ON BLESSED GOTHALMUS, CONFESSOR.
IN THE MONASTERY OF MELK IN LOWER AUSTRIA.
Before the Year 1020.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
The cult, age, miracle, writer of the Acts, and various copies of them.
Gothalmus, confessor, in the monastery of Melk in Austria (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR G. C.
On this day the monuments of Melk suggest that Blessed, in which he is said to be by nation a Scot; who nevertheless seems to have been hitherto unknown to his own countrymen, since I could find no memory of him in any Fasti of the Irish or Scots. A certain difficulty being proposed, I know not whence Castellanus dug him out, in whose Universal Martyrology it is read thus today: In Ireland, St. Gotalmus confessor. By what reasoning, I pray, is he announced in Ireland, while all the instruments which it has hitherto been permitted to see testify that he died in Austria? Was he to be placed in Ireland because of his birth? But Castellanus himself and other Martyrologists everywhere announce Saints outside their country in that place where they consummated the happy course of their life, or where their sacred bodies are honored. But our Gothalmus died in Austria, and his venerable bones rest in the monastery of Melk in Lower Austria. Do two holy Gothalmi occur on the same day? This knot I leave to be loosed by Castellanus, and the further examination of this matter to be instituted by the Irish, while I proceed to prove the cult of our Blessed.
[2] Anselm Schramb, a Benedictine of Melk, who in the year 1702 published the Chronicle of Melk and munificently transmitted it to us, the cult of Gothalmus is proved from his honorable burial, page 34 thus testifies concerning his immemorial cult: The venerable bones of blessed Gothalmus, so called by the voice of the people, are preserved in the crypt of our church near the altar of the Blessed Virgin adoring the divine Child in the Bethlehem stable, whose anniversary the religious company celebrates on the feast of St. Anne. After which, on page 251, having narrated how in the year 1362 the sepulcher of Blessed Gothalmus was reverently opened before Rudolf IV duke of Austria, he subjoins the following: From this time no room for doubting is left, but that in this sarcophagus rests Blessed Gothalmus, to whom our religious always descend on the feast of St. Anne, to pay the anniversary. Nor from this time until the present is this tomb read to have been unlocked or broken open. Jerome Pez, tome 1 of the Writers of Austria, page 109, in the preliminary observations to the Life of Blessed Gothalmus, num. 1, most recently thus speaks concerning the same relics: His body, brought thence to Melk (namely from the village of Maur, in which he died), was afterward honorably laid up here … The bones of that Gothalmus, enclosed in a marble tomb, when in past years our old basilica had been demolished, being moved from their former seat, were for a while placed in the chapter-house (as it is the custom to say), until in the new church a more honorable place should be prepared for them. From these things at least it is clear that his sacred remains were always held in price and honor.
[3] The praised Pez, in the place just cited, num. 2, thus vindicates the title of Blessed for him: and from the ancient title of Blessed. Our Bernard Dapifer everywhere calls Gothalmus Blessed, and a domestic Kalendar written by hand, verisimilarly six hundred years ago, in these words: On the 7th of the Kalends of August, the memory of blessed Gothalmus the pilgrim. To which another more recent hand has attached these: Companion of St. Coloman. But also in three fifteenth-century manuscript copies of Melk, whence without doubt the Imperial copy of Vienna was transcribed, he is constantly honored with the name of BLESSED. That public veneration and cult was formerly bestowed on Gothalmus, is made manifest not only from the Life, but also from the title which is prefixed to him in the Imperial and our manuscript codices, although the autograph codex does not have the already-mentioned title. But in our age this public cult and religion of Gothalmus has utterly fallen out of use. What the cause of this is, is hidden from me. This only I know, that yearly on his vigil, which falls on the 8th of the Kalends of August, Vespers of the dead, and on the following day a Mass of Requiem, are wont to be performed by us at his tomb. In vain will you seek other testimonies of ancient veneration outside the monastery of Melk, in which almost alone that Blessed was known, and which can best testify concerning his immemorial cult. Wherefore these things seem to us to suffice, that we may insert him into our work.
[4] The determined year in which that Blessed migrated from this life The time of the burial of Blessed Gothalmus is uncertain, cannot easily be known, since the writer of the Acts, num. 3, thus confesses: Then he is brought to Melk (yet it is not known in what year of the Lord) and is buried. Nevertheless that time can be gathered approximately from the martyrdom of St. Coloman, of whom, on the 13th of October, it will have to be treated professedly (ex professo), as they say. Meanwhile the ancient chronicle of Melk, which Pez in the tome cited above, page 95, praises, concerning the time of that martyrdom has these things: In the year 1012 blessed Coloman was martyred, and hanged at Stockerau. Furthermore, the translation of the relics of that holy Martyr to the monastery of Melk was made in the year 1014 or 1015. Whence Pez, in the observations mentioned in the preceding number, concerning the time in which Blessed Gothalmus was honorably buried in the same monastery, makes this conjecture: In what precise year, he says, that was done, antiquity does not disclose: I would believe that it happened not much after the year 1014. But because
the pilgrimage of Blessed Gothalmus admits some latitude, and he could have come into Austria one or another year after the burial of St. Coloman, therefore above, in the margin, I placed the death of Blessed Gothalmus, in a round number, before the year 1020.
[5] and of a certain miracle wrought at his tomb. Neither is it more established concerning the time in which a certain king of Bohemia, wishing to open the tomb of Blessed Gothalmus, was struck with sudden blindness, as is reported in the Acts, num. 4. Nevertheless the praised Anselm Schramb, in the Chronicle of Melk, pages 36 and 37, proposes his conjecture concerning this matter in these words: But who that king of the Bohemians, the breaker of the sepulcher, was, if it is permitted to divine, we say that it was Wenceslaus, whom others name Primislaus, the father of Ottokar, likewise king of Bohemia and duke of Austria, the notable patron of the people of Melk: whom we have found to be the invader and devastator of Austria, from the flowers of our chronicles (the Flowers of Melk assign this devastation of Austria to the year 1231, other chronicles to the year 1229), in the absence of Frederick duke of Austria, who was accompanying the emperor on the Italian expedition … On which occasion, Melk being subdued either by threats or by arms, we congruously assert Primislaus king of Bohemia to be the violator of the Gothalmian sepulcher, not ignorant that some fasten this stain upon his son Ottokar; but undeservedly, since, in a matter so uncertain and unclear, this deed—worthy of the penalty of the Flavian law concerning kidnappers (plagiarii), for a slave withdrawn by fraud from his master, or of the Julian law passed against those who profaned a sacred thing—it is fitting to appropriate rather to the enemy Primislaus than to our most munificent patron Ottokar, as we shall see. I confess indeed that that deed befits an enemy rather than a benefactor, if it was done with malevolent mind to violate the tomb of the Blessed; but Ottokar could have done it out of inconsiderate curiosity, and therefore also at once have recovered his sight, on account of which quick pardon of his inconsiderateness he afterward showed himself grateful to the monastery of Melk. Nothing, however, do I define in this matter.
[6] The Acts of the Blessed were written in the year 1362 by a monk of Melk, I shall be able to bring forth more certain things concerning the writer of the life, who at once, on the threshold, accurately indicates his name, his profession of life, and the time of writing. He was Bernhard or Wernhard, surnamed Dapifer (the Steward), a monk of Melk, who in the year 1362 wrote this history from the tradition of the elders, and afterward, in the year 1378, was extinguished (died) on a journey to Rome, as Pez noted in the preliminary observations. But that Bernard ingenuously confesses that he was ignorant of the determined time of certain deeds done, and on this very head deserves greater faith than those biographers who, in default of this knowledge, often unskillfully invent years, and disturb the order of chronology, so that you scarcely know what in their history is to be safely believed, since in their chronotaxis they are caught so mendacious. Whence Schramb, in the work cited, page 36, thus discourses concerning the faith to be given to this author: As regards the truth of the things narrated, I do not disapprove, if, for establishing this, ampler motives of credibility and firmer testimonies be desired, since the chronology of the history is lacking, the name of the king, the violator of the sepulcher, is kept silent, and neither the year nor the time is added—otherwise a great testimony for conciliating faith. Then he mingles in some things concerning the apostolic traditions, which in this matter prove nothing, since between these and those there is a huge difference.
[7] Then he better concludes thus: Since therefore the Melk relator professes that he drew from most trustworthy elders those things which he brought to light concerning Gothalmus, whose faith and authority is weighed, he sufficiently intimates that he rests on the prop of tradition, and that the constant narration of our ancestors concerning the same event supplies the place of testimony and confirmation … There is added, that a witness of approved faith is to be safely believed; but by this, that our writer, groaning, confesses that, because of the burning of the monastery and library, the chronological integrity of his history is lacking, he shows plainly enough that, the substance being safe, even that chronology could have been had from this storehouse of certitude, if the sudden chance of the fire and the destruction of things had not placed an impediment. But to this reasoning it could be objected, that even now there survive Melk chronicles, and various monuments of neighboring monasteries, written before that fire, which made no mention of these adjuncts of the Gothalmian Life. Nevertheless I think that Bernard sincerely left to posterity those things which he had received from his ancestors concerning this matter: and, on account of the mentioned candor of writing, I so defer to his narration that I do not doubt but that in his age this was the common tradition of the elders, to which I prudently assent, so long as it keeps itself within the limits of verisimilitude, and does not openly contradict historical monuments. But nothing of this kind in this tradition has hitherto occurred to me.
[8] Peter Lambeck, book 2 of the Imperial Library (Bibliotheca Caesarea), chapter 8, page 619, first, unless I am mistaken, published in print the Acts of Blessed Gothalmus, and various copies of the Acts are recounted. to which, in his manuscript codex, was prefixed this title: There follows the account concerning blessed Gothalmus the pilgrim, whose bones rest on the right side of the altar of the blessed Virgin Mary in the crypt, in a white marble sarcophagus, and are daily venerated by almost all who more devoutly visit that monastery and the place itself: who, although he doubtless shone with miracles, yet other testimonies of his sanctity are at present not established for us, except those which the following brief Memorial, here rewritten from a certain ancient codex, contains in this manner. Then is subjoined the very lucubration of Bernard Dapifer, to which this proem a later pen prefixed, as sufficiently appears from the mentioned text. According to Jerome Pez, nearly the same title, written in red (minium), is read in three Melk manuscripts, although it is not had in the autograph codex. The oft-praised Schramb inserted the same little work of Bernard into his Chronicle of Melk, pages 35 and 251. Finally Jerome Pez published the same Life of Blessed Gothalmus again from the autograph codex at Leipzig in the year 1721, and illustrated it with preliminary observations in tome 1 of the Writers of Austria, from page 109. We here reprint that edition of Pez, collated by him with three Melk manuscripts, being about to admonish in the margin or annotations, if variant readings of greater moment shall occur.
THE ACTS, BY THE AUTHOR BERNARD DAPIFER, MONK OF MELK.
From the autograph Manuscript, which Jerome Pez published in tome 1 of the Writers of Austria, and collated with three other apographs.
Gothalmus, confessor, in the monastery of Melk in Austria (St.)
BHL Number: 3627
FROM A MANUSCRIPT.
The author indicates his name and the time of writing, I, brother Bernhard, professed monk of the monastery of Melk, called Dapifer (the Steward), have thought it would be [] useful, for a perpetual memory of the matter among men, to bring to the notice of all the faithful of Christ, present and future, the nation and the arrival in Austria and at our monastery, namely that of Melk a, and the abode there, of blessed Gothalmus the pilgrim, resting in the crypt of the monastery of Melk; and this, as by the relation of the elders b, and of many other men c living in my times, I could the better perceive, and as they themselves perceived from their elders and contemporaries. Therefore I, Wernhard [] above named, in the year of the Lord 1362, began by writing on the vigil of blessed Barnabas the Apostle, and this on a Friday after evening synaxis (Vespers), and committed to paper not long after, which also thus happened d.
[2] and narrates how Blessed Gothalmus, seeking his lord, When the most blessed martyr of Christ Coloman had resolved to leave his country, namely Scotland, and his earthly dominion or aforesaid kingdom, for the love and kingdom of Christ, and had revealed this to no other than this blessed man Gothalmus (who, namely, blessed Gothalmus, is said to have been the cellarer of his father), yet without indicating to him when he was about to do it; blessed Coloman afterward secretly slipping away and making for Jerusalem, Gothalmus, out of the love which he had toward him, followed him, and sought him everywhere, and came into Austria, and heard that he had suffered, died, and, by the command of Henry, at that time margrave of our land, namely of Austria, been buried at Melk; then he too came to his beloved young lord and master in such a manner.
[3] died and was buried in Austria, When on one of the days of his pilgrimage he had come, to pass the night there, to a village called Maur, distant a mile from the aforesaid city of Melk, which day was a Saturday, and a certain peasant had given him a night's lodging e, and he had gone to the barn to sleep, and when on the morrow, namely on the Lord's day, the time of rising was at hand, and he did not rise; he is several times roused, and at last it is ascertained (as was asked how it was with him) f that he had fallen asleep in the Lord. And, placed upon a bier, lighted candles are found g with him. Then he is brought to Melk (yet it is not known in what year of the Lord) and is buried, we, however, being now ignorant of the place of his first burial, though the place where his sacred bones are contained is now well known; namely in a hollowed and marble, and this a white, stone, beside the altar of the Mother of God the Virgin Mary in the crypt of the monastery of Melk, placed [*] on small little columns, and his memorial day is on the day of St. Anne, mother of the fostering Virgin Mary.
[4] A certain sign also, which the Lord wrought through him, where afterward a miracle happened at his tomb, and by which He showed his sanctity, as I have also learned by relation h, is by these writings made manifest to all readers and hearers. For when a certain king of the Bohemians i, by his own name yet unknown to us, had come to Melk, and had seen the white marble sarcophagus in which his bones are contained, and had doubted that relics were therein; he caused a square hole to be made in the head of that sarcophagus. Which, as he began to do, forthwith he lost his sight. Then all, terrified, bending their knees before the altar of the Mother of mercy the Virgin Mary situated there beside, supplicating with devotion first the lord God and the Virgin Mary, and afterward blessed Gothalmus, that they would show mercy to the blind king, and the king vowed that he would never henceforth do such things. Then, the prayer being finished, he received his sight, by the merits and intercession (as we are bound to believe) of blessed Gothalmus, and closed the fracture with a square and white stone, as today the sign of this hole is manifestly seen, and with joy he departed. All these things, committed to writing by me the aforesaid Bernhard, k at what time they were done, is not clear to us, and this either on account of the sloth and negligence of those then living, or on account of the burning of our monastery and books in 1297, and this on the vigil of the Assumption.
[5] In the year of the Lord 1362, on the day of St. Paulinus bishop and confessor, who by the command of the duke of Austria is opened in the year 1362. which is on the vigil of blessed Giles the abbot, Rudolf, the illustrious duke of Austria, and of his other titles prince and lord, the fourth of this name, being here in the monastery of Melk, wishing to try whether there were any writing, or other evident sign, with blessed Gothalmus the pilgrim in the marble
stone, namely in his sarcophagus, in the crypt of Melk, set upon small little columns []. And so on the aforesaid day the devout one l, secretly approaching and standing by with certain others, and candles being lighted, and psalms [] being said in a low voice by some brothers of the convent, removing the upper stone of the sarcophagus itself, and thus seeing the bones existing therein, and finding [] nothing else than the bones themselves—and in the middle of the forehead of the head there was found affixed a small white cross, as if it were made of pure fine-flour paste m. Which cross a certain one of his chaplains, a secular priest, called Liembweriger, incautiously broke off by handling it with his hands, we being present and grieving for the breaking off of this kind, and at first marveling over it; and so afterward, the blessed bones being commended to the sacristy, until the repair of the same sarcophagus. Then also those bones were re-enclosed in the same place, Gotschalcus being present, the custodian at that time; but I, Wernhardus [], called the Steward (Dapifer), alas! being absent n.