Amalberga the Virgin

ON ST. AMALBERGA THE VIRGIN, AT GHENT, TEMSE, AND MATERNE IN BELGIUM. IN THE YEAR 772. PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Amelberga, virgin, at Temse and Ghent in Belgium (S.)

BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.

§ I. The diversity of the synonymous Belgian saints.

As well known and widely spread, especially throughout all Belgium, as is the venerable name of St. Amalberga, so persuaded am I that there are very few women marked with that name who know well enough which Saint at last is to be set before them and proposed as their Patroness: nay, that even men not altogether unlearned are found, The holy widow is to be distinguished from the virgin of Temse; to whom the distinction of each holy virgin from the widow is not sufficiently explored. Already above, from page 63, I have abundantly, unless I am mistaken, set forth the Saxon etymology of the name itself, and its present modification — shall I say, or smoothing — into the sweeter inflection of Amalia. Then I attempted to discuss and illustrate those things which, concerning the holy widow and her true holy children Emebert, Reineldis, and Gudila, to be distinguished from the supposititious ones, were compiled ambiguously and confusedly enough by unskilled Legend-writers after the Norman ravages. From those things therefore which were argued there, it is most manifest that only by rude and rustic men can those things which we discussed there concerning the married woman and widow be transferred to the holy virgin of Temse, of whom we must here treat, so that we may plainly dare to be confident that there will not remain in the future those who find no distinction between the two Saints, nor will worshippers of the Virgin be found who do not hesitate to affirm that the sacred remains of their holy Patroness are laid up at Binche in Hainaut.

[2] And these things indeed I judge to be obvious enough to those moderately skilled in Belgian history; and especially the virgins among themselves more unknown to many is another virgin of the same name, herself too endowed with the honors of the Saints, celebrated enough within the borders of the dominion of Gelderland and Jülich, from the place where she is buried and religiously venerated, namely the town of Susteren, situated in the Meuse district, not far from Roermond, called Susterena, Sustria, of Susteren, whom our Bartholomew Fisen in the Liège history, book 6, number 2, at the year 900, calls Amelberta, but in the Flores on the XXI of November more rightly Amalberga. Her, F. Arnold Hertsworm, Prior of Holy Cross at Venlo, more laboriously distinguished from the Virgin of Temse and the widow of Lobbes or Binche, who in a little work in Flemish, written not so long ago by his own hand, wished to comprise the history of the illustrious chapter of St. Salvator of noble canoness virgins in the aforesaid town of Susteren, and dedicated it to the most illustrious Lady Wilhelmina Elizabeth, Baroness of Hompesch, abbess of that chapter, still surviving while I write this (in the year 1721), a copy of which I obtained through the effort of our Father Louis Toebast, confessor to the most serene Henrietta Christina, born a Princess of Brunswick and Lüneburg, whence I excerpted some things, which here come to be examined beforehand.

[3] of Temse and of Susteren, The care of the praised Arnold may seem superfluous in the premonition which he placed in part 2, §9, of his little book, when with great solicitude he distinguishes the holy widow from the two synonymous virgins, calling her St. Amalberga the first, this our present St. Amalberga the second, and finally a third Amalberga, whom he contends to have been, not the first foundress of the monastery or chapter of Susteren, inasmuch as it was founded by St. Willibrord

in the times of Saints Gregory and Alberic, Bishops of Utrecht, but more properly the restorer, by the help of her father Zwentibold, King of Lorraine, after the devastation inflicted by the Normans on nearly all Belgium: concerning which it must be treated expressly on the XXI of November, on which that St. Amalberga is venerated at Susteren with three, as Arnold calls them, sisters, Benedicta, Cecilia, and Relindis, whom they also will have to be reckoned among the Saints, but which do not pertain hither. So great care, I say, of distinguishing the widow from the Virgins may seem superfluous; for we have already abundantly shown that to those not altogether unskilled in Belgian history the distinction between the widow of Binche and the virgin of Temse is well enough known.

[4] whose relics have been confused. He bestowed more useful effort in removing that confusion which is the subject of this paragraph, preliminary to the rest; in removing, I say, the confusion between the two holy virgins, namely of Temse and of Susteren, who, because both were virgins and synonymous, were held by not a few for the same, so that the histories of both could easily be mixed. And this seemed very necessary to us, lest the rashly pretended identity should creep more widely, which has already so far prevailed that the people of Temse themselves, among whom the present saint had her tomb, and has for so many centuries been religiously honored, received relics from Susteren, which they venerate as the pledges of St. Amalberga, their special Patroness; at least if they have no others, besides those which are explained in the approbation itself, kept at Temse; for from that, exhibited to me, it is established that the relics were received from the church of Susteren, and passed through our Fathers to the Reverend Lord Pastor of Temse in the year 1643. I would believe it not improbable that there still exist at Temse the ancient relics of the Saint, which the miracles, to be subjoined at the end of the Legend, testify were once exposed there, and that those others, received from Susteren, were added to the ancient ones, lest we be compelled to say that the relics of another Saint were substituted for the remains of St. Amalberga of Temse, and so that the religious cult, at least as directed to the relics themselves, is not sufficiently genuine. But let us elucidate a little more distinctly the diversity of the two Amalbergas.

[5] From those things which will be discussed in this whole commentary, it will be most clearly plain that St. Amalberga of Temse could by no means have prolonged her life beyond the eighth century, Amalberga of Temse being a whole century older, and so that she flourished before the Norman ravages, being called away by her heavenly spouse in the year 772. But it is established that Zwentibold, son of the Emperor Arnulf, founder of the chapter of Susteren, and buried there, lived about the end of the ninth century, so that his daughter St. Amalberga, whether she was truly his daughter, or, as others will have it, only the instructress of the daughters of Zwentibold, could have reached about the year 900; whence it follows that the aforesaid two holy Virgins are separated by at least a whole century, being also most diverse in origin, deeds, and habitation: so that it is a wonder that the monks of Blandin (of St. Peter's at Ghent) too had recourse to Susteren in the year, as the praised Arnold says, 1688, that they too might obtain relics thence, to be substituted for those which the fury of the Calvinist heretics had foully contaminated and dispersed, as will be demonstrated at greater length below. I will indeed not deny that the relics of St. Amalberga of Susteren too have obtained Catholic veneration for many centuries; but who is ignorant that it is forbidden to confuse the sacred remains of diverse Saints? For the rest, that I may not dwell longer here, I judge it sufficiently clear from what has been said that the holy virgin Amalberga who is venerated at Temse in Flanders is plainly diverse from the other of Susteren, whose fame of sanctity is far more restricted; I dare to say that the more celebrated cult of the other two has in a manner obliterated her memory in this part of Belgium.

[6] But the confusion of the two could be given occasion by a history, some things are wrongly ascribed, to me suspect on every side, which the aforesaid Arnold inserted in §10 of his writing, concerning our St. Amalberga of Temse, as the co-foundress of the monastery of Susteren, whence he vainly (to speak most mildly) fabricates that she too obtained a cult there together with the other. Arnold there records, from the Legend of Temse, how St. Willibrord, turning aside to her parents Christian and Eva, took care that the tender virgin should be commended to St. Landrada, when Charles Martel by force dislocated her arm: for, as I shall show below, that whole amatory scene, if it is true, is without doubt to be referred not to Charlemagne, but to his grandfather Martel, and so is to be judged to have happened not at the villa Materne, as is handed down in the Legend, but rather at Bilzen. On this head I do not refute the writer; the question is, by what surety, by what witness he asserts, that after receiving the veil in the year 690 from Saints Willibrord and Landrada, St. Amalberga of Temse lived at Bilzen for twenty whole years and more; and then, full of the Holy Spirit, in the year 714 was called by the same St. Willibrord to Susteren, to watch over the new plantation, not indeed as abbess, but as superior and mistress of the monastery, such as it was, erected there; which office she discharged most faithfully, but, withdrawing thence into Flanders, died a happy death in the hundredth year of her age.

[7] things thought out rather than proved. These things I all but call the dreams of idle men, to whom it pleases, according to the corrupt itch of their wit, to embellish anything, and so to heap doubtful things upon doubtful, that no way out appears anywhere, unless we blindly embrace their fictions as truths. Let us suppose the narration of the Legend itself to be admitted such as it is; why fabricate new things from the affinity of names, which are handed down nowhere? The Legend itself indeed supplies abundant labor and troubles, to be saved somehow, and to be purged of enormous anachronisms; as will be easy to perceive from the following paragraphs. Let such writers moreover understand that the impossibility of the things which they peddle is not being argued; for nothing implies a contradiction that St. Amalberga, as a disciple of St. Willibrord, could have been set by him over his monastery of Susteren when first founded, nay, even to accompany him to Utrecht itself and even to Echternach, and, if you so wish, to reach a hundred years of age; but who, except rashly and ridiculously, would today dare to forge that kind of inventions, with no one going before? Here the question is solely about facts and deeds, and those supported by sufficient credence and authority, which would that they shone a little more abundantly in the Acts of St. Amalberga themselves. But of these in passing; for the inquiry proposed in the title, the distinction of the synonymous Saints has been sufficiently demonstrated; now let us approach more nearly the Virgin of Temse.

§ II. The ancient cult of St. Amalberga from the eulogy of blessed Radbod, Bishop of Utrecht, and from the Martyrologies.

Buried at Temse and translated to Ghent, Temseca, to us Tamisia, commonly Temsche or Temst, in the region of our Flanders which is called Waes, between Antwerp and Dendermonde, situated on the left of the river Scheldt, is described by Sanderus in his Flanders Illustrated, Volume 2, page 546, as a municipality second to none in elegance and pleasant prospect. It was once the property of blessed Amelberga the virgin, who, buried there, was afterward translated to the monastery of Blandin about the year 870, as Miraeus noted in the Belgian Annals, in which year also Charles the Bald, by a diploma given at Compiègne in the royal palace, gave to the people of Blandin, in the district of Waes, as he calls it, the estate which is called Temseca, with a well-adorned church, consecrated to the honor of St. Mary and St. Peter, where St. Amelberga, the glorious virgin, departed from the world to Christ. No little light for illustrating the history of the translation will the diploma itself, to be exhibited whole below, give; here it will suffice to have described Temseca, once the lordship of the Abbots of Blandin, now of the Princes of Bornoville, as Miraeus likewise accurately noted.

[9] You have the place of the last habitation and burial of St. Amalberga the virgin, from which her sacred body passed to the most celebrated shrine, once rich in the relics of the Saints, also of Materne, the place of her dwelling, the monastery of Blandin, or of St. Peter beside Ghent, concerning which, on the occasion of the translation of St. Bertulf to the same place, it has already been treated on the V of February: again where St. Ansbert is treated on the IX of the same month of February: but more distinctly on the life of St. Gudwal on the VI of June, so that nothing remains to be observed concerning the chief place of veneration of St. Amalberga. These things had to be noted beforehand for the knowledge of the places where the Saint is chiefly venerated, to which is to be added another village, Materen or Materne, called in the Acts the villa Materna, not far from Oudenaarde, also in Flanders, in whose church, on the testimony of Sanderus, page 527, there is still a castle-chaplaincy of St. Amelberga, most munificently endowed in memory of her dwelling, in the patronage of the Lord of Schorisse. What moved Mabillon to place her at Merbeck, I do not hitherto perceive; there are venerated on the III of February Berlendis, Nona, and Celsa, but that there is any peculiar veneration of St. Amalberga there, I have not yet understood: without doubt he who composed the indices wished to write Temseca.

[10] Concerning the origin and inflections of the name of St. Amalberga we have said that we already treated above, on the life of the synonymous holy Widow, she is celebrated with a most ancient cult, where too he was rebuked in a word who, from the cult of the latter on this X of July, wrongly asserted that this other was recorded on the same day. That the cult of this holy Virgin is far more ancient, and that most celebrated, at least throughout all Belgium, all the monuments cry out, here to be recited in order, while meanwhile that Widow was first inserted into the sacred Fasti by Molanus in the sixteenth century. And the first argument of the most ancient cult is offered to us by a man most learned in his age both in prose and in verse, and the same who deserved the honors of the Saints on the XXIX of November, Radbod, Bishop of Utrecht, the fourteenth in order, or, as others write, the thirteenth, whom Mabillon says died one year before the beginning of the tenth century; he would speak better if he had asserted that about that year he obtained the sacred mitre; for by the more common reckoning he prolonged his life into the tenth century, being called to those on high not before the year 917 or 918, most praised on many titles in Beka and Heda, and other Belgian writers.

[11] He wrote, not a Life and translation of St. Amalberga, praised by blessed Radbod, Bishop of Utrecht. as Valerius Andreas and others wrongly related, but a homily or one book, in which he pursues the praises of the most illustrious virtues of the Virgin, which, because it is a very brief discourse, is wont to be called in the Manuscript codices by the name of Tomellus, which he probably recited before the assembly to his own people; perhaps, as I have found noted somewhere, because St. Amalberga was known to have contracted some spiritual affinity with St. Willibrord, patron of the people of Utrecht, on which title, equally with St. Boniface, she deserved a singular encomium. This certainly seems undoubted, that already in the ninth century itself, nearest to the death of the Virgin, the fame of the virtues and miracles of St. Amalberga the Virgin was most illustrious throughout all Belgium, so much that the holy Prelate, in a certain antonomastic manner, did not hesitate to call her the paradoxical Virgin, by a word well enough known, and by the etymology of the word, which here is taken for a virgin of stupendous sanctity and adorned by God with incredible signs,

such a one as St. Radbod judged her to be, it must altogether be reckoned.

[11] I would believe that he relied on this argument who, long after the times of St. Radbod, compiled the Legend anew, filled indeed with very many wondrous signs and prodigies of St. Amalberga, as a paradoxical virgin, one century after her death. distributed through twenty-nine chapters in all, which would that they stood by the same credence as the oration of the holy Prelate. But this is most to be lamented, that it is defiled with so many errors and anachronisms, that the most learned Mabillon did not judge it worthy to occupy a place in the Acts of his Order, concerning which matter more will be argued below. These things are said only for this, that it may be plain how celebrated St. Amalberga must have been, who even toward the end of the ninth century and the beginning of the tenth already then deserved to be called the paradoxical Virgin by so illustrious a Prelate, a true appraiser of her sanctity. Certainly monuments so notable concerning our Belgian Saints, which reach that age, are rare enough; rare the Legends of that time, most rare the eulogies of so great authority transmitted to posterity, inasmuch as they had to escape the most rapacious hands of the ravaging Normans and other barbarians. The words of St. Radbod I do not here transcribe, since the whole little work itself is to be exhibited below, before the Acts themselves.

[13] Noted in the Martyrologies from the twelfth century, Without doubt he saw the oration of the most holy Prelate concerning blessed Amalberga who, for the church of Utrecht, copied the Usuardine Martyrology, augmented somewhere in England and carried thence, and amplified it with local Saints about the year 1132, as you have in the recent preface to our edition of Usuard, page 57, where that codex is called the Rosweyde one, from the fatherland of Rosweyde and the first collection of monuments conducing to our work. He is the first, so far as I know, who added the name of the holy Virgin to his Usuard on this day, in these words: Likewise of St. Amalberga the virgin. Him in rivalry followed the great Antwerp, the Utrecht, the Leiden, the Louvain, the Alberg, and the Danish codices, with a somewhat longer phrase: At the port of Ghent, in the monastery of Blandin, of St. Amelberga the virgin. Nay, the Centula codex too, an ancient codex written in Gaul, mentions the same Saint: At the monastery of Blandin, the birthday of St. Amalberga the virgin. Equally simple are the announcements of the codices of Hagenau, of Anchin, of the Register of the Charterhouse of Utrecht, of the Lübeck-Cologne edition of Greven, and of Molanus himself in his Additions: so that I almost suspect that the first writers of those codices saw no Acts of the Saint besides the already praised panegyric of St. Radbod.

[14] she was not the niece of St. Gudila The author of the Brussels Usuard entered upon another way, or followed other footsteps, recording somewhat more, but also erring, thinking it, I suppose, glorious to himself if he might join his holy Patroness Gudila by nearness of blood to blessed Amalberga; which by what reasoning it could be done, he himself neither inquired, nor could explain, especially so as to call her not only a kinswoman, but a niece. For even though we admit it true that St. Gudila was the daughter of the other St. Amalberga the widow, that this our Saint had her as a niece, since her brother was a Bishop, and her sister Reineldis equally cultivated virginity, as has been shown in their places, is asserted only ineptly. Augment, if you so please, the number of the sisters of St. Gudila, and add to them Saints Pharaildis and Ermelendis, yet not even so would any niece ever have been born to her, since these two also kept their chastity untouched even to death. Neither from the aforesaid eulogy of St. Radbod, nor from the longer Life, could he anywhere have taken those amatory scenes, perpetrated by Charles Martel; although, if they can be referred to any Charles, they are certainly far rather to be ascribed to him than to Charlemagne, as will be discussed below; now let us hear the announcement of the Brussels codex.

[15] He writes thus: At Temseca beside the Scheldt, the deposition of St. Amelberga, virgin of Christ, as it is wrongly read in the Brussels Usuard. niece of blessed Gudila, our Patroness; whose arm-bone Prince Charles Martel broke, when he himself was younger, to seize her as his bride: whom he would even plainly have taken, had not virginal chastity utterly withstood him. The relics of this sacred virgin were afterward translated to Ghent, on the mountain of Blandin. Of the same vein are the things which Arnold Wion has in the Tree of Life on this day, mixing in his notes various things which rest on no credence at all. Behold his text: At the port of Ghent, on the mountain called Blandin, of the most holy virgin of Christ Amelberga; whose arm Prince Charles Martel broke, while he wished to seize her as his bride: whom he would plainly have taken, had not virginal chastity, triumphing over him, withstood him. Dorganius kept silent the name of the Prince; Menard embraced the same matter in fewer words, which then Bucelinus undertook to amplify after his manner. I pass over Trithemius, Cratepolius, Galesinius, Maurolico, Felicius, Ghinius, and others, thinking nearly the same. Let the present Roman Martyrology stand for all: At Ghent, of St. Amelberga the virgin.

§ III. The more recent eulogies of St. Amalberga.

Concerning the ancient and constant cult of St. Amalberga the virgin in the Church, and so of a far more ancient and celebrated one In the eulogy of Molanus than that which was paid to St. Amalberga the widow, from what has been said there can be no doubt. Nor do we here make the ancient religious veneration different from the more recent, but we undertake to show this alone, that with a singular office and rite in some parts of Belgium even to the present day her festival is celebrated on the X of July, and on other days the memory of the translations, especially at Ghent on the mountain of Blandin, at Temse and at Materne, as we shall now pursue in order, after we have prefaced the eulogies of Molanus, Miraeus, and Sanderus, and others from Manuscript codices; then what Saussay has, although he added an error of his own, when he placed the deposition of the holy virgin not at Temseca or Ghent, but at Lobbes, which is the place of burial of the synonymous holy Widow, as we said above. Thus Molanus speaks of the virgin in the Indiculus and in his Nativities: At the port of Ghent, on the mountain of Blandin, of the most holy virgin of Christ Amalberga. This virgin, from the Ardennes, by the counsel of St. Willibrord, came to Bilzen to be instructed, where the most holy Landrada presided over a monastery which she had built. Prince Charles Martel is thought to have broken her arm-bone, to seize her as his bride: whom he would even plainly have taken as wife, had not virginal chastity, triumphing over him, utterly withstood him.

[17] She departed to the Lord in the year seven hundred and two or thereabouts, some things are to be observed on the sixth day before the Ides of July, buried at Temseca, her own estate on the Scheldt: where her tomb is shown; but her virginal body Baldwin the Iron translated to Ghent, to the monastery of St. Peter of Blandin; where it was joined to the relics of St. Bertulf. Massaeus writes that the citizens of Ghent, together with William, bishop of Tournai, instituted a feast day for themselves in the year one thousand three hundred and one. But at Blandin her memory is more frequent, whence in the Martyrology it is read, on the sixth day before the Kalends of November: At Blandin, the coming of the body of the most holy Virgin of Christ Amelberga. On the Kalends of May: At the monastery of Blandin, the translation of the body of the most holy Amelberga. On the thirteenth day before the Kalends of June: At Blandin, the translation of the bodies of the holy Gudwal and Bertulf, with the relics of the holy virgin Amelberga. In pictures she bears in her hand a crozier, like an abbess, or a palm, as a virgin. Under her feet she has a fish, commonly a sturgeon, which others call the acipenser. For, these fish accompanying the ship, her body is said to have been carried by divine prompting up the river against the current. Thus far Molanus.

[18] What he relates concerning the fish depicted with the Saint, I know not whence he drew it; which Miraeus omitted. for in the whole history of the translation not even a word is had which insinuates that accompanying; except in the greater Belgian Legend, which we shall afterward show to be not sufficiently genuine. Perhaps one might judge it better that one of the two fish be indicated, of which there is treatment in the Legend, number 27 and number 43. Briefer are the things which Miraeus seems to have related rather timidly; shrewdly noticing that some things are narrated in these which can in no way be connected, unless St. Amalberga prolonged her life to a decrepit age; inasmuch as she laid the first rudiments of the religious life under the discipline of St. Landrada, was loved by Charles Martel, and meanwhile lived until the year 772. But these will be the subject of another paragraph, in which we shall try, in whatever way it can be done, if not to reconcile the chronological reckoning of her life, at least to exempt it from absurdities. These are the words of Miraeus concerning St. Amalberga: They relate that at Bilzen she was instructed in pious morals by St. Landrada. She lived long, and at last in the year 772 died at her own estate Tamisia or Tempseca on the Scheldt, in the diocese of Ghent; where her tomb is shown even today, and a Manuscript history of her life is preserved. Her virginal body Baldwin the Iron, Count of Flanders, translated in the year 870 to the monastery of Blandin.

[19] Sanderus collects more. From the two eulogies already adduced, Sanderus, the illustrator of Flanders praised also above, composed his own a little longer, in the Hagiology, page 6, marking the year of the translation wrongly as 890: by a typographical error, I suppose, since he recites the very words of Miraeus; most rightly observing with him that the Saint lived long. But to the former he adds: that St. Radbod, the fourteenth Bishop of Utrecht, of the royal stock of the Frisians and Franks, a man illustrious for a prophetic spirit, wrote the Life of St. Amalberga. That the same was written likewise by Theodoric, abbot at Saint-Trond, of the Order of St. Benedict, in the diocese of Liège, from the monastery of Blandin, as Valerius Andreas rightly noted in the Library of the Belgians. But these will have to be examined a little later, where we shall also discuss another more prolix Life written in Flemish: to this article now pertains a eulogy of St. Amalberga, a little more ancient than those already cited, which the codices cited more than once elsewhere suggest to us — the manuscript Ado of the monastery of St. Lawrence at Liège, of whose age nothing can be established for certain, and the Florarium of the Saints, likewise manuscript, in which the same oration is exhibited, except that the Florarium more distinctly determines the position, beginning the announcement thus: At Temseca, the deposition of Amelberga the virgin, of the stock of the Carolingians, whose body rests at Ghent, at St. Peter's, in the monastery of Blandin. The rest plainly agree with those things which I transcribe from the already-mentioned Ado of Liège, taken from the Legend itself, yet in such a way that the name of Charles can be referred nearly equally to Martel and to the Great. Thus it has it:

[20] At Ghent, of St. Amelberga the virgin, who, sprung from noble birth, The Ado of St. Lawrence of Liège was, by reason of the excessive beauty of her body, amiable to all; but she desired to appear vile and despicable to human eyes. Who, since she surpassed all the virgins of that time, on account of the comeliness of her body nearly incurred the loss of her chastity. For when the report of her had come to King Charles, straightway, captured by love of her, he began incessantly to treat with her concerning marriage through go-betweens. But after he perceived that his will was in every way rejected by the blessed virgin, who had devoted herself to a better spouse, that is, to Christ; what by blandishments and

he could not do by royal power, he secretly strove to attempt by snares and certain brigandage. But she against all these things held out the shields of prayers. But on a certain day, while she sat alone within the house, applying herself to prayer, a household boy suddenly burst in by the back door, proclaiming and announcing that the King with his attendants was present before the doors. Then she, forgetful of nothing, with swift course entered the oratory which adjoined the house; where at once, with groaning and tears, she prostrated herself in prayer, beseeching with a tearful voice that the Lord would free her from the imminent danger.

[21] But then the King, too rash, pressing after her into the oratory, it agrees well enough with the Manuscript Florarium. began to flatter her with many blandishments, and to promise temporal honors, that thus he might make her acquiesce in his persuasions. But she, in no way willing to abandon the spouse whom she had chosen, lay immovable, and so fixed to the ground, as if she were held entangled by roots of some kind. But after the King had employed all his idle words, and saw that he was accomplishing nothing, he turned his royal authority into the most savage tyranny, and, seizing her hand, tried violently to drag her out. But when even so no result followed for him, at last, shaking the girl's arm forcibly, and twisting it with the utmost force, the bone of her shoulder being broken, as if he had avenged himself, he departed. Then she, as she was most tender, weighed down by the pain of the wound, wept a little before the Lord. But she prayed so long, until Christ, who had betrothed her to himself, restored her to entire health. From that day, suffering no secular lover, she burned with the love of the heavenly lover alone, until, loosed from the flesh, she came to Christ, after whom she had sighed with longing, with the reward of virginity and a holy life.

[22] There remains the encomium of Saussay, whose error we have already made plain, in that he places our holy Virgin at Lobbes, What in the encomium of Saussay where not she but the older synonymous Widow was once laid up, now translated to Binche, as we have shown in its place. Thus he speaks in a somewhat more polished phrase in his Gallican Martyrology on this day: At Lobbes, of St. Amalberga the virgin, who, committing herself to the most holy Landrada in the monastery of Bilzen * to be instructed, under her discipline attained to such glory of chastity and of the religious life, that she was looked up to by all as, so to speak, a portent of all holiness. But she excelled in such great beauty, that Charles Martel, when he more ardently desired to take her to himself as wife, and strove to seize her, broke the arm-bone of her who resisted. Ashamed of which matter, he permitted virginal chastity, spurning the world for love of Christ, to triumph over him. In the service of Christ therefore Amalberga persisted in quiet, accumulating great interest of grace, until at last, invited by her heavenly spouse to the most desired fellowship, putting off the flesh, she joyfully breathed out her most pure spirit into his hands. But she died at her own estate Tamisia on the Scheldt near Ghent, where even today, in a basilica of her name, her tomb is shown.

[23] are to be corrected. Saussay errs here again, following I know not what guide; the empty tomb of St. Amalberga is indeed shown at Temse, where a chapel and altar are dedicated to her; but no basilica is inscribed to her name; for the parish church, which is the only one there, we know to be sacred to the most blessed Virgin, the Mother of God. Sufficiently accurate are the things which he then subjoins: But the virginal body, out of desire for ampler veneration, Baldwin the Iron, Count of Flanders, conveyed to the monastery of St. Peter of Blandin, where, together with the relics of St. Bertulf, it is frequented by the inhabitants with fitting honor, on this very day on which, already many centuries ago, they asked that her feast be appointed to be performed for them by William, bishop of Tournai, then the diocesan. From these his own words Saussay could have gathered that the holy Amalberga the virgin was not laid up at Lobbes or venerated with peculiar veneration there, but chiefly there where he mentions a basilica built for her, although not rightly. At which you may wonder even more, since in the words immediately following he relates the elevation of St. Amalberga, the widow and nun, whose passing, he says, is celebrated yearly at Lobbes and Binche on the IV day before the Ides of June. Wrongly again for the VI day before the Ides, or the X of July. Now we proceed to her singular cult at Ghent, Temse, and Materne.

* read Bilzen.

§ IV. The peculiar cult of the Saint at Ghent, on the mountain of Blandin.

A Manuscript Breviary of Blandin happily found Here we treat only of that cult which was proper to the monks of Blandin, after the sacred body was translated thither, in the ecclesiastical Offices: for those things which pertain to the translation itself, and to the more general veneration of St. Amalberga among the people of Ghent, will more opportunely find their place below. To me indeed there was no doubt that the present saint had once enjoyed a singular Office in the monastery of Blandin, although I understood that no memory of it survives today among those monks, pleading that the whole furniture of relics and of their sacred treasures both and monuments was, by an irreparable loss, either consumed by fire or otherwise destroyed by the Calvinist iconoclasts raging in the sixteenth century. This indeed was clear enough to me; but I did not think that all things had so perished that at least some copy of the aforesaid Office had not escaped the hands of those impious men. It happily came about that what I did not find there, fell opportunely into my hands from elsewhere; namely a Manuscript codex in the form, as they say, of a quarto, of nearly four hundred pages, in a rude Flemish hand, with its rubrics, without doubt copied from some more ancient one, toward the end of the sixteenth century, or the beginning of the seventeenth: for it itself narrates those things which were perpetrated by the impious heretics in the destruction of the monastery in the year 1578.

[25] The title of the aforesaid codex is, Offices of Our Saints; The proper Offices and a little below he who copied the whole codex with his own hand distinctly expresses his name, in this manner: For the use of Brother Andrew vander Meere, monk of the Order of St. Benedict, of St. Peter on the mountain of Blandin. There follows a Calendar, from which, at the very first glance, you may perceive which and how many proper Offices are contained in that Manuscript Breviary, although they are not arranged in order through the course of the months, since the memory of St. Amalberga occupies the first place in the body: it therefore refers to various folios, where the individual offices are to be found. In the Calendar, the first is the deposition of St. Bertulf on the V of February. On the following day, the VI of February, of Amandus and Vedastus; and on the IX of the same month, of Ansbert, bishop and confessor. For March, on the III day, of Winwaloe the abbot: on the XX, of St. Wulfram the bishop: on the XXXI, the translation of SS. Wandregisel, Ansbert, and Wulfram. In the month of April there is had only the elevation of St. Florbert on the XIX. On the I of May, the Commemoration of St. Amalberga the virgin at both Vespers: but then on the XX day the translation of the holy Gudwal and Bertulf.

[26] Whether all these things are rightly or wrongly arranged, it is not for this place to inquire; we pursue the series of the Saints. they are enumerated in order, On the VI of June, of Gudwal the Bishop: on the XIII, the octave of St. Gudwal. On the X of July, of Amalberga the virgin; on the XVII, the octave of Amalberga. On the XXII of the same month, the deposition of St. Wandregisel the abbot. Notable is the feast of St. Anne, mother of blessed Mary, here inserted, as proper to that monastery; whence you may gather that it was in use there, on the XXVI of July, before it was celebrated by the universal Church. On the XXIX is the Octave of St. Wandregisel. In the month of August there is had only the commemoration of Winwaloe at both vespers on the I day. For the month of September is marked the coming of SS. Wandregisel, Ansbert, and Wulfram on the III, and the octave of the same coming on the X day. October is adorned by the elevation of St. Wulfram on the XV, the translation of Amandus on the XXVI, and the coming of St. Amalberga on the XXVII. In the month of November is celebrated the festival of Florbert the abbot, on the III day, but then on the X day the octave of St. Florbert. Finally for the III of December, the coming of St. Gudwal and Bertulf. It seemed good to enumerate these things one by one, that in a brief scheme the economy of the whole work, today rather rare, might be represented.

[27] You have therefore a notice of the codex, in which, as I said, especially of St. Amalberga, in the first place is set the Office of St. Amalberga, arranged through more than fifty pages in such a way that at the beginning occur the chapter and hymn at Vespers; then the invitatory, hymn, and other things proper to the individual nocturns, with eight lessons excerpted from the Life, the order not being kept; for the first three are taken from numbers 1 and 2 of the Legend, to be exhibited below; but the fourth and the rest flow from number 33 and the following, and the eighth comprises the end of the Life. The Gospel, The kingdom of heaven is like unto ten virgins, and the homily of St. Gregory on it, contain nothing besides the common. At Lauds and through the hours the Antiphons are proper, which also suit Vespers, of which somewhat more below. There follows the remainder of the whole Life, distributed into various lessons within the octave over twenty-four whole pages: to all of which is finally subjoined the Office on the coming of St. Amalberga, for the XXVII of October, as appeared from the Calendar, in which all things are done as in the aforesaid office, except a few which are there extended. The lessons moreover for that solemnity are taken from the history of the finding of the sacred body and of the translation, to be examined by us a little more accurately below. Let it now be permitted to select some specimens from them, concerning which the hymn at Vespers, from which the conjecture about the rest may be easy.

[28] First occurs the chapter of Vespers (for we said the antiphons are the same as those at Lauds): Wisdom overcomes malice, it reaches therefore from end to end mightily, and orders all things sweetly. The hymn then is arranged, not sufficiently polished, in this manner: Let us with one accord entreat the Lamb, the virginal spouse, that he may bedew our breasts with heavenly breath, in setting forth the praises of Amalberga the virgin. From great kings she drew the vein of illustrious blood, but she made it more illustrious by the insignia of her virtues, which shines forth in the miracle of her restored arm. "The phalanx of demons is put to flight at the coming of the virgin; a fish quivers on the dry land; this a huge miracle, the world being bedewed, the rain settles from the clear air." Hence, the betrothals of the most illustrious Charles being scorned, she suffered martyrdom on account of his tyranny, whom Christ, the spouse of virgins, cherishing, heals when wounded. "She restored the sick to health by the medicine of her word, for the blind man returns to the light, the lame now, upright, leaps; they feel an ample remedy who lack health." The citizens of heaven visit her, illustrious for many virtues, that the daughter dear to God may seek the joys of heaven, whither make us to ascend with you, O most happy virgin." Glory and honor to God the most high, together to the Father and the Son, to the renowned Paraclete, to whom is praise and power through the eternal ages. Amen. These and nearly all the following can be sufficiently understood only from the life itself.

[29] likewise at Matins, Antiphon at the Magnificat: Well done, Amalberga, beautiful to Christ, splendid to the Son of God, pleasing to the Angels and all the Archangels, with

with whom you shine in chastity, rejoice in modesty; O august one of the heavenly empire, clinging to the companies of the Lamb, hear your suppliants from heaven, and intercede with your spouse for us. Prayer: O God, who gladdenest us by the yearly solemnity of blessed Amalberga the virgin, grant that we may follow by the example of pious conduct her whom we venerate by our office. Invitatory: Let us adore the Lord, king of all who live piously, who has crowned blessed Amalberga in the heavens. Hymn: Singing with clear voices, let us sing a hymn to the Lord, rejoicing in the solemnity of blessed Amalberga. "Nourished with royal food, given noble milk to drink, budding in infancy, glorious in sanctity." beloved of an earthly king, more dear to the King of heaven; living justly and happily, she triumphs in heaven forever. "O kind Amalberga, deign to hear our song in your honor, and intercede for us." Borne up among the angelic choirs, have mercy on our faults, preserve us with continual prayer, and help those who venerate you. "Let us sing glory to the Father, and to his only Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and through every age. Amen."

[30] Antiphons, prayers, etc. There follow six Antiphons for the first nocturn, but which there is no need to transcribe, since they sound entirely the same style which we have sufficiently tasted from the preceding hymns. Of the same sort are the Responsories after the individual lessons, so proceeding through the whole Office, in a manner repeating twice what it will be enough to run through once in the Acts. No more sublime are the antiphons which we said were fitted to Lauds and Vespers. From the antiphon at the Benedictus judge of the rest: Let us praise the Lord our God in the glorious solemnity of the blessed virgin Amalberga, who, in this pilgrimage scorning secular marriage, chose Christ as her spouse. Alleluia. At Lauds and at Terce the prayer is the same which we gave above: but at Sext this is subjoined: Grant, we beseech thee, almighty God, that we who keep the birthday of blessed Amalberga thy virgin may both rejoice in the yearly solemnity and profit by the example of so great faith. Then at last at None: Grant, we beseech thee, almighty God, that, keeping the birthday of blessed Amalberga thy virgin, we may be protected by her merits and prayers. At second Vespers nothing worthy of note occurs except the antiphon at the Magnificat, which savors of a prayer, not much unlike the first: but the prayer is the same as that which was reported in the first place.

[31] And these things, thus far said concerning the proper Office wont to be sung by the monks of Blandin, of all which none is in use today. let suffice; in what manner it is observed today is sufficiently plain even from this, that they confess that at this time they neither have it themselves nor know it; and so all things must be taken from the common of holy Virgins, as we have shown was done concerning St. Rumold, St. Godeleva, and others, whom, when various churches had once celebrated with proper Offices, these gradually fell into disuse; whether because the Ordinaries judged that all these should be brought to the norm of the Council of Trent, or because perhaps through the Calvinist ravages the codices themselves were consumed, or because, the course of those Offices being interrupted from some other cause, it was at last altogether neglected. What piety and confidence toward St. Amalberga formerly shone among the people of Blandin, in what honor the relics were then held, what miracles were ascribed to her, I have found written or handed down nowhere. Of the general solemnity among the people of Ghent we have already spoken in a word, and further in what follows more will be said. To this also plainly pertains the singular and constant veneration which perseveres for many centuries past in the places of Flanders, consecrated in a manner by the sojourn of the holy woman herself, especially at Temse in Waes, as we said at the beginning, and at Materne or Materene, not far from Oudenaarde; which will be the subject of the following paragraph.

§ V. The cult of St. Amalberga at Temse and Materne in Flanders.

Concerning the situation of these places, enough has been said toward the beginning of this commentary, and of both the Legend itself makes mention, A celebrated well against fevers, so that, although many uncertain things are there, it can seem by no means doubtful that St. Amalberga was the temporal Lady of both, and in each place passed no small part of her most holy life. To begin from the first, there is there a fame and a tradition of many centuries, that certain ruins, still existing, not far from the celebrated well, are the ruins of the ancient house or castle in which the Saint dwelt, where now a barn is seen, venerable even on that title. But the well, distant about half a quarter of an hour from the town of Temse, is today decently covered in the form of a certain shrine, to which not only the inhabitants, but peoples from nearly all Waes flock, to draw water salubrious against fevers and other diseases, not without a certain relief, and often the entire recovery of health, as the public fame there attests. Let us hear the very Reverend Lord John Baptist Buyst, presbyter of the Oratory of the Lord Jesus, present pastor of Temse, thus writing to me: To the questions I finally add that there exists a stone well, which was in use to the living Virgin, and is now a place sacred to the people, and is most devoutly adorned in the form of a shrine, to which in troops both the local and the outside people run with exceeding devotion, who, refreshed by the water of the said well or fountain, are not infrequently freed from diseases, especially fevers.

[33] The patronage of the Saint in shipwrecks, Nor does the heavenly protection of the holy Virgin toward her own and toward strangers stop there; for when I had asked about her other protections and favors, the praised Pastor plainly answers: Altogether peculiar is the patronage of the Saint, and she is wont to be invoked in all perils, especially of the shipwrecked, and also for a happy harvest. But descending to particulars, I had asked whether there did not exist a memory of more recent miracles, or at least benefits, which might be ascribed to the merits of the Saint; and what vows of the pious were made to her, both on the festival itself and at other times of the year? To both questions: So great, he says, is the devotion toward the Virgin, so great the concourse, that our predecessors were little solicitous about the approbation of benefits or miracles. But this among innumerable things I declare, that I have often heard from a most ample man, Provost of the Congregation of the Oratory, and for 44 years rector of this parish, and a most devout worshipper of holy Amalberga, that sailors came to him who, had he not prevented it, would have affirmed by oath that in the danger of shipwreck they had invoked the holy woman, and had seen her as a helper on the ship, in the same garb in which the image is exhibited in our church. That these things have not been committed to writing a little more distinctly, we complain in vain.

[34] likewise in other diseases and storms of the air. Buyst subjoins another miracle a little more expressed. Let this be added, he says, that there came to the aforesaid most ample man a certain Capuchin Father, once an alumnus of our college of Temse (for the Oratorians there teach the humanities), who, from a malignant fever near to death, imploring the help of the holy woman, and binding himself by a vow of some Masses to be celebrated in her shrine, confessed that in that garb, as above, he had seen the holy Virgin standing by him as he scarcely drew breath, and had shortly obtained his former health. Paying the aforesaid vows here, he candidly opened the matter to my predecessor. What that Father explained more sincerely and openly, others tacitly profess, for, on the testimony of the same Buyst, votive Masses too are made more frequently, which by persons and from distant places, as recently from Amsterdam, are here paid, that they may render due thanks for the health which they ascribe to the aid of this holy Virgin. And these things are common not only to the people of Temse, but also to the most remote clients: not so what follows. To all the inhabitants of this country it is especially known that, the crops of all the neighboring parishes being often devastated by hail, this one alone was unharmed, which safety they undoubtedly ascribe to the patronage of the Virgin, who is most especially invoked for the preservation of the fruits of the earth.

[35] A solemn procession on the Wednesday of Pentecost Thus then he continues: Deservedly also to be noted is the devotion which is exhibited yearly on the Wednesday after Pentecost to holy Amalberga from time immemorial, which solemnity is commonly entitled, THE CIRCUIT OF THE RELIQUARY OF THE RELICS OF ST. AMALBERGA. This is the series of the said solemnity. Between the second and third hour of the morning a Mass is celebrated, which being finished, they proceed in procession to the aforesaid well, and there, the antiphon of that day being sung, on account of the excessive concourse, they divide themselves into troops, and go off along the whole way, which extends over the space of four hours, singing without ceasing a rhythm concerning St. Amalberga: whether in the tone of the Litanies, or in some other proper one, matters little. The song itself, or panegyric ode in Flemish, divided into fifty-three articles, in the manner of the native songs, runs through the whole series of the Life in order, expressing the praises of the Virgin, chiefly excerpted from the Legend itself, with a ruder art indeed, but with an inmost sense of piety, and great confidence in the most holy Patroness, a precatory intercalary meter recurring after the individual segments of the song: Help us, O God, through thy holy virgin; Help us, O God, through her who pleased thee.

[36] Those who were present at the procession have testified to me that a nearly innumerable crowd of men flows together to it from all Waes, wont to be frequented with a great concourse of people. among whom, as the letter of Buyst again has it, a huge multitude of barefoot people, which could scarcely be numbered. But what is astonishing in this procession, many old and infirm people complete this great space of four hours without any labor: and we have it for certain here, that many, to whom that journey seemed impossible on account of fevers or failing legs or feet, returned whole from the journey. In this procession too very many are seen who, on account of excessive infirmity, are carried around in carriages: and for the greater pomp of the said solemnity, some hundreds accompany the procession on horseback. And this is most of all to be wondered at, that on account of no injury of the weather or difficulty of the roads is this procession ever intermitted. To these innumerable things could be added, which can be set forth more clearly and fully by mouth than by pen. For the rest, the narration already given demonstrates so abundantly the constant confidence of the people of Temse and the other neighbors in the patronage of St. Amalberga, that I have thought I should refrain from inquiring further. But what penalty they once bore on account of the neglect of the aforesaid procession, the miracles will teach, subjoined from the Temse codex of the Legend, where near the very beginning a dire history is described.

[37] Proceeding to the other arguments of the Temse cult, I had asked whether a proper Office was recited there, The present Office is from the common of Virgins. distributed through the whole octave, such as I knew the monks of Blandin had used. Buyst replied: From our predecessors we have it handed down that a proper Office was sung there, and it makes for proof that even hitherto that Office is preserved in Manuscript in our archives, although for a long time the Office from the common of Virgins alone is in use. Which, unless the X of July falls on the Sunday itself, the feast of the Virgin Amalberga is transferred to the following Sunday, in which case only the feast is solemnly kept by the confraternity without the office of the Hours: but that Sunday is most solemnly kept, and ends with the octave: and on that very Sunday is the dedication-feast of the parish, because she is the universal Patroness. To the following question; whether, just as

the people of Blandin, the people of Temse too celebrated the translations, on what days and with what rite? The answer was: The finding of the relics (which for the people of Blandin is the coming) falls on the XXVII of October; the translation of the same on the Sunday before the feast of St. Michael, each celebrated with the double rite. From which it is easily understood in what they agree with the monks, and in what, for I know not what reasons, they have deviated.

[38] The veneration of the sacred relics; There followed the question, whether they had relics of St. Amalberga, which were exhibited in the church? The answer was: That relics are had, which are wont to be exhibited on the more solemn feasts, and at all Masses sung in honor of the holy Virgin. Whether they are only those of St. Amalberga of Susteren, or perhaps some proper ones joined to them, which it is established were once there, I have no means to explore for certain. The particle seems small enough, inserted into a round silver case, and adorned around with precious little stones; which is wont to be placed, in a manner doubled, in a larger chest, itself also skillfully made, while it is presented to the veneration of the people. With how great a multitude of men flowing together from every side both the relics themselves, and the place of the first burial, which is shown there even today, are frequented with almost daily supplication, and often with longer pilgrimages, there is no one who could explain in a few words. You would say that the East Flemings contend in pious rivalry for the glory of their holy Virgin, as I remember I indicated elsewhere concerning St. Godeleva, the special Patroness of the West Flemings. A perpetual Mass in honor of the same holy Virgin (the words again are the Lord Pastor's) is sung on every Wednesday, with a great concourse of people, besides the innumerable votive Masses which are celebrated there almost daily.

[39] the place of the tomb and other indications of the cult. The aforesaid place of the old tomb is shown to those entering on the right, under an altar dedicated to the Saint, on the top of which stands out Charles, seizing the Virgin by the arm; a statue of St. Willibrord elegantly adorns one part, another of St. Landrada the other part. To say it in a word, indications of exceptional reverence toward the holy Patroness occur everywhere, in pictures, banners, the preaching-pulpit, and other outward signs, all of which most openly demonstrate the altogether exceptional patronage-devotion of the people of Temse toward St. Amalberga. The shrine once built by her is reckoned to form part of the church, whence by its very frontispiece, with a Flemish inscription, it is signified that St. Amalberga erected that shrine to the most holy Mother of God Mary in the year 770. In representing her effigy painters and sculptors vary, among whom she is mostly expressed in the habit of a nun; yet in such a way that the Reverend Lord Pastor of Merelbeke, James Heyndricx, author of the great Flemish life, confesses that he found a different manner of garments; concerning which it does not please me here to contend. At Temse and throughout Waes she is thus everywhere exhibited, so that you would think her to have been a nun, nay, even an abbess, with a great fish set beside her, which they will have to be a sturgeon or acipenser, concerning which I expressed my mind sufficiently above at number 18; whatever other things too are bandied about concerning the sturgeons of Temse, which you would more easily concede to the opinions of the common folk, than contend that they should be reported here by me.

[40] The explanation of the image. An image, as fitting as he could, drawn together from various others, Heyndricx, cited just now, took care to have depicted, enumerating his prototypes from page 396; which, although it is not proper to the people of Temse, nor is it altogether sufficiently established that St. Amalberga the virgin was ever clothed in a religious habit, who is simply narrated in the Life to have put a veil on herself, that she might escape the violent hands of her suitor; yet seems to deserve a place here, both on account of its singular elegance beyond the others, and because it exhibits under one view many things which are divulged in a scattered manner; of which most are, from the Life and from what has been said, obvious enough: only the linen cloth or sieve hung on the well is to be noted, by which they record — one might say, they invent — that the Saint drew water from another well, the cause of many disputes among the neighbors, and carried it elsewhere, where on dry ground she drew forth water, whence now a well overflows, under the name of St. Amalberga, whether it be that which today at Temse, as Heyndricx judges, or that which at Materne is held celebrated for the fame of its cures. So he himself piously opines, happily enough, if it were as solidly proved, ancient registers being produced from somewhere. The head placed under her feet, though I keep silent, speaks sufficiently, whoever the Charles denoted by it be presumed to be. From the appended little plate, compared with the Acts, what the geese and the rest signify, you will readily perceive; while meanwhile we proceed to the other part of the paragraph.

St. Virgin AMELBERGA, born at Rodino in the Ardennes, instructed at Bilzen, dead and buried at Temseca in her own estate on the Scheldt in the year 772, found by Robert, Abbot of the Monastery of Blandin, and there, under the auspices of Baldwin the Iron, first Count of Flanders, in the year 870, translated, and joined to the relics of St. Bertulf; in these last turbulent times she perished. To her William, Bishop of Tournai, in the year 1331, on the 9th day of October, throughout the whole Christianity of Ghent, appointed a feast with indulgences of 40 days on her accustomed day. Here burn, here cut. P. B. Bouttat engraved it.

[51] To the people of Temse, the exceptional worshippers of St. Amalberga, come next in praiseworthy rivalry the people of Materne or Materene, the old castle-shrine of Materne, from the village today called Materen, which, situated in the territory of Alost not far from Oudenaarde, we described above from Sanderus. Asked by me, the present pastor of the place, the Reverend Lord Pieraers, clearly set forth in a few words both the traditions surviving there concerning their holy Patroness, and, what I had most requested, the traces and monuments of the cult and veneration toward her. From his answers my questions will be understood. Thus he writes: There is in the aforesaid parish a castle-shrine of St. Amalberga the virgin, ample and very old, ordered to be built by her, as is handed down, in the seventh century (from the context it is plain that he understands the eighth century) while she dwelt at Materen, a stone's throw from the parish church, dedicated to St. Martin, in which she (while she lived, on her mother's side the lady of the parish) is now venerated as Patroness, with the rite and office of the first class, with a solemn feast on the X of July; on which day too a solemn procession is held, all the neighboring Lords Pastors honoring it with their presence; as also on the dedication of the same shrine, on the Sunday after the feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, with the highest devotion and a great concourse. He subjoins other things concerning Charlemagne soliciting the Saint at Materen to marriage, which are recited more fully in the Legend: here we relate only those things which pertain to the cult wont to be exhibited by the people of Materne.

[42] in which is the constant cult of the Saint, In the ecclesiastical Offices no account of her translation is had here, but I believe it is had at Temse near the Scheldt, not far from Dendermonde; since it is handed down and read that she migrated from Materen to that town, of which too she was the lady, and there died in the year 772, and that in the time of Robert, abbot of St. Peter's on the mountain of Blandin near Ghent, and of Baldwin the Iron, first Count of Flanders, her sacred body, lost for nearly a whole century, was at last, after many labors, found as it were miraculously by the monks of St. Peter's, and translated from Temse to the said abbey. He cites for this matter the only author whom he had read concerning St. Amalberga, the Pastor of Merelbeke praised above, the Reverend Lord Heyndricx, but then refers to the abbey of Blandin, in which he thinks more other particulars could be found. But neither did Heyndricx contribute much to elucidating the Saint's life solidly; who intrepidly swallowed great anachronisms, nor was it permitted to obtain a jot from the monastery of Blandin. What he records concerning the finding and translation of the Saint's sacred body will be explored a little more diligently by us in the following paragraph. Let us now hear the other part of the reply.

[43] and a remedy in various diseases. There are no monuments of that Saint here except the said shrine, often devastated by the infidels, restored by others, and now in a good and decent state: likewise the traces of that castle, and the solemn fountain, which is named from St. Amalberga. There are no relics here, which is greatly to be lamented; they are said to be at Temse, and in the aforesaid abbey, to which the whole body is said to have been translated from Temse. Several times I have spoken about this with the religious affirming the same. But while in the fifteenth century (it is plain the sixteenth is meant) the heretics occupied Ghent, and even held their abbey in the place of a citadel, they seized all the silver cases (for they had very many holy bodies), the relics being cast aside, which, mixed and gathered among themselves, are now preserved indistinctly in one case. The Saint is invoked in every kind of fevers, contusions, and other pains in the shoulders and arms, and also in the disease, commonly den langen evel, which in Latin you might call volvulus, or the iliac disease, otherwise the "miserere." On her feast, and through the whole octave, and at other times of the year, according to a vow or the aforesaid afflictions raging, there is a frequent pilgrimage and concourse of people, who with great devotion offer one loaf or another, in attestation of a benefit conferred by the Lord God, through the intercession of that Saint, before, upon one sick unto death, concerning which see the Legend below, number 28, whence he thinks the custom of offering loaves takes its origin. And thus far concerning the cult.

§ VI. The history of the translated sacred body, its veneration among the people of Ghent, and its destruction by the Calvinists.

To that chief solemnity, of which we treated above, the coming of the sacred body gave occasion among the people of Blandin, What prodigies are feigned concerning the translation, translated from the place of burial at Temse to that monastery in the year 870, while Baldwin the Iron ruled the Flemings, son-in-law of the King of the Franks and Emperor Charles the Bald, by whose munificence no small increase of fortunes had accrued to the monastery. The history of the translation is subjoined to the Acts themselves, not written, as it seems, by the same author, but by one who, equally with the other, delights in prodigies in a wondrous manner; for the whole finding and translation is depicted as miraculous. The Legend-writer had said at number 47 that St. Amalberga was buried in the church which she herself, by the command of a heavenly oracle, built in honor of the Mother of God and ever-Virgin at her own estate of Temseca, and was placed to the right of the altar, namely in the year 772, with a great concourse of the faithful to so celebrated a funeral; who without doubt did not cease to frequent such venerable relics, and to commend their cult to their sons and grandsons, so that the memory of the event very easily flowed to posterity, not yet removed by a whole century from it. Meanwhile the narrator of the translation, as if about to treat of a most obscure matter, thus rather frigidly begins his history at number 49. For, many courses of days having passed after her most happy death, that coffer, honorable to all Christians, in which her sacred body lay, was unknown to all mortals, except one alone, and he the household servant of that most blessed Virgin herself.

[45] Hence those investigations of many, whether thought out rightly enough I know not, and exaggerated with great pomp, namely of the monks of Tronchiennes and of St. Bavo, can be conveniently explained who all had no right at all over Temse; hence the persistent silence of that household servant,

or, as it is read elsewhere, of the little chaplain of the Virgin herself, as if this one had been more than a hundred years old; then the singular zeal of the people of Blandin, the fastings, prayers, and at last a revelation made from heaven, and in a manner a furtive removal of the sacred body: all which are arranged not much more sensibly than the context of the whole Legend. I will indeed not deny that the sacred body could have been hidden for fear of the ravaging Normans, who plundered things sacred and profane; but that the coffer was known to none of the faithful, except that pretended household servant, I think a fiction, not unlike poetic ones, as if it had to be drawn out from hiding-places. That writer could surely have narrated the matter more simply and more genuinely, if he had said that by the liberality of Charles the Bald Temseca was transferred to the monks of Blandin in that very year 870, as the diploma to be produced presently will teach; whence it came about that they judged the body of St. Amalberga should be transferred from the estate, then their own, lest perhaps it should fall as booty to the barbarians, just as we know so many other bodies of the Saints were translated to Blandin, as to a safe refuge, about those times, as of Winwaloe, Wulfram, Wandregisel, Gudwal, Ansbert, Bertulf, and others, whose festivals we have shown were wont to be celebrated yearly in the aforesaid monastery.

[46] Thus I plainly judge the matter happened, for which there was by no means need of so many circuits and roundabout ways: one might even say more briefly, with Christian Massaeus, whose words we shall report below, that all things were accomplished by the command of Baldwin the Iron. from the diploma of Charles the Bald, The diploma of the donation of Charles the Bald the distinguished Miraeus drew out in the Belgian Donations, chapter 9, whence Sanderus copied it in more than one place. The title is: Temseca, an estate of Waes on the river Scheldt, is given to the monks of St. Peter of Blandin near Ghent, by Charles the Bald, King of the Franks, in the year 870. Behold now the diploma itself: In the name of the holy and undivided Trinity. Charles, by the grace of God King. We wish it to be known to all the faithful of the holy Church, and to ours, namely present and future; that the venerable man Baldwin, abbot of the monastery which is called Blandin, built by St. Amandus in the village of Ghent, consecrated in honor of the Apostles SS. Peter and Paul; and where now the body of blessed Amelberga the virgin is recognized to rest … how, for the remedy of our soul, asked that we should give some things by the authority of our precept to the brothers worthily serving God in that same church: which we also did.

[47] handing over Temseca to the people of Blandin; For a complete construction, there seems to be lacking at the ellipsis the word "asked," "supplicated," or something similar. Observe likewise that the Abbot is here called Baldwin, who in the history of the translation is called Robert. The precept continues: We have given to the aforesaid servants of God, in the district of Waes on the river Scheldt, the estate which is called Temseca, with a well-adorned church, consecrated in honor of St. Mary and St. Peter, prince of the Apostles, where St. Amelberga, the glorious virgin, departed from the world to Christ … Which, that they may obtain fuller force in the name of God, and be more truly believed by the faithful of the holy Church of God, and of ours, and more diligently preserved, we have ordered to be sealed below with our ring. The sign of Charles, the most glorious King. I, Ildebold the Notary, in the stead of Goslenus, have acknowledged it. Given on the Ides of April, in the third Indiction, in the thirtieth year, Charles the most glorious King reigning. Done at Compiègne, the palace of the King, in the name of God, happily. Amen. The signed characters plainly denote the year of Christ 870, in which, in this month of April, the thirtieth year of Charles's reign was still running, inasmuch as he had begun to reign in Neustria in the year 840, from the 20th day of June or a little after, as Labbe shows in his Chronology.

[48] whence they claimed the body of the Saint for themselves. From the said diploma, which Charles gave in that year 870, in which we believe it undoubted that the translation itself also happened; it is clearly gathered, unless I am mistaken, what we said above, that so many inquiries about the sacred body ought not at all to have been feigned, especially by the monks of the monasteries of Tronchiennes and of St. Bavo, who could not, without evident injury, swoop upon the goods of others; nor indeed by the people of Blandin themselves; who, having obtained the possession of the estate of Temse from the King, could at their own discretion, especially with the barbarians ravaging through Belgium, transfer the sacred body of the holy Virgin to a safer place: in which we think it manifest that no long delay was placed. On the Ides of April Charles confirmed the donation; the first finding and translation is furthermore recorded to have been made in the month of October next following: why then are things so wondrous brought forward for a plainly obvious business? Someone might not improbably object that there could have been another motive for the people of Temse in hiding the sacred body; namely, that, desirous of retaining the precious remains, they had recourse to such concealment, lest they be deprived of so great a treasure by the new lords. Let it be so, for my part; nor even so do I find a sufficient cause for embellishing that kind of narration. Miracles did not have to be invented, that the subjects might be compelled to reveal the body of the Saint to their lords; nor is it probable that all so conspired, that thence the writer of the translation might take occasion of asserting that the coffer in which the sacred body lay was unknown to all mortals, except one household servant; which, to what prudent man it could be persuaded, I desire indeed to be taught.

[49] However these things were done, no one doubts the truth of the substance of the matter. The feasts of the Saint with others at Blandin, Consult, if you please, Meyer in the Annals at the said year 870, where you will moreover find noted that Baldwin confirmed all the goods and privileges of that monastery. There are celebrated on the mountain of Blandin, besides the festival mentioned in the third paragraph on this day with a solemn octave, first the commemoration of St. Amalberga on the 1st of May at both Vespers, why it is affixed to that day I do not find explained, except that Molanus there places some translation in the eulogy recited above. Our Blandin proper mentions on that day only the commemoration of the Saint. A note, to be cited below, says that a commemoration is made of the translation; but of which one it treats, it does not at all indicate. It is more plain whence the praised Molanus took another translation of the relics of St. Amalberga for the XIII day before the Kalends of June, which both he and others after him announce in these words: At Blandin, the translation of the bodies of SS. Gudwal and Bertulf, with the relics of the holy virgin Amalberga (although in the Office there is treatment only of SS. Gudwal and Bertulf) for that finding of the relics of St. Amalberga, and their translation and re-deposition with those of Bertulf, the very Life of St. Bertulf most openly insinuates, on the V of February, chapter 10, number 40, page 686, whose text, on account of the rarity of the Acts of that month, deserves to be transcribed. Thus it has it:

[50] In translating the relics of St. Bertulf, Christ added this glory to his glory, and another translation with St. Bertulf, that, as she is a partaker of the joy of the Saints in heaven, so also she might become a partaker on earth of the translation of their relics with herself. To whom this special honor accrued when he was about to be translated, that he merited to have the most sacred virgin of Christ Amalberga as a companion in this his translation. How this was done, it will not be irksome to indicate to the reader in a few words. There was in the eastern apse of the holy church of Blandin a shrine, laid up in hiding for an immense age, which was opened by certain Brothers devoutly admitted thither, and in it something of divine awe was found. For in it was to be seen almost all the dust of the virginal body of the Virgin of Christ Amalberga, and several particles of her most chaste bones, together with her garments and veil, also a wallet and staff, a hair-shirt too, and a consecrated veil of precious workmanship and color: the veil, I say, with which she is read to have been veiled by divine prompting through blessed Willibrord and holy Gertrude, and consecrated to God. The Brothers, admitted more secretly to so sacred a spectacle, having found so precious a treasure, rejoiced not a little, and thought it worthy to place it with the body of St. Bertulf. Which also was done.

[51] Then a notable miracle is narrated, by which the troubles of the flood with which the whole region labored, in which a singular miracle. and which had taken away from the toiling farmers all hope of the future harvest, suddenly ceased; so that it was one and the same thing, that the Brothers opened the coffer, and that the cataracts of heaven withdrew their rains. More things can be seen there which bring light to what has been said, namely that on the morrow of Pentecost, which fell on the 19th of the month of May, it pleased the Brothers to translate the most sacred body of blessed Bertulf, with the relics of St. Amalberga, from the old little coffer into a new one. The whole rest of the chapter is spent in describing the unusual solemnity of that day, which we wish to be held here as inserted. What Fisen had cavilled at concerning the sacred veil received from SS. Willibrord and Gertrude, you will find explained by Bollandus: not that it was given to her by the living Saints, since they differ in age by whole centuries; but by them, now endowed with happy eternity, as we shall note on the Life. Most certain also is another festival at Blandin, and that sufficiently explored, on the XXVII of October, namely, the Coming of St. Amalberga, under the lesser double rite, because without doubt at that season of the year the sacred body was brought thither, after the monks had been endowed with the dominion of Temse in the preceding month of April.

[52] What feasts survive at Blandin: And this manner of cult perseveres even today in the same monastery, as a note transmitted from Ghent by our Father Francis Cocquyt attests: who, asked by me to deign to inquire from the people of Blandin whatever could conduce to illustrating the Acts of their Saint: they pleading, as I said above, the destruction of all their sacred treasures, could supply only this, which survived by the custom received there; namely that on the three aforesaid days a memory of St. Amalberga is made in the choir. I transcribe the notice given, word for word: The festival of St. Amalberga is celebrated by the people of Blandin solemnly with an octave on the X of July. Her coming is celebrated among the people of Blandin on the XXVII of October. Double. And on the 1st of May a commemoration is made of her translation. As for the proper lessons, which pertain to the Office, we do not have them. That they are not recited, I would easily believe; but that they are neither had nor found in that monastery, must surely seem a wonder; since they were first written toward the end of the sixteenth century, after full tranquility had already been restored to that monastery, as will be manifest from the very words of the writer, to be recited below. But concerning those lessons, which exist with us in Manuscript, we have said enough for our purpose.

[53] a peculiar feast for the people of Ghent There now remains, and this too Molanus narrated from Massaeus; namely that the people of Ghent instituted a feast of St. Amalberga for themselves. The words of that chronographer, published in the year 1540 at Antwerp by John Crinitus, are on page 204: Baldwin the Iron translated the bones (of St. Amalberga) to Blandin at Ghent: whose citizens, together with William, bishop of Tournai, instituted her feast day for themselves in the year 1331, Indiction 14. The instrument of that institution the writer of the Flemish Life, to be met with a little later, opportunely supplied to us, to which he made the title: How the day of St.

Amelberga is to be solemnly celebrated throughout the whole Christianity of Ghent, with Indulgences of forty days. He ought to have added that all things were ordained and granted by the authority of the aforesaid Bishop William. Thus the document reads, as transcribed: God is glorious in his Saints, and wonderful in majesty, the height of whose ineffable prudence magnifies all his ministers, adorns them with high honors, and makes them possessors of heavenly beatitude: whose kindly mother the Church, following his sacred footsteps, honors them with solicitous zeal, and does not cease incessantly to extol their honors with praises. And therefore through the ministers and prelates of that Church she is wont to lead the faithful by salutary admonitions to the continual and devout veneration of the Saints, in whose veneration God himself is praised, and to invite them by spiritual gifts, and to animate the devotion of the faithful.

[54] Weighing these things therefore with intent meditation, and desiring to incite the clergy and people of Ghent, instituted by Bishop William in 1331 of the town and deanery of the Christianity of the same, of our diocese of Tournai, to the due veneration of the blessed and glorious virgin Amelberga, whose body rests venerably in the monastery of St. Peter of Ghent, by the zeal of pious devotion, and to animate them by spiritual gifts, to the honor of God and the devotion of the aforesaid Saint, we have thought fit piously and reasonably to ordain, that henceforth the feast of St. Amelberga, on her accustomed day, and in the said town and deanery of Ghent, be solemnly celebrated by their clergy and people, that the more celebrated and more devoutly the aforesaid devout clergy and people, flowing together thither, by assiduous and devout prayers and orations, imploring the grace of the Savior *, the more quickly they may merit to obtain pardon of their offenses and grace in the present, and eternal glory in the future, from the bestower of all good things. But that the aforesaid clergy and people may more easily be inclined to the devout concourse and solemn veneration of the aforesaid virgin Amelberga, and be more devoutly animated; We, the aforesaid Bishop, to all truly penitent and confessed, who on the said feast, for the sake of devotion, prayer, or pilgrimage, shall visit the monastery of the said convent; trusting in the mercy of almighty God and the authority of his blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, mercifully relax in the Lord forty days of the penances enjoined on them, in remission of their sins. In testimony of which matter we have thought fit to append our seal to the present letters. Given at Ghent in 1331, on the 9th day of the month of October.

[55] How long the piety of the people of Ghent toward St. Amalberga prolonged so solemn a cult, The sacred remains of many Saints violated by the heretics. since those whom it concerns refrain from inquiring, nor is it easy for me to explore: what we know, says the Apostle, we testify. It will be pleasing, I think, finally to understand in what place both the body of St. Amalberga and those of so many other Saints were once laid up in the church of Blandin; then how foully and sacrilegiously they were violated, dispersed, and perhaps burned by the raging Calvinist iconoclasts. The first he taught who is cited by Bollandus in the Commentary on St. Bertulf, number 11: In the choir of the church of St. Peter an iron structure is seen behind the high altar, so skillfully formed that it seems as it were to grow from the pavement: so bent, curved, and interwoven to every symmetry and proportion of the moderns, that the iron could seem to have been ductile like wax. Thus are preserved those precious cases in which the bodies of the Saints are laid up; namely, of St. Bertulf … St. Godewal, St. Ansbert, St. Wandregisel, St. Wulfram, St. Amelberga, and four others. Of the destruction of all these Henschenius makes mention in the Commentary on St. Ansbert on the IX of February. I transcribe the whole matter from the Blandin Proper: Whose relics, alas! and the most sacred pledges of most sacred bodies, which, God favoring and propitious, had been granted to us, not without his great benefit, the same being not undeservedly angry with us, were violently snatched away by the enemies of the faith in the year 1578, the Calvinist Prince of Orange persecuting the Catholic Church in Belgium, not without inestimable loss which, beyond a seven-year exile, we suffered in this our monastery, which then was horribly defiled with very foul ruins. Where I would have you observe that that writer cannot be more ancient than the end of the sixteenth century.

* read "imploraverint" (shall have implored).

§ VII. The Acts of the Saint and their writers.

The cult is more certain than the history of her life We seem now to have treated abundantly of those things which pertain to the most ancient and most celebrated cult of St. Amalberga the virgin, especially on the mountain of Blandin, at Temse, Materne, and in all the Christianity of Ghent, so that her most deserving memory of virtues and miracles among the people may be sufficiently plain, all which plainly stand and are most received by the perpetual recollection of our fathers, whatever finally be established concerning the Legend of her life, not altogether accurate, nor worthy of so much credence that we do not miss great authority in it. Concerning the authors of the life, we have already set forth above the judgment of Sanderus from Valerius Andreas and others. They judge, namely, that both St. Radbod wrote it, and Theodoric, abbot of Saint-Trond; not sufficiently designating what both contributed to the matter. For the first, as was shown above, delivered not the Acts of the Saint, but an encomium of her, or an oration to the people: the other, whoever he was, composed the Legend; namely at the time when some things were recorded by popular tradition alone, which, passing through various centuries, had so degenerated from the truth that the writer, not sufficiently skilled in chronology, confused both facts and times for certain: by a custom received enough, while the Lives of the Saints were weighed rather by the standard of edification than of truth. I wonder meanwhile that there has hitherto been no one to publish the said Legend in Latin, equally with so many others, since nevertheless it is found so often cited among various writers, and quite often either refuted or rejected with disgust.

[57] hitherto rejected and published in Latin by no one. Thus of that Life have spoken Mabillon, Le Cointe, and the recent French Legend-writer, reciting shreds from it here and there, which they might easily refute; especially those which pertain to the reckoning of times, most badly arranged by the writer: but in such a way that, as if of set purpose, they withdrew the history itself, as unworthy of the press, from the eyes of readers. Of it Mabillon speaks thus in the Benedictine Acts, third century, part 2, page 240: The book on the deeds of St. Amalberga the virgin, written by a certain Anonymous in twenty-nine chapters, a Manuscript codex of the Bigot library exhibited to us, but so sprinkled with so many fables and uncertain narrations, that it seemed better to pluck certain things from it than to exhibit the whole book. How much the aforesaid book is esteemed by us, we have already begun to insinuate sufficiently, and shall show more manifestly hereafter. For the rest, we did not wish to pass judgment rashly on an unknown matter, but to set forth the whole Life itself sincerely, that anyone, by unrolling it, may be able to decide about our arguments and those of others. Let the first inquiry now be into the author, but the second into the worth of the Legend itself.

[58] A Belgian writer attributes the Legend to Radbod; More than one Manuscript copy of it the Reverend Lord James Heyndrix, presbyter, bachelor of theology, and pastor of Merelbeke near Ghent (whom we called Heyndricx), found, who in the year 1625 published the life of our holy Virgin in Flemish, in a good large volume, extended to 434 pages in duodecimo, inasmuch as he interpolated it with innumerable pious and moral observations, for the benefit of virgins devoted to God and of others, as he candidly confesses in his preface. All which I would more easily pardon him than those things which he inserted into his Flemish text, foreign to the Latin, as will readily be plain to one comparing this our edition with his Flemish one. That Pastor Heyndricx acknowledges that the aforesaid Life was long ago ascribed to Theodoric, abbot of Saint-Trond; he could have added that it is the opinion of nearly all the Belgians, but he himself prefers to make the author the Lord Radbod, fourteenth Bishop of Utrecht, deceived, I suppose, by the Tomellus subjoined to that Life, of which we spoke above. I would not believe that Heyndricx found many followers of his opinion, for those who thought with him must confess that they did not even salute the writer's preface from the threshold, where he speaks so plainly that he demonstrates manifestly enough that he is not a Bishop but a monk, which is clearly given to be understood from his words. Thus he wove his prologue.

[59] It is the glory and honor of the living God to narrate the merits and virtues of the Saints, but it is plain enough that it is the work of a monk; and to commend them in writing, insofar as emulous virtue may be incited by the zeal of the good, and pious imitation may prolong the memory into eternal ages. Which, although it belongs to the perfect, nay, the most wise, who can fulfill by the significations of words what they conceive in mind, yet we are bidden by the Psalmist, young men with virgins, old men with younger, to praise the name of the Lord. But I, whose wit is dry, am bidden to gird myself to treat of the life of the most holy virgin of Christ Amelberga, and to praise the bride of the eternal King … But what shall I do? I am forced to strive against the torrent, since it seems that what I cannot do can be commanded of me, and a boy, who has not yet pushed off a skiff, is compelled to steer the helm of a merchant ship among the windings of the Euboean shore. I find nothing in such an oration that savors of a Bishop writing; nothing that could not most aptly be referred to some monk dwelling at Blandin; who, among the rest a little more skilled in the Latin tongue, was ordered by his superiors to commit to writing the life and deeds of St. Amalberga, so illustrious in that monastery, as they were then borne by the mouth of the monks; which why they cannot be ascribed to Theodoric, I do not hitherto see.

[60] Thus Valerius depicts him above, as if from a monk of Blandin he had been made abbot at Saint-Trond; perhaps by Theodoric, abbot of Saint-Trond. but you will find his various fortunes better explained in the Commentary on the Acts of St. Rumold, 1 July, §2, from page 171; where we also showed that he had leisure, while he dwelt at Blandin, to write the Legends of several Saints, which are most constantly attributed to him, such as those of St. Bavo, St. Rumold, St. Landrada, and St. Trudo; of each of which it is true to say that Theodoric, indeed not unlearned, nor unskilled in the Latin tongue, collected those things which he had heard from the elders through traditions, more solicitous to say good things, and those which would conduce to the edification of hearers and readers, than those which could be weighed by historical and chronological criticism, as has already been sufficiently plain in the Acts of St. Rumold and St. Landrada; and it will be further plain, when St. Bavo must be treated on the 1st of October, of whose Legend you will find more than one error already corrected in our work. It is a clever thing to select prudently from such writings those things which can find credence among the sensible; and to reject moderately those in which either Theodoric or any other disclosed his ignorance too manifestly.

[61] the compiler of several Legends. Mabillon indeed asserts, in the place cited above, that the age of the Anonymous author could be gathered by no indication, and so that his name could not be drawn out;

but if he could have weighed all the things which we have already said concerning Theodoric, both in the Commentary on St. Rumold and here, perhaps he would not have shrunk from ascribing this Legend too to him, whence he would plainly have gathered his age, since he is said to have died in the year 1107: sufficiently many centuries after St. Amalberga, so that from confused rumors he connected many things wrongly. For the rest, either I am greatly mistaken, or Theodoric, or whoever the compiler of that Legend was, had the Radbodian Encomium before his eyes; in which, reading of the Carolingians and of Charles, he doubted not at all that that whole history of the suitor of St. Amalberga was to be transferred to him who was the most celebrated of all in that lineage. This argument once assumed, the loves of Charlemagne would flow not so ineptly, if he could have supposed that he had not contracted marriage before the death of his father Pippin, which he had no leisure to bring to examination, nor to discern the times of St. Willibrord and St. Landrada, inasmuch as he aimed only at this, to make his Legend as ornate as possible.

[62] The Acts are given from Manuscript codices. Whatever meanwhile be the case concerning the true author of the Legend, whom we readily confess we cannot explore for certain; we have it in three different Manuscript codices of our Museum, but not in all is the homily or Tomellus of Radbod and the history of the translation added, all which are reported entire in the codex marked ✠ Ms. 50, which once belonged to St. Paul in Soignies. In the large Moretus or Vaucelles codex marked P. 157, only the homily of Radbod is lacking; in the third, ✠ Ms. II, some things are exhibited more contracted. I have already said above that the same history, distributed into various lessons, is had in the proper Offices of the monastery of Blandin, where the narration of the translation seems to be confounded with the Tomellus of Radbod. There is no doubt that our former codex agrees for the most part with the Bigot one, and so with that book on the deeds of St. Amalberga the virgin, which Mabillon testifies that he examined, but did not judge worthy to find a place in the Acts of his Order. He himself had reason why he so judged: our method of collecting the Acts is different, we who omit not even apocryphal things, the readers being nevertheless forewarned, lest they be led into error.

[63] collated with the Temse parchment, To these afterward was added the Manuscript Life of Temse, which, since I had often found it cited by Heyndricx and others, as a monument to be venerated for its antiquity, I at length obtained by the favor of the above-praised very Reverend Lord John Baptist Buyst, presbyter of the Oratory of the Lord Jesus, and Pastor in that very place, to whom I owe several other notices, chiefly pertaining to the cult of the Saint. That parchment codex is of fifty pages, in a folio of smaller form, of which the former thirty-two contain the common Legend and the history of the translation, in the same manner and order in which all things have been transcribed from our codices. For the aforesaid Life consists of those its twenty-nine chapters, which is followed by a preface to the translation, and a description of it, with a little addition of time, in which you will find noted below at number 56 that the author wished to know a little more. This discrepancy from our codices occurs, that where in these it is read that only the household servant of the blessed Virgin was privy to the burial, the Temse codex calls him the chaplain; understand him to whom perhaps the custody of the chapel or altar had been entrusted. But what you may most wonder at, the Tomellus of Radbod is altogether absent, which we have already sufficiently shown to be the chief and most ancient monument.

[64] There follow in that codex eighteen other pages, comprising some miracles from the year 1311 to 1327, in which miracles are added. found nowhere else, to which at the end is subjoined the document of William, Bishop of Tournai, given in the year 1331, on the IX day of October, concerning the feast of St. Amalberga for the Christianity of Ghent, to the decreeing of which the aforesaid miracles perhaps gave occasion, wrought in so great a number, in so brief a space of time. The decree we set forth above from Heyndricx: whether he took it thence is of little interest to know. This I chiefly miss in the writer of the miracles, that he kept no order of years in their series; in which he could have been corrected, had I not preferred to represent his genuine text, rather than to transpose anything in it. I judge him to have been faithful in reporting the benefits of the Saint, and that they can therefore be more safely admitted, since he sometimes seems to speak as if he had been present; so that he will by no means wander from the truth who asserts that all was written about the year 1340. It would plainly be to be wished that of other graces too, obtained by the intercession of St. Amalberga in the centuries afterward following, as accurate a reckoning had been kept by the people of Temse: they record innumerable miracles confusedly, none of which they can exhibit duly committed to writing. Now it is time to weigh those things which are opposed against the Legend.

§ VIII. The arguments of Mabillon and Le Cointe against the Legend.

Let it be permitted here to premise in a word, that it is a fault among the Belgian writers of the Middle Ages sometimes to refer the Saints to the times of the more celebrated Pippin, From the confusion of the Pippins whose age could be connected with some Pippin. Thus you have, on the VIII day of this month of July, in volume 2, page 625, the confused age of St. Landrada, who, on the testimony of Sanderus and others, is said to have built the monastery of sacred virgins at Bilzen in the times of Pippin and Carloman, when meanwhile she herself died many years before those two brothers gained control of affairs in Francia: so that it ought to seem a wonder to no one, if the author of our Legend, by no means accustomed to clearing away the calculations of times, confused the same badly, when he referred the birth of St. Amalberga the virgin to that very age, himself blind, following the blind who went before; who namely roundly made St. Landrada, and this St. Amalberga, contemporaries under those princes. Hence the first and gravest stumbling-block why Mabillon thought the Acts of the Saint altogether to be despised, as those which joined St. Landrada, St. Willibrord, Pippin, Carloman, Charlemagne, and others with St. Amalberga, whom the true reckoning of times demonstrates to be most disparate, especially where only thirty-one years are attributed to the Saint, her death being tied to the year 772.

[66] To carry out the matter proposed, the arguments of Mabillon against the Legend of the Anonymous, very many things are badly connected, or perhaps of Theodoric, come to be weighed. The beginning of his premonition from the third Benedictine century, part 2, page 240, we have already given, in which namely he says that it seemed better to him to pluck certain things from that codex, than to exhibit the whole book. Thus he continues there at number 2. In chapter 1 the Anonymous treats of the nativity and infancy of the blessed Virgin, who took the beginnings of her life in the district of the Ardennes, in the patrimony, an estate called Rodingi, at the time when Pippin of holy memory, together with his brother Carloman, worthily bore sway in the scepters. Her father is said to have been named Christian, but her mother Eve, deriving their origin from the blood of great kings and the princes of the kingdom. Those things seem fabulous which that author relates concerning the kinsfolk of Amalberga, who is said in the first chapter to have been most near by relationship to the most blessed Gertrude, Aldegund, and Waldetrudis, and to have had Begga as her aunt. There was indeed an Amalberga, daughter of the sister of Pippin the Mayor of the Palace, surnamed of Landen, cousin of blessed Gertrude, abbess of Nivelles, and of holy Begga; but the mother of St. Gudila: but that Amalberga, who perhaps gave occasion to this fable, lived a hundred years before the principate of Pippin and Carloman. Those things can be seen which we disputed concerning her a little above. Mabillon continues:

[67] which in these Acts are deservedly assailed; In chapter 2 our Amalberga, still a girl, is reported to have built with her own hands a little oratory in her parents' garden; and in the following chapter to have restored health to a boy who had contracted an ailment on account of a theft. Then St. Willibrord, while he went to visit the monastery of Echternach, founded by himself, making his journey through the Ardennes, is recorded in chapter 4 to have turned aside to the house of the illustrious Christian, and to have instructed Amalberga with the best admonitions; kindled by which the Virgin was handed over to blessed Landrada, that she might instruct her in sacred letters, and form her by the examples of virtues. But Landrada presided over a monastery of virgins which she herself had built in Beila, a royal forest, in a place called Belisia, whence the name to the monastery of Bilzen, from chapter 5. Landrada, virgin and first abbess and founder of Bilzen, is she whose deeds Theodoric, abbot of Saint-Trond, amplified in Surius, and she is more than fifty years older than the age of Charles. The subject of the sixth chapter is that Amalberga was chosen by the renowned King Pippin for marriage to his son, although dwelling in the monastery of Bilzen, whom, resisting, Charles himself, having taken with him Bodino the brother of the blessed Virgin, visited, and vainly enticed to the bond of marriage.

[68] especially of Charlemagne But he, when he had slain a huge beast in the neighboring estate of Gersbellia, hostile to passers-by, attacked with such great effort to drag the Virgin to consent to him, that she fled into the oratory of the Mother of God, Charles wishing to break down the doors of the church. Charles having returned to his father's court, Amalberga, wishing to take counsel for herself, began to go to Andenne, to blessed Begga, or rather to the monastery of blessed Begga, who is falsely called her aunt here in chapter 10. But the parents of the kindly Virgin being taken away, a certain Hunrod, first among the noblest in the King's court, foreknowing this, intercepted her, and, taking the orphan left behind, as if by right of kinship in a guardian's substitution, into his own, into the house of his mother, named Riquera, led her over unwilling and reluctant, that he might opportunely hand her to the King's son. Pippin being dead, the Princes of the Franks are said in chapter 12 to have entered upon counsel concerning the marriage of Charles with Amalberga. But she, warned by her brother Rodino, came to a place which has the name Achoïus, where her venerable sister then dwelt: and, a veil being placed on her head, she took to flight.

[69] Various miracles being wrought on the journey, which the author describes from chapter 14 to chapter 21, contemporary with the Virgin St. Landrada Charles in the following chapter, returned from the Aquitanian battle against Hunold, is said to have hastened to the fortress of Tournai, and to have met Amalberga, meditating flight across the sea, lying hidden in the estate of Materne of the district of Brabant. But she, forewarned by Waldulf the presbyter, who was in her company, fled into the oratory of the place, dedicated to St. Martin by herself: into which Charles rashly burst, and inflicted on her martyrdom, that is, the dislocation of her arm; but she was soon healed by the Lord. These things done, Charles having set out for the fortress of Valenciennes, a fever was inflicted as a penalty for the deed: who, through the abbot Fulrad, sent with gifts to the virgin dwelling in the estate of Tempseca, obtained health. Finally Amalberga departed from life in the year of the incarnate Word 772, in the tenth Indiction, on the VI day before the Ides of July, in the thirty-first year of her age: buried in the church which she herself built in honor of the Mother of God, at her own estate of Tempseca, and placed to the right of the altar.

[70] The things which have hitherto been reported concerning the marriage desired by Charles with Amalberga, the desired marriage, etc. rest on the testimony of no ancient writers. Radbod indeed, Bishop of Utrecht on the Rhine,

having died one year before the beginning of the tenth century, relates similar things concerning Amalberga, but does not name the King her suitor in the homily composed concerning this Virgin, which reads thus, with a few things cut away. The aforesaid homily follows in him, why he mutilated it I do not see: what has been cut away could have been left, although it would not conduce so greatly to the history. The error in the age of St. Radbod we corrected above. But what he says, that the suitor is not named by him, can be true of the Bigot exemplar; for in our codex the name of Charles is distinctly expressed, but without a distinguishing surname, so that it may be referred not so incongruously to the synonymous Charles Martel, as we shall say presently in the, if not solution, at least explanation, of the proposed arguments, when we shall have heard Le Cointe in a few words.

[71] He, in his ecclesiastical Annals of the Franks at the year 772, from number 12, cites Luc d'Achery and Jean Mabillon, Then the kinship with SS. Begga, Gertrude, and others; and amplifies their words somewhat here and there, or turns them more tightly into arguments, by which he may altogether weaken the Legend of which we treat. First therefore he impugns the kinship of St. Amalberga the Virgin with SS. Gertrude, Aldegund, Waldetrudis, and Begga, whose times being rightly fixed, but the age of St. Amalberga contracted to thirty-one years, it comes about that she could not have been born before the year 742 or 743, and consequently he infers that that near relationship is fabulous, which is asserted in the Life. Again, the death of St. Willibrord being tied to the said year 742, he rightly shows that on that hypothesis our Amalberga could neither have been instructed by that Saint, nor destined to blessed Landrada at Bilzen. Fabulous also, he says, are the things which are subjoined concerning Charles, son of King Pippin, namely that King Pippin sought Amalberga, although dwelling in the monastery of Bilzen, as wife for his son Charles, but that Charles vainly tried to entice her, resisting, to the bond of marriage. Then the slain beast, the withdrawal of St. Amalberga to Andenne to St. Begga her aunt; and other things of this kind he does not hesitate to consign to mere fictions.

[72] all which are here rightly impugned. At number 17 he says that other fables are added to the former, even after the death of Pippin, when Charles, afterward surnamed the Great, now held the kingdom of the Franks. To which he especially adduces the plundering by Hunrod, by which he tried to bring the orphan to Charles, then the counsel of the nobles of France concerning the marriage of St. Amalberga with him, the flight of the Saint with her brother Rodino, the last attempts of Charles in the estate of Materne, and the inflicted martyrdom, finally the penalty inflicted on Charles at Valenciennes, from which he was freed only by the merits of the Virgin. To which he subjoins: This whole little tale is destroyed by the marriage of Charles and Himiltrude; for it was celebrated while Pippin reigned, and Himiltrude, surviving after the death of the same Pippin, lived some years. She was still surviving in the year of Christ 769, when Charles triumphed over Hunold or Hunald in Aquitaine. She was still surviving too in the year of Christ 771, when the same Charles held a general assembly of the Franks at the river Scheldt in the estate of Valenciennes. Therefore Rodino did not incur the anger of King Charles, because he had secretly withdrawn his sister Amalberga from the house of Hunrod.

§ IX. By what reasoning they may chiefly seem able to be explained.

But the times being somewhat adjusted, All the learned will acknowledge with me that the arguments of those learned men, proposed in the preceding paragraph, are such that, adhering to the text of the Legend, they can in no way be dissolved. Nor indeed is it my mind to excuse in every way the writer's enormous lapses and anachronisms; this one thing I meditate and attempt, which is our office, that, the substance of the matter itself being safe, I may restore the author's inexperience, as far as can be done, the grosser falsehoods being excluded, by distributing the order of times otherwise: which, if it be supposed for a while, most things may stand with historical truth. I therefore wish the reader mindful of those things which I insinuated in a few words at the beginning of the former article, and which come up often elsewhere, namely that the Belgian writers, after the Norman ravages, gathering the surviving ears of things done before, so confused facts and times that they sometimes took several Pippins, Charleses, and Carlomans for one and the same, but continually called their kinsmen, though removed by many degrees, brothers, sisters, nieces, or nephews, as can be shown concerning St. Amalberga the widow, Pharaildis, Ermelendis, Landrada, Itisberga, and others. But this happened more easily in this holy Amalberga, because, synonymous with the other older one, she was adorned with such titles of kinship with those Princes, which would rather pertain to the most holy widow.

[74] some things seem able to be explained. Lest the same things be repeated at the individual arguments, not without nausea, I will say once for all, that the Amalbergian Acts, especially in the reckoning of times, are badly sewn together and unskillfully arranged, yet in such a way that, with others equally badly patched together, they can have a place in our work, especially since hitherto, so far as I know, they have not been published in Latin, and then most of all, if, by correcting the writer's ignorance, it be permitted to restore some things, in the manner which we are about to set forth here. We shall grant, if it be so necessary, first, that the Anonymous confused the illustrious origin of St. Amalberga the virgin with the birth of the other older one, although we do not see why it cannot altogether be saved otherwise. We shall grant, secondly, that her nativity was most badly referred to the times of Pippin and Carloman. Thirdly, that he erred no less when he contracted the years of her life to only thirty-one; if indeed this ought truly to be imputed to him. Fourthly and finally, that the loves of Charlemagne, and the pretended marriage with St. Amalberga, are equally fictitious; although such amatory examples concerning Belgian virgins and others are handed down frequently enough. These being for a while erased, I ask that the faculty be granted to me to reconcile the deeds of the Virgin and of others with her age a little otherwise, and so to distribute both times and facts that they wander not so far from the truth, but, by what reasoning it can be done, be rendered tolerable.

[75] Since the writer's slight skill in arranging histories sufficiently appears, The Saint was born in the mature seventh century, it is not so much a wonder if, mixing many things, just as he perhaps attributed the family and parentage of the older St. Amalberga to this our one, so he wrongly coupled the age of various Saints with her times; and since the Saint was most probably an octogenarian, he himself divined that she died in the thirty-first year of her age; if, as I said above, that is truly to be gathered from his words. I will grant him that she flourished under Pippin and Carloman, and prolonged her life to the times of Charlemagne, having died at last, as he so expressly defines, in the year 772: to admit which epoch, it will be necessary to establish plainly another hypothesis of affairs. Thus therefore let the series of her life be arranged, that the holy Virgin be said to have been born about the year 680 or a little after, and to have reached so great an age, in which matter nothing paradoxical is asserted. Her nativity will have to be moved thither on the supposition that St. Landrada, whose age we have not dared to determine for certain, died in the year 690.

[76] On that supposition, I say, for St. Amalberga must be said to have been at least eight years old, thus she conveniently lived under Landrada, when she was committed to the instruction of that holy Abbess. But what if now with others we suppose that St. Lambert, Bishop of Liège, on whose epoch of martyrdom the rest depend, underwent it not before the year 708, then St. Landrada could surely have entered the eighth century, and survived even to the year 704, which why it could not be done, no one will easily prove. But this being posited, nothing much occurs to hinder that St. Amalberga was first born about the year 690, so that accordingly she scarcely reached the eightieth year of her life, when she was called by her spouse to the crown of her merits, which daily examples demonstrate is not so rare in virgins. And this basis of events being admitted, most of the arguments will be dissolved, or at least explained, which are drawn chiefly from the badly ordered chronology, and that first of all, that St. Amalberga could not have been instructed under the discipline of St. Landrada, since the latter preceded the former by half a century and more.

[77] Again, what can be said to have hindered that she could deal with St. Willibrord, and could be loved by Martel. both in her father's house at Rodingi-villa, which the writer of the Acts records, and often elsewhere; why not also in Temseca or Tamisia itself, while the Saint preached to the people of Antwerp? Finally this too will be somewhat reconciled, that she could have been sought in marriage by Pippin, not indeed the Short or the father of Charlemagne, but by the Fat or of Herstal, for his son Charles Martel, and could have been more wantonly assailed by him, wooed, and afflicted with the dislocation of her arm, which is the most received solution of Molanus and others for tearing out this rock from this and the Landradian Legend. To the prodigies recurring again and again, this must be replied, which has very often had to be said in our Acts, that such things stand in that degree of probability and likelihood to which the authority of the writer himself rises, which, although it be not the greatest, thence the various miracles there narrated receive much weight, because the Virgin, both on account of her plainly exceptional virtues, and on account of the signs by which she shone, is called by St. Radbod, distant from her by only a single century, by the wholly singular title of Paradoxa. Now I reply in a few words to the arguments of Mabillon and Le Cointe.

[78] Nay, and some kinship First it is urged by both, that St. Amalberga is said to have been most near by relationship of kinship to the most blessed Gertrude, Aldegund, and Waldetrudis; and then to have fled to Andenne, to St. Begga her aunt, which last words are better absent in one of our codices. But let us adhere to the writer's opinion. To explain that difficulty the things serve which have already been constructed by us: those Saints belong to the seventh century, from which St. Amalberga the virgin must be reckoned so much the more remote, the younger she is supposed to have been when she met death. We have already for a while admitted that the Anonymous perhaps confused the two synonymous Saints, the Virgin with the Widow; the latter of whom, since she is supposed to have been the niece by a sister of Pippin of Landen, he perhaps wished to indicate this, not accurate enough in weighing such things. But just as, on account of the Legend of St. Amalberga the widow, it was necessary to introduce some anonymous sister of Pippin, whose daughter she was, what so great offense will be thrust into the history, if on any credence whatever of this writer it be admitted that the father or grandfather of St. Amalberga the virgin touched Pippin by some near degree of consanguinity, whence she too could be said to be sprung from that relationship, although the exact degree cannot be determined by us.

[79] it can be supposed with the Pippins. But St. Begga is called her aunt, and so it will be necessary to feign Christian, the father of our Saint, a son of Pippin, brother of St. Begga, which none of the ancients has hitherto dreamed. Nor indeed does it please me to dream that; although no one would deny that St. Begga could have had a brother, hitherto unknown to us, who was the father of Christian, and so the title of aunt, or rather great-aunt, would be conveniently saved,

which the Legend-writer did not sufficiently distinguish; nay, what I would more easily believe, he called her an aunt, who was only to be called a kinswoman. By this or a similar reasoning the consanguinity of St. Amalberga with so many distinguished Virgins and widows of Christ will be given to be understood, for which it by no means pleases me to contend. It was treated in the preceding volume, on the VIII of July, concerning the illustrious origin of St. Landrada, which, although it could not be explained more accurately, certainly ought not to be denied, that she too was near to blessed Pippin. However meanwhile you may judge all these things are to be taken, I have already sufficiently insinuated that it is by no means my purpose to dissolve adequately the arguments of Mabillon and Le Cointe, which I have readily confessed cannot at all be done; but only so to explain them, that the Legend may be reduced to a tolerable sense.

[80] Other chronological errors are restored That the chronological rocks must chiefly be explained, is sufficiently plain. Behold another, insuperable on every side, unless access to the methods just now prescribed lie open. St. Amalberga born while Pippin and Carloman worthily bore sway in the scepters (these lived together in the highest authority from the year 741 to 747): Willibrord the instructor of the Saint, while he went to Echternach, or returned thence, who died in the year 742: Landrada, of whose age we have also treated, at that time abbess of Bilzen, to whom St. Amalberga was committed, snatched from the living in the year 772, in the thirty-first year of her age: so many are the monstrosities in the reckoning of times. But we have already acknowledged the most open lapses, for the correcting of which Pippin the Fat, or of Herstal, the father of Charles Martel, must be substituted, who held control of affairs in Francia at least until the year 714, in whose time we altogether suppose St. Amalberga to have been born, as was disputed a little above with what likelihood it could be. The age of Martel agrees well with the years of the Saint, except that he seems to have been younger, so that all the things which are recorded concerning the love-affairs may be fitted to him, if they happened while St. Landrada was still living. But those smaller blemishes of the Legend-writer must be pardoned, provided the substance of the matters be kept intact.

[81] As for St. Willibrord, we have made that difficulty passable too in this our hypothesis. pertaining to St. Willibrord. Willibrord Bosschaert did not discuss the whole matter in his dissertation 141 on the apostles of Frisia; for the rest he tried long ago to settle that controverted approach of the Saint to the estate of the Virgin's parents. Thus he speaks on page 544: If you ask, in what year or at what time St. Amalberga was sent to Bilzen to St. Landrada? I answer, this must have happened before the year 696, in which some, or before the year 698, in which others assert St. Lambert was martyred; for all the Landradine histories affirm that she departed the lands before St. Lambert, and was given to burial by the same. But that we may reckon somewhat more closely, according to Molanus Landrada died about the year 692: which being posited, Amalberga was sent to her by St. Willibrord in his first entry into Austrasia, while, either going to Rome or returning from Rome, he treated with Pippin, Prince of Austrasia, concerning matters pertaining to the conversion of the Frisians. Choose which pleases more; it is enough for me to have somehow settled whatever of the impossible occurred in reconciling the ages of the Saints Willibrord, Landrada, and our Amalberga.

[82] That nothing may remain untouched, there remain the marriages of the Saint desired by Pippin for his son Charles, to be understood no otherwise, But it is badly argued from the Life, than that Pippin, already called of Herstal, could have sought them, but Charles Martel, his son, could have perpetrated nearly all those things which are wrongly attributed to Charlemagne in the Legend: for St. Amalberga, decrepit, would have been little apt to entice that Prince to love of her. I pass over the controversy, to be settled between Le Cointe and Pagi, whether Himiltrude was the wife or the concubine of Charlemagne; for whatever be the case with it, I think it sufficiently explored that Charlemagne was married before the death of his father Pippin: which although we should grant to be false; in the system of the life of St. Amalberga already proposed, to say it again, no one would be so foolish as to judge an old woman worthy of the loves of Charlemagne. Furthermore, that St. Amalberga was advanced in age when she flew into the embrace of her eternal spouse, Molanus, Sanderus, Fisen, Bosschaert, and as many others as put even the least effort saw before me, that the things which are narrated confusedly in the Legend might be reduced to some order of chronology. But if you wipe away these grosser stains, nothing so much will remain why we should be deterred from producing the Acts of blessed Amalberga by the authority of Mabillon, Le Cointe, or others.

[83] This finally is adduced, as subversive of the whole Legend, That the Saint died in the 31st year of her age. that the Saint is supposed from the Acts to have died in the thirty-first year of her age, which indeed I confess must be admitted, if she died in the year 772 at that age still, so that a little before she was sought in marriage by Charlemagne with such great efforts, as the whole life perpetually inculcates. Nevertheless the words of the Anonymous do not so expressly establish the matter, that they cannot be taken otherwise and more truly. Thus he has at number 47: But the most blessed one departed … in the pontificate of the holy Roman Church, Pope Adrian acting, in his first year: also in the fifth year of Charles the Emperor, but in the thirty-first of his age. Those last words, taken in strictness, are referred no more to St. Amalberga than to Charles; but it is as certain that they fit him well, as we have shown above that the connection of so many persons is impossible, if the Saint departed from life so young. But that Charles was born, not in the year 747 (as Labbe and others long held) but in the year 742, is today explored: most rightly therefore can it be declared that St. Amalberga died while Charles was passing the fifth year of his reign, but the thirty-first of his age. If you say that this is foreign to the writer's mind, yet you will certainly not deny that he, even unwittingly, left some crack, through which his paradoxes might be composed to a fitting appearance of truth. The things which will seem to need further explanation, you will find observed in the annotations. Behold now the Tomellus of St. Radbod, concerning which it has been so treated above, that here nothing besides remains to be said.

TOMELLUS

Or the Sermon of the Lord Radbod, Bishop of the holy church of Utrecht, on the life and merits of the paradoxical Virgin of Christ Amelberga.

From the Manuscript codex of St. Paul in Soignies, collated with the edition of Mabillon.

St. Amelberga, virgin, at Temse and Ghent in Belgium.

BHL Number: 0322

FROM MANUSCRIPTS.

As often, most beloved brothers, as we celebrate the memory of the Saints of God, Exhorting his own to spiritual resurrection to the praise and glory of his name, so often do we rise again from the sepulchers of our sins. For then in a manner our faith revives, and our voice, restored to life, is renewed with sweetness through the offices of our lips ^a, and through this there comes about in us what the Apostle says: Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man. For what else is it to die badly in the sepulcher and, by lying, to stink, but to be defiled by the filth of sins? And what else is it to rise from this tomb, but through confession and penance to return to life, which is Christ? We have indeed very many examples of this kind of death in the Scriptures, which is wont to call those dead who never wish to come to their senses from their sins; as is that in the Gospel: Let the dead bury their dead. For those who buried the bodies were not corporeally dead; but since they were wicked, and therefore dead, they buried those whom the death of the body withdrew from life. Wherefore let us too beware the losses of this death; nay rather let us hasten to rise quickly from the sepulchers of vices through the grace of Christ, that we may deserve to live with him in eternal beatitude.

[2] Therefore let us praise the Lord our God in his Saints, the holy Prelate praises the Virgin and let us in turn praise them together and honor them in him; since to serve God and his Saints is truly to live; and to remain in this at all times is prudently to avoid the snares of offenses. But behold, there occurs to us on this present day the most fitting time for this matter, in which we recall by the yearly festivity the memorable life of the PARADOXICAL Virgin Amelberga, who in this pilgrimage was most pleasing to God and men, both by the splendor of her twofold beauty, and also by the merit of her virginal modesty. She, since she was sprung of noble birth, and amiable to all on account of the excessive comeliness of her body, chose to adorn herself with the gems of virtues, rather than with precious garments; and resolved to show herself vile and despicable to human eyes, that she might appear precious and most honorable to the divine gaze. She used neither gold nor pearls, because she knew that Christ her spouse had not used them on earth: she loved neither purple nor fine linen, since she was not ignorant that on account of such things many are plunged into the abyss. She was not delighted by the little rumors of popular resort, because she knew a secret place to be opportune * for mourning.

[3] But further, these being despised, she habitually did far otherwise: for instead of the kinsfolk and friends of the world, with every kind of virtues; she loved the poor of Christ: instead of gold and pearls, she was adorned with the sayings of spiritual doctrine: instead of fine-linen and purple garments, she used ashes and a hair-shirt. Instead of popular resort, which she utterly rejected, she continually tarried in the watches of the temples of the Lord, around the sacred altars, praying and keeping vigil. But how and in what order she came to so great a height of heavenly discipline, must not be passed over in silence, on account of the good example, and on account of the proclamation of her merits worthy of narration. For this most modest girl was in the inheritance of her fathers in the times of the Princes of the Franks, whom indeed from Charlemagne we can call the Carolingians, who, on account of his manifold victories and admirable zeal in the Christian religion, alone among the rest here merited the title, that he should deservedly be called Great and Best.

[4] In the days of these, as has been said, the holy Virgin Amelberga, pleasing to God, but especially by the keeping of virginity, her parents being now dead, in the possession which had come to her, most extensive, beside the river Scheldt from the succession of her progenitors, dwelt most religiously with her only brother, serving with fastings and prayers day and night, and making very many and most generous alms with the greatest cheerfulness; having always in memory that apostolic saying: God loves a cheerful giver: and since she was most beautiful, so much that she surpassed all the rest by her beauty, on account of the prerogative of her most comely body she nearly incurred the loss of her modesty. For when the report of her had reached the king of the province, namely Charles ^b at that time, he, straightway captured by love of her, began incessantly to treat with her concerning marriage through go-betweens. But after he perceived that his will was in every way rejected by the blessed Virgin, who had devoted herself to a better spouse, that is, to Christ, what he could not do by blandishments and royal power, he strove secretly to attempt by snares and certain brigandage. But she against all these things held out the shields of prayers and the javelins of the heavenly armor.

[5] the blandishments of Charles being repulsed; But on a certain day, when the most blessed girl was sitting alone within the domestic walls, and singing the psalms in her wonted manner, a household boy suddenly burst in through the back door, proclaiming and announcing that the King with his attendants was present before the doors. Then she, forgetful of nothing of herself, entered with swift course the oratory which adjoined the house, where at once with groaning and tears she prostrated herself in prayer, beseeching with a tearful voice that the Lord would free her from the imminent danger. But then the King, too rash, entering the oratory after her, began to flatter her with many blandishments, and to promise temporal honors, that thus he might make her acquiesce in his persuasions. But she, in no way willing to abandon the spouse whom she had chosen, lay immovable, and so fixed to the ground as if she were held entangled by roots of some kind. But after the King had employed all his blandishments *, and saw that he accomplished nothing, he turned his royal authority into the most savage tyranny, and, seizing her hand, tried violently to drag her outside. But when even so no result followed for him, at last, forcibly shaking the girl's arm, and twisting it with the utmost force, the bone of her virginal shoulder being broken, as if he had avenged himself, he departed.

[6] by whom her bone is broken. Then she, as she was most tender, on account of the most grievous pain of her wound, wept indeed a little before the Lord: but she prayed so long, until her spouse Christ was present, and restored her to entire health. But from that day she suffered no secular lover any more, but freely remained in the love of her spouse, our Lord Jesus Christ. O happy exchange! O most prudent choice! where the king of earth is despised for the creator of heaven and earth, where God is loved instead of man, where for that mire heavenly riches are sought. O most blessed Virgin, if the loftiness of your birth greatly harmed you, yet much more did your voluntary self-abasement, and the contrition of your flesh for God's sake, profit you. If the splendor of your beauty incurred danger, yet the contempt of royal majesty crowned you with perennial glory. If for an hour suffering saddened you, yet thence there came to you the fellowship of the Martyrs and everlasting rest. Behold, now you enjoy all the things which you desired in this life, since the King of kings and Lord of lords has desired your beauty, and you, O most august queen, stand at his right hand in gilded raiment, surrounded with variety ^c.

[7] The glory of her illustrious triumph, Now therefore in you faith, hope, charity shine, humility reigns, patience triumphs, virginity gleams white, modesty shines, prudence discerns, temperance moderates, fortitude overcomes, justice judges: and, to make an epilogue, the warfare of all virtues is contained in you and from you. Wherefore in eternal beatitude you not only see ineffable goods with your most blessed eyes, and hold them with your most happy hands, but even the rest of your senses enjoy the same felicity. For with blessed ears you hear the heavenly instrument, and with joyful mouth you sing a new song, and with venerable nostrils you now smell perennial delights. And so there will no longer be anything that begets solicitude for you, or that brings anxiety. For you have joy without sadness, delight without weariness, security without dread, peace without dissension, sweetness without bitterness, satiety without failing. Light shines for you without darkness, cleanness gleams without defilement: you have entire rest, you possess entire life, you who neither suffer weariness nor succumb to death.

[8] What then is better? what more delightful? Earthly wealth either the wheel of fortune withdraws, and the manifold reward in heaven. or the condition of mortality wrests away; but the heavenly treasures their very perpetuity makes exceedingly desirable. These you, O most blessed Virgin, with the angels, on account of your celibate life; with the Apostles, on account of the Catholic faith; with the Martyrs, on account of the constancy of your passion; with the Confessors, on account of holy innocence; with the Virgins, on account of the special modesty of body and soul, now truly, seeking again your fatherland after its thresholds, partake by hereditary right, and glory in your spouse Jesus Christ our Lord: through whom we pray you and suppliantly ask, that you cease not to intercede for us with him, who so strengthened you in this mortality, that you overcame an earthly king by the glory of chastity, and surpassed the prince of hell, the devil, by outstanding sanctity, he himself helping, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is glorified as God through all ages of ages. Amen.

ANNOTATA

* Elsewhere: amicum (a friend).

* Elsewhere: vaniloquia (idle words).

VITA

The author perhaps Theodoric, Abbot of Saint-Trond.

From the Manuscript codex of St. Paul in Soignies, collated with others, likewise Manuscript.

St. Amelberga, virgin, at Temse and Ghent in Belgium.

BHL Number: 0323

FROM MANUSCRIPTS.

PREFACE.

It is the glory and honor of the living God to narrate the merits and virtues of the Saints, and to commend them in writing, insofar as emulous virtue may be incited by the zeal of the good, and pious imitation may prolong the memory into eternal ages. Which, although it belongs to the perfect, nay, the most wise, who can fulfill by the significations of words what they conceive in mind, yet we are bidden by the Psalmist, young men with virgins, old men with younger, to praise the name of the Lord. But I, whose wit is dry, am bidden to gird myself to treat of the life of the most holy virgin of Christ Amelberga, and to praise the bride of the eternal King. Not that she needs human praise, whose praise is Christ himself; who also, while she still played the part of a human being, trod earthly things underfoot as empty; but that her glorious life, ever emulous of angelic purity, may commend the example of pious conduct. But what shall I do? I am forced to strive against the torrent, while I see that what I cannot do can be commanded; and a boy ^a, who has not yet pushed off a skiff, am compelled to steer the helm of a merchant ship among the windings of the Euboean shore. And who will make me equal to so great a burden? The merit, namely, of the most pious Virgin, whose interest it is, that I may seem not so much to have presumed this matter of so great praise by any rashness, as to have served her due veneration, like a devout minister. May she now guide my hanging, faltering step over the planks, and may she commend the sense and the joints of the writer to God by her prayers and merits, so that we may effectually fulfill the office of her praise, which we bear with devout mind. Nor would I say this, that I desire to touch on all her deeds here, which by no means can even all of us do, even if we wished; but just as those who depict the immense sphere of the whole world in a narrow space, so here you may not see all her deeds comprehended, but only those which happen to be known to the faithful for this reason, that they were public. The prologue ends.

The order of the chapters in the Manuscript.

I. On the nativity and infancy of the blessed Virgin.

II. That while still a girl she built with her own hands an oratory in her parents' garden.

III. On the boy who, having attempted a theft, was wondrously crippled, but healed by the merits of the blessed Virgin.

IV. On blessed Willibrord and his divine admonition.

V. Where she is led to the monastery, called Bilzen, and committed to the handmaid of God Landrada to be educated.

VI. That she was chosen by the renowned king Pippin for marriage to his son Charles.

VII. How, at the prayer of the Virgin of God, Charles could not stand, but by divine command yielded his place.

VIII. That she fled into the oratory of the Mother of God, Charles wishing to break down the doors of the church.

IX. That Charles importuned his father Pippin for the Virgin with manifold entreaty.

X. On Hunrod hindering the journey and vow of the blessed Virgin.

XI. On the death of the glorious king Pippin, and the succession of his son Charles.

XII. On the counsel held by the Frankish princes concerning the betrothal of the Virgin of God.

XII. On the divine oracle, revealed to the Virgin through blessed Gertrude.

XIV. That, entering upon flight, she solemnized the feast day of Easter among the shepherds.

XV. On the robber choked by a wolf.

XVI. That at the blessing of the Virgin of God an abundance of bread and wine increased.

XVII. That she terrified the opposing throng of demons with the sign of the cross.

XVIII. On the fish that came out from the channel of the river.

XIX. On a certain ailing woman, restored to health by the merits of the blessed Virgin.

XX. That she held off a flood of rains from her own field.

XXI. On the flock of birds commanded by divine will.

XXII. That she fled from the face of the king into the oratory, and herself cut off the hairs of her head.

XXIII. That Charles rashly burst into the church after the Virgin of God, and inflicted martyrdom on her, but she was soon healed and visited by the Lord.

XXIV. On the illustrious Rodino, brother of the Virgin, taking up the habit of holy conduct.

XXV. On the visitation and address of the Saints, and the revelation of her most holy death.

XXVI. On king Charles, struck by divine chastisement, but healed by the intervention of the blessed Virgin.

XXVII. On the water changed into blood, and the miracle of the fish divinely bestowed on her.

XXVIII. On the commemoration of her virtues, and the praise worthy of her.

XXIX. On her happy falling-asleep in Christ.

CHAPTER I.

The illustrious origin of St. Amalberga, her pious infancy, renowned for miracles; led at the admonition of St. Willibrord to blessed Landrada at Bilzen, she is recognized by Pippin and sought for the marriage of his son Charles.

The glorious virgin of Christ Amelberga took the beginning of this life in the district of the Ardennes, in the patrimony called Rodingi-villa ^b, at the time when Pippin of holy memory, together with his brother Carloman, worthily bore sway in the scepters ^c. Deriving her origin from Kings, Her father was named Christian, but her mother Eve, deriving their origin from the blood of great kings and the princes of kings. Which to bring forth more clearly: for this most sacred Virgin was, by relationship, most near in kinship to the most blessed virgins of Christ Gertrude ^d, and also Aldegund and Waldetrudis. And that indeed was excellent, that she drew the vein of high blood from parents both most illustrious and religious; but more glorious, that she made the same illustrious by her life and virtues. Then, therefore, reborn from the sacred font, after she was weaned, through the individual increases of her age she sprouted the growths of virtues. Whom her parents, forming her with divine teaching, cherished as an only child, as the bride of God. She indeed was so always intent on divine things, so frequenting the thresholds of the churches, that you would believe her Anna of the Gospel, who did not depart from the temple, with fastings

and entreaties, assiduously devoting herself to them; whence she made it conspicuous to mortals that the heavenly spouse had already then chosen her.

[2] A spacious and pleasant orchard ^e was adjoining the house of the parents of the most blessed Virgin. while yet a little girl she builds an oratory. There lilies blooming in spring, contending with blood-red roses; there the aromatic scent of cinnamon and balsam, striving with the sweetness of paradise: irrigating fountains commended the pleasant green places. Then the distinct variety of flowers, and the tallness of the foliage invited; so that you would be no more delighted by the cedars of Lebanon, or the cypresses of the most pleasant mountain of Zion. And while, still a girl of kindly disposition, kept under the guardianship of her parents, she advanced in the school of virtues, she was wont to enter thither, and there with virgins of her own age already then to contemplate heavenly things: in which building, constructed with her own hands after the likeness of a little oratory, and an altar being erected there in honor of the Lord, she gave it the name of a church, which also so clung to it. Then, placing beneath the choicest fruits with nuts, pomegranates with chestnuts, incense with spice, she offered a sacrifice of praise to the Lord with silent prayer. And, to say it with admiration, although on account of the infancy of her tender disposition she could not yet weigh what she then did at that age, yet she fulfilled the offices of perfect Fathers, nay, of most holy men, of which one is to stand by the sacred altars, the other to address God with vows and prayers. Wherefore in the very rattles of her years, held celebrated among men for her merit, it began to be conjectured by those who heard that more illustrious things would come to pass through her, whose beginnings were so glorious.

[3] A boy punished for theft and restored to health. Seeing therefore that the infancy of the venerable girl was growing up with such great grace, the enemy of the human race dreaded the losses of his wickedness, so that he tried to hinder the Virgin of God. And, preparing to engage, he corrupted one who, in carrying together the material of wood and stone, was a helper and fellow-worker of the most blessed Virgin, that he might commit a theft of the fruits of the offerings. Who shamelessly stretched out his right hand to the altar, and stole away something from the sacred offering. But the crime being done, he could by no means draw his arm back to himself any more; for as he had presumed to stretch it out to iniquity, so, stiffening suddenly, it grew rigid. The crippled little boy still stood astonished before the altar, and, except only to weep, he knew utterly not what he should do. But his companions, drawing him by the hand, themselves also wept, fixing their eyes on the Virgin of God alone, as the remedy of so great a sickness. But the parents also of the crippled boy, approaching the illustrious Christian and his wife devoted to God, offer prayers, if in any way, through the intervention of the kindly Virgin, they might obtain for their son the joy of health. The pious Virgin is accordingly invited by the prayers of her parents, and by the tears of all who flowed together for this sign, that, if she has any grace in heaven, she may thence draw out for the crippled boy a remedy of mercy. Then prayer was made: and behold, that iron rigidity began little by little to slacken, and to resume the state of its former use, so that you might see at one and the same moment both the prayer of the virgin fly up before the sight of the Lamb and her spouse, and the pain depart; and thus it was cried out by all: Glory to God, glory to his Christ; so that from those from whom pain had before poured forth a groan, afterward emotion wrung out tears.

[4] Therefore St. Willibrord, a prelate of holy memory by merit and office, at the exhortation of St. Willibrord in those days honorably drove the chariot of the holy church of the people of Utrecht; who at that time was building a monastery, to which the ancient name Aternacus ^f clung: this at length he then went to visit. But while he made his journey through the Ardennes, that he should turn aside to the house of the illustrious Christian, it happened by divine command; for it was to be that he himself should declare the merit of the Virgin, and enlarge a great part of the report. For amid the offices of kindness shown, and amid the sighs of divine conversation, by which they mutually refreshed each other in reciprocal exchange, they come to the Virgin of God, and the discourse is extended concerning her life and character. Then the miracle lately done, concerning the restoration of the withered arm of the boy, is famously recalled. Then the Prelate says: We who have borne the burden of the day and the heat have obtained nothing such as yet, and to you, most blessed Virgin, for the exalting of the summit of virginal glory, divine mercy has thus conferred the grace of sanctity: by the virginity by which you have deserved to ascend the bridal chamber of the immortal spouse, you have brought forth praise and glory in the eternal ages. The ancient enemy, through the boy, a slave friendly to himself, longed to mock you, but, his strength being broken, he failed, whence Christ your spouse both bestowed on you honor and splendor. May you flourish therefore with Thecla, be strong with Agnes, and with Mary may your portion be the best. He, by the eulogy of so great merit, both exalted her virginal merit, and confirmed the bride of God with the anointing of sacred Chrism.

[5] Beyla is a royal forest, and in it a place called Belisia ^g. There at that time the blessed Landrada, she is directed to Bilzen, to St. Landrada: shining with the endowment of virtues, built a monastery, which she entitled to the honor and name of the holy Mother of God: to whom, by the admonitions and exhortation of the blessed prelate Willibrord, the virgin Amelberga ^h of kindly disposition is directed, that she might instruct her in sacred letters, and form her by the examples of virtues. She being received, and united to the choir of Virgins contending there for the prize of life, the virgins recognize in the Virgin the marks of an angelic life, whom they as much wonder at as they love. They see her tender little body covered with silks, but they are awed that her milk-white limbs are so worn by the hair-shirt: they marvel, as though they saw her daily new, ascending from virtue to virtue, and yet they do not envy. And so in each single virtue she stood out as excellent, as if she did not have the rest: but by the urgency of her prayers, and the frequent use of the Scriptures, she made the temple of her heart a dwelling of the Holy Spirit.

[6] Meanwhile Carloman ⁱ, the belt of warfare being laid aside, where, recognized by Pippin and the habit of holy conduct being assumed, is made a monk on Mount Soracte, namely the retreat of St. Sylvester. But his brother Pippin, by right of succession, and a general assembly of the Franks being solemnly held, is exalted in the kingdom, who both waged many wars gloriously, and was most serene in civil causes. Who at that time came to the wilderness of Beyla to hunt with the nobles of the Franks. To whom, when meanwhile it had come to memory that the venerable temple of the Mother of God was situated nearby, he was unwilling to pass it by unsaluted; and dismounting there, the day being now declined, he was magnificently received by the blessed Landrada and her sacred congregation, and was invited to lodge there. But the King, lifting up his eyes, perceives a girl of splendid disposition in the choir of virgins, at the same time silently contemplating in her the prerogative of elegance and the nobility of character; during the meal he inquires about her, whose daughter she was, and of what ancestors she was sprung. But when he learned that she was born of most illustrious birth, having summoned her to himself, he lingered a while in kisses and embraces of the virgin. For he had already resolved within himself to join her in the bond of matrimony to his son Charles.

[7] she is invited to the marriage of his son Charles; Whence, counsel being held on this matter with the princes of the Franks then present, nothing so noble is found in the families of great kings, with which the nobility of the virgin Amelberga does not vie. This the King himself avows, and the King's princes confess the same. Thus they say: Since the illustriousness of her birth, the elegance of her body, and also the amplitude of her patrimony, and other things of that kind, make the Virgin desirable, deservedly, Lord Pippin, most victorious of kings, Amelberga shall be called the bride of your, nay of our, Charles. This, moreover, for the honor of the King, for the defense of the kingdom, this for the increase of glory, we choose for our Charles. But the King, raising the hope of his desire by such sayings of his nobles, and granting his assent, importunes the Virgin of God concerning the marriage of his son, as one who would ask more abundantly on his behalf, and would more easily obtain it by royal authority. But the Virgin of the Lord, armed with the vigor of the Holy Spirit, and with her whole face turned toward the King himself, gave this reply: I love Christ as my spouse, whose beauty I gaze upon, from whose most chaste embraces I cannot be loosed: and how shall I choose the marriage of your son, I who cleave inseparably to the Son of the eternal King? Already I have received his betrothal, already I have entered his bridal chamber; and how, for love of a mortal man, can I exclude the love of the living God and immortal spouse? To him I have vowed the privilege of virginal modesty, for him I have reserved the lily of my white virginity.

[8] but he praises her constancy in her holy purpose. These things heard, the King says: O Virgin, and glory of virgins, a divine reply, and never uttered save by a divine mouth. Thrice and more blessed, from the dwelling of whose breast such instruments of the Holy Spirit resound! Could, O my renowned ones, this age of so tender a disposition ever conceive such things in mind, unless inspired by a divine gift? Truly admirable and glorious is God in his Saints! Thus the King, and with the King all that court, said a hymn to God and resounded alleluia. But departing, he commends the Virgin of God to the venerable Landrada, and, repeating it again, admonishes that she should venerate her with deep reverence, as the bride of God, and instruct her in the disciplines of the virtues; the King, I say, wonderful in wisdom and piety, who not only gave honor to God in his bride, but afterward received her, as if a daughter, into his own household. After this, received into the palace, he sets forth to Queen Bertrada the events of his journey, and likewise the name of the Virgin becomes celebrated in the King's court. And the Queen says: So too her brother Rodino, from the very rattles of his beginnings, has grown up with increases of virtues: and now indeed, although in the court he administers public affairs among the first as most noble, yet under the pretext of warfare, he devoutly serves the Christian religion. Let both then be nourished, says the King, with deep reverence, he here in the palace, and she in the monastery: and in all things let them use free choice of serving the Lord: perhaps one day their merit will provide patronage for us and for our kingdom.

ANNOTATA.

But to observe such minutiae in such Legends, I do not judge worth the effort, provided the constructions are sufficiently understood.

Understand the consequent by-works mixed in from time to time to be composed from the author's own invention. Not that we deny they happened somewhere, since they suit the Paradoxical Virgin exceedingly well; but that the order of events is badly arranged. The same is also to be judged of what follows.

CHAPTER II.

The useless attempts of Charles in pursuing the Virgin; the saner counsels of Pippin; the treachery of Hunrod; after the death of Pippin, Charles is urged more, but in vain, into love of St. Amalberga through his own people.

[9] Therefore Charles ^a, a royal offspring worthy in form and in the endowment of virtue, Charles, having heard the fame of the Virgin when he perceived the fame of the blessed Virgin, drawing panting sighs, poured himself wholly into love of the Virgin, nor did he think to desist before he should try what the strength and impulse of a youthful spirit could do. And first, having gone out from the palace, and having taken with him Rodino, the brother of the most blessed Virgin, under the pretext of hunting, he is conveyed to the wilderness of Beyla; and, the soldiers being disposed about the hunt, with very few young men joined to him, he himself with Rodino prolonged the journey as far as Bilzen, that through him he might more quickly incline his sister's mind to himself, and more easily obtain the bond of the desired marriage. But when it was come thither, Charles, looking from afar, recognized the bride of God in the midst of the virgins, by the prerogative of her singular elegance, as it was easy to discern, and found her turning mortar with her own hands, or performing some other work, for building the walls of the monastery, with the rest of the virgins. At length, as soon as he cast his eyes on her, he remained fixed at one gaze, as if he said to himself: Behold, Charles, she who has pleased your soul.

[10] he tries in vain to entice her by blandishments; And after an hour he dismounted from his horse, and did not suffer the tender hands of the Virgin to be handled any longer by the roughness of wood and stone, and said that it would be unworthy that a girl of royal nobility should be admitted to the work of the hands; and, asking the Virgin to hold back her right hand, Rise, he says to his men, and, taking the place of this girl, exercise your hands in mortar and stones. Then indeed, amid kisses and embraces, he opened the desire of his youthful spirit, then exulting with the Virgin, and descended to every entreaty that she ought to be called his bride, and be joined to him in matrimony. Whom, neither enticed by blandishments, nor shaken by terrors, he could not bend, that she should share in his love, because, founded upon the wall of faith, she remained like an impregnable tower. But the Virgin of the Lord, her eyes raised to heaven, in the silence of her lips implores the suffrages of the angels, invites the presence of the Apostles, and, with them mediating, murmurs this offering of prayer pleasing to God: Kind Jesus, only-begotten of God the Father, and only son of the Virgin mother, at the invocation of your holy name, look upon the contrition of your handmaid. To you, my immortal spouse, I have vowed the virginal tokens of my modesty, and have reserved thus far the pledge of my faith. Author of chastity, preserve the flower of my virginity dedicated to you. Descend, Lord, to my prayer, and restrain the fury of this tyrant, lest at any time the intercourse of my body should chance to become a mockery to his lust.

[11] She spoke, and her pure prayer, as it sounded in the ears of the Lord, made manifest the presence of the heavenly spouse to be at hand. who, learning that a bear was ravaging there, For it was to be seen at one and the same moment, both that the Virgin had not yet relaxed her lips from prayer, and that the Lord Jesus had bestowed a benefit on his dear one. When behold a certain woman, Bartina by name, from the neighboring estate of Gesbellia, crying out that she was wretched, came, and with rapid course threw herself, wailing, at the feet of the blessed abbess Landrada: and being questioned about the cause of so great a complaint; Alas me, she says, Lady, I have scarcely escaped half-alive a most huge bear ^b, bursting forth from the forest. For it has both crushed my beehives, and eaten the bees with the honey, and now even rages about the very cattle, gnashing and tearing. And now send me a deliverer, who may deter it from the imminent devastation. These things heard, Charles, a most excellent youth, and soon to be victor, the sport being set aside, and his horse being swiftly urged on, hastening with his men, made his way to where he knew the beast to be. And as he departed in haste, the husband of the aforesaid woman, named Theudo, for he happened to be standing by, and, intent on the trade of tent-making, was smoothing the shaft of a wagon, cried out thus after the young man's back: Whither do you make, my Lord, whither do you go, son of the King? Do not, I pray, bereave the most serene king Pippin of so great a pledge; for the beast is most huge, and for your age you lack the strength of a man, and do you go even unarmed?

[12] He had not drawn a sword, but was only girded beneath with a broadsword, seizing the shaft he kills it. which was then the custom for the young men of Frankish birth. To whom Charles, as he was always impatient of delays, Make, he says, an end of words, and more quickly hand me the shaft which you hold. Seizing which, swiftly flying before them all, when the place was reached, he commands his men to give way, and resolves to engage single-handed, not wavering between hope and fear, but fearless with the constancy of valor. But the beast too, roaring against him, gnashed with open mouth, and stretched out its arms to tear him. But the great-souled youth, brandishing the shaft on high, dealt a blow between its two temples, and split its very brain in two. And so the bear fell before the feet of the victor, whose flesh he gave to the venerable abbess Landrada for the use of the workmen: the skin also, on account of the notable triumph accomplished, he sent to his father at the palace. But the aforesaid woman, like that one of the Gospel, raising her voice from the crowd, on account of the renown of the deed of arms, magnified the victor Charles with these words: O youth, most illustrious offspring of kings, you bear the reverence of majesty in your face, strong in your arms, you will be crowned with the title of an excellent name, and you will be surnamed Charles the Great in the eternal ages. Which surname began from then, and from that time clung to him, in which he afterward shone magnificently. For, afterward made august Emperor, he not only enlarged the glory and kingdom of the Franks beyond others, but almost crushed and subjugated the whole world itself.

[13] The victor, returning, makes new attempts, The royal recruit therefore, master of a notable and glorious victory, was returning by the way by which he had come, that he might procure the bond of the marriage that pleased him. But the Virgin of the Lord had entered the oratory of the Mother of God and ever-Virgin, and, the doors being barred from within, meanwhile held the harbor after shipwreck. And, having seized a little casket of sacred relics, she places it on her head instead of a helmet: the earth is moistened with weeping, heaven is beaten with prayers, divine help is implored with pious complaints, and, with the angels mediating, the prayers of his dear one are announced to God: she panted on the ground and thus addressed the author of her integrity: Lord, King of angels and receiver of sinners, grant, for the honor of your name, that the dominion of earthly tyranny may not prevail over me. Sweetness of my soul, let not the poisons of carnal union pass into me. My glory, let not me, your handmaid, be so confounded, that I be stripped of the robe of chastity. You I have chosen as spouse, your beauty I have desired, and I have reserved nothing for myself to love except you. That I may please you in marriage, I beg that I be not despoiled of the rings of modesty and the necklaces of golden virginity. Look down, most merciful one, from the heavens, and save me from the mouth of the lion. The prayer therefore of the Virgin dear to him was pleasing to Christ for grace, and did not lack efficacy.

[14] but he is constantly rejected by the Virgin. Therefore the young man of glorious warfare, discovering the flight the Virgin had begun, because he could not persuade her, was not ashamed to bring force openly ^c: and, striving to act more shamelessly against royal piety, he increased indeed the glory of virginal merit, but openly disclosed his own tyranny. For he had ordered that the temple of the blessed Mother of God and ever-Virgin, venerable even to the angels themselves, be defiled, and its doors broken in, and, unless the Virgin of God went of her own accord into his bridal chamber, that she be dragged out by force. Landrada, glorious in merits, perceiving this, and like some rampart resisting the imminent javelin, now by persuading that he should give honor to God and his holy Mother, now by supplicating and kissing his feet, that he might not dash so great a blasphemy against the very author of life, scarcely broke the impulse of the youthful spirit by tearful prayer, promising that she would reconcile the Virgin's mind to his desire, and that she would become the attendant of his bridal chamber. The youth, made more tranquil by this hope, passed on: and the Virgin of the Lord, having enjoyed peace for a while, rested in the love of her spouse.

Pippin praises the Virgin: Meanwhile to king Pippin, by the celebrated mouth of all, the renown of the accomplished triumph over the killing of the bear came, and by all the nobles of the Franks Charles is surnamed the Great by a glorious title. But he too, returned to the palace, began to pant with every entreaty before his father, and to treat through go-betweens, that the Virgin of God Amelberga might be taken as his bride; asserting that she alone was the one whose nobility suited him, whose beauty pleased him. To whom, when his father coaxed him by forbidding, that he should no longer sadden the Virgin of God for a matter of this kind, and that he might turn his mind away from his intention, he promised the daughter of Desiderius, king of the Lombards, named Hildegard, to be joined to him in matrimony.

[15] But the Virgin of the Lord, wishing to redeem the malice of the time, mindful of the Gospel saying, she soon flees to Andenne; which says: If they persecute you in one city, flee into another: resolved to change her place, and to go to Andenne, to blessed Begga, her aunt ^d, namely the sister of the most blessed Gertrude, of whom we made mention above: who at that time built a monastery in that place, in which she also united to God a choir of virgins contending in the monastic warfare. But a certain Hunrod, first among the noblest in the king's court, and a cousin of the most blessed virgin, foreknowing this, by anticipating cut off both her journey and her vow alike. For the parents of the kindly Virgin being taken away, the aforesaid Hunrod, taking the orphan left behind into his own charge, as if by right of kinship, in a public substitution, led her over unwilling and reluctant to the house of his mother, named Riquera; but in truth, as what follows will demonstrate, rather that he might opportunely hand her to the King's son.

[16] Pippin therefore, a king magnificent in justice and piety, but he died a little after. when for fifteen years the kingdom

of the Franks, when for fifteen years he had vigorously administered it, the Aquitanian war being finished, which he had undertaken against duke Waifar, returned victor to Paris, and died of the disease of dropsy on the VIII day before the Kalends of October, and was buried in the basilica of the renowned martyr Dionysius. After whom the Franks, by general consent, constituting his son Charles king, place the fillets of empire upon him. Furthermore his mother Bertrada often recalled to memory the admonitions of his father, by which, while still living, he instructed him, that he should hold back his mind from the pursuit of the Virgin of God; considering lest perhaps he be punished with a divine penalty for his unjust presumption. And wishing utterly to cut off the occasion of his malady, she approached Desiderius, king of the Lombards, and sought that he might take his daughter, named Hildegard, in marriage for his son Charles.

[17] Therefore king Charles in those days arranged to celebrate the solemnities of the Easter joy at Herstal, the love of Charles is inflamed by Hunrod, at that time a palace. This solemn assembly of his nobles being held, where again they take counsel concerning the state of the kingdom, concerning the peace of the nation, the discourse is also drawn to the royal marriage, and among other things it is treated, what maiden might be worthy of the royal bed. But when the virgins of the various provinces are examined, the blessed Amelberga is found more illustrious than all in family, more noble in character, more elegant in form, so that the more numerous are the things which assail virginity, the more heaped up would be the glory of her contending for modesty. Whence the clear and single opinion of all decreed that Amelberga be called the bride of the King, and be made partner of the kingdom. And the King indeed gladly heard these voices of his princes, and received them as if for an omen, since even the senatorial dignity had most greatly demanded that his desire, which grew by delay, be fulfilled. But the aforesaid Hunrod, on whose counsel the King chiefly relied, an instigator of the youthful and wanton spirit toward the Virgin of God, was then also, before others, a great promoter of the royal marriage. For, my Lord, he says, renowned victor and ever triumphant, our king Charles, it is fitting that you carry out with the highest zeal and piety what your majesty, what the opinion of your princes, has ordained to be worthy for the welfare of the republic, for the honor of the kingdom.

[18] who had resolved to betray the Virgin. Behold, unless I am mistaken, no other maiden will be found more suitable for the summit of the kingdom, to reign with you as queen and command as mistress; and the consent of all your people with goodwill desires her, especially since she pleases your eyes, and you yourself ardently gape after her embraces. Why do you weave delays for a useful and honorable matter? And unless you suddenly forestall the counsel of your glorious mother, now tarrying in Lombardy, perhaps what she now proceeds to contrive will one day be an impediment to you, and will render you frustrated of your excellent wish. He spoke, and inflaming the royal ears, rendered the youth's spirit, along with his countenance, changed, so that the Virgin of God, whom before he tenderly loved, he afterward ardently thirsted for: and, urging his mind into love of her, in hastening the marriage he constantly watched to forestall his mother's journey. Whence, envoys being sent with speed, he ordered the illustrious Riquera that, the days of the Easter solemnity being finished, she should meet him, and lead with her her kinswoman Amelberga in solemn array, that he might receive her as his bride. Help, help, O good Jesus! Behold, for your grace's sake, so many snares are set for your Virgin, whom, to snatch her from you, even the demons themselves, and then the satellites of the demons, assail on every side. And in a wondrous manner, when Hunrod, a near blood-relation, who also could have helped much, persecuted her by betraying her, no safe place was left to the Virgin for the protection of flight. But the wondrous wisdom of God rendered the machine of this counsel frivolous, like a spider's web.

ANNOTATA.

CHAPTER III.

The flight of the Virgin with her brother Rodino; the festivity of Easter celebrated with shepherds; the punishment of a thief by a wolf; the miraculous abundance of bread and wine; a throng of demons is driven off, and various other prodigies are performed.

[19] Rodino admonished in dreams by St. Gertrude, Meanwhile the Lord Jesus, duly mindful of his dear one, piously disposed to glorify her yet more highly for the privilege of virginal glory, and to cherish the bride of his name under the wing of his protection. And because, by the counsel of the Most High, that the glory of virginal modesty might be crowned with the palm of martyrdom, the storm of persecution thus preceded the notable trophy of her passion. The King then pressing hard concerning the marriage, behold Gertrude, amiable to God, herself also lately departing by a happy passing, appeared in dreams to the venerable Rodino ^a, like the angel to that blessed Joseph, saying: Arise, and, taking your glorious sister, go and flee, and take refuge: for the King has sent ahead messengers, who may search her out, and, that he may receive her as his bride, lead her to himself. Rodino therefore, admonished by the oracle of so great a vision, broke off delays, and, rising up straightway by night, is conveyed to the place which has the name Achaius, where his venerable sister then dwelt. Then he directs that she should come to him for conference through the dark silences of the night. But the Virgin of the Lord, learning of her brother's coming, in silence through the hidden entrances of the orchard, which happened to lie adjacent to the house, went down to him, and, the causes of her journey being heard, stretched her eyes and palms to heaven, and for the conferring of so great a benefit rendered thanks to almighty God, and in sobbing and prayer commended her modesty to God.

[20] And quickly returning home, she took with her only the veil which she had prepared to place on her head, she takes flight with her holy sister, and afterward entered on flight with her brother; and thus the Virgin of God, a noble virgin, a rich virgin, and — what is more glorious than these — by the constancy of her mind rejecting nobility and riches, mindful of the Lord's word, which says: Unless one renounces all that he possesses, he cannot be my disciple; setting all things of this world behind her, naked, with her cross, she followed Christ. But the servants of the house, discovering her absence, their murmuring grew so much that it sounded in the ears of the most illustrious Riquera: and at once, messengers being sent to the palace, she took care to report to her son Hunrod how the matter had been done. Who likewise, other envoys being dispatched to where he then knew his nephew Rodino to be; when he did not find him present, he sufficiently perceived that he was withdrawing his sister by leading her away. Whence forthwith an edict was posted in the palace by the King, that they should beset the outlets of the roads, and close off every route, so that the Virgin of God might lack the means of proceeding further. But according to that Gospel proclamation, the wicked persecutors, having eyes and not seeing, could not find her, to whom Christ had been leader and way. But the Virgin of God, as she had begun, avoided the face of the King, and for a time lay hidden in more remote places.

[21] And now, the feast day of the Easter joy being at its midpoint, Rodino was pressing on to complete the journey which he had begun, and she celebrates the festivity of Easter with country folk: with the august bride of the heavenly Lamb: and in the course of the journey the Virgin of God began to be wearied and to sigh sorrowfully, because, while it was the glory of the Lord's resurrection, she had that day been placed far from the sacred and immortal mystery. For, avoiding the shortcut, and taking the pathless route again through places of solitude, it chanced that they could by no means reach a church that day: to whose sadness divine mercy condescended, and afforded a refreshment of benefit to her seething grief. When behold, lifting their eyes afar, they behold along the slope of a mountain, adjoining the estate of Golminas, the gathering and running-together of a multitude. For they were shepherds, keeping watch there over the custody of their flock, having also on that day their own presbyter: their horses being dismounted, they go up the mountain, and were made partakers of the Sacraments of the Paschal Lamb.

[22] among whom a certain thief is nearly devoured by a wolf; But while the Virgin of the Lord was still solemnizing the sacred solemnities of the Masses, behold the impure corrupter of spirits thrust himself in, if perchance by the wicked efforts of his fraud he might at least even lightly strike against her. And ensnaring one of the boys, he plunged him into the precipice of his damnation, and compelled him to descend to the crimes of theft; for he stole the little casket of the most blessed Virgin. But soon his wickedness is punished with a fitting judgment: for he who had put the theft under his garment, hiding it, carried it further off, and secretly from all, as if he had acted unpunished, began to go further. But the earth, opening at the divine command (for I am about to tell wondrous things), showed a pit, there before unseen, under the eyes of all, and vomited forth from it a huge wolf, which, being an avenger of the accomplished crime, and leaping upon the culprit of the theft, first tore the garment in which he had hidden the theft, and then shook out the little casket from his hands. And when, in anguish and quivering, he sought a place of escape, wherever he turned, the wolf stood facing him in the face, with vast jaws and menacing teeth, lest he flee, its brow set against him, yet by no means extending a tooth or claw into his flesh. But the shepherds, seeing their companion pressed near to death, cried out in laments for the mercy of the most blessed Virgin, that at least, even late, after the exaction of penalties, he might gain what remained of his life. But Rodino, renowned in warfare, swiftly with his men, his horse being urged on, forbade the beast from its prey, and so that culprit, by the pious succor, escaped the perils of death. A new thing: the wolf held the thief, lest he escape, and did not harm him whom it could easily have seized.

[23] she miraculously supplies bread and wine to all. But the aforesaid presbyter and the rest of the company, seeing the presence of the power of God, recognized the merit of the most blessed Virgin and clearly proclaimed it. But the Virgin of the Lord and her venerable brother, the reverence of the Easter day inviting, gave place to the prayers of those who asked, and reclined to feast. And so, being satisfied, and the remnants of the fragments being taken up, they recognized that, at the blessing of the Virgin of God, the food had given increase between the mouths of those eating, so that whereas scarcely two or three days' sustenance could be had for them, from the very fragments which they gathered they ate abundantly enough on the next day, and thus the food did not fail those refreshing themselves for eight days. But the Lord bestowed a new grace on the wine also, which, when it ought to have been diminished by being drained, on the contrary, against nature, overflowed by abounding. O Virgin rich in merits, and renowned for signs, by whose sacred virtues the Lord illustrated even the places of solitude.

[24] Continuing the journey through Hesbaye Therefore the blessed Amelberga, proceeding thence, and making her way through Hesbaye, the day declining to evening, came to a river which has the name Jetta ^b. And behold, a phalanx

of demons, with a certain horrible blackness of face and of arms appearing terribly, came to meet her, having indeed human faces, but most black; then horses, shields, and the rest of their arms blackening with a dusky gloom, easily prostrated with dread the hearts of those who beheld. But the very great and most black array of horses and arms led Rodino to the estimation that they were Moorish men, sent by the King to pursue them. Who swiftly flies ahead of his companion band, desiring to know beforehand whether so unusual a meeting was safe enough. Whereupon the Virgin of the Lord is at first shaken with great dread, but after a little is received back into the calm state of her mind, and, fleeing to the known aids of prayers, as if from certain quivers of prayer and psalmody, directs divine darts against the princes of wrath. Then at last the apostate phantasms, not bearing the force of the heavenly dart, pierced and confounded, groaning as it were at their wounds, gave forth a sound without mind.

[25] For it was to be heard, a wondrous roaring of lions, the din of bears and leopards, they fall in with a throng of demons, the howling too of wolves, and also the various dreadful hisses of serpents, and other things of that kind grating out an unknown voice. And one of the seducers, indeed a prince of blasphemy, tempering threats with seduction, burst forth into these words. Why, he says, Rodino, do you strive in vain against the torrent, and oppose the glorious king Charles, withdrawing from him your sister beloved by him? Unless indeed you change your resolve, you will create for yourself the offense of the royal majesty. Surely the wisdom of God has said: Everyone who resists power does harm to himself: but now, for the welfare of the kingdom, for the glory of your nation, lead her as the attendant of the royal dining-couch. But Rodino, knowing that demons are always wont to stuff in lies, did not heed what the seducer prattled, but rather, that he might cross the river, quickly made for the bridge. But that same most black whirlwind of malignant spirits, anticipating his journey, cut off his hope, destroying the bridge. But seeing the brother and sister anxious about the crossing, again a certain one of the throng of the wicked ones, under the appearance of truth, thus gave words of falsehood. Do not be troubled about the crossing, bride of the eternal King, but come to me, and my right hand will lead you across this river with unhurt foot. Since therefore that crafty enemy did not fear to tempt the Lord God of hosts himself in the flesh, what wonder if he presumes to do this same thing in his members, I mean in the Saints.

[26] But why say much? The Virgin of the Lord, not preferring the snares of the malignant ones to the things of the Lord, whom the Saint put to flight by the sign of the cross. made the sign of the cross against the seducers; who, seeing the figure of the Lord's trophy, and remembering their former defeat, at the same time exclaiming the power of the Virgin, disappeared in every way, and thus the deceit of the seduction, and the swelling of the threats, passed away into nothing. But vanishing with a shaking of the earth itself, which by feeling you would see also tremble at the same time, they gave forth a huge sound, such as is wont to be the sound of camps in tumult and exhorting themselves to battle. Hearing which, those dwelling in the neighboring estate, Tienas by name, not without a certain great wonder, burst forth with the gates opened, and, the marvels being known which the divine power wrought through the most blessed Amelberga, rebuilt the bridge for the service of the Virgin, and proclaimed the Lord in his great works. But as many as were present, for the crowd was not small, showed themselves witnesses of this miracle. Truly thrice and more glorious Virgin! who, like the morning star at the right hand of the Lord, glittering with signs and virtues, as everywhere she did not cease to be assailed by enemies, so by almighty God she deserved the more to be glorified!

[27] Vilfordia ^c is the name of an estate, where there is a church, and in it a memorial of the Mother of God and ever-Virgin, where the Virgin of the Lord, at Vilvoorde she dispatches a huge fish, still avoiding the threats of the royal tyranny, together with her venerable brother, on the following day turned aside for the sake of lodging. Who, because she was distinguished as by vigils and prayer, so also by fastings, was wont often to take for food only simple bread, with a little bundle of herbs. But on that same day, continuing her fast according to custom, and calling her maidservant Abra, she ordered that she should pluck the herb which they commonly call crisonium ^d (cress), about the watered banks of the Senne. Then she departed on the errand. But when the handmaid bends down along the slopes of the channel to gather, behold from the depth of the waters a most huge fish, as if to devour her, with a leap swam out near to the dry land. And terrified she cried out: Help, help, for it attacks me. To her who questioned at last, Why did she make such a clamor? Alas me! she says, Lady, had I not fled more quickly, it would well-nigh have swallowed me. But the Virgin of the Lord, already conscious of the benefit divinely conferred on her; Go, she says, and seize its gill, and drag it onto the dry land: which also was done. But others also of the servants running up, for the girl was unequal to so great a weight, set that huge bulk of the fish out on the dry ground. And that indeed was new, and therefore the more astonishing, because it is new, to see a fish, as if suspended, floating on the surface in one and the same place of the river; so that after it was first seen, a second time it did not return to the current of the channel, and offered itself of its own accord to the hands of those who received it. For which the most holy Virgin, offering to the Lord a pleasing sacrifice of hymns, refreshed with its flesh the poor, whom she always especially cherished, nor yet did sufficiency of sustenance fail for all her own.

[28] and she restores a sick woman to health. There dwelt therefore in the same estate a certain presbyter, Benignus by grace and by name. He went down to the Virgin of God, and offered her the eulogia of blessings: who had a mother, a great handmaid of the Christian faith, but by a grave disease now so near to death that her joints had already stiffened, and, taking absolutely no food for forty days, they were attending to only those offices which befitted burial alone. When, at the harshness of the disease, hope now began to fail, the woman found counsel for herself. At length she asks those who were more sadly bewailing her as now departing, that some of the food which the most blessed virgin handles with her own hands should be given to her. The message of which desire, when the aforesaid presbyter, who then happened to be one of those reclining, had received it, he suggested to the blessed Virgin as she supped the words of his mother's request. Who first indeed poured out a prayer in the secret of her lips. Then what came to hand of the fragments of food, she took, blessed, and sent to the sick woman at her bed. Meanwhile it is announced that the gift of blessing had come, full of health, and abounding in heavenly remedy: and the woman, as though she were now ailing more lightly, wishing to rise from her bed, attempted with an effort, that she might show to the Virgin of God, coming in her gift, the reverence of honor and grace. Not yet either had she put to her mouth the first and small portion of the food, yet not without deep reverence, when behold suddenly she put to flight the plague of all her disease ^e. Thus that most powerful sickness, in which very many aids of physicians had failed, departed, and by the gold of faith, and by the help of the most pious Virgin, released the aforesaid woman.

[29] Meanwhile king Charles ^f directed his army against Hunold, prince of the Aquitanians; residing at Materne on her own estate which of all wars indeed he first undertook, surviving his father, and concluded with an honorable end. Hearing of whose departure, the most blessed virgin Amelberga, and, for the interval of peace granted, judging it a suitable time in which she might with freer mind be at leisure for the Lord, forthwith resolved to increase her allotted task of service to the Lord. And so on her own estate Materna ^g, situated in the territory of Brabant, she determined to found and dedicate a church. And what she conceived with excellent desire she did not delay to give to a completed work: in which she also placed a memorial of St. Martin ^h the Confessor. At which season, on the aforesaid estate, at harvest time, the Virgin also went down to her reapers in the field. Meanwhile the sky shone so serene, that not even a trace of a small cloud appeared. When suddenly, by a whirlwind of the air, in a wondrous manner all that tranquility began to be enveloped, the clouds to gather, the sky to bellow, and to flash with frequent coruscations. But the reapers, on the other hand, that they might avoid the imminent and now-threatening rain, with what urgency they could, hastened to heap the sheaves onto the threshing-floor. But at last, seeing that they could not avoid the impending necessity of rain, with one impulse of all together, they run to the Virgin of God, where she was at leisure for psalmody and prayers; and lest the hope of the whole year, which one was near to seeing extinguished, should perish, she is implored, for whom it was possible, to redeem it by prayers and merits.

[30] Then the Virgin of the Lord indeed kindly received the prayers of those supplicating, she averts the flood of rains from the field; but it was commanded that they should return as quickly as possible to their works. Why say much? When for a while she had wept with a motion of her lips; yet, to say it with the novelty of astonishment; you might see heaven suffer force, and the elements of the air, as if by a certain law, be reined in. And so, while from all the cataracts of heaven a most powerful hail of storm-clouds rushed down, the sky shone serene in part, and poured the rays of the sun more abundantly over the fields of the glorious Virgin. Wondrous to tell! That dense mass of storm-clouds therefore, encircling in a ring the field of the most blessed Virgin, hung as if fixed for a wall, so that not even a trace of cloud could darken even slightly that part of the sky. Behold the Virgin of God, bride of the Lamb, how with Elijah she closed the heaven, drove off the clouds, and likewise, where she willed, drew on the rain. That renowned traverser of the field and leader of the Lord's warfare, Joshua, spoke to the sun; and it stood still: she prayed, and the sun knew no failing of its light. But in that the vast world was drenched with a flood of rain, but on her field alone not even a drop dripped, she shared in the power of the most valiant Gideon, who, all the threshing-floor being bedewed, on the fleece alone obtained dryness. For it is plain that of those to whom the Virgin of the Lord shone forth equal in the sublimity of signs, she was namely full of their spirit.

[31] and a great multitude of geese The most holy Virgin therefore sitting, not long after, in the oratory which she had built for herself in the aforesaid estate, adjoining her house, on account of the frequency of prayers and vigils, and, as was her custom, intent in mind on divine things, a household boy, himself also bearing the office of steward, came to her saying that many thousands of birds were feeding upon the seed-crop of her field. And again; Sometimes, he says, Lady, frightened and put to flight they give way, but after an hour they return. They can indeed be wearied, but, too troublesome, they cannot be removed from those seats. And blessed Amelberga; Go, she says, and shut them up in public custody. But the servants hastened to carry out the commands; but again they dissemble; like those who indeed desire to fulfill the commands, but see them to be impossible. Seeing whom hesitating, a certain one of the nuns, named Genevieve, herself also of praiseworthy memory, rebuking them, said: O sluggish and slow ones, if the Lady had told you a great thing, surely it would have had to be done; how much more, what she has now said. Go and drive those birds; for I, a woman, will go before you men, but you follow, and imitate my actions. And, not to prolong it further; they go into the field, and behold, all things far and wide grow white with feathered birds, which

commonly are wont to be called geese ⁱ; to which, although they had not, like the beast of Balaam, common speech, yet, that you might perceive by a certain likeness that they felt and discerned as humans, with their heads set down on the ground and their wings lowered, so, while they drove them, they went before with meekness, so that not even one of them moved a feather, or opened its mouth and cackled: whence at length it was clear that they were conscious of the crime committed and confounded.

[32] by her command she compels them to fly away. But on the following night, while, the hymns of matins being finished, the Virgin of the Lord returned home toward morning ^k, pitying the voices of those making a din, she ordered the pen to be opened to them, that they might go away wherever they wished. But out of all that multitude of birds an attendant boy took away one, and hid it in a secret place. But all the rest were now going out further from the enclosures; when suddenly, all having looked about themselves, with a rush they returned, and sought the presence of the Virgin of God. Then, cackling beyond their custom, now and then looking about themselves, now and then fixed at one gaze upon the Virgin of God, as she then happened to stand looking out through the window, it was to be seen that they displayed by certain signs and nods the feeling of those making a request. But the Virgin of the Lord, by a power known to herself and to God, recognized even when absent what they were seeking or what they were asking, and orders their captive companion to be brought out, and joined to the flock. She being received back, ordering them to depart more quickly, she laid a command on them, that they should no longer touch the boundaries of that field, and should never transgress this in all their generation. The flock being thus formed, all that multitude of birds flew away, so that, as it is attested by the inhabitants of that place, none of their kind is said afterward to have settled in the aforesaid field. Here therefore it is pleasing to exclaim: O Virgin of great merit, whose power, in the finger of God, was admirable even concerning the birds!

ANNOTATA.

CHAPTER IV.

Charles, pursuing the Virgin again, dislocates her arm, but she is healed by the Lord. The withdrawal of Rodino to Monte Cassino. The visitation of the Saints; health restored to Charles; other miracles of the Virgin; her virtues and most happy death.

[33] At that time therefore King Charles, Hunold ^a duke of the Aquitanians, and Lupus duke of the Gascons also, Charles again threatening the Saint, whom he had challenged in war, being equally subjugated, having gained victory over Aquitaine and all Gascony, returned laureled, and brought back the triumphal eagles to noble France. Meanwhile rumor spread to the ears of the King that the most blessed virgin Amelberga, with her venerable brother, was hastening a flight across the sea. Furthermore the King, the word heard, is cast down with grief, and is wholly rekindled to love of the Virgin, and is carried away with all his effort to reach her. And although, at the request and prayers of Adrian, the Roman Pontiff, he was then setting in motion a war against Desiderius, king of the Lombards, and his son Adalgis, which he also nobly conducted afterward, yet he suspended by delaying again a business so great and so important, and for the sake of the Virgin of God is conveyed in haste as far as the fortress of Tournai. For he judged that, if he then suffered any delay in acting, all his hope of obtaining the Virgin must be cut off. Since indeed hitherto his labor with her concerning arranging the marriage had run in vain, and his speech had pleaded to no purpose, when she was unwilling to acquiesce in his wish, he tried unexpectedly to circumvent her secretly. And inquiry being made about her, he learned that the flight which she had once entered upon, fleeing from his face, she had prolonged as far as the estate of Materne, and there at that time lay hidden. But the King, thinking that he could avail himself of the benefit of night, about the very beginnings of sleep, seizes the road which led to the estate of Materne, that, if she had been unwilling to consent willingly, he might at least, by a certain force, have shared the marriage-bed with her resisting and reluctant: which could have come to effect, had not the evident providence of God been so present, and a certain salutary vision appeared.

[34] he is for a while led astray by a priest, The most holy Virgin therefore had in her company a presbyter, named Waldulf, an industrious man, and in all things a man of virtue, to whom it appeared in a dream, as though he saw a wedge of armed men passing by, and, inquiring who they were, or what they wanted, he received the reply that King Charles was on a journey to carry off the bride of Christ, the virgin Amelberga. Awakened, and believing the divine vision, having mounted his horse, he went down by that road where a little before the King had seemed to him in his sleep to pass. He advanced a good way, and behold the din of horses and arms began to be heard more clearly. But waiting, and observing the outcome of the matter, when he learned the causes of their journey, he turned the King with his men from the road, saying that, having followed byways, they could by no means, on the journey begun, reach where they wished to arrive. But when the soldiers had now completed the greatest part of the journey, and did not draw near to the place whither they were going, perceiving that they had been deceived by the man, and were breaking their way through every part of the wilderness, they took again the path which they had a while before left. But the presbyter, helped by the opportunity of the place, and the benefit of night, by gradually withdrawing himself, turned aside from the crowd, and by a shortcut passed them: and reaching home, announces to the Virgin of God the unexpected coming of the King. Whom, while still speaking, a household boy following straightway, himself also with panting gait burst in; he is here, he says, my Lady, the most powerful king Charles with many nobles, and now the first of the recruits, that they may break in, surround on every side the halls of the house.

[35] while the Virgin fled to the church; But the Virgin of the Lord fled to the known protections of prayers, and entered the oratory near the house, and thus it was done by divine power, that, while the aforesaid presbyter believed the sacred vision, the Virgin of the Lord avoided the imminent perils; who, when she entered the oratory, stood before the venerable altar with hands outspread, and in this manner invited Christ her spouse. Most kind Jesus, lover of chastity, and guardian of my integrity, do not forsake me in the day of tribulation. You I chose as spouse, you I desired as lover with all my strength, and besides you I never had anything sweet; because I kept faith with you, I have incurred the threats of royal tyranny: and behold a lion, that he may devour me, pursues me on every side, and does not suffer that I, a fugitive, should anywhere have any lurking-place of refuge. And now, Lord, I commend to you my modesty, that I may never lose the crown of virginity. Incline, Lord, your ear to my prayers, and send me help from the heavens. And the prayer being completed, having seized iron shears, she shore off the locks ^b of her head, and covered it with a sacred veil; bearing a mind not degenerate from the renowned recruits of Christ, I mean the Martyrs, who triumphed by iron and fire over the Decii and Neros. An illustrious kind of deed! and indeed all rare things are illustrious: which nevertheless passed into the Gospel clergy from blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, whose faith and acts the most blessed Virgin imitated, herself also doing a certain new and illustrious thing for the Lord, which she afterward left to sacred virgins as a monument of example.

[36] The King meanwhile, seeing that favorable things did not answer his wishes, when Charles, having pursued her, while he accomplished nothing, and the secrets of his counsel being uncovered, because he had learned that the Virgin of God, whom he was preparing to surprise silently at home, had fled to the church, used audacity instead of wisdom. At length, what was not permitted, he burst more shamelessly into the church after her; because what he ardently desired, he could not modestly dissemble; and seeing her covered with the sacred veil, he says with vexation: Since no minister of the sacred Order, after you were named my bride by my father Pippin, has presumed to veil you, how do you, under the guise of religion, use this veil? And again, tempering threats with blandishments, he offers royal patrimonies, that she might choose his marriage. But the Virgin of most constant faith, neither enticed by blandishments, nor shaken by terrors, made it clear to the King that, devoted to God, she embraced all kinds of death. But the King, when he saw his entreaty frustrated, with an impulse of his youthful spirit, seized the tender little arm of the Virgin with the utmost force, and from the place where she lay prostrate at the base of the altar, tried by violence to drag her to himself and to lift her from the ground; nevertheless he was cheated of his desire.

[37] And so the Virgin of the Lord could not be moved at all, he dislocated the Virgin's shoulder. inasmuch as the Holy Spirit by his presence fixed her immovable. But the most powerful King, while he still shook her arms strongly a second and a third time, because she could by no means be changed even for the blink of an eye, he himself too began to fail with amazement. Who, not even so restraining his mind from what he had begun, but pressing her harder by wrestling, dashed the sacred veil from her head to the ground, and thus for a little while she appeared markedly disfigured. Whence, lifted up in anger, he defiled the magnificence of royal piety with the cruelty of most savage tyranny. And so, twisting her shoulder with all his strength, the bone of her virginal shoulder being broken, he truly recognized the bride of God, and made her a Martyr of Christ. Nevertheless the Virgin of the Lord did not rise from the place where she lay, until the Lord Jesus appeared to his dear one, weeping and praying, and restored his chosen one to entire health. Thus at last the most blessed Virgin, emulous of angelic modesty, harvested from the seeds of chastity the illustrious fruit of passion; truly, I say, thrice and more blessed, to whom the Lord, that he might bestow the crown of a twofold prize, clothed her with the white lily of virginity, together with the red palm of martyrdom.

[38] These things thus done, Rodino ^c, knowing that he had fallen into tribunician terrors, and at the same time fearing lest perchance the King should pour out the wrath of his fury upon him, because no result concerning his sister followed him, prepared to avoid the perils imminent to himself, and to seek the remedies of the times. And going to Carloman, namely the brother of king Charles, who at that time dwelt in the city of Reims, he was magnificently received by him, and detained by him for a while. But a few days having passed, with the counsel and consent of that most excellent Prince Carloman, and the blessing of Wulfar, Archbishop of the church of Reims, the renowned soldier of Christ Rodino betook himself to Rome, and there on Mount Soracte, the belt of warfare being laid aside, and the habit of the clergy assumed, went into the province of Samnium, to the monastery of St. Benedict, situated in the fortress of Cassino, to Carloman, the brother of king Pippin, who was once called Tudites (the Hammerer), because he crushed the various peoples of the nations by conquering and subjugating them; and there, having become a monk, he most religiously completed the course of the present life on the monastic path. For his patrimonies too, by which, being of the blood of Kings, he was most illustrious and most wealthy in the kingdom of the Franks, he partly handed over beforehand to sacred places by the terms of a testament, partly distributed for procuring refreshments for the poor. But let these things said concerning the venerable Rodino suffice.

[39] The Virgin visited by the Saints Therefore after the visitation by which the Lord deigned to visit through himself the blessed Amelberga, his beloved bride, nay renowned Martyr, and to restore her to health, it seemed good to him piously to bestow on her again through his Saints the benefit of consolation. At length, when according to custom, after the length of her vigils and prayers, she indulged her wearied limbs a little in rest, there appeared to her in a vision the holy prelate Willibrord, with the most blessed virgin of Christ Gertrude ^d, bearing from heaven an oracle of this kind. O glorious Virgin, O blessed Virgin, whose beauty the heavenly spouse has loved, and pledged with the precious seal of his ring, you have fought manfully, persevere constantly, and you shall receive a crown from the Lord with the angels. The Lord Jesus has sent us to you, bestowing on you through us the sweet addresses of his care, and promising the rewards of your glorious struggle. Then St. Gertrude, taking the veil of the most blessed Virgin, which she herself, for a sign of the heavenly betrothal, had placed on her head, offered it to the holy prelate Willibrord.

[40] she is bidden to migrate to Tempseca. Which, marked with the consecration of sacred blessing, he placed back again upon the head of the most blessed Virgin, saying: Let these signs of modesty be to you monuments of your chaste lover, and immortal spouse, that you admit no lover except the Son of God. And it was added: When the space of three years is finished, you shall complete the course of the present life, and like a queen in gilded raiment shall enter the bridal chamber of your spouse, and thus shall enjoy forever the face of your desired one. And when the most blessed Virgin asked them what pious exercise, most pleasing to her Lord, she should meanwhile toil at, they answered; that she should go to her own possession, the estate of Tempseca, situated beside the river Scheldt, and build a church in honor of the Mother of God and ever-Virgin Mary, where she should also fulfill what seemed to remain to her of the present life; which she deserved to be instructed and admonished of by the reply of the heavenly oracle. And so, the Saints returning to the heavenly realms, the Virgin of the Lord, for the conferring of so great a benefit, said a hymn to God, and jubilantly sang alleluia. But morning being come, according to the agreement of the divine address, she goes to visit the place commanded to her, and carried into effect all things according to what she had learned from the Saints.

[41] King Charles therefore, when he had left the Virgin of God Amelberga, Charles seized by disease, afflicted with insults and worn down with injuries, because he was cheated of his desire, returned with indignation, and reaching in haste the fortress of Valenciennes, by a sudden affliction of fevers began to be more harshly pressed, and to be brought near to his very end. But his brother king Carloman and the nobles of the whole kingdom, who had come to visit him, cast down the senate with sadness at the failing of so great a monarch, as if they saw the court itself utterly extinguished: for the sickness was most powerful, and therefore the grief of confusion most sorrowful. For while all were astonished and wondering whence so sudden and dire a torment, they judge that the scourge of divine chastisement was hanging over him on account of the calumny which he had cruelly inflicted on the Virgin of God. They accordingly urge the King that a message should be sent to the Virgin of God, that, unmindful of her injuries, by pious intervention she might hold back the scourge of divine judgment from him, and lead his life back from destruction . But the King, giving assent to the salutary admonitions, what the whole senate advised for his welfare, he himself too began to demand that it be done as quickly as possible. A certain Fulrad at that time was most renowned in the palace, a man in all things of religion and virtue, on whose counsels the King chiefly relied in secret, by merit and office an abbot.

[42] For he, the bearer of the salutary message, with immense gifts of gold and silver, an embassy being sent to the Saint, he is healed. and various furnishing of precious garments, is then sent to the Virgin of God, who in those days, dwelling at Tempseca, by the pious conduct of good works practiced the life of angels. Whom, as the necessity of the matter demanded, approaching with speed, when at last he enters upon the hinge of his discourse, he offers the gifts, and accordingly repeats his prayers, that by pious intercession she might obtain for the ailing King a place of repentance, and not repay him in kind for his evils. But the most kind Virgin, as she was in all her life most pious, receiving indeed the prayers of the supplicant, but rejecting the gifts of the offerer; for she did not think it would be right for her, if, now joined to her heavenly spouse, she should incline her mind after perishable things; I have already, she says, trodden underfoot the glory and riches of this world, and now I have had no need of these encumbrances. Wherefore let his gifts be your Lord's own, only carry to him from me this word of salvation, that he distribute them for the uses of the poor, and redeem his sins by alms. But I will freely pour out my prayer in the sight of the Lord not only for the restoration of his health, but for the safety of the state of his kingdom: but let him himself implore the suffrage of the blessed virgin Gertrude, who was always to me an impregnable shield of defense against the darts of his persecution, and brought upon him this scourge of divine chastisement. And so the messenger returned, and as he had asked with pious faith, obtained health for his Lord, and, like that centurion of the Gospel, found whole him whom he had left ailing.

[43] In time of famine she works various miracles. At which time at last the scourge of a dire famine was oppressing the whole kingdom; but the servants, seeing that the Virgin of God had spurned the money offered her by the King; for, as the race of servants is wont to be querulous, murmuring they said that their Lady had acted unadvisedly, in that, for redeeming the want of the famine, she had reserved no part of the money for herself. Nor did the most kind Virgin cease to give her people admonitions of pious consolation, persuading them never to despair of the mercy of God, who is always, and especially indeed in the temptations of his own, a present hearer. But on the next day, while the Blessed one in the morning, the hymns of Matins being finished, returned home, a household boy went to draw water. But when at home he poured it out changed into blood, he grew pale, and the cause of so great astonishment was by no means hidden from the Virgin of God: for all of the hearers, struck by the novelty of the thing, reckon it not foreign to a presage, that they perceive something so unusual to have happened. But the Virgin of the Lord orders them to invoke the Lord who works prodigies, and to continue the vows of prayers a little, and to return again to the river. They go, and a miracle is beheld on the shore: for a most huge fish ^e, conferred by a divine gift, is found laid out on the dry ground. But the most blessed Virgin, understanding that Christ her spouse had compassion on her need, and that sustenance was provided for her own uses, the wave serving her; rendered a sacrifice of jubilation to God the Father. For the enormity of the fish was so great that, the regard for the poor being safe, there was more than enough sufficiency of sustenance for all her household too, and, what you may wonder at the more, it did not fail those eating daily, until the time of harvest came. And so it came about that the food grew by being eaten, and, diminishing over the days, did not fail. Here therefore speech is overcome by the greatness of the matter, and all that we say is too little. But although these things are great and astonishing, yet because they were done by the finger of God, faith is to be given to them in all respects.

[44] Her more notable virtues, For we have said few things concerning the signs and virtues of this most glorious Virgin, who, God being witness, performed more, but, full of holiness, when she was betrayed by her virtues, she overshadowed the knowledge of them by the secrecy of silence, and shunned the favor of human praise. But these things are known only because they were public. For the rest, who can worthily proclaim in her the privilege of chastity? Who her solemn custom of fasting? Or who can fittingly set forth her right hand, always generous to the poor? who, so to speak, bestowed such comforts on the needy, that the healthy often envied the refreshments of the poor. But the urgency of her vigils and the continuation of her prayers I pass over. It pleases me also to pass over common things, but truly let me confess this, and repeating it let me say, that a chaste virgin, a modest virgin, she lived in the flesh truly like an angel, since what an angel has by nature, she obtained by grace. But what? Even if I should draw a little stream of speech from the Ciceronian fountain, could I worthily recount all the notable things of her works? By no means. If I should add the milky eloquence of Titus Livius? But not even then. Finally, to conclude what may suffice, whoever, I say, desires to walk through all the notable things of her life, I bid him have the tongue of the great Jerome, and the heart of Father Augustine *; that by the mouth by which Christ, namely, is declared, his bride may be praised.

[45] These things being thus ended ^f, let us approach her glorious passing by the service of our joints. her happy death, But behold, while we strive to describe in full her happy falling-asleep in Christ, as though the grief were breaking out afresh, we ourselves are wholly given to the funeral. For who, I ask, would look upon a rose newly born, or a lily still blooming, prematurely torn away, save with mourning eyes? Nevertheless, if we must grieve for this reason, that what we held dear we have lost with grief; rather indeed must we rejoice, that, so that the pious Lord might provide for his children, he sent their mother ahead to the heavenly realms, whence let us not mourn her as though taken away from us, but rather rejoice that she is joined to her immortal spouse. Therefore the most blessed virgin of Christ Amelberga, foreseeing that the day of her holy calling was at hand, remained at her own estate of Tempseca, as she had learned from the Saints through a vision; in which she also chose the resting-place ^g of her holy falling-asleep. And so, when suddenly death began to drain the fountains of her veins, although it deprived her of strength, yet her panting spirit did not fail from prayer. Therefore with her eyes and hands ceaselessly outspread to heaven, the moment of death now impending more nearly, she sang more sweetly to the Lord: My soul, she says, has thirsted in you, Lord, how manifoldly for you my flesh also, that I may see your power and your glory in Zion: so that you might easily perceive that she was rather departing

and unwilling to be any longer absent from Christ her spouse. And when she heard him calling: Arise, my friend, my dove, and come; straightway, fortified with the divine Sacraments, she breathed out her soul into the hands of the angels, of whom it is fitting to believe rightly that a throng was present at her sacred passing, who ever venerated in her the virginity akin to themselves.

[46] Then a not small crowd of the faithful ran devoutly from here and there to the venerable obsequies of the pious funeral; her burial, for the renowned merits of her life, and also her ample and most illustrious person, made illustrious the departure of so great a Virgin, and drew devoted throngs from every side to that angelic service. For who of the religious, I mean of the priests or of the nobles of the world, did not rejoice, in the translation of the sacred body, to have toiled at the pious burden, or at least to have handled it with his hands: who, although they rejoiced together at the glory of so great a blessed Virgin, nevertheless could not at times contain the grief which they wished to conceal, with tears bursting forth, so that between hope and the glory of the resurrection, piety did not restrain weeping. For this too was a special thing to see, for glory, namely that the choir of virgins and the crowd of the poor bedewed with tears the very pledge of the sacred funeral: they, namely, bewailing the lost mark of virginal honor, did not keep silent in pious confusion what they grieved: these, showing the tunics and garments which a second Dorcas ^h used to make for them, for the extinguished comfort of so great a mother, descended more copiously into lamentation. O Virgin of great renown, to whom among the gifts of graces it was granted, that she then became more glorious, nay more happy, by the tears of the poor, than any of the Princes by their joys.

[47] and the time of her passing. But the most blessed virgin Amelberga departed in the year of the incarnate Word 772, in the tenth Indiction, on the sixth day before the Ides of July, in the pontificate of the holy Roman Church, Pope Adrian acting, in his first year, also in the fifth year of Charles the Emperor, but in the thirty-first of his age ⁱ. She was therefore buried in the church which she herself, by the command of a heavenly oracle, built in honor of the Mother of God and ever-Virgin at her own estate of Tempseca, and was placed to the right of the altar, the choirs of the faithful resounding on every side in hymns and psalms: to the praise of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom with God the Father and the Holy Spirit is honor, power, and glory forever and ever. Amen.

ANNOTATA.

* Elsewhere: redimat (may redeem).

* Elsewhere: Folradus.

* Elsewhere: Gregorii (of Gregory).

INVENTIO,

The finding, elevation, and translation of the sacred body from Temse to the monastery of Blandin near Ghent, in the time of Baldwin the Iron.

From the same Manuscript codex, collated with others.

St. Amelberga, virgin, at Temse and Ghent in Belgium.

BHL Number: 0324

FROM MANUSCRIPTS.

[48] After the holy Amelberga, amiable to God, for the preserving of her title of modesty entered upon a flight imitable by virgins who have suffered like things, the earthly King being not only spurned, The writer of this narration but even overcome, she betook herself straightway to the heavenly King, who rules all things eternally with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and who, receiving her within the secret chamber of his ineffable mercy, most kindly and most mercifully nourished her thenceforth with the delights of heavenly food, as a daughter whom before he had most clemently healed when wounded. Namely because she, by the condition of the flesh, was weak and timid, she made her refuge to the rock which is a refuge for the hedgehogs. But the Spirit, who to everyone fleeing to him is a most solid and most happy rock, protected her, received within himself, with such great kindness, that afterward she could suffer no snares of the enemy, whether visible or invisible. At length, departing from the place which by the ancestral custom was called Materne, in which she had suffered the insult, she hastened straightway to a certain little possession of her own, which was called Tempseca: where, persisting without ceasing in the working of virtues, and in the spiritual contemplation of Theology, how holy and memorable an end of life she at last had, has already been in some manner expressed above. But the writer of this little work, not presuming to narrate it with polluted lips, besought an author of purer tongue that it be more correctly explained: from whom also — and would that it might — a worthy narration of the translation of her most holy body may come forth, Christ being propitious, which, truly ascertained from most approved men, it is certain to have happened in such a manner ^a.

[49] For, many courses of days having passed after her most happy death, he attests that the sacred body was sought by various persons; that coffer, honorable to all Christians, in which her sacred body lay, was unknown to all mortals, except one alone, and he the household servant of that most blessed Virgin herself ^b. Which, since it could not longer lie hidden on account of the merit of her sanctity, was found by a sufficiently solicitous and dutiful inquiry of the faithful. And first the brothers of the monastery of Tronchiennes, thrusting themselves to this work somewhat more ambitiously than was fitting, wearied by their diligent inquiries, gave place to others, who might explore it more religiously. After these likewise the brothers of the monastery of St. Bavo, laboring much in the exercise of the same inquiry, at last understood that that treasure was not to be shown to them, but rather to those whom the most blessed Virgin was about to enrich with true riches by her presence. In which matter this is necessarily considered, that whoever strives to seek the deeds of the Saints rashly and irreligiously makes for himself an unjust faculty of finding. For the more unworthily each one approaches the heavenly office, the more this very thing exalts itself on high, that an arrogant and rash seeking may not have the effect of finding the spiritual thing, whence the Apostle: Do not be high-minded, but fear.

[50] but not except after prayers and fastings At length hence we read that Uzzah was punished by divine chastisement, because he had touched the ark of the God of Israel, not with that hand of humility with which it was worthy to be touched. Wherefore let no one flatter himself, let no one become forgetful of himself; finally, let no one presume for himself at all what he does not deserve, since thence follows for each a punishment the graver, the greater the injury done to holy religion has preceded. And so from examples of this kind it is easily gathered that the brothers mentioned above did not deserve to find so precious a treasure of the most holy body, because they had both sought it negligently, and perhaps would afterward have treated it otherwise than the manner of devotion requires. Not far therefore from them was found a certain faithful and prudent servant, who bound himself to so great a work by a far different reasoning. He, being in the monastery of blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, situated within the village of Ghent, Robert by his own name, but known to all for his ecclesiastical studies and the honor of his life, very wisely understood that it was to be sought from divine mercy, what by human argumentations could by no means be found. And first, purifying himself with many fastings and assiduous prayer, he sought from the Bishop of the same diocese the means, that he might deserve license of searching, who, immediately assenting to his prayers, both distinguished him with a blessing and strengthened him with counsel, and supported him with things suitable to so sacred a work, saying: Go in the name of the Lord, and as the will shall be in heaven, so let it be done.

[51] by the monks of Blandin, And he at once, a few brothers being taken with him, with the highest humility and holy fear, yet full of faith into good hope, on account of the abundant benefits of divine mercy, raising himself up confidently, went without delay to the place in which he had heard that those venerable treasures were laid up. But when it was come thither, with how many tears he there bathed himself, and with how great contrition of heart he sacrificed himself before the Lord, who will suffice to explain? The man of heavenly genius knew well that it was not easy for him, which had been impossible for others; and therefore he vehemently afflicted himself with the maceration of the flesh, that the pious Virgin, condescending to his sadness, might at last reveal herself even to him thus knocking, she who never in her life had closed the door of mercy to anyone piously asking. Throughout the whole three days therefore that most precious pearl was sought with immense humility and much supplication, but by no means found. And when they had repeatedly questioned the household servant of the most holy Virgin, of whom we spoke above, where that which he sought was laid up, they could by no means extort from him, either by blandishments offered or by rewards promised, that he should reveal this.

[52] a revelation being received, it is found, And so now a wretched despair had fallen upon them, and now they lamented with groaning and tears that they had labored in vain; when suddenly one of the brothers, Thietwala by name, exulting in a wondrous revelation, proclaimed that the place of the tomb had been shown to him. At whose voice, when all, stupefied, turned themselves, the place with that venerable tomb became clear to all who were there present, which nevertheless they had not before seen, though exposed in the open to the eyes of all. But then, filled with the highest joy, and in a manner changed into other men, singing glory to God with lofty voices, they filled that angelic temple with hymns and praises. But since the frequent incursion of pirates most vehemently infested that region, using very salutary counsel, quickly carrying out the limbs of the most blessed Virgin, decently wrapped in a pall and placed in a little coffer, they returned with haste to the ship by which they had been conveyed thither. Then, as they went out from the basilica, a multitude of the birds ^c of the sky appeared, which, applauding with their little wings, and rejoicing together with tremulous voices at the service that was being performed, exulted with what feeling they could in homage to the venerable body.

[53] But Robert, an abbot of worthy memory, the treasure most precious of all treasures being placed within the ship, conveyed upstream to Ghent, when he had first set himself to the oars, admonished the brothers not to delay to take thought for flight as quickly as possible.

But while they eagerly desired to carry out the father's command, they suddenly felt themselves, by divine will, borne against the force of the river; and therefore, marveling at so great a grace of God and the merit of the most holy virgin Amelberga, judging that they ought not to labor where the power of Christ was working, they returned with incredible speed to the monastery of blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, of which we spoke above. This place, as we believe, the most blessed Virgin had chosen, that she might dwell in it to this day; to which, when she had come, an innumerable people of both sexes and of various age and condition came to meet her: whose multitude, when it had filled all the fields and all the woods, was heard to pour forth sweet melodies in praise of Christ.

[54] But first of all, as was fitting, the venerable Bishop Reynelm *, affected with immense joy, did not delay to be present, adoring the Lord and praising him, and there deposited by the Bishop of Tournai. because he then saw what he had before often despaired that he would see. After him Baldwin the Count, son-in-law of Charles, the most powerful king, showed himself present with the highest devotion, and happily shared with all the people in vigils and prayer. But especially very many clerics and monks, running up in troops from every side, frequented the watches of that night — it cannot be said how devoutly and how solemnly. Morning therefore being come, the most holy body of the blessed Virgin was placed in the little coffer, with great humility of the Bishop and clerics, and the care of all the people, a cry being raised to heaven to him who granted us so great a good, by which, with examples of this kind, we may triumph over the headlong impulses of men by the virtue of constancy, and may be able to overcome the demons. If anyone should have ill interpreted these things faithfully narrated concerning the translation of the body of the holy Amelberga, amiable to God, he will confess himself to be unfaithful, since it is demonstrated by a sufficiently open sign that he loves evil things, who scorns to believe good ones.

[55] But now, about to say a few things concerning her most noble name, imposed on her by a certain divine prophecy, An inept etymology of the sacred name. we shall thus make an end of our discourse. For that the name of that most holy Virgin is composed of two languages ^d, namely Latin and Teutonic, the twin words declare. For the former part, "a malo" (from evil), the latter, "berga," proclaim by alternating word that her merit was most happy. For "Amalberga" is expressed as "a keeping from evil," or "a wariness from evil," both of which no one doubts fit most aptly her holy purpose. For because she had dedicated her body and soul to Christ by her perpetual chastity, there is no doubt that she kept herself from evil. But how much she always held the snares of demons suspect, and drew back her feet from the traps of iniquity, that she continually shunned evils and always did good, is proved by clear reasoning. Otherwise, or in another way, by I know not what manner of teaching anyone will interpret her name — or will he lie that she did otherwise than has been said above? which nevertheless it is a sin for anyone to utter concerning so holy a virgin, amiable to God, who so exalted the bridal chamber of her modesty, that now, august one of the heavenly empire, she fully enjoys the longed-for embraces of her spouse, our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom is honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

[56] In the Temse codex a clause is added, which by no means seems to be attributed to the first author of the translation, taken without doubt from some ancient inscription, which the copyist judged should be subjoined, lest it perish, adding of his own an inept correction, which would better have been omitted. Behold his words: The body of the paradoxical Virgin of Christ Amelberga was conveyed to the aforesaid basilica by Baldwin, surnamed the Iron, namely the grandfather of Arnulf the Great, on the sixth day before the Kalends of November in the year of the incarnate Word 870, in the third Indiction, but I would say in the fifth Indiction. Wrongly indeed, for the third Indiction plainly coincides with the year 870, not so the fifth; so that the correction is plainly superfluous. But that he mentioned Arnulf the Great, let no one thence infer that that clause or addition was added in the time of that Count: for although it could have been composed in his century, it seems certain enough that the history of the translation is more recent. I would rather judge that the memory of Arnulf was inserted there because it was always fresher in the monastery of Blandin, on account of the innumerable benefits with which that Count had enriched it.

ANNOTATA.

* Elsewhere: Reyngelmus.

MIRACULA

From the parchment Manuscript codex of the church of Temse.

St. Amelberga, virgin, at Temse and Ghent in Belgium.

BHL Number: 0325

FROM MANUSCRIPTS.

[1] In the year of the Lord 1323, on the Tuesday after the chains of St. Peter, A fisherman heard by the Saint. a certain poor fisherman, casting a net into the Scheldt to catch turbots ^a, not after a long delay drawing his net, found caught in his net a great turbot; and drawing the turbot into his little boat, he rejoiced at the catch of the fish: which joy was at once turned into grief; because, when the turbot felt the dryness, quivering and striking the boat with its tail, and breaking the fisherman's net, it leaped through a hole of the net into the Scheldt. The fisherman, invoking with sorrowful heart the blessed Amelberga, that she might succor him in catching the turbot, promised that he himself, fasting, would offer a great Tournois coin upon her altar. And, this said, casting the same net into the Scheldt, the turbot, entering the fisherman's net, was drawn peacefully like a little fish to the shore of the Scheldt; and thereafter it never tried to escape the fisherman's hands: whence the fisherman, praising the blessed Amelberga, when morning came, as he had vowed, offered the Tournois.

[2] It has been customary from the antiquity of time, On account of the neglected solemn procession to carry the bier of the blessed virgin Amelberga, with her relics and also those of other Saints, around the boundaries of the town ^b of Temse every year, always on the Wednesday of holy Pentecost: and all the clergy and nobles of the aforesaid town, and also the common people of the same town and of the surrounding towns, with reverence and the greatest devotion, the citizens of Temse fasting and barefoot, unanimously going around the town, follow supporting the holy bier. There are present there also mimes and other jesters; players, organists, trumpeters, drummers, fiddlers and harpers, and very many others, whose interest it is, to the praise and glory of the blessed virgin Amelberga, to ply praiseworthily the manifold kind of instruments. And a certain place is chosen, which is called Banc, next to the town which is called de Avestone; and there the whole people gathers, making a stay, soldiers, knights, squires, lady-knights ^c and noble damsels, with their covered carriages: and there a sermon is preached, and many miracles of the blessed virgin Amelberga are recited. And the bier is honorably placed upon carriages, until the sermon is completed, and is honored by all in manifold ways: then the bier is lifted up and carried back into the basilica of the blessed virgin Amelberga.

[3] In the year of the Lord 1322, when the aforesaid bier was carried very poorly around the town, The people of Temse in the year 1322 with not many persons, even the lowliest, accompanying, but the greater multitude did not care in this year for what had been customary from of old, and thus the bier was weakly carried back by those who were then present to her shrine. Thereafter ^d, on the solemnity of the blessed virgin Amelberga there was such serenity, that almost generally all who were then present at the said feast at Temse marveled at the brightness of such a feast day, which was suddenly turned, about the hour of Vespers, into so immense a darkness and a strong storm of thunder, lightning, and hail, with a strong wind and dense rain; and almost generally all who saw that horrible weather believed that they were perishing, and that the day of judgment had truly come. And it arose within Temse, the town of the holy Virgin Amelberga, and thus nearly half of the fruits of such a town were shattered and destroyed by the hail which then fell on that day.

[4] And this is miraculously noted, for beyond the bounds * of the parish of the holy Virgin it extended only slightly, punished by a terrible storm. and on some hailstones, great after the manner of apples, it was found that there had been impressed the form of a most foul face, like that of a demon or of some other foul animal: and most skilled men asserted that that huge storm had been specially destined by God for the people of Temse as an example and chastisement, and a memorial of the aforesaid storm, that the blessed virgin Amelberga might be more diligently honored henceforth by the people of Temse and by all Christians. Especially in the year of the Lord 1323 so great a cult and so great a reverence was shown to the blessed virgin Amelberga, that scarcely a single one remained to guard the house, but that all and each, old with young, ran together to the bier of the blessed Virgin to support it, to her honor and praise, praising and beseeching the holy Virgin, that she might intercede with the heavenly King specially for the people of Temse, and also for all Christians, that he might by his mercy deign to remove from all Christians the threat of the storm.

[5] A woman in peril in childbirth is healed. In the year of the Lord 1311, a certain woman made pregnant by her husband in the town of Temse, born and reared in the same; while the time of her bearing was coming, the infant died in the womb of that woman, and she could in no way be freed from the infant, but, in pain and made sick for nearly half of one year, beyond the term of bearing, she thus remained. Who at last, relying on the counsel of certain matrons, faithfully invoked the blessed Amelberga, that she might entreat the Lord Jesus Christ, that she might be freed from the infant, which she felt dead in her womb. She vowed, for as long as her life, that she would visit the basilica of the holy virgin Amelberga on pilgrimage every year. And the vow being made, at once the dead infant came out limb by limb through an opening near her navel. First the head and then the flesh in pieces with all the bones of the infant was cast out, and the mother, by the prayers and aids of the blessed virgin Amelberga, not after a long space of time, was restored from the infirmity of that childbirth to her former health.

[6] In the year of the Lord 1323, sitting beyond the Scheldt, A dead infant is raised. in a place which is called Weert ^e in Teutonic, a certain woman, having in her lap a little infant of hers, being healthy and cheerful, who, suddenly becoming pale, expired. The mother, wailing and crying out with a loud voice, called together the neighbors, who urged her to invoke the most blessed virgin Amelberga over her dead son. Who, at once, when she promised to offer him to the Virgin, all the neighbors there seeing, that boy, as if awakening, without delay revived.

[7] In the year of the Lord 1320, a certain townsman in Rupelmonde, A despiser of the Saint gravely seized. on the eve of the blessed virgin Amelberga, about the first hour, ordered to be prepared

ordered food to be prepared for himself for dinner, and the table to be set. To whom his wife replied, saying: It is the fast of the blessed virgin Amelberga. But he, answering, making light of his wife's word, despised the blessed Virgin and rebuked his wife and the whole household of his house, saying that the fast was a piece of folly; and reviling the blessed Virgin with frivolous and unseemly words, he thus sat down at his table; and when he had begun to take food, the first morsel of bread which he had in his mouth he could neither swallow nor spit out; but, his limbs being drawn together, he was thrown into a stupor, and was thought by all to be wholly dumb and as if dead. But his wife and his sons and daughters, seeing this, astonished, calling together the neighbors, on bent knees humbly prostrated themselves to the ground, and with a lamentable voice began to invoke the blessed virgin Amelberga, that by her intercession he might be healed. Their mother and sons vowed, fasting and barefoot, to visit with him the holy basilica of the virgin Amelberga on pilgrimage, with their offerings, in praise of the Virgin, promising to go on pilgrimage to the holy Virgin every year on her eve, all the days of their life. A little after, their father was healed, and began to speak, incessantly seeking pardon from the holy Virgin, and confessed before all that he had grievously offended against the Virgin in thoughts and words; and rising without any interval of time, he most devoutly visited the temple of the virgin Amelberga with offerings and friends on that day.

[8] In the year of the Lord 1320, a certain matron dwelling in Aardenburg ^f, having a daughter who was struck with the falling sickness, A girl suffering from the falling sickness the mother heard recited the miracles which were done at Tempseca through the glorious intercessions of the blessed virgin Amelberga to Jesus Christ. The mother, invoking the holy Virgin, promised her that, if her daughter were healed, she would never with adorned head take part in dances or weddings or betrothals, until she had personally visited with offerings the holy church of the blessed virgin Amelberga at Tempseca; and she was healed of her infirmity. But afterward the mother and daughter were forgetful of the vow made, for nearly three years having passed; a certain bride, a niece of this woman's daughter, on a certain feast day, when she was to be joined in matrimony, asked her niece, namely the daughter of this matron, that she should go before her, with bare head, with the rest of the virgins, as is the custom in such towns, and in other cities and in large villages.

[9] The mother, on the preceding night, when she had begun to wash the head of her daughter, the vow being uttered, she is healed: that on the next day she might walk more becomingly, and appear more adorned among the other girls with her garments, bare-headed; but the daughter, while her mother was washing her head, was struck in the head with the terrible falling sickness, which she had not felt for three years, and the mother remembered the promise which she had not yet fulfilled to the blessed Virgin Amelberga. The mother began again to weep, and to cry out with a very loud voice: Have mercy on us, holy virgin Amelberga, for we have sinned against you; heal my daughter, and, for as long as our life, every year with our offerings, in praise and honor of your name, we will visit at Tempseca your holy temple ^g. These things said, the daughter again recovered, and began to praise and bless the blessed virgin Amelberga. Who, mother and daughter rising in the morning, with gifts and offerings, visiting at Tempseca the holy temple of the blessed virgin Amelberga, and how these things befell them, related all word for word before the priests there and all the people.

[10] likewise a swelling of the throat, In the year of the Lord 1323, a certain sailor, whose throat was swollen, suffered great distress for about eight days; and when on a certain day he tried to take food, at table he could not put a single morsel of bread into his mouth; nor could his breath enter or go out through his windpipe: at once, as he invoked the blessed Amelberga, he was healed of the inflammation, going with offerings to the church, and blessing the blessed Amelberga.

[11] a madman, In the year of the Lord 1322, a certain townsman in Mechelen ^h, raging and out of all his senses, was bound with an iron fetter, and with nearly twelve ropes about his hands and feet, and was held by several people in his frenzy. But at last, in the midst of them all, he burst the iron with all the cords, and in the same hour invoked the blessed Virgin, saying: Help me, blessed virgin Amelberga. Who at once, God assenting to the prayers of the virgin Amelberga, perfectly recovered his five senses: and rising in the morning of the next day, with his own hands he carried the iron, as an example to all, to the temple of the holy Virgin. Which can be seen by all to the present day.

[12] a crippled girl, In the year of the Lord 1323, a certain widow woman, in the town of Temse, had a certain girl, about seven years old, placing her to guard the goslings ⁱ in the streets. On a certain day that girl was sitting upon a certain ditch, not far from her mother's house, and by the will of God all her limbs remained contracted in that place, so that she could not move by herself. Her mother, coming, said, Daughter, rise, and the mother touched her and drew her by her hands: but she remained immovable, like a stone. But the mother, then exceedingly saddened, lifting her daughter on her shoulders, carried her into her own house with a groaning heart. At last, invoking the blessed Amelberga, for the aid and help of her daughter, she prayed that she would restore her limbs, thus contracted, to their former health. Who for some days lay helpless in bed, and the mother prayed confidently, so that by the prayers of the blessed Virgin the girl raised herself from the bed, and with her mother and her other neighbors came to the temple of the blessed Virgin cheerful and healthy, leaving offerings upon the altar of the blessed Virgin.

[13] and a woman afflicted from childbirth. In the year of the Lord 1322, a certain woman dwelling in Hulst ^k, laboring in childbirth, bore an infant having upon its head a mass of flesh nearly the size of its own head; seeing which, her mother and several other women were saddened beyond measure. And the mother ordered to be called the most skilled surgeons and cutters of wounds, who might apply a remedy by cutting off this piece of flesh, so grown upon the head of that infant: but none of the surgeons, on account of the danger of the boy's death, though he was urged to it by the parents, dared to lay his hands on it, but the boy so remained. But the mother, grieving much, remembered on that same night the miracles of the blessed virgin Amelberga, with mournful heart continually invoking the holy Virgin herself over her son's health; vowing that if the infant recovered and the swelling of that flesh were destroyed, the mother would come, as soon as she rose from childbed ^l, to offer her son with offerings to the blessed virgin Amelberga. The swollen flesh on the head then utterly vanished and was destroyed; and by the prayers of the blessed Virgin, the infant was made whole in its head: and his mother presented the infant, as she had promised, in the temple of the Virgin at Temse.

[14] In the year of the Lord 1318, a certain Jacobin, of the Order of St. Dominic, A Dominican Father learns to his cost to have faith in miracles. having the name Brother John of Bonestele, of good memory, a preacher beyond the Scheldt in the land of Waes, preaching in the place which is called Ter banc, a great multitude of people being gathered there, and reciting several miracles of the blessed virgin Amelberga, which the same brother had found in the Legend of the blessed Virgin, written a long time ago in her temple at Temse, his sermon being completed, returned to Antwerp to his Brothers; and the same day, sitting alone in his cell, he recalled within himself his sermon made on that day, and the miracles of the blessed Amelberga, doubting and hesitating whether, in many things which he had truly preached to the people, they could be true ^m, and speaking to his inner self and saying: Such things are not so, although they are noted there by some. These things being done and said within himself, without any interval of time, a chill invaded him as if he had begun to have a fever, and he was made helpless in all his limbs, nor could he utter even a single word with his mouth. Who at once, groaning with all the intention of his mind, and with most firm heart invoking the holy Amelberga, humbly sought pardon for the things committed against her; and after a little time obtained health, praising and blessing the Virgin; and he vowed that he would faithfully every year on the feast of the virgin Amelberga preach the praise of the Virgin in the place which is called Banc ⁿ, for as long as his life. And this immense miracle he immediately made known to his Brothers, and as long as he lived, he was always present at the feast of the Virgin, preaching, and there published above all his own miracle, how it had happened to him, together with the other miracles of the blessed Amelberga.

ANNOTATA.

* read "limites" (bounds).

Continuation of the miracles.

[15] In the year of the Lord 1312 ^a, a certain workman, while the castle of Beveren ^b was being raised higher, labored there for daily wages, A crushed hand is restored: carrying stones to the engineers, and serving the masons.

He took an immense stone and put it on his neck, and, from the excessive weight of the stone, he slipped to the ground; and that stone fell upon his hand, and shut it between two stones; and it received so great an injury that no surgeons could cure that hand, although several masters had come to heal it. Whence that man felt so great pain in that hand, that at last the masters said the hand was infected and inflamed with fire, and that there was no other remedy, except that the hand be amputated. And on the next day his friends were called together, that they might be present there with the masters: and while one master was preparing an instrument suited for this, there came into that house a certain old man, very grey, and he spoke to the wife of this sick man in this manner: Your husband's hand will be healed within three days, if you visit the blessed virgin Amelberga with a pure heart at Tempseca with ten pilgrims: and drawing out a certain green leaf of some herb, he placed it upon his hand; and ordered that it should not be removed until the third day had passed, and immediately withdrew, unknown to all of them. And while some of them followed him through the streets to ask of him more good things, he could nowhere be found: and his wife, rising on the third day at earliest morning, faithfully fulfilled the vow of pilgrimage, as that good man had commanded her; and when she had returned home in the evening, she found her husband cheerful, healthy, praising and blessing the Lord and the blessed Amelberga, because by her prayers and merits almighty God had healed his hand of all injury: and, healed, without delay he likewise visited the Virgin herself on pilgrimage.

[16] In the year of the Lord 1327, a certain very innocent young woman, a woman freed from the danger of death. deceived by a man of higher rank, conceived a boy by him: who, when he perceived that she was pregnant, repelled her, often reproaching her and charging that other men had lain with her. Whence she, greatly saddened, began to invoke every day the holy Amelberga with deep sobs, that she might console her in this great grief, since she was pure from the company of all other men. She, remaining sad and mournful, because her lover had so defamed her with his words, nine months having passed, bore one son. Her lover, entering the chamber where she then lay in childbed, with drawn dagger approached the bed of his mistress, saying: Now it appears that you have lain with another, and now I will kill you with this knife; you shall not escape my hands. She then with tearful heart faithfully invoked the blessed Amelberga, that she might free her from that raging and senseless man. And at once he fell straight on his back toward the ground; rising a first and a second time, but a third time he could not rise. He lay helpless in all his limbs, as if he had expired, until the neighbors entered the chamber, weeping and greatly struck over him, lying thus as if dead. They came to visit the blessed Amelberga, that he by her prayers might recover health. Who, at once rising, confessed before all that he had had the will to kill her by diabolical suggestion, had not the blessed virgin Amelberga restrained him: seeking pardon there for what he had committed, he himself, with his mistress and with several other persons, visited on pilgrimage the threshold of the chapel of the blessed virgin Amelberga, in her honor and praise; and they vowed that, for as long as they should live, they would visit once in every year.

[17] In the year of the Lord 1327, on the Thursday after the Purification of the blessed Virgin Mary, An unbeliever comes to his senses. one man and two women were present at the miracles which were done in the chapel of the blessed virgin Amelberga: namely that two possessed women were freed. One of them from two demons, the other from three, in one hour at once and at the same time: which miracle is rarely seen to happen in any church. They went from Temse to the church of Rupelmonde, and found there gathered the aldermen and other honest men of that town, talking of their affairs. They related to them the miracles done in the church of Temse; one of which aldermen, not believing, but smiling, said: These things which you relate are not true; and immediately, those words being uttered from his mouth, he remained immovable and dumb, and helpless in all his limbs. Whom his friends placed in a wagon, and he was conveyed the same day as far as the forecourt of the blessed Amelberga: and when they lifted him from the wagon, placing him upon the steps ^c of the forecourt, at once by the help of the blessed Amelberga he there recovered the health of all his limbs; and approaching her tomb and altar, with his friends and other good parishioners of Temse, praising and blessing the blessed Amelberga, he left there his offering, and returned to his home cheerful and healthy.

[18] In the year of the Lord 1327, in the month of August, on the vigil of the Assumption, A heart disease is cured; a certain damsel suffered from a cardiac ailment, that is, a grave disease of the heart, so that her friends despaired of her life. Among other things a certain matron advised that sick woman to invoke the holy Amelberga; and she promised to visit the holy Amelberga with bare feet, and to offer her one heart made of wax, weighing one pound: and when she had made this vow with good intention, in that hour she was healed of her infirmity; who, on the third day following, as she had vowed, visited the blessed Amelberga.

[19] fever, In the year of the Lord 1327, on the Monday after the feast of blessed Lawrence, a certain woman gravely afflicted with fevers vowed to go on pilgrimage to the blessed Amelberga; and the vow being made, the fevers thereafter vanished, and she was wholly healed of them, by the prayers of the blessed Virgin: and in like manner many were healed of fevers, and of various infirmities in the same year.

[20] and a possessed girl. In the year of the Lord 1327, a certain girl of about ten years, possessed by unclean spirits, was brought into the chapel of the blessed virgin Amelberga; whom a certain priest conjured by conjuring with great conjurations, and by placing her in a bath ^d, and strongly attempted that she might be freed from the unclean spirits, without injury to her body and to others: who on the ninth day, on the following night, sleeping before the altar, was freed from all the vexations of the demons; and at earliest morning she confessed before the priests and other honest men that she was wholly healed, by the prayers and merits of the blessed virgin Amelberga.

[21] The penalty of a violated feast, In the year of the Lord 1327, a certain young woman, the daughter of a certain widow, prepared herself to spin ^e on the eve of Amelberga about the ninth hour, and wound wool upon her distaff. Her mother said to her: My daughter, cease spinning, because it is the feast of the blessed Amelberga: you see the pilgrims passing toward the town of Temse, in honor of the blessed virgin Amelberga. To whom the daughter replied: I have no care about this; I will spin all my wool wound on my distaff before it grows late. And when she had uttered these words, immediately she fell from the stool upon which she was sitting, groaning and crying out like a lunatic, and all her limbs were grievously twisted. The mother and the neighboring women invoking the blessed Amelberga for her health: and she vowed, for as long as she should live, every year to go around the town of Temse with the bier of the blessed Amelberga. At once, the vow being made, the infirmity in her ceased; and on the same day that young woman visited the chapel of holy Amelberga, in her honor and praise.

[22] and the revealing of a theft. In the year of the Lord 1327, on the eve of the blessed virgin Amelberga, a certain rich woman, by diabolical suggestion, stole 21 ells of the best linen cloth about the ninth hour: and when she from whom the cloth had been taken perceived that she had lost it, she thought this way and that, who might have carried off her cloth. And this woman had a certain young maidservant, a comber ^f, working in the wool-trade, who was a foreigner, and so she who had lost the cloth, and also her husband, charged that comber with having carried off the cloth, or that it had been taken by her counsel. Then that comber began to be saddened and to deny that she knew anything at all of it, and that she was blameless of that theft, weeping and praying all night on bent knees and with clasped hands, beseeching the blessed Amelberga with most bitter tears, that the Virgin might entreat the God of heaven, that he by his mercy might deign to show who had done this theft: vowing that she, fasting, barefoot, would visit her on pilgrimage at Tempseca as soon as day dawned; which she also did. And when this comber had returned to that house from which she had gone out in the morning, that thief was found upon the same ditch, in which she had done the theft, there wishing to hide the cloth in the water, but by no means could her hand be drawn away from it, by herself or by another, who would gladly have concealed the scandal of that woman. Then the neighbors flowed together, even the temporal Lord himself, who all unanimously invoked the blessed Amelberga, that she might deign to have mercy on that woman. The prayer being made, the woman rose, telling all that the blessed Amelberga had compelled her to bring back the cloth. And she was then freed; and for the honor of the blessed Amelberga, the temporal Lord dismissed the whole matter, and on the same day those three women with many others visited the church of the blessed Virgin.

[23] In the year of the Lord 1323, a certain woman in the town of Temse, sight restored to a blind woman, lacking sight, was led into the chapel of the blessed Virgin, and by the prayers of the same Virgin recovered her sight.

[24] In the same year, a woman's son of five and a half years, and whole limbs to a crippled child. set to guard the geese, fell asleep in the street next to his mother's house: when he thought to rise from sleep, he was helpless in all his limbs. His mother, carrying him in her arms into her house, invoking the blessed Amelberga for the health of her gravely sick son, vowed to offer her son with offerings, and with all the pilgrims whom she could gather, to the blessed Amelberga in her chapel. The vow being made, her son was made whole, and they set out on pilgrimage in honor of the blessed Amelberga.

[25] In the year of the Lord 1327, in the month of June, on the Saturday before the feast of the nativity of St. John the Baptist, a certain young woman, A harlot invoking the Saint, who for about four years had practiced an unclean life, often besought the blessed Amelberga, that she might entreat Christ for her, that he by his mercy might deign to convert her heart to better things ^g, and free her from the harlot's life. This woman, on the Wednesday in the days of Pentecost, while the bier of the blessed Amelberga was being carried around the town of Temse, vowed to the blessed Amelberga, with inmost compunction of heart, to abstain for a year from those illicit sins. Leaving the town of Temse on the aforesaid Saturday, she proposed to go toward Ghent. She came to the well from which the blessed Amelberga in the time of her life drew waters, and knelt down beside the well

before the cross, and left there one offering, in honor of the blessed Amelberga, that she might defend her from sins, all the days of her life. And she, rising, wishing to depart, all her limbs were contracted, so that she could not depart from that place.

[26] And she at once fell down, falling asleep beside the well, from the first hour until the ninth hour; by her apparition she is brought back to good conduct. to whom in her dream there appeared a certain woman clothed in white garments, making a great tumult in the well; and the woman, awaking, found nothing. And rising again, she thought to depart, and could not cross the boundaries of that place, in which Amelberga was wont to dwell. All the priests and clerics, and nearly the people of the whole town of Temse, being called together for this miracle, no one of men could lead her away, but she remained the whole night in that place. Morning being come, she stripped herself of all her garments, and offered them to the blessed Amelberga, and thus Amelberga permits her to enter and visit her chapel, and does not forbid her to be present at the divine offices, but to her own place, the divine offices being finished, she always returns. And if she wished to be at leisure for other business, her feet and hands are so contracted, and she is so weakened, that she would almost immediately die.

ANNOTATA.

The third part of the miracles.

[27] At a certain time two young women in the territory of Brabant, Possessed women, helped by the Saint, one married, the other a Beguine, then dwelling in the village which is called Raamsdonk, distant three leagues or a little less from the town of Temse, were walking and roaming about ^a in a certain street. One of them, having an apple in her hand, drew her little knife and divided the apple into two parts, and handed one piece to her companion; who, thus talking to each other of vanities, the one then swallowed three malignant spirits, and the other two, with the pieces of the apple, and were vexed beyond measure by those evil spirits: whence the parents and friends of those girls began to be exceedingly saddened. These possessed women were then conveyed near Mechelen, to a certain church of St. Mary, which is called Hanswijk, that by the adjurations of the priests they might be freed from the demons. Who thus tarrying there, the priests by adjuring for one month accomplished absolutely nothing upon those possessed women, and they returned to their own village and home. And the mother of one possessed woman says, questioning one demoniac spirit which so vexed her daughter: Why, she says, do you thus torment this innocent creature, and why did you enter such a harmless vessel? The demon says to the mother: This daughter of yours has not deserved it; but it is for the chastisement of all Christians. To whom the mother: How long will you vex these two? The demon says: A little time; a certain virgin beyond the Scheldt, a black nun, will put us to flight from these bodies, and by her prayers they will remain unharmed and will be healed.

[28] These things heard, that mother and the friends of both vowed, but forgetful of the vow they are more sharply tormented, without any delay to visit on pilgrimage the temple of the blessed Amelberga, in her honor, with twenty-six people. And at once, the vow being made, those possessed women, as if feeling nothing evil, on account of the health which they had received, tarrying for some days, did not fulfill the vow of their pilgrimage, as they had vowed. Who on a certain night began to be gravely afflicted, and to be vexed by the demons, so that they became almost mad and so raging, that their friends scarcely dared to associate with them. And morning being come, taking to the road, their friends proceeded with a tearful voice invoking the blessed Amelberga over these afflictions. Then the demons within them grew quiet, and the possessed women rising, with their friends, went peacefully toward Temse, on pilgrimage, until they beheld with their eyes the shrine of Amelberga. For then one of them began to reproach some persons with secret deeds; and the other woman had been made mute from Monday until Thursday, so that she had not uttered a single word, and was drawn by force into a boat to cross the Scheldt. And when they had approached the forecourt, they were in no way willing to enter the church, so that six strong men drew the one, and five the other, into the chapel of the blessed Amelberga before her altar with great force, and set them on the ground.

[29] Who, quivering with all their limbs, although they were held firmly, they are freed at Temse. grinding and spitting upon the priests there and into the faces of men, tried to seize one and to strike another, and by crying out sent forth terrible sounds. And when the priests had surrounded those possessed women about the sixth hour, that mute one began to speak, and one demon answered the priest. To whom the priest says: You and your associates must go out from these vessels. Who answered: We shall not yet depart. Again the demon, being questioned, said that there were three evil ones in one of them, and in the other two, and that about the ninth hour, or a little after, they would go out from their bodies unharmed; because the blessed Amelberga compelled them, so that they could harm no one. And while the priests conjured them, their bodies were so swollen, that their necks seemed thicker than their heads. And the priest encircled the neck of one possessed woman with his stole, and said to the demons: Now go out from this vessel. The demons said: The way for us at present is too narrow for going out. Then the priest withdrew the stole, and immediately one evil one went out; and always, as one went out, the other remaining named its departing associate by its own name, saying: This one has now gone out. And in the ninth hour those creatures lay as if immovable, with open mouth as in a trance. And all the evil spirits being cast out, both women rose at once and at the same time in one hour, with joined hands and bent knees, and began humbly to invoke the blessed Amelberga, because she had so amiably, by her prayers, fully freed them from those malignant spirits. This immense miracle was seen in the chapel of the blessed Amelberga in the year of the Lord 1327, in the month of February, on the Thursday after the Purification.

[30] Another likewise, thinking to violate her vow, In the same year, on the next following Sunday, a certain young woman was brought in, possessed by two demons, one of which, going out, bit through the middle of the little clapper of the bell of the blessed Amelberga, like a man with teeth, as appears to this day in the iron, into two pieces, and by the other malignant one she is at once made healed. And those two pieces of the clapper can be seen openly in the choir of Temse. This woman was healed of two demons; and when she wished to return to her own parts, forty days having passed, she entered the chapel of the blessed Amelberga, adoring her with the priests and other honest men present there. And when she thought to cross the threshold of the aforesaid chapel, she fell to the ground like a stone, and all her limbs were crushed, and she lay mute with closed eyes, as if she had been dead. At last, her former bodily health being received back, by the counsel of the priests, she vowed to serve the blessed Amelberga for as long as her life, and that she would never remove herself outside the inheritance of the blessed Amelberga, and that she wished to live and die there; and that she would abide at the tomb of the blessed Amelberga herself in her chapel to receive the offerings of the pilgrims, and to dispense them faithfully, according to her ability, every day when the time required.

[31] so often does she relapse. And this being done, a place was given her in the house of the Beguines. And it was seen by many, that when this woman meditates in her heart about returning to her homeland ^b, she at once falls to the ground, and for a long while, as if she had expired, lies immovable, and there are not four men strong enough in Tempseca, who in that hour, with all their strength, could lift her from the ground. Such a miracle appeared in this woman sixty times and more; and as often as she thinks of departing, she is chastised and punished in all her limbs, and as soon as she repents, so soon is she healed. And it was seen that for two days and two nights she could not leave the chapel, because her heart was hardened and her will was to depart. And her carnal mother confessed before several persons that she had presented this daughter, with soul and body, to the blessed Amelberga, that for as long as she lived, she might remain a handmaid of the blessed Amelberga.

[32] An infant is healed of the falling sickness, In the year of the Lord 1326, on the Tuesday after the feast of Matthias, a certain woman from the Four Offices ^c had a certain little infant seized beforehand by the falling sickness, who offered him to the blessed Amelberga, and he was healed of the disease.

[33] then a mute, In the same year of the Lord, a certain woman had a mute son of seven years, who visited the blessed Amelberga on pilgrimage with his mother; who confessed that after they made the vow of pilgrimage, that son began to speak.

[34] In the same year, a certain rich man in Germany ^d was made blind for many years: then a blind man. to whom it was intimated in a vision that he should destine to the blessed Amelberga two silver eyes, and thus would recover his sight: which was so done by the prayers of the blessed virgin Amelberga.

[35] In the same year, a certain widow in Mechelen visited the blessed Amelberga, A house preserved from fire. because she had preserved her house from fire, where the neighboring houses on both sides were burning, and her house remained unburnt. At which miracle almost the whole city marveled.

[36] In the same year, a certain poor child of five years in Waes, A dead child raised. lay dead from the first hour until the hour of vespers. His parents invoked the blessed Amelberga, weeping and praying, that she might entreat God for their drowned son. And at once he began to quiver, and revived by the prayers of the same blessed Amelberga.

[37] In the same year, a certain fuller, a mere layman, who had never learned a single letter, A demoniac cured. possessed for a fortnight, spoke Latin so fittingly ^e that scarcely any of the clerics could answer him; he was led into the chapel of the blessed Amelberga; who by her merits was healed of all diabolical calamity: and never afterward knew how to speak Latin.

[38] In the year of the Lord 1318, a certain murderer, born of Bruges, A wondrous grace toward a murderer. captured and imprisoned in the town of Temse on account of a homicide which he had committed, vowed to keep as a feast ^f, for as long as he lived, the feast of the blessed Amelberga, and to fast on her eve on bread and water every year, and, clad only in his shirt ^g, to go around her town with the bier, that she might deign to free him from this deed by her prayers, poured out for him to God. Who was many times led out from prison before the lay justice to be condemned for that deed and to be beheaded; and he stood in the midst of the aldermen several times, as if he would be handed over into the hands of his enemies, namely the brothers of him whom he had killed, that they might avenge themselves for their slain brother. But at last he had confidence and consolation in the blessed Amelberga, that he would never die for that deed, in whatever way they threatened. And thus he was detained in prison for a whole year. And after a year, without guard and unharmed, he was freed, by the help of the blessed virgin Amelberga.

[39] In the year of the Lord 1317, so great a plague of cows and oxen was there in the village which is called Ossenisse ^h, Cows preserved from death. that there a certain damsel had twenty-four cows, which were dying, except six, which then survived. And a certain man entered the house of that damsel, and advised her that for each cow living there she should vow to offer one Parisian penny ⁱ to the blessed Amelberga with as many pilgrims: which done, the cows afterward suffered no harm. And this damsel, when she had fulfilled her pilgrimage, confessed before several persons that this miracle had happened to her from the Lord God, in honor of the blessed Amelberga.

[40] In the year of the Lord 1317, a certain priest suffered in one of his eyes an immense pain for several days, An eye's pain healed, so that he could not sleep by night. He had a certain niece serving him, who spoke thus: Lord, why do you not vow to visit the blessed Amelberga? You hear that the sick are healed of every disease, who, having confessed with contrition of heart, approach her tomb. The priest, refusing the word and advice of his niece, on the following night dreamed that he was bare of head and feet in the church of holy Amelberga; and that from that nakedness he was exceedingly ashamed before the priests and all the clergy. And when he was awakened from sleep, without delay he set out to holy Amelberga on pilgrimage, as he had dreamed on that night, and returning home, within three days his eye was restored to its former health.

[41] and an ailing matron. In the year of the Lord 1327, a certain matron ailing without any food for nearly thirty days, vowed a pilgrimage to the blessed Amelberga, who on the following night, after the vow was made, was healed of that infirmity by the prayers of the blessed Amelberga.

[42] Eggs miraculously offered, In the same year of the Lord, a widow woman visiting on pilgrimage the basilica of the blessed virgin Amelberga at Tempseca, was carrying eggs to offer to the blessed Amelberga, and found the chapel closed, because the whole people was in the town, except ten or eleven old persons, who had remained in the church. She complained, weeping, that she could not approach the altar of the blessed virgin Amelberga: immediately the closed doors of the chapel, all those seeing it, were opened: and as she entered ^k, she offered her eggs at her tomb; and the woman having returned, at once the doors closed of themselves.

[43] A house unharmed by fire, In the same year, a certain widow, seeing the neighboring houses burning, invoked the blessed Amelberga: O Virgin, preserve my house unharmed from fire, by your prayers poured out to the heavenly King; I will visit your temple, to the honor of your name, barefoot, clad in my shift, on pilgrimage. And after the vow was made, on both sides of her house several houses were burning, and the house of that woman remained unburnt.

[44] a drowned boy restored to life. On a Tuesday of the same year, in the month of August after the feast of blessed Lawrence, a certain man having oats, his sons were playing in the field of that oats, one of whom, falling into a deep ditch full of water, the others who were with him not knowing, lay for a long while submerged in the water; namely that his father for so long a time, plucking the oats with his sickle ^l, going and returning, ran over three times a bonnier ^m of land before he became mindful of his sons. And running with haste to the ditch, he found his son lying in the bottom of that ditch. Drawing him out, that boy appeared most black, as if he had expired. The father, at once invoking the blessed Amelberga for the life of that drowned boy, saw three veins moving and throbbing in his body; and he began to groan, and, God helping, resumed life: and he was offered to the blessed virgin Amelberga, beside her tomb in the chapel of Temse.

ANNOTATA.

Thus far the Temse codex, concerning the miracles performed within not quite twenty years; from which specimen it is gathered that an immense harvest would have arisen, if the people of Temse had kept a like account of the past and of the following centuries up to now. They relate indeed that the benefits and miracles of the holy and paradoxical Virgin toward her clients are most frequent and daily, as has been sufficiently indicated above in the preliminary Commentary; but no one has been found who might narrate them in order, or exhibit them proven.