ON ST. DISIBOD, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR,
AT DISIBODENBERG, IN THE TERRITORY OF MAINZ, IN GERMANY.
In the Year 674.
PRECEDING COMMENTARY.
Disibod, Bishop and Confessor, at Disibodenberg in the territory of Mainz in Germany (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
§ I. The monastery of the Mount of St. Disibod, and its vicissitudes.
Disibodenberg, or the Mount of St. Disibod, otherwise of Disibodus, was once celebrated for a notable monastery, founded there by the Saint himself, under the rule of St. Benedict; which, tossed by various mishaps, was in the tenth century overthrown and destroyed; afterward it began to be rebuilt, The monastery founded by the Saint, and given to a few priests, then to twelve canons; who, at the beginning of the twelfth century being sent elsewhere, it returned again to Benedictine monks, thence handed over to the Cistercians, and at last devolved by reversion to secular canons, who to this very day enjoy the possession of it. The site of the place the author of the Life describes at number 16, and notably at number 21, defining its bounds beyond the running rivers, namely the Nahe and the Glan. The words of Trithemius, book 1 of the Compendium of Annals, under Clovis King of the Franks, son of Dagobert, accomplish the matter in fewer words: St. Disibod also, monk and presbyter, in the diocese of Mainz, in the county of Sponheim, two miles from Kreuznach [*] and one from the monastery formerly mine of Sponheim, leading an eremitic life, in that place near Sobernheim, where the Nahe and the Glan flow together, built a monastery of monks, which today stands by his name. The Glan discharges itself on the right into the Nahe, which then flows into the left bank of the Rhine at the town of Bingen, not far from which St. Hildegard, who wrote the Legend, passed the chief part of her holy life.
[2] You have cursorily tasted the things which in the Life of St. Disibod are deduced more fully in various places, especially chapter 4, here not altogether to be neglected. afterward oppressed by various calamities, Notable mishaps are mentioned at numbers 42 and 43, when a great pressure of wars so occupied the province in which the monastery was situated (understand the county of Sponheim and the regions bordering the Rhine), that the terrified princes and peoples, knowing the aforesaid mountain to be high and impregnable, with much haste, before it should be occupied by the enemy, the brethren serving God there being unwilling, fled up upon it, and, fortifying it with firm walls, made dwellings on it, trusting that both by the merits of blessed Disibod, and by the fortifications of the same mountain, they would be rescued from the aforesaid cruel tyranny. But when, amid the crowds of the tumultuous men, the congregation of the brethren serving God there could not remain in quiet and serve God in uprightness, therefore by the counsel and request of the same princes and men, the same brethren divided themselves into far regions: those men promising that, after these tribulations and labors, they would be honorably brought back. This indeed was performed with the utmost faith, as is narrated in the cited place, greater means also being conferred, and ampler allods, than those Disibodian monks had before had.
[3] at last overthrown and destroyed That calamity seems to be referred to the times of Charles Martel, upon whom, Pepin reigning, so great a tranquillity succeeded, that presently, through St. Boniface, the returning monks took care that the sacred body of their Patron be raised, as you have at number 45. Let it be permitted to suppose that that elevation was made about the year 740, from which time they abode quietly and peaceably in their monastery under Charlemagne, protector of monks, and all his progeny, until the great disturbances in Gaul and the empire of the tenth century, when the writer of the Acts thus connects the matter: The Emperor (Charlemagne) being dead, and very many other times succeeding one another, a new tyranny of cruel wars arose; namely, when hostile nobles, together with the Prelate of Mainz, gaping after the possessions of the monks, so circumvented the Cæsar who then was, that, the matter being suborned by agreement, through many false testimonies they drove out the monks by a most cruel invasion and expulsion, who left their mountain and the monastery founded on it, wailing with great lamentation, compelled to withdraw to other places; their dwellings being razed to the ground, except only the sanctified place in which the bones of the aforesaid Saint had been buried after the translation, one priest alone being left there, for whom the overthrowers and destroyers of the monastery designated a scarcely sufficient food and clothing from the benefices pertaining to that place: which is the argument of number 50.
[4] by Hatto, Bishop of Mainz, The epoch of that most fatal disaster and deplorable ruin no one has hitherto dared to seek, much less to determine, the author of the Life narrating all these things most confusedly. I think that by long seeking I have investigated that whence some light may shine. The very many times succeeding one another after Charlemagne easily lead us to the tenth century, to which it is certainly necessary to advance, that we may find that Bishop of Mainz, whom Hildegard paints in black colors as the chief author of this invasion. Him at last Marianus Scotus opportunely suggested, writing thus of Willigis at the year 976: He also restored the divine Office on the Mount of St. Disibod with Canons, which Hatto, the predecessor either of him or of this Archbishop Ruprecht, destroyed, the monks being expelled thence. These things agree exactly with the Hildegardian history, and that Bishop is most expressly designated, who was elsewhere sought in vain. Since therefore that Hatto, the immediate predecessor of Ruprecht, as the same Marianus Scotus witnesses, died in the year 970, not having long possessed the see, as Serarius proves, vindicating him from the infamous death inflicted by mice; it seems no doubt that the destruction of the Disibodian monastery must be connected with about the year 968, Otto I governing the Roman empire from the year 961, whom doubtless both the Bishop of Mainz and the other persecutors of the monks circumvented with feigned accusations and criminations.
[5] The piety of Count Liuthard, mentioned above at the cited number 50, who, for the glory of the holy Trinity, Willigis handed it over to secular Canons. and for the memory of St. Disibod, disposing three priests to serve God there, established for them from his own means a sufficiency of the necessaries of the present life, may look to about the year 970, so that those priests administered the divine service in that place, until, some other years having revolved, a certain Archbishop of the see of Mainz, pious, humble, and contrite of heart, ascending the same mountain, and suppliantly bending his knees at the tomb of blessed Disibod, deeply grieved that he had been made great and rich from the possessions unjustly taken from that same Saint, and making a vow to God, disposed Canons, to the number of the twelve Apostles, that they should serve God and the aforesaid Patron there day and night. The revolution of certain years, asserted by Hildegard, must be contracted to a few, if Marianus rightly taught us that in the year 976 the divine Office with Canons was restored there by Archbishop Willigis; which the author of the Life indicates a little more clearly, through the words already alleged by us, the name of the Prelate however being unmentioned.
[6] To the standard of these must be reconciled the things which Trithemius in the Hirsau Chronicle at the year 1108 seems to have somewhat confused, But by his successors, when, treating of the restoration of the aforesaid monastery, he thus speaks: In these times also Ruthard, the venerable Archbishop of Mainz, beheld the desolation of the most ancient monastery, which St. Disibod, formerly a Bishop from Ireland, and a pilgrim for Christ, in the county of Sponheim, in the time of St. Gregory the First Pope, near the town
of Sobernheim had built, at the confluence of two little rivers, of which the one is named the Nahe, the other the Glan, desiring to restore it, fitted both his expenses and his mind to the holy business. For that monastery was once most wealthy and endowed with many possessions, which a certain Archbishop of Mainz obtained from the Emperor of his time, and miserably dissipated: for he conferred the estates and possessions of the monks upon his soldiers as a benefice, and turned all that he found to another's use, until little by little the monastery was almost wholly desolated. The monks at last failing for want, he set over it a few secular clerics, under whose occupation the place remained miserably fallen for many years. These things, I say, must be distributed according to the series already arranged above, and by those secular clerics are to be understood the Willigisian Canons, who for a whole hundred and thirty-two years remained in the occupation and desolation of the place.
[7] Through that long exile from the monastery of monks, the truth of St. Disibod's prophecy plainly appeared, it was restored to the monks, by which he had in a dreadful manner, in the spirit, foretold to his sons at number 32 that they would suffer great pressures and tribulations. For after the expulsion of the year 968, the tribulation lasted even to the year 1108, until the divine purgation, little by little, somewhat withdrew its scourges. For when it had pleased the Holy Spirit, in his secret, to inspire another Bishop of the see of Mainz, that the oft-named place should receive the splendor which it had received in its first origin, as Hildegard deduces more fully toward the end of the said number 51. The intricate reckoning of the times Dodechinus here unfolds, from whom I think the cited Trithemius above received it, and to be referred again a little below. These are the words of Dodechinus at the aforesaid year 1108: In this year also a new monastery began to be built on the Mount of St. Disibod. For Burchard, abbot of St. James at Mainz, of pious memory, whom the Lord Archbishop Ruthard had set over the church of blessed Disibod as first abbot, on the second before the Kalends of July laid the first foundation-stone, by the command of the aforesaid Prelate.
[8] and built anew from the foundations. With these plainly agree the things which Trithemius hands down in the praised Chronicle at the same year 1108: There was in the same times Burchard, abbot of the monastery of St. James near Mainz, sent thither from the Hirsau plantation with Erckenbald of old by St. William, a prudent man, and most religious with singular devotion. To him Archbishop Ruthard committed the restoration of the aforesaid monastery of the holy Prelate Disibod, conferred the expenses, and provided all necessaries. Which Burchard, in the year noted before, on the last day of the month of June, laid the first foundation-stone on the mountain, for the church which is beheld today, and, transferring the monastery from the foot of the mountain, where it had been before, to the mountain where it now is, in a short time building it, magnificently completed it: and, monks from St. James being placed there, he had the care of both monasteries, and fulfilled the office of a good shepherd in both. From this Burchard was taken and begun the series and succession of the abbots of the Mount of St. Disibod, among whom Fulchard, the third abbot of St. Disibod, is noted by Dodechinus to have died on the fifth before the Ides of November 1136, a fourth being substituted for him, named Cono, in whose time Juda, or Jutta, ceased to live, who for four years above twenty had been enclosed on that mountain, the mistress and instructress there of St. Hildegard, by whom we have said the life of our Saint was written.
[9] Various translations of the sacred body. Hither look the things which the praised Dodechinus accurately commemorates in the following years, and first indeed at the year 1138 he thus writes: In this same year, on the day of the Parasceve of Easter, the Kalends of April, after Matins had been celebrated, presently the sepulcher of our most holy Father Disibod was opened by the brethren, venerable persons being present, namely the Lord Cono, the fourth abbot of the place, the Lord Gerard, the most dear abbot of St. Maximin, and the Lord Bernhelm, first abbot at Sponheim, with the whole congregation of the same church, and the relics of the same Father were carried out one by one by a single brother. They were found in the old monastery, where they had been laid up by the Lord Archbishop Willigis. In the following year 1139 he thus again has: The relics of St. Disibod were translated on the Kalends of November, from the old church into the new monastery, one consecration of all removing, under the aforesaid Lord Abbot Cono. Finally at the year 1143: In this year, the sixth Indiction, the new monastery on the Mount of St. Disibod was dedicated, and the principal altar by the Lord Henry, Archbishop of Mainz, in honor of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of his glorious Mother, and of blessed John the Evangelist, and of our most blessed Father Disibod, confessor and pontiff. In the same year and on the same day was dedicated in the vestibule of the monastery an altar by the aforesaid Archbishop, in honor of the most victorious Cross and of St. John the Baptist. In the same year and day, moreover, the relics of St. Disibod our Father were laid up by the above-mentioned Prelate, on the third before the Kalends of October, in a stone tomb behind the principal altar, placed in two little leaden coffers; one of them, namely the smaller, containing the bones, the other, the larger, the ashes. Of these also Trithemius has a few things; but which it is not worthwhile to relate.
[10] The last thing which can be brought hither Dodechinus noted at the year 1155, The abbey passed to the Cistercians, namely, that the Lord Cono, abbot on the Mount of St. Disibod, died on the sixth before the Nones of July, whom the Lord Helinger succeeded. This I wished to observe, since by the command of this Helinger, Hildegard testifies that she wrote the life of St. Disibod in the year 1170, at which time the Benedictine monks persevered in the peaceful possession of the recovered goods. That some chronological account of the last transmigration may be had, I ask how long they were left in it? But since Mabillon neglected to inquire this, or despaired of finding the solution of the question, I scarcely see from what documents I could learn it. He himself was content to indicate in a word that now the monastery of St. Disibod is subject to secular Canons, nor is it easy enough to subjoin more for elucidation. Some spark Trithemius supplies, to be cited more fully below, book 3 concerning the illustrious Men of the Order of St. Benedict, chapter 288, in these words: Which place is today called the Mount of St. Disibod, and is inhabited by the Cistercians, after our men, for more than three hundred years from the time of the holy Father Disibod, dwelt in it.
[11] There is need of an interpreter, that the sense of Trithemius may be rightly understood, today occupied by secular Canons. for if those three hundred years are to be reckoned from the time of St. Disibod, nearly four hundred years had already flowed away when St. Hildegard wrote the life. I think Trithemius wished to indicate something else, and began to compute the years from the restoration of the abbots and of the whole monastery in the year 1108, so that the dwelling of the Benedictines lasted even to the beginning of the fifteenth century, when the Cistercians, I know not by what cause or occasion, succeeded in their place. So indeed I conjecture, eagerly to embrace whatever more solid can be brought forward. For the rest, however these things happened, it is certain that the Cistercians also were dislodged from their possession, but after the death of Trithemius, who lived even to the rising of Luther's heresy, so that you may plainly gather that those monks, before the fury of the heretics raged through Germany, either voluntarily withdrew from the Mount of St. Disibod, or were expelled thence, so that now the monastery is subject to secular Canons. But of the place and its manifold fortune enough has been said; let us approach nearer to the Saint himself.
Annotated* Kreuznach.
§ II. The Saint's Acts, age, fatherland, and profession.
[12] We have already begun to say that the life of St. Disibod was composed by the holy virgin Hildegard in the year 1170, by the command of Helinger, fifth abbot of the Mount named from the Saint. St. Hildegard wrote the Life Concerning her we have also noted that, in the same monastery of St. Disibod, she had as mistress and instructress Blessed Jutta, under the fourth abbot, named Cono; but thence, being translated nearer to the Rhine, she there built on the mount of St. Rupert a nunnery of virgins, over which she presided with the highest praise and fame of sanctity, most widely known by her most celebrated revelations in the age of St. Bernard and afterward to nearly the whole Catholic world, as will have to be said at greater length on her birthday, the seventeenth of September. That life of St. Disibod is the sole and only one which, edited by Surius, is wont to be cited everywhere, endowed with this warrant, that it is reckoned divinely revealed. So certainly she herself testifies at number 1, after the visions of the book of the life of merits had been produced … from the sweetness of the divine wisdom I heard a voice from heaven thus speaking. And again at number 52: These things which have been produced, through the Holy Spirit, to the glory of his name and to the memory of the aforesaid patron, and to the chastisement of the men who hear, have been manifested by a truthful revelation. A wonderful assertion indeed of Hildegard, concerning a narration confused and intricate, and endowed with no true historical marks, and which Mabillon judged not worthy to occupy a place among the Acts of the Saints of his Order. The deeds of Disibod, he says, St. Hildegard amplified with almost commonplaces.
[13] from a mystical vision, as she herself asserts, The rather long lucubration I have often and attentively unfolded, both in our manuscript, received from St. Maximin at Trier through Rosweyde, and in the very edition of Surius, more freely polished, or, as others say, corrupted: but nowhere did there appear to me even slight indications, whence to such a writing the prerogative of revelation could be ascribed, no more than to any other Legends of the Saints of that kind; unless you should call revealed certain sentences of the sacred Scriptures, which the holy authoress expounded with a singular interpretation, being wholly occupied in explaining moral doctrines, which if you should tear away from the rest of the work, that history, such as it is, could be circumscribed in very few words, at least in the part in which the deeds of the Saint himself are narrated. Examine, I pray, diligently that long and rather gloomy oration; weigh the several chapters, even the moral ones; I am deceived if you shall anywhere find anything to which the name of revelation is fitting. For the things which she herself could and ought to have known concerning the existence of the Mount of St. Disibod, in which she had formerly dwelt, and concerning its various mishaps and vicissitudes, were not to be learned by revelation, since in St. Hildegard's age all these things were sufficiently known and widely published among the monks.
[14] but in what it consisted, is not clear enough. I could indeed wish that, in that vision, such as it was, the more distinct times of the several persecutions and calamities had been exhibited to her; likewise that they had unfolded to us the cradle of St. Disibod, his parents, his episcopal chair, and indeed the ordered series of his whole age and deeds; concerning which she seems to have been by no means solicitous, so that the whole revelation returns at last only to those things which she herself had preconceived from things often heard, and which she amplified with almost commonplaces. Lest here I do what has been done, or again stir up controversies long ago agitated, let the reader see what Papebroch long ago disputed concerning visions and revelations of this kind, in the Responses to article 20 of the Exhibition of errors, wrongly fastened upon him: unless someone judge that the whole matter is to be dispatched by a more compendious way, and deservedly doubt whether that heap of matters, at least as it has come to
us, is Hildegard's own and genuine, and not rather afterward augmented and amplified by some interpolator, and reckoned among the other revelations of that Saint, known from elsewhere and somehow approved; concerning which it does not please to inquire further in this place, nor indeed does it seem worthwhile.
[15] Another Legend, written by an Anonymous author Besides this most widely published life written by St. Hildegard, I found another among our papers, which no one hitherto has ever mentioned: for as the praised Mabillon noted, third century of the Benedictines, part 2, page 498: Besides Hildegard … none of the ancients whom I have read makes mention of Disibod, except Rabanus Maurus and Marianus Scotus. And certainly that other life, transcribed from the parchment Passional of the monastery of Bödeken by our Father John Gamans, is not of such value that it deserves to be remembered or much proclaimed. I call it a cento, adorned perhaps by some monk of the Mount of St. Disibod: or rather, let us say, insipidly compiled from other Acts of the Saints, the exordium being taken almost from the Acts of St. Kilian, and other things scraped together from elsewhere. The chief part of the whole narration sticks in describing the hunt of King Dagobert, who, with his men wondrously pursuing a hind for a whole three days, is said to have ascended the mountain which the man of God inhabited, and to have found him hiding there in his hut, and to have been received by him with a frugal meal, during which the beast, pressed and wearied by the hunters, betook itself to the Saint. He then narrates how Disibod tamed the hind, and gave it as a gift to the King, so that it followed him everywhere like a household dog.
[16] But on the contrary, the King, admiring the prodigy, not ungrateful, does not deserve to be reported. is said to have granted to the Saint, at his request, as much space of land, for his own and his posterity's use, as, from the dawning of the morning until the evening hour should come, he could go around under an ass as carrier: all which the King is said to have confirmed by a perpetual document; nay, which the plagiarist writer wished to filch from other Legends, which there is no need to enumerate here. I pass over the rest, equally puerile, so puerilely and verbosely cemented together, that I do not judge it worthy of serious reading. If I conjecture rightly, these things were collected perhaps in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, by someone ignorant of the more ancient life of St. Hildegard, as one who relates most different things, and altogether alien from the sense of this author. This also seems able to be gathered from the few miracles subjoined by that more recent author to his Legend, which, since they were unknown to St. Hildegard, who recounts other far more ancient ones, must have been both done and written after her death; and that fell in the year 1180; whence, unless I am mistaken, it is manifest that both the Legend and the miracles must be referred to ages nearer to us. Only the said miracles, therefore, we have judged to be taken thence, of which the writer asserts himself a witness, narrating with long digressions and windings what could most conveniently be contracted to a very few lines.
[17] And so to Hildegard alone must the whole substance, such as it is, of the Acts of St. Disibod be recalled, Concerning the Saint's age various opinions, whose age she marked by no indication, except that alone by which, if we follow it, he must be said a whole hundred years older than Marianus Scotus wrote, and others everywhere following him, who dare not declare him older than the seventh century. Christopher Brower, in his Annals of Trier, at the year of Christ 639, thus writes: They add to these (the Saints whom he had named) Disibod, who, if he indeed is the one whom Trithemius relates, distinguished with the infulæ of the pontificate, to have come from Ireland into the county of Sponheim from a desire of pilgrimage, and there, not long after the death of St. Benedict, to have built a monastery, you would not doubt that he is more rightly referred to earlier times. Nor is the authority of Trithemius great or constant in these matters, who elsewhere removes the death of St. Disibod to the year 700. The whole difficulty arises from St. Hildegard's period, number 13, where, bringing the Saint into Germany, she says that he had heard the good and sweet fame of the religion of blessed Benedict, who had very recently departed, and had left very many lovers of his religion. Since therefore St. Benedict flew to the heavenly things in the year 543, if the word "very recently" be taken more strictly, St. Disibod could not have passed beyond the sixth century.
[18] some standing for the sixth, others for the seventh century. The manuscript Annals of Trier would favor this opinion, in which Mabillon says he found that Ingobert, Disigoth, Wandelin, Karilef, with others, flourished on Mount Colena, or St. Paul's, in the pontificate of Magneric; they would favor it, I say, if the authority of those Annals were great, or if it were established that by Disigoth our St. Disibod is designated; for since Magneric is said to have held that see from about the year 573 to 595, no doubt would be left that St. Disibod must be reckoned to have flourished in that century. Sirinus, in his manuscript commentaries, most obligingly communicated to me by the Reverend Fathers the Irish Minorites of Louvain, brings to the same opinion Menard, in his little book on the Origin and increase of the Order of St. Benedict, page 860, where he says: St. Disibod the Irishman, who a little after the death of St. Benedict came into Germany, founded his monastery under the rule of St. Benedict. This St. Hildegard testifies in his life, whom Trithemius seems to have followed when he composed the Hirsau Chronicle, in which at the year 1138, treating of the translation which we related above from Dodechinus, he asserts that the Saint founded a monastery of his Order, not long after the death of the holy Father Benedict, on the summit of the mountain. But of Trithemius more below. I am silent about other writers thinking the same, from the sole authority of St. Hildegard, which to Colgan, Mabillon, Le Cointe, and several other most learned men did not seem of such value that it should be preferred to Marianus Scotus, or to his continuator and interpolator Dodechinus.
[19] The epoch marked by us is preferred, But thus the Chronicle of Marianus speaks at the year 674: The island of Ireland is held full of holy men, from which our blessed Father Disibod, having abdicated his episcopate, having gone forth with very many companions, inhabited this place, and here merited to be venerated with divine praises by the faithful before God. All these words cannot be referred to Marianus, but to Dodechinus; for it is as clearly established that this man lived as a monk on the Mount of St. Disibod, as it is certain that Marianus was never enclosed in that place; so that vain are the evasions of Sirinus and others to weaken the authority of the chronicle, which alone in the present matter seems decisive, as in his unpublished work on the apostolate of Ireland among foreigners Colgan openly acknowledged, plainly thinking that the death of St. Disibod, both absolutely and according to the mind of Marianus, who mentions it neither before nor after in his Chronicle, must be referred to the year 674, and thus his migration from Ireland to the year 633 or the following; which year, he says, the death of St. Benedict did not so long precede, if we benignly interpret the words of the ancients: as the Hildegardian life at number 22 seems able easily to be explained. If you deny that those words can bear so great a latitude, certainly the aforesaid Chronicle of Marianus, rather than the vague phrase of Hildegard, will always seem to me to be trusted. Hildegard, abbess of Bingen, says Le Cointe at the year 674, number 29, is not of such authority with us as Dodechinus, who governed the monastery of St. Disibod with the title of abbot.
[20] to which Trithemius is to be reduced, Whatever Trithemius may have said otherwise elsewhere, he thought with Dodechinus, when in book 1 of the Compendium of Annals, as we also related above, under Clovis King of the Franks, son of Dagobert, he thus discourses: St. Disibod also, monk and presbyter, in the diocese of Mainz, in the county of Sponheim, two miles from Kreuznach [*], and one from the monastery formerly mine of Sponheim, leading an eremitic life, in that place near Sobernheim, where the Nahe and the Glan flow together, built a monastery of monks, which today stands by his name. These things, cited above for another end, we here repeat again, that it may be clear that Trithemius did not everywhere hold the same. Clovis II died, according to Labbe, in the year 662, or, as others, a little earlier, certainly beyond the middle of the seventh century. Disibod, Hildegard being witness, served God faithfully on his mountain for thirty years. Nothing therefore is repugnant, says Le Cointe, to Disibod having come into the diocese of Mainz while Clovis reigned, and having lived there surviving in the year of Christ 674. The praised writer then observes that, just as the year is unknown in which Disibod chose his station on the aforesaid mountain, so neither can the year be determinately established in which he ceased to live. But whatever be of either, thus Le Cointe proceeds, Disibod flourished in the seventh century, nor can his pilgrimage and dwellings outside Ireland be referred to the sixth century.
[21] That in that year 674 in the Chronicle of Marianus the year of St. Disibod's death is noted, who at various places held various things. is likely enough, and so thinks Le Cointe, with the above-cited Colgan and others; yet I would not too sharply contend that the Saint precisely in that year ended his life, since it is not there expressly stated, so that if anyone should wish, with Trithemius on the Illustrious Men of the Order of St. Benedict, to prolong our Saint's life even to the year 700, I would easily assent to him. Hear the words of Trithemius himself from book 3, chapter 288: Disibod, bishop in Ireland, a man of most holy conversation; when he saw his people stiff-necked and altogether incorrigible, having abdicated his episcopate, with certain companions came to Germany, and in the diocese of Mainz, in the county of Sponheim, found a place suited to his desire, in which, a monastery being built, he was the Father of many monks. Which place is today called the Mount of St. Disibod, and is inhabited by the Cistercians, after our men for more than three hundred years from the time of the holy Father Disibod dwelt in it. His life was described by Blessed Hildegard, abbess of the monastery of Bingen, whose feast is kept on the eighth of June. He flourished about the year of the Lord seven hundred. Now you perceive well enough that in the age of St. Disibod Trithemius wavered.
[22] Arnold Wion, in his notes to his monastic Martyrology on the eighth of June, Arnold Wion is corrected, makes Trithemius surety for certain things which he by no means asserted. The first is, that he attributes to him that St. Disibod departed from the world on this same day (the eighth of June). For Trithemius in the words just cited only says that his feast is kept on the eighth of June, which for various causes could be done in the time of Trithemius and afterward be changed. In this again Wion is deceived, that under the name of Trithemius he writes that St. Disibod was a monk and abbot, whereas it is manifest that the aforesaid Trithemius asserted nothing else than that he was the Father of many monks, which is most true, although, by the trust of Hildegard, he can neither be called an abbot, nor properly a monk, but a true anchorite and solitary; who had not taken the habit of the monastic religion which his congregation used, as she herself most expressly declares at number 30. In this Wion did not err, that from the recited passage of Trithemius he affirmed that St. Disibod flourished about the year
the seven-hundredth. The same opinion Ferrarius, Wilson, Mabillon, Castellanus, and others follow and uphold, which differs so little from ours that it is not worthwhile on that account to move a dispute.
[23] and the whole series of his life is somehow ordered. From the fixed epoch of his death you will conveniently order his preceding age, if you remember that he was made Bishop in his thirtieth year, administered the church committed to him for a decade, wandered abroad for another ten years, and at last for thirty years sat on his mountain, so that he plainly received the term of this present life in the eighty-first year of his age, as is at number 35. The Saint's fatherland the author of the life, St. Hildegard, and Dodechinus distinguished so expressly, that the Scots labor here in vain to snatch him from the Irish. As for his dignity, Rabanus endowed St. Disibod with the title of Confessor only, as will be clear from his words in the following paragraph; whence arises the suspicion, says Mabillon, whether (as happened to several others) the word Bishop was fastened upon him. But we have shown elsewhere that the word Bishop was not so rare at that time in Ireland, that from Rabanus's silence it can presently be inferred that it was fastened upon him. Here the learned man may trust Hildegard and Dodechinus, most expressly asserting that he was a Bishop before he betook himself from Ireland into Germany. That he is wrongly called abbot and monk, we have already said sufficiently: for the Saint so instituted his life, that with the most rigid harshness he set before himself for imitation the ancient hermits, Antony and Macarius and those like them, who had lived on herbs and hard fare; showing the way to the assembled brethren, by example more than by command, to the exercises of the virtues; whence he so diffused the rays of his sanctity in every direction, that even while living he was honored as a Saint, and certainly straightway after his pious death obtained the veneration of the heavenly ones; which remains here to be shown a little more distinctly in the following paragraph.
Annotated* Kreuznach.
§ III. On the Saint's cult from the Martyrologies and other monuments.
[24] Among the classic Martyrologists We have already gathered here and there in the aforesaid some things which are to be referred to the cult and ancient veneration of St. Disibod, and especially those which, concerning the various elevations and translations, we have commemorated after Dodechinus and Trithemius, from which it is manifestly established that an ancient religious cult was exhibited to him on the oft-mentioned Mount, which the author of the life, St. Hildegard, more confirms, when she narrates the fame and glory of his sanctity, while yet living, widely dispersed and published through the whole neighboring region, also recounting miracles, which were wrought in great number: so that concerning the public veneration shown to the Saint straightway after his happy death it seems impossible to doubt. That the same was afterward more widely diffused, the aforesaid Legend also sufficiently testifies, which was thereupon received and common, at least after the sacred body, raised by St. Boniface from the first sepulcher, was placed in a more fitting place, about the year, as it is nearly allowable to suppose, 740. Meanwhile this is plainly to be wondered at, that so great a splendor of sanctity in other regions lay thus hidden under a bushel, so that it never came to the notice of the classic Martyrologists. And to Bede indeed, Florus, Ado, Usuard, and Notker I would easily pardon this; but that Wandelbert, a monk of Prüm, and thus nearer, was ignorant of St. Disibod, is more difficult to believe.
[25] And so among the ancients Rabanus Maurus alone mentions St. Disibod, not on this day the eighth of July, but on the sixth before the Ides, or the eighth of September, under this formula: Rabanus alone mentions St. Disibod, and that on 8 September And in the suburban parts of the church of Mainz, the birthday of St. Disibod the confessor. The dignity of bishop passed over by Rabanus we have already observed above with Mabillon, not thinking however that the Saint should be deprived of that mark, which we believe Rabanus was ignorant of, to whom he was known only as an anchorite; from the solitude of the mountain, which he had inhabited for a whole thirty years, the dignity being altogether neglected, with which that he was truly endowed the Chronicle of Marianus so expressly affirms. Moreover by "the suburban parts of the church of Mainz," to say this in passing, are designated not the suburbs of Mainz itself, but the tract or territory, or diocese, of the aforesaid church, which happens also elsewhere. But whether Rabanus there properly calls the day of death, when he writes "birthday," or perhaps the solemnity of the translation is indicated, which in his time was more festively kept, you will not easily distinguish; the author of the life, St. Hildegard, most clearly referred the birthday itself to this day, the eighth before the Ides of July, on which in the additions to Usuard the Lübeck-Cologne Edition placed him: On the same day of blessed Disibod, bishop and confessor: whence it passed into Grevenus and Molanus, although the latter mentions him again on the eighth of September, on which he copied the words of Rabanus.
[26] The monastic writers Wion, Dorganius, and Menard do not all think the same; by the first he is placed on the eighth of June: On the Mount of St. Disibod, The more recent vary in assigning the birthday. the deposition of the same Disibod the bishop, who, his episcopate being left, was made Father of many monks, in a monastery of the diocese of Mainz, of the county of Sponheim, which place afterward was called from his name the Mount of St. Disibod, and, illustrious for miracles, rested in peace: which things are nearly copied from Bucelin, who promises more elsewhere. But on this day the aforesaid Wion, not consequently enough, announces: In the district of Trier, of St. Disibod, bishop and confessor; admonishing that he treats of the same one whom before he had much more rightly placed in the diocese of Mainz. Dorganius wrote on the eighth of June: The translation of St. Disibod the bishop. On this day simply: Of St. Disibod, bishop and confessor, that you may understand the birthday here to be indicated. Menard mentions St. Disibod neither on this day nor on the eighth of September, but on the eighth of June thus has: On the Mount of St. Disibod, the deposition of the same Disibod the bishop, who, his episcopate being left, was made Father of monks in the diocese of Mainz. Those who contend for the eighth of September, as Mabillon and Castellanus, rely on the authority of Rabanus, here certainly no small one: Trithemius gave light to those who marked him on the eighth of June, with Saussay, the Englishman Wilson, and the Scot Dempster, who ascribes the Saint to Belgium, on this day treating of his translation at Trier, and connecting other translations with several other days. To us it has seemed good, with the author of the life, to prefer this eighth of July, on which he is also noted by Canisius, Ferrarius, and the Irish Kalendars; marked by Camerarius alone on the seventh of July.
[27] The words of Trithemius from book 3 on the Illustrious Men of the Order of St. Benedict, chapter 288, were related above at number 21. I wonder indeed It is weighed and emended that Trithemius testifies that his feast is kept on the eighth of June; unless perhaps some translation, more solemnly made on that day, is commemorated, concerning which also we have said abundantly in the first paragraph. Various eulogies of St. Disibod, from Ghini and others, I do not judge it worthwhile to heap up here; a long enough panegyric the Acts themselves will give, exceedingly amplified and adorned. Nor is there need to recite the words of Dodechinus again. Saussay deserves to be heard in his Supplement on the eighth of June, at least that those things may be refuted in which he deviated from the right. This is his encomium: At Mainz, of St. Disibod, an Irish bishop, who, his prelacy being abdicated and his fatherland left, that he might become a perfect cultivator of humility, having professed as a monk in the suburb of Mainz for the love of Christ, so shone forth with the splendors of divine grace, that, the abbot being dead, by the vow of his companions, though reluctant, he was substituted. Directing them in all the discipline of religion, and more by deeds than by words inciting them to all virtue, he transformed them into ideas of Evangelical perfection, Christ inspiring. In these few things Saussay sins in more: for neither did St. Disibod dwell in the suburb of Mainz, nor did he ever there profess as a monk, nor was he substituted for a dead abbot; all which things are diametrically repugnant to his Acts. The remaining part of the encomium is not free from fault; let us subjoin the sequel.
[28] the longer eulogy of Saussay, Then, much spiritual offspring being happily begotten, the father of many sons, the worker of many prodigies, he migrated to the pleasant dwellings of the supernal city (to which he had always panted). The series of whose angelic conversation the blessed virgin Hildegard, abbess of Bingen, described with pure mind and white hand; the King of glory honored his memory with great clarifications, and the church of Mainz, enrolling him among its Guardians, having pursued him thenceforth with perpetual cult, joyfully distinguished by his name the church and monastery which he long ago ruled as a faithful dispenser. Thus far the Gallican Martyrologist, who, although he seems here to name St. Hildegard as surety for his statements, certainly did not consult the Legend written by her, from whose mind he heaped up things so different and alien concerning St. Disibod. Nor is it true that the church of Mainz enrolled him among its Guardians (these at Mainz are SS. Martin and Boniface): nor does that church use any proper office of St. Disibod, so far as I know, certainly it is not wont to use one, as is manifest from several old Breviaries and Kalendars which are in our Museum. Safely therefore can we assert that in his more ornate panegyric Saussay piously supposed many things which could indeed have happened, but which that they were done or customary is in no way established.
[29] as also that which Wilson invented. Less well arranged and more inept are the things which John Wilson thrust into the light, whose in the English Martyrology on the eighth of June this is the text: On the same day in the diocese of Mainz, in upper Germany, the deposition of St. Disibod, bishop and confessor, who, born in Ireland, and a monk of the Order of St. Benedict, was ordained bishop of Dublin in the same kingdom; which dignity being resigned, he went into Germany to preach the Christian faith, and, made abbot of a certain monastery of the aforesaid diocese of Mainz, which to this day is called St. Disibod's, there in great sanctity of life and in miracles consummated his blessed days, about the year of Christ 700. In vain have I sought whence Wilson could draw such things, certainly unworthy that the above-praised Sirinus should illustrate them with his Commentaries, when he feigns for us a bishop of Dublin even before the times of St. Rumold, whom we showed on the first of July cannot be called prelate of that city, as being nearly three centuries older than the institution of its chair. No less absurd is the resignation of the episcopate; where all the monuments cry out that St. Disibod was rather cast out from his see and driven away. But that he was a monk of the Order of St. Benedict, or professed even in Ireland itself, is equally a dream; as also the abbatial dignity in some monastery, which is supposed to have existed before the Saint's coming into Germany.
[30] But whatever those more recent writers may have confounded, mixing true with false, A curious and ancient border-plate they can in no way harm the perpetual cult of St. Disibod, established for so many centuries, at least in that monastery where his precious remains were deposited, hitherto, unless I am mistaken, surviving, although the Mount of St. Disibod has devolved to secular canons. The curious, diligent, and learned helper of our Elders, Father Alexander Wilthem, wrote to Papebroch about the beginning of the year 1676,
that he had found a beautiful monument of antiquity concerning St. Disibod, who is venerated on the eighth of July, and sent the same delineated from Luxembourg on the thirtieth of May of the same year. There are four bronze plates, he says, which, joined, make up a square border, such as are of mirrors. The work and the figures consist of enamel and gilded bronze. In the upper plate is Christ in a round circle, with Α and Ω added on either side. On the left (he meant to say on the right, unless the first delineator changed the sides) stands St. Disibod, in the garb of a Bishop, his name written beside. Behind him is St. Clement with his name. On the right (on the other side) SS. Gislialdus and Salustius with their names, who were three companions of St. Disibod. Before Christ, outside the circle, Hildegard bends her knees and inclines herself, holding a book, namely the one she wrote on the life of St. Disibod. In the other top of the plate St. Disibod sits in a chair, his name written beside. Below him are two shaven monks, with the cowl attached to the tunic, suppliant and kneeling.
[31] Suppliant I acknowledge, which the lifted face in the added figure sufficiently shows, caused to be delineated by Wilthem, but in what manner Wilthem observed them kneeling, I do not so easily perceive. But in whatever posture, gesture, and habit you contemplate them, this is certain, that our delineation, the copy sent to us, which the praised Wilthem testified corresponds most perfectly to the original, also represents it most perfectly. Let us pursue the rest of the letter. From the bottom rises a scroll even to St. Disibod, with these letters: O Father! WHAT SHALL IT BE, WHEN WE SHALL LOSE YOU, OUR SHEPHERD? On the contrary, from St. Disibod descends another scroll: IN THE HUMBLE PLACE OF THE ORATORY, WHERE I SERVED GOD AS A SOLITARY, BURY ME. It is credible that both sentences were taken from the original life, which Hildegard wrote and Surius corrupted. In the right plate (to us the left) St. Disibod stands three times, clothed pontifically, with his name also added three times; and in the highest place before him a mute man, in the place next below, before the same, a dropsical man, in the lowest a leper. In the lowest plate St. Disibod is buried by a priest with a cope and crozier, and on either side stand cowled monks, but with long beards. The characters and figures savor of the twelfth century. In the four angles are, in circles, the Evangelical animals, which the engraver, equally with the rest, diligently and accurately imitated. Now let us explain the things which were passed over by Wilthem.
[32] In the Wilthemian copy, after the standard of the prototype, the several things are distinguished by their colors, which here could not be so perfectly rendered, although they are discerned by those skilled in heraldry. You will note therefore that in the original three colors chiefly are exhibited, here is exhibited engraved in bronze namely yellow, green, and blue. The yellow, by which all the human figures are depicted, designates gilded bronze; the rest of the enamel is formed by lines and transverse parallels in such a way that these express the green color, those the blue, and by this indeed even the very beard of Salustus or Salustius is figured. The upper epigraph, inscribed on the circle which surrounds the image of Christ, no doubt makes this sense: Be mindful of your Church. If you ask to what use that border ever served; I will suppose that which Papebroch left written somewhere; namely, that with those plates was adorned the book of the life of St. Disibod, written by St. Hildegard about the year 1170. Certainly I would by no means doubt that those parts, whether separately or joined together, were once deputed to sacred uses; likely enough, to be fitted to some pious image. But in what place today, or by whom they are kept, is not known to me; they have been here reported and exhibited only for this grace, that the ancient cult of St. Disibod may be shown, since I think Wilthem judged rightly that the characters and figures savor of the twelfth century. Other things the curious explorers of treasures of this kind will observe, as Papebroch long ago observed.
[33] and it is explained, and treated of the three companions. Rightly also did Wilthem conjecture that it is credible that both sentences, described in the image, were taken from the original life, not indeed according to the several points of the words, but according to the genuine substance of the matter, which you will find at number 34. But what of those three other companions of St. Disibod, Gislialdus or Gillilaldus, Clement, and Salustus or Salustius? It is plain that here Saints are most openly declared, received from the Hildegardian Legend at number 16, where they are expressly named in this manner: Who were three, of whom the first, namely the elder, was called Gillilaldus, the second Clement, the third Salustus, who had come with him from Ireland. St. Hildegard abstains from every title of veneration, indicating them by name in this one place only, so that of them this one thing is handed down to memory, that they accompanied St. Disibod into Germany. But whether they adhered to St. Disibod even to death, whether they led his singular eremitic kind of life, or rather that of monks; what they did, whether they departed from life before or after their holy preceptor, St. Hildegard so did not commemorate, that in the whole remaining course of the narration she mentions them, as I said, not even in a word. It is, I confess, no small authority of so ancient a monument, that they too should be reckoned among the Saints; but since I have hitherto found no memory of them in approved fasti, I abstain for the present from joining them to St. Disibod, until elsewhere there occur things which may more clearly prove that the honors of the heavenly ones are to be attributed to them. If you object Camerarius, announcing on the eighteenth of August: St. Salustius followed St. Disibod from Scotland: and on the twenty-sixth of June: St. Gisualdus confessor, companion of St. Disibod; I shall easily answer that it is indeed true that those two, with Clement (whom I wonder was neglected by Camerarius), by the trust of St. Hildegard, followed St. Disibod into Germany, but that that writer is not of such authority that he should forge Saints for us, on this title alone, that they accompanied some Saint; as I have elsewhere admonished that the Irish are too liberal in canonizing all those who are recorded to have been joined to St. Patrick either by companionship or by blood; unless it be established from elsewhere concerning a cult legitimately exhibited. Now it is time that we subjoin the Life of our Saint.
LIFE
By the Author St. Hildegard, nun.
From the manuscript of St. Maximin of Trier.
Disibod, Bishop and Confessor, at Disibodenberg in the territory of Mainz in Germany (S.)
BHL Number: 2204
FROM THE MANUSCRIPT.
CHAPTER I.
The Saint's family, his parents expelled by tyrants, his progress in letters, his election as Bishop, his abdication and withdrawal from his fatherland.
In a mystical vision a, as God willed, on account of the petition and command of my Prelates, namely of Hebiger [*] the abbot, and of all the brethren serving God on the Mount of blessed Disibod, A little preface being premised concerning the vision, I was beholding concerning the life and merits of the same blessed Father, and after the visions of the book of the life of merits had been produced, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation one thousand one hundred and seventy, Frederick the Emperor of the Romans reigning, under the pressure of the Apostolic See, lying nearly for three years on a bed of sickness, from the sweetness of the divine wisdom I heard a voice from heaven, waking in body and mind, thus speaking: Disibod, the elect of God, from his infancy inspired by the Holy Spirit, like blessed Nicholas and blessed Benedict and those like them, panted with thirsting heart for every good which he saw and heard. Wherefore of him it can be said: Out of the mouth of infants and sucklings you have perfected praise, because of your enemies, that you may destroy the enemy and the avenger.
[2] Which is thus to be understood b. In the good affection of infants, the wonders of God are explained even in little ones; not yet having speech, and of those who ought rather to suck milk than to work wonders, you, who are the Lord of all, have led to the perfect praise of your name; since you have often wrought your wonders in them: namely, when you so inspired them, not yet having full marrow, that they brought forth many things in speaking and working unknowingly; and when you strengthened others, against the laws of the flesh, with such fortitude, that, tending with all desire to the heavenly things, they did not exercise the offices of the flesh by sinning. But in these let no one apprehend a doubt, because the serpentine deceit could not do these good and holy things in those Blessed ones; for you did these things because of your enemies, namely the lost angels, so that to their confusion they might see your power in childish ignorance; and that you may destroy the enemy, namely him who in all good things denies you. And the avenger: namely him who casts stones and darts of his impiety against your words and miracles, by reproving them.
[3] These evils in the aforesaid Blessed men in no way prevailed, which are applied to the Saint. since they spoke the things which are right: for God in blessed Disibod, from his infancy even to his decrepit age, wrought in his gifts; so that his boyhood did not play in wickedness, and his youth did not burn in lasciviousness, and the maturity of his old age did not look to the left. For he so left all the pomp of this world in heart and body, that some affirmed him through this to be foolish, some vain, some erring, but some wonderful in his works, saying: What is this that this man does?
[4] The parents expelled from their native soil. The parents therefore of blessed Disibod, powerful in the freedom of the world, had drawn their origin from the excellent stock of the Irish, but yet did not have the pomp and glory of the world in superfluity. Whence certain of the tyrants, swelling in pride, when in that same region they had subjugated very many to themselves by tyranny, strove also to oppress and subject to their dominion the parents of this Blessed man, who at that time was a boy. But they, not unmindful of the freedom of their stock, refusing the hard and unjust subjection, declined from them, and betook themselves far to the more remote places of the same region, and near a certain river, which is poured out from the sea c, together with their son blessed Disibod, and all their substance, took up a dwelling in a certain town, where they also commended him to religious men to be imbued with letters and the other liberal arts.
[5] They take care that the holy boy be instructed, But he, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, committed the good things which he heard from his teachers, with a capacious mind, to a good memory, and from this made no small joy for his parents, laboring in the affliction of exile. Thus that boy, advancing from day to day, and growing in body and in sanctity, ascended from the pursuit of good works into the pursuit of good works, by praying and giving alms, so that he hastened with all desire to everything which he could hear or learn of God, and thus, through the grades of the virtues and through the increases of his age, the several sacred orders being received, he attained to the grade of the presbyterate, when he was thirty years old. Which, received with the fear of the Lord, he did like a good perfumer, who
in his garden plants every spice and aromatic, always studying that his garden may be green and not dry.
[6] who, made a priest, shines with such great virtues, For in these pursuits the same Saint was mindful of the words of Wisdom, where it says: I have gathered my myrrh with my spices. Which is thus to be understood d. I, who ought to labor in just works, with a good intention offer to God the mortification of my flesh, since for the love of him I desire to become a stranger to vices, and to flee their common uncleanness, and to have no fellowship with them; because in the spices of the virtues I hasten to love and venerate the true God himself; since the love of heavenly desire will not fail from my heart, himself helping. In this right and holy will that Saint was as it were dead to the world, so that many, seeing these things, acted as though they did not know him; and shrank from remaining with him; because he compelled himself wholly to serve the spirit, and not the flesh.
[7] so that he is elected Bishop; And when in virtues of this kind he served God laudably, and for this pleased, blameless, those who loved God; it happened that a certain Prelate, in the parts of the same region, passed from the present life to the life to come: and when the people, both of the lesser and of the greater, had assembled, according to custom, to choose another Prelate for themselves, some of them, who knew the honest morals and holy life of blessed Disibod, unanimously chose him for their Prelate e. But some, whose life and conversation was reprehensible, forbade this to be done, saying: What profit is it that a silent and non-speaking man, and one not knowing the people, be made a master?
[8] But God looked upon this Blessed one, as it is written: and that dignity, in no way struggling against it, To justify the humble and the poor. Which is thus to be understood: To sanctify in works the just man, who for God's sake humbles himself to the ground, and who confesses himself needy and poor with his whole heart; because justice, with the open eye of piety, looks upon him. For this humble man always desired poverty, and with the dove-like eye of simplicity always looked to God, that he might acquire eternal riches for himself: whence also God loved him. He held death for death, and counted all failing things for nothing, and placed all his works in God, and therefore God chose him. For the supernal judge had hidden this man from the common people, but had manifested him to those who loved him; whence, though some were amazed, he willed him to be master and Prelate.
[9] And when this Blessed one was compelled by the more prudent to undertake the aforesaid burden, he, crying out that he was unworthy of so great a dignity, he is compelled to admit. with the force he could, drew back his hands and feet; but yet, those who feared God impelling and prevailing, even unwilling, but by divine ordination, he was placed in the see of the episcopate: In which the happy Bishop himself began to proclaim and teach the justice of God, and admonished all whom he could to be subject to God, and now by teaching manifested that he had been imbued from his infancy through the Holy Spirit, and offered them in himself good examples of sanctities and virtues with fatherly affection. But some, for the merits of the virtues which they saw in him, loved him and desired his doctrine with the attentive ear of the heart; but some, who had cast God behind their back, cried out raging against this Saint: This man lives as though he were not a man: whence he compels us also to live inhumanly. And who can hear him? And they afflicted him with many injuries.
[10] But he gathered to himself a few and faithful men, who afforded him both consolation and help. Discharging the office of a good Shepherd, And daily he afflicted his heart for God, saying: O Lord God, I your servant prostrate myself before your piety, doing the things you have commanded; for you know that I desire you alone; wherefore I trust that sometime you will fulfill my desire: as it is written: Delight in the Lord, and he will give you the petitions of your heart. Which is thus to be understood. O man, who were conceived and born in sins, delight, against the affection of the flesh, in the precepts of him who created you; recalling also to memory who he is who freed you. Which when you have done, he will give you what you ask, since you do not ask the things that ought to be asked, but, showing him the affliction of your heart with a humbled spirit, and by crying and grieving, you will constrain yourself, like a beast, to labor at the things that are right. And so those who shall study to repent and to amend their evils in this manner, are more prudent than the children of light: because these neither willed nor did this. For it pleases God that a man have a hard war against himself, and against the dragon, so that whoever shall have this, God speedily fulfilled his prayers and desires, as also he did in blessed Disibod, who had hard wars, as long as he lived in the body, but yet happily consummated them with a good end.
[11] Afflicted with various injuries of the impious, But meanwhile, while that Saint presided over his people in the faith of the aforesaid dignity by words and examples, a great mockery, a great schism boiled up in that whole region, some resisting the Old and New Testament and denying Christ, some seeking the heresies of heretics; some laying hold of the sect of the Jews, some loving the sect of the pagans f. Some burning to live, not humanly, but in the confusion of beasts, with base zeal, but others having discipline indeed for the sake of humanity, yet studying to do no good. To these greatest errors and confusions blessed Disibod, opposing himself manfully and intrepidly, patiently endured many reproaches and many injuries, choosing rather to lose the present life than to consent to such great and so unfitting evils.
[12] and deserts both his see and his fatherland. And when he had endured these things for some years, without the eradication of the same evils, with peril also of his own body, at last, affected with weariness, he said to God in his prayers with great lamentation: O God, and O Judge of all holy men, what profit is it to me to labor with this people, who transfix your justice with rabid bites? At length the favorers of the aforesaid errors, with the people, entangled in the same errors, seeing that this Blessed one would not consent to their errors and depravity, but constantly rebuked them everywhere, without fear of death; laid very many snares for him, and at last, a band of the unbelieving being gathered, expelled him from his see, afflicted with many contumelies. But he, choosing rather to serve God in quiet than longer to tarry without the fruit of usefulness, a few religious men being gathered to him, left the see of his dignity, which for ten years he had ruled strenuously and religiously; his fatherland, and all he had, for the name of Christ, saying that it profited neither himself nor others that he should remain there: Where so great an unbelief with hardness of iniquity had grown; and seized with joyful mind the pilgrimage which he had long desired, for eternal life g.
ANNOTATED.
* Helinger.
CHAPTER II.
The pilgrimage into Germany, the instruction of the people near the Rhine, the solitary and austere life on the mountain, the beginnings of the monastery and miracles.
[13] And when he had gone out of Ireland, having traversed many regions a, and diligently surveyed many places, Having set out into the parts of Germany, seeking rest for his soul, he came at last into Alemannia, where indeed he found a hard and rough people, and there, wearied, fixing his step for some time, when he gave to that people the words of salvation and examples of sanctity, many hearing him loved him, but many cared neither to hear nor to love him. And when he made delays in the same province, deliberating with himself whither he might turn aside, he heard the good and sweet fame of the religion of blessed Benedict, who had very recently departed b, and had left very many lovers of his religion, and so, through the admonition of the Holy Spirit, he knew that his desire, which he had long desired, was not yet fulfilled, namely that to the people once committed to him he might associate some men of true and perfect religion: for this cause he went again from place to place, and found nothing in the places or in the morals of those peoples that pleased his soul.
[14] Then he began to weep and pray, saying: Incline, Lord, after he had traversed various places, your ear and hear me: for I am needy and poor; which is thus to be understood. Condescending to my tribulations, incline you, Lord, who are the ruler of all, the ear of mercy, and hear the words of my prayer, since I am needy in soul, through pusillanimity of mind, and poor in body, through the contrition of afflictions, I who ought to follow you, to love you above all things. Remember therefore that from my infancy I studied to serve you, and that for your love I always loved poverty and contempt of the world. Then God, on account of the greenness of his good desire, receiving these prayers, sent into his mind the sweet consolation of quiet, as dew falls upon grass,
and also in a vision of the night, by a certain showing, manifested to him that sometime a place suited to his vow was to be found by him: for to this Blessed man God, as he did to his other beloved ones, who desired him with all love, seemed to be present with them, by seeing, speaking, and hearing, on account of the great and good intention with which they trustingly directed themselves to him with all their heart.
[15] desiring to serve God alone; The Holy Spirit also took away from him all the fabulous fame of vainglory, which is in many men, who according to their own will pray and fast in dissimulation; when they seek something from God unjustly, where, if anything should happen to them as they wish, they hold it as though for a showing from God. If any such there be, they shall be scattered like stubble by the wind. But when a man mortifies himself from vanities, he takes as it were sleep in them, and then pride and vainglory, and the acquisition of honor from the peoples, and the other vices are constrained by the power of God, lest that man be in any way turned aside, by their suggestions, from the love of the embrace of his creator.
[16] at last on a mountain, not far from the Rhine But blessed Disibod, rejoicing for the hope of his good desire, because he knew it would sometime be fulfilled through the help of God, when he had heard a good fame of the people dwelling in the parts of Gaul on this side of the Rhine, namely that that people was indeed hard, but yet devoutly held the ecclesiastical religion by living well; he grew weary of the mockery of the deriding people, and, scarcely waiting, hastily directed his journey to the end of the Rhine: and thence turning aside, and proceeding through every trackless place, he came to the river Glan, and it being crossed, saw a high and wooded mountain, which after ten years of his pilgrimage he ascended, and there sitting weary and resting, to his companions (who were three, of whom the first, namely the elder, was called Gillilaldus, the second Clement, the third Salustus), who had come with him from Ireland, being touched by the Holy Spirit, he said: Here shall be my rest.
[17] he determines to dwell with his companions; For when he had afterward traversed the same mountain round about, and diligently considered each of its sides; its pleasantness pleased his soul more and more for dwelling, because both its loftiness would afford a difficult access to those coming, and the streamlets flowing on either part c would give refreshment of body to those remaining there: and he prayed, saying: Lord, who reside above the heavens, and rule the abyss, I pray that the pleasantness of this place may be turned into the pleasantness of souls: because it is fitting that in this place you be faithfully served by a faithful people. And saying these things, he marked out for himself a habitation on the descent of the same mountain, toward the East, on account of the convenience of water, and, strenuously beginning the conversation which he had long desired, by praying, watching, and fasting, hard and harshly he led a solitary life.
[18] But his companions, who were with him, that they might not have any mutual joy among themselves, built their dwellings one by one, various little cells being built separately. more remotely from him. And it is to be known that for some time they were sustained there by the roots of herbs, since they had no other food. But that mountain in its circuit, with the woods adjacent to it, and places passable and impassable (not of one man, but of the men of the province, both lesser and greater), was at that time more than one mile. Whence it happened that, when men entered the same wood, whether for the catching of wild beasts, or for the fishing of the adjacent rivers, or for the cutting of wood, or for their other necessities: they many times saw this Blessed man, either digging up roots, or gathering other necessaries for himself round about, and thus after some time he was made manifest.
[19] For a rumor went out among the people, that a certain Saint, Shining by a harsh and solitary life, with certain others, had come, sent by God into that place; which very many admiring, with good desire came to him, and conferred with him the things useful to themselves, to whom he rendered the words of salvation and of life: since from the time of his exile even to that time he had labored especially in learning the language of the same men; whence he both understood and uttered it according to his measure. From which it came about that those to whom he gave the words of life and the admonitions of the failing life, often brought to him and to those remaining with him the necessaries of the body. But the servant of God, with the men associated to him, gathered to himself the poor and needy: and whatever remained to him beyond his daily food, by this he fed them. For he was always mindful that Adam perished by food; wherefore he frequently had in his heart Antony and Macarius and those like them, who had lived on herbs and hard fare, that by their example he might constrain his body from soft and delicate foods, lest he be deceived by the ancient serpent. And the more this Blessed one afflicted his flesh, the more amply did God multiply his grace with him; whence very many sick and weak were brought to him, whom the Holy Spirit through his merits suddenly healed: which yet he himself, humbly dreading, fled the praise of men as much as he could.
[20] And when the fame of his sanctity flew through this whole province, by example and words he instructs the people; the people spreading it, certain God-fearing men came to him, and built for him a small oratory, on the descent of the aforesaid mountain toward the east, in which he might celebrate the divine offices with his companions, that both they and the others coming for God's sake might there receive from him the words and pastures of life. But others, toward the West, on the plain at the foot of the same mountain, cut down the brambles and thickets, and prepared there for the blessed Man gardens and pastures and little huts: whence also, on account of the thickets which were cut down there, which in the common speech are called studim d, the place itself was at first called Studenheim. Many also from far regions came to this Blessed one, and commended their souls to him with good faith and hope: which the peoples dwelling in the same province, by divine instinct, dreaded, and said that they were negligent in this matter, since God, for the glory and honor of his name, had visited that place through his Saint, whom they, having him beside them, neglected to visit and to honor more frequently with their means.
[21] by whom also a more convenient habitation is prepared, Whence it came about that the Princes and the other nobles and rich, together with the rest of the people inhabiting those lands, offered the mountain itself with all its bounds, beyond the running rivers, namely the Nahe [*] and the Glan, directed in length and breadth, as was said before, to the same Blessed man and to his posterity, because they saw the wonders of God in him, so that also, good men of holy conversation being gathered there, the necessaries of the present life might suffice and without want; and with common voice and cry they said: Praise to you, Lord God, because you have deigned to send us this your Saint. Which offering being received, that Blessed one greatly feared, remembering that in the episcopal burden he had before endured very many adversities from the nations, and with knees bent to God, he prayed that the same offering might rise to the fruit and to the quickening of souls, the Spirit granting.
[22] in which, according to the rule of St. Benedict Then, day and night burning in his heart, he thought, as in the desire of his mind for very many years past he had had, how and where he might gather religious men and men of harsh life, since in spirit he understood that it befitted God that a spiritual congregation should serve its creator in that place. And, the Holy Spirit inspiring, he placed all the devotion of his heart on the conversion and doctrine of blessed Benedict, who had already passed to God, and had left certain Blessed men, faithful ministers of his holy institution, still living and surviving in those same times, and he sent messengers with humble supplication to the far regions where the same conversation religiously and holily flourished, for those who might plant the vineyard of the Lord of hosts, according to the doctrine of the aforesaid Father, who had constituted a rule suited to a spiritual people, from the whole life of the Saints, the Holy Spirit teaching.
[23] he attracts more brethren to himself, And thus he drew to himself very many religious men of the same conversation, for whom he ordered an oratory and suitable dwellings to be built, on the brow of the same mountain, on account of the difficult access, toward the east, namely lest henceforth they be infested by the people, and lest perhaps their rigor and religion, by the daily frequenting of those coming, be turned into softness and sloth. But he himself, that he might be ready for all that met him, and that he might satisfy those coming in rendering answers to all according to their quality; on the descent of the same mountain to the east, in the dwelling and the oratory which he had prepared for himself, as was said above, remained a solitary. But the congregation of the same brethren was augmented, both according to God and according to man: and whatever they had to do or to have was done by the command or permission of this holy man, and they exercised the common life, according to the institution of blessed Benedict.
[24] For the pious father Disibod studied that his congregation, through the custom of the law instituted for it, might be so composed and firm, whom he also diligently instructs that the devil could not prepare in it a pit of vices, and could not transfix it with his darts and separate it one from another; and that it, terrible through the restraint of vices, and like an army set in array, might appear in the concord of virtues to the devil and to men. For he taught it wisely to fight against the hostile bands of the airy spirits in humility, and to avoid the vanity of pride and the arrogance of mind, in the delight of this world, and diligently set forth the praise and glory of the victor, who shall have contended lawfully, and shall then have well preserved himself in the caution of right circumspection. With a rampart also of rigor and strictness of the whole spiritual discipline he entrenched and fortified it, lest the devil should secretly and suddenly rush upon it, knowing that he has the greatest zeal to rush upon a spiritual people: and that he rejoices much more if he shall have overcome a spiritual man according to the will of his depravity, than if he had conquered many worldly ones: since he sees that he has made him like to himself, when he falls from heavenly desire, even as he himself fell from heaven through pride.
[25] In this manner that Saint began to gather and strengthen his sons. Which when the worldly men saw, perfecting the monastery little by little. from that whole province they ran together, and whatever he began to work and do in his necessities, this they with good spirit studiously perfected. Whence it came about that that blessed congregation, multiplied through twelve years to the number of fifty perfect brethren,
For in those same times few men of this conversation were found, and none entered upon this way unless proven. But the Holy Spirit, who had planted that congregation, also watered it: even as dew when it falls upon a rich field, so that whoever was found in it under discipline ascended from virtue to virtue, and had no hindrance from the ancient plotter; because where the Holy Spirit himself is in his miracles, there the same ancient enemy will be timid, nor will he dare to enter there; but if he shall have secretly sown anything there, this the Holy Spirit again, to his confusion, treads down. But the signs and miracles of God followed the merits and sanctity of blessed Disibod, which also without weariness were often renewed, since God will always do new things.
[26] For a certain man, whose tongue, through excessive weakness of his body, had been so debilitated To a mute man speech, that he could not utter human words, coming to him from far parts, by nods and signs of his hands, as best he could, tearfully entreated that he would help him with God in this trouble. But the pious Father, prayer being made over him, feeling that the grace of God was present with him, and remembering the example of the Lord, where he made a mute man speak: blew into the mouth of this man, saying: In the name of him who said to the mute, Ephphatha, and he began to speak; to you, bond of infirmity, who have debilitated the tongue of this man, I command that you be loosed and depart hence; nor henceforth hinder his tongue from speaking. And straightway the bond of his tongue was loosed, and he brought forth human words aright, and gave thanks to God and to this Saint e.
[27] to a dropsical man he restores health, Which being done: also a certain dropsical man, swollen with a wondrous tumor, was offered to the same Saint by the hands of his friends, who, with many tears shed, sought health of body from him. But when he had hesitated somewhat, and affirmed himself unworthy of so great a deed, at last overcome by the prayer of the suppliants, he entreated the almighty Lord for him, and touching him with his hands blessed him, and thus the disease, through the grace of God, little by little disappeared from him.
[28] and cleanses a leper. But also a certain leper, distorted with a horrible skin, came to him, and, prayers being first poured out for his infirmity, threatened even with words that he would never depart from him, unless he were restored to soundness. Moved at last by the man's importunity, this Blessed one led him into his dwelling, and kept him with him for some time, and often pouring out prayers for him, made him, having sound and fair flesh of his body, return to his own. But the very Truth, which then saw these things, and did them, here through itself brought them into the open, they not knowing.
ANNOTATED.
* otherwise Nahe.
CHAPTER III.
The veneration of his subjects toward the Saint, the increases of the monastery, the prophecy of its coming destruction, his death, the fragrance of odor, the burial, and after it various cures.
He continues himself in a rigid kind of life, Many other signs and miracles also were wrought by him in the blind and lame and weak, and in those possessed by the devil, and also in those who, from the tempest of evil humors, had lost their senses, who were brought to him both from far and from near parts: who were all healed through him; since the power of God was in him. For the same servant of God lived among his own as a hermit, which life is the root of the life of monks, because the men of that conversation, withdrawn from the world in all things, live in solitude with the praise of the Angels, and their life is so laborious that even very many, for the frailty both of body and of mind, could not endure it: if they should enter upon it improvidently and suddenly. But in this strictness the blessed Father himself, living, strengthened his subjects to every good work by doctrine and example, so that, as a man who makes a burning fire burn strongly does this; they, while he lived, neither sought nor wished another master, especially since by his precept they had among themselves those who directed them to the rectitude of his conversation, without offense and murmuring.
[30] But the habit of the monastic religion, which his congregation used, he had not taken and although he had not put on the Benedictine habit, a; since he had granted his subjects a milder conversation according to the rule of blessed Benedict than he himself had, and this he did lest, if he were like to them in habit, while yet he would not lay aside the hardness of his rigor in vigils, in fastings, and in the other contrarieties of his flesh, he should seem to detract from their religion and to destroy their common life: but with a most wretched diet, by which he scarcely sustained his body, and with rough and hard clothing, as he had gone out from his land in his pilgrimage, he frequently used, as long as he lived, imitating blessed Paul the first hermit, and those like him, who wished to be in the woods rather than in the towns. The divine things also in the office of the altar, from the time when he was expelled from his see even to the end of his life, he celebrated not according to the order of Prelates, but according to the custom of poor presbyters b, nor in this had he any oppression of mind, but gladness of heart, imitating the passion of Christ.
[31] He also labored many times to set over his congregation a spiritual Father and defender, as is just, the Brothers do not wish to be under another than himself but all who were under him refused this to be done; because they wished to have no other father and teacher than himself, saying that they had indeed overseers of their conversation, but him, that he might shine to them more sublimely in the Lord, as long as he lived, they would never change. Wherefore, concerning the good vow which they had in their hearts, they were divulged through very many provinces, and many, coming to them, sought from them both counsels and helps concerning their souls. But also very many, who dwelt in this province, and who were set in the vicinity of the aforesaid mountain, whose circuit is long and broad, on account of the most sweet odor and rumor of their conversation, offered to the holy and blessed Disibod, without any withdrawal, whatever they could have of estates and means, or hoped would remain over to them, and built little farms in the aforesaid wood, here and there, for their use.
[32] But the Saint of God, when he had now labored there long, He foretells the coming tribulations, and when he had now almost failed in the strength of his body from excessive labors, foretold to his sons in the spirit, dreadfully, that in prosperity and security of this kind, as for a time they had come without offense, they could not always endure; but that they would suffer many and great pressures and tribulations c, because the devil, whom by living well they had often derided to his very great confusion, in the great mockery which he strove to make in the people, would with the greatest zeal labor to disturb both them and their posterity. Nevertheless he consoled them piously and abundantly, saying: I in the sighings and grief of my heart, with great desire, have hitherto labored that I might not see your tribulation as long as I live in this world, which also I trust in the Lord will so be. But know you that after my death, which will soon be at hand (since the strength of my body is now in failing), and after the tribulations which you shall suffer, your last times shall be better and more prosperous than the former; so that in all the necessaries of soul and body, then you and your posterity shall abound more amply than while I live.
[33] and his imminent departure from life. Which words when they had heard, in great grief with tears they lamented, since they understood his end to be imminent. And that rumor went out among the people, and stirred up many to see him, whence also they heard him, and commended themselves to his prayers and sanctity; to whom he, giving admonitions of salvation and words of blessing, also commended to them his sons and the place given to him, and, that they might more attentively fix these things in their hearts, he did not hide from them that his end was at hand. Then they, hearing that the term of his life was at hand, with mournful voice gave very many groans, and, as long as he lived, visited him more frequently than usual. But whence he knew his end, he opened to none, except certain few and religious men, who knew nearly all his secrets, to whom he had also said that it was manifested to him by an angelic showing, and this he hid from the rest, who hid all his works, lest they should perish by praise, as much as he could.
[34] A Superior being set over the Brothers, And when for thirty years he had faithfully served God on the aforesaid mountain, and had fully supplied his brethren with all the necessaries of the present life, wearied now more by labor than by age, he began to sicken, because the strength of his body had wholly failed, and presently, all the brethren being called together, he named to them a Father, whom also, while he still lived, then first at their request, he set over them, to whom he committed all things that pertained to that place; since in the times past he had refused to have a Father set over him, because they had always followed the same Saint in all things as a Father. But he also showed them the place of his burial, and that they should bury him not in a lofty place, but in the humble shade of his oratory, in which he had served God as a solitary d, with groans and tears poured forth he asked: which they, weeping in great griefs, promised so to fulfill: grieving also, they numbered one by one all his good works and doctrine: and bitterly lamenting, they cried: Alas, alas! what shall become of us, when we shall lose you, the defender and consoler of our bodies and souls e? And as a thirsting hart desires the fountains of waters, so they too desired to have him longer, which before, for the joy which they frequently had with him, they could not fix in their hearts.
[35] Then, the pain growing heavier, the brethren being again called together, full of years he dies, leaving a most sweet odor. he made known to them, as he could, that his end was at hand;
and after many labors, and after many tribulations, in the eighty-first year of his age, on the eighth before the Ides of July, he received the term of the present life, and rendered his spirit to the Lord, whom he had faithfully served, they standing by. At his passing, a most sweet odor of balsam, and as it were an odor of myrrh and incense and of all spices, straightway followed, and very many signs were done there. And through that whole province the fame flew most swiftly that blessed Disibod had passed from this life, whence the greatest multitude of men, hastening to his obsequies, desired both to be present at his burial and to see the signs which God wrought there. But the most sweet odor, which had appeared at his passing, lasted around his sepulcher even to the thirtieth day of his passing, on which days also seven men, possessed by malignant spirits, thirty lame men also, and many blind and deaf, and very many others, wearied with various languors, touching his sepulcher, were truly healed through the grace of God.
[36] And since these signs were many, and since the men of that time held signs for a custom, The miracles cease, lest they grow cheap. they fixed them in their hearts too carelessly f. But the people, beholding them, said: God shows us greater signs and more miracles after the death of this Blessed one than while he lived; wherefore we also trust that through his merits we shall be rescued from all our perils. But because of these signs which were then done there, and which afterward were done there through the grace of God in all things, many rejoiced more and more carelessly than they ought; therefore God withdrew them for their chastisement. For the Holy Spirit does not will that a man glory in the miracles which are done by him: but that with dread praise the glory be attributed to him alone who has the power of doing them. For God so distinguishes the works of his Saints, as he also constituted the creatures; namely thus, that to some he grants good works and sanctity without signs, but to some he attributes good works and even great miracles, and to others by his grace he gives that through their good examples many may be converted to him: as also he distinguishes the sun for the day, and the moon and the stars for the night, in their seasons.
[37] The whole circuit of the world also, with the flying things and creeping things, What above the other creatures and the other growing animals, he filled, so that it is in no way empty in any need; whence also each thing admonishes to its offices in that monastery, whatever pertains to man: for each single creature is multiplied in its kind, as God commanded it in the first constitution: but that which is irrational succors by ministering to man, since the father of the family, who is man, cannot rule his house without help and ministry: but God made man alone to live from a rational and living soul; wherefore his breath does not fail, as neither do the branches of a tree fail, because God infused knowledge into him, so that by thinking he dictates what he wills, and what he has in mind, which he afterward with a crying voice and a rational word multiplies, as also the leaves are multiplied on a tree.
[38] knowledge confers on man, But the irrational creature does not have the knowledge of rationality, and therefore is windy, and passes away: but man, being rational, through knowledge knows utility, and loves it, and draws it to himself, and in the same knowledge sees what is evil and what is harmful, and fears and flees it, and guards himself from it, and in these two, namely fear and love, which he has in the knowledge of good and evil, he rules himself everywhere, as also a bird flies with two wings. For he alone was formed to the image and likeness of God, since God created him that he might work according to himself: whence, where his conscience raises itself to good, there through the grace of the Holy Spirit help meets him. For in this distinction, as was said before, God placed all creatures, and because he made man to his image and likeness, therefore he gave him full knowledge above every mortal creature.
[39] and what reward awaits him. And since his flesh has an end and a defect, therefore his soul cannot have the perfecting of good except from him who is without end. But those who shall have persevered in good even to the end, these ascend into heaven to God, and there the cherub numbers all their good works before the throne of God, and then also that face of God beholds them, as purest gold, and as most precious and most noble stones. Wherefore all the heavenly harmony sings a new song over them, and so the Holy Spirit in the works of the Saints always does new things. But those who shall have persevered in evil, these imitate the lost angels, who for their wickedness fell from the glory of heaven; and so through squalid vanities they lose the reward of the eternal ones.
[40] How foolish is the wickedness of the evil, For God sent into man full knowledge of rationality, as was said before, since he foresaw both that man through it could overcome the devil, because man through good knowledge knows evil, and through evil, good; and therefore with a most victorious war he fights against the same ancient enemy, that he may conquer him, and that he may possess the place which the other lost; which he could in no way do unless he had full knowledge; since what man knows by knowing, from this he can scarcely contain himself, that he does not by choice turn himself to it at times. But if dark shadows shall have ascended into the heart of man, so that man in his flesh has a taste that he can sin; and if then he shall have chosen sin, and persevered in it impenitent, he shall be made like to him who withdrew from the brightness of light, that he might fulfill the desires of his dark property; on account of which also the gehennal punishments arose.
[41] which are against the pursuits of the good. But the blessed one desires to do that which he has no taste for in his flesh, and asks help from the Holy Spirit, that he may look into the mirror of sanctity. And as a man considers his face in a mirror, in which yet it is not, and what he shall see there unworthy, as much as he can amends, so the blessed one, through faith, desires to work good works in this manner, to the confusion of the devil, against his flesh; and what the flesh does not assign to him, he works; and thus, by the hardest and strongest wars overcoming himself with his wills, he shall possess the charity which the lost angels had had. For God so constituted the creatures, that man completes his works with them; whence also he imbues certain men in this manner, that they build holy edifices, and that they gather others to serve God, whom yet God himself many times permits very many and various vicissitudes, according to his good pleasures; all which he tolerates: nor yet does he immediately send upon them his vengeance. But where the Holy Spirit builds in edifices and in men, even if they shall have lived carelessly in sins, if anyone there through the contumacy of his perversity shall have made destruction, the fire of the Holy Spirit speedily burns him in his zeal and in his judgment g.
ANNOTATED.
CHAPTER IV.
The dispersion of the monks, their return: the translation of the sacred body by St. Boniface; the ruin of the monastery, and its mishaps and vicissitudes.
In this manner the Holy Spirit also wrought in the aforesaid place, The Brothers of the Mount of St. Disibod, where blessed Disibod had served God in good works; and where he himself, passing from this life, had rendered his happy spirit to the Lord. For after his passing, some years having elapsed, a great pressure of wars occupied all the aforesaid province: so that certain men, coming with tyrannical rage, devastated the parts and lands contiguous round about to the Rhine, together with the same province; by which horror and fear those dwelling in them, being terrified, fled wherever they could. But the Princes of the aforesaid province, with the rest of the people, knowing the aforesaid Mount to be high and impregnable, with much haste, before it should be occupied by the enemy, the brethren serving God there being unwilling, fled up upon it, and, fortifying it with firm walls, made dwellings on it, trusting that both by the merits of blessed Disibod, and by the fortifications of the same mountain, they would be rescued from the aforesaid cruel tyranny.
[43] compelled by the wars that arose to migrate elsewhere, But by reason of the multitude and unrest of those men, who had occupied the mountain itself, the congregation of the Brothers, serving God there, were not able to remain in quiet and to serve God in uprightness, and therefore by the counsel and request of the same Princes and men the same brethren divided themselves into far regions (because they promised them that after those tribulations and labors they would honorably bring them back), except certain few and perfect men, who betook themselves to the tomb of the blessed Man, namely their Patron, that they might keep it in honor, who were also of such perfection that they cared nothing either for the world or for their own life. But the aforesaid affliction a did not last for many times of years, but this province was freed by the help of God from the tyranny of the invading enemies. Which being done, those who had occupied the same mountain, remembering their promise, and regarding also the fear of God, sought out the Brothers of the aforesaid congregation wherever they could, and brought them back with great honor, and conferred on them all the things which they had gathered there, and which they had built there, with greater means and ampler allods than those had had before.
[44] but afterward honorably brought back, Whence it came about that, according to the words of blessed Disibod, which living he had foretold, their last times became better and more prosperous, after his death and after their tribulations, than they had been before; so that even from far regions very many, both spiritual and worldly, came thither, and sought from them counsels and helps,
both of souls and of bodies, from them and received them. But God so often purged those blessed men for their negligences, as often as they offended; as also he then did, when concerning the signs and miracles which were done through the merits of the aforesaid holy Father they rejoiced more and more carelessly than they ought, whence also henceforth they did not appear with so great frequency as they were wont to appear before. But where the works of the Holy Spirit are seen and known, yet are drawn into a showing, there the same Holy Spirit examined the same offense with a judicial penalty even to the last farthing.
[45] They take care that the body of their Father be raised by St. Boniface. And when the signs and miracles had ceased to be done at the sepulcher of this blessed Father, while yet his posterity for many years religiously kept the memory of his passing to God, at last they, groaning within themselves with sighs, by a divine nod remembered that, their sins exacting it, God had withdrawn his hand there in the prodigies of miracles, and that he showed them only at intervals, for the memory of the same Saint: and accusing themselves, they said to one another: What are we doing, torpid in negligence, that we do not venerate this Saint of God, when God has done for us very many miracles and good things through his merits? And so, going to the elders of the same province and to the wise men, and receiving counsel from them, with the consent and authority of Boniface, Prelate of the see of Mainz, they fixed a time and a day on which they might raise the bones of blessed Disibod, and divulged this day through all the people of that land. And when the appointed day had come, and a multitude of people had run together, the aforesaid Prelate being present, going to the sepulcher of the holy Man, with great veneration they took up his bones and ashes, and transferred them from the shade of the oratory, in which they had been buried, into the monastery, built almost toward the west of the same mountain, with the praises of hymns and the great voices of the peoples, after very many years of his passing to the Lord, and honorably laid them in a place prepared for this.
[46] But God, who knows hidden things, again manifested the merits of his Saint there, New signs are done, and the monastery is enriched. so that on the same day, while these things were being done, a certain dropsical man and other sick men, burdened with various infirmity, were cured: and, what is more, the most sweet odor which had appeared at his passing appeared again that whole day with a wondrous fragrance: whence it came about that the people of the same province thenceforth frequented, coming to his sepulcher with great veneration of prayers and offerings, the yearly day on which these things were done, and the day of his passing to the Lord b. And so the Brothers of the aforesaid congregation lived in peace for very many years, and served God and blessed Disibod without offense in quiet: so that the people loved and blessed them greatly, and was present to them everywhere with help and with their goods; and therefore they were made wealthy and rich in many means.
[47] At length, very many courses of very many years and Kings having passed, Vain attempts against the monks before Charlemagne, the greatest wars again arose with the provincials of the aforesaid region. Wherefore the elders with the Princes of the same land, going to the Emperor, namely Charlemagne, who at that time had taken the Roman empire, said that it was not fitting that those who ought to serve the spirit and not the flesh, God and not the world, should possess the riches and pomps of the world in superfluity, as those did who were on the Mount of St. Disibod, while they themselves, oppressed by wars and straits, had not riches and means whence they might serve the kingdom and profit themselves. Whose words the Emperor wisely received, and wisely dissembled, saying that he would in no way take away from those Brothers either the allods or the other means which the faithful had conferred on them. Which answer received, they restrained themselves from their begun intention.
[48] And so, this Emperor being dead, and very many other times succeeding one another, which under another Emperor have their success, again a tyranny of cruel wars arose, which grew strong with such cruelty that even certain cities adjacent to the Rhine were destroyed by the same oppressions. Wherefore the nobler men of the aforesaid province, who were of the lineage of the aforesaid Princes, the Prelate of the see of Mainz joined with them, went to the Emperor who at that time held the empire, and made the aforesaid complaint, crying more sharply, saying that they had no abundance of means whence they could both serve the empire and defend their life: since those who dwelt on the Mount of St. Disibod possessed their allods and those of their parents; and that they knew not whence this was. Which the same Emperor having heard, gave assent, and, the other Princes and judges being called together, as though under judgment, willing, inquired by what tradition and confirmation the possessions of the allods had been conferred on the Brothers so far and so wide.
[49] But they, understanding the Emperor, and blinded by envy and malice, so that, despoiled of their goods, they may be driven from the mountain, brought forth many false and unjustly composed testimonies, and said that the aforesaid Brothers held those possessions, which for very many times they had possessed without complaint, unjustly and without imperial sentence and grant. Wherefore, by the judgment of the judges, judging unjustly, an imperial sentence being given, and license received from the same Emperor, the proclaimers of the aforesaid complaint, together with the aforesaid Pontiff, who was the chief author of this invasion, disturb by a most cruel invasion and expulsion the possessions and allods which pertained to the Mount of blessed Disibod, and the bound of the same mountain, the divine vengeance permitting. By which persecution and inconvenience the Brothers dwelling there, disturbed and consternated, and altogether stripped, and terrified by the horror of the imminent wars, left the same mountain, wailing with great lamentation, and betook themselves to other places, wherever they could.
[50] When they had gone, lest they should have hope of returning, the buildings also being overthrown, their dwellings also were razed to the ground by the aforesaid invaders, except the sanctified place, in which the bones of the aforesaid Saint had been buried after his translation. But yet, lest the same place should remain wholly desolate of divine office, those who had been the authors of this destruction set over it one priest, who might rule the people dwelling in the vicinity, for whom they designated a scarcely sufficient food and clothing from the benefices pertaining to the same place; and thus that place remained long in desolation of this kind. At length, after many courses of years, a certain pious and noble man, and count of the aforesaid province, Liuthard by name, given indeed to the world, surrounded with very many riches, seeing the aforesaid mountain high and beautiful and desolate, compunct by divine grace, sighed, and for the glory of the holy Trinity, and for the memory of St. Disibod, disposing three priests to serve God there, established for them from his means a sufficiency of the necessaries of the present life.
[51] But also afterward, some other years having revolved, a certain Archbishop of the see of Mainz, which, being gradually restored, yield to canons; pious, humble, and contrite of heart, ascending the same mountain, and bending his knees suppliantly at the tomb of blessed Disibod, deeply grieved that he had been made great and rich from the possessions unjustly taken from that same Saint, and making a vow to God, disposed Canons, to the number of the twelve Apostles, that they should serve God and the aforesaid Patron there day and night; to whom also he caused to be resigned, as much as he could, of the allods pertaining to the same place. And so the divine purgation little by little somewhat withdrew its scourges; but yet it had not yet fully perfected this. And so when it had afterward pleased the Holy Spirit, in his secret, he inspired a certain man prudent as to the world, who also presided over the see of Mainz, and made him thirst, that the oft-named place might receive the splendor which it had received in its first origin. For this man acted as a prudent father of a family, who divided his substance to his sons with charity; the canons remaining on the aforesaid mountain he benignly placed in other places suited to them, and restored there religious men who might live in great discipline, according to the rule of blessed Benedict, and in whom every good, by living holily, might be perfected.
[52] Which being done, he looked upon them in the embrace of his heart, but at last they return to monks. so that, as a blessed man in largess, he ministered to them alms from the substance and means which he possessed, according as he could. And so this congregation suffered very many scourges, then and afterward, there by divine permission; as also those who had been there before suffered many times, as also now it many times happens there in the scourges of God, and as it will be afterward, when the same dwelling there shall have deserved it. But very many foolish tales concerning all the aforesaid causes, through the varieties of many vicissitudes, run about and are told among the people, which the Holy Spirit does not gather; and therefore they are scattered like stubble: but these things which have been produced, through the Holy Spirit, to the glory of his name and to the memory of the aforesaid Patron, and to the chastisement of the men who hear, have been manifested by a truthful revelation: whence nothing is to be added to them from the former opinions; lest the words of him who Is be drawn into derision.
[53] Wherefore also it is to be considered what God from the first man hitherto has wrought in men. How variously God For when Adam first fell, he was made a pilgrim from paradise; and since he fell through a mean creature, therefore God also willed [*] creatures to be offered to him, even as an infant is first nourished with milk. But after the Son of God put on humanity, he offered himself as a sacrifice to the Father, and opened the mouth of man to the food of justice; as also a boy is fed. But when the same Son of God ascended the heavens, he filled men with the fire of the Holy Spirit, and taught them to fight with vices and concupiscences, and thus to make of themselves a sacrifice to God: so that they even chose to live according to the heavenly harmony, as spiritual men do, who left themselves and the world for the love of God; and as also other good men study to do, who in ardent desire, according to the gift of the Holy Spirit, undertake strong continence; even as a man of perfect age takes food by himself.
[54] So God also did here, since he took away the vacillating opinion, works in men. and bade the truth, walking confidently, come forth. And so the same God often purged those who dwelt and dwell in the aforesaid place, as was said before, as he also often chastised very many others, yet so that he did not wholly desert them, as he did to the children of Israel, who, when they had begun good, on account of the many vanities which they afterward perpetrated, suffered very many persecutions, and who also in the malicious time shall be sought out, and so through all things shall not perish. But now praise be to God, who against the ancient serpent always fights, so that he has purged every wrinkle of sin, even to the consummation of the world, where also every constitution of his faithful shall fully
appear, as he first ordained it: and then the ancient enemy shall be fully confounded, because he shall be able to profit neither himself nor others, nor to give glory to any. These words, therefore, the true Wisdom brought forth: but I, a poor little woman, lying on the bed of my sickness, saw and heard all these things, and began to write them and finished; but God has the power to raise me from the bed, if it shall please him. Amen.
ANNOTATED.
* Should it not be "to be offered"?
MIRACLES
From the parchment Passional of the monastery of Bödeken, of the Order of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine, of the diocese of Paderborn.
Disibod, Bishop and Confessor, at Disibodenberg in the territory of Mainz in Germany (S.)
BHL Number: 2205
FROM THE MANUSCRIPT.
A woman contracted with the pains of gout is healed, In the little village of Studernheim there was a certain woman, very poor in goods, who had daintily reared an only daughter, not by opulence of things, but by the wonted manner of mothers, who, loving miserably, fix their whole mind on their only offspring. Who, when she had reached that bound where she might be able to be subject to the bond of matrimony, was struck by a sudden calamity of misfortune, and was afflicted with so great a trouble of calamitous gout, that not only with a lame foot, but sticking to her buttocks, she in no way had the use of walking, unless she were supported by the fork of a staff set under her. This evil therefore of the daughter troubled the mother with exceeding grief, and she was straitened by so great a misery of bitterness that one could scarcely distinguish which was punished with the graver penalty. For the daughter tolerantly endures the wounds of her deadly passion; the mother is immoderately ulcerated by the point of a grief inwardly raging: but when for some time she had been shaken by this storm of sorrow, at last, the counsel of a sound mind being taken, they betake themselves to the asylum of the most blessed confessor of Christ Disibod; and there, moistening the pavements of the Saints with a most abundant effusion of weeping, they especially seek to be protected by his merits, that they might deserve to be placed in the harbor of the wished-for safety. But the offering of prayers being consummated, at the very approach of the sleep-bringing night, they return home by the way retraced. Then, refreshed with a poor little supper, they laid their limbs to rest after the wonted manner. Presently, when sleep rushed in, which the sudden calamity, mother either of sloth or of bitterness, had begotten: behold the servant of God, crowned with a most white stole, seemed to have stood by the girl, and first to touch the place of pain, and at last to untie the bonds of the inflicted passion. Awakened by this vision, she secretly summoned her mother, and, addressing her with soothing words, diligently set forth what she had seen, and in what manner she had been made whole. Who therefore could conceive how great or of what kind was the joy that arose, when the mother had seen her daughter relieved of every burden of sickness? Indeed I reckon that through joy and exultation it came into her mind, as though the spirit, quickening anew, had supplied all the parts of the dead body with power of being animated. Therefore, sweating between hope and fear, a stolid occasion crept into her tasteless mind, whether she should disclose the deed, or overshadow it with the silence of taciturnity: for on the one hand she feared to be accused of a lie, on the other to deserve punishment. Suspended by which solicitude, she little weighed what she should do; nor did any certain reason show the way of keeping silence. And so, morning being come, fame shook off silence; nor did this rumor sound only through the neighboring houses, but had also filled everywhere round about the assemblies of the market-place with manifold joy, and as many as had heard praised the clemency of the Savior in the merits of the blessed Confessor and excellent Prelate.
[2] A certain girl was so miserably contracted by the disease of paralysis, and another from paralysis: that she performed almost no office of her limbs; but at last there had remained a rare faculty of speaking, and also in her eyes a thin spark of seeing, the other sinews being utterly enervated and unfit for human use, and therefore whatever natural use required, this the skillful care of her parents was wont to supply: hence the parents, ulcerated with grievous solicitude and sadness, knew not what they should do. At last a good counsel, as it seemed, occurred, that the suffrages of the Saints must be sought, by whose patronage they hoped their daughter could be relieved from her infirmity and restored to her former soundness. Without delay, they seek the asylum of blessed Disibod with most humble devotion, they carry their daughter with them, they place her near his sepulcher, in no way doubting that the hoped-for safety, the blessed man's merits helping, would soon be at hand, according to the mercy of God. Now a little time passed, and suddenly the girl, crying out, called her parents, and spreading her hands to heaven, tries to rise, and, her strength recovered, stood upon her feet, and with tottering steps, as with feet not her own, attempted to walk. But the parents, seeing the miracle, were bedewed with a shower of tears for joy, more and more exhilarated, because they had seen their daughter, with strengthened steps and safety recovered, walk, whom they had brought limb from limb dissolved, they sounded unappeasable praises to almighty God, in the most glorious merits of blessed Disibod, by whose patronage it was granted them to bring back the sheaves of exultation. Whom afterward we saw enclosed even to thirty years, and beheld in her an unwonted abstinence: for not only did she abstain from flesh, but she did not knowingly care to take even crumbs of bread for food. But if anyone, for the sake of proof, mingled a little flour into the foods with which she was fed, she could not digest it without grievous pain.
[3] likewise another paralytic woman; Among the notable miracles which God the Lord of hosts wrought for the merits of blessed Disibod, there occurs also another, like to this miracle which we have tasted before, to be commended to our most eager memory and that of all the faithful. In a village situated near the mountain, whose name is Berwitere, a certain girl was held by the dire sickness of paralysis, so dissolved in the whole frame of her limbs that she was thought to be a useless corpse: and because on every side half-dead, she palpitated with breath alone, the sole diligence of her friends provided the necessaries of life, whose parents, wearied with long labor, studiously administering all necessaries, at last began to grow faint with weariness; and they preferred that she had already yielded to nature, than that she had so miserably led her life, lest they should be longer wearied with labor of this kind. And when they were long saddened, that they saw her neither able to live with entire health, nor to die with a certain end, they hastened to the suffrages of blessed Disibod together with their daughter, and there, casting with tears the seeds of prayers, they did not doubt that they would reap the wished-for joy: but while they tarried there a little time, behold the wished-for safety was at hand, which relieved the girl, tortured with long pain, from every infirmity, and drew the cloud of sadness from the hearts of the parents. Namely, the tongue long constrained is opened; the darkened eyes are cleared with bright light; the hardened ears are unclosed; the enervated hands are restored to soundness; the feet are made firm with natural step, and thus the whole uselessness of the limbs, divinely procured, returned to entire health through the glorious merits of the holy Father. But the kinsfolk of the girl and the crowd standing by, seeing the corpse, which they had brought weak, wonderfully reformed into a natural mass, resounded magnificent praises to the King of heaven, without intermission venerating the merits of the blessed Man, who made them return more joyful.
[4] then one crippled in his limbs, A certain man, reared in the aforesaid village, and known to the same girl, is said to have been afflicted by a double cause, namely by want of the necessary things without which not even the just are nourished, and by the weakness of his limbs, which often brings a reward to those who endure, because whom the Lord loves with fatherly affection, he corrects, and chastises every son whom he receives. This man, having heard the fame of the virtues of the blessed Man, did not protract the space of delay, but hastily went to the place, and, entering into the temple, poured out tearful prayers to the Lord, and what he had in vow and hope, through the patronage of the servant of God he obtained. On the same day, since it was the Parasceve, no small multitude had come together from the neighboring fields, which after the wonted manner desired to be expiated from the filth of vices through confession and penance, that on the holy day of Easter it might more cleanly receive the Eucharist. But he, when he saw the people approaching to salute the Cross with humble devotion, presently prostrated himself on the ground, and with bent knees crawled forward as best he could, and, pardon being asked, disposing to return half-footed, presently the wood tied to his knee, for the sake of walking more easily, fell off, and, the people looking on, he appeared sound.
[5] and a dropsical woman. Among the other virtues of the blessed Man, which the hand of the Lord wrought through his merits, there returns to memory an excellent thing, to be admired in all past ages; and because we ourselves saw it, we judged it to be unlawful to cover it with the color of taciturnity, and for this especially, because it seems it would be better often to ruminate the deeds of the Saints than, the knowledge being foretasted, to loathe them in oblivion. The celebrated solemnity of the birthday of our blessed Father Disibod returning, there flocked to the feast day, after the wonted manner, a very great multitude of both sexes, from the remote parts of the adjacent provinces, some for the sake of prayer, some for the grace of receiving health or of any business whatever. Among these bands was led a poor girl, whom the disease of dropsy had afflicted with so grievous a pain that she could scarcely walk. But the sun verging to its setting, she was uncertain whither she should turn, or what place she might especially approach for the grace of humility, because the inhabitants of the place were unknown, and the nearer villages were far distant, so that if it settled in her mind to seek them, perhaps the steep way, and the weakness of her body, and the darkness of the shady night would hinder her. Yet what she should do, she knew not; but, the counsel of her mind being taken, reclining near the tomb of the holy Father, with tearful prayers she invited his patronage, and, remaining all night in prayer with such intention, she awaited the grace of the divine mercy. And so, morning being come, a copious multitude assembled, which, seeing her depraved with the deformity of a swollen belly, grieved with her, and ceased not to pour out prayers for her. Therefore the supplication of the people was not despicable to God, which the salutary intercession of the servant of God well prospered: for amid the sacred solemnities of the Masses, the pest under the skin, like smoke, vanished without uncleanness, and, many admiring, the little woman became sound, to the praise and glory of almighty God, to whom is glory forever. Amen.
Thus far the Bödeken manuscript, to which what we might add, nothing has been found.