of Eichstätt, he refers us thither, where we have long sought that epoch in vain. If the Pontifical or the manuscript relation rightly worked out the numbers, it necessarily falls into the times of Gebhard, or Gundekar the second of that name, the eighteenth Bishop, who, since he caused the order of the Bishops to be collected usefully enough and written from his own expense, and, when written, delivered it to the altar of St. Willibald, Confessor of Christ … would not have omitted the memory of that translation, if in his own or his predecessor's time it had happened. Equally uncertain is the epoch of the third translation, of which I found no traces except those which Philip suggested, so that we are altogether compelled to confess that the chronological reckoning of those first elevations and translations is not correct, although for the rest it ought not to be doubted that at some time they were made: however much Mabillon page 392 seems to expunge those two Philippine translations, admitting only the first, the Henrician of the year 1256, and the Hiltbrandine of the year 1270, where this last is excluded by Philip, most plainly asserting that the most holy body, honorably placed in a sarcophagus, then remained without change of place; as shortly you will understand at greater length.

[50] There is, however, in the description of the last two solemnities, Most famous is the Henrician of the year 1256, where you may desire Philip's accuracy, that he arranged the matters preposterously, which are here to be reviewed, the order of times being kept. The fourth therefore, or last, properly so-called translation is thus described by Philip page 132: In the year from the Incarnation of the Lord one thousand two hundred and fifty-six, on the fourth of the Ides of June, in the second year of the pontificate of the Lord Alexander, when the Reverend Father Henry, Bishop of the church of Eichstätt, mature counsel being had beforehand, had resolved to place the blessed Willibald, who had been laid away in the crypt, more honorably, the neighboring Prelates being called, Syboto, formerly Bishop of Augsburg, and most religious men, Abbots, Priors, of both the Cistercian and Cluniac Orders, supported by the help of twelve brethren, as well of the Preachers as of the Minorites, with the greatest reverence opened the sarcophagus. Where we, who were present, if it be lawful to utter it, felt the fragrance of paradise. But the relics of the most blessed Confessor being taken up, and placed in a new sarcophagus, the Pontiffs going before, and very many others following, with hymns and canticles they placed them in the choir upon the altar of the Cathedral church. But that the Lord and blessed Willibald might approve a translation of this kind pleasing to him, straightway when he had been placed on the altar, these miracles followed. Into signs Philip divides them, which the author of the manuscript codex, out of innumerable ones before wrought, gathered a few, to be described by us after the Hodoeporica.

[51] In the so often mentioned Catalogue of the Bishops this translation before the others is accurately narrated by the anonymous compiler of the codex in Gretser page 475: described in the Catalogue of the Bishops, it will not be irksome to behold the whole matter in a manner with the eyes, clothed with other circumstances which were passed over by Philip: In the year of the Lord 1256, on the fourth of the Ides of June, when St. Willibald had for many seasons and years been honorably laid in a sarcophagus in the crypt, but in these times it had been often revealed by divine revelation to religious and discreet persons, both of the male and of the female sex, that from that place in which the blessed Willibald was laid away he ought to be translated, and placed in another place, on account of certain enormities which by foolish persons were wont there to be often attempted. He then narrates the counsel had by the Bishop concerning the translation to be instituted in the Octave of Pentecost. And so the Lord Bishop Henry, called of Wirtenberg, of that same place, who was the thirty-third from St. Willibald, and also the Lord Syboto, Bishop of Augsburg, all the Prelates and Clerks of the diocese of Eichstätt co-operating with them, at daybreak, on account of the pressure of men, with hymns and canticles, with devout mind, into the crypt, with copes and infinite lights, proceeded to the sepulcher of the excellent Confessor, and there the man dear to God being found, from that place, with the greatest grief and weeping, the divine grace consenting, and the good will of blessed Willibald acceding, he was translated, and placed over the high altar, in the choir of the blessed Mary the Virgin, in a well-gilded sarcophagus, that he might be seen by those coming; and was set for them for salvation on that day. For the greater solemnity the bodies of SS. Wunebald and Walburga were brought to Eichstätt, as you will find there deduced at length.

[52] which is said to be celebrated in the Octave of Pentecost. From the same codex Gretser subjoins this little admonition: The day of the translation of St. Willibald from the crypt to the monastery, always in the Octave of Pentecost, ought to be celebrated in perpetuity in the diocese of Eichstätt. Whence, most dear brethren, you ought to have in mind the grace which the Lord God showed and granted to the church of Eichstätt, in honor of his Mother and of St. Willibald, and for this give thanks to our Redeemer day and night. These things were done 475 years after the death of the blessed Willibald. In the Calendar of the Pontifical, Gretser being witness, these things are noted on the fourth of the Ides of June: In the year of the Lord 1256, on the fourth of the Ides of June, St. Willibald was translated from the crypt, and held under great custody, and every day was shown to the magnates of the land and to those coming. At last on the third of the Ides of October he was laid in a sarcophagus in the monastery. Wherefore also on the thirteenth of October these things are ascribed: St. Willibald in the year 1256 was laid in a sarcophagus in the monastery. And indeed in the middle of the monastery, as the relation of the translation of St. Willibald has, says Gretser again, rightly cautioning lest anyone here take by "monastery" anything other than the Cathedral or chief temple. For the rest, whoever weighs rightly with me all these things narrated at length concerning the Henrician translation, I am much mistaken if he do not with me deservedly suspect that here is indicated the very same second translation of Philip, from the crypt behind the altar of blessed Vitus, into the middle of the church. Whether the third is not to be confounded with the Hiltbrandine solemnity, I leave to be considered from what follows.

[53] The translation into the choir of St. Willibald, These again are the words of Philip page 131: But last of all a Bishop, worthy of much reverence, by name Hiltbrand, who at that time presided over the church, out of great devotion, and also reasonably, resolved to build for him a basilica by himself, in which the most holy body, honorably laid in a sarcophagus, should remain without change of place. Which also he accomplished, according as the present-day structure manifests. The same Bishop also instituted, as did other successors of his, four chaplains there, to serve God and blessed Willibald in perpetuity, who also are specially called the chaplains chiefly of blessed Willibald and of all his successors. Where miracles and prodigies of miracles so innumerably multiplied, that it is not within our faculty to be able to cross the sea of them. Thus far he, with whom you will not easily reconcile the things which in the manuscript codex, in Gretser page 477, are reported concerning the praised Bishop Hiltbrand, who completed the western choir or that of St. Willibald, and instituted in it two chaplains, and, that same choir being completed, TRANSLATED St. Willibald on the third of the Ides of October with great solemnity, and enclosed St. Willibald in the highest part of the high altar of that same choir, and ordained that the choir of St. Willibald should be named in perpetuity, where the divine clemency through him works many miracles daily. If from the cited words of Philip, then he was placed over the choir of the blessed Virgin, you expunge "of the blessed Virgin," you will have the third translation, however much the same man so plainly affirm that the holy body, honorably laid in a sarcophagus, remained without change of place, which error we shall pardon him with the rest.

[54] And certainly that Philip was neither a diligent nor an accurate historian has now by many arguments been abundantly demonstrated. which seems to have been the third and last. But who would have believed that in the last chapter of the life, when he sets forth a matter so near to himself, he would err? The age of Hiltbrand we know from this, that he was the thirty-fifth Bishop of Eichstätt in order, and sat from the year 1261 to the year 1279. If therefore Philip was present at the translation procured by Bishop Henry in the year 1256, there is no doubt that he could see the things which were done fourteen years after, and so much later; for not in vain does he add "last of all." Nevertheless he here openly contradicts the manuscript codex, which in other things he manifestly followed. Since in matters done in the thirteenth century the people of Eichstätt exhibit some things so confused and opposed, they will cease to wonder that in discussing far more ancient things we do not straightway and blindly obey their tables. But whoever here be mistaken, whether the anonymous writer of the codex or Philip, though the latter seems to represent several translations, I will say boldly what I think; after I have not idly examined everything pertaining thereto, I think that only

three, described in some way in the Eichstätt monuments, are to be admitted, and no more. But of these having said enough, it remains that concerning the relics and their veneration, and likewise concerning the ecclesiastical Offices, we briefly collect the few things which could be found.

ANNOTATIONS

* entombed.

* or not "in the city"?

§ VII. The veneration of the relics, a prose and a rhythm.

In the elevations and translations just described, everything is so set forth that no doubt can arise to anyone, The sacred body deposited at Eichstätt that all the relics, or the whole and untouched body of St. Willibald, was there elevated, and still today is deposited at Eichstätt, so that in vain should the sacred remains be sought elsewhere, unless perhaps they were more recently distributed, concerning which, since Gretser has handed down nothing, there is no ground on which we should investigate that matter. Concerning the ecclesiastical Office a few things too are suggested by the praised writer. As for the relics, he speaks thus page 272: The body of St. Willibald is preserved at Eichstätt in the choir of Willibald, whose relics, however, translated, are now kept at Furnes, says Bale Century 2, chapter 16. But not the whole, good man, but only a certain portion. Which be said also of St. Walburga; concerning which Molanus did not forbear to admonish, in the little Index of the Saints of Belgium, and that lest anyone be deceived by the narration of certain persons who so report the matter, that one might think that the whole relics were carried to Furnes; which is alien from the truth. This translation of portions of the relics of St. Willibald, St. Wunebald, and St. Walburga was made in the year of the Lord 870, at which time Otker or Otkarius, the sixth Bishop of Eichstätt, governed the chair of Willibald; although in the deeds of this Bishop there is deep silence concerning these relics sent into Flanders. Baldwin, surnamed the Iron, then held Flanders in his dominion; under whom also the body of St. Donatian, Archbishop of Reims, was translated to Bruges in Flanders, in the year of grace 863.

[56] These things cursorily Gretser, which were far more accurately discussed and cleared up by Henschenius in the Commentary on the Acts of St. Walburga on the twenty-fifth of February, what part could be carried to Furnes in Flanders. where he most diligently inquires at what time, on what occasion, and in what manner the relics of that holy Virgin could be translated into Flanders, to whom in several cities of our Belgium, as you will there find, notable temples are dedicated, scarcely any mention anywhere being made of the holy brothers Willibald and Wunebald, except that in some fasti, enumerated by the praised Henschenius number 41, on the first of May and on the fourth of August they are joined to their sister, probably for this cause, that not the body of St. Walburga, but those of the holy brothers, the Bishop and the Abbot, were believed translated into Flanders together, which Gretser and Henschenius rightly understand of portions, or notable relics. To explain more clearly a matter of itself perplexed enough, there is no one who after Henschenius has bestowed labor, nor did Mabillon suggest anything, nor have I found elsewhere anything by which the aforesaid history may be illustrated. But if one insist on the Gretserian epochs, it must be admitted that relics were received from Eichstätt before the body of St. Willibald was elevated; or it must be confessed that he was raised from the earth a whole century earlier than the tradition of the people of Eichstätt holds. Of the relics of St. Walburga everything is full, of the holy brothers only by concomitance, so to speak; no certain portion of the sacred body of St. Willibald being anywhere noted, so that consequently silence of this kind seems not obscurely to favor the possession of the people of Eichstätt: certainly that by far the greatest part of the sacred bodies, both of the brothers and of the sister, is today honored there, no one would dare, except rashly and temerariously, to call into doubt.

[57] Lessons for the ecclesiastical Office Ancient Offices or Breviaries concerning St. Willibald, which would make for our purpose most of all, Gretser brings forward none, alleging only the Sequence or prose from some ancient missal page 380, and on the following page a hymn, which is taken from the Breviary of Eichstätt. The few monuments so often recited are the Pontifical, the Calendars, and some manuscript codex, in which those relations alone are nearly had, which one might think extracted from Philip, unless those same instruments went before Philip himself; but Gretser supplies nothing which pertains to a peculiar rite of celebrating the festivity of Willibald. Among us there exists no proper book of the feasts of the diocese of Eichstätt, except that which in the year 1629, by the order and authority of the most Reverend and most Illustrious Prince John Christopher, Bishop of Eichstätt, was given to the press; in which an Office is decreed under the rite of a double of the first class, as of the first Bishop and patron of the church of Eichstätt, which is continued through eight days, or through the Octave, as we say. To the present-day Roman rite all things are adapted, so that they are from the common, except the prayer and the lessons of the second Nocturn. Here we shall first subjoin the former: O God, who hast on the present day translated thy glorious Pontiff Willibald, heir of the kingdom of the English, to the eternal inheritance of the angels; grant propitiously, that by his merits and intercession we may deserve to be his coheirs in thy glory. Through our Lord Jesus. It does not agree well enough with the tradition of Eichstätt, that St. Wunebald was the elder, and here St. Willibald is called heir of the kingdom.

[58] they are not purely taken from the Hodoeporicon. In the first Nocturn the lessons Faithful is the saying. In the second Nocturn to the fourth lesson is prefixed this title: From the Hodoeporicon of St. Willibald in Heinrich Canisius volume 4 of the Ancient Reading. Most rightly is recourse had to the source; but since it behooves us to speak candidly and sincerely, the specious title deceives, since many things are inserted, far removed from the purity of the Hodoeporicon. Hear even the very beginning: Willibald, son of Richard, King of the English. There too concerning Gregory II, the supreme Pontiff, some things are added, which, although they may be probable, are certainly not mentioned in the Hodoeporicon by the Nun. The fifth lesson recedes least from the autograph, but the sixth is wholly Philippine, his chronological reckonings being expressed, concerning the episcopal consecration received in the year 745, concerning the age of 77 years, and concerning the episcopate administered for thirty-six years, which above you have abundantly refuted in paragraphs three and four. Whether the fixed solemnity of St. Willibald extends beyond the diocese of Eichstätt, I have not ascertained; certainly although in the table of Furnes Henschenius read that the bodies of the holy Walburga and of her brothers Willibald and Wunebald were carried thither, only Walburga is honored both there and in other cities throughout Belgium with an annual veneration. How the relics of the holy brothers and sister also came into England, Henschenius teaches from number 57; but the arguments of a peculiar veneration are not today to be fetched thence. Have now the prose or Sequence, reported from the Eichstätt missal by Gretser on the page, as I said, 380.

[59] There shines a bright day, to be remembered by all ages, The Sequence concerning the Saint on which the Saint enters the abiding rewards of his labor, Willibald, a citizen of the heavenly hall. For Christ the King of Kings, on this day, drawing forth his body from the dark cloisters of the flesh, associated it with the supernal citizens. Though he was afflicted with very many labors, he held them for nothing, conscious of the good things to come. Him England, born of her, ascribes to the angels. He, breathed on by the Holy Spirit, while he wailed in his cradle, a victim, renouncing all the pomps of the devil, and about to lead a celibate life, immolates himself to the Lord like a little lamb. His infancy passed, he soon snatched himself with his fellow-tribesmen from his country. Now he had visited Rome, and round about very many places, and Jerusalem; here after he traverses the lands beyond the sea, which Jesus Christ, made man, himself walked about with bodily feet, at last the Lord looked upon such a pilgrim to profit many: he committed to him his own little sheep. These the vigilant and good shepherd fed and sated with most rich pastures. And secure he climbs to the flowery heaven, distributing to his own the marks of virtues. By his rising, O Christ, mayest thou will to guard us from the monsters of sins.

[60] Finally receive also the hymn.

Sea, fountain, mouth, and God of the lands, and the hymn. thou art the head of all good things; from thee good things flow, to thee they return. A long good part of the sea from the islands returned to the fountain, and seeks thee, Jesus, the fountain of the living waters. God is the fountain of the sea, Willibald the part, who, running far from his native shores, after the manner of the stag stretches toward his draught. O happy nursling of the isle of the English, by assiduous prayer make us worthy of the water, which whoever shall drink, thirsts no more after. The cleansed by baptism the iniquitous frauds ever infect, and evilly plunge them through the pool of crime into the penalty of death. But by thy prayers, we all ask, snatch from the harm of the Charybdis on the left those touching with tears the port of salvation. Praise to thee, O Trinity, praise and power; the rivers, the heaven and the earth praise thee; from sea to sea let there be praise on this day. Amen.

§ VIII. The present-day cult of the Saint, and the monuments erected to him.

These things which have thus far been said being so ordered and digested, nothing occurred to me New notices and monuments which I might subjoin from the published monuments to illustrate more the glory of St. Willibald, although I desired it most of all; lest therefore anything could be said to be neglected or omitted by me, this remained over, that I should have recourse to Eichstätt, to the Rector of our college there, the Reverend Father Franz Schuch, by whom, being most kindly heard, I obtained all those things which the most diligent man could collect, to whose officious services therefore are to be ascribed whatever in this last paragraph are deduced, and are exhibited engraved in copper. He himself used the help of the most Reverend, most Noble, and most Ample Lord, D. Johann Adam, Bishop of Dioclea, Vicar general both in pontifical and in spiritual matters of the most Reverend and most Exalted Prince of the Holy Roman Empire and Bishop of Eichstätt, councillor and President of the ecclesiastical council, Capitular Canon of the cathedral church of Augsburg, and also Provost of the collegiate church of St. Nicholas at Spalt. To these two men, most zealous clients of St. Willibald, I here faithfully render the things which I gladly confess to have received from them, the expenses also being supplied which were required for engraving and printing the images.

[62] My whole investigation sought chiefly the things which pertained to the present-day cult of St. Willibald, the things received from Eichstätt are exhibited. and the monuments erected in his honor, of which, since I have obtained the delineations thence, I have not judged that they should be withdrawn from the eyes of the readers. Most to be lamented was the depopulation and devastation of the city of Eichstätt in the disastrous Swedish war, when very many things were burned, consumed, torn apart, and destroyed, so that, the praised most Reverend Bishop of Dioclea being witness, it is not established enough what and how much of the sacred body of St. Willibald survives at this time in the sepulcher of the church, which is never opened. Nor further is it to be wondered at if through the aforesaid ravages many instruments perished which would conduce not a little to illustrating the cult of St. Willibald. For the rest, there persists thus far the highest veneration of the people of Eichstätt toward their holy Patron and founder, and the concourse of the neighboring peoples, even foreign, to his sepulcher, especially on the present-day solemnity, which is festively celebrated by all, not, I think, without new benefits and miracles, although a more accurate

reckoning of them has not been kept.

[63] That which before was doubtful to me, namely how far the ecclesiastical cult extended, Of the present-day cult the Reverend Father Rector thus explained: I signify that the feast of St. Willibald is a feast in the whole diocese, even in the forum, and is celebrated under the rite of a double of the first class, in those parts of Bavaria too which pertain to this diocese of Eichstätt. But in the neighboring diocese of Augsburg, as far as I know, under a double rite: which the Index of the divine Office for that diocese confirms, of which we have a copy printed in the year 1685. What of this? that I have found the memory of St. Willibald also in the directory for reciting the Canonical hours for the province of Bohemia of our Society. The same Father Schuch had submitted various lessons concerning St. Willibald taken from the Breviary of the year 1589, but since I straightway noticed that they altogether agree with those which in the preceding paragraph number 58 I could not approve, it seemed better to forbear publishing them. Now we approach the sacred tomb, a monument worthy of copper and of the memory of posterity, as being a work precious in magnitude, art, and antiquity. We received it divided into two plates, and so caused it to be engraved. Have the description of the whole work in the very words of Schuch:

[64] The chapel, which is wont to be called the Choir of St. Willibald, and the description of the monuments. is the last part of the cathedral church, a most ample basilica, not unbecoming, and famous for the religion of its worshipers. The basilica conspicuous today was built by Engelhard, the thirty-fourth Bishop, together with the aforesaid Choir of St. Willibald, which however his successor Hildebrand first finished. It is ascended to by five steps of solid stone, not unlike marble, laid down. On the highest of these is seen the artful and huge statue of St. Willibald, representing him sitting on a throne between two columns with episcopal ornaments. Above the throne rise, in the middle, the images of Christ affixed to the Cross, and on the right and left of the most Blessed Mother and of the divine John standing by the Cross. All which are artfully wrought of marble. The sides of the statue on either hand are occupied by iron and gilded railings, through which access to the chapel lies open, and it is shut off from the rest of the temple. Within the railings, at the back of the statue, the sepulcher of this Saint is held in veneration, of most ancient work and art, constructed of cut stone by the mentioned thirty-fifth Bishop Hildebrand, in the year 1276. To the sarcophagus the middle altar of the chapel is contiguous; for two other altars, more remote from the sepulcher, are seen erected on either side. The last space of the chapel a music-gallery, and beneath this a sacristy, fill up. This chapel has its own Canons, who from St. Willibald are called Willibaldines; and they are at this time nine. Finally it is rendered more illustrious by the sacred Orders, which are wont to be conferred in it at fixed times.

[65] Concerning the relics the most Reverend added these things, which no more than the preceding was it free to draw out from elsewhere; The Saint's relics outside the tomb namely that in the Choir of the Cathedral church there is preserved an arm-bone, enclosed in a silver reliquary skillfully made, and there without doubt wont to be exposed to the veneration of the people. At St. Walburga's is shown a finger of St. Willibald, with a tooth of the same Saint. But in the hall of the most Exalted Prince and Bishop of Eichstätt, which likewise from the holy Patron is called Willibaldine, the Saint's cranium is held in great honor, duly also adorned. The staff and the ring the illustrious Canons of the cathedral church possess; the miter, the chasuble, the alb with the humeral and the rationale, by a special privilege at any rate of the Bishops of Eichstätt, the canons of the Choir of St. Willibald guard, which in the cathedral church is called the lower. These are today, as Schuch said above, nine in number, who are also called the Willibaldine Chaplains, founded by various Bishops of Eichstätt, who, bound to certain Masses, moreover do not serve the choir, but are for the most part in the services of the Bishop, as ecclesiastical councillors. Thus far nearly the words of the most Reverend and of Father Schuch, or at least their sense most entirely rendered. There follow the Hodoeporica from the edition of Heinrich Canisius, of which above, when the Legends were disputed, it was abundantly treated.

LIFE

Or the Hodoeporicon, by the author a virgin kinswoman, a Nun of Heidenheim,

from the edition of Canisius corrected from the variant readings of Gretser.

Willibald, Bishop, at Eichstätt in Germany (S.)

BHL Number: 8931

BY A NUN.

THE PREFACE OF THE NUN.

To all the venerable, and indeed ^a most dear in Christ, presbyters enriched with the honor of the priestly fillet, She undertakes this work of her own accord, and to the deacons of illustrious nature, and no less to the abbots, or to all the nobles of the common condition, whom, by the privilege of pastoral care, the pious Pontiff of nobles advanced to better things by the principate of right government, some as presbyters in holy order, others as deacons elegant in sober chastity, others as monks of the cenobitic warfare, and others under the disciple's habit, cleaving to the diligent studies of letters by teaching, and so, as an excellent nursling of the armies, by his industry through the diocese diligently, in a manner as his own children by soothing, by cherishing, he was wont to cherish: to all these there remaining under the governance of the sacred law, I, unworthy, of the Saxon nation, the last of those coming thence, and not only in years, but also in manners, and in comparison with my fellow-tribespeople, as it were a little manikin; I indeed to you religious and Catholic men, ministers of the heavenly library, for the profit of memory, touching a few things briefly, had resolved gradually to discourse somewhat of the proem of the primeval life of that venerable Willibald. But yet chiefly I, a woman, and corruptible by the frail weakness of my sex, supported by no prerogative of wisdom, nor elevated by the industry of great powers, but compelled by the spontaneous violence of my own will, as if plucking a few things from the little prudence of an ignorant breast, and from many leafy and fruitful trees mingled with a variety of flowers [*], with whatever slight art, at least on the extreme branches, it pleases me to excerpt, to join together, and to set forth a few things fit for your memory. And now, repeating in reciprocal speech, I say that I begin this earnestly, not relying on the beginning of my own presumption, not on the audacity of temerity, but so that I scarcely dare.

[2] about to narrate these things But because now for the first time, by the grace of God, and by the greatness of the vision of so great a man, and by the excellence of your authority, and no less by the well strong help of your will and consent, I somewhat believed I could obtain that the loftiness of so great a work, and the signs of so great miracles, and also of virtues, which the Lord, humbling himself for the salvation of the human race, descending, in the assumption of a human body, strengthened by the privilege of divine power, deigned to bestow and accomplish in this world; and, known bodily by his own eyes of the venerable man Willibald, and by his own feet handling and penetrating through all, visibly to appear; all these things by intimating we touch briefly. And not only the signs, which are shown to us certain through the grace of the Gospel, did he see; but also the very places of the lands, where our Lord, by being born, by suffering, and by rising again, appeared to us: and no less other traces of prodigies and virtues, which the Lord deigned to bring forth and spread abroad in this world; he, the perspicacious pedagogue of us all, passing through all, robust in faith, fortunate in fate, boldly traversing, by visiting all things found and saw. Whence now certainly, so to say, it seemed to me presumptuous, that all these things the human tongue should, with a mute silence of tenacity, with lips stopped up, keep silent, which the Lord in our times deigned to reveal to his servant, by the labor of his own body, by the vision of the eyes, by showing them. These things we know were related not by an apocryphal, not by an erratic disquisition; but just as, himself seeing and relating, we determined to hear from the dictation of his mouth, and no less to write, two deacons being witnesses and hearing with me, on the ninth of the Kalends of July, on the day before the solstice.

[3] These letters certainly I, an untaught woman, do not begin to discourse for this reason, which she had received from St. Willibald that you should think me to distrust anything of the industry of your sagacity, or that I do not well know many of the men [*], whom the Lord God and our Prelate deigned to prefer to me, not only by the dignity of the male sex, but also by the ministry of the divine condition, and much more to dispose and set forth things by the erudition of the divine law, and no less bolder by the investigation of diligent care. But because I knew that I, unworthy however, propagated not from elsewhere from the stock of their ^b genealogy, was perhaps of the extreme little shoots of the branches, of such and so great blessednesses of the men and of their venerable life, of those going forth perfectly not only in acts, but also in various journeys, and manifold greatnesses of miracles, it pleases me to place something worthy of memory in the hands of the reader for reading. Of whom the one, preferred by the prerogative of the highest and priestly fillet and of pastoral care, an illustrious cross-worshiper, the great Master Willibald; and the other, rightly seizing the way of solidity, directing crooked things into straight, and politely leveling the harsh and fierce, the thick and insolent filth of the wicked gentiles and of sinners not with a slothful, lukewarm, wavering mind, but with a happy audacity of boldness, and rightly strengthened with the dart of supernal sagacity, by insistent labor emptied out all. Who, also preferred by the priestly fillet, and reckoned by pastoral honor an Abbot, was the illustrious worshiper of Christ Wunebald. All these things, written through the white plains of the fields, the furrow being traced, black plowed traces, presented before your dear knowledge, against all the reproaches of the envious, by the grace of God, and by the shield of your protection in all things, and no less to your placid perception we commend, that in all things glad we may praise the Lord who frees us and bestows gifts.

ANNOTATIONS.

* elsewhere: yours.

* elsewhere: laden.

HERE BEGINS THE LIFE.

CHAPTER I.

St. Willibald, three years old, is miraculously healed; instructed in pious exercises and in letters in a monastery, he induces his father and brother to the Roman pilgrimage.

The venerable man First therefore the beginning of the venerable Priest and Pontiff of the most high God, and the loftiness of the life of that venerable man St. Willibald, who diligently under the governance of the sacred law clung to the fostering examples of the earlier Saints by warring, by serving, by following with mind and manners; the beginning therefore of this life, and its progress before the middle of his youth, up to his old age, and by intimating up to his now decrepit age, I had resolved to begin, gathering the slender conjecture of this little work, and by arranging to weave it.

[5] three years old, lamented by his parents, When he in the proem of his infancy, amiable in his cradle, and delightful, and by the gentle flatteries of his nurses, and especially by the affection of the great devotion of his parents toward him, and the daily providence of solicitude of those bearing care, was strengthened and nourished, he came to his third year. And so, three courses of years being then passed, when that little and delicate one, of frail age, of infant years, still bore the limbs of a tender body, suddenly it came about that a grave sickness of body for three years weighed him down, and he was seized with so great a trouble of body that the little frames of his limbs were drawn tight, and scarcely in him

did the breath abide; it threatened a near departure of his life. And when the father and mother beheld this, their offspring sick, and now almost half-dead, timid with a trance, and greatly held by a strange sadness of mind, they began to be anxious, because they saw that their offspring, born to them, wearied by a fresh sickness and ensnared by a deadly crisis of unexpected death, and that him, whom before, weaned and cherished from the cradles of his first infancy, they had nourished up to his third year, and whom they wished to have as survivor and heir, they feared to lament as now lifeless or extinguished, and covered with the clod. But almighty God, the framer of the world, the polisher of heaven and earth, did not yet wish to lead his servant, an infant, and still unformed, and tender in the frail frames of his limbs, and uncertain [*] to men, out of the prison-house of the body, but rather that afterward through the world he might spread wide by his standard the open rewards of life to the newly-baptized.

[6] But let us return again to the former infancy of the aforesaid man. He is consecrated to God and recovers. And when his parents, held in suspense by a great excess of mind, and doubtful about the uncertain escape of their son, taking their son, offered him before that dominical and holy Cross of the Savior. For such is the custom of the Saxon nation, that in certain estates of the noble ^a and good men they are wont to have, not a church, but a sign of the holy Cross, dedicated to the Lord, fostering, erected on high with great honor, for the convenient diligence of daily prayer. There, placing him before the Cross, they earnestly begged the Lord God, the psalm-singer of all, to console them and to keep their son safe, by his powers; and thus by their most intent prayers they promised to render a return to the Lord, that if the former health of that infant should be restored, forthwith they would make him receive the tonsure under the beginning of the sacred Order, and subject him to the service of Christ, warring under the discipline of the cenobitic life, under the governance of the divine law. And straightway, after they had vowed their vows to him, they consummated their words, and commended their son to warring for the heavenly King, immediately they obtained grace, and moreover from the Lord the effect of their petitions, and afterward the former health was restored to the boy.

[7] And when that illustrious boy had come in infancy to his fifth year, and ^b in him at that time was already germinating the shoot of wisdom. At five years old delivered to the Abbot of Waltham And so his parents hastened to fulfill the vowed promises of their desires, and hastened to prepare and accomplish the illustrious one as quickly as possible, with the consultation of friends and the counsel of carnal kinsmen, for the instruments of the sacred cenobitic life. And forthwith they commended him to the venerable and most faithful man Theodred ^c, and asked him by his providence to lead him to the convent, and prudently to dispense and dispose all things concerning his cause. And when they had proceeded, and led him to the monastery which is called Waltham ^d, they offered him to the venerable Abbot of that monastery, who is called Egbalt ^e, and subjected him, younger by the right of his condition, as a disciple in obedience, to his command. And straightway that Abbot of the monastery, according to the discipline of the regular life, declared this to his congregation, and thus he begged that this might be done with their counsel or leave. To whom forthwith all that assembly of the Brethren together gave answer or leave, and said that all these things could be lawfully done by the judgment of their will, and, receiving him, quickly joined and associated him among the cenobitic fellowship of their life.

[8] After this therefore, when that chaste and perfect boy, imbued and instructed in the sacred studies of letters, he is imbued with letters and virtues. traversing the sacred pages of the Davidic song with diligent intention of mind, but also investigating the other little cupboards of the hagiographers of the divine law, or reading them, wise ^f in keen sense, moderate in mind, he searched: and yet not yet aged in the years of many, but, as the divine clemency of supernal piety is ever wont to act, according to the prophetic prediction of the prophecies, out of the mouth of infants and sucklings deigned to perfect praise for himself. Then therefore in him at once the age of years and the sagacity of mind, by the governance of the divine dispensation, had begun to sprout; and much more in him then had the divine grace of the Holy Spirit grown than the greatness of body, or the health of his limbs. And now wholly turned to the love of God, treating with great meditation of mind and daily the instruments of monasterial moderation, and the monarchy of the monastic life, in the hidden quiet of his mind he solicitously revolved day and night, how he might join himself to their chaste clientele of monks, or in what way he might be able to take part in their happy ^g disciplines of the familiar life.

[9] Meditating a pilgrimage, And when he diligently revolved these things within the mobility of his mind, he began to consider in what way this thought could deserve its effect, that he might despise all the fleeting things of this world [*], or could abandon them, and desert not only the temporal riches of earthly things, but also his country and parents and kinsmen, and attempt the land of pilgrimage, and seek the unknown fields of foreigners. And when, some interval of time being passed, after those playthings of his infant delight, and the boyish wantonness of enticements, and the alluring petulances of luxurious age, through the indefatigable and ineffable grace of the divine dispensation, he had come to the down and the adolescence of puberty ^h, he provoked in himself the greatest love in the fellowship of the Brethren, through the affection of obedience, through the munificence of meekness; so that he was held notable in love and honor among all of them. And thus for a longer time by the care of daily solicitude, and by cleaving to the divine studies of letters day and night, he flourished so far, and so tamed his mind by the rigor of rectitude, that from day to day he advanced to better instruments of the heavenly warfare.

[10] he draws his father and brother with him. After that youth, the servant of Christ, as we said above, wished to test the unknown ways of his pilgrimage, and desired to go to and behold the foreign lands of the borders, and had also resolved to cross the most savage seas of the deep, straightway he revealed these secrets of his heart, hidden from all, to his carnal father, and begged him with earnest prayers that he would give his consent to the desire of his vowed will, to the counsel of proceeding; and he more attentively asked both that he would give him leave to cross, and that he himself would go with him. And when he wished to separate him, by inviting him to the beginning of so great a work, and to the conversation of so great a life, from the pleasures of the world, from the delights of the world, from the false prosperities of the riches of the temporal life, by suggesting, and, the Lord helping, to begin the divine service according to the form of right constitution, and to the novitiate of the heavenly warfare, and to desert his own country, and to seek with him the open fields of pilgrimage; and thus at last incite him with rewards, addressing him with the gentle pursuits of oracles, so that, having the company of his sons, he might go to the excellent thresholds of Peter the Prince of the Apostles; then he at first, at his request, denied the crossing sought, and answered, excusing himself, that to bereave his wife and his growing ⁱ children, small and frail, and to abandon them to strangers, was dishonorable and cruel. Then that warlike soldier of Christ, by repeated wonders of exhortations and great continuances of prayers, so often by the harsher documents of a more rigid life, by fear and threats reproached him, and so often by the gentle promises of eternal life, by the pleasantness of paradise, and by the love of Christ, soothing him, urged him: and so by exhorting, addressing him in all ways, he tried to provoke his mind to the assent of his will. And so at last, by the help of almighty God, the will of the one asking and provoking prevailed, so that his father, and his brother Wunebald, promised to begin the goal adopted and urged.

[11] After this therefore, the interval of time and the course of years verging, Having begun the journey they land at Rouen, the season of summer already being imminent, his father and his celibate brother began the predestined and adopted journey. And at the fitting season of summer, prompt and ready, having taken with them the stipends of life, with a company of colleagues accompanying them, they came to the appointed places, which by an ancient word were called Hamwich Mouth ^k, near that mart which is called Hamwich. And not long after, an interval of time being passed, a ship being prepared, that sailor with the fleet, and his shipmaster, the fare being paid, the northwest wind blowing, and the sea prevailing, the oars crackling, the fleet shouting, ascended the pinnace. And when, the maritime terrors of the waves being crossed, and the perilous pressures of the deep, over the vast plain, with the swift course of the pinnace, with favoring winds ^l, the ship being under sail, they safe beheld the dry land. And straightway, rejoicing, they descended from the ship, and there pitched their camp, and fixed their tents, on the bank of the river which is called the Seine ^m, near the city which is called Rouen ⁿ: there also was a mart.

[12] And there resting some courses of days, they began again to proceed, Thence to Lucca, where the parent dies. and thus there sought many oratories of the Saints, which were convenient for them, by praying. And thus forward, gradually traversing in part the district of Tortona ^o, they arrived. And when, proceeding, they had come to the city which is called Lucca, St. Willibald and blessed Wunebald led their father in the company of the journey alike with them. And straightway there he was seized by a sudden infirmity of body, so that, past intervals of time being nearly [*], now the day of his departure was at hand. And the gravity of the sickness prevailing in him, his weary and cold limbs of body now wasted away; and thus he exhaled the last breath of his life [p]. And straightway those brothers, his sons, taking the lifeless body of their father with the affection of paternal piety, gracefully wrapped it, and buried it in the earth in the city of Lucca at St. Frigidian's [q]. There rests the body of their father. And forthwith they, proceeding, until through the vast lands of Italy swiftly, through the hollows of the valleys, through the steeps of the mountains, through the plains of the fields, to the arduous heights of the Alps, ascending with a pedestrian step directed their way on high.

[13] And when, the summits of the Alps being surveyed [r], and the icy whirlwind of the cloudy snows, by the aid of the fostering God, and the support of the Saints, with the clientele of all their fellow-tribesmen, and all the company of colleagues, Staying at Rome he is seized by a fever; all safe escaped the timid craftinesses of the soldiers; forthwith they came to the illustrious thresholds, and sought the excellent protections of Peter the Prince of the Apostles, and there rendered immense and grateful thanks to almighty God; that, the great crises of the sea being crossed, and the various ignominies of the pilgrimage of foreigners, they deserved through all things prosperously to ascend the scholastic ladder [], and to go to and behold the illustrious Basilica of St. Peter. Then those two brothers stayed there from the nativity of St. Martin up to another solemnity of Easter []. And meanwhile, while that cold and frugal winter passed by, and the vernal seed now pressing on was at hand, and the Paschal season shone and irradiated through the whole world, there the two brothers led the happy life of monasterial discipline, under the governance of the sacred law. Then also, the reckoning of the days decreasing, and the heat of summer increasing [*], which is wont to be the foreboding of a future fever, they were straightway seized with a great trouble of body, so that, keenly panting, feverish, and so often growing cold with chill, so often burning with heat, a fierce plague was diffused through their limbs, and so ensnared and held, and constrained by a great near ruin of death, they were wearied by the fever, that scarcely now in them did the breath of life, flitting through the weary limbs of the ailing, move about. But yet the indefatigable providence of paternal piety deigned to take counsel for its own and to succor them, so that one of the two had one week, and the other one, for the relief of ministering

them by turns. And yet, so far as the infirmity of body could permit [*], they did not recede from the norm of the sacred institution, but the more earnestly persevering clung to the study of the sacred reading, according to the voice of Truth, saying: But he who shall have persevered unto the end, this one shall be saved.

[14] Restored to himself, he thinks of Jerusalem. After that illustrious and famous cross-worshiper, with great intention of mind and contemplation of heart, hastened, with provident circumspection, to the supernal speculation of the inner life, and, panting for the virtues of a loftier and more rigid life, now desired, longing, not the level, but the narrow way of a more austere life through the norm of the monastic life, and desired now to go to a greater ignorance of pilgrimage than that was in which he then seemed to stand. Then that strenuous man, by the counsel of his friends, and the leave of his fellow-tribesmen being asked, begged that they would deign to follow him with the help of their prayers; that by safe courses of the journey he might, through their pious protections of prayers, possibly be able to traverse and behold the walls of the delightful and desirable city of Jerusalem.

ANNOTATIONS.

p. Not on the seventh of the Ides, or the seventh of February, on which day St. Richard is venerated, for in the very year in which the pilgrimage was begun, namely 720, the sons had already come to Rome before the nativity of St. Martin, as we have shown elsewhere.

q. Of Frigidian or Frigdian. So it should be read; not of Priscian, as it is in the second life. Mabillon adds that there still exists that basilica of St. Frigidian or Frigdian, ninth Bishop of Lucca; once indeed placed outside, now within the walls of the city, which is subject to the Lateran congregation; in which is seen the tomb of St. Richard (so they call the father of St. Willibald) with an epitaph made by posterity. See this in Surius, Baronius, and Henschenius in the cited place.

r. These things would be better placed a little above, for to those going from Lucca to Rome the Alps do not lie in the way to be surveyed, nor even the Apennine.

* perhaps inserted.

* elsewhere: many.

* that is, of the world.

* perhaps "quickly."

* he means Rome.

* or not "of Easter"?

* that is, by heat.

* to permit.

CHAPTER II.

The departure from Rome to Naples; thence through Calabria and Sicily into Asia, and at last through Cyprus to Jerusalem.

Setting sail from Naples, And when the solemnities of the Paschal Lord's Day were passed, the nimble band [] raised itself with his two companions, and they began to proceed. And as they proceeded, they came up to the city Daterina ^a in the East, and there they stayed two days. And thence proceeding they came to the city of Gaeta, which stands on the shore of the sea. And there then, ascending into a ship, they crossed over to Naples. And there, the ship in which they were proceeding being left, they stayed there two weeks. These cities belong to the Romans. They are in the territory of Benevento ^b, but yet they are subject to the Romans. And straightway, as the divine piety is wont incessantly to act, that it may deign to fulfill the vowed desires of its servants, they found there a ship from Egypt, and, ascending into it, they sailed into the land of Calabria, into Calabria, to the city which is called Reggio. And there staying two days, they raised themselves, and came into the island of Sicily, in which is the city of Catania, where rests the body of the holy virgin Agatha. And there is Mount Etna, which, when it happens, for certain matters, that that fire is willing to spread itself over the region, then the citizens quickly take the veil of St. Agatha, and set it against the fire, and it ceases. Sicily, There they were three weeks. And thence sailing, they came across the Adriatic sea to the city of Monemvasia, in the Slavonic land. And thence sailing into the island by name Cos, they left the Corinthians on the left hand. And thence sailing into the island of Samos. And thence sailing into Asia, to the city of Ephesus, one mile from the sea. and thence sails to Ephesus: And thence they walked to that place where the seven sleepers rest. And thence they walked to St. John the Evangelist, in a beautiful place near Ephesus. And thence they walked two miles by the sea to a great village which is called Figila []. There they were one day. And, bread being sought, they went there to a fountain in the middle of the village, and, sitting there upon the edge, they dipped the bread in the water; and thus they ate.

[16] then into Cyprus, And thence walking by the sea, they came to the city of Strobolus, on a high mountain. And thence they went to the place which is called Patara, and there they tarried until the horrid cold of the icy winter should pass. And afterward then they, sailing, came to the city which is called Miletus. That was once to perish from the waters. There sat two solitaries, on a pillar ^c, that is, built and secured with a great wall of stones, very high, that the water could not harm them. And there they were constrained by the sharp asperity of hunger, so that, torn within by fasting, they feared the deadly day of death was now imminent. But the almighty shepherd of the peoples deigned to furnish food to his own poor. And thence sailing they came into the island of Cyprus, which is between the Greeks and the Saracens, to the city of Paphos, and there they were a week after the circuit of a year. And thence they went to the city of Constantia ^d, where rests St. Epiphanius, and there they tarried until after the nativity of John the Baptist. And thence sailing they came into the region of the Saracens, into the city of Tharratas, Tharratas, by the sea. And thence they walked about nine or twelve miles to the fort which is called Arche [*], where there was a Bishop of the Greek nation, and there they had a litany according to their custom. And thence proceeding they walked to the city which is called Emesa, Emesa. twelve miles. There is a great church, which St. Helena made, in honor of St. John the Baptist, and his head was there for a long time, that is in Syria.

[17] Then there were with St. Willibald seven of his fellow-tribesmen, and he himself was the eighth. And straightway the pagan Saracens, finding that strangers and unknown men had come thither, Imprisoned with his companions, he is kindly treated by a merchant, took them, and held them captive, because they did not know from what region they were, but thought them to be spies. And they led them captive to a certain rich old man, that he might see and know whence they were. And that old man asked them whence they were, or on what embassy they were engaged. Then they, answering, from the beginning intimated to him the whole cause of their journey. And that old man, answering, said: I have often seen men coming hither, fellow-tribesmen of these, from those parts of the earth: they seek no evils, but desire to fulfill the law of their God ^e. Then thence they, proceeding, came to the palace, to ask them a way to cross to Jerusalem. And when they were in prison, straightway by the wonderful dispensation of almighty God, who, pious everywhere, deigned to protect his own with his shield among darts and torments, among barbarians and warriors, among prisons and bands of the stubborn, and to keep them safe; there was one man there, a merchant, who wished to redeem them for his alms and the redemption of his soul, and to snatch them from prison, that they might be free to go as they willed, and could not. But on the contrary daily he sent them dinner and supper; and on the fourth day of the week, and on the sabbath, he sent his son into the prison, and led them out to the bath, and again brought them in. And on the Lord's Day he led them to the church through the mart, that of the wares for sale they might see what delighted their mind, and he then at his own price might obtain for them whatever was taken by their mind. Those curious citizens of the cities were continually wont to come thither, to behold them, because they were young and comely, and were well clad in the adornment of their garments.

[18] Then, while they tarried in prison, one man from Spain came; and he spoke with them in prison, and by the help of a certain Spaniard he is freed. and diligently inquired of them who they were or whence they were. And they told everything in order concerning their journey. This Spanish man had a brother in the palace of the King, who was chamberlain of the King of the Saracens. And when that governor, who had put them in prison, had come to the palace; that

Spaniard, who spoke with them in prison, and that sailor, in whose ship they were when they went from Cyprus, all came together before the King of the Saracens, whose name was Mirmumni. And when the discussion arose about their cause, that Spanish man intimated to his brother all the things which they had said in prison, and asked him to indicate it to the King, and to be a protection to them. After this therefore, when all these three came together before the King, and, intimating everything in order, indicated to him about their cause, he asked whence they were. And they said: From the western region, where the sun has its setting, these men have come. But we know no land beyond them, and nothing but water. And that King answered them, saying: Why ought we to punish them? they have no sin against us. Give them a way, and let them depart. The other men who were held in prison had to pay a tribute of one tremissis. But to them it was remitted. Those of Cyprus sat between the Greeks and the Saracens, and had been unarmed; because there was the greatest peace and reconciliation between the Saracens and the Greeks. Great and wide was that region, and there were the dioceses of twelve Bishops there.

[19] He seeks Damascus, And straightway they, with leave raising themselves, proceeded to Damascus, a hundred miles. There indeed rests St. Ananias. That is in the land of Syria. There they were one week, and thence it is two miles ^f. There was a church; and in that place first Paul was converted, and the Lord said to him: Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? and the rest. And they, praying, walked into Galilee, to that place where Gabriel first came to holy Mary: Hail, full of grace, and the rest: there is now a church. And that village, in which is the church, is Nazareth. Nazareth, That church the Christian men often bought from the pagans, when they wished to destroy it. And there, commending themselves to the Lord, they walked thence, and came to the village of Cana, where the Lord turned water into wine. Cana of Galilee, There is a great church, and in that church stands an altar ^g made of one of the six water-pots which the Lord ordered to be filled with water, and they were turned into wine: and of that wine they communicated. One day they were there. And thence proceeding they came to Mount Tabor, Tabor, where the Lord was transfigured. There is now a monastery of monks, and this church is consecrated to the Lord, and to Moses and Elias. And those citizens name that place Agemons ^h.

[20] Tiberias, But there praying they proceeded thence to the city which is called Tiberias. It stands on the shore of the sea, where the Lord walked over with dry feet, and Peter, walking upon the waves, was sunk. There are many churches and a synagogue of the Jews: but also a church of great honor. There they were some days, and there the Jordan passes through the middle of the sea. And thence they went round the sea, and proceeded by the village of Magdalene. And they came to that village Capernaum where the Lord raised up the daughter of the ruler. Capernaum There was a house and a great wall. And thus those men said that Zebedee with his sons, John and James, had been placed there. And thence they proceeded to Bethsaida ^k: thence were Peter and Andrew; there is now a church, where formerly was their house. And staying there one night, in the morning they proceeded to Corozain, where the Lord cured the demoniacs, and sent the devil into the herd of swine. There was a church of the Christians. And there praying, they proceeded thence, and came to the place where two fountains flow from the earth, the fountains of the Jordan, Jor and Dan; and then, coming down from the mountain, and collected into one they make the Jordan. And there they tarried one night between the two fountains: and the shepherds gave us sour milk to drink; and there are wonderful herds created with long back, short legs, great horns [*]; all are of one color. There are deep marshy pools ^l, and when in the summer season the great heat of the sun is wont to come from heaven to earth, those herds, lifting themselves, go to the marsh, and plunge themselves in with the whole body, except only the head.

[21] And thence proceeding to Caesarea, where was a church and a multitude of Christians. Caesarea Again they proceeded to the monastery ^m of St. John the Baptist, and there were about twenty monks. One night they stayed there. And thence they went about one mile to the Jordan, where the Lord was baptized. There is now a church raised up on stone columns, and beneath the church is now dry land, where the Lord was baptized. In that very place they now also baptize. There stands a wooden cross in the middle, and a small derivation of water stands there; and one small rope, extended over the Jordan, is fixed on this side and on that. Then on the solemnity of the Epiphany the sick and ailing, coming, held themselves by the rope, and thus are plunged into the water. But also the women who are barren, coming there, deserve the grace of the Lord. Our Bishop Willibald bathed himself there in the Jordan. One day they were there. And they proceeded thence, and came to Gilgal. Gilgal, There it is within five miles; and there are twelve stones there in the church: it is of wood and not great. There are twelve stones which the children of Israel took from the Jordan, and carried to Gilgal about one mile [*], and set for a testimony of their crossing over. And then praying there they proceeded to Jericho, about seven miles from the Jordan. five miles to Jericho, There burst forth a fountain, which was barren, at the foot ⁿ of the mountain, and was useless to men, before the Prophet Elisha came and sanctified it. And afterward it flowed forth, and all that city divided it into fields, into gardens, and into everything, wherever it was necessary for them, and everything which that fountain moistens, by growing profits to salvation on account of the sanctification of the Prophet Elisha.

[22] And they proceeded to the monastery of St. Eustochium []. But it stands in the middle of a field between Jericho and Jerusalem. the monastery of St. Eustochium, And thence he came to Jerusalem, to that place where the holy Cross of the Lord had been found. There is now a church in that place which is called the place of Calvary. And this was formerly outside Jerusalem. But blessed Helena, when she found the Cross, placed that place within Jerusalem. Jerusalem. And there stand three wooden crosses ^o outside on the eastern side of the church near the wall, in memory of the holy Cross of the Lord, and of the others who were crucified with him. They are not within the church, but stand outside under a roof outside the church. the sepulcher of the Lord. And there beside is that garden in which was the sepulcher of the Savior. That sepulcher had been cut out of the rock; and that rock stands above the earth, and is square [] at the bottom, and slender at the top. And there stands now on the summit of that sepulcher a cross; and there above is now built a wonderful house; and on the eastern side, in that rock of the sepulcher, is a door, through which men enter into the sepulcher to pray. And there is within a couch, on which the body of the Lord lay.

[23] At Jerusalem he falls sick. And there stand on the couch fifteen [p] golden bowls with oil burning day and night. That couch, on which the body of the Lord lay, stands on the northern side, within in the rock of the sepulcher; and it is on a man's right hand, when he enters into the sepulcher to pray. And there before the door of the sepulcher lies that great square stone, in likeness of the former stone, which the Angel rolled away from the mouth of the monument. And thither came our Bishop on the festivity of St. Martin. And as soon as he came thither, he began to be sick, and lay ill up to the week before the Nativity of the Lord. And then, when he was somewhat recovered, and had better of his infirmity, he rises and went to that church which is called holy Sion: it stands in the middle of Jerusalem. There indeed praying, he went thence into the porch of Solomon. There is a pool, and there lie the sick, awaiting the moving of the water, when the Angel should come and move the water: and then whoever first descended into it would be healed. Where the Lord said to the paralytic: Rise, take up thy bed and walk.

[24] Concerning the sacred body of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Likewise he himself [q] said that before the gate of the city there stood a great column, and on the summit of the column stands a cross, for a sign and for a memorial, where the Jews wished to take away the body of holy Mary. When the eleven Apostles, taking up the body of holy Mary, were carrying it from Jerusalem: straightway when they came to the gate of the city, the Jews wished to seize it; and straightway those men who stretched out their arms to the bier, and tried to take it, their arms being held back, as if glued, clung to the bier, and could not move themselves, before by the grace of God and the petition of the Apostles they were again loosed; and then they let them go. Holy Mary in that place in the middle of Jerusalem departed from this world, which is called holy Sion. And then the eleven Apostles carried her as I said before: and then the Angels, coming, took her from the hands of the Apostles, and carried her into paradise [r].

to advise the curious investigators of these matters, that they consult moreover other hodoeporica of this kind and descriptions of the Holy Land, from which I fear that they will combine the relations of the several aptly enough. Nor indeed is it of great interest to discuss them here more laboriously, since our Acts easily stand, although, by the fault either of the writer herself or of the copyists, the names of places are deformed, and the series of the journeys not rightly enough ordered to the geographical level. The things which more properly pertain to the present purpose we have thence transferred into the preliminary commentary. And let it suffice to have advised these things in passing and once for all, lest at each place, Monemvasia, the Slavonic land, Figila, Strobolus, Patara, Miletus, Stulite, Tharratas, Arche, and names of that kind, we be compelled to stick so long that our notes be much longer than the text of the life itself.

p. Mabillon observed that only twelve are numbered by Adamnan book 1, chapter 2, and from him by Bede, in the book on the holy places chapter 2.

q. Understand of St. Willibald, namely from whose narration the Nun wrote her account.

r. The Anonymous narrates these things otherwise, who wished above to be wiser than the Nun, as see number 12.

* Or "trainer"?

* elsewhere: Sigila.

* elsewhere: Arahe.

* perhaps "erect."

* or "journey."

* Mabillon.

* Eustachius.

* that is, "square."

CHAPTER III.

The continuation of the pilgrimage, the loss and recovery of sight, various perils, the stay at Constantinople, the return into Italy, and the ten years' monastic life at Monte Cassino.

He goes to the valley of Josaphat, And thence descending, the Bishop St. Willibald came to the valley of Josaphat. It stands near the city of Jerusalem on the eastern side. And in that valley is the church of holy Mary, and in the church is her sepulcher, not that her body rests there, but for a memorial of her. And there praying he ascended into the Mount of Olives, which is there near the valley on the eastern side. That valley is between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. the Mount of Olives. And on the Mount of Olives is now a church, where the Lord before his passion prayed, and said to his disciples: Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation. And thence he came to the church on that same mount, where the Lord ascended into heaven. And in the middle of the church stands something made of bronze, sculptured and beautiful, and it is square. It stands in the middle of the church, where the Lord ascended into heaven. And in the middle of the bronze is made a quadrangle, and there is in glass a little lamp ^a, and about the little lamp is that glass closed all round. And it is closed for this, that it may always burn in rain and in sun. That church is open above, and without a roof; and there stand two columns within the church against the northern wall, and against the wall of the southern side. They are there in memory and in sign of the two men who said: Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye looking into heaven? And that man who can there creep between the wall and the columns, is free from his sins.

[26] Bethlehem Thence he came to the place where the Angel appeared to the shepherds, saying: I announce to you great joy. And thence he came to Bethlehem, where our Lord was born, seven miles [*] from Jerusalem. That place where Christ was born was once a cave under the earth, and now is a quadrangular house, cut out of the rock, and the earth round about is dug out from the pit, and thence cast forth. And there above is now built a church. And where the Lord was born, there stands now above an altar, and another smaller altar is made for this, that they, when they wish there within to celebrate Mass in the cave, taking that smaller altar, may carry it there within at the time when they celebrate Mass, and again lift it out. That church, where the Lord was born, which stands there above, is built in the likeness of a cross, a glorious house. And there worshiping they proceeded thence, and came to a great village which is called Tekoa, Tekoa, to that place where the infants were once slain by Herod. There is now a church, and there rests one of the Prophets. And then he came thence into the valley Laura ^b. There is a great monastery, and there sat an Abbot at the monastery, the Laura of St. Sabas. and the doorkeeper of the church, and many other monks, who are there in that monastery, and sit around the valley in the sloping rock of the mountain. And they have cut out in the rocky rock of the mountain small receptacles, here and there. That mountain is in a ring around the valley. And the monastery is built in the valley, and there rests St. Sabas.

[27] Thence he came to the place where Philip baptized the eunuch. His sight lost at Gaza And there is a small church in a great valley between Bethlehem and Gaza. And thence they went to Gaza. And there praying they went to St. Matthias: there is great glory on the Lord's Day. And when the sacred solemnities of the Masses had been celebrated, our Bishop St. Willibald, standing there at Mass, lost the light of his eyes, and was blind for two months. And thence they went to St. Zachary the Prophet, not the father of John, but another Prophet. And thence then he went to the fort Aframia ^c: there rest three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with their wives. And thence he came again to Jerusalem; it is recovered at Jerusalem; and entering into the church where the holy Cross of the Lord had been found, his eyes were opened, and he received sight. And there staying some time, he proceeded thence, and came to the place Diospolis ^d, to St. George, which is ten miles from Jerusalem. He proceeds to Diospolis, etc. And thence he came to another village, there is a church of St. Peter the Apostle. And there St. Peter raised up the widow, who was named Dorcas. And there praying he proceeded, and came to the Adriatic sea ^e, far from Jerusalem, to the city of Tyre and Sidon. Six miles are between those two cities, and they stand on the shore of the sea.

[28] And thence he proceeds over Mount Lebanon, and came to Damascus. At Ptolemais he falls sick. And thence he came to Caesarea, and thence he came a third time to Jerusalem, and there he was the whole winter. And thence he came to the city Ptolemais ^f, it is on the extreme borders of Syria, and there he was the whole time of Lent: he was sick, and could not proceed. His companions, who were in his company, proceeded to the King of the Saracens, by name Myrmunni, and wished to ask a letter for them, that they might proceed, and could not find the King, because he himself had fled outside beyond that region, the sickness and disaster which was over that region. And when they did not find the King, they came again, and there tarrying together at Ptolemais, until it was one week before Easter. Then they came again to Emesa, and asked that governor to give them a letter. And he gave a letter to two and two: because they could not proceed together, but two and two, because thus more easily they could obtain provisions.

[29] He comes to Jerusalem a fourth time, And then they came to Damascus, and thence they came a fourth time to Jerusalem; there staying some time, they came to the city Sebaste ^g, which formerly was called Samaria. But after it had been broken down, they built again a fort where formerly was Samaria, and called that fort Sebaste. And there now rest St. John the Baptist, and Abdias, and Elisha the Prophet. thence to Sebaste. And there is that well near the fort, where the Lord asked to drink water from the Samaritan woman, and over that well is now a church: and that mountain is there, on which the Samaritans worshiped. And that woman said to the Lord: Our fathers worshiped on this mount, and thou sayest that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship. Then they worshiping proceeded over the region of the Samaritans to the extreme borders of them, into one great village, there they were one night.

And thence they proceeded over a great field full of olives, and there proceeded with them an Ethiopian with two camels and one mule, who was leading a woman through a wood. And when they had proceeded, a lion met them, which, roaring with open mouth and fierce, desiring to seize and devour them, greatly threatened them. Then that Ethiopian said to them, Fear not, but let us proceed forward. And straightway they, proceeding, drew near to it. But it quickly, by the aid of almighty God who sits on high, turned aside to another part, and let them go, that they might proceed. And thus they said that afterward, as they proceeded thence, they heard that lion give a great roar, so that, fierce, it devoured many of those men who went to gather the fruits of the olives. Thence proceeding they came to the city which is called Thalamartha on the shore of the sea. Thalamartha, And thence walking they came to the head of Lebanon, where that mountain goes into the sea, and is a promontory. There is the tower of Lebanon. And whoever comes thither, not having a paper ^h, does not pass the place, because that place is under guard, and is a barrier; but if he comes without a paper, the citizens will take him, and send him to the city of Tyre. Tyre, That mountain is between Tyre and Thalamartha. And then the Bishop came again to Tyre.

[31] where he is in peril. The holy Bishop Willibald, before, when he was at Jerusalem, bought himself balsam, and filled one munerba ⁱ. He took therefore one munerba, which was hollow, and had flax. That he filled with petroleum, and put it within the munerba, and cut that small reed of the munerba, so that at the rim both were plainly alike, and thus he closed the mouth of the munerba. And when they came to the city of Tyre, those citizens of the city, taking them, constrained them, and searched all their baggage, that they might find whether they had anything hidden; and if they had found anything, they would quickly punish and martyr them. And when, searching all things, they had found nothing, except one munerba which St. Willibald had, opening it, they smelled what was within. And when they smelled the petroleum, which was within the reed above, and did not find the balsam, which was within the munerba beneath the petroleum: and so they let them go. Many days they were there awaiting a ship, when it should be made ready.

[32] And afterward then they sailed the whole winter from the birthday of St. Andrew the Apostle up to one week before Easter. From Constantinople he returns to Sicily: Then they came to Constantinople, where rest three Saints, Andrew, and Timothy, and Luke the Evangelist in one altar. And that John, the golden mouth, rests there before the altar, where the presbyter stands when he makes Mass: there is his sepulcher. There was our Bishop two years: and he had receptacles within the church, that daily he might behold where the Saints rested. And thence he came to the city of Nicaea, where once Caesar Constantine held a synod. And there were at the synod three hundred and eighteen Bishops. All these held the synod there. And that church is a daughter of that church on the Mount of Olives, where the Lord ascended into heaven. And in that church were images of the Bishops who were in the synod. And St. Willibald proceeded thither from Constantinople, that he might see how that church was made, and again returned to Constantinople. And after two years they sailed thence with the messengers of the Pope and of Caesar into the island of Sicily, to the city of Syracuse. And thence he came to the city of Catania, and came to the city of Reggio in Calabria. And thence they sailed to the island of Vulcano ^k. There is the hell of Theodoric.

[33] And when they had come thither, they descended from the ship, he visits the hell of Theodoric, that they might see what that hell was like. And straightway St. Willibald, wishing more curiously to see what that hell was like within, wished to ascend to the summit of the mountain, where the hell was beneath, and could not; because the ashes rising from the foul Tartarus up to the edge, heaped together, lay there. And like snow, when it snows from heaven, and is wont to heap up the white and snowy falling flakes from the airy citadels of the ether; so the ashes, heaped up on the peak of the mountain, lay, and prevented the ascent of St. Willibald. But yet he saw the foul and terrible and horrid flame belching forth breaking out of the pit, like thundering thunder: thus a great flame, and the vapor of smoke ascending very high on high, he terribly beheld. That pumice, which writers are wont to have, he saw ascending from that hell, and cast forth with the flame, and thrown into the sea, and then again cast from the sea onto the dry land: and men take it, and lead it away. And straightway after these things a horrible and terrible fire burns with flame-vomiting and smoke-stinking vapors, wonderful. The spectacle of the visions ^m being explored, thence raising themselves they sailed to the church of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, which stands on the shore of the sea, and they came to those mountains which are called the Didymi. And thence sailing they came to the city which is called Naples, he passes to Naples, there they were many days. There is the see of the Archbishop, and his great dignity is held there. And there is near a fort ⁿ, where rests St. Severinus.

[34] And thence he came to the city of Capua. And that Archbishop sent him to another city, to another Bishop ^o. And that Bishop sent him to the city of Tyana, thence to Capua, to that Bishop. And that Bishop sent him to St. Benedict. Then it was autumn, when he came to St. Benedict. And then it was seven years since he began to depart from Rome: and altogether it was ten years [p] since he departed from his own country. and at last to Monte Cassino. And when the venerable man St. Willibald and Diapertus, who went with him through all, had come to St. Benedict, they found there only a few monks, and an Abbot, by name Petronax. Straightway he, with great governance of mind, and genius of doctrines, admonishing the happy [*] fellowship of the brethren with diligent disputations, taught them not only by words, but by graceful manners in visiting, and afforded the form of right constitution, and the norm of the cenobitic life, by showing it in himself; so that he drew the love or fear of all toward himself by provoking it. And in the first year, coming thither, he was chamberlain of the church, and in the second he was dean in the monastery. And afterward for eight years he was porter in two monasteries. Four years he was porter in that monastery which stands above on the very high mountain, and the other four he was in the other monastery which stands below near the river Rapido.

ANNOTATIONS.

p. The place was restored from Gretser, in Mabillon; namely since at that time St. Willibald is supposed to have completed ten years of pilgrimage. In the edition of Canisius was read "and there were of all and years." But that those years cannot be taken as altogether completed, the chronological order distributed above in the commentary into its years not idly teaches, from which it is established that at the end of spring of the year 720 the Saint departed from his country, but in the year 729 betook himself to Monte Cassino, when it was autumn, so that there do not seem able to be found ten years altogether, but about nine and a half: which are not wont to be taken so scrupulously by historians and Legendaries, especially by this our Nun.

* elsewhere: VI.

* happy.

CHAPTER IV.

The return to Rome, the sending by Gregory III to St. Boniface in Germany, the episcopate of Eichstätt, the institution of the monastery, and the author's epilogue.

And so, the interval of ten years ^a being then passed, Having stayed a decade at Cassino, he seeks Rome, that venerable man St. Willibald tried in every way, so far as it could be, to observe the sacred institution of the regular life of St. Benedict, which by the help of almighty God, and the aid of those whom over the long stadia of places, and over the vast ways of the borders, for the redemption of his soul and for the help of the present life he sought. And not only he himself, but he led others also with him by going before in the venerable footsteps of the regular life. After this therefore one presbyter, who, coming from Spain, was staying at St. Benedict's, asked the Abbot Petronax leave to proceed to Rome. And straightway he, leave being asked, begged St. Willibald to proceed with him, and to lead him to St. Peter. And he straightway promised consent or effect to his petitions.

[36] And when they proceeded, they came to Rome, and forthwith entering the basilica of St. Peter, where, these things being narrated to the Pontiff Gregory, they sought the sacred protections of the heavenly Key-bearer, and commended themselves to his pious

patronage of prayers. Then that holy Pontiff of the Apostolic see, Gregory III, learning that the venerable man St. Willibald was there, commanded him to come to him. And when he had come thither to the holy Pontiff of the supreme priesthood, straightway with face bowed to the earth he turned himself, and saluted him: and forthwith that pious watchman of the peoples, with pious interchanges of words, began to investigate from him the order of his journey; how he traversed the reckoning of seven years, testing it in the foreign borders of the lands, or how through many spaces of time he escaped the pernicious depravities of the pagans by penetrating them, he diligently inquired of him.

[37] about his seven-year pilgrimage, And straightway then that nimble servant of Christ, to the glorious governor of the nations, with wise industry of words, humbly setting forth, intimated the series of his journey in order, how [*] he had passed through many mansions of this world by migrating, and how he perambulated the fostering natal place of the coming of the most high Framer of the ethers in Bethlehem by adoring, by asking help, and by surveying it. And no less he visited another land, that of his baptism, in the Jordan, by beholding and bathing himself. But also in Jerusalem and thus in holy Sion, where the holy Savior of the ages, hung upon the Cross, was slain and buried. And afterward on the Mount of Olives he ascended into heaven. Thither four times coming he prayed, and commended himself to the Lord. All these things he explained by intimating them to him.

[38] Destined as a helper to St. Boniface, After they, talking among themselves with delightful discourses of words, revolved all these things, that holy and supreme Apostolic Pontiff, with sober indications of words, testifying intimated to blessed Willibald that St. Boniface was asking him to have St. Willibald himself brought and made to come from St. Benedict's: and thus he should then send him briefly [*], and make him a cooperator to him for instructing the nation of the Franks ^b. And when the Apostolic Lord Pope Gregory III had indicated to St. Willibald those vowed desires of the wishes of St. Boniface, he approached him with placid oracles of exhortations by asking or commanding, that he should come to St. Boniface. Then that renowned athlete of Christ St. Willibald promised diligently to perform briefly the effect or obedience to the petitions of the Pontiff, and at the same time to his commands; if, according to the discipline of the regular life, he should ask leave for him from his Abbot. And straightway that supreme Pontiff of holy authority answered, and commanded him, secure without ambiguity of solicitude, to proceed obediently with the leave of his command, saying: For if it please me to send that same Abbot Petronax anywhere, certainly he has neither leave nor power to gainsay me. And forthwith then St. Willibald answered his consent to the sacred exhortations of words, and that he showed himself spontaneously. And not only thither, but everywhere in every place of the lands, wheresoever he should deign to send him, he promised to proceed devoutly without slothful difference, according to the judgment of his will.

[39] and having set out into Germany After this then, the tales of the oracles being finished, St. Willibald proceeded thence at Easter, who had come thither on the nativity of St. Andrew; and Diapertus stayed at St. Benedict's. And he came to Lucca, where his father rested. And thence he came to the city of Pavia. And thence he came to the city of Brescia. And thence he came to the place which is called Carinthia [*]. And then he came to Duke Odilo, and there he was one week. And thence he came to Suitgar ^c, and there he was one week. And thence Suitgar and St. Willibald proceeded to Linthrat to St. Boniface. And St. Boniface sent them to Eichstätt, that he might see how it pleased him. That region of Eichstätt Suitgar handed over to St. Boniface, for the redemption of his soul. And St. Boniface handed over to our Bishop St. Willibald that region, which was still wholly laid waste, so that there was no house there, except that church of holy Mary, which still stands there, smaller than the other church which afterward blessed Willibald built there.

[40] And when the two stayed there together at Eichstätt for some interval of time, St. Willibald and Suitgar, he is set over the church of Eichstätt, and there chose by exploring a fostering place of dwelling: afterward again they proceeded to St. Boniface at Freising. And there they were with him until all together came again to Eichstätt. And there then St. Boniface consecrated St. Willibald to the grade of priestly dignity. On the very day on which our Bishop St. Willibald was consecrated to the presbyterate, it was the eleventh of the Kalends of August, on the birthday of St. Mary Magdalene ^d and of St. Apollinaris.

[41] And after the circuit of one year had passed, St. Boniface commanded and he is consecrated Bishop, that he should come to him in Thuringia. And straightway that venerable man of God St. Willibald, according to the command of St. Boniface, came into Thuringia, and had the lodging of hospitality in the house of his brother Wunebald: for he had not seen him before, for the space of eight years and a half nine ^e, from the time when he set out from Rome. And now then, seeing each other, they rejoiced; and both were glad of their meeting. It was the autumnal season of the year, when St. Willibald came into Thuringia. And straightway after he came thither, St. Boniface the Archbishop, and Burchard and Wizo, by ordaining, consecrated him to the sacred authority of the episcopate. But there then, when he had been enriched with the highest honor of the priestly fillet, he was one week, and afterward returned again to the predestined place of his dwelling.

[42] St. Willibald, when he was consecrated to the episcopate, being 41 years old. had forty-one years. And then it was the autumnal season, about that very hour three weeks before the birthday of St. Martin, he was consecrated to the episcopate, in the place which is called Sallpurg. The prolonged course of the journey of St. Willibald being passed and finished, which that sagacious man went through in surveying in the truce of seven years ^f, those things now found, and searched out according to the rite, we tried to explain and intimate: and not found from another, but heard from himself, and dictated from his mouth, we wrote down in the monastery of Heidenheim, his deacons being witnesses to me, and some others of his younger men. Therefore I say this, that no one may say again that this was frivolous.

[43] After he came from Rome into this province, He institutes a monastery in his church, with three fellow-tribesmen, then at the age of forty-one, already skilled and aged, he received the grade of the sacred episcopate, and in the place which is called Eichstätt began to build a monastery, and there practiced the sacred discipline of the monasterial life, in imitation of his former life, which by seeing at St. Benedict's, and not only there, but also in many dwellings of monks, which he himself, diligent and wise, searched out by exploring through the vast fields, according to their norm, showing in himself a conversation of venerable life. And with few workmen there as yet he brought the broad and spacious field of the divine harvest, by sowing the sacred seeds of the supernal Word, up to the harvest. And just as the most prudent bees, which through the purple thickets of violets, and through the tawny little flowers of the foliage, and through the fragrant blossoms of the olives, straining out the deadly poison, and sipping the sweetest juice of nectar, and thus, laden in their legs and their whole body, hasten by carrying it to the hives: so also that blessed peer Willibald, in all things which, surveying widely, he beheld with his own eyes, by choosing the best, seized, and by seizing afforded to all the phalanxes of his subjects a proffered norm of the zeal of right conversation by living well, in word, in the obstacles of vices, in goodness, in patience, in abstinence skilled.

[44] to whom disciples flow together But quickly after that strenuous athlete of the fostering God began to inhabit the monasterial place of his dwelling, straightway from every side, from those provinces of the regions, and no less from the far-off borders of the regions, they began to flow together to the most salubrious teaching of his wisdom, whom he in a manner all, as a hen which is wont to nourish her chicks by ruling them under her wings, so also that holy father Willibald, as a mother, protecting many of the Church through the age with the shield of his piety, brought as adopted sons to the Lord. And just as a foster-parent ^h is wont to nourish his infants, so he too, nourishing them and gently suckling them with the milk of divine piety, fed them, until they, cherished, and instructed from infancy, and elegantly taught, came to the youthful puberty of a fair nature. And now, according to the example of their preceding master, following the holy gifts of his teachings, they shine with many helps ⁱ.

[45] The Epilogue, Behold that St. Willibald, who with few first helps of attendants had begun the exercise of holy conversation, at last with innumerable magistracies of the court, warring in manifold ways, acquired for the Lord a worthy people. And widely for him through the vast province of the Bavarians, by driving the plows, by sowing the seeds, by reaping the harvest, with many workmen of the reapers, through the glassy fields of the Bavarians, with churches and presbyters, and the relics of the Saints, he culls worthy gifts for the Lord. Thence now the antiphons crackle, thence the lessons resound, thence now the bright throng of believers holily make noise of the miracles of Christ, and, rejoicing, chatter the most famous proclamations of the Founder. What shall I now say of St. Willibald, my master, and your foster-child? Who was more excellent than he in piety, more excellent in humility, purer in patience, more rigid in continence, greater in meekness? To whom was he ever inferior in the solace of the sorrowful, and to whom inferior in the succor of the poor, or slower in the clothing of the naked? All these things are said not for boasting, but as I saw and heard, the deeds of God's grace, not of man: because according to the Apostle, he who glories, let him glory in the Lord. Amen.

ANNOTATIONS.

nineteen. Worse does the Anonymous solve the matter, when at number 19 he says the brother was not seen by St. Willibald for eight and a half years after they departed at Rome, unless with Gretser we suppose that St. Wunebald had set out to Monte Cassino, while his brother acted as a monk there, from which time the aforesaid eight years began to flow, which Le Cointe roundly admits at the year 742, number 13.

* read "of what sort."

* that is, "at once."

* elsewhere: Charta.

THE SECOND LIFE.

By an Anonymous author, very ancient. From the edition of Canisius.

Willibald, Bishop, at Eichstätt in Germany (S.)

BHL Number: 8933

BY AN ANONYMOUS AUTHOR.

CHAPTER I.

The birth of St. Willibald, his sickness in infancy, his progress in virtue and letters, and the journey to Rome undertaken.

The Prelate therefore ^a Willibald, like angelic chastity, shone forth born of the race of the English ^b. And when, a boy of excellent nature, with the greatest hope of his parents, he now completed his third year, English by origin, freed from sickness, he is consecrated to God. he suddenly wasted away with the troubles of diseases: the notable comeliness of his face, worn away with foul leanness, faded. His parents, wounded with grief, brought that which alone then remained, him scarcely drawing air with open mouth, to the church ^c; they set him before the adorable holy cross, and vowed that, if he should be restored to health, he should be devoted to the divine service. His pious vows straightway obtaining their effect, with health the former comeliness of his face returned to the boy, and, reconciled to complete soundness, he began to prevail with premature virtues.

[2] Instructed in letters and virtue in the monastery, With this omen therefore the parents, perceiving that God would work something great in a boy of so great a nature, were not wanting to themselves; but dedicated their son, scarcely five years old, to the monastic strictness at the monastery called Waltham, under the venerable abbot Egilward. Applied therefore to letters, he indulged not a moment of time in idleness, but soon, a most diligent Prelate, made his breast a cupboard of hagiography, and, that he might express Christ in all things, whatever of divine, whatever of the ecclesiastical law he perceived by reading, this he fulfilled by faithfully following it in manners and habit. Excelling therefore already most excellently in the several virtues, he so shone forth most perfect in Christ, that he thought of nothing but to be with Christ.

[3] he induces his father to go on pilgrimage, etc. Although therefore, himself now being denied, he had trodden the world both in mind and in habit; yet he feared that there was lacking to perfection this, that in his native soil the dignity of his kindred added somewhat of fame and honor to him, though unwilling; he had resolved to depart from his country, and, as unknown as needy, to go on pilgrimage for Christ. And lest he alone of his own should be enrolled in the warfare of Christ, he went to his father, by name Richard ^d, famous in race and possessions, and began to persuade him to the contempt of the world and to pilgrimage: who, when he objected to his son that it seemed to him most cruel, and altogether alien from humanity, to bereave his children, to widow his wife, to desolate the whole house; St. Willibald instilled into him that nothing was to be preferred to the divine love, that this cruelty for Christ was more humane than all piety, and that only the despisers of the world would be coheirs of Christ. Overcome at last by the truthful narration of his son, he promises that he will obey, and follow whithersoever he should be led by his dear pledge. The same happy ardor of St. Willibald had also kindled his brother Wunebald, the builder of the convent of Heidenheim, and future Abbot, and also the sister of both, the glory of virgins, Walburga ^e, and many not only of the same kindred, but also of the same country, that, the standard of the Cross being taken, naked they might fly forth to follow the King of glory.

[4] On the journey he buries his father at Lucca and falls sick at Rome. The year growing warm into summer, when, the winds being patient, the first faith smiled on the sea, the holy brothers Willibald and Wunebald, with their father Richard, and their sister Walburga, and not a few others, in whose breasts the same ardor burned, having boarded a ship, seize the desired journey, and, the winds happily following, put in at the bank of the river Seine, near the city which is called Rouen. Thence, making for Rome, they came to Lucca, a city of Tuscany, and there buried their father, loosed from the flesh, and having attained the rewards which by obeying his son he deserved, in the cemetery of St. Prescian ^f. Hence, coming to Rome long desired, with tearful devotion they besought pardon from the Princes of the Apostles; and there, visiting the places of the Saints situated in those parts, and daily sacrificing themselves to God on the altar of the heart, from the festivity of St. Martin up to Easter, they endured, burned by a cruel infirmity. Meanwhile, however, the holy brothers, by God's providence, obtained this solace, that when one, oppressed by disease, occupied his bed one week, the other, his languor being meanwhile mitigated, ministered to him as he lay. So, the graver languor occupying this one and the milder that one by turns, the holy brothers took care of themselves.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER II.

The whole pilgrimage to Jerusalem is described.

And when, by God's mercy, St. Willibald now flourished, completely reconciled to health, Our Saint made whole, proceeds to Jerusalem, out of love of the heavenly Jerusalem, he began to sigh for the earthly one, and to see the places marked by the footsteps of Christ. His brother Wunebald therefore and his sister Walburga being there dismissed, accompanied by two companions, himself the third, he sets out on the victorious journey. Coming therefore to Benevento ^a, where St. Bartholomew rests, they found an Egyptian ship put in. Benevento, Which having entered, they reached the port of Calabria called Reggio, the sails swelling with full bosom. Reggio, Thence crossing over into Sicily, they enter the city of Catania, notable for the body and patronage of the holy virgin Agatha, Catania, where Mount Etna, boiling up from the depth, is wont to cast forth globes of flames, and, fervid with glowing ash, to overspread the sky. To whose burning, often loosing and inflaming the neighboring places, the people of Catania oppose the veil of the sepulcher of the holy Virgin, and fear not to be harmed. Thence, the sepulcher of St. Lucy being also visited at Syracuse, a city of the same island, Syracuse, they again commit themselves to the sea, and, the islands of Cos and Samos being passed, they set their limbs, wasting with the brine, at Ephesus, a city of Asia. Where after, at the sepulcher of St. John the Evangelist, marveling at the manna bubbling up thence, they bedewed it with tears: after they commended themselves to the seven Sleepers and to Mary Magdalene ^b, resting in the same place: Ephesus after they cannot sufficiently marvel at the place on the top of the neighboring mountain, where the holy Evangelist was wont to pray, immune and secure from all rain and tempest, they came on foot to the village Sigila [*], distant two miles thence. There, bread being begged, refreshed by the fountain which bubbles up with waters clear to the bottom in the middle of the village, into which they dipped it; the high mountain of the city of Strobolus being passed, Patara, they crept to Patara, and there, the icy winter roughening the waves, they await the clemency of spring.

[6] Paphos, At last having entered a ship, they crossed over to the mount of the Galani ^c. Which being then stripped bare by the tempest of wars, they suffered cruel famine. Thence they put in at the island of Cyprus, situated between the Greeks and the Saracens [*], and, keeping the Paschal feast, which now was at hand, at the city of Paphos, the sun now revolved, they stayed three weeks in it. Thence going to Constantia, a city of the same island, Constantia, glorious for the miracles and body of the holy prelate Epiphanius, they kept there the nativity of St. John the Baptist. Thence through the city of the Saracens, called Tharratas, and the fort Arahe, they came to Edessa ^d of Phoenicia, magnificent for the relics of Thomas the Apostle, and the Epistle which the Savior wrote to King Abgar. He surveys Edessa, etc. Where now shines a church of wondrous work, which Queen Helena built, in honor of St. John the Baptist, whose head, translated thither from Jerusalem, long lay hidden in that same city.

[7] Captured by the Saracens, he is freed. But now St. Willibald, seven of his fellow-tribesmen accompanying him, himself was the eighth. The Saracens, seeing them dissonant in language, unknown in habit, said that they had come for the sake of treachery. And presenting them to the Governor, they committed them to prison. But because no one is shut up from God, there was there one merchant, who daily ministered to them whatever was necessary. Sometimes he had them bathed, and brought them to the church. While they were held in prison, a certain Spaniard, having a brother in the palace of the King, the business of the Saints of God being learned, excused them before the King called Mirmum ^e, by the help of his brother together with the sailor who had brought them, and obtained for them permission to depart.

[8] Thence having advanced, they came to Damascus, notable for the relics of Ananias, He advances to Damascus, who there baptized Paul, converted by divine power. Prayer therefore being poured out in that church which now shines in the place of the conversion of St. Paul, they came into Galilee to the village of Nazareth, from which Jesus is also called the Nazarene: Nazareth, where the Archangel Gabriel, appearing to holy Mary the perpetual Virgin, foretold to her concerning the Son of God to be incarnated in her womb, and where, impregnated by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, she inestimably conceived the Son of God. There stands a church of worthy sanctity, often ransomed at a price by the Christians from the Saracens attempting to cast it down. Thence, after first visiting Cana of Galilee, noble for the first of the Lord's miracles, Mount Tabor being passed, Cana of Galilee, Tabor, etc. where now a congregation of monks is gathered in honor of the Lord's transfiguration; through the city of Tiberias, situated on the shore of the sea, where the Lord made Peter tread the waters with dry footsteps, where also the Jordan passes through the sea of Galilee ^f, they came to Magdala, the village of Lazarus and his sisters.

Thence, through Capernaum on the opposite side on the other shore, where the Lord raised up the daughter of the ruler, where Zebedee, father of James and John, rests; and through Bethsaida, where now a church shows the house of Peter and Andrew, they touched at Corozain, where the Lord, the demons being cast out, granted them the herd of swine.

[9] Hence, out of love of the holy places, by a winding journey, Caesarea, they came to the sources of two fountains on Mount Phanio ^g, of which one is called Jor, the other Dan, of which one flowing from one part, the other from the other part of the city, which in the Gospel is called Caesarea Philippi, but by the Phoenicians Paneas or Phaniada, wearied by a not long fall of their flowing, and joined in name, make the Jordan, notable for the baptism of the Lord. Some herds therefore being seen in the same place, with long back, short legs, tall horns, which, the sun kindling the day, are wont to plunge themselves, except only the head, in the neighboring marsh, they came to the aforesaid Caesarea, where Peter was made the key-bearer of heaven. Entering the church there, they saw the statue of Christ, at whose foot, placed under the open sky, an herb of admirable power arose from oil, of which it is thus read in the Ecclesiastical history ^h.

[10] It is established that the woman whom he had cured, laboring with a flux of blood, was a citizen of this city. [on whose occasion is introduced the statue of the woman touching the fringe of Christ, etc.] But before the doors of the house of the same woman a certain base, placed in a higher spot, is shown, on which is seen the image of that same woman, as if fallen on her knees and suppliantly stretching out her palms, expressed in bronze. There stands another statue also cast in bronze, with the face and habit of the Lord, surrounded with a fringed garment, and stretching out his right hand to the prostrate woman. But at the foot of the male statue a certain herb of a new kind rises by growing from the aforesaid base, and does not cease to grow until it touch the fringe of the garment of Jesus. Which when the growing herb has touched with its highest top, it thence acquires powers to drive away all diseases, so that whatever that infirmity may be, it is driven away by a little draught of one moistened with the salutary grass; bearing no powers at all, if it be plucked before it touch by growing the summit of the bronze fringe. This Eusebius, the writer of the times, testifies to have lasted up to his own times, and that he himself beheld it with his own eyes. But this statue of Christ the most wicked Julian the Apostate, as is read in the Tripartite history, took down, and placed his own in its stead. But God avenging so great a crime for the present, that same statue of Julian is divided by a stroke of lightning, one part of the head with the neck is fixed in the earth, the other, sticking in its place, testifies to the burning of the lightning. But the statue of the Savior the pagans broke, and the Christians, gathering it, placed it in the church.

[11] Departing thence, following the streams of the Jordan, they came to that place of the Jordan He surveys Gilgal where the Lord, washing by his baptism the waters once polluted by the deluge, cleansed them. There, sprinkled with the salubrious liquid, they came to Gilgal, where the children of Israel placed the stones taken up from the Jordan in testimony of their crossing over. the monastery of St. Eustochium, Thence, Jericho being passed, where the Jordan flows into the Dead Sea ⁱ, about to lose its name with its course; the monastery of St. Eustochium also being visited, situated in the middle between Jericho and Jerusalem, they enter the scarcely-awaited Jerusalem. To what place there, conscious of miracles or of any works of the Lord, did the man of God Willibald not impress kisses? Jerusalem, where he is tormented by sickness. What altar there did he not bedew with tears and groans? With how great devotion did he lie there before the dominical Cross, crucified to the world? With how burning a river of tears did he bedew the stone which the angel removed from the mouth of the monument? Six weeks there he was tormented, ensnared by a most grave languor, yet he was not burdened to go round the holy places, his zeal beguiling his labor. With how great desire of seeing the God of gods in Sion did he go to the church of Mount Sion, situated in the middle of the city; how devoutly did he implore the Archdeacon and protomartyr of that same church, Stephen, translated thither!

[12] He goes to the valley of Josaphat, At last, going out, they come into the valley of Josaphat, where the sepulcher of holy Mary is shown. But whether the Apostles buried her there, her body being left, loosed here, or whether perhaps, when they were resolving to bury her, after the sepulcher had been dug there, she was assumed with her body, or if she be granted to have been buried there, whether, taken thence, she was transposed elsewhere, or, having received true immortality, she rose again, it is better doubted than anything thence apocryphal be defined ^k. As they depart thence, the Mount of Olives receives them, the Mount of Olives, entering the church, open above and built in the place of the dominical ascension by the work of Queen Helena. This place therefore, in which the Lord in the very hour of his ascension, the disciples crowding about, had stood, and whence, his hands being lifted up, he had led our captivity captive into heaven, even today the footprints of the dominical feet most evidently show, and, as if feeling itself, from this impression of the feet, incomparably more precious than every artful adornment, it suffers to be neither paved ^l nor covered with a roof. These marks of the Lord's feet St. Willibald, with his companions, not ceasing to water with flowing tears, could truly say: We will adore in the place where his feet stood. In the same church they report that two columns stand in memory of the twin angels who said to the disciples beholding the Lord ascending: Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye looking into heaven? Thence too they report that whoever can creep around between the columns and the wall of the church has deserved pardon of his sins.

[13] Bethlehem, Thence he came to Bethlehem, where the ox knew his owner, and the ass the crib of his lord. Approaching therefore there to the well, which before, when heard of, he wondered at, he saw on the surface of the water, going from edge to edge, the figure of the star ^m which appeared to the Magi when the Lord was born, and led them on the thirteenth day of the Lord's nativity to Bethlehem. Thence they came to Tekoa, Tekoa, where, the coevals of Christ being slain by Herod, Nathanael, hidden by his mother under a fig tree, escaped, and therefore it was thus said by the Lord: When thou wast under the fig tree I knew thee. Thence through the Laura, where St. Sabas rests, they came near the village of Betzur, to the water Betzur, which is swallowed in the same place in which it is begotten, in which the Ethiopian, from the uttermost borders of the earth, the temple of the Lord being visited, baptized by Philip, anticipating the neighboring Israel, changed his skin, that is, whitened by faith, laid aside the blackness of sin. Thence when they came to Gaza, Gaza, where he loses his sight, the solemnities of the Masses being heard at St. Matthias, St. Willibald lost the light of his eyes.

[14] Thence through the fort Aframia ⁿ, where the three Patriarchs Abraham, which he recovers at Jerusalem. Isaac, and Jacob, with their wives, rest, he returns to Jerusalem, and, having entered the church built where the holy cross was found, after two months of his blindness he received sight. Thence, the church of St. George being visited at Diospolis, Thence he proceeds to Diospolis, etc. through Joppa, a maritime town of Palestine, where Peter raised up the widow Dorcas, along the shore of the Adriatic sea ^o, the Lord's footsteps being adored at Tyre and Sidon, Mount Lebanon being passed, He comes to Emmaus, etc. the maritime city of Tripoli being traversed, Damascus being again visited, he came to Emmaus, a village of Palestine, which the Romans, after the destruction of Jerusalem, from the event of victory, called Nicopolis. Where after, in the house of Cleophas, changed into a church, he adored him who was known in it by the breaking of bread, desiring the fountain of living water, he saw also the fountain which is at the crossroads, by which Christ, on the same day on which he rose, walked with two disciples, Luke [p] and Cleophas, as if about to turn aside to another village. For there is a fountain there, to which Christ, once conversing on earth, is said to have come with his disciples, and to have washed his feet in it, some journey being measured, and hence that same water, made by God efficacious of divers medicaments, so that, being drunk, it infuses the presence of health for any languors whatsoever, both of cattle and of men.

[15] Thence St. Willibald came a third time to Jerusalem, He revisits Jerusalem a third and fourth time, and there stayed the whole winter. Nor less, Syria being traversed, he sought Jerusalem a fourth time. Thence through Sebaste, famous for the sepulcher of John the Baptist, although destroyed in the time of Julian the apostate [q], and for the relics of the Prophets Abdias and Elisha, and the well where the Lord had asked drink from the Samaritan woman, Mount Gerizim being seen, thence to Sebaste, on which the Samaritan woman had said the fathers of the Samaritans had given themselves to prayer, to the head of Mount Lebanon, neighboring Tyre, contiguous to the mountain, they come, having suffered on the way the savage assaults of lions. Thence at Tyre, a ship being long awaited, Tyre, the voyage being begun on the birthday of St. Andrew, sailing through the whole winter, scarcely in the week next before Easter they came to Constantinople, Constantinople, famous for the relics of the holy Apostles Andrew, Timothy, and Luke the Evangelist, and John Chrysostom. There having tarried two years [r], he crossed over meanwhile to Nicaea, a city of Bithynia, Nicaea, etc. where Constantine, to ventilate the controversy of Arius and Athanasius the Alexandrian Prelate, gathered a hundred and eighteen [s] Bishops, and there is a church in which they sat to the synod, lacking a roof, like that which is situated on the Mount of Olives. Returned to Constantinople, the passage of the sea being remeasured, through the cities of Sicily, Capua, Catania, they come to Reggio: hence to Naples, thence to Syracuse.

ANNOTATIONS.

or of the fort he did not express the place, says Mabillon.

p. The author adds Luke from the preface of Gregory the Great on Job; for Luke himself in the Gospel mentions Cleophas alone.

q. See Rufinus book 2 of the history chapter 28, Theodoret, and others.

r. Understand that the crossing to Nicaea happened during that same two years in which the Saint tarried at Constantinople, as is certainly established from the Nun.

s. Again there is an error, to be corrected from the Nun with several others which we have left here and there unobserved: to these reckon Syracuse, placed out of its proper place.

* elsewhere: Figila.

* elsewhere: Saracens.

CHAPTER III.

The stay at Monte Cassino, the return to Rome, thence into Germany, the episcopate of Eichstätt, and his death.

At last, autumn contracting itself into winter, St. Willibald laid himself down on Monte Cassino, For a decade a monk at Cassino. at the monastery of St. Benedict, under the Abbot Petronax. And this was the tenth ^a year since he undertook his exile, but the eighth since he departed from Rome. After therefore that holy man joined himself to the Monks of the aforesaid place, he most fully showed in himself the norm of the cenobitic life and of a most religious conversation. Therefore, the love of all being provoked toward him, in the first year after he came thither, he was made chamberlain of the church: in the second, dean of the monastery. Afterward for eight years, in two monasteries there placed, porter ^b; four years at the monastery situated on the top of the mountain; four years again at the lower monastery placed near the river Rapido ^c.

[17] There flourished also at the same time in the German parts, Known by fame to St. Boniface, both in work and in name, Boniface, Archbishop of the church of Mainz, likewise English by race, and a kinsman of St. Willibald ^d, and, afterward, savage Frisia being converted, a notable Martyr of Christ to be. He, when he thought of planting the nourishment of the Christian religion, and panted to gather from everywhere those fit and necessary for this work, had heard the fame of St. Willibald at the fort of Cassino, most devoted to divine contemplation. Coming therefore to Rome, that same Archbishop, after other things conferred with the Apostolic Prelate concerning the state of the Catholic Church, subjoined that which most fervently was consuming him, namely that the archbishopric of the see of Mainz ^e committed to him, ample in the space of land and places, but squalid and much by the rite of gentilism, the harvest there was much, but the workmen few, and since irrecoverable necessity compels the Pastor to render account of any committed to him, and the blood of the subjects is required of the prelate set over them; that one pastor could not suffice for so numerous a sheepfold; and therefore if God should assent, and if the Apostolic authority permit, he had resolved to divide that same episcopate, two Bishops being established in it, he is sought as a helper that the smaller administration might both fortify the flock and be able to acquit the pastor; and that there was at the fort of Cassino a certain monk Willibald, who, his country and parents being set behind the divine love, after his age was broken by the long labor of the ways and of traversing the holy places, devoted to God there serves, to whom he wished to commit one of the episcopates to be established, if the Lord Pope himself would take care to send him, withdrawn from the monastery, to him. There then presided over the Apostolic See Gregory the third of that name, but the ninety-first Pope. He, having heard the so laudable desire of the Archbishop Boniface set forth, approved his intention, promised the sending of St. Willibald, and, cherished with long embraces, dismissed him full of sobs.

[18] Nor was it long; afterward St. Willibald, the decade being now completed at Monte Cassino, and sent by Gregory III into Germany. went to Rome with a certain fellow-brother of his, a Spaniard by race ^f, by the leave of his Abbot Petronax. His coming being heard, the blessed Pope called him, and after many inquiries and answers, made known to him the petition of St. Boniface. Reckoning this hard, and contrary to the life he had proposed, St. Willibald urged that he, who had dismissed his own, who had subdued the world with his feet, could not again be ensnared with worldly things, nor wished to be deprived of the quiet which he had prepared for himself in the vale of tears, nor was it the part of a provident man, and one whole in mind, that after horrid shipwrecks, the port being occupied, he should, with footsteps still wavering, commit himself to the sea that threatens cruel death. To whom the Pope uses these or such words: The love of God is proved by the love of one's neighbor. To Peter therefore, after he heard himself thrice loved, he committed the care and pasturing of his flock. Hence the holy Fathers, instructed by divine power, committed episcopates to many snatched from monasterial quiet, to very many from solitary contemplation. My predecessor and namesake Gregory, a monk in mind and habit, is set over the Apostolic See. Moses the hermit, famous in the desert for innumerable signs, snatched from the solitary life which he had led, Queen Mauvia ^g obtaining it from the Roman Emperor, is set over the nation of the Saracens as Bishop; nor was it long, the most savage nation, clothed in a lamb's skin, he wins for Christ. Whoever therefore, prevailing in virtues, refuses to preside, and prefers his own quiet to the utility of others, will be worthy to pay the penalties of as many of the damned as the Prelate himself could have corrected the manners of sinners. By these or like words the mind of St. Willibald is bent, and, cast at the feet of the Pope, he professes that he will undergo with devoted shoulder whatever burden is imposed. Much instructed therefore, and fortified with the Apostolic blessing, the holy Willibald is directed to the holy Boniface, whom the holy Archbishop, receiving as an Angel sent from heaven, embraces with gracious affection, and most worthily venerates.

[19] The cause of his calling being thereupon made known to him, he asked St. Willibald He is set over the church of Eichstätt. that he would deign to go and see the place over which he was to be set as Prelate. There was therefore to that same Archbishop, in the borders of Bavaria, a place called Eichstätt, handed over to him by a certain pious religious man, by name Suiger, for divine uses out of regard for divine recompense. In this place therefore, still subject to his own diocese, St. Boniface resolved to make an episcopate, and to set St. Willibald over it. He went, saw, approved, and, returning to St. Boniface, the latter accompanying him, again went to his own place, and there completed the grade of the presbyterate, the Archbishop consecrating him. Without delay, he began to lay the foundations of a church, to mark out the cloister and the workshops of the Clergy, and sagaciously to dispose whatever was necessary for the divine service. A year being revolved from this, going to the Archbishop in Thuringia, he had a tolerable lodging on the way, with his brother Wunebald, not seen for eight ^h years and a half after they departed at Rome. Hence he came to his Archbishop at the city of Salzburg ⁱ, where, a college of Prelates flowing together, and the suffrage of clergy and people consenting, he received the episcopal blessing and the chair of the church of Eichstätt, then completing the forty-first year of his age.

[20] The episcopal care therefore being undertaken, he had no rest, His pastoral care and his pious death. to preach the word of God day and night, to raise the slothful minds of that nation, and little solicitous for the future, to the hope of heavenly things, the cares of vain things being set aside, to seek eternal things. And lest the husbandman should profit little in faith, what he planted by word he watered by a life consonant with his doctrine. Nor was it long, the rude field of squalid hearts had so felt the exercise of the Gospel mattock, that, the field being ignorant of fruit, the shrub of errors being extirpated, a ruddy harvest and a vineyard of the God of Sabaoth seemed to have risen. After therefore he had most worthily informed his episcopate with the institutes of a sound life for seven ^k years, desiring to be dissolved and to be with Christ, he rendered his spirit to his Creator, buried in the church over which he presided. Of how great merit he now is with God, the crown of justice testifies, which the miracles shining at his sepulcher testify that he received.

ANNOTATIONS.

MIRACLES.

Willibald, Bishop, at Eichstätt in Germany (S.)

BHL Number: 8934

FROM A MANUSCRIPT.

The people of Eichstätt will easily pardon me, I think, although I accuse them of no small negligence in noting down and reviewing the miracles of their most holy Patron, which, since the tables everywhere proclaim them innumerable and well-nigh infinite, yet enumerate none separately, except those few which Philip reported from the manuscript codex on the translation of St. Willibald in Gretser from page 133 to 147, and which we find consigned by him alone. Have therefore the text of the so often above-named Philip.

A cripple is cured. The first sign was made on the very day of the translation about the sixth hour on a cripple, one of the household of the Provost of the greater choir, the Lord Albert, namely a doorkeeper known and nourished by the people of Eichstätt from his youth. Who, when he had learned by report that the relics of St. Walburga were being carried to the Cathedral church, taking up his crutches [] as usual, firmly limping, ascended the choir, breaking forth with a strong cry into these words: O glorious Prelate of Christ Willibald, give me the bread of the messenger [], thy sister has come, to salute thee kindly. And approaching the altar of the undefiled Virgin Mary, on which the most holy body of Willibald had been placed, a threefold petition being made, he obtained health of every kind: so, namely, that his crutches and staves being cast away, he began to rejoice, to leap, and to magnify the name of the Prelate of Christ Willibald.

A possessed woman is freed The second sign. A woman vexed by a demon for many years was freed, so that the demon was seen to be sent into the air in the form of a most black crow.

A Jewess in childbirth finds health of soul and of body. The third sign. A certain Jewess labored in childbirth more than fourteen days, and when she saw that the pain wished to end her life, she asked the Christian women, who before had been familiar with her, to carry her out of the Jewish house, which being done, straightway, invoking the name of the undefiled Virgin Mary, she brought forth her child with all pain removed, having however before the birth received the holy font of baptism. Which child, when the mother, for shame, did not procure to be baptized, she herself, as if

destitute and a beggar, intended to commit him to be brought up by the Jew from whom she had conceived. When she brought him one day to the monastery of St. Willibald, the sanctuary of the most blessed Confessor Willibald being touched, she was deprived of the clearest light of her eyes, and also contracted in both hands. But she, when, as if anxious, she asked to be led from the choir to the Crucifix, which is to be adored on the left part of the choir; and it fell into her mind that this plague was inflicted on her on account of the unbaptized child, and that she was unworthy to touch the most holy relics of the Confessor of Christ Willibald; without delay she vowed to God and to blessed Willibald that she wished to procure baptism for the child, and she straightway received sight, and her contracted hands were loosed, and the child was baptized in the parish of Eichstätt, whose sponsors are the Lord Hermann of Tanhausen, Canon of Eichstätt, and master Herting, provisor of the scholars.

The fourth sign. A certain blind lady came from Hungary to Regensburg, A woman, thrice blind, thrice recovered her sight whose intention was to wish to visit the thresholds of St. Mary at Aachen [*], by the mediation of a guide, who, when she heard by report that St. Willibald was to be translated, with hands and face raised to heaven, suppliantly begged God that through the merits of St. Willibald, her Confessor, she might deserve to recover her sight. Scarcely was the prayer completed, when, having received her sight, she came to Eichstätt, magnifying the name of Jesus Christ and of St. Willibald. Then she took the way to Aachen without a guide, not content with the grace obtained from St. Willibald. When therefore she came as it were into the middle of a wood, which by its common name is called forst, her sight was taken from her. And when it happened that she, alone, wandered for some time, at last some little women came hastening to the thresholds of St. Willibald. Whom, when they heard crying with groaning, they approached, asking whence the blindness had come to her? But she, setting it forth to them one by one, asked that, by the mediation of their guidance, she might reach the city of Eichstätt, which also, the Lord granting, came to effect. She too, weeping copiously, was led into a certain house, from which she could not go out for excessive pain of head; invoking the name of the Confessor of Christ Willibald, she a second time received her sight. And straightway hastening without a guide to the monastery of the Cathedral church, she vowed perpetual continence to St. Willibald. Then after a short space of time, when, as a young girl of elegant form, she went against this vow, and said that she wished to take a husband, she was a third time deprived of her sight. But after this, making a pure confession, and vowing perpetual continence to God with the greatest contrition, she a third time received her sight.

The fifth sign. At Eger, while the citizens carried with them a particle of the garments of blessed Willibald, A cripple is healed. out of reverence for blessed Willibald, a copious throng of both sexes meeting them, prostrating themselves most devoutly on the earth with a procession, they offer the son of a certain very rich man, crooked and contracted in feet and hands, saying: O illustrious Prelate Willibald, show to us thy faithful in this paralytic thy salutary grace. Straightway, by the touch of the sanctuary, the young man was restored to his former health. Of this credit was made to us by the oath of twenty citizens of that place.

The sixth sign. At Augsburg a boy of two years, submerged, A dead boy revives. and carried down by the river far from the city, about half a mile, is brought back dead. Before many citizens standing around, the aforesaid dead boy, at the invocation of the excellent Confessor Willibald, the mother making a vow that if he should regain life she would consign him a perpetual minister to blessed Willibald. Soon the boy, lifting his hands to heaven, was restored to his former life. Of which credit was made by trustworthy men, who swore that they had seen the aforesaid boy dead. He too afterward for a long time dwelt with St. Willibald.

The seventh sign. A certain man bound with iron rings, prostrating himself before the altar, suppliantly begged blessed Willibald An iron ring is broken. that he would afford him certainty and a token whether he had done worthy penance for his sins and offenses in these rings. He is straightway freed, the iron rings being wholly broken.

The eighth sign. When pilgrims, wishing after the visitation of St. Willibald—who had flowed together both from Regensburg and from other cities and villages—to return to their own homes, at Ingolstadt eighty of both sexes, both old men and pregnant women and children, Shipwrecked men on the Danube are wonderfully freed. entered a boat. Who, when they had come to Vohburg, where the passage is rocky and perilous, the sailors incautiously steering the boat, all the pilgrims suffered shipwreck. But groaning, and most devoutly invoking the name of the Confessor of Christ Willibald, they were seen to swim upon the Danube like ducks [*], although very many of them had never practiced the art of swimming. And the children and pregnant women went out unharmed to various shores. But Duke Louis of Bavaria and the ministers and other guests, standing before the gate of the castle, most swiftly, when they saw the aforesaid being shipwrecked, ran to the Danube, most strictly commanding all who had boats, under threat of goods and persons, to come to the aid of the shipwrecked. But those shipwrecked, answering with hands stretched out, said that they needed the help of no one, except only of the Confessor St. Willibald. And so all escaped safe and sound, blessed Willibald being their guide.

The ninth sign. Certain persons, wishing to visit the thresholds of blessed Willibald, In another shipwreck also the Saint is a helper. hired themselves in a certain timber vessel which is called a raft [], and crossing came to the town which is called Hayn, where the Lech flows into part of the Danube. There, by the force of the meeting waters, the oars [] were broken by the narrowness of the vessel, because the raft went to the bottom; a great cry arose of all trusting in the timber; and all together invoking the name of the Confessor of Christ, cried out: O blessed Willibald, draw us to the port of safety by the grace of thy piety. Straightway there appeared to them a man in a fillet, like a Cleric, clad in white garments, holding a white banner in his right hand and the sign of the Cross through the middle of red color; with his left he steered the timber, all seeing it with fullness of joys; so, namely, that without difficulty they crossed the bridge, and all standing on it came safe to the port.

The tenth sign. A deaf man recovers hearing A certain presbyter of Ulm, deprived of hearing, went to the thresholds of divers Saints for the recovery of his hearing. When he profited nothing, at last, calling to mind the grace which the Lord, on account of his love for St. Willibald, imparted to all coming to him; under such a condition he vowed to go to the thresholds of the aforesaid Confessor, if by the intervention of the same Confessor his hearing should be restored to him within three days. On the third day about vespers, when he stood praying, which day he had set for himself as the term, he received his hearing. He, fulfilling his vow, came to Eichstätt, and affirmed by oath that this had happened to him. Moreover the same priest had sight so weak that he could not cross the lands without a guide, and, anointing himself daily with the wine with which the bones of blessed Willibald had been washed, he departed without a guide.

The eleventh sign. A boy killed by the waters is raised. A certain boy at Rugeshoven was submerged, his friends and kinsmen carrying him with the greatest wailing and outcry to the choir of the Cathedral Church, they placed him upon the altar, anointing him around with the arm of St. Willibald, many standing by and seeing the great deeds of Christ and of his Prelate, he was raised up. Whence the verses:

There stand healed by the deeds of the blessed Prelate six men of gout in the hand, six others of gout in the foot. Other miracles. Willibald restored sight to pilgrims, to one or to five, as each one's hope prevailed. And the signs are proved by oaths as done, though many others various went before. And so many new ones still he brings forth, both secretly and openly, that these signs do not admit a true number. These signs are thirteen times done in a day.

The twelfth. Adding to the aforesaid a few out of innumerable ones, which we know were done in our time, let us hasten to the end of the Legend.

The thirteenth. There was a certain woman in the city of Eichstätt, of honest life and good conversation, A woman freed from a grave vertigo. who suffered a vertigo of the head, and felt the intolerable strokes of most sharp arrows and reverberations with such vehemence that as it were every hour the danger of a splitting of the brain or of madness seemed to threaten her: and when the strokes of the reverberations of this kind descended to her eyes, she was deprived of light, and drops of blood trickled from her eyes. She, coming to the tomb of the most blessed Confessor of Christ Willibald, and touching it with her hand, hoping to be cured of her head by the salutary contact, in the power of the sacred contact touched around, handling her forehead and eyes; which done, in that very hour she was cured.

The fourteenth. Likewise we ourselves, being as usual in the study of reading, a certain suffering of the bowels so vehement and full of pain suddenly seized us, The author himself freed from a great suffering of the bowels. that if it had continued up to evening, altogether, as we most certainly believe and learned by the experience of the pain, we should have departed from the light of this world. Rising therefore with great wearing of body, and much contrition of mind, with unspeakable difficulty, we came to the choir of blessed Willibald, and, desiring to ascend by the few steps which are there in the ascent of that same choir, we could not; but standing before the door, we looked lamentably at the image of the Virgin and Mother of God, placed opposite at the end of the choir, which with turned face looks upon those entering, praying in these words: Blessed Mother of God, for the reverence and honor of blessed Willibald, thy chaplain, who always venerated thee by honoring thee singularly, deign to cure me, his unworthy successor, especially since this suffering has invaded me in the composition of his work and Legend. And straightway in that very hour we were cured, feeling no pain or any trace of pain from the very moment of the cure. And these things we say in the word of the Lord, not lying, with the testimony of a good conscience.

The fifteenth. Before we impose an end on our reading, we desire to answer a certain question. The question of the curious. For very many are wont to ask by way of insult: Since blessed Willibald is preferred by God with innumerable miracles, why does he sometimes permit his Church to be troubled by those unjustly disturbing it, and does not avenge all things to the line, leaving nothing unpunished?

The sixteenth. To which we answer: That blessed Willibald, after the example of our Savior, Punishment on those who invade the goods of St. Willibald; dissembles many things for a time, that he may show himself eminent in the virtue of patience. But certain things he by no means dissembles, that he may make himself known as compassionate to his chaplains. This however has been ascertained by the examination of much time, and we ourselves have experienced it, that Barons, princes of lands, or nobles of whatever condition, who, unmindful of their own salvation, coming against God and justice, with rash daring molesting, or in any way unduly disturbing the church of Eichstätt in goods or persons, are found to die without the solace of children. But we say "without the solace of children" of those who either die altogether without children, or, if they have children, find in them no matter of gladness or of honor, but matter of sadness and of grief.

The seventeenth. to lack children and successors. Thus therefore, thinking by their invasions to extinguish the name of the church of Eichstätt, they destroy themselves; and the name which should be kept for their posterity, and most famously continued, they miserably lose; and in those things in which they try to offend the Church, by the wonderful dispensation of God, indeed sometimes they exalt it. For the fiefs which they never faithfully served, by the vengeance of their ingratitude and

perjury [*], when they die without the posterity of children, return usefully, gloriously, and to God laudably to the aforesaid church. What more? Blessing and brightness and wisdom, and thanksgiving, honor, power and strength be to our God forever and ever. Amen. Who has set over us such a prince of peace, whose name of priesthood remains forever.

The Peroration. The eighteenth. To have added anything to the praises of our holy and most blessed Father, the blessed Prelate Willibald, is to have taken away. Since indeed the grace of his virtues is not only to be set forth by discourses, but to be proved by works: hence therefore let the psalms resound, let the Lessons ring out. Hence let the throngs of the peoples rejoice, hence let the poor of Christ be relieved. For a great Priest has risen among us, through whom the Lord has visited his people, of whom by famous lesson and by preaching alike we can say: Behold a great priest, who in his days pleased God, and was found just. Behold by the presence of demonstration. Behold by the evidence of sanctity. A great priest not only on account of the exuberance of graces and the magnificence of virtues; but also a great priest on account of the dignity of the pontifical office. He in his days pleased God, on account of the familiarity of divine love, and was found just, on account of the equity of final justice, which he always graciously held in the exercise of the way, until he happily attained in the fatherland the crown of justice laid up for him: to which by the merits of blessed Willibald may Jesus Christ lead us, who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, God, unto all ages of ages. Amen. And here is the end of the miracles.

* ducks.

* a raft.

* oars.

* of the worsening.

* with props.

* as if to say, a gift for good news.

* of Aachen.