ON SS. BENIGNUS AND CHARUS, HERMITS.
AT MALCESINE NEAR VERONA IN ITALY.
Ninth Century, at the Beginning.
CommentaryBenignus, hermit near Verona (S.)
Charus, hermit near Verona (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR P. B.
At Malcesine, a village of Verona, of SS. Benignus and Charus, hermits.
Thus on this day Philip Ferrari in the General Catalogue of the Saints; who, concerning Malcesine, in the same place subjoins in the annotations that it is a village situated on the shore of Lake Garda, They are honored on this day distant from the city of Verona 15 miles: but that he drew the announcement itself of their present-day celebrity from the tables of the church of Verona. He cites besides, on this matter, Augustine Valerius, bishop of Verona and afterward Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, who in the ancient Monuments and histories of the bishops of Verona and of other Saints, whose bodies or churches are at Verona, composed by him together with Raphael Bagata and Baptista Peretto, and published in the year 1576, folio 19, thus has it: To the fame of the miracles by which the holy Benignus and Charus were illustrious, both for devotion and for religion very many of the neighboring peoples, especially the Brescians, betake themselves to Malcesine every year, in our times too, on the 26th of July, on which their feast is solemnly celebrated, to visit their holy bodies. The same Ferrari affirms the same on the same day in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy; where he adorns these Saints with a longer eulogy. On the same day Brautius in the Poetic Martyrology thus sings to them:
To touch the venerable bones of the sacred bishop, Benignus And Charus were held worthy—they alone.
At Malcesine, in the church of St. Stephen; where honorably What the poet means, you will understand from what follows. Castellano also reports the same on this day. Yet the more ancient Martyrologists are silent.
[2] And so of SS. Benignus and Charus (the words are those of Augustine Valerius, folio 18) the bodies of the hermits rest at Malcesine, of the diocese of Verona, in the church of St. Stephen, as is read from the letters on the wall behind the greater altar of that church, as below: "In the year of the Lord 1314, in the 12th Indiction, in the month of May, in the time of brother Gregory, archpriest of that parish, the work of that Truina was begun, and in the same year finished. And in the month of November the venerable father, lord brother Thebaldus, by the grace of God bishop of Verona, diligently laid up the relics, or bodies, of the holy hermits Benignus and Charus, wrapped in a certain pall, in a most beautiful chest cut from stone under this altar at the time of its consecration. This was done, many prelates, presbyters, and clerics being present, and all the people standing by, the noble soldier and most upright man, lord Cangrande della Scala, vicar of the sacred empire in Verona and in Vicenza, being present.
Benignus and Charus, each deservedly illustrious, Under this altar have deserved worthily to be placed. Of St. Zeno, the patron of the city of Verona, These two deserved to translate the relics. Bishop Thebaldus honors these, and Rotaldus: Rotaldus in his life; Thebaldus thus entombs them."
[3] The church of St. Stephen is one, I think, of the thirty-six archpriestly ones of the diocese of Verona, in the year 1314 their bodies were placed, and a chapel erected: which Ughelli enumerates in volume 7 and the following, where it is called St. Stephen of Malcesine. But what "Truina" in the transcribed text means, we could not attain; yet it is expressed in the same way in Ughelli in the bishops of Verona, volume 5, column 849. Francis Pona, in the Life of SS. Benignus and Charus, as also Cornelius Curtius, who made it Latin from the Italian, understand a magnificent chapel, which was erected by Thebaldus in the church of St. Stephen for these Saints behind the greater altar. Of Thebaldus many things may be seen in Ughelli in the same place, from column 839. He sat at Verona for 34 years, dying more than ninety years old in the year 1331. But Rotaldus administered the same church from the year of Christ 802 up to the year at least 824, as the same author teaches in the same place, from column 599. He held not only Benignus and Charus living in esteem, as will be evident from the narration presently to be given; but also dead; since he took care that they, as Jerome dalla Corte is author, History of Verona, book 4, page 189, be buried in the church of St. Zeno at Malcesine, where, he says, up to the present day they are found, that is up to the year 1594, in which he published his History. It follows that the church of St. Stephen and of St. Zeno at Malcesine is the same; if indeed he proclaims true things here. The cited Curtius and Pona add that a celebrated day was assigned to them by the same Rotaldus, the 26th of July; but whence they drew so great an antiquity of this feast, neither do they themselves say, nor have I found out.
[4] For the rest, although the people of Malcesine preserve the chief part of the relics, although some relics are found elsewhere too. and even the bodies of both; yet some of them came to other churches of Verona; namely to St. Thomas of Canterbury through bishop Thebaldus in the year 1316, which Ughelli hands down, volume 7, column 1452; and others, which in the praised Monuments of the holy bishops of Verona Augustine Valerius assigns; as to St. Firmus the Less, folio 79; to St. Mary Magdalene, folio 84 verso; to SS. Teuteria and Tusca, folio 87 verso; to St. Zeno in the Oratory, folio 88. Now from the same author we subjoin those things which, concerning the deeds of SS. Benignus and Charus, remain almost alone in the more ancient monuments. These, folio 18, taken from an ancient Lectionary of the cathedral church of Verona, thus have it:
[5] When Rotaldus bishop of Verona, and Pippin, son of Charlemagne, together with the whole clergy and people of Verona, They are called from the wilderness for the translation of St. Zeno. tried to translate the body of St. Zeno from his church in the Oratory into his greater church, and no one dared to touch the bones of the holy man, because a certain divine thing, striking fear from the place where they lay, almost deprived all of life, SS. Benignus and Charus his disciple, who on the summit of a cut-off mountain on the shore of Garda near Malcesine, in a solitary place, led an eremitic life, the fame of their sanctity being heard, summoned to Verona by the bishop and the king (God inspiring it) for that sacred work, alone were held worthy by their merits to touch and translate that holy body.
[6] A miracle of Benignus, and his severity toward himself. How much those blessed Men had compassion on all the wretched, and how hardly they were wont to chastise even the very slightest sin in themselves, can hence easily be discerned: for when the devil tried to prohibit them from that work of translating the holy man's body; and for that reason, by his malign impulse, had sent upon them, as they were hastening to Verona, a blackbird, which, with wings loudly beating, with a cackling voice, flitting across through a narrow and steep path, as though portending a sinister omen, would recall them from their undertaking, holy Benignus adjured the bird [*] not to move from that place until they should return to Verona. But when, returning, he had seen the blackbird lying in that place, thinking that it was resting and awaiting his coming, he approached to rouse and dismiss it. But beholding it dead, he imposed on himself a most strict fast of forty days, saying that it had been worthy of pardon, not of death; as being irrational, and having offended by the instinct of the demon. In memory of which thing, a blackbird cast of bronze hung in that place. Thus far the Lectionary in the work cited, where presently it is subjoined: The aforesaid blackbird of bronze in our times too (in the year 1576) is preserved above the greater altar of St. Zeno on the mountain of Malcesine.
[7] This translation was made about the year 809. The same history, narrated a little more succinctly, we gave from Peter Calo on the day on which St. Zeno was treated, the twelfth of April, page 75, numbers 2 and 3; where this is especially to be noted, that the disciple of Benignus is called not Charus, but Lazarus; whether both this name was his, or an error ascribed the other: the first certainly occurs everywhere; not likewise the second. Moreover, from either document, both cited and recited, it is easy to gather at what time this thing happened, and so when our Saints flourished: for from the Lectionary indeed it is established that this was done neither before the year 802, in which Rotaldus first obtained the see of Verona; nor after the year 810 and the 8th of July, which was Pippin's, son of Charlemagne, last day: but from Calo you will establish that this happened not indeed long before the death of Pippin; since, according to him, first was contracted, and by frequent intercourse confirmed, the familiarity between Pippin and Rotaldus, now bishop; then from it was born the common counsel of illustrating the sepulcher of St. Zeno; and at length a church was built of polished marbles and a tomb fabricated, a royal work indeed, on which some years must have been spent before it was finished, and the relics of St. Zeno could be translated thither. These things, if I mistake not, moved Jerome dalla Corte, History of Verona, book 4, page 187, to defer this translation to the year of Christ 807; being perhaps about to protract it further, if he had known that Pippin lived two years later than he himself establishes. Meanwhile some more recent writers follow him.
[8] And these are the things which the more ancient documents relate concerning SS. Benignus and Charus. The things besides which are narrated of them by more recent writers, Nor indeed, if anything besides, supported by solid authority, had survived among the Veronese, would it easily have escaped the accurate diligence of Bagata, Peretto, and Valerius in seeking out things of this kind. They saw other things recent in their times; but by no means approved them; as is clear from these their words, folio 18 verso: Hence it is evident that that little book of Antonio Bressanini concerning the holy men Benignus and Charus, written in the vernacular tongue, does not contain a truthful narration or history. And so I have not thought it worth while to inquire into that Life. Much less could I be induced to publish here the Life which either Francis Pona gave in Italian in the year 1636, or Cornelius Curtius in Latin the following year. For although each contains the same things which we have just given; yet neither these very things, nor those which are added to them, are asserted with any more ancient witness or table brought into the open: nor accordingly do they merit greater credit than the age of such writers requires; unless they be confirmed from elsewhere.
[9] Moreover, the things which these add to what has hitherto been related are very few; and first indeed, they need proof. they will have SS. Benignus and Charus to have been born at Verona; then that they were Augustinian hermits; besides that they were sculptors, as having fashioned that image of the Mother of God which, under the name of the Mother of Piety or of Mercy, is most celebrated in the church of the Augustinians of Verona at St. Euphemia; finally that they died a few years after the instituted translation of St. Zeno, and both indeed on the same day, the 20th of July; as dalla Corte also expressly affirms, book 4, page 189. Yet Tinto, on the Nobility of Verona, book 5, chapter 12, assigns them for a birthday the 26th of July; because, I believe, that was sacred to the cult of the Blessed. Of all which things solid foundations are deservedly wanting; however much some of them certain Augustinian writers adopted from Curtius; as Naevius in the Augustinian Hermitage, page 299, and Elssius in the Augustinian Encomiastic, page 122. But Pamphilus in the Chronicle, Simplicianus Sammartinus, Ludovicus Torellus (who, however, wrote at Bologna in Italy in the year 1647) in the Lives of the Saints of the Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine, Thomas de Herrera in the Augustinian Alphabet, make not even mention anywhere of these Saints, that I have seen; much less do they reckon them among their own.
Annotated* or "adjured" adjuravit