ON BLESSED CESLAUS ODROWĄŻ, OF THE ORDER OF PREACHERS,
AT WROCŁAW IN SILESIA.
IN THE YEAR 1242 OR 1257.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
Ceslaus Odrowąż, Confessor of the Order of Preachers, at Wrocław in Silesia (B.)
BY THE AUTHOR G. C.
§ I. Cult and Acts.
Wrocław, which by the Germans is called Breslau and by the Poles commonly Wrocław, an ample city of the kingdom of Bohemia and the capital of Silesia in the Duchy of Wrocław, which draws its name from it, situated on the river Oder, [Bzovius testifies that Bl. Ceslaus was formerly honored with public cult at Wrocław;] and notable for its episcopal chair, venerates Ceslaus, an excellent apostle from the sacred Order of Preachers, and its once prodigious defender against the Tartars, as blessed now for some centuries. Of this public veneration a witness is the Reverend Father Abraham Bzovius, who in the Acts of Bl. Ceslaus, to be subjoined to this Commentary, after certain miracles are narrated, thus writes of his cult at number 54: "On account of which marvelous deeds, not long after, dug up from the earth and brought into the church—by the munificence of the citizens, but especially of Nicholas Slup of Wrocław, erected in the year of the Lord 1330 in that amplitude in which we now behold it—raised from under an altar consecrated under his invocation, he was held in the highest veneration of the people. The religious devotion of the Elders had reposited his sacred pledges in a small casket and closed them with an iron lock, and even then pursued him with diverse cult even to our times: for his images were both carved and painted, and honored with public honor; votive offerings, for a benefit received, were hung consecrated at his altar; proper Offices of the Mass and of the Hours, both daily and nightly, were recited of him; anniversary solemnities were celebrated with the accustomed rite of other festivities." Thus he in general; let us descend to particulars.
[2] I do not doubt that the citizens of Wrocław, as a token of grateful mind and a sign of religious cult, also caused paintings to be made (at what time they were made I do not know) representing the life of Bl. Ceslaus, and the same is shown from inscriptions, concerning which Theodore Moretus, a priest of our Society, in letters given to our Henschen in the year 1659 from Wrocław, thus speaks: "The day before yesterday I visited the sepulcher of St. Ceslaus in the church of the Dominican Fathers in this city, whose life is depicted in the choir with various inscriptions." Then, beneath the images in which the life of Bl. Ceslaus is depicted on the wall, he testifies that the following are read: At 1. Bl. Ceslaus, a Pole by nation, one of the first Brothers who received this place for a convent in the year 1226, the second Provincial of the province of Poland, a man of great merit before God, who raised four dead, and shining with innumerable other tokens of miracles in life as well as after death, and even to this present day. He finally delivered this our renowned city of Wrocław from the incursion of the Tartars by his prayers in the year 1242. He is here buried in the church of St. Adalbert of the Order of Preachers. At 2. Bl. Ceslaus, disciple of St. Dominic, companion of St. Hyacinth, and first Prior of this place. At 3. He restored to life an infant suffocated by the waters, after eight days. At 4. Full of the apostolic spirit he preaches; he gains souls for Christ. At 5. He hardly emaciates his body with disciplines and vigils. At 6. He sails across a river on his cope, and crosses it with dry foot. At 7. He raises three dead and is famous for various miracles. At 8. Being implored, he succors a young man almost submerged in the Oder. At 9. He defends the convent of his Order at Wrocław in a dangerous conflagration of fire, being seen in the air. At 10. He appears among the Apostles to a nun doubting concerning him. At 11. He is sent with the Brothers to the northern shores. At 12. Confirming the Brothers in piety and religion, he renders his soul to God.
[3] and from the proper Lessons of the Office, What Bzovius affirms in general concerning the ecclesiastical Office of Bl. Ceslaus, recited at Wrocław, is thus to be understood, that it was done by the Order of St. Dominic alone: for it does not seem to have been at that time yet extended to the clergy of Wrocław, since in the proper Offices of that diocese printed in the year 1662, among which nevertheless the Offices of St. Hyacinth and St. Ignatius Loyola are placed, no mention is made of Bl. Ceslaus. I judge therefore that only the Dominican Fathers at Wrocław, and perhaps in some other northern dioceses, celebrated the feast of their Blessed with a proper Office: for besides the fragment of the proper lessons, adduced by the Reverend Father Thomas Malvenda in the Annals of the sacred Order of Preachers at the year 1218 chapter 5, I have three copies of the same entire. The first was described by Father Theodore Moretus at Wrocław from the Breviary of the Order of Preachers, which was printed at Nysa in the year 1602. The second, altogether similar to the preceding, was taken from the Cracow library of the Dominican Fathers. The third finally I found in the Reverend Father John Rechac, in the work On the Saints and illustrious persons of the Order of Preachers, printed at Paris in the year 1650, where in tome 3 in the Life of Bl. Ceslaus he exhibits the proper lessons of the Office. This last copy is much briefer than the two former, and, to say what I feel, seems to me more ancient and more sincere: for the Wrocław and Cracow Lessons relate more recent miracles, which namely happened about the end of the sixteenth century. Besides, their interpolator so augmented them with uncertain and verbose narratives, that from three he made six. But since these additions are contained in the Acts to be given afterward, it will suffice here to subjoin from Father John Rechac those three Lessons, which, as I said, I judge to be more ancient and more sincere.
[4] Lesson I. Blessed Ceslaus, son of Eustace, Count of Konskie, of which the more sincere are here exhibited. of the house of Odrowąż in the province of Opole of the diocese of Wrocław, was the full brother of St. Hyacinth: to whom such a name in baptism seems to have been given not without a certain divine presage and instinct: for interpreted from the Polish it signifies honor and glory. Who, according to his name, busying himself to procure honor and glory to God and to himself by the incorrupt odor of good conversation, by the pious comeliness of morals, and by every kind of holy virtues, adorned not only the line of his nobility, but also his whole country and the neighboring regions, and affected them with a more illustrious splendor.
Lesson II. His more tender years being passed innocently, the knowledge of theology and of divine law being attained at Bologna, not inferior to St. Hyacinth, he was co-opted by his uncle Ivo into the number of the canons, the prelacy of the custody of the church of Sandomierz being adjoined. With which dignity, set as a lamp upon a candlestick, he shone before others by the sanctity of his life and the example of piety. Afterward clad in the gown of religion together with St. Hyacinth in the monastery of St. Sabina, under the discipline of the blessed patriarch Dominic he so profited that in vigils, fastings, maceration of the flesh, zeal of praying, pious meditations and contemplations, and finally in humility itself and fervent preaching, he was a true imitator of his most blessed father Dominic.
Lesson III. Treading in the footsteps of his father Dominic, he wholly burned with divine fire, and kindled the coldest breasts of mortals to the love of Christ by the sanctity of his life and the warmth of the divine word. Illustrious for innumerable miracles, both living and dead. Living, he recalled to the enjoyment of this light a boy suffocated eight days by the waters. Three others dead he restored to life. He put to flight from the city of Wrocław, by suppliant prayer, an innumerable phalanx of the Tartars savagely raging, laying waste Silesia far and wide with iron and flames. They say that a fiery globe was seen over the head of Ceslaus by the enemies. Endowed moreover with the spirit of prophecy, Ceslaus foretold many things to come, laid open many hidden things. He crossed the swelling rivers of waters with dry feet, his cope being placed under him. On languishing men he conferred the benefits of desired health. His course of life being most holily transacted, joyfully beholding the crown and reward of his labors, he rested with a blessed end in the year 1242. Buried at Wrocław, he shines with very many miracles even to our times.
[5] These Lessons contain a sufficiently exact compend of his life, and briefly and candidly describe the chief deeds and miracles of Bl. Ceslaus. To augment his cult, lately Clement XI, It is indeed a wonder that after so manifest indications of public veneration the memory of this excellent Man is not found among the more recent Martyrologists, who edited general catalogues of Saints and Blesseds, and in them sometimes placed some, of whose cult no vestige or argument exists. But the defect of these was abundantly supplied, and every doubt concerning the legitimate cult which could have arisen from their silence was plainly removed, by the Supreme Pontiff by a decree published not long ago, which, most kindly communicated to me by the Reverend Dominican Fathers of Antwerp, thus runs: Pope Clement XI, for the future memory of the matter. Lately, at the supplication of our beloved son Antoninus Cloche, Master General of the Order of Friars Preachers, there emanated from the Congregation of our Venerable Brothers, the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church set over the sacred rites, a decree of the tenor which follows, namely:
[6] a decree of the sacred Congregation concerning the Office and Mass Of Wrocław. Of the Canonization of blessed Ceslaus Odrowąż of the Order of Preachers. The prayers being related by the Most Eminent and Most Reverend Lord Cardinal Barberini, on the part of the Reverend Father Antoninus Cloche, Master General of the Order of Preachers, offered in the name of his whole Religion to our most holy Lord, and by his Holiness remitted to the sacred Congregation of Rites, in which it was most humbly supplicated that, not only in the whole aforesaid Order, but also in the city and diocese of Wrocław, the Office and Mass of blessed Ceslaus of the same Order of Preachers might each year, by all both the Religious of the said Order, and also the ecclesiastics of the aforesaid city
and diocese of Wrocław, who are bound to the canonical Hours, on his feast-day be recited and respectively celebrated, the same sacred Congregation of Rites, having first heard, both in writing and by voice, the Reverend Father Lord Prosper de Lambertinis, Promoter of the faith, judged that the requested grace ought to be granted, if it should seem good to our most holy Lord, on the day XXVI August 1713. And a report being then made by me the Prosecretary concerning the aforesaid to our most holy Lord, his Holiness kindly assented, and granted the aforesaid Office from the common of a confessor not a pontiff for the city and diocese of Wrocław under a semidouble rite, but for the Religion of the Preachers under a double rite, to be recited and the Mass respectively celebrated, on the day VI September of the same year 1713. G. Cardinal Carpineus. In place of the ✠ seal. N. M. Tedeschi, bishop of Lipari, Prosecretary of the sacred Congregation of Rites.
[7] confirms it; But since, as the said Antoninus, Master General, has caused to be set forth to us at intervals, he greatly desires that a decree of this kind, that it may the more firmly subsist, be fortified with the patronage of our Apostolic confirmation, we, wishing to pursue the same Antoninus, Master General, with the favor of a special grace, and, from any sentences of excommunication, suspension, and interdict, and other ecclesiastical sentences, censures, and penalties by law, or by man, on any occasion or cause pronounced, if by any he is in any way bound, absolving him and judging him absolved for the purpose only of obtaining the effect of the present, by the tenor of these, inclined by the supplications humbly offered to us in his name concerning this, by Apostolic authority by the tenor of the present approve and confirm the aforesaid decree, and add to it the strength of inviolable Apostolic firmness. Then, after the accustomed formulas of decrees, it is thus subscribed. Given at Rome at St. Mary Major under the ring of the Fisherman on the day XVIII October 1713. In the thirteenth year of our Pontificate.
[8] and to his first feast granted plenary Indulgences. The following year the same most holy Lord, wishing to augment the cult of Bl. Ceslaus, gave the following Brief. Pope Clement XI, to all the faithful of Christ who shall inspect these present letters, health and Apostolic benediction. Intent with pious charity, for augmenting the religion of the faithful and the salvation of souls, on the heavenly treasures of the Church, to all the faithful of Christ of either sex, truly penitent and confessed, and refreshed by holy communion, who shall devoutly visit any of the churches of the Brothers of the Order of Preachers existing anywhere, on the sixteenth day of the next coming month of July, from first Vespers until the setting of the sun of such a day, and there shall pour out pious prayers to God for the concord of the Christian Princes, the extirpation of heresies, and the exaltation of Holy Mother Church, we mercifully grant in the Lord a plenary indulgence and remission of all their sins. The present being valid for one time only. Then again, after the ordinary clauses of Briefs, it is subnoted: Given at Rome at St. Mary Major under the ring of the Fisherman on the day XXVI March 1714, in the fourteenth year of our Pontificate.
[9] The cult of Bl. Ceslaus being now sufficiently confirmed, let us premise a few things concerning his Acts. [Bzovius collected the Acts of Bl. Ceslaus, plundered by heretics, from fragments,] That they were formerly preserved in the Convent of the Preacher Fathers at Wrocław is testified by Humbert, of the same Order and nearly contemporary with this Blessed, whose words are cited by Father Rechac in the Preface to the Life of Bl. Ceslaus, and by Bzovius in the Life to be subjoined to this Commentary at number 55. But that those Acts were plundered by the Lutherans in the year 1525 and perhaps burned, Bzovius says at the same number, who afterward, from certain fragments which had escaped the rage of the heretics, wove the Life of Bl. Ceslaus. Here therefore an ancient series of the Life is not to be expected. Bzovius indeed diligently collected all things pertaining to this Blessed man, but here and there he indulges his style too much, and narrates those things which probably could have happened, rather than those which certainly happened. But this I would have understood only of certain uncertain circumstances adorned with oratorical eloquence: for concerning the miracles and other substantial, so to speak, deeds, I do not doubt at all, as will be clear from the things which in the course I shall say.
[10] From the same fragments, unless I am mistaken, was composed the Life (this is the title of the Wrocław Manuscript sent to us by our Father Andrew Stredonius) of Bl. Ceslaus of Silesia of the Order of Preachers, dug out from the library of the Dominican Fathers dwelling at St. Adalbert's at Wrocław. which we, collated with the Manuscript fragments, I had resolved at first to edit that Manuscript alone; but I changed my mind, when I saw that the series of the narrative at intervals did not sufficiently cohere, and that its collector was younger than Bzovius, which last I gather from these words, which he intermixed with the Acts collected by himself: "The bones of this Divine," he says, "were found by the Preacher Fathers at Wrocław in the year of the Lord 1607 on the fifth of January in the same monastery; whose honor since the heretics could not bear, in the year 1608 on the twenty-seventh of December the church of St. Adalbert was violated by a plebeian tumult, as the author of the Annals of Silesia testifies, and I who write these things, who was then a boy at Wrocław." This writer therefore says that he was a boy in the same year in which Bzovius edited the Life of Bl. Ceslaus. I think, however, that he had before his eyes the same fragments from which Bzovius collected the Life of Bl. Ceslaus: for mostly he agrees with him word for word, except in those things which Bzovius rhetorically adorned. Lest therefore I lose this Manuscript Life, and that at the same time I may have the entire narrative of Bzovius, I shall enclose in brackets [] those things which Bzovius supplied. Thus by the same labor the reader will distinguish the fragments which more probably survive in the Wrocław monastery of the Dominican Fathers, and those which Bzovius added to them from his own.
[11] Very many writers besides, from the religious Order of Preachers, committed to writing the deeds excellently done by Bl. Ceslaus. Besides various ones who mentioned him in passing, the later writers being left aside, we are about to edit. the Reverend Father Thomas Malvenda inserted his virtues, labors, and miracles here and there in his Annals at the years in which they probably happened. The Reverend Father Dominic Mary Marchese in the sacred Dominican Diary tome 4, at the day XV July wrote his Life in Italian. The Reverend Father John Rechac in the French Work already cited illustrated the same with chronological notes and other testimonies. To these may be added our Bohuslaus Balbinus, who in the Historical Miscellany of the Kingdom of Bohemia book 4 §49, gave an accurate compend of his life. But all these confess that they followed Bzovius, and by name Rechac before the Acts of Bl. Ceslaus thus prefaces: "Our historian Abraham Bzovius diligently collected by his labor the precious monuments of antiquity, while he was Commissary General of the convents and monasteries of both sexes in the province of Silesia." Then, the writings being enumerated in which Bzovius treats of Bl. Ceslaus, he thus proceeds: "To him therefore we ought to attribute what we are about to write concerning Bl. Ceslaus." I scarcely doubt that the Reverend Father John Damascene Lubienecki, who in the year 1711 from the Order of Preachers was assumed to the bishopric of Bacău in Moldavia, from the same monuments made the Inquisition concerning the deeds and miracles of Bl. Ceslaus, which, offered to Clement XI, obtained the public decree of licit veneration, and is kept at Rome in the archive of the Congregation of Rites, as James Echard asserts in the review of the Dominican writers edited at Paris in the year 1721 tome 2, page 792. Since therefore Bzovius is the most ancient collector of the Acts, his little work written on the deeds of Bl. Ceslaus, which under the title of the Guardian of Silesia he published in print at Cracow in the year 1608, we shall reprint after this Commentary, the dedications, however, being cut away, and a part of the prolix preface, and other things, which do not properly pertain to our design. But first let us examine the chronological series of the Acts.
§ II. The chronological series of the life up to the completion of the novitiate of the Religion.
The chronotaxis adorned by the Reverend Father Rechac, Various writers have given a various chronotaxis of the deeds done by Bl. Ceslaus; but none more distinct (would that it rested on solid foundations) than the said Rechac in the cited work On the Saints and illustrious persons of the Order of Preachers: for in tome III in the Life of Bl. Ceslaus chapter 4 he reduced the more notable points of the life from his birth to his death into a chronological compend, which I here from the French thus render into Latin: He was born in the year 1184, St. Dominic being in the fourteenth year of his age. In the year 1200 he studied Philosophy at Prague with his brother St. Hyacinth. In the year 1203 he gave attention to jurisprudence and theology at Bologna, when he was in the nineteenth or twentieth year of his age. In the year 1207 or 1208 he returned to Cracow, and exercised the office of Canon and guardian of the church of Sandomierz until the year 1217. In the year 1217, being thirty-three years old, he came to Rome with his uncle the bishop of Cracow. In the year 1218 he received the religious habit in our convent of St. Sabina by the hands of our blessed Father, and came to Friesach in Germany. In the year 1219 he came to Cracow and there remained until the year 1222. In the year 1222 he came to Prague, having founded two convents, one for the Brothers, the other for the Nuns of his Order. In the year 1223 at Wrocław he founded a monastery for his Brothers. From this year until the year 1225 he traversed the regions enumerated in this history, that in them he might announce the faith, or restore good morals, or propagate his Order. In the year 1235 he was Provincial of Poland. In the year 1240 he was constituted Prior of Wrocław. In the year 1242 he wrought that great miracle, delivering the city of Wrocław from the Tartars, and then in the same year died on July 16. Now let us discuss the several parts of this chronotaxis.
[13] First of all the epoch of his birth, to which Rechac assigns the year of Christ 1184, is altogether uncertain. Nay he himself sufficiently indicates concerning the birth of Bl. Ceslaus, that he fixes it from mere conjectures, when in the Life of Bl. Ceslaus he thus writes Chapter 1: "It is not certainly known in what year Bl. Ceslaus began to live; but it is probable that he was born after his brother Hyacinth, and was younger than he: for under the discipline of our blessed Patriarch, contending with his brother at an equal pace to the summit of sanctity, yet he was postponed to him, as though age compelled him to yield to his brother. Since therefore St. Hyacinth was born in the year 1183, the birth of Bl. Ceslaus will have to be placed in one of the next following years. But I think certainly that it must be fixed in the year 1184, one year after his brother Hyacinth, because they were so equal in age that at the same time they gave attention to their studies, and completed them." This conjecture, made from the birth of St. Hyacinth, that it rests on an uncertain foundation is sufficiently intimated by the Supreme Pontiff Clement VIII, who in the Bull of the Canonization of St. Hyacinth thus speaks: "Blessed Hyacinth was born in Poland in a village which is called Kamień, of the diocese of Wrocław, before the year of the Lord 1200, of noble and Christian parents." You see here the year of the birth of St. Hyacinth left undetermined by the Supreme Pontiff. Why would he not have determined it, if he had believed it certain? Add that our Acts afterward to be exhibited at number
5 indefinitely say that Bl. Ceslaus was born "above the year of the Lord one thousand one hundred and eighty from the redemption of the world."
[14] Nor is the title of Brother, which Rechac uses to establish his conjecture, altogether certain: the fraternal bond of blood with St. Hyacinth, for although many more recent writers confidently call Bl. Ceslaus the full brother of St. Hyacinth; others nevertheless prudently abstain from this name. Leander Alberti in the Life of St. Hyacinth, edited by Surius at the day XVI August, thus writes: "Further the excellent prelate, using his counsel, chose from all his family three young men, excelling in honesty of morals, namely Hyacinth, of whom we are about to speak, Ceslaus, and Hermann the German, young men indeed rare and worthy of so great a province." Severinus of Cracow in the Life of St. Hyacinth book 1, chapter 1 cites from the Chronicle of Poland the following words: "Ivo … the prodigies, sanctity, religion, and preaching of Bl. Dominic being seen, sought Brothers of his Order to be brought into Poland, and, not being able to obtain others, obtained that four of his familiars and companions, namely Hyaczko or Hyacinth, Canon of Cracow, noble of the house of Odrowąż of the province of Opole and heir in the village of Łąka; likewise Ceslaus the Pole, Henry the Moravian, and Hermann the German, should be received into the Order by the most blessed Dominic." But in the Preface the same Severinus adduces Martin Cromer, bishop of Warmia, Matthias of Miechów, and other Polish historians, who call Bl. Ceslaus only the companion of St. Hyacinth. In the subscriptions placed beneath the images of his Life at Wrocław, he is called only the companion of St. Hyacinth. Perhaps through equivocation this name of Brother was attributed to Bl. Ceslaus: for since they were sprung from the same region and stock, and addressed one another in the Religion as Brothers, as is the custom, it could easily happen that they were thought to be full brothers whom the Religion had joined by the spiritual bond of fraternity. However that may be, Clement VIII in the Bull of Canonization, cited in the preceding number, names Ceslaus only the kinsman of St. Hyacinth.
[15] the studies of letters, I do not know whence Rechac so distinctly knew the arenas and years of his studies. "In the year 1200," he says, "he studied Philosophy at Prague with his brother Hyacinth. In the year 1203 he gave attention to jurisprudence and theology at Bologna." Neither Bzovius nor others, that I know, assigned a certain arena, still less an epoch, to his philosophical studies. Did perhaps Rechac assign to them the city of Prague, because he had read that St. Hyacinth gave attention to studies at Prague, and supposes that Bl. Ceslaus studied with St. Hyacinth at the same time and place? If that is true, why does he not also attribute to Bl. Ceslaus Cracow as an arena of studies, since in the Life of St. Hyacinth, written by the Reverend Father Severinus of Cracow, book 1, chapter 3, it is read that St. Hyacinth had the illustrious academies, the first of Cracow, the second of Prague, the third of Bologna, as mistresses of his youth? What? that our Acts at number 10 expressly assert that Bl. Ceslaus also studied at Paris. Meanwhile Rechac in his chronological compend makes no mention of these Paris studies, nor leaves any time vacant for them. Wherefore I suspect that this whole chronotaxis of the studies is proposed by Rechac as a hypothesis, to explain at what time they probably could have happened. The same I judge concerning the years of his return into Poland and his stay in the city of Cracow.
[16] and the Roman journey, is shown to be uncertain. Although the rest of the series of the life is written more chronologically by the historians, yet it is not free from controversy. Rechac indeed thus asserts: "In the year 1217, being thirty-three years old, he came to Rome with his uncle the bishop of Cracow." But, if we believe others, that journey must necessarily be deferred to the following year, since various Polish writers affirm that Ivo was elected bishop of Cracow only in the year 1218. John Długosz, otherwise Longinus, book 6 of the Polish History at the year 1218, having narrated the spontaneous cession of Vincent, bishop of Cracow, and the election of Ivo, thus proceeds: "But while a difficulty was feared in the admitting of Vincent's cession by the Supreme Pontiff, Ivo, having taken to himself as companion and consultor Jacko of the province of Opole and the village of Łąka, Canon of Cracow, a man of sense and industrious, betook himself to Honorius the Third at the City, and easily obtained both that Vincent's cession be admitted, and that his own nomination be confirmed, and that he be promoted to the bishopric of Cracow, his person extolling with high praises to Cardinal Ugolino, bishop of Ostia, on account of the special familiarity which they had mutually contracted in the study of Paris, before the Pope and the college of Cardinals." To this epoch agree various Historians and among others John Caesarius in the Catalogue of the bishops of Cracow, where after the chief deeds of Ivo comprised in a few verses he says that he was assumed to the episcopal office in the year 1218. To these is contradicted the chronicle of Poland cited by Severinus of Cracow in the Life of St. Hyacinth book 1, chapter 1, which anticipates this election by two years in this manner: "In place of Vincent Kadłubek, bishop of Cracow, in the year of the Lord 1216 was substituted Ivo, son of Saul, count of Konskie, noble of the house of Odrowąż, cantor of Gniezno, canon of Cracow and chancellor of Duke Leszek the White," etc. From these contrary opinions of the authors it is at least clear that here again the chronology of Rechac is uncertain.
[17] Nor is there greater concord of the writers, when they assign the cause The authors differ among themselves in assigning the cause why Ivo went to Rome. why Ivo set out for Rome. Leander Alberti in the Life of St. Hyacinth cited above thus speaks of it: "Perhaps at that season Ivo had to go to Rome for the sake of fulfilling a vow, who, choosing Hyacinth among the rest, took him with him." But Długosz, whose words we gave in the preceding number, asserts that Ivo went to Rome, that his election might be confirmed by Pope Honorius. But Bzovius in the Acts of Bl. Ceslaus number 18 assigns a far different cause of the journey in these words: "The Church had then received Honorius the Third as supreme hierarch; going to him for the sake of recovering the archiepiscopal dignity, Ivo Odrowąż, bishop of Cracow, uncle of Ceslaus, wished the same and Hyacinth to be the companion of his journey." But Bzovius here confounds two Roman journeys of Ivo. This becomes manifest to one reading Martin Cromer book 8 On the Affairs of the Poles. Długosz indicates one journey and its cause in the words given in the preceding number; but the last setting-out of Ivo he describes book 6 of the Polish History at the year of Christ 1229 in this manner: "Ivo, bishop of Cracow … busying himself to restore the metropolitan splendor to his church of Cracow, neglected by his other predecessors, judging it the best and most opportune time in which the restoration could come to him, betook himself into Italy to Pope Gregory the Ninth, favorable and well-disposed to him in many ways on account of the communion of familiarity and friendship contracted in the study of Paris, while both were of lesser rank." Severinus of Cracow in the Life of St. Hyacinth book 1, chapter 4 distinguishes three Roman journeys of Ivo. But let us return to the chronological examination.
[18] Nor are the things more certain which Rechac writes concerning the entrance of Bl. Ceslaus into the sacred Order of Preachers and his departure from the city of Rome into Germany in these words: Bl. Ceslaus is said to have entered the Order of St. Dominic in the year 1218 "In the year 1218 he received the religious habit in our Convent of St. Sabina by the hands of our blessed Father, and came to Friesach in Germany." I confess indeed that this year is also everywhere assigned by other historians, who place in the year 1218 that celebrated miracle of St. Dominic, on occasion of which Hyacinth, Ceslaus, and others embraced the religious life. Odorico Rinaldi tome XIII of the Ecclesiastical Annals at the year 1218 number 35 narrates the matter thus: "The sanctity of St. Dominic also shone forth at Rome about this time: for while he gave attention to sacred sermons with great profit of the faithful of Christ, a youth by name Napoleon, nephew by his brother of Cardinal Stephen of Fossanova, thrown from his horse and crushed, and extinguished by a sudden death, he recalled to life, and on that occasion St. Hyacinth, canon of Cracow, was enrolled in the religious Order of Preachers." Thus he from Długosz or Longinus, who book 6 of the Polish History at the same year narrates the same more fully. That prodigy also to the year 1218 refers Malvenda in the Annals of the Preachers, and cites Vincent of Beauvais, Theodoric, St. Antoninus, and others, who committed this miracle to memory. The most learned James Echard, who most recently edited the writers of the Order of Preachers in two volumes, tome 1, page 82 from various ancient historians tries to prove that the miracle of the resuscitated Napoleon happened in the year 1219 of the old style, that is, in the year 1220, as we now reckon. Nevertheless he is compelled to confess that day by day an error crept into those noted by Theodoric of Apolda. What if the negligence of the copyists happened the same in marking the year? Yet Echard brings forward so many and so solid reasons that I think his opinion is to be preferred to the rest.
[19] and in the same year to have completed his novitiate, Bzovius in the Ecclesiastical Annals tome XIII refers that prodigious history of the resuscitated Napoleon to the year 1219 number 8. But here he either forgot himself or fights with himself: for in the Acts of Bl. Ceslaus at the beginning of the novitiate, as they commonly say, he notes these things in the margin: "1218, the novitiate in the Religion." But here again he seems in some way to contradict himself, when to the religious profession of vows he assigns in the margin the twentieth year of the same century in these words: "In the year 1220, the solemn profession." To this longer delay Thomas Malvenda in the Annals of the Preachers is opposed. Let us hear him at the year 1218 chapter 26 thus discoursing:
[20] as Malvenda proves, whose epoch Echard rightly rejects. That St. Hyacinth remained with his companions a whole year in the convent of St. Sabina exercising the novitiate of the Religion, and passed the greater part of the year under the discipline of St. Dominic, who was then there present, busying himself to imitate his morals and virtues, Leander, Castillo, Bzovius, and others are authors. But to me, reckoning these things, a difficulty arises; both because the Polish Annals, which we related above, openly say that Ivo brought those four companions back with him into Poland, already clad in the habit of the holy Religion; whom nevertheless it is not probable that he waited for a whole year at Rome, that they might make their profession, the year of novitiate having elapsed; especially since the same Annals relate that Ivo at the time of the raised Napoleon had already expedited all his affairs at Rome by the work of Cardinal Ugolino, bishop of Ostia; and because Clement VIII in the bull of Canonization, as we saw, expressly asserts that Hyacinth, instructed in a very short time in all the discipline of St. Dominic, the habit being received from the hands of the same Man of God, and having expressly professed his Religion, returned into Poland with his companions. But that which he says, "in a short time," without doubt diminishes from the year of novitiate, since the time of novitiate is a full one, in which one can be excellently instructed in the monastic discipline. To these add that Hyacinth could not have been sent by St. Dominic into Poland with his companions, and set out with his blessing (which nevertheless most hand down)
as soon as he completed the whole year of probation, since the Holy Father at that time was engaged in Spain, and did not return to Rome after his departure into Spain until the end of the year 1219, as we shall say in its place. We conjecture therefore, which we have already observed to have often been done in other cases, that Hyacinth and his three companions in a short time, namely two or three months, at St. Sabina under St. Dominic drew in the formula of the religious life, and fixed in their mind the whole reckoning of the life of the Holy Father, and soon, by the indulgence and grant of the Supreme Pontiff, or by the custom then received, their profession being made, because necessity demanded it, were sent away by the holy man into Poland this very year, and made the journey in the company of Ivo, who was bringing them back, as far as Carinthia. All things being weighed, I embrace the opinion of the Reverend Father Echard concerning the time of the aforesaid miracle as more probable.
§ III. The rest of the chronotaxis of the life up to his death.
Our Acts make no mention of a three-year stay of Bl. Ceslaus in the city of Cracow, but at number 22 rather intimate that, the monastery of Friesach being built, It is examined whether, and how long he stayed at Cracow; he was straightway sent by St. Hyacinth to Prague, the metropolis of Bohemia. Still more clearly the same is indicated by the fragment of the proper Lessons adduced by Malvenda in the Annals of the Preachers at the year 1218 chapter 25, which at the end thus has it: "At the prayers of Ivo each, as two apostles, was sent to the northern shores: the one indeed to Cracow; but blessed Ceslaus with blessed Henry his companion betook himself to Prague, the metropolis of the Bohemians." Rechac, however, thus defines the time of his coming to and stay at Cracow: "In the year 1219 he came to Cracow, and there remained until the year 1222." Other writers would have it that he came to Cracow in the year 1218, and determine the time of his stay still more exactly. Malvenda in the Annals already often praised at the year 1218 chapter 27 concerning this matter thus writes: "After St. Hyacinth had stayed six months in the convent of Friesach, that he came to Cracow with Ceslaus and Henry the Moravian all the authors affirm… But that he remained there from the feast of All Saints of this year, when he came to Cracow, until the VIII Kalends of April of the year 1222, when the church of the most holy Trinity was given to the Order, namely three years and five months, the Polish Annals relate." It is indeed a small space of time, that in the same year 1218 (or rather 1220 according to the reckoning of Echard) they should have passed the novitiate of the religious life for some months, built the monastery of Friesach, and come to Cracow. Yet since all these things could absolutely be done in the interval of one year, I leave to the Polish Annals their faith, such as it is.
[22] Neither is there agreement among the authors concerning the year in which the monastery at Prague in Bohemia was granted to Bl. Ceslaus. at what time he founded the monastery of the Brothers at Prague, Malvenda in the Annals at the year 1222 chapter 13 cites from a certain Bohemian chronicle these words: "In the year of the Lord 1220 the Religion of St. Dominic was introduced into Bohemia by King Přemysl." This epoch of the chronicle most reject, and place the foundation of that monastery in the year 1222. Bzovius however in the Acts of Bl. Ceslaus number 22, treating of this foundation, notes in the margin the year 1223. But he seems little constant in his chronology, since in the Ecclesiastical Annals tome XIII, speaking of Bl. Ceslaus, he refers the beginning of the Prague monastery to the year 1222 number 16 in these words: "Sent to Prague by St. Hyacinth, he found Gregory Crescentius, Cardinal Deacon of the title of St. Theodore, legate of Honorius III, Supreme Pontiff, at this year engaged there, and then both by the authority and intercession of him and of Andrew, bishop of Prague, at that time returned from the City, and by the beneficence of Přemysl Ottokar, king of Bohemia, he acquired the church of St. Clement and a monastery of the Order of Preachers."
[23] concerning which Bohuslaus Balbinus also discourses. Which of these epochs is to be preferred, I shall not easily say. I conclude therefore with our Bohuslaus Balbinus in the Historical Miscellany of the kingdom of Bohemia book 4, part 1, §49, if anyone can perhaps reconcile the diverse times, from these his words: "All things being settled in Poland, and the monastery of Cracow being built, he came into Bohemia in the year 1222 with blessed Henry the Moravian and other companions. There are, however, those who suspect that blessed Ceslaus, when he returned from Rome into Poland, passed through Prague, and that some beginning was even then given to the Prague monastery. However that may be; Ceslaus came to Prague. Přemysl Ottokar I reigned at that time, who, captivated by the heavenly morals and the innocence of life of the holy Man, most liberally gave first before Prague the Greater in the village of Poříčí the church of St. Clement, then another at the Prague bridge in the very Greater city, likewise the church of St. Clement, already before not ignoble, and a most ample area for building a monastery." This change of place, to which in the margin is noted the year 1227, is more fully narrated in our Acts numbers 22 and 23, and is said to have been made on account of the growing number of the Brothers, whom the former place could not hold.
[24] Rechac would have another for the Nuns built by him at Prague, Rechac affirms that a double monastery was erected the same year at Prague by Bl. Ceslaus in these words: "In the year 1222 he came to Prague, having founded two convents, one for the Brothers, the other for the Nuns of his Order." At what time this monastery of the Nuns was built at Prague, I have not thus far been able to find, because the other writers make mention only of one monastery of the Brothers, erected by Bl. Ceslaus at Prague. Perhaps he gathered this from Bzovius, who in our Acts number 24 says that Margaret, daughter of Leopold, archduke of Austria, left widow of Henry, King of the Romans, and afterward repudiated as wife by Přemysl Ottokar, king of Bohemia, on account of sterility, was enrolled in the monastery of virgins which Ceslaus left, for humility among those whom they call conversae. Bzovius here indeed, and perhaps alone, asserts that a monastery of Nuns was built or left by Bl. Ceslaus; but he expresses no year of the foundation.
[25] [who erroneously narrates that Margaret in it received the habit of the Order from the hands of Bl. Ceslaus.] Besides, Rechac misunderstood the mind of Bzovius, and in the Life of Bl. Ceslaus chapter 2 thus wrongly interpreted it: "As soon as the monastery was built, queen Margaret, daughter of Leopold, archduke of Austria, widow of Henry, King of the Romans, and repudiated by Přemysl on account of sterility," says Bzovius, "there received the religious habit from his hands, and for the sake of humility never wished to be anything but a conversa sister." But how, I beseech, could she receive the religious habit from the hands of Bl. Ceslaus, who entered the Prague monastery long after the death of the blessed Man? How, straightway after the monastery was built in the year 1222, as he himself would have it, did she embrace there the religious life, whom Přemysl only repudiated in the year 1260 according to the chronicle of Melk, lately edited by the most learned man Dom Hieronymus Pez, or in the year 1261 according to Hájek, Balbinus, and other historians?
[26] In fixing the epoch in which the monastery of Wrocław was founded, there is again dissension and a certain obscure difference. Of the convents founded at Wrocław by Bl. Ceslaus, Rechac thus pronounces: "In the year 1223 at Wrocław he founded a monastery for his Brothers." Malvenda in the Annals at the year 1223 chapter 9 confirms the same chronotaxis in these words: "That in the same year a convent was founded under the name of St. Adalbert at Wrocław, the chief city of Silesia, from the old monuments of the Province of Poland, collected by Abraham Bzovius, manifestly appears." But if from the old Polish monuments collected by Bzovius it is manifest that this convent of Wrocław was founded in the year 1223, how in the subscriptions, which at number 2 above I exhibited, are the following read? "Bl. Ceslaus, a Pole by nation, one of the first Brothers who received this place for a convent in the year 1226." Nay, why did Bzovius himself in the Life of Bl. Ceslaus number 25 concerning this foundation thus note in the margin, without further explanation? "The diploma given in the year 1226 on the Kalends of May." Rechac also saw this difficulty, and tries thus to solve it in the Life of Bl. Ceslaus chapter 2: "When it is said that he founded the convent at Wrocław in the year 1226, that is to be understood of the purchase of the place and the actual building, but the reception was made in the year 1223, as has been shown from the ancient testimonies of the Polish province." Whatever be the case with this explanation, it is to be lamented that these ancient testimonies of the Polish province are not distinctly and word for word brought forward: for how dangerous it is to trust others' eyes, daily experience teaches us, and especially the example brought above of Margaret makes me cautious, who, Bzovius being wrongly cited, is said to have received the habit of the Order from the hands of Bl. Ceslaus.
[27] In the two following years Bl. Ceslaus is said, incited by zeal of gaining souls, to have traversed various provinces of the north. of his apostolic excursion and Provincialate, His arduous labors, and the spiritual fruits of his labors, are enumerated in our Acts numbers 28, 29, and 30. Let the faith of the chronology rest with Rechac, since in other monuments this apostolic excursion is not circumscribed by a certain time. The same nearly I judge must be said of the years of the provincialate, which Rechac thus marks: "In the year 1235 he was Provincial of Poland." Malvenda in the Annals at the year 1242, chapter 6 thus subscribes to the same epoch. "That blessed Ceslaus was created Provincial Prior of Poland in the year of the Lord 1235, the index of the Provincials of that province rendered by Severinus and Bzovius manifestly teaches."
[28] I do not know which index of Severinus Malvenda inspected. the time is discussed. I in the Catalogue of the Reverend Provincial Fathers of Poland of the Order of Preachers, which Severinus of Cracow inserted into the Life of St. Hyacinth printed at Rome in the year 1594, book 1, chapter 24, thus read: "The first after blessed Hyacinth as Provincial of the province of Poland, the Reverend Father Brother Gerard, a German by nation, was appointed and confirmed by the Most Reverend Master of the Order Jordan in the year 1258." Then follows: "The Reverend Father Brother Ceslaus, formerly guardian of the church of St. Mary of Sandomierz, is there elected, and confirmed as Provincial by the German visitators." It can indeed easily be explained how Bl. Ceslaus here is numbered the third Provincial of Poland, who elsewhere is called the second. But unless here there be some fault of the typesetter in the arithmetic, certainly it is a gross error of the author in chronology and history, as will be clear to anyone even a little skilled in the Chronicle of the Preacher Fathers. Meanwhile I suppose that the number of the year 1258 is to be reckoned among the typographical errors, to which I would gladly give pardon, and in turn ask it.
[29] He was Prior of Wrocław, "In the year 1240," says Rechac, "he was constituted Prior of Wrocław." The same office Malvenda in the Annals at the year 1242 chapter 6 thus attributes to Bl. Ceslaus: "About this time Bl. Ceslaus was Prior of Wrocław in Silesia." But Bzovius in the Acts does not expressly express this monastic dignity, but, after his labors in administering the province of Poland are described, rather intimates that he
lived at Wrocław rather as a private person, by this manner of speaking: "His magistracy being ended, he laid down the fasces, and passed the rest of the time at Wrocław in the same tenor of life." Yet in his Ecclesiastical Annals tome XIII at the year 1241 number 2, narrating the prodigious raising of the siege of Wrocław, he expressly calls Bl. Ceslaus Prior of the monastery.
[30] when he prodigiously put to flight the Tartars breaking into Silesia, Whatever be the case with the year 1240, which Rechac assigns to this religious prelacy, I scarcely doubt that Bl. Ceslaus at the time of the irruption of the Tartars was set over his Brothers at Wrocław, since this is asserted by most historians who have even lightly touched the deeds of Bl. Ceslaus. Among these John Długosz book 7 of the Polish History at the year 1241, describing the irruption of the Tartars into Poland and the neighboring regions and the siege of the castle of Wrocław, thus expressly notes: "But when they had protracted the siege for some days, no assault being attempted, Brother Ceslaus of the Order of Preachers, a Pole by nation, and the first Prior of the monastery of St. Adalbert at Wrocław, who himself also had fled into the castle of Wrocław with the Brothers of his Order and other faithful of Christ, prayer being poured out to God with tears, drove off the siege. For as he persisted in prayer, a fiery column descended divinely from heaven upon his head and illumined the whole territory and place of the city of Wrocław with a stupendous and inexpressible splendor. By which prodigy the breasts of the Tartars were so turned into fear and stupor that, the siege being raised, they fled rather than departed." The office of Prior at that time also Martin Cromer book 8 On the Affairs of the Poles, and Matthias of Miechów book 1 of the Polish Chronicle chapter 38, attribute to Bl. Ceslaus, whose words are afterward given in the Acts number 41. These minutiae also we discuss, lest we seem to have neglected anything in illustrating the Life of this Blessed.
[31] We have come at last to the last chronological point, which Rechac thus proposes to us: and in the following year, as most would have it, he died, "In the year 1242 he wrought that great miracle, delivering the city of Wrocław from the Tartars, and then in the same year died on July 16." Thus briefly he comprises the epoch of the miracle, the year and the day of the death of Bl. Ceslaus. Of the several points let us say a few things. The historians cited in the Acts numbers 41, 42, and 43 agree concerning the substance of the miracle; but concerning the time there is between them and others a discrepancy of one year: for some with Rechac would have it that the Tartars irrupted into Silesia in the year 1242; but most and the more ancient chronologers place that incursion of the barbarians in the year 1241. As to the year of his death; it is established by most after the birth of Christ 1242. Yet it is not so certain but that some protract the Life of Bl. Ceslaus to fifteen years, as Malvenda testifies in the Annals at the year 1242 chapter 6 in these words: "That Bl. Ceslaus was in this year taken from this life and flew away into the everlasting, Abraham Bzovius in the monuments of the same province hands down; others would have it that he reached the year 1257. I, destitute of ancient testimonies, cannot settle this dispute."
[32] There is also among the Dominican authors themselves some difference in marking the day of his death. on July 15. Bzovius in the Acts of Bl. Ceslaus number 49 thus expressly asserts: "Hence on the morrow, namely on the very Ides of July, … several times devoutly invoking the name of Jesus, he breathed out his holy soul into the hands of his Creator." Him follows Marchese in the sacred Dominican Diary, and others, who commonly hand down that he died on the day XV July. Yet Father Dominic Herreus in the Holy Year of the Order of Preachers printed in Flemish, and Father Frederick Steil in the spiritual Pleasure-garden of the Order of St. Dominic, edited at Cologne in the year 1676 in German, place him with Rechac on the day XVI of the same month. Clement XI indeed in the Brief, which we exhibited at number 8, constituted his first solemnity on the sixteenth day of July, and granted plenary indulgences to the faithful duly celebrating it. But thence it does not follow that he died on that day, since often on account of the concourse of the festivity or other causes the feasts of the Saints are transferred to another day. We, however, insert him on this day, on which he is venerated, into our Acts, and now subjoin his Life collected by Bzovius, and collated with the Wrocław Manuscript.
THE ACTS
By the Reverend Father Abraham Bzovius of the Order of Preachers.
Collated with the Manuscript fragments of the Wrocław monastery of St. Adalbert.
Ceslaus Odrowąż, Confessor of the Order of Preachers, at Wrocław in Silesia (B.)
BY A. BZOVIUS.
PROLOGUE.
The century a was being passed, the hundredth above the thousandth from the Virgin birth, in which the Church labored no less from the ruined morals of the citizens The author describes the wretched state of the Church, than from the madness of the heretics. It was oppressed by grave tyranny by Otto, the second b Emperor of that name. The obstinacy of some of the Eastern and Western men had rent it with much schism, and, that nothing might be lacking for the calamity, Almeric c, fallen from Orcus, with an innumerable phalanx of the Albigenses, breathed savage wraths against it. From the rebellion of Otto, which he had stirred up against Innocent III, Supreme Pontiff, in Hungary, Bohemia, Germany, Poland, and other most ample kingdoms, impiety and the unbridled lust of morals flew about everywhere.
[2] The precentors of evils came forth one after another as if by agreement, Frederick, Conrad, to which, afflicted on every side, William, Mieszko, Béla, Ladislaus, and other dynasts in the northern kingdoms, or rather monsters of nature, to whose example the rest of the vulgar was hurried everywhere, as if maddened by error and folly. The heretics then, having obtained an opportune occasion, plied their business not sluggishly; they set fire to sacred buildings, slew priests with the impious sword, profaned the symbols of Religion with wicked hands, contrived slaughter for all the good. Truly then could that be said: "The boar out of the wood has laid it waste, and the singular wild beast has devoured it." That heresy had pervaded all Italy, the Gauls, and the Spains d, and had defiled all things with slaughters, flames, debaucheries, sacrilege.
[3] there succored, besides others, St. Dominic, Lest the Church should by this destruction be blotted out or weakened, He set against it Dominic and Francis, the standard-bearers of the Religions strenuously fighting against impiety, and their other reserves, who might quench the wrath of the Godhead burning against the outrages, and preserve the Church, where rent by schism, whole and sound; where assailed and thus tottering by heresy, prop it up; where also defiled by the crime of many, expiate it, and cultivate it with the utmost zeal. To Innocent III, the supreme Prelate, sleeping, the Lateran church, the mother of all, seemed to fall, unless Dominic and Francis had set their arms beneath it; the one by the acrimony of doctrine, the other by the rigor of discipline. By this Francis medicated the cancers and abscesses of the citizens, by that Dominic detected the pestilences creeping in the darkness, and destroying many with a deadly plague, drove them off, and caught in their own astuteness those to whom hope had shone of drawing into the net of error souls illumined by the light of truth.
[4] with his companions and especially St. Hyacinth and Bl. Ceslaus. The burden imposed upon him the patriarch Dominic, the labor being shared, divided among his disciples, of whom the North gave him a noble pair, Hyacinth and Ceslaus Odrowąż e, two thunderbolts to lay low, and props to hold up the tottering; truly Brothers of the race of the gods: for so it is right to call them; for each, as if they had been brought forth from a heavenly bosom, adorned, amplified the Church with so great an ardor of soul, and with opposing breast defended it against every onset of Satan, that they were reckoned not unequal to the ancient propagators and champions of the Christian faith. Their fatherland was Poland f, their stock that of the Odrowąż from Konskie, fruitful in men most illustrious in the toga, and the war-cloak, and the mitre. Their parent was Eustace the Count, son of Saul, and great-great-grandson of Andrew, formerly bishop of Moravia, great in soul, most illustrious in deeds. Of this bishop Andrew the most illustrious praise is in Hájek g at the year 1092, who asserts that that stock was already then held by all as most ancient.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER I.
Bl. Ceslaus' fatherland, name, boyhood, studies, virtues, and deeds before the religious state.
Ceslaus was born in the village of Kamień a, of the toparchy of Opole and the diocese of Wrocław, above the year of the Lord one thousand one hundred and eighty from the redemption of the world. Bl. Ceslaus, according to the etymology of his name, Suffused with the living stream in the Catholic church, he bore the name Ceslaus, proper to one of the five martyr full brothers of St. Adalbert, Archbishop of Prague and martyr. Bzovius here inserts a history which pertains to St. Adalbert, bishop of Prague, and which we, on the day XXIII April, among the miracles of St. Adalbert, collected from the Annals of the Bohemians, gave. Here therefore, that being omitted, we pursue the Acts of Bl. Ceslaus. Of one of those five martyrs our Divine received the name. [Nor by chance fortune, but by divine predetermination: for by this token the infant was pre-signified, that, when he should grow up in age, he ought to yield to the praise scattered by vain and false rumor, which fleeting many pursue; or also that, with lofty soul despising earthly things, and thinking himself born for heaven not for the mire, he should be, as you might name him, Ceslauny b, on account of the glory of his deeds, and his immense merits toward the Christian commonwealth, worthy of immortal fame.]
[6] Still in the cradle there shone forth from the little boy's countenance and eyes something divine, putting itself forth by a certain silent force, in infancy, which portended that he himself would be great. For the little tender one, to raise to heaven his hands [*], which he was unable to bring food, to beat his little breast, first to ruminate to himself with mouth something stammering, turned toward heaven,
and to send forth frequent sighs, rather than to utter a word; to be carried more gladly to the church than to the cradle, and to behold in it the sacred rites of the Christian people, he had learned and been wont more eagerly than to suck the breasts.
[7] The boy, weaned from the milk, since he was like soft clay, easily following the hand of the fashioner, drew from paternal discipline first of all that wisdom. and boyhood, To venerate the Godhead of heaven piously, holily, modestly according to the ancient rite; to reckon himself born not for himself, but for illustrating his country and stock; accordingly to consider himself bound by strict right and custom; to aspire with precocious sense to the best and highest things; to preserve his mind from vanity, his little body from stain; to have modesty in his countenance, courtesy in his intercourse with all: nothing of jest, to do all things as serious, seriously; [not only to be ashamed of that which was unbecoming, but to be irked by it; to beware the beginnings of evils, no otherwise than of diseases; to decline the familiarity of the wanton, especially the Sirens, sweet unto destruction, who at the very threshold choke the premature age with sweet ticklings; to suffer the extremes rather than to prepare his soul for outrage.]
[8] he shows tokens of future sanctity; The parents, when they saw these seeds of virtues sprouting in Ceslaus, and also heard him, then when he had withdrawn himself from them, now, solitary, preconceiving something great, now, surrounded by a troop of boys, feigning himself a priest or herald of the divine word, and designating for himself someone more insolent, upon whom with sterner countenance and speech he might animadvert, from this first as it were sprouting age easily gathering the abundance of the future harvest, conceived great hope of erudition and virtue concerning him. [And that nothing of that cultivation might be lacking, at the very threshold of youth they adjoined to him tutors of great and proven virtue, by whose doctrine and intercourse, by the study of wisdom, and by examples of probity, he might be formed.] And since he had brought a keen genius to perceiving and investigating all things, easily by their diligence, the seeds of all-kinds of erudition were stirred up in him, and the precepts of discipline passed into him with happy progress.
[9] then greatly profiting in doctrine, Beyond his age, he drew in to the nail all those sciences, both those which are learned for the sake of elegance and those for the sake of prudence. Neither difficulty nor obscurity could deter him from the knowledge of the most beautiful things, [nay these were the keener goads, to raise himself to those things which are sublime. Wherefore not only the hidden things of philosophy, but also of divine theology, he searched with sagacious desire; and both by frequent hearing, and by continual reading, and by pertinacious contemplation, he furnished his breast as a library of Christ; and that learning which brings so much weariness and labor to youth, ignorant of immortality, he overcame and broke with such constancy of soul, that of him too it was openly said, that he and Hyacinth alone were wise, the rest were carried as shadows.]
[10] he joins virtue to it, Traversing the Athenaeum of Paris and of Bologna, by the will of his parents lest he should be to them a Homeric Telemachus, idle at home, he kindled the tinder of erudition with such ardor that not wandering foolish, changing neither his heaven nor his soul, but he was held a great inquirer of things. Accordingly, when he had bestowed notable labor on philosophy and theology, and had joined himself to the highest men, he merited the laurel of the more divine science and of jurisprudence, by the public vote of all, at Bologna in the secret dwelling of wisdom. [And since he judged only those worthy of God and of doing things excellently who are equally imbued with knowledge and with probity, to the height of doctrine he joined the same.
[11] and guards himself against vices, For in far pilgrimages, among those peoples who are no less fertile of the dregs of the corrupt than of the good; in that age in which Satan moves every stone, that pious young men may dedicate themselves to nefarious crimes, he kept himself uncontaminated, and truly a Ulysses, neither maddened by the delights, nor softened by blandishments, nor enervated by enticements, nay by parsimony, continence, moderation of both mind and senses, he so bound himself that already not obscure vestiges of future sanctity appeared in him.] Against every foreign contagion he had forearmed himself, as with an antidote, both with most salutary precepts and with the examples of his elders. "My ancestors," he said, "consecrated their names to immortality, by piety, religion, temperance, and other divine ornaments; to me also their old praises are not to be obscured by blemishes, but to be illustrated by the same honors, and heaped up."
[12] While many allurements assailed his mind, that he might betray his chastity, and exhorts. he tamed the various head of this licking and killing hydra by the custody of his senses, by the study of solitude, by the reading of sacred things, by fastings and vigils, and by another various kind of arms. "Conquer," he said, "thy desire, Ceslaus: this spark kindles a great conflagration. This Circean cup deforms into brutes. Nothing is more insidious than poisoned honey, nothing more dangerous, nothing more effective to emasculate a man than a sweet titillation. Hear that great one: Thou who with upright countenance seekest heaven, and liftest thy brow, bear thy soul also on high, lest, weighed down, the lower mind sink to the bottom, the body being raised higher. Meditate lofty things, revolve them with arduous thought. To great endeavors great rewards. By daring and doing lofty things, thy estate will grow, thy glory too will grow; the laurel is ever green; the fame of right deeds never dies; the avenging flames of the baser things are not extinguished even by eternity."
[13] Bound by these precepts, Ceslaus sailed past the syrtes and charybdes, Returned into Poland for the integrity of his life in which innumerable are wrecked, with body untouched. On which account he had passed into the admiration of all, so that in his sight his companions feared to do anything base, nay even anything jesting, and if they wished to lead anyone as an example of chastity, they showed Ceslaus, prince of youth perfect in every point of virtue. Returned to his country, when he had given a specimen of noble disposition and sanctity, he delighted by his coming Ivo c his uncle, bishop of Cracow, and chancellor of the monarch Leszek d. And indeed, when he had had the dexterity of his prudence discerned, he wished him to gird his side.
[14] He co-opted him therefore into the college of the canons of the chair of Cracow, an honor being added, he is augmented with honors, which they call that of Guardian, in the church of Sandomierz. Admitted within the episcopal palace to conduct affairs, he applied a mind equal to his order and office. In the norm of living, with unspotted candor; in the administration, with keen skill and the highest integrity.] For he had not gone thither to canvass the palatine honors, which as dangerous rocks he fled with oars and sails; but because he knew that this was a shrine of virtue, a school of piety, and an arena of good exercise. Initiated into the sacred orders, he performed them, whether at home or abroad, with the highest devotion.
[15] and is set over the examining of ecclesiastical causes, Coming to the chapter, as they call it, to examine the ecclesiastical causes and the difficult causes of the afflicted, according to the prescription of his office [in which often the votes are numbered, not weighed, and either the greater or the more powerful part overcomes the better], he sanctioned his sentence not by hatred, not by love, but by zeal of truth and justice. [This one alone, as the surest thread of Theseus in escaping entangled controversies, he followed. The surname of Areopagite he could have claimed for himself, from his equity. He intrepidly opposed himself, lest his countrymen should be ruined before the tribunal of his uncle the chancellor, by the hatreds of informers, or by private rapines, or public exactions; and protected them, his authority being set against the perils.] Amid the storms and tempests of his country, stirred up now by princes, now by a certain clergy, now by seditious citizens, he had proposed to himself the public safety, to be defended with all zeal. [For the favor of no one ever, which certain palatine dogs, devouring the wealth of others with gaping jaws through hope and ambition, are wont to do, did he either grant a lie, or conceal the truth.]
[16] in which office he aids many, The wealth, not small, which he had possessed from his hereditary share and from an ecclesiastical benefice, he collected with a beneficent hand not for the drones of the court, nor the alluring harpies, or the ungrateful bound to him by blood, but for the adornment of the church, for the help of the more needy clergy, and for the alms of the poor. A frugal table was prepared for himself, a more liberal one for the priests and the beggars, of whom he called no small number daily. [The pernicious burden of a house, vehemently hostile to the Lord, friendly to the goods of the clergy—namely a long train of servants of vicious morals—he wished to be sent away from himself.] The youths of honest disposition, whom he fed by request, he formed to the pattern of the heavenly life.
[17] and lives holily. His house was called by the common vote a seminary of all virtue. For he himself became day by day greater than himself, by rigid innocence, by a soul unconquered by desires, by contempt of the favor and pleasures of this world; [which he knew to satiate or foster the greedy and sick mind with no remedies, but rather to infect it with sweet poisons, and to habituate it, not to free it from disease. His soul neither did prosperity lift up by its breath, nor, if any adversities befell, break down. In prosperity he moderated his soul, lest he should grow insolent by happy success; in the baser things, he bore the countenance of good fortune [*]. The mark at which he aimed was this, that he might approve himself to God, to the Church, to all good men, and render himself pleasing.] Thus constant in virtue on every side, polished and rounded, he was proclaimed, not only of his own family, but commonly of the Polish nation and church, as it were a certain deity, and in doubtful matters a pillar.
ANNOTATIONS.
* perhaps "manibus" (his hands).
* namely "of fortune."
CHAPTER II.
The occasion of his entrance into the Order of St. Dominic, the novitiate of the religious life, the foundations of monasteries, virtues, and apostolic labors.
The Church had then received Honorius the Third a as supreme hierarch. Going to him for the sake of recovering the Archiepiscopal dignity, Bl. Ceslaus, incited by the miracle of St. Dominic, Ivo Odrowąż, bishop of Cracow, uncle of Ceslaus, wished the same and Hyacinth to be the companions of his journey. When these had come to the City, they there found the Lord patriarch Dominic, famous for many virtues, raising from death to life, the divine aid being implored, Napoleon, nephew of Cardinal Stephen, dead from a most grievous collision of his members (a somewhat fierce horse had thrown him), in the church of St. Sixtus, three Cardinals and many citizens as well as strangers looking on b.
There was present at the spectacle also Andrew, Prelate of Prague, who had suffered grave calamities from Přemysl Ottokar, King of the Bohemians, on account of the ecclesiastical immunities which the King wished to be diminished, and moreover was driven from his see and country. All being turned into stupor by the miracle wrought, decreed to Dominic the highest veneration of sanctity.
[19] But Ivo and Andrew, each solicitous for his flock, wearied Dominic with prayers that he would deign to grant some companions of his institute to the North; asks to be admitted into the Order of Preachers, who might both inflame those congealed by the frost of malice, and rouse those sleeping in lethargy to the sight of the true light. And Dominic having no one who knew the idiom of the nation, behold, men driven by the divine Spirit, long aspiring to the perfection of the heavenly life, Hyacinth and Ceslaus Odrowąż the brothers, Henry the Moravian, and Hermann the German, familiars of Ivo, leaped into the midst, demanding of Dominic that their necks be adorned with the far sweetest yoke of religion. Dominic assented, received, and clothed them with the preacher's gown in the most religious monastery of St. Sabina. It moved Ceslaus to embrace this kind of life, both his contempt of the world and of his fortunes, and his immense love of heavenly things, for the rousing of which he had seen religious poverty and humility to be no small fan.
[20] Received into the formula of the disciples of Dominic, he prayed for himself his virtue and felicity. [As the foundation and base of the after-building, and, admitted into it, the novitiate being performed, he laid deep first of all the abjection of himself. Nothing was so lowly, of which he judged himself unworthy. Obedience, and that blind and eager to obey, he built upon it.] He had ears attentive to command, hands prompt to work, feet ready for going at the nod of Dominic. Nothing had been so arduous or difficult which he would not in a moment undertake or execute, when the authority of Dominic had enjoined it upon him. "It is mine," he said, "to obey, not to inquire into the sentence of the elder." A diligent cultivator of poverty, wealth and the necessities of life, which he had before contemned, he did not a whit look upon even with a sinister eye. A most vigilant guardian of chastity. In prayer and meditation wakeful all night. In various affliction of the body severe upon himself. [That he might not be first among his fellow-soldiers, he strove with the utmost force toward the emulation of the deeds of Dominic.] In sum, so great a splendor of soul, and so great a magnitude was present, that he did not hesitate to claim for himself all things which were Dominic's.
[21] he is sent by St. Dominic to the gain of souls, The course of the novitiate being finished, in which he not only equaled but surpassed many veterans, summoned together with his companions, in the hands of Dominic he swore, in words conceived according to the prescription of the laws of the Order of Preachers, to lead to death the life begun with auspicious foot. By whom a little after he was sent to his own household with commands: that first of all he should by every means care for the amplification of the Church and of the Order, which consists especially in the salvation of souls. [That from the discipline which he once admitted into his breast he should not decline a nail's breadth, nay should imbue many others with the same,] and should sedulously apply himself to the study of the heavenly doctrine, especially from the codex of charity. "Go," he said, "in the name of God, to announce penance and the remission of sins. This is the office of the Order undertaken, these the parts, these the honors. Whoever shall convert one straying from the error of his way, both shall save his soul, and shall heap up for himself an inestimable reward."
[22] and at Prague founds a monastery, The command of Dominic, which he had given in common to himself and to others, Ceslaus obeyed no less than the others. Returning to his own, in erecting the monastery of Friesach c, which was the origin of the other monasteries of Germany, he bore no sluggish labor for Brother Hyacinth. Sent by him to Prague, the metropolis of Bohemia, together with Henry the Moravian d, he found Andrew the bishop, now returned from the City, reconciled to King Přemysl by the work of Gregory Crescentius, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church of the Apostolic See, whom they call Legate a latere. By all these, on account of the unwonted sanctity of his life, and the eloquence of speaking the word of God near apostolic, held in the highest honor; by the care and impulse of the Cardinal Legate and of Andrew the bishop, he obtained from the King the church of St. Clement in the outskirts of the Vltava e, where now is the new city of Prague over against the royal court, with a most ample monastery, in which a hundred companions of his family might pay both the nocturnal and daily praises to the Most High. Which, since it was not capable of so great a multitude of those who, seized by the divine spirit, bade the world their last farewell, some years after f was translated by the same King Přemysl and Wenceslaus to another church likewise of St. Clement, founded formerly by the admonition of an angel by King Ladislaus in the greater city.
[23] There were now numbered of the Brothers of the new plantation six and twenty above a hundred, where he acquires many brothers, who were in the clergy, when they were transferred into the new colony then. Various and precious furniture of gold, silver, pearls, and stone of rare workmanship the King had bestowed on that church, among which were reckoned twenty-four silver-gilt chalices, and a cross of fifteen pounds' weight of silver for the adornment of the altar. Very many things had added also Peregrinus [g, the successor of Andrew, a man, as Hájek writes, simple, upright, and a lover of quiet more than of dignity; which that he might find in the common asylum of peace, laying his feet at the feet of Honorius III, Supreme Pontiff, he chose the monastic life, and, turning aside to the monastery of St. Clement, embraced the discipline of Bl. Ceslaus, which he had instituted.]
[24] To his mastership gave themselves also other men notable in their time, imitators of his life; Jaroslaus of Rostock, Henry of Ryczanów, and Bl. Adrian, who, having discharged the office of Prior at Prague, not long after sent to Bosnia h, together with twenty-six brothers impaled on a stake by the Turks, not long after bore off the glorious trophy of the faith. The same institute of the religious life embraced also Margaret i, daughter of Leopold, archduke of Austria, left widow of Henry, King of the Romans, and afterward repudiated as wife by Přemysl Ottokar k, King of Bohemia, on account of sterility, enrolled in the monastery of virgins which Ceslaus left, for humility among those whom they call conversae.]
[25] Having stayed a little while at Prague, when he had founded the religion of the Preachers flourishing with excellent institutes, then a monastery being erected at Wrocław, and established it by his examples, he hastened to Wrocław. There, when he proved with deeds the fame of his virtue before scattered, and led many mortals to the state of a better life by word and example in the church of St. Martin, by the munificence of Laurence the prelate, he received the church of St. Adalbert at Wrocław and an area for erecting a monastery. He omitted nothing at Wrocław of those things which at Prague he had done for the gaining of souls. His daily rule of living was this: By night, being at leisure for contemplation in the church, he raised himself to the heavens [and bore himself up. There the joys, which blind mortals despise, and esteem as a hair, he read with eager mind.]
[26] Again unrolling the mockery of human casualties, he vehemently marveled that men should marvel at and love these perils illustrious for various virtues, which await those walking by oblique paths. [But especially that they should already kindle for themselves the flames of eternal fire, while the fervent love of possessing, fiercer than the fires of Aetna, burns these; the heat of lust boils down others; anger tortures these; grief wearies those; slippery hope racks others; other desires drag others through byways to everlasting destruction.] He wept over the lot of sinners, that they should wish to be exiles from the heavenly kingdom; and those whom by day he formed to virtue, these by night he covered with the shield of prayers from the divine wrath. Then with iron scourges, not only that he might blunt the goads of desires and the sparks in a plainly dead body, and quench them with his own gore, but also that he might so much the more easily merit the salvation of the lost, he was wont to lacerate himself even to the shedding of blood.
[27] Most sparing of sleep; [if ever he was pressed by the necessity of nature, he used nothing but a stone placed under him, he prepares himself to gain souls, for a most soft pillow. Wherefore, having attained also the acrimony of James, he penetrated the poles of the heavens with his eyes, and not only perceived innumerable admirable things, a keen searcher, but, conscious of future things, foretold them.] To Prince Henry, son of the divine Hedwig, and also to all Silesia he long before foresaw and foretold the immense calamity brought by the Tartars. What of the nocturnal time remained over from prayer and contemplation, he spent on books, [that thence he might bring forth what he might abundantly set before the people laboring in hunger of the word of God. That hour dedicated to the study of wisdom he by no means suffered to be taken away by sleep, or by any occupation, although he had come to the summit of wisdom not so much by reading as by the assiduity of praying and contemplating. Since he knew from the common preface of the sacred rites that those whose hands are not pure are barred from the sacred things, with much zeal he took care not to contaminate himself with any offense.] His conscience being washed from trifling things, with eyes overflowing with weeping, he daily offered the host consecrated to God.
[28] and kindled with apostolic zeal [The sweetness of the heavenly doctrine, more fully fore-drunk, he could not contain, but that he should belch forth the good word to the thirsting. From the sacred prayers therefore his honeyed eloquence snatched away the silent and attentive people. The sweetness of his speech, tempered with sharpness, fixed those greedy to hear, and astonished with ears erect. From his speech a certain flame flashed forth, by which he not only illumined, but bent; while he raised virtues, lightened vices, and, the horrid punishments of hell and the ineffable joys of the heavens being shown, sowed the former, drove off the latter. How many slippery ones did he cast down from a crime begun and now almost perpetrated? How many already sunk into the pit of sins did he draw out? How very many did he gather as champions under the standard of Christ, strenuously fighting against the phalanxes of Satan? How innumerable wanderers did he lead back to the bosom of the church, and receive with open arms?] From his doctrine, tongue, morals, and the whole reckoning of life, peoples very many at a distance, but especially the Poles, Bohemians, Moravians, Saxons, Pomeranians, Prussians, all these sprung from Mars and augmented and nourished by Martial affairs, drew piety and religion, plainly contrary to their former life.
[29] he traverses many regions. From his discipline that admirable divine Hedwig l, wife of Prince Henry the Bearded, learned to have repudiated the use of matrimony before dissolving the bond to be loosed by death alone; when, some children being begotten, she first bound herself by a vow of perennial chastity, and enticed her husband to the same imitation of the angelic life. He himself leading the dance, innumerable men illustrious in the glory of nobility, in wealth, and in dignity, entering the cloistral choir, spurned all those things of bland and lofty show, and embraced the summit of perfection in poverty. [And so he opened to religious fame provinces unknown; nor did he cease to scatter the seeds of a purer life before that, within the Hercynian forest m, the river Elbe n, and the Baltic sea o, there was lacking what he might sow with the doctrine of Christ.] An innumerable number of monasteries in those provinces, he being the author, came forth by the beneficence of the pious, in which those following the heavenly manner of living made of earth a heaven, as it were sprinkled with so many stars, or filled with angels living in the flesh beyond the flesh.
ANNOTATIONS.
setting-out to this Pontiff, bishop of Cracow, and the cause of that setting-out, which Bzovius here confounded, we said some things in the preliminary Commentary number 17.
CHAPTER III.
Miracles, administration of the Polish province, the prodigious deliverance of the castle of Wrocław, confirmed by the testimonies of writers.
Bl. Ceslaus, gaping after the gain of souls, He ran out most frequently into the villages, the markets, and the crossroads of the ways; that if he should find any weak or lame gospel-poor, he might refresh them with the food of vital nourishment, and strengthen the tottering. [He was scorched by the noonday sun; his members, scarcely cohering to him, dripped with almost bloody sweat; his jaws were parched with thirst; for the rest, he was neither wearied nor broken by the intemperance of the sky, nor by the toil of the journey or the labor, from seeking the sheep straying from the right path, directing the wandering, and instilling into their minds the things salutarily observed.] It happened that one of the days he was hastening across the Oder a for the sake of the divine word. This he found, its channel overflowing, to have frightened off and utterly driven away the boatmen who met him from crossing.
[31] he prodigiously crosses a river, He was urged by the desire of gaining the souls bought with the blood of God, for whom, though they asked, there was no one to break bread, but he was held back by the barrier of the swelling waters. No boatman then, no skiff was seen. What should he do? He conceived the hope of attempting a great thing. "I know," he said, "that to my Savior, going to seek out the lost, the sea offered itself solid. Nor to me, burning with the same love, I believe, will the Oder set itself liquid beneath." Soon, drawing off his cope, he spread it upon the waters flowing past; and by the power by which Christ commanded the sea and the winds, he commands the swift and far-and-wide stagnating river. Then, fortified with the sign of the Cross, he stood upon the garment, and thus more happily than by a boat, wet with no moisture, swam across. To those oppressed by grave calamity he brought the greatest help he could; and if he could not help any, he consoled them with his commiseration.
[32] At Wrocław a certain mother had an only little infant. He, crawling above the Oder, he recalls to life an infant submerged for eight days, by chance slips, is submerged, and lies for whole eight days overwhelmed in the waters as in a thicket. The mother, stricken with grief, when after eight days she had received the little boy sought and found dead, trust being placed in the merits of Ceslaus, carries him to his feet. She begs him to deign to play Elijah, and to restore soul and life to the dead infant. He, prostrate on his knees, when he had begged the author of life and death with a most humble and most ardent prayer, upheld by hope in God, commands the infant to rise. "In the name," he said, "of Him who gives the word to those who evangelize with much power, arise." He had spoken, and in a moment the vital spirit returned to the bloodless little body, and soon changed the livid into rosy, with many looking on.
[33] Three others, intercepted by various kinds of death, by his prayers returned to the enjoyment of life by postliminy. and he works other miracles, There was no one, though cast down by a piteous chance, or by an infirmity abandoned by the medical hand fixed to his bed, who was not by the work of Ceslaus either relieved or healed. To the blind he bestowed sight, to the deaf ears, to the languishing strength, to the lame feet, to the fevered the first governance of the body, and to others, afflicted by another kind of disease, health; nay, having obtained great power also against the demons, he drove them from the possessed by a word.
[34] [But no more did these things adorn him than his loftiness of soul, by which the exercise of many virtues, his innocence of mind, his zeal of preserving virginity, his parsimony of diet, a certain sweetness of morals mixed with severity, his patience of labors, his ardor of propagating religion, his desire of the salvation of souls, his profound humbling of himself, by which he showed himself a disciple of Dominic, nay proved himself like him in all things.] In prayer, he was caught outside himself above himself. That nothing mortal might cleave to him, he attended in every way. [He saw through the cunning of the old trickster, who assailed him by guile, by force, secretly, openly, in all manners, at all hours, and now allured him with blandishments, now pressed him with terrors, that he might contaminate his innocence, and turn him aside from the tenor of his constancy; he spat upon his force, disarmed his wrath, and, fixing his eyes on Christ the president of the contest, trod down with his foot the crafty one, wearied at the very threshold.]
[35] For the unspotted chastity of his body he kept watch over his senses; and especially the custody of chastity adds splendor to them. [and not only that which could entice, but he fled also all occasions of stirring the extinguished tinder.] To this end he protracted his fasting for many days; he had forbidden himself flesh even in the greatest sickness. His little body, eaten away and exhausted by labors and fastings, he made bloody each night with an iron chainlet. [He must have been of an almost iron body and soul, whom neither so great a rigor here, nor even old age itself dissolving all things broke, nor did the esteem of kingdoms and provinces, which they had conceived of his true virtues, puff up with pride.]
[36] To the prefecture of the province of Poland, which then was contained by the kingdom of Bohemia and Poland and the most ample toparchies adjoined, elected Provincial of Poland, after Brother Hyacinth b, a little after being assumed by the will of Bl. Jordan, Master General, he brought nothing but the common zeal of good men, in all commands more severe upon himself than upon his own. With the greatest commiseration upon the infirm, and those wavering and tottering in their station, he poured on their ulcers oil rather than medicated wine. [He had been first to the work than to the precepts; accordingly he attempted that of a certain abbot, to teach nothing which he had not first done. He refused nothing whereby he might bestow labor on adorning and amplifying religion. In arduous matters he required not the opinion of himself alone, although inspired by the divine spirit, but of good men, and this he preferred to his own.]
[37] he diligently administers the office, The province, though then most vast, he went about on foot. In the censure of morals he so played the delayer that scarcely did he proceed against those in whom he trusted. The form of administration which he held he measured not by the popular breeze, but by the truth of conscience and the balance of justice. From right to wrong no one ever drew him. He wished no hour of his governance to be ill spent. [Material for doing things, lest a silent virtue should grow old, he both desired and hunted for, not on account of desire of glory or praise, but because he judged himself given to religion.]
[38] and, that office being discharged, he lives piously at Wrocław. His magistracy being ended, he laid down the fasces, and passed the rest of the time at Wrocław in the same tenor of life. The Brothers exhorted him to indulge himself somewhat and not so greatly to slay himself with fastings, vigils, and scourges. He desired to be restless. The same custom of his of passing the night in the church, the same maceration of the flesh, continued fastings, the daily use of reciting the sacred rites, the unwearied zeal of preaching and of labors for the Church of God. "It is not true love," he said, "which is not jealous and perpetual."
[39] The Tartars, besieging the castle of Wrocław, About this time befell the calamity which he had long ago foretold with prophetic mouth, to all Poland and Silesia. The most ferocious nation of the Scythians c, the Dnieper d being crossed, had laid waste all Poland far and wide with slaughters and flames; and, being warded off by no garrisons set against them, ranged also through Silesia; and girt with a siege Wrocław too, the bulwark of the province. When the hostile fury displayed on this side fires for the buildings, on that side swords for the necks of the men of Wrocław, all the citizens, the city being abandoned, had betaken themselves into the castle, fortified as best it could be. The wretched ones saw not how to defend themselves. By the river? It offered itself fordable. By walls set against them? These could easily catch fire. By a chosen strength of soldiers? But they had enlisted none.
[40] he prodigiously compels them to flee, To Ceslaus, who was then present, they turn their eyes; they implore his help in the now open peril of life and fortunes. By the example of Moses, laying low the Amalekites with hand outstretched,
they urge him to dare some marvelous deed. He gave himself to prayers, and, the sacred host being offered, cast himself in for all. And when he had climbed the walls of the castle, that with his breast, armed with the shield of faith, he might defend the afflicted from the enemy, behold, a certain soothing and, as it were, licking flame of harmless light, fallen upon him from heaven, illumined his head with the appearance of a globe. Which globe the enemies straightway experiencing to fly about within their own camp, and to consume many, they freed the city from the siege, the citizens from the fear of death.
[41] which miracle Miechów and Cromer narrate, [Thus Miechów from John Długosz. "And to Wrocław," he writes, "the Tartars came down, and finding nothing in the city, walled up the castle, and after some days raising the siege (as they say, by the prayers and tears of Ceslaus, Prior of the Order of Preachers, and of his Brothers, admitted into the castle) they withdrew, driven off." But Cromer more fully adds. "The Tartars," he says, "from Wrocław, their undertaking being vain, departed like men fleeing, terrified, as was afterward ascertained, by a divine portent, which was of this kind: Ceslaus, one of the companions of Ivo, bishop of Cracow, having professed at Rome the institute of St. Dominic, presided over the convent of St. Adalbert at Wrocław, and at the first tumult had fled with his other companions into the castle. As he therefore with continual prayers and tears implored the mercy of God and the driving off of the present peril, behold a fiery column appeared from heaven, and lit up the encampment of the Tartars and the whole territory with an immense and terrible splendor. By this miracle the barbarians, thoroughly terrified, hesitating not at all, raised the siege."]
[42] Curaeus e, although a heretic, of the Lutheran sect, and Curaeus himself, a Lutheran heretic, the name of Ceslaus being suppressed, after his envious manner, adds still further: "To Wrocław," he says, "the Tartars were brought, hoping from that city, which they had learned to be the capital in Silesia, a rich booty; but since that city at that age was not yet strong in military strength, and was little fortified, the citizens had carried their goods into the castle, but they themselves had departed; then the garrison-men had set fire to the roofs, lest the enemy should enjoy them. The Tartars, deceived in their hope, undertake a terrible assault of the castle. But there was manifestly beheld the presence of God defending some relics of the Church: for the Tartars were terrified by flames falling from heaven, and running about widely among their ranks, and thus by the prayers of the pious they were driven back from the castle, as once Attila from the city of Orléans in Gaul by lightnings and thunder."
[43] But the Annals of the Monastery f have it thus written: and also the Annals of the monastery of Wrocław. "Blessed Ceslaus, a Pole by nation, from Bl. Dominic, together with Bl. Hyacinth, received the habit of the Order at Rome, and shone with marvelous signs and prodigies in Poland and Silesia. He, about the year of the Lord 1241, when Poland and Silesia were being devastated by the rage of the Tartars, being in the castle of the renowned city of Wrocław with other faithful of Christ, by his prayers powerfully defended the city from their madness. For as he prayed, a fiery globe appeared over his head; by which the terrified legions of the Tartars took the refuge of flight, and, departing, left the city untouched. At his venerable sepulcher also, even to this day, the dead are raised, and those oppressed by various languors, at the invocation of his name, by his merits are graciously delivered." Nay the same Annals add this also, that many of those Scythians, who indeed had the appearance of men, but in morals and rites were more savage than any barbarians, nay than the most rapacious beasts, the prodigy being seen, their ferocity being laid aside with idolatry, gave their names to the Religion of the Preachers; and in it, when they had made the greatest progress in virtues under the mastership of Ceslaus, they gave great labor, with the other Brothers of the province, to the conversion of their gentile fellows.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER IV.
The exhortation of the dying Bl. Ceslaus to his Brothers, certain testimonies concerning him, and miracles after death.
Bl. Ceslaus, conscious of his death, At last, when now not by the false opinions of the vulgar, but by the cultivation of true virtue, Ceslaus had acquired a great name, and had brought the Religion of the Preachers to the far-remote North, he recognized by divine admonition that the end of his labors was imminent to him at hand. To this therefore he gave himself wholly, that he might prepare himself for the meeting of the great Judge, [lest He, who searches Jerusalem with lamps, when He should be present, should detect anything of adulterine color in His image.] He burned moreover with the highest desire to fly away as soon as possible to the fountain of eternal felicity.
[45] On the day before the Ides of July, which was the last but one of his combat, his body being now worn out by labors, full of hope he consoles the Brothers, old age, and fevers, but his spirit more keenly vigorous, prostrate on the ground upon hard straw, the Brothers being summoned, he announces that he, now weary of the present life, desires and ought to render to God the soul which up to that time he had preserved for the Church and religion. "As far as concerns me," he said, "sons, be not anxious. [Propitious, I hope, will God be to me, once a keen spectator of my cares, and now a just and at the same time merciful judge. The course of mortal life, if I have run it for His praise, as I think, and in this arena have borne myself an unconquered wrestler, He will be present to me, decreeing rewards and crowns.] For you, whom in body indeed, not in soul, I desert, the care presses me. Accordingly, since I can no longer pass my days with you, I appoint you heirs in full of my riches. These, however, are those which I carry with me even into the heavenly treasure, nor shall a late hour snatch them from me, but the day shall heap them up."
[46] "[You have perceived the state of the goods of body and fortune, and having exhorted them to the contempt of the world, namely] that wealth is the incitement of evils, that delights and the great enticements of the world are manifold hidden snares, having great causes not for disease, but for destruction too. That the appetite of them is full of anxiety, the satiety of penitence; that fortune plays continually the game of inconstancy, and turns its wheel in a rolling orbit; accordingly mingles the lowest with the highest, the highest with the lowest; that the sweetness of human felicity is besprinkled with much bitterness. I both teaching and going before, you have fled these sad outcomes of pleasures; you have left the fugitive riches; you have spurned the ambiguous countenances of the blind deity; from the rough place in which you were stuck, you have flown to the seat of security and stability. Do not therefore, by the example of Lot's wife, look back behind; nor, after the Hebrew manner, any longer think of the yokes of Egypt, or impose them on yourselves. God wished you to excel all earthly things; it is not fitting to let down and thrust your dignity below these lowest things, but to aspire to the high things, to which it is not lawful for the rashness and folly of the earth-born. To your endeavors set before you not earth, but heaven.]"
[47] "Buy for yourselves those wealths, delights, and dignities obedience, which no day shall wear away, no bitterness besprinkle, no power chill. [Purchase for yourselves the venerable name of the world at the price of a glorious life. To the wandering mind in the various and doubtful surge of thoughts, cast, as a sacred anchor, obedience. Judge the commands of your elders those of God. Their directing rod, as a cynosure to those sailing on a vast and blind sea, set fixed before you. To obey these, reckon the summit of perfection. Poverty, the most apt instrument for living well and blessedly, sustain with willing mind. In this sober and girt-up fortune nothing of those things which are necessary for prolonging life to the praise of God will be lacking to you; nay all things will be present, when God is present. To those enrolled in God's lot is promised a hundredfold for a single, nay even for nothing. To these is granted as it were a royal honor and dominion; namely to know the senses of God hidden from the ages, to expiate the sins of men, to bind and loose souls, to restrain and rout the aerial powers, to overleap the laws of nature, to have the right of life and death, to live with the angels, to attain the fellowship of the divine blessedness, and to be happy forever, not for one day.]"
[48] "Chastity too, which ought to be your honor and ornament, and having exhorted them to the other virtues, keep not only unspotted, but also uncontaminated by every sinister rumor. It is not enough to be away from crime, unless you also escape the suspicion of crime. Emulate profound humility. [The heavy ears of grain are bent down; so you, if imbued with true virtues. As the moon pours back to the world the light which it receives from the sun; so you the gifts conferred by God for the advantage of the Church. Let the glory of the deeds of Dominic, whether you sleep or wake, be before your eyes. By this way, which he trod before, one goes to the stars]." These and other admonitions he spoke to his sons weeping around him.
[49] he piously departs from this life. Hence on the morrow, namely on the very Ides of July, when he had now proved himself by sacred confession, he received the consecrated host with panting heart; and beating his aged breast, weeping he addressed the leader of life. "Lord," he said, "Thee alone have I desired; deign Thou also to admit me into Thy embrace." Soon, when he had been anointed with the sacred oil after the custom of the Church, and had said the last farewell to the wailing Brothers, several times devoutly invoking the name of Jesus, he breathed out his holy soul into the hands of his Creator. A man wholly composed of wisdom and sanctity, born for religion and the Church; great in soul and counsel, greatest in deeds. [Who, having suffered nothing human amid human things, having fought with nature, always departed victor, and, wearied by the long journey, never struck his foot; but bore his mind, entire and well conscious to itself, loosed from the earthly prison, into heaven.
[50] His elogium Thus concerning him the Annals of the monastery which, living, he founded at Wrocław. "Silesia deserved from God the most illustrious confessor of Christ Ceslaus, as an exalted and divine gift. Nothing more pleasant to it, nothing more useful, nothing more divine could be brought. As they say the sun ascends from the Ocean, so Ceslaus, from Poland about to illustrate all Silesia, still more Wrocław, emerged as a most splendid radiance, with his own and most upright,
and heavenly life, he allured lost men to honest and upright morals, fostered the good and frugal with exhortations, and aided Wrocław also greatly by his prayers. Whatever of virtue, whatever of proven work, whatever of heavenly grace was ever seen in a religious, all that shone forth in Bl. Ceslaus, who is truly worthy to be glorified. Him almighty God ceases not day by day more and more to adorn with immense miracles." And below.]
[51] from the Wrocław Annals, "Ceslaus, coming to Wrocław, the singular exemplar of all virtues, by the honesty of his life and his holy preaching recalled many wicked men and not a few dishonest men from baseness and crime, and converted them to the love of Christ and the zeal of living virtuously, and also led very many into the Order. For there was in him a sweetness of words in exhorting, in praising virtues a special abundance, and a most illustrious praise of doctrine and eloquence: [whence he efficaciously worked not only his own, but the salvation of not a few others, by word as well as by example. Whence this man is a herald of salvation, a witness of Christ, who bore witness to the truth, whose, according to his name, so also is his praise."]
[52] and from the inscription beneath his image. But in the church, beneath his image, which stands publicly displayed painted, antiquity subscribed to him such an elogium: "Blessed Ceslaus, a Pole by nation, of the first Brothers who received this place for a convent, in the year of the Lord 1226, the second Provincial of the Province of Poland, a man of great merit before God, who raised four dead, and shining with innumerable other tokens of miracles in life as well as after death, even to this present day. He finally delivered this our renowned city of Wrocław from the incursion of the Tartars by his prayers in the year of the Lord 1241; here in the church buried."
[53] Straightway from his death, a certain nun, On account of frequent miracles, having professed the institute of his life at St. Catherine's at Wrocław, but somewhat enticed by the suggestion of the tempter, had hesitated concerning his blessedness; to whom he soon appeared surrounded by the choir of the Apostles, and openly testified that he had been made a partaker of the glory of those whose perfection of life he had emulated, saying: "Associated," he said, "to the apostolic throne, I have been happily glorified"; he testified also by various miracles as indicators of his sanctity and blessedness: for as he sought heaven, he had ever from heaven been wont to aid his worshipers with the greatest help. At his sacred remains a perennial medicine gushed forth, the sick were healed, those beset by a demon were delivered, from death to life very many rose at the invocation of the Divine.
[54] On account of which marvelous deeds, not long after dug up from the earth, he was already from the year 1330 publicly venerated; and brought into the church—by the munificence of the citizens, but especially of Nicholas Slup of Wrocław, erected in the year of the Lord 1330 in that amplitude in which we now behold it—raised from under an altar consecrated under his invocation, he was held in the highest veneration of the people. The religious devotion of the elders had reposited his sacred pledges in a small casket, and closed them with an iron lock, [and even then pursued him with diverse cult, even to our times. For his images were both carved and painted, and honored with public honor; votive offerings, for a benefit received, were hung consecrated at his altar. Proper Offices of the Mass and of the Hours, both daily and nightly, were recited of him. Anniversary solemnities were celebrated with the accustomed rite of other festivities.
[55] Would that the detestable and impious heresy of Luther had not pervaded Silesia! but the heresy of Luther abolished his Acts and other monuments. we should have the monuments and documents of these, clearer than the sun, which that heresy scraped away and perhaps gave to Vulcan.] In the year of the Lord 1525, when the fury of the citizens raged against the churches of Wrocław, among the other precious things of the sacristy at St. Adalbert's, it snatched away the exact Annals of the monastery, and the commentaries of the Life and miracles of Bl. Ceslaus and of others. For that these existed Bl. Humbert testifies in his Chronicle of the Order of Preachers in these words: "Under Master Jordan there was given to the brothers the church of St. Adalbert, bishop and martyr, at Wrocław, by bishop Laurence, which brother Ceslaus, sent by him, received, who was there the first Prior, shining with many miracles, which even to today are had in writing in the same convent of Wrocław."
[56] Yet Bl. Ceslaus did not cease, nor the splendor of his miracles to shine. Afterward, however, he preserved two monasteries from fire, In the year of the Lord 1570 a fire stirred up at Wrocław was devouring all things around the monastery of St. Adalbert, in which he rests. Now fiery globes flying about were nearly scorching the roofs of the same church. Bl. Ceslaus brought help: for appearing from heaven with some still surviving even now while we write these things, he was seen, his mantle being set against, to ward off and extinguish the flames from the dwelling which, living, he had cultivated. It was the third feria after the feast of Corpus Christi on which these things happened. Not long after, namely in the year of the Lord 1585, the same one, fallen from heaven in plainly the same manner, brought help to the most religious monastery of the virgins of St. Catherine of his Order, imperiled by fires devastating the new market of Wrocław, of which benefit the devout virgins, mindful, have been wont to flee to him in the various afflictions of life. [Some of them, for the sake of a grateful mind, confess these things with entire faith.]
[57] and to various nuns, In the year of the Lord 1599 sister Dorothea Panckwietz, Subprioress, tossed by extreme illness, and now abandoned by the college of physicians, a vow being made to Bl. Ceslaus, recovered. In the year of the Lord 1603 sister Catherine, daughter of a wax-maker, gravely afflicted with a most intense pain of the feet, so that she could not walk, when she had caused the sacred rite of the Mass to be recited in honor of Bl. Ceslaus, in a moment, raised up, recovered her gait. The same, for her mother, held by a most grievous disease, promised a vow, fulfilled it, and beheld her mother unharmed by the intercession of Bl. Ceslaus. Sister Dorothea Majorissa was now almost struggling in the death-agony, and now breathing out her soul; when she had ordered a candle to burn by vow at the sepulcher of Bl. Ceslaus, it still burning and not consumed, she returned from the gate of death to life in the year of the Lord 1605.
[58] he succors those imploring his help; [The mother of sister Mary was almost at her last; her that sister had commended to the protection of Bl. Ceslaus; a vow being made, that if she recovered, she would take care to recite the sacred rite in honor of the five wounds of Christ at the altar of Bl. Ceslaus every Friday of one year. As soon as she fixed the vow, the next day she recognized her mother healed. The same, afflicted with a pain of one arm, a candle of such a length being offered, was cured at the altar of Bl. Ceslaus in the year of the Lord 1606.] Sister Barbara Majorissa suffered in the leg the same year 1606, with an incurable disease; when she had vowed the sacrifice of the Mass at the sepulcher of blessed Ceslaus, the pain being driven off, she rose, she walked a. [All these things they confessed in writing, compelled by the ecclesiastical censures pronounced by me, their unworthy Prior and Commissary, and Vicar of the Monasteries of Silesia of the Order of Preachers.]
[59] [nay, even by the confession of the heretics themselves, he relieved pains of the head.] Concerning the dust dug out from the place around the burial, I have heard very many of the heretics relate that innumerable persons, having used it to allay acute pains of the head, and to medicate other most sharp infirmities, obtained the benefit of health. For shame, and for fear of the magistrate b, they dare not publicly profess this. [Within the memory of our fathers there still stood votive tablets and waxen images hung up, for the memory of a benefit, at the altar of the blessed Man. A certain madman (whose name I keep silent, in case perchance he should come to his senses) struck them down, broke them, and turned them to profane uses. Him God gave over, in punishment of his sin, into a reprobate sense, even to now, when we were collecting these things from various fragments of antiquities.] To these Acts Bzovius wove a sufficiently prolix catalogue of illustrious men who came forth from the monastery which Bl. Ceslaus founded at Wrocław. But I have here omitted it, because it does not properly pertain to the Life of Bl. Ceslaus.
ANNOTATIONS.
APPENDIX
Concerning the translation of the Relics.
Ceslaus Odrowąż, Confessor of the Order of Preachers, at Wrocław in Silesia (B.)
FROM MANUSCRIPTS.
Since from the preface of the Reverend Father Rechac to the Life of Bl. Ceslaus I understood that certain things had been written by Abraham Bzovius, Bzovius in the Manuscript Annals of his Order, an eyewitness, concerning the translation of the sacred bones in the Annals of his Order, which are preserved in manuscript in the Paris convent of the Dominican Fathers, I straightway wrote to Paris, and, by the care of Father Charles Fleury, a priest of our Society, obtained thence from the Manuscript Annals a certain transcript, in which Bzovius, after certain benefits bestowed on the Nuns by the intercession of Bl. Ceslaus, and already narrated in the Acts numbers 56, 57, and 58, thus describes the translation of the Relics, accomplished by himself: "All these things they confessed in writing, compelled by the ecclesiastical censures pronounced by me, their unworthy Prior and Commissary, and Vicar of the Monasteries of Silesia of the Order of Preachers, in an examination brought forward in the year 1607, in which, from the old burial, with the consent of John the bishop and the whole college of the Canons of the Cathedral church, I translated the bones of Bl. Ceslaus, and brought them under the table of the altar of the neighboring chapel of the most blessed Virgin, a coffer being opened in the wall behind the altar, from the lower sacristy. From the lower sacristy of the church it was necessary to translate them. The piety and devotion of those running to the former burial, and digging out the dust salutary for diseases, had opened an aperture beneath, through which there lay open to the heretics an opportunity of dishonoring, or even destroying, the sacred pledges with some contumelies. I reported the peril to the bishop staying at Nysa, and also to the chapter of the canon fathers, and at the same time asked of him and obtained two of these, who should assist at the opening of the older sepulcher, and at the same time behold in person the things which should then be laid open. I also enjoined on the brothers and sisters of the Order a three-day fast and the use of the sacred food of the Eucharist, that God might manifest the remains of the blessed Man.
he narrates the translation of Bl. Ceslaus, Here, on the appointed day, the canons designated by the bishop being present together with the brothers of the monastery, others being excluded and the church closed, workmen were summoned; we removed the wooden altar placed upon the burial and then the stone table; soon in the pit they found another, but broken stone, or rather a fragment of a stone formerly squared, of the length of about three palms. Which being removed, a little wooden chest and a brazen key inserted in an iron lock corroded with rust, and in the chest, the decay having almost consumed it, they laid open the skull of the blessed Man and the principal bones to the number of fifty, disposed in their order, the teeth in the white skull, likewise white, so firmly fixed that scarcely with an iron instrument could two molar teeth be plucked out; one for the most serene Sigismund III, king of Poland, the other for the most serene mother of Ferdinand II, now happily emperor. The sacred body being thus uncovered, the organs being sounded and the brothers singing 'Te Deum laudamus,' the statue of the most blessed Mother of God, hanging in the midst of the church, inclined itself, moved by no one, the angels hung round about exulting in a wondrous manner, all who had been present seeing it. The miracle was repeated a second time, when after
some days the sacred body of the blessed Man was translated from the former burial into the place named above, and, washed with wine, and reposited in a new wooden chest secured with three locks, was laid up. The wine of that washing profited, when tasted, innumerable persons laboring under diseases, even heretics. There exists a public instrument of all these things in the convent of St. Adalbert at Wrocław."
whose authentic testimony is said to be preserved at Wrocław. It can be doubted whether that authentic instrument even now survives there, because, in the year following this translation, the Lutheran mob, raging and envying the glory of Bl. Ceslaus, violently and sacrilegiously invaded the convent of St. Adalbert at Wrocław, as was said at number 10 in our preliminary Commentary, and Jacob Schickfus the heterodox himself confesses in his German Annals of Silesia at the year 1608 book 1, chapter 42, where he narrates how on the 27th of December, between the 7th and 8th hour of the evening, certain of the populace of Wrocław, on account of Ceslaus being honored by the Dominicans, stirred up a tumult, and, the doors being broken, burst into the monastery of St. Adalbert. Whence it could easily have come about that these written testimonies, and other things pertaining to the glory of Bl. Ceslaus, were plundered or scattered by the rabid and heretical mob. Wherefore I did not think it worth the trouble to write to Wrocław, that I might obtain the solution of this doubt, especially since it contributes little to the substance of the matter, and the Fathers Andrew Stredonius and Theodore Moretus, cited in the preliminary Commentary, made no mention of this testimony.