ON S. BOGUMILUS OR THEOPHILUS FORMERLY ARCHBISHOP OF GNESEN, CAMALDOLESE HERMIT,
AT UNIETOV IN GREATER POLAND.
THE YEAR 1182.
LITTLE PREFACE.
On the Writers of the Life, and the last to be given here.
Bogumilus, formerly Archbishop of Gnesen, Camaldolese Hermit, at Unietov in Poland (B.)
D. P.
The first seat of the Polish Princes Gnesen, and their Metropolis, after they were led to the Catholic faith from the year 966, Although for no long time from death he was held a Saint; numbers as her fourteenth Archbishop B. Bogumilus (which by a Greek but more known to foreigners word, is rendered as Theophilus in the proper Collects on him at Mass) from all retrospective memory called Saint: who after not full five years of his office, captured by desire of solitary life, of the Camaldolese institution to be led, renounced honor at once and burden in the year 1172. But he led that life near Dobrovum, a village situated at the confluence of the Warta and Nyra rivers; and there buried, in the parochial church of the H. Trinity which as a layman he had founded, and as a Presbyter had taken care of, shone with miracles; until the body to Unietov, a nearby town, and situated on the right bank of the Warta river, was translated, in the year 1666.
[2] No one of the ancients wrote a Life: The Miracles into one book in the year 1443 are said collected below, The Life however was begun first to be written this century, at num. 64; but this book before the year 1647, in which over the ancient cult of undoubted sanctity a Process began to be formed, is said to have perished by fire. The first ex professo wove a synopsis of the life, and gave it to be printed at Cracow, in the year 1609, Martin Baron, Cleric of Jaroslaw, among the Lives of certain Patron Saints of Poland page 34; but the book of Miracles, although then extant, he did not know; as is clear from the Index of Authors, whence he professes to have culled his own. More prolix and instructed by other documents (for the book of Miracles had now burned) the same subject treated Stephen Damalevicius Vartam, when the book of miracles had already perished: Provost of the Regular Canons at S. Nicholas of Kalisz, in the Series of the Archbishops of Gnesen, brought into the light at Warsaw in the year 1649; from which we shall give some things in the Appendix, and especially the mandate given by the Chapter of Gnesen to his fellow Canon D. Matthew Iudicki, for preparing a Process, to serve at Rome for instructing the Cause of Canonization: which I therefore note, because to him already old, and now Provost of Gnesen, as still most intent on the same cause, in the year 1661, a new Life of the same Saint, printed at Rome, the same Stephen dedicated.
[3] This Life therefore, I have adapted to our work, with parerga, both moral and historical, rejected, The most recent of all how it is here given, with which it was extended into 41 Chapters; and into nine, proportioned to our work, I have digested it: I omitted also importunate marginal citations of authors; but I added, from previously edited or afterwards received, Analecta, illustrating the cult of the previous and present time, and what for its augmentation has been done at Rome, that nothing might need many things to be prefaced about them. I cannot however not premonish, with Analecta about the cult continued from old, that in enumerating and explaining the virtues of the Saint, Damalevicius seems to have used rhetorical art; while descending to particulars, in each individual condition of life acted by the Saint, he writes that he himself has done those things, which it was fitting were done, that from divine and human laws a living someone, should be judged to have led that holily.
LIFE
By the Author Stephen Damalevicius, Provost of the Regulars of Kalisz,
printed at Rome in the year 1661.
Bogumilus, formerly Archbishop of Gnesen, Camaldolese Hermit, at Unietov in Poland (B.)
BY DAMALEVICIUS.
PREFACE OF THE AUTHOR
To the most illustrious and Reverend Lord, D. Matthew John Iudicki, Doctor of sacred Theology and both Laws, Apostolic Protonotary, Archdeacon of Pomesania, in the Cathedral church of Vladislav Canon, Provost of Gnesen, Mitred of Kamien.
At length sometime, after five centuries, and seventy-two years running from them, The Author congratulates Matthew there came to You, Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord, your Saint Bogumilus, Archbishop of Gnesen; who, like a flower fragrant in vernal days, gladdened the Sarmatian orb with the fragrance of many virtues. Yours, I say, especially: whose praises You with the affection of a religious mind, throughout the whole orb of the lands, by immortal celebration, to posterity far and wide have propagated. Had been hidden until now the memory of the Apostolic Confessor, circumscribed only by the bounds of Poland, and enclosed in the native volumes of histories. You to the Indies even the cult and veneration of your singular Patron, the Saint's cult promoted even to barbarous nations, most grateful client of trustworthy protection, also with the greatest ornament of your name, excellently extended; and how faithful you had experienced often, especially in arduous matters, the aid of his patronage, among nations barbarous in inhumanity, the Scythians and Turks, you taught the faithful worshippers of Christ dwelling. With great propagation of the Christian religion, the zealous Apostle of the Scythians, Philip Stanislaus, of Nicopolis, and of the Dobrogii, and also of the Provadii on the shore of the Euxine Pontus Bishop, in honor of S. Bogumilus (as in letters sent to You on this matter he indicated) erected an altar, and many soldiers won to Christ, marked with the character of Baptism and Confirmation, devoted to the patronage of S. Bogumilus … Many Archbishops of Gnesen aimed at this honor; and the matter thought by several Archbishops, Baranowski, Gembicki, Uvezyk, Lubienski, that they might be able to perpetuate the memory of S. Bogumilus. Already money, for building a brick church, in honor of the Saint, from the offerings wont to be made at his tomb, two hundred and seventeen years ago, Vincent Cotus the Archbishop, Cardinal of the holy Roman Church, had ordained. Already Baranowski, by his patronage restored to health, had prepared liberal expense, for accomplishing that thought. Already Gembicki had given the business of gathering material to the Governor of Unietov. Already Lubienski, through masters skilled in architecture, having measured out a suitable place for building the temple, had brought together bricks and lime. But all the wishes and desires, death envious to the perennity of men, ordered to be in vain. Of this care has your Patron deigned You, that the cult and veneration of him, not only within the bounds of Poland, but also through the most remote regions of the orb most widely you should amplify. Receive the gift of blessing, to You and your Collegiate church by the holy Archbishop liberally bestowed; and the veneration of the Saint, but committed to him. which to You the illustrious Senate of the Metropolitan College of Gnesen (already from three hundred years and more, with mature counsel and grave deliberation of the Archbishops decreed) committed to be propagated, to the extremest ends of the orb of the lands, faithfully and alacritously extend.
CHAPTER I.
Bogumilus's birth, education, chaste adolescence with the Archbishop his maternal uncle.
CAP. I
[1] Saint Adalbert, by nation Bohemian, of the Family of the Rose, which bears the Rose white on a red field as a stem, heir of the Counts of Libice, son of Slaunicus and Strzezyslava illustrious parents, disciple of S. Romuald Patriarch of the Camaldolese Hermits; when in vain again, With S. Adalbert Bp. of Prague. with the Archbishop of Mainz at the Roman Synod soliciting, and the supreme Pontiff Gregory V commanding, to the Cathedra of Prague he had returned: with the consent of the holy Apostolic See obtained, unless the Pragans came to themselves, and obeyed the admonitions of their Pastor, to preach the Gospel to barbarous nations; first into Hungary, then into Poland he came; that the new germs of the planting of the vineyard of the Lord Sabaoth, with the saving rain of Christian doctrine he might water; with companions in part of the labor, of the institution of S. Romuald, Camaldolese Hermits, Christianus and Papant, and Gaudentius or Radzin his uterine brother; then also Porajus, having entered Poland the brother Porajus, whom divine providence had withdrawn from the nefarious fury of the Bohemians, raging against the other brothers of the holy Bishop, Sobonus, Spicimirus, Sobeslaus, Zimissus, and Ceslaus, having taken with him. Of whom Gaudentius or Radzin, into the Cathedra of Gnesen for himself he substituted, with Gregory V Supreme Pontiff approving, kinsman of Otto III the Emperor; he himself with great prayers in vain solicited by the Poles, that the labor of cultivating the morals of neophytes, from that Cathedra as Doctor and Archbishop he should bestow. In which matter, lest he should seem entirely to despise the wishes and desires of the nation recently converted to Christ; with him martyred among the Prussians, the sum and compendium of Christian doctrine, written in the vernacular tongue, to be sung by the Poles, with Gaudentius brother he had left (which until the present day, in temples, houses, and once military lines, was customary to be sung) he himself, to preach the Gospel to the infidel Prussians, proceeded. Where he obtained the crown of martyrdom, first gravely struck with an oar by a sailor, then pierced by seven lances by the barbarians, on the day 23 of the month of April, on the great sixth feria, in the year of Christ 997.
[2] But Porajus, his uterine brother, having taken a wife in Poland, propagated the name and stock of the Counts of Libice, from which the genuine heirs of the white Rose of ancestral candor came forth, Boguphalus, He propagated the stock of the Counts of Libice: and Bogumilus uterine brothers; from Nicholas, of the Counts of Libice in Bohemia of the stock of Poraja sprung, in greater Poland Castellan of Gnesen, a man of primary dignity in the Polish Senate; and Catharine Gryphia, sister of the Counts of Jaxa, a most chosen woman, parents pious and fearing God being born, in the hereditary Villa called Cosminco, near Dobrovum a village of the Archdiocese of Gnesen, of the Archdeaconate and territory of Unietov, of the Palatinate of Sieradz. Hence born with brother Bogumilus, These from infancy, in the fear of the Lord and Christian piety instituted by parents, with humane letters also cultivated their boyhood, in the Gymnasium of Gnesen, with a holy preceptor sustaining the care of their institution, Otto Bishop of Bamberg; who although he himself from illustrious Counts in Suevia, Father Berthold and mother Sophia, was born; yet bereft of parents, had come to that need, that, when the precepts of Grammar, from S. Otto, afterwards Bp. of Bamberg, and likewise the Poets and Philosophers, with tenacious memory he had embraced; and did not have the expenses necessary for sublime studies; into Poland, which then was the most noble emporium of the most precious wares of wisdom, he came; and a literary school there with the authority of the Prince by teaching, opened. Then made Chancellor of Boleslaus the first King of the Poles, and by him performing a legation to Henry the Fourth the Emperor, Instructed in Grammar, then sent to Paris, the Bishopric of Bamberg, with Rupert the Bishop of that Diocese dead, by the promotion of the same Emperor, he obtained; by Pope Paschal confirmed, and on the very day of Pentecost consecrated by the same. Under so great a preceptor, after they had set down the apprenticeship of Grammar and the humaner studies in their homeland; to cultivate the severer Muses, and to polish the mind with the skill of Theology and Canon law, to Paris, sufficiently and liberally provisioned, they were sent.
III.
[3] There was living then S. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux of the Order of the Cistercians, who throughout the whole orb of his holy institution far and wide so had spread fragrance, and thence returned to his homeland; that with him surviving three most celebrated monasteries, Andreoviense, Lucnense, and Landense were founded in Poland; and endowed with the liberal munificence of the Founders. Of whose Order, when he had diligently in Gaul observed the sanctity Boguphalus, after enriched with the riches of divine sciences, together with his brother Bogumilus, he had returned to his homeland; nothing delaying, what with firm and constant mind, applying himself to sacred Theology, he had deliberated, to execute he established; and himself, with the false world's paint despised, and its vain promises, and the allurements of secular delights condemned, to the sodality of the Cistercians, in the Lucnense monastery, which now is called Wąngrowec, by solemn profession assigned. * Moreover the older born Bogumilus, completing the measure of his illustrious name with fortunate omen, with the brother added to the Cistercians, put all his effort here, that with no slower pace he would follow the footsteps of his younger brother; who already to his name Bogufali (the praise of God it sounds in the Polish idiom) sufficiently seemed to have responded, into a holocaust of divine praise by religious profession consecrated. Therefore stirred by holy emulation, he began also himself to think more diligently, in what manner through stable exercises of virtues, dear to God (which the saying of Bogumili by its signification requires) he might come out.
IV.
[4] the part of his inheritance And first of all, when, by loving God strenuously and strongly, he hoped to attain this; by the impulse of the divine spirit between God and himself reciprocating friendship, all the occasions of sinning as accurately as possible he resolved to flee under. But when the administration of the goods, devolved on him by the death of his parents, he had undertaken; he had been wont more frequently to survey the village of Dobrovum with eyes and mind, as a place removed from all noise of business, and therefore most suitable for the contemplation of celestial goods: he confers to the founding of the parish of Dobrovum. beholding especially a hill, among lofty oaks more eminent, with a double bend of the rivers Nyr and Vartae, intercepting access to the dark grove, flowing around. The opportunity of which place, when he had more attentively considered, before all things which he had digested in mind as proposed, Christ as coheir of his goods he wrote, with a certain portion of them assigned to the Parson, who would take care of the people of Dobrovum; and a temple, to the praise and glory of the most holy Trinity, under his patronage, of fir plants, which tree not subject to rot lasts for ages, he constructed: Destining himself to the Clergy, and by the Archbishop of Gnesen John the First, to be dedicated by solemn rite he procured. These zeals for the propagation of God's glory of the young man pleased the Archbishop of Gnesen, who admonished the youth, that after the temple dedicated to divine cult, himself also to his praise he should wish to be made over: for thus he could be esteemed beloved by God and men, according to the elogium of his name. With not unwilling ears he received the admonition of the Archbishop his maternal uncle, the more so easy, he is made Chancellor of the Archbishop. that already about the state of life to be chosen, with mature deliberation with counsels weighed hither and thither, and the answers of the prudent, he was no longer distracted with two-headed delusion, the office of priestly duty embraced with firm thinking. * With the accounts of domestic matters therefore settled, the Archbishop not much later he follows to the castle of Unietov; and inscribed in the album of courtiers, the office of Chancellor, entrusted to him by him, with great faith and diligence he undertakes.
[5] He did not trust to the fragility of slippery age, the inconstant blandishments of the court, Fortified with the fear of God. from which generally the freedom of admonishing and the candor of truth are wont to be exiled, with circumspect thought rolling over; therefore he affixed a faithful doorkeeper to the gates of his senses, the fear of the Lord; cautious, lest anything should enter there, which the chastity of mind and body in any way could contaminate, or at least the efforts resisting the appetite of the flesh weaken. From the society of those, by whom to offend God is held as small, he greatly abhorred. He esteemed time too much, for it to vain occupations of courtiers and the lightness of plays to be spent. and desirous of preserving chastity. Hating leisure, now by praying, now by writing, now by reading, the tedium of labors and cares he tempered; sometimes with honest walks and conversations of friends, the intense powers of mind being content to relax. He put on the panoply of a strenuous soldier of Christ of all those virtues, by which much aid for defending chastity is wont to be
wont; but especially by fasts, in obedience to the spirit, the rebellious vigor of the flesh to subdue he used: of which so religious a cultivator he was, that he not only kept the vigils of the Saints and the observance of the Four Times with one refreshment; by frequent fasts and other modes he macerates the flesh, but also on any sixth feria, on account of the memory of the Lord's passion, while a boy he kept such rigor, that not even a piece of bread to be tasted in the evening he permitted himself. Lent through nine entire weeks, according to the custom of his ancestors he observed exactly. Beyond which modes of fasting, prescribed by the Catholic Church, or by the daily tradition of the Poles taken up, more frequently voluntary fastings for chastising his body, just as also hair-shirts, sleeping on the ground, vigils, flagellations, genuflections, extensions of arms in the manner of a cross, day-long standings, and other things of that kind of instruments for macerating the flesh, frequently he applied.
[6] To these he joined the unconquerable shield of prayer, to the most glorious virgin of virgins the Mother of God in greater manner supplicating, and he invokes the Mother of God; that the purpose of the chaste mind of her client, with tutelary aid, against the hostile insults of the world, the flesh, and the cacodemons, she would deign to defend; knowing that the blows of demons and the innate appetites of the flesh, by which we are assiduously vexed, are difficult to settle without the help of the Blessed Virgin. By such exercises, gradually he was leading his adolescence away from the vanities of the false world, to continuous worship of the divine Numen, in the priestly state disposing it; which purpose from boyish years he had conceived. And so as a law he fixed in his mind perpetually, to revere those older in birth, not to envy equals, not to contemn inferiors, friends meeting on the path of virtue more zealously to honor with all offices, every ambition to exclude from his actions, and in them to look only to God's glory and love; to love sobriety, to restrain the tongue from useless speeches, exercising himself for every virtue, to give time to reading pious books and meditations of heavenly things, to avert the ears from the words of detractors and the scurrilous jests of the court, and to borrow whatever arms of virtues from the holy Fathers, by which he might fortify himself wholly against the strokes of the very crafty serpent; so that all whom he considered to excel in some virtue, he set before his eyes for imitation; and already by the very composition of a serious face, and the moderation of the motions of mind and body, a certain specimen of anchoritic life in adolescence he seemed to display. All the courtiers wondered at such grave constancy of unperturbed purpose: on account of which both they sincerely loved him, and venerated him with a certain religious observance; that with him present, they did not dare to utter anything molestful to chaste ears; nor indulge in plays, he is the best example for the courtiers. or in vain witticisms and delights of courtiers, presume. Bogumilus was in the court a youth bearing a senile heart, officious to all, burdensome to none, devout to God, kind to neighbor, sober to the world, the Lord's servant, neighbor's companion, world's lord; having superior things for joy, equal things for fellowship, interior things for service.
CHAPTER II.
Priesthood undertaken, and in it the humility of Bogumilus, and zeal for prayer.
CAP. V.
[7] The Archbishop considered the morals in the youth, to the harmony of all virtues rightly composed more attentively, The maternal uncle inviting to the sacred Orders, with his great solace; giving thanks to the supreme Numen, that he had destined for himself such a co-worker in his vineyard. So having called the youth to him, who already then was of the age defined by sacred Canons for the Priesthood, the desire, which previously he had set forth to him regarding the consecration of the parochial Church of Dobrovum, with repeated turns by grave persuasion he inculcated; again and again asserting, that he would render a strict account to the awful Judge for the talents entrusted to him, unless he should wish to comply with just admonitions, and to convert the use of the talents into nourishment for the Lord's family faithfully, over it through the Order of Priesthood to be constituted. He gives thanks first to the Archbishop, for his paternal affection toward him and benevolence; then a respite for the time of Orders prefixed by law to be conceded to him he asked, after mature deliberation, within which with mature deliberation performed, he should dispose himself for the office of so excellent a charge. Departed from the Archbishop, he began the height of the sublime peak accurately to observe; and the more dangerous precipice's ruin to consider, the higher the apex of dignity rose; within himself diligently weighing; Great the dignity of Priests, but great the ruin if they sin; we rejoice at the ascent, but let us fear at the lapse. It is not of such joy to have held lofty things, as of such mourning to have fallen from sublime ones: for not only for our offenses shall we render account, but for the gifts of all whose we abuse, and we are by no means solicitous about their salvation. But such solicitude about the profit of one soul is necessary, as would not suffice for a merchant about to gain the riches of the whole world. Yet, when more frequently the Archbishop set forth the necessity of the Churches, and with more words exaggerated the charity for the salvation of neighbors, he decrees to obey. for which the Son of God descended from heaven; and moreover that one with the authority of powerful obedience he terrified; at length Bogumilus, having interpreted this to be the will of God, in a matter of such moment, as was his own and his neighbor's salvation, to the commands of elders who undertake the place of God on earth not accustomed to resist, gave conquered hands willingly to the authority of the persuading Archbishop. Namely according to S. Bernard a good obedient one gives his wishing and his not wishing, that he may be able to say, My heart is ready O God, my heart is ready; ready whatever you shall have commanded to do, ready at the nod more quickly to obey; ready to give time to you, to minister to neighbors, to guard myself, and in the contemplation of celestial things to rest.
VI.
[8] Him so disposed the Archbishop separates from the crowd of the people, and refers into the number of the Clergy, he is ordained Presbyter, and at length through all the grades of Orders duly and legitimately promoted, with the sacred character of the Presbyterate he marks. * Made out of obedience Priest Bogumilus, began more abundantly to feel the gifts of celestial sendings; and now to God, who is a consuming fire, by the burning of sacred love to liquefy; and flowing like wax from the face of fire, to send himself into the abyss of nothingness with profound humility. For this is the condition of true humility, that the more closely it contemplates the glory of divine majesty, the more it recognizes itself as unworthy of the consort of divine discourse. It happens here entirely otherwise, than what in the frequency of human conversation we see come about; he is nothing thence exalted: where daily familiarity is wont to be the occasion of extreme contempt. For the faithful and truly humble soul, because the celestial Spouse deigns to address her, recognizes nothing in herself, by which to merit such great favors; but with modest reverence and modesty, before the supreme majesty, into the knowledge of her own nothingness more deeply descends; nor does it weigh, where it now is; but where it was, when it was not. Bogumilus was excited, but before God deeply, to progress in this virtue, by remembrance of the wretched condition and fragility of human, always thinking with S. Gregory what was lacking to him; repeating in memory, where he was when entangled in secular cares; or fearing the sentence of God's judgments, and seeking with himself, where he will be; or attending to the evils of the present life and solicitously mourning, he considered where he was; or contemplating the goods of the supernal homeland, which because he had not yet attained, mourning he saw, where he was not; only that taking up with tedium; As the deer desires for the fountains of waters, so desires my soul for you O God.
[9] But he followed that humility, which is the origin of all virtues in us, sprouting and enduring in the proper root of charity; sincerely before his neighbor, he humbles himself, not which by soft composition of countenance shows itself, or with broken voice of words insinuates: but which by pure affection of heart, through the recognition of its own vileness, prostrates itself before God. For there are many in the world says S. Bernard who wish to be humble without contempt; well clothed without solicitude; possessors of delicate peace without labor; detracting from others, biting like dogs, deceitful like foxes, proud like lions, but inwardly ravenous wolves; seeking the sweetness of honey, that is of vain glory and hidden licentiousness, like bears. They wish to be judges without authority, witnesses without sight, finally false accusers, and lacking all truth. That humility Bogumilus cultivated, which founded in the fear of the Lord, by conscience of his own infirmity is depressed to the depths, and with sincere heart submits itself to God both in the duties of his vocation, with confidence of divine help to be faithfully undertaken, and in showing obedience to be displayed in pains and troubles, and in showing due honor to others. In heart he believed himself unworthy of honors; and with mouth confessed, that to the Priesthood by no merits, but only by the dignation of the Lord's mercy he had been called. So reflecting in mind on the Angelic purity, especially in the sacrifice of the Mass. which is annexed to the dignity of the Priesthood; weak strengths for receiving in hands the Lord, under whom are bent down those who bear the orb; for bearing him, who carries the mass of the earth hung on three fingers; for sustaining the majesty of him, who sits above the Cherubim and Seraphim; for wrestling with the strong God of Israel, with humble prayer he disposed; now with the Centurion, pronouncing himself unworthy of the presence of such a guest with sincere heart; now with Elizabeth, exulting with cheerful pleasure and wondering exclaiming; Whence to me this that my Lord come to me? now with Abraham professing himself dust and ashes in the sight of divine majesty; now himself a sinner with holy Peter recognizing; now with the prodigal son, judging himself unworthy to see the height of heaven; now relying on the confidence of divine aid with David rejoicing singing in turn; I shall take the chalice of salvation, and shall invoke the name of the Lord; now all the faculties of mind and body, to praise the Creator, with the fervor of the divine Psalmist provoking; Bless the Lord O my soul, and all that is within me his holy name. Bless the Lord O my soul, and forget not all his retributions.
VII.
[10] Therefore recognizing the singular goodness of God, and the grace of vocation to the apex of so excellent dignity; Devoted to frequent and attentive prayer, and with faithful Samuel, exhibiting himself prompt and cheerful for service, to the calling God; the help of prayer, for fulfilling the duty of so arduous business, he applied. Besides the duty of divine Office, which on individual days, according to the rite and order of the Province of Gnesen, devoutly, attentively, and faithfully he discharged to almighty God; he was wont to give a great part of his time to mental prayer; ejaculatory (as they call) prayers from time to time with fervent spirit interjecting: I will love you, Lord, my strength: The Lord my firmament, and my refuge, also accustomed to ejaculatory prayers, and my deliverer: My God, my helper, and I will hope in him. My protector, and the horn of my salvation, and my receiver. Praising I will invoke the Lord, and from my enemies I shall be safe. Lord, your name and your memorial, in the desire of the soul. My soul has desired you in the night: but also with my spirit, in my inmost parts, I will watch for you: My soul has melted, as my beloved
has spoken to me. O my God! may I know you, may I know myself: Would that you the highest goodness, all men should know, and cease to sin, and worthy thanksgivings for benefits, your whole creature should pay to you! The excessive charity of human redemption, with most pleasant inflammation of will, and most ardent desire of imitation of virtues, in the torments of our Lord Jesus Christ, expressed, and the Office and the Marian Crown; with most tender compassion liquefying inwardly, he was contemplating. The Office of the most glorious virgin Mother of God, to the Canonical hours he joined; and her Crown, with a certain internal taste of supernal sweetness and serene pleasure of soul, daily he recited. There had already prevailed then the pious custom in Poland, (for at the same time with the Gospel, the cult toward the Mother of God came into our parts) of repeating Angelic Salutations, to the number of the years, in which she stayed on earth; and that sixty and thrice greeting her, with the Lord's prayer joined to each decade of Salutations; which manner of praying, from a certain holy Hermit, with the Mother of God herself teaching it, (as by the faithful tradition of our ancestors we have received) flowed forth.
[11] This rite of supplicating our Advocate never did Bogumilus intermit; handed down to him as a boy, Monument of this devotion, by pious parents: of which devotion the evident argument is, a larger stone globe, such as Hermits and our pilgrims generally are wont to bear, in his hermitage, among four oaks found; which Matthias Lubienski, Archbishop of Gnesen, special cultivator of the Mother of God, bore in place of a great gift; who in her honor with regal magnificence erected a basilica from the foundations at Lovicz, and another at Unietov with great expense restored and vaulted. But let us return to Bogumilus; and the manner, in which he disposed himself to operate the tremendous mystery of the Sacrifice, let us pursue. He lay prone on the ground, with hands extended in the form of a cross; and with an abundant shower of tears, leaping forth from the sweetness of the spirit, he watered the ground: imitating the example of Christ the Lord, who more prolixly praying to the Father in the garden, with tears and bloody sweat, prepared himself for the bloody Sacrifice, on the altar of the cross to be offered for us. He commended his prayers to the Angels, to be presented to the supreme Lord, with not little solace of those bearers themselves. Preparation for the Sacrifice of the Mass, For with Augustine testifying Prayer is the protection of the holy soul, solace to the good Angel, torture to the devil, pleasing obedience to God, the praise of penitence, the perfect glory of religion, certain hope, incorrupt health. He implored as a suppliant the patronage of the Virgin Mother of God, that of him whose most pure mother she was, to compose the body and blood, she would obtain for him the necessary purity from her Son. He sought the intercession of the heavenly ones, but especially of those, in whose memory he was about to make the divine matter. He propitiated the divine Numen for the souls of the faithful departed, and indeed the more fervently, the more by the suffrage of those of the living, set in extreme necessity, he considered the need to indigent; and pious tears under it, beseeching the highest majesty, that by the intervention of the saving Host, the guilty to the pains of the prison of purgatory she would deign to absolve. The mind of the Saint melted, suffused with celestial delights, as often as the sacrifice of the most holy Mass, the pledge of immense charity toward the human race, he offered: that sweet tears from the eyes of the celebrant, in the very middle of the heart distilled by the heat of divine love, sometimes sprinkled on the sacred linen of the altar, would burst forth.
CHAPTER III.
Care of the Dobrov Parish, faithfully administered.
VIII.
[12] The Dobrov parochial church of the Most Holy Trinity becomes vacant meanwhile; whose care and administration the Archbishop transfers to Bogumilus, Set over the Dobrov Parish, as patron of it recently built and endowed, and as hereditary Lord of the village. The obedient Priest in nothing resists the orders of the Bishop; he receives not unwilling the province, divinely (as he interpreted) by the will of the Archbishop offered to him: but conscious of his own infirmity, he prays for the grace and aid of the supreme Giver of all goods, striving for greater increments of accustomed virtues. With diligent attention he revolves with himself, that it is a great argument of love of God, to incumbent on the care of human salvation; and of souls, redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, to bear vigilant solicitude. Burning therefore with a great fire of divine love, and, that to love one's neighbor as oneself is greater than all holocausts and sacrifices, considering; for those committed to him he frequently sacrifices, just as for himself, so also for the people to the supreme Majesty he offered a sacrifice; in which the sweetness of most pleasant charity, as in its proper fountain, is tasted. For greater love than this no one has, than that one lay down his soul for his friends; of which laying down of the soul or death the announcement is the sacrifice of the most holy Mass, according to that oracle of the Apostle; For as often as you shall eat this bread and drink the cup, you shall announce the death of the Lord, until he comes: and, In this is charity: not as we have loved God, but because he himself has loved us, and sent his son a propitiation for our sins. I Cor. 11 Namely this is the bond of the love of God, first toward us and of our union with him and among ourselves; and inculcates mutual charity in them, which God loves so much, that whoever shall have rent it, he repudiates the sacrifice offered from his hands, with the Lord himself saying: If you offer your gift at the altar, and remember, that your brother has something against you: leave there your gift before the altar, and go first to be reconciled to your brother: and then coming you shall offer your gift. Matt. 5, 24
[13] As often therefore as for the token of Christian charity, and the pledge of communion of eternal glory, in the most divine sacrament of the Eucharist, to be received the faithful came, so often the good Pastor, inculcated to them the mandate of the beloved Disciple: Let us love God, because God first loved us. I John If anyone shall say, Because I love God, and shall hate his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother, whom he sees, God whom he does not see, how can he love? And this commandment we have from God, especially under the holy Communion. that he who loves God, love also his brother. He also proposed Christ the Lord's testament, full of the highest love toward us: A new commandment I give you? that you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another. John 13 In this all shall know, that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. So Bogumilus, just as by the charity of God and of neighbor urging him he undertook the Priesthood; so the first office of a Priest, to root in the hearts of the faithful so excellent a plantation of virtue, he judged. Therefore he placed very much pastoral effort in this, that all scandals of mutual offenses in his people he might remove, and the causes of dissensions from souls, with the thickets of angers running wild, root out from the root; but the sweet olive of fraternal love and Christian concord he might insert.
IX.
[14] To the administration of the Sacraments (which is another office of a Priest, In ministering the Sacraments he is diligent, and an excellent argument of true love of God) of those especially, by whose omission eternal salvation cannot be obtained, he adhered diligently; thinking, lest sometime the price of an inestimable ransom, by his negligence in some sheep of Christ might perish. Therefore he frequently admonished the people, not to procrastinate the baptism of infants; demonstrating, in how great danger the infant is, not yet dipped in the saving wave of baptism: as one who is the slave of the tyrant most hostile to the human race, who dares anything against those, who are to enter the inheritance of eternal salvation through the grace of baptism. But if the boy about to be born were endangered of life, the form for that case and matter of baptism he taught midwives; especially regarding the baptism of infants, and admonished seriously that they not dare to take away or add anything, that would alter the substance of the most necessary Sacrament, for obtaining eternal life. Women near childbirth he exhorted, that with the Sacrament of penitence they should expiate the faults of offenses, between hope and fear of life and death, set under Eve's malediction; which doctrine also to those about to enter on a long and dangerous journey, about to sail, soldiers about to enter battle, and those afflicted with some sickness on the bed, he frequently inculcated: the penitence of those endangered of life, lest then for the first time they should call a Priest to receive the confession of their sins, when set in the extreme crisis of life, scarcely possessing senses and reason, and what follows from this, scarcely capable of divine grace, the loss of eternal salvation by supine negligence he sets before them. He himself meanwhile both healthy and sick parishioners gladly visited; those in the affluence of things prosperous, to thanksgiving owed to God, and alms to be imparted to the poor for the name of Christ, inviting; these however, to endure the troubles of sickness patiently exhorting, with paternal consolation proposing to them, that diseases, which by God are sent on us, are either amulets against future sins, or satisfactory remedies for past ones. But if some by longer or graver sickness he noticed brought into danger of life, to fortify himself with the sacred Viaticum of the most divine Eucharist sweetly he induced, Viaticum and Unction. and induced kindly refreshed; persuading that they not postpone the Sacrament of extreme Unction; whose force and efficacy was such, that the remnants of sins especially venial it would delete: and therefore strongly the athletes of Christ, to resist the enemy lying in wait at the heel he would corroborate; and the health of body too sometimes, according to the good pleasure of God, would restore.
[15] To the healthy he commends works of mercy, He persuaded the healthy, that they should gladly visit the sick, and to their necessities, of soul and body, each according to his strength would aid: he himself in those things which he taught, with cheerful example going before. Among other works of mercy, that they should conduct the funerals of the dead, and for the burial of the poor the richer should bear expense, he exhorted, declaring the abundant retribution of that compassion in the works of holy Tobit: he never himself omitting this office of Christian piety when occasion was offered, and at his own expense paying just things for the poor. But lest anyone might desire in him any office of pastoral solicitude, and through his fault he could justly complain before the supreme Judge of having perished; with assiduous he kept himself within the limits of his parish; avoiding banquets redolent of luxury, both of parishioners and of neighboring nobles. Where however, when, and the burials of the poor. and to whom he hoped his presence, and especially to the simple to be of profit; always he exhibited himself agreeable, kind, mild, modest, affable, and accessible to all easily; food, drink, and sleep more sparingly indulging, that at the vigilant station of pastoral office, to refresh the sheep committed to his faith with the mysteries of the Sacraments, by night and by day he should be ready.
[16] Nor truly is that indication of love of God and neighbor obscure, The Evangelical minister of the divine word, divinely entrusted talents to him in the negotiation of celestial pearls, and the interest and gain of souls of the Lord's family, liberally to expend. For this faithful and prudent servant set over the family signifies says S. Hilary one caring for the conveniences and utilities of the people committed to him: who if he shall be obedient to the dictum, and shall obey the precepts, that is, if by the opportunity and truth of doctrine, he confirms the weak, consolidates the broken, converts the depraved, and dispenses the word of life as food of eternity for nourishing the family, and doing these things and dwelling in these he is caught; glory from the Lord, and equipped with excellent gifts for this, as a faithful steward and useful manager
he shall obtain, and over all good things shall be constituted; that is, in God's glory shall he be placed. Bogumilus had obtained by the benefit of nature illustrious gifts for persuading; the just stature of a man, which neither exceeded the measure of proportion and symmetry of all the parts of the body, nor was deficient from it in any part; firm sides, sonorous voice, the majesty of gravely composed countenance, with the liberal face also conferring grace on his speech. But in all these things more was operating fervent charity of neighbor, ardent zeal for propagating divine glory, indefatigable zeal for sacred letters, reading of the holy Fathers, meditation on God's benefits especially of human redemption; and of virtues, which he instilled in the ears and minds of hearers, in himself the expressed exemplar. His heart was burning with such a vast fire of divine love, that he desired the whole orb to blaze with that fire, which Christ the Lord came to send into the earth. Whatever he saw opportune for amplifying God's glory, in no way did he think it should be neglected by him, as a faithful dispenser of the Lord's talents.
[17] he approached to speak only well prepared. Whatever he was about to say to the people from the pulpit, whether about to detest vices, or commend virtues, or aggravate the pains of eternal punishments, or explain the joys of the happy retribution of good works, or narrate the magnitude of God's benefits and in these especially the redemption of the human race, or exhort sinners to penance for admitted crimes; all that within his inmost parts and the marrow of his heart burning with God's love to decoct, with tears bursting forth outside, he was wont; not first for the people, than for himself the master. No discourse or sermon savored to him, however elaborated, and accommodated to the progress of neighbors, which he had not sweetly seasoned with the sweet commemoration of the most sweet name of Jesus. For this divine Name, he knew was poured-out oil, which both breathed the odor of salvation, to those panting for eternal life; At the sacred names he always deeply bows. and dispelled the stenches of sins for those progressing; would illumine the splendors of virtues, kindle the tepid, refresh the weary, corroborate the pusillanimous, and minds liquefied by the fire of charity, into the consortium of divine nature would mix. For neither is there another name under heaven given to men, in which it behooves us to be saved. But as often as this saving name or that of the Mother of God Virgin Mary was to be pronounced by him, both in church and outside, so often with humble reverence he inclined his head; teaching by example, and sometimes with words admonishing the rude people, how great veneration was owed to the most sacred Names.
XI.
[18] And although, as a fiery Seraphim, he had especially in his wishes, He strives to eliminate plebeian superstitions, to inflame the wills of men to the love of God, by remembrance of his many benefits; yet to the capacity of the dull little common people lowering himself, especially he explained the necessary heads of Christian doctrine to be known, with the simplicity of vulgar speech, with also, where the matter demanded, similitudes applied, especially regarding the mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity, the Lord's Incarnation, and the most sacred Eucharist, and other articles of faith. But the greatest labor for him was, in extirpating the remnants of pagan superstition. For although through faith they had adhered to Christ already for a hundred and more years the Poles; yet the indocile vulgar, the conjectures of dreams, vain observances, and various divinations in the events of human actions, retained the more obstinately, the longer by the custom of ancestors regarding the ancient idolatry they had been rooted. Therefore he diligently explained the matter of the precepts of the Decalogue to the wandering sheep; teaching that both ways of healing, which would have no foundation in the connection of natural causes, and sortileges, incantations, magic, necromancy, and any species of divination, flow from the frauds of the devil and pact whether expressed or tacit; and therefore those who are occupied with such or believe them, are opposed to the first divine precept. and inculcates the catechism of S. Adalbert. Reweaving the remaining precepts of God in order to them, and announcing the obligation of them, under the guilt of mortal sin and the loss of eternal salvation; because those who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God. He commended to them the testament of S. Adalbert the Martyr or Canticle, left to the Poles before he went into Prussia; in which he had embraced certain chief heads of Christian institution in brief compendium, for easier remembrance; chiefly containing the cult and veneration of the Mother of God Virgin, the mystery of human redemption, and invocation of the Saints; and that they should sing it devoutly, he exhorted.
[19] Many indeed and grave labors were to be borne by the Saint, in such difficult cultivation of the rude little common people; To virtues fitting for the rude, yet they were comforted by the sweet fruits perceived, in the simple people, and with sincere heart obeying the pastoral admonitions. He admonished farmers, that they should so temper their labors with alternating works, that solicitude for temporal things might not avert the intention of the soul, from those things which pertain to exhibiting cult to God. Then also he frequently insinuated to them, that they should not gird themselves to do any work, unless first they directed all the acts of the present day to God's glory; which, while on celebrated feasts abstaining from servile work, and hearing the most sacred sacrifice of the Mass, they faithfully executed, with great pleasure they cheered the solicitous Pastor: who with holy emulation and fervent zeal, the virtues which he desired to insert in the minds of hearers, those from the trunk and root of his own example, with luxuriant shoots he transplanted; thus sweetly drawing the people to run the way of God's commands, indeed most strongly dragging them, the grace of signs, promised by Christ the Lord to believers, abundantly he obtained. For to how many blind, by example as much as by word he goes before. in the way of truth erring to speak with S. Maximus and from the highest rock now hanging in the deep, did he return lost sight, and restore that gaze by which Christ might be seen? To how many deaf ears, and condemned by the obstruction of infidelity, to receive the voice of celestial commands, did he infuse precious hearing; that to the calling God to mercy, they might respond by obedience? How many internally wounded, by the art of Angelic mouth and prayers, did he cure from infirmity? How many, by long carelessness, dissolved by the stain of sin, and bathed in a certain contagion of leprosy, by chastisements and exhortations expiating, with God operating in him, did he cleanse? How many souls, living in body already deceased, and buried under the mass of offenses, by calling to amendment as to light, did he resuscitate to God, that as the admirable imitator of his Lord, those already dead to God, on the contrary he mortifies with vital death to sin?
CHAPTER IV.
The duty of Dean of Gnesen accurately fulfilled. Miracles.
XII.
[20] About to gratify the labors of so great a man the Archbishop, adorns him with the Decanal dignity in the Metropolitan Church of Gnesen, Without ambition or simony he grasping nothing: for far from the morals of the holy man was that subtle evil, secret venom, hidden plague, artificer of deceit, mother of hypocrisy, parent of envy, origin of vices, moth of sanctity, blinder of hearts, ambition. Not duty to him from obsequy, either by hand, or by tongue prepared access to dignity; by which ways generally are wont ambitious men to strive, to the highest peaks of honors, willingly with blind impulse rushing into the precipice of the abyss; without examining the proportion of strengths to dignity, made Dean of Gnesen, and considering nothing what shoulders may be able to bear the burden. The simple candor of virtue itself, and the vehement ardor for propagating divine cult, and the indefatigable labor in seeking the gains of souls, prepared access to that dignity for Bogumilus. The faithful worker labored in the Lord's vineyard, not seeking himself outside, content with a small benefice, sufficiently wealthy with his patrimony, from which he provided himself and the poor with the necessaries of life. Yet, as to this grade of dignity proud ambition did not lead him, so neither did the abundance of paternal wealth push his generous mind into pride, that he should spurn to be enrolled among the illustrious Senators of the Metropolitan Church, the eloquent Prelate, considering the burden in the honor. For the office of Dean is, to order the rite of divine cult through the diocese; he accurately fulfills that office; to attend to the Canonical hours, that they may be devoutly and gravely performed in the Cathedral church; among the beneficed, ascribed to the Choir for perpetual times, to foster peace, concord, tranquility of souls; the series of ministrations, according to order and the seniority of persons, to dispose; and, lest anything be lacking for fulfilling the duties of divine praise, with diligent consideration to look around.
[21] Moreover although, that he might satisfy the burden annexed to dignity, yet he does not dismiss pastoral care, he wished to abdicate from himself the solicitude of the Curate benefice of the Dobrov church; yet asked by the Archbishop not to do this, he obediently acquiesced: judging nothing holy, which one would dare or attempt against obedience. There was then such a condition of times, that one had to be enrolled in several churches, on account of the scarcity of Priests. And so the burdens imposed on him of benefices thus he alternated, that on the more celebrated days he was present at the Choir of the Metropolitan church; and lest any negligence should creep in in discharging the duty of divine Office, more diligently he might look around; with meanwhile a substituted Priest to the parish, who would sustain the burden of pastoral care for a modest time, until he should return; at remaining times he assiduously resided in his parish, religiously obeying the mandate of divine right.
XIII.
[22] Having attained that dignity, he convoked the College of Vicars; and with a discourse on the excellence of divine praise premised, in which with eloquent speech, how the assembly of Angels distinguished by their hierarchies, He admonishes the Vicars to attend to Psalmody; to the supreme Creator with alternating choirs, with the whole collection of strengths, with profound reverence, filial fear, and most flagrant ardor of will jubilate, when he had explained; he exhorted them to the emulous contention of the celestial choir, as much as human weakness would permit, diligently; that mindful that to the same Lord in the sight of Angels they sang psalms; devoutly, reverently, attentively, with grave pause, the Angelic office, as the very Angels of the Lord of armies, they should execute. And lest any torpor of mind, slowness of body, or omission of any Hour creep in, he seriously enjoined the Vicedean, that he should always be at the Choir; and lest anything of those things, which by him have been ordained, should be intermitted, he should accurately watch. Then he gave the business to the Punctator, of noting those who were absent, or talked among themselves during the Office, or in any way either impeded or disturbed its course; that the stipend taken away for punishment from the negligent, might go in aid of the more diligent.
[23] These things thus constituted, he returned to the parish, to fulfill the office of a good pastor. The more sublime dignity did not draw him from conversation with the rude little common people; The same as before regarding his people the cupidity for honors did not lead him across the goal of right intention; no vain swelling or empty pride relaxed the solicitude of pastoral care; no love of his own excellence drew higher the eyebrow, that he should sometime despise some poor man; the same as above Bogumilus, agreeable to all, easy of access, kind, affable, liberal; except that augmented with richer revenue, he provided for the necessities of the needy more sufficiently than before. He kept the same fervor in preaching, sustained the same care in the administration of the Sacraments, preserved the same solicitude in cherishing the poor of Christ, faithful dispenser of the Lord's goods. Which zeal of the holy man, and ardent zeal for the salvation of neighbors, how much it had pleased him, the Divine Majesty proved by a miracle. For when with the Canonical Hours duly discharged in the Metropolitan church of Gnesen, on more principal feasts to his parochial Dobrov, fifteen miles distant from Gnesen, to make divine matter he proceeded; with the highest desire the people his arrival
was wont to await on the bank of the river, because the Warta a swift river, which with vernal and autumnal waters more than usual overflows beyond its accustomed channel, is illustrated by a miracle: would close to him access to the island, on which the temple is situated. When the holy man came there, with great confidence relying on divine aid, treading the surface of the river with dry feet, he passed to the island himself; and the people, ordered to proceed in his footsteps, he confidently led to the Church, by the same miracle walking over the waters. But with the divine Offices duly performed in the temple, by the same journey the holy man with the people following him, returned with dry feet to the opposite bank of the river; where standing, he called fish in God's name to him, who when gathered in heaps many, obeying the orders of the man of God, had come; many of them caught, he distributed to the hungry people, as much as each had need; the rest to go away into the waves, with blessing imparted to them, he ordered: and at the same time to Gnesen for dinner, together with his fellow Prelates and Canons at the usual hour to be taken, he returned.
XIV.
[24] Six miracles in these acts of the holy man shine forth. The first, that fifteen miles, which since it embraces six miracles, (after the sixth hour of the divine Office, according to the custom of the country, namely after the ninth hour in the middle of the clock,) within about one hour, that at a competent time for celebrating he should be present at Dobrov, he completed. The second, that over the waters himself with dry feet he walked. The third, that the people also through them wondrously he led across. The fourth, that by the same way with the people he returned: for the long interpolation as is of the Mass and sermon, betrays that the miracle by such an interval of time is different. The fifth, that he had the fish obedient to his command. The sixth finally, that within an hour, through fifteen miles, to take at a fitting time dinner with the Canons, he was wont to return. There grew in those parts the report, that by the blessing of the holy man, of which is premised, the fish in that place are so multiplied; that even now there they abound more, than anywhere else in Poland; and in flavor far others, which are contained in the same Warta river, they surpass. appears how great his faith was, Of crabs it is certainly ascertained, that there of the best flavor they are found, in such abundance, that not only to all the Sieradz region, but also to the Posnan tract, which is situated on the same river, they sufficiently provide. And hence it is clear, how much in divine faith Bogumilus excelled, to whom Christ the Lord attributes the operation of miracles; Amen I say to you, that whoever shall say to this mountain, Be taken up, and be cast into the sea, and shall not hesitate in his heart, but shall believe, that whatever he shall say, be done, it shall be done to him. Mark 11 But when, by the name of the mountain as says Bede sometimes is signified the devil, on account of pride, by which he raises himself against God, and wishes to be like the Most High; the mountain, at the precept of those, who are strong in faith, is taken up from the earth, and cast into the sea; when with holy Doctors preaching, the unclean spirit is driven away from the heart of those who are preordained, and in the turbulent and bitter minds of the infidel he is permitted to exercise the madness of his tyranny. But it is manifestly clear, that by the fervent preaching of the Gospel, which generates faith in the minds of hearers, many such mountains, cast out from the proud souls of haughty rich men, into the Phlegethontean sea would have cast holy Bogumilus.
[25] For this is the assiduous occupation of Preachers, to fight with the most crafty enemy of the human race; who more certainly than Peter walked upon the waters, and his deceitful machinations, lest by them the unwary minds of the faithful be ensnared, to unweave and dissolve. By the faith, which Preachers instill in the ears, the hearts of believers are raised up; that recognizing their conversation in heaven, they may despise earthly possessions and riches, suffocating the saving seed of the word of God, with generous magnanimity. By this Peter, to whom not flesh and blood, but the celestial Father revealed, higher raised from earthly thoughts, through the mad waves of the furious sea, forgetful of bodily concretion, ran to Christ: whose ardor of faith had not he cooled, he would have safely measured out the desired journey. He began to sink, because he doubted, and had little faith to Christ calling. But who here does not see, how much more sublimely the constancy of faith raised our Bogumilus; while he hesitates not at all to undertake a journey unusual to men, and the swift whirlpools of the Warta to press with dry footprints? Nor only alone he adhered to the foundation of such great faith, but its solid firmness, also to the ears and breasts of the crowd devoutly hearing the word of God he happily impressed; and at the same time he led across the people through them; that, just as the leader of eternal salvation, so also of the journey wave-wandering with undaunted hearts to follow him leading they should by no means be deluded. It was a pleasant spectacle to the gathered neighborhood, to behold the new Israelites, blessed in the seed of Abraham, with portentous daring overcoming with dry feet the waves, proud with the swelling flood of waters. The admirable surpassing of faith for much and long religious antiquity looked up to, while in the old walls of the temple, through the waters leading the people, and commanding the fish, with a rude indeed, but by its very antiquity commendable brush, it transmitted Bogumilus, never to hesitate about such great miracles to posterity.
[26] This miracle of treading on waters was, for corroborating Poland in the faith, converted to Christ a hundred years before, very opportune: by which again to faith, and the integrity of innocent life, and ardent zeal in promoting the salvation of neighbors, after a hundred years, of holy Hyacinth the Pole of the Order of Preachers it pleased the supreme Majesty to adorn: as afterwards S. Hyacinth, when he crossed the Vandal river, near Visograd overflowing with waters, with no boat, with his companions also led across over a cloak spread over the waves. It is certainly why we Poles should give singular thanks to the divine Majesty, that with greater miracles than Christ the Lord himself did, our Saints he has deigned to honor. We read that Christ the Lord often used a boat in crossing waters, only once walked over the waters; and that B. Peter walking in the waves with his right hand, lest he sink, he raised. Saint Bogumilus without a boat, often crossed the Warta. Christ the Lord raised the four-days-dead Lazarus from the dead; S. Stanislaus the three-years-dead Peter from the tomb, to give testimony to truth, summoned. Namely such faith of these Saints stood out, to whom greater miracles Christ the Lord promised: Amen, amen I say to you, he who believes in me, the works, which I do, he also shall do, and greater of these shall he do. John 14, 12.
CHAPTER V.
Bogumilus's virtues in the Archbishopric; care for visiting the diocese, liberality bestowed on the poor; the Coronovum monastery founded.
CAP. XV.
[27] John, the first Archbishop of Gnesen, commonly Janicus, meanwhile closed his last day of life, with ischiatic sickness, by which he had labored longer, With Archbishop John I dead, worn out; after he had governed the Church for fifteen years. When therefore the frequent Senate of Prelates and Canons, to provide for the spouse of the widowed Church had met; a not long deliberation held the desire of clergy and people, that to Bogumilus, whose sanctity of life was sufficiently explored by all, they should transfer the fasces of the lofty dignity. The truly humble Priest resisted the suffrages of his colleagues, both by prayers and by tears beseeching, that they should not impose the burden formidable to angelic shoulders on his weakness; but rather with the merits of one more worthy, who would be equal to sustaining so arduous a labor (indicating the man by his proper name) with the peak of so sublime honor they should crown. the unanimous election of Bogumilus assented to, But when to him resisting in vain the electors opposed their prayers; they added stern threats to him, that he should weigh more diligently with himself, whether to dissent from the election, is not to resist the Holy Spirit, who had drawn the wills and souls of all by harmonious suffrage to himself. At length suffering himself to be persuaded, he girded his loins with fortitude, imploring the help of the Holy Spirit; that he who had called him to such a burden, would deign to supply him with strengths suitable for bearing it. From Alexander therefore the third the supreme Pontiff, he is consecrated in the year 1167. he obtained confirmation; and consecrated by neighboring Bishops, and adorned with the Pallium, 1167, with the greatest rejoicing of all Orders applauding the holy Prelate, he undertook.
[28] Constituted in such an exalted summit of dignity, as a good watchman, Hence he is more anxious to attend to himself; he looked around first the accounts of his life, and circumscribed with the firm law of the fear of the Lord; seriously considering, what an exact account on the day of strict judgment, of so many sheep committed to his care, to the supreme Prince of pastors he was about to render. So nothing of the zeal of contemplative life he remitted; indeed in vigils, prayers, fasts, in subduing perturbations of soul, breaking cupidities, and bringing the body to the command of reason, he gave the more intensely time, the more these arms for ruling and moderating the affections of others he judged more ready and more necessary. Revolving further with continual meditation that Apostolic dictum: Every Pontiff taken from men, is constituted for men in those things which are toward God, and time accurately divided, that he may offer gifts and sacrifices for sins; and laboring to satisfy that duty more accurately; time, before all things he distributed with stable dispensation thus, that three hours to contemplation, and prayers both public of divine office and private, and to reading sacred Scripture and pious books he gave; for prayer then to the most sacred sacrifice of the Mass, with ordered recollection of the faculties of soul and senses to be celebrated, he came forth from his chamber. Heb. 5, 1 But this with such great devotion for himself and the people he was wont to offer, that with frequent tears leaping forth from the heat of divine love, the wills of those standing around compunct, by a certain violent force into God he seemed to snatch: praying God most with internal affection of mind, that the price of the blood of Christ the Redeemer, the propitiation of our sins, in his time should not become cheap; or by his fault, in some little sheep committed to him should perish: and lest in place of placating divine wrath, severe on account of his sins and negligence, the slothful pastor should kindle vengeance on the sheep. and to spend on the Episcopal office. The remainder of morning time that was left, to the reading of supplicatory little books, presented to him by subjects and the poor, to the judgments of causes, and the disputations of controversies, to the necessities of widows and orphans to be relieved; the afternoon however to ordering economic matters, to explaining the windings of suits, to handling matters of the commonwealth, and the dispatching of letters, and the regulating of boundaries, and also defending the goods of the Church, finding means, he attributed. The residual part of the day finally, to evening prayers, to meditation and examination of conscience, to litanies and other exercises of piety he gave.
XVI.
[29] In human conversation there shone forth a certain in his very face more august and entirely above human peak more sublime majesty, Of exterior appearance worthy of a Prelate on account of the most beautiful symmetry of morals, and the becoming composition of bodily gestures: by which in himself a living example of good works to be imitated to the sheep he exhibited, undertaking the preaching of no virtue, of which the appearance and beauty did not shine in his actions. There shone in the man of God a singular temperance of actions and motions of soul, the bridling of anger and other cupidities, the stability of sound counsel, the dexterity of matters to be handled, in enduring the importunities of the perverse equanimity, in bearing injuries fortitude, in the care of subjects indefatigable solicitude, in cultivating the laws of friendship unperturbed constancy, in food and drink discreet moderation and frugal parsimony, in receiving guests generous liberality,
in sustaining the poor profuse munificence, joining virtues fitting to him, in speech serious gravity, in gait circumspect maturity, in countenance modesty joined with severity, in chastising errors and vices merciful kindness, in adorning temples and augmenting sacred apparatuses heroic magnificence, in zeal for propagating divine cult burning zeal, in promoting human salvation incredible desire; which insignia of a pure mind, ornaments greatest him with all, not only grace, but also venerable authority augmented; with which he was very powerful, in leading back sinners to better fruit and saner counsels of laudable life.
[30] Which duty, most proper to Bishops, that with greater profit of the subject flock he might execute; He visits the diocese and bestows Confirmation on his own: with the care of preaching in the cathedral church committed to others, he himself undertook the business of visiting his most ample diocese; in which marking many with the character of Confirmation, he taught that in this Sacrament to those rightly disposed are conferred seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially of fortitude, for freely confessing the name of the Lord, and the faith of Christ without the vain fear of the world to constantly promulgate; and to teach others, with even the pouring out of blood, if necessity so demands, publicly; not fearing on account of its constant profession any adversities, injuries, and persecutions; in evidence of which fortitude, regarding this Sacrament, generous soldiers of Christ are not ashamed openly to endure a slap. If he found any subject to public sins; mildly he admonished, and to performing public penance, with the gravity of the crime proposed, he exhorted; and what remedy each one should use thereafter to avoid sins by enjoining, as a good physician saving plasters, by example of the Samaritan pouring in the wine of austerity and oil of compassion, he applied to the penitent. He had compassion indeed on human fragility, vices, especially public, he corrects, yet he did not desert the just manner of correcting; especially where to several through the examples of the perverse crime he saw imitators flow. Thus he showed himself a kind father in admonishing, that at the same time he exhibited himself a severe censor of vices, when the matter demanded it, both the progress of the sinner, and the edification of the witnesses conscious of the crime; prudently mingling the severity of clemency, and the clemency of severity. For there are some so strict with S. Gregory testifying that they lose all the gentleness of kindness: and there are some so gentle, that they lose the rights of strict rule. discreetly severe. Whence by all rulers both must be most highly held, that neither in the rigor of discipline, the kindness of gentleness; nor again in gentleness, the strictness of discipline they should desert: that they may neither grow hard from the compassion of piety, when they correct the contumacious; nor soften the rigor of discipline, when they console the souls of the weak.
XVII.
[31] But since the good Pastor ought to give his soul for his sheep, Prepared to lay down soul for the sheep, so that where he shall see the danger of eternal salvation imminent for them from the infernal wolf, he is bound to expose himself to the crisis of present life, that from the jaws of Tartarus he may snatch those endangered, (whence both in hostile persecution of the faithful, where not the head of the Pastor is sought, but for overthrowing divine faith war is waged; and in the contagion of pestilent plague, he ought not to withdraw from the sheep his presence, ought not to flee, which the hireling does; but faithfully and bravely to be present, and to minister the Sacraments to those in danger) much more does it pertain to the same, to succor the indigence of neighbors with temporal subsidies. For in this we have known the charity of God, because he laid down his soul for us: and we ought to lay down souls for our brothers. I John 3, 16 & 17 He who shall have the substance of this world, he liberally helps the needy; and shall see his brother to have need, and shall close his bowels from him, how does the charity of God remain in him? Bogumilus fulfilled this precept of the beloved Disciple, when prodigal with charity urging him of his own life, he proceeded through the overflowing river, that to the hungry people he might break the bread of saving doctrine; and sinners, through penance reconciled to God, from the eternal torments of gehenna, to the inheritance of supernal felicity might transfer. Many waters could not extinguish his charity, nor floods overwhelm. So he who was ready to give life for the sheep, more willingly the substance of this world for relieving their necessities was disbursing, with the more cheerful liberality; the more luminously it was clear to him, that part by best right in the revenues of ecclesiastical benefices the poor reclaimed, according to that dictum of S. Augustine, Whatever Clerics have is of the poor, and their houses ought to be common to all: they ought to watch for the reception of pilgrims and guests.
[32] Indeed it concerns the Doctors of the people to know: that the things which some superabundantly according to S. Thomas have, by natural right are owed to the sustentation of the poor. as from debt; But now, alas! to how many can be said that of Basil, It is of no smaller crime for the one having to take away, than when you can and have to deny to the indigent: the bread of the hungry is what you withhold; the clothing of the naked, the redemption and absolution of the wretched, the money, which you bury in the earth: know that you invade the goods of so many, as you can provide to, and do not wish. Would that says S. Bernard the ministers of the Church fear, who in the lands of the Saints, which they possess, do such iniquitous things, that not content with the stipends which ought to suffice, tripartitely dividing the ecclesiastical revenues, superfluous things by which the needy were to be sustained impiously and sacrilegiously they retain for themselves, and for the uses of their pride and luxury to consume the food of the poor they do not fear: with double iniquity certainly do they sin, that thus they take away things of others, and abuse the sacred things in their vanities and turpitudes. And although, he who refreshes the hungry with the bread of the word, and refreshes the thirsty with the drink of wisdom, who calls back the wandering into the father's house, who protects the innocent, who takes up the weak in faith and confirms, who helps one oppressed by tribulation by compassionating or consoling, fulfills true love; with Rabanus testifying yet, when all these arguments of true love Bogumilus had fulfilled, he judged he had not yet satisfied Christian justice and the full office of a Pastor, unless he should also comply with the disposition of the Church, which thus divides the benefices of Bishops. It is the custom of the Apostolic See, with a Bishop ordained to hand down precepts, that of all stipend, which he has received, four portions ought to be made; indeed also patrimonial revenues. one namely for the Bishop, and his family, on account of hospitality and reception: another for the Clergy, the third for the poor, the fourth for repairing churches. This custom he faithfully observed. For although both of Prelates and Canons, and of other Curates, Vicars, and Chaplains of Priests, revenues in their erected Benefices had been constituted: yet when the Church needed frequent ministers; the Episcopal house, then was the seminary of clerics and boys to be formed for Ecclesiastical obsequies. Nor only from the goods and revenues of the Church did Bogumilus feed the hungry, cover the naked, bury the dead, and exhibit hospitality to pilgrims; but also from the most ample portion of his patrimony, he conferred very much on the works of mercy.
XVIII.
[33] As the path of the just like light proceeds, growing into perfect day; so the liberality of Bogumilus, from the sustentation of the poor, providing for widows and orphans, the reception of pilgrims, advances to heroic magnificence. Then attempting something greater, For this is between both virtues, that this every private person, according to the manner of his faculties, can exercise toward the needy; this is proper to Princes, who with sublime greatness of soul, destining something rare and admirable, expenses with splendor worthy of Princes, for accomplishing the endeavor of a lofty purpose, gladly bestows; such are monuments exposed to the admiration of men, the erection of Academies, the foundation of Hospices, the buildings of Basilicas, which are not wont to be completed without lavish profusion of moneys, by heroes. For the proud masses of palaces, although they draw curious eyes of spectators into admiration of themselves, yet with oblique brows generally, by some are wont to be considered not without groan; that either by oppression of subjects, or by usurpation of another's lot, or by constriction of poorer neighborhood, or by withdrawal of due sustentation of the poor, they have risen to a peak to be envied; as if, with the very tears of the oppressed and the maledictions of the injured drawing them to ruin, sometime by a fatal accident to be shaken down they were omening, and sometimes a vengeful thunderbolt for injuries imprecating.
[34] There was flourishing then the Cistercian Order, under the Rule of the holy Patriarch of Monks Benedict religiously fighting, To the Cistercian Order, illustrious for the sanctity and doctrine of divine Bernard, in which both the studious observance of regular life, and the care of educating boys, and the kind reception of guests, but especially singular devotion toward the most holy Virgin Mother of God, far and wide through the Christian orb had spread a most pleasant odor. This when his predecessor the Archbishop of Gnesen, with pious propensity of will, had loved, having called from Burgundy Sodals of his Order, alumni of the Morimund cenobium; the whole part of his inheritance, seven villages, and the tithes of nine villages, from two Bishops of Cracow, Maurus and Radost, with the consent of the Chapter obtained, by perpetual donation he attributed; whose Order's Brothers already before, in the year of Christ 1145, Miesco or Mieczyslaus the elder, in the year 1145 led into Poland, Duke of Greater Poland, in the place which is called Landa near the Warta river, with thirteen villages for their sustentation ascribed, with Peter II Archbishop of Gnesen, and Martin Bishop of Posen present, under the same Eugene, for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ (as the diploma sounds) liberator of our souls, and for the veneration of the glorious mother of the same perpetual Virgin Mary, and of all Saints, from far parts of the earth led, namely from the Bergen cenobium, for lettered men, for the celebrations of divine things, and contemplations of celestial things, had placed.
[35] The sanctity of the recently arisen Order drew the hearts of all Princes, into admiration of itself, he attributes with the consent of the Chapter the reverend composition of morals, the generous contempt of secular things, the assiduous zeal for divine praise, the excellent cult of the Mother of God, the peaceful tranquility of contemplative life, and the opinion of excellent doctrine. So Bogumilus, when he had resolved with himself to follow the example of his maternal uncle, John the Archbishop; five villages of his patrimony, and of fourteen villages the tithes, with the consent of the Metropolitan College, he bestowed on the aforesaid Order, for founding a cenobium in the place, which to the general Chapter would seem more suitable; which goods into the hands of his brother Boguphalus, already then professed in the Lucnense monastery, in the year of the Lord 1153, villages and tithes, by Sbylut a noble Pole the founder, he consigned; which all the goods, namely Dobrowo, Leszno, Rzuchowo, Zadowo, and Kuvoaczewo; Tithes in Chelm, Krobawo, Danbe, Ostrowo, Komorowo, Karszewo, Kakrzewo, Bessiekieri, Slavencino, Grabowo, Janislowo, Kolnica, Chociemino, and Wenglowa, the General Chapter, to Christian Bishop of Prussia, a Monk of the Cistercian Order, (because his goods, of which he had more than a hundred villages in the Culm land by donation of Conrad Duke of Masovia, the Prussians had devastated) in aid conferred to be possessed. Which then when Christian had resigned in the year of Christ 1233, to William Abbot of Sulejow and his Convent, by the will of the General Chapter to be possessed; he by the mandate of the same Chapter, founded a monastery beyond the Vistula, opposite the Cathedral church of Vladislav, in the village Szpital; which then translated to the Village of Byschow, thence after seventy years, to the town of Coronowo in the year 1288,
on the day of holy Vitalis the Martyr, IV Kalends of May, for founding the Coronovo monastery, under the rule of Engelbert Abbot of Byschow, Vislaus the Bishop of Vladislav transferred, of the Zabavian stock. Whence the Coronovo monastery, with grateful soul acknowledges and venerates Bogumilus as its first founder, anciently attributing this elogium to him: Bogumilus, Archbishop of Gnesen, of the house and family of the Roses, a pious and ecclesiastical man, strenuous defender of the poor and orphans, in his life injurious to no one, most ardent zealot and propagator of divine cult, first founder of the Coronovo monastery. Thus S. Bogumilus the substance of this world and the goods of his patrimony dispersed, gave to the poor; and on this account he most especially the Cistercian Order with cheerful liberality bestowed, that according to the precept of the holy Patriarch Benedict, cheerful reception of guests there be accurately observed; that so the inexhausted fountain of his liberality, by perpetual gushing, into the poor of Christ and pilgrims might flow: as if singularly to him that dictum of S. Peter Damian had been said; Strive to enrich slender churches by the conferring of your estates: give earth, and take heaven: let transitory possessions be transferred into titles of eternal inheritance.
CHAPTER VI.
How just in all life and in his rule Bogumilus.
CAP. XIX.
[36] Of justice, which commands to attribute to each his own right, from the first years of boyhood he had put on the habit, diligently listening to the admonitions of his parents; who taught him from infancy to fear God, and to render the right, From a boy taught to render the debt to God, owed to the supreme Lord of all things, of reverence, cult, and love, gladly reciting with still stammering tongue the Lord's prayer, the Angelic salutation, and the Symbol of divine faith, they more frequently admonished: that already in the smooth tablet of the five-year-old infant's understanding, they seemed to have strongly impressed this sentence of Lactantius; By this condition we are begotten, that begotten, to God we should offer just and owed obsequies; this one alone we should know, this one we should follow: by this bond of piety bound to God and tied we are, whence Religion itself received its name. After he had attained the full use of reason, his heart and intellect to the knowledge of the Creator, lifted up by divine faith and hope, to desires of celestial goods he erected; thence resolving, that whatever he thought more conducive to God's glory, he would execute with faithful obsequy. Whence it happened, that giving effort to letters in the Gymnasium of Gnesen, he gladly visited the church, and heard the sacred sacrifice of the Mass, before he entered the school; and the duties of divine praise, sung by the Priests, he ruminated with diligent thought: on account of the tribute faithfully bestowed on the supreme Majesty, delighted with wondrous pleasure of soul. When the versicle of the Third hour of the Lord's day, among the chanting Priests, according to the custom of the Church of Gnesen by order, with him constituted in the school, his turn coming, Incline my heart O God to your testimonies, he sang; with a certain intimate taste of sweetness he was affected, with ardent desire begging the divine Majesty, that he might deign to co-opt him into the college of Priests.
[37] Thus already in his boyish years, he seemed to have inserted sweet shoots, especially suitable for nourishing old age, into the trunk of the fear of the Lord. For the beginning of our salvation and wisdom, according to the Scriptures, is the fear of the Lord. From the fear of the Lord, is born saving compunction; and founded in his fear, from compunction of heart proceeds renunciation, that is nakedness and contempt of all faculties; from nakedness, humility is begotten; from humility, mortification of wills is generated; from the mortification of wills, vices are extirpated and grow dry; by the expulsion of vices, virtues fructify and grow up; by the sprouting of virtues, purity of heart is acquired; through purity of heart, the perfection of Apostolic charity is possessed. Which all when in the course of his life they are seen expressed to the line, already in the very years of boyhood he seemed to have established the foundation of Anchoritic life, by no tempests of the world to be uprooted, by no blandishments of the pleasures of the flesh to be shaken, by no machinations of satan from the constancy of his tenacious purpose to be moved. And on this foundation or immovable column, he fixed for himself the stable law, of attributing to each his own right; cautiously avoiding, lest the voluble tongue ever should run before the mind not determined by certain deliberation; or the soul, set in the two-headed crossroads, should throw captious words to the part, to which itself in no way inclined. There was always to him circumspect care, to involve no cunning in the ambiguous windings of words, to keep no deceits by sly simulation, to his neighbor he also rendered his right; to thrust on no one falsehood for truth, to defraud no workman of the constituted wages; but of all pacts, agreements, promises, biddings, commissions, deposits, the unblemished sincerity with inviolate faith to preserve. For accomplishing which matter constantly, lest with words to wound his neighbor in any way he should offend, the hay of the tongue by speaking little he brought together: that although by nature he was eloquent, yet in conversation with men of supreme moderation of speech he used.
XX.
[38] Made Archbishop of Gnesen, accurately the rights of justice, those to be ordained he solicitously examined, of distributing offices and benefices according to the proportion of merits of each, he preserved; diligently watching, lest virtue and doctrine, by example and word laboring for the utility of the Church, be frustrated of worthy rewards; and first of all, that he might not impose hands quickly on anyone, obeying the Apostolic constitution, he employed serious vigilance. 1 Tim. 5 So when the Archdeacon, with the deputed examiners of those to be ordained, Doctors of sacred Theology and both laws, was discharging his office; seriously weighing the conditions and gifts of those to be ascribed to the ministries of the Church, on the scale of the sacred canons; and from what diocese, country, parish each was sprung, solicitously inquiring; then the morals of individuals, birth, age, doctrine exploring, and the Clerical habit he demanded he was wont to be frequently present; that nothing about their exact examination should be desired, considering; and whether they were properly understanding the heads of Christian doctrine with which they were going to imbue others, attending; then also that be observed prescribing, that not only Clerics initiated in minor Orders, but also the Rector of the parochial school, the Precentor of the boys' choir, and the Sacristans, should use ankle-length tunics, and indeed an upper garment or toga of black color: that thus especially adolescents deputed to the ministries of the Church, however much not at all marked with the character of Order, by any ministers of the Church. should be discriminated from the common dress of the people: which custom laudably, in the Churches of the Polands, until the times of Lawrence Gembicki Archbishop of Gnesen continued; especially when Albert Baranowski his predecessor, against the transgressors of this mandate had established a penalty. So great was once the observance of the Poles toward Priests, that not only to them they exhibited submissive veneration; but also those, who came nearest to their dress in cultivation, they held reverently; and they imparted to them competent food alternately sufficiently.
[39] For greater Orders he used a greater choice, Those who aspired to sacred Orders especially of the Subdiaconate, he subjected to stricter examination; because already to those constituted in sacred Order, with hand once sent to the plough, it was nefas to look back, and further to fly to secular wishes. To the grade of the Presbyterate, except those who with distinct intervals in the Orders of Subdiaconate and Diaconate had executed their ministries, and in them been well exercised, and were skilled in the rites of administration of the Sacraments, and were apt and sufficient for instructing the people in the articles of faith and the doctrine of morals fitting to the Christian man, were not admitted; but suffered rebuff for so long, until for fulfilling the duty of their Order the necessary doctrines they learned. Moreover although without the title of provision they were not admitted to be initiated in the sacred Orders Clerics; yet, if he saw any more cultivated in letters than commonly were others, and more apt for exercising the care of souls; and most especially for Canonries, he cherished with himself, examining their morals at close range, and to which Church with greater profit they could be ascribed weighing: and just as in conferring Orders he never followed precipitate judgment; so in raising men to the Cathedral Church and its Dignities and Canonries, he had a singular choice of persons; on which account he favored very much those, who excelled in gravity of morals and solidity of doctrine: providing, that in the college of the Senate of the Church, the middle part at least it should have of Doctors, on whose counsels in arduous matters of the Church he might securely lean. But by John Laski, Archbishop of Gnesen, the twenty-ninth successor from Bogumilus, with surreptitious narration of Leo X (otherwise most loving Patron of letters) more frequently fatiguing his ears, without respect of nobility. learned men, frustrated of the reward of virtue and doctrine, waste away. For in the principal five Cathedral Churches, of Gnesen, Cracow, Vladislav, Posnan, and Plock; only four Doctors in each have place, two laureated in Theology, two in Both Laws; the rest excluded, even excellent Doctors, who from both parents were not reckoned noble.
XXI.
[40] Justice, which respects the vindication or punishments of crimes proposed by the sacred sanctions of the Canons, More inclined to mercy than to vindication, thus with the spirit of mildness and gentleness he moderated, that he might exhibit himself a father, first leading away impious soldiers from the conceived iniquity of raging license by mild dehortations; at length to rushing into precipice audacity, with the great ruin of the salvation of very many, the severe censor of morals and just avenger of iniquity, the reins of penalties by right decreed bringing forth, more inclined to mercy, slower to vindication. He had before his eyes the manner of correcting, described by the Doctor of the nations, Brothers, even if a man have been pre-occupied in some offense, you, who are spiritual, instruct one of this kind in the spirit of mildness, considering yourself, lest you too be tempted. Gal. 6 He considered, the office of healing effective, from kindness and paternal gentleness, before to iron and fire it should be necessary to come, ought to proceed. For just as physicians, that they may exhibit a future antidote to the sick man, when they know that not otherwise except by a bitter potion the evil can be averted, season its bitterness with sugar; lest the sick despising the medicine, frustrate the physician of the desired effect; so those who wish usefully to admonish another, with mild words first to dispose the one laboring with sickness of soul is necessary, that the bitter potion of exhortation he may bear more lightly, and so to saner counsels he who is corrected may return. But where the gravity of desperate sickness has advanced so much, that to others by pestilent contagion the life seems to be about to snatch; yet to evils publicly noxious he did not spare, one must descend to severer rebuke, that for cutting off the putrid member there is need of iron, and of fire, according to the edict of holy Augustine the Doctor: To sustain emendatory vindication if anyone perhaps shall refuse, let him be cast forth from your society; for this is not done cruelly, but mercifully, lest by pestilent contagion he destroy very many. Namely manifest sins as says S. Gregory are not to be purged by hidden correction; but openly are to be argued, those who openly harm: that while by open rebuke they are healed, those who by imitating them had offended, may be corrected. For while one is rebuked, very many are emended; and it is better, that for the salvation of many one be condemned, than that through the license of one many be endangered. Moreover, he who does not correct things to be cut off, commits: and has the fault of one doing, who what he can correct, neglects to emend.
[41] Bogumilus applied to public sinners opportune remedies, with the upright acting moderately, with the supine vehemently, with the bold acerbly, with the more cautious mildly. The timidity of pastors, who with little soul fearing to offend the delinquent, fearing no one. ruin themselves and the flock, threateningly God
reproved, through Ezekiel; What was weak you did not strengthen, what was sick you did not heal, what was broken you did not bind up, and what was cast away, you did not bring back. Where what is broken ought to be bound up, the supreme prince of Pastors declares, which through Ecclesiastical censures most conveniently is done, according to the power, handed by Christ the Lord to Peter, and communicated to the other Pastors of the Church called into part of solicitude through these words; Whatever you shall have bound on earth, shall be bound also in heaven. Which the more diligently the Prelates are bound to execute, the more they must fear, lest of public sins, provoking the wrath of God against the whole kingdom, they become participants. For he who fears or is ashamed to correct the perverse, does nothing other than favor their impiety; since he is not without the scruple of hidden society, who ceases to oppose a manifest crime.
XXII.
[42] As often as before the tribunal to render rights, according to the terms prescribed by the sacred Canons, he sat; so often mindful, that the judgment of God is exercised, from all enticements, which could either impede the equitable course of justice, or drive the judge transversely with love, hatred, Wont to declare right according to the Canons, respect of friendship, of blood, of a gift, he abstained; relying solely on the solid examination of truth. He did not order anyone to be summoned by the plenitude of power, which he could not usurp without the authority of the Apostolic Lord, by his own motion, except at the requisition of an accuser, or in public crimes of the Fiscal of the Court; that to the accused be given; against those falsely accusing an innocent person the faculty of acting for the penalty of talion, insofar as the accuser failed in proof. For thus with impunity to anyone it would be permitted to slander an innocent, and to subvert all the rights of human society; if what one says, without one party present a judge should hear; and as contumacious, by affectation of the adverse party, he condemned no one unheard: he should pronounce him who is not. He remembered the right process of the supreme Judge, and the Founder of all things; to whom although Adam's disobedience was sufficiently observed, as to one to whom every will speaks, and from whom no secret hides; yet about to condemn him, that he should present himself to judgment, he called. And in that proud endeavor of the Babylonian tower, the Lord descended to see the city and the tower, which the sons of Adam were building. And in the nefas of the Sodomites' crimes to be punished, a place of penitence was given; I shall descend (says God) and see, whether they have completed the cry, which has come to me, in work; or it is not so, that I may know. And so to a sentence never to be carried did Bogumilus proceed, except to which, whether the matter so stands, through visitation and serious inquisition he had descended. Thus he tempered the authority of judgments, that those about whom by certain persuasion it was clear to him, that in the Church they labored more earnestly; he would not allow them to be endangered in honor for old wives' tales of trifling rumors, but first with accurate visitation made, and inquisition into the morals and life of the accused, with clamorous insinuation of public fame, or with rigid examination of witnesses convicted, he caused to be cited to him, that to the accused appearing he might say; What is this I hear about you? render an account of your stewardship. He kept exactly the manner of punishing defined by the holy Canons, that first with the threefold Canonical admonition premised, he should pronounce the accused rebellious, and at length proceed to the definitive sentence.
[43] He revered the authority of the holy Apostolic See, so that into its judgments he never sent the sickle, in which the holy See had set its hand, or to which the cause in any way had been devolved: he did not usurp another's right; judging it religious to abstain from those, which touched the majesty of the supreme Judge of the Church. He did not arrogate to himself the keys of Peter, in the confusion of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, content with their communication to him from the grace of the Apostolic See. Causes which to him pertained nothing, to the competent forum and authority of the superior judge he referred; lest he should seem more by lust of dominating, than by zeal of investigating the true and right, to be carried into rash vindication, in defense of friends or familiars, in which they had sinned, more pertinacious. Maturely the business of litigants he dispatched, and by extinguishing the fuel of hatreds, and by removing and amputating the occasion of superfluous expenses. Seeing the merits of the cause, according to God, conscience, and written right he judged; in nothing indulging the affections of litigants, he exacted penalties moderately. and the cause being properly known and discussed he amputated useless and to conscience harmful and to domestic affairs pernicious procrastinations; knowing best, that of all his actions, so also of the process of judgments, a rigid account he would render to the Judge of the living and the dead. In the execution of penalties against the contumacious he held this order, that he never proceeded to their infliction, before he had known and defined the cause by legitimate process; which he did not inflict on the guilty according to his proper arbitrium of will, but according to what the sacred Canons decreed to be done; which to execute he had as customary, that with pecuniary fine first he chastised the guilty; then, if hope of emendation was absent, to the penalty of prison he condemned the guilty; then finally the disobedient, with the spiritual sword he cut off, and to satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved, the guilty he handed over to the power.
CHAPTER VII.
Prudence, Fortitude, Patience of Bogumilus.
XXIII.
[44] Conciliated grace to the man of God, and with a certain excellent beauty adorned his actions, both in the decrees of judgments, Endowed with singular Prudence, and in the counsels of the commonwealth, and in composing the motions of various affections of men of diverse condition, and with a wondrous symmetry harmonizing and equalizing them among themselves, skillful prudence. This virtue is the charioteer of the others, holding before human acts a certain universal light of things to be done; by the variety of sciences, and the traversal of foreign nations, by the diverse cases among men, and the manifold events in businesses, and the connection of past and future things acquired: by which the prudent man illustrated, considering the properties of times and places, then the natures of persons and the constitutions of humors, and with the adjuncts of all these weighed, and the fitting proportion of individual things among themselves well balanced, what here and now must be done, what becomes, what is fitting, what is conducive, what means correspond to the intended end, with skillful circumspection he concludes and decrees. Of this virtue the brightness shines the more amply, the more rightly directed by the fear of the Lord, through all the events of human actions, both prosperous and adverse, and the persons of those acting, just as a needle rubbed with a magnet to the Greater Bear, to the glory of God he directs the gnomon. This Bogumilus had prepared for himself both by tours of foreign nations, and by the science of letters, and by frequent acts, in the various offices of the Metropolitan Senate College with praise discharged. For having excellently discharged the Decanal office, both on account of other excellent gifts of soul, and especially on account of prudence, to the lofty peak of the Metropolitan dignity, with all his Colleagues' votes suffraging, he was raised.
[45] if he had equal wisdom joined to prudence. He joined to prudence the wisdom of the just, whose office is according to S. Gregory nothing through ostentation to feign, to open the sense with words; to choose true things as they are, to avoid false; to exhibit good things freely, to tolerate evils more willingly than to do them, to seek no vengeance of injury, to consider insult for the truth as gain. He was also strong in discernment of spirits, and the snares of the crafty serpent he knew to detect cautiously. For when he called fish for food to be distributed to the people; there was present among these an eel, which so entwined his hand, that with a certain alluring titillation of pleasure it solicited the body of the holy man with disordered motion: which snares of satan, in the form of an eel, after he had detected, with the fish shaken from his hand he ordered to be exiled for perpetual times from the Dobrov channel. From then, although in other places of an abundance of eels the Warta river abounds, and the discernment of spirits, at Dobrov this fish never appears further; just as from his ancestors by long tradition received, the fishermen of that place carefully have observed until now. He shone in all the virtues prescribed by the Apostle for a Bishop, again and again repeating them in memory: It behooves a Bishop to be without crime, as a dispenser of God; not proud, not angry, not given to wine, not a striker, not desirous of base gain; but hospitable, kind, sober, just, holy, continent, embracing him who is faithful to the word according to doctrine; that he be powerful to exhort in sound doctrine, and to argue those who contradict. Tit. 1, 7.
XXIV.
[46] By the confidence of these virtues having obtained the greatness of an unconquered and excellent soul, To the seizers of the Church's goods, he was able to exhort in sound doctrine, at that time especially, when with the reins of license poured out, with such raging lust against the goods of the Churches impious Soldiers were running riot, that by no bars of human and divine laws could they be contained in duty. So blind cupidity had driven them headlong, that with no fear of Christian religion or reverence, or synteresis of conscience they suffered themselves to be persuaded, to keep sacrilegious hands from the usurpation of the Church's goods; and now either to atheism to decline, or into pristine idolatry by obstinate will of sinning to be drawn back they seemed. Not much before Bogumilus had ascended the Archiepiscopal peak, Bolesta impious with rash daring invaded the goods of the Church of Plock; Verner then, sprung from the equestrian Rosian stock, conspicuous for sanctity of life, and to Bolesta because of the killed Bishop. and gifted with notable doctrine, governing it. Bolesta was of that family, which bears a horse-shoe as its stem, with a cross eminent on either side, Castellan of Visca, a powerful and bold man, with the Prince fostering the man's boldness, by whose authority he governed the borderland of Prussia. He was taking away the village Crascum from the Church of Plock: Verner courteously and mildly asked, that he not inflict violence on the Church. Where the Bishop accomplished nothing with admonition, he calls the occupier into court, obtains the cause, is put into possession. Bolesta dispatches suborned assassins to the Village of Biskupice, where then the Bishop was staying, with brother Bieniassius, who the sleeping Bishop in his chamber, together with Benedict, professed of the holy Order, cruelly slaughter.
[47] When this deed perpetrated was known to the Archbishop of Gnesen Peter, he announces a Provincial synod, and convokes all the Bishops, to deliberate about the penalty to be constituted for such an atrocious crime: With punishment of the unemended. who after they had met, and had examined the atrocity of the crime by diligent inquisition, decreed by harmonious votes that the whole Poland must be interdicted from Sacred things. Moved both by the atrocity of the deed and the promulgated interdict Boleslaus the Crisp, son of Boleslaus the Wry-mouthed, Prince of Poland, orders Bolesta to be apprehended, and from chains to plead his cause before him; and convicted of the crime and condemned, in the Gnesen forum about to expiate the savagery of his atrocious crime, he gives to the flames. Bieniassius, absorbed by the earth's gaping, is believed to have paid the penalties owed by the just judgment of God to his savage crime. And although the author of the crime bore deserved punishment, yet there were not lacking such wicked daring, Bogumilus strongly resists: either patrons, or defenders, or companions, or imitators, even in Bogumilus's times, who would devastate the goods of the Churches with truculent rabies. Of whose crimes when he had more frequently admonished the chief authors, and accomplished nothing by mild admonitions; with constant magnanimity and undaunted fortitude he drew the spiritual sword against the sacrilegious; with no other event, than that against the goods of the Churches with more savage tumult they would rush; and in devastating them they raged the more insolently, the more gravely they interpreted themselves wounded by the Archbishop.
XXV.
[48] The companion of fortitude is patience, whose force
through all the offices of Christian life is so diffused, that nothing without it holy, with great patience nothing worthy of the endeavors of an excellent soul, nothing ever can be done or accomplished glorious. For it is so set over God's affairs, that no precept can one fulfill who is a stranger to patience. And this therefore, because in a certain way each single precept is contrary to us, as opposed to liberty and nature, inclined toward pleasures and vices: on account of which Augustine, that word of Christ; Be agreeing with your adversary, while you are with him on the way; expounds of the precept and law, with our improbable endeavors resisting. Matt. 5, 25 But if in all precepts it holds the helm of direction, for executing the office of each one; with a much more valid rudder, for exercising the pastoral office as is fitting, the ship-master it turns; when especially the sheep turned into the nature of wolves, lacerate fame, plunder goods, and waylay the life of the pastor. Against the solidity of this virtue of Bogumilus, the furious waves of military impiety dashed; which all, he sustains the assaults of the same, as an unmoved Marpesian rock, with unconquered fortitude of soul he sustained; faithfully obeying the Apostolic admonition: Preach the word; insist opportunely, importunely; argue, beseech, rebuke in all patience and doctrine. 2 Tim. 4 For there shall be a time when sound doctrine they shall not endure, but to their desires they shall heap up to themselves masters, with itching ears; and from the truth indeed they shall turn away their hearing, but to fables shall be turned.
[49] In such arduous exercise of patience one thing especially grieved Bogumilus, that the masters, stirred up by concubinary Parsons. itching in ears, who in part of pastoral labor by him had been taken up, ensnared then in incestuous nuptials, so far was it from they announcing to the people the crimes, and frightening them with the wrath of God and eternal punishments established for sin; that even military fury against the holy Prelate, condemning sacrilegious nuptials, they kindled: that the less he himself, entangled in very many vexations, injuries, and persecutions, might have leisure to attend to the Nicolaite heresy, widely creeping among the Priests; the more licentious a life they led securely the blind leaders of the blind, supplying the fuel of impious counsels against the pastor. Poland seemed then already to have come into those times, which the Apostle predicted: In the last days perilous times shall be at hand: there shall be men loving themselves, greedy, elated, proud, blasphemous, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked; without affection, without peace; slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness; traitors, headstrong, swollen, and lovers of pleasures rather than of God; having indeed a form of piety, but denying its virtue. 2 Tim. 3 Impiety had grown stronger in Poland, than that some form of piety could be cast over it. Each did what was pleasing to himself, with no equivocation stirring a scruple, whether it was lawful.
XXVI.
[50] But the unhappy calamity of those times, with the words of Cromer Bishop of Warmia, our most weighty historian, it pleases to unweave. There had grown up by the negligence and connivance of the higher Princes, The violent oppression of the rustics. a depraved and barbarous Polish custom among the Magnates and Knights, that those traveling, as often and wherever it should be pleasing, depastured the fields and meadows of the rustics and townspeople; and not only fodder, but also all food they demanded from them, or even themselves by breaking open the barns and cells by force took away: nor content with how much they had pleased to consume, the rest also they maliciously poured out, dissipated, and corrupted: cattle from the pastures and stables, and even those yoked to carts and ploughs, to be used or rather to be wasted in running off they led away: and them either exhausted and killed they dismissed, or if perhaps they had pleased they retained and usurped. accustomed to the traveling nobility. Indeed also the Prefects of the Prince did the same, and they augmented the Prince's granaries, estates, and treasury with faculties, which were dedicated to the ministers of divine cult, and to the needy. These things although iniquitous, unjust, cruel and impious, although bitter to the wretched men and intolerable; yet because by long custom they had grown old, and almost held the force of law, and were defended by Magnates to whom they were useful, were difficult to abrogate.
[51] The Archbishop of Gnesen gathered a national Council at Lanciciae, and injurious to the churches, seeking remedies by which to meet such wicked daring of Soldiers: to which when all the Bishops had met, with harmonious votes and unanimous consent they sanctioned; that those who had occupied or invaded goods, possessions, and any faculties bereft of defenders by the death of Bishops; those who would extort by force from farmers cattle, carts, or food; those who would usurp the things of departed Priests, and according to pleasure would dare to plunder, alienate, or convert to their own uses; should be subject to anathema for so long, until all things they should fully restore to their lords, or to those to whom by law the disposition pertained: which law that it might obtain the perennial vigor of firmness, and more powerfully resist the wicked endeavors, was confirmed by decree of the supreme Hierarch of the Church Alexander III; He restrains by Synodal law. and at length by Zdislaus, second successor of Bogumilus, brought to execution; with Casimir the Just Prince interposing authority and forces necessary for execution. But now those usurping rights, fruits etc. of the Apostolic See, or of other Churches, or those who sequester them without the license of the competent Superior, are excommunicated in the Bull of the Lord's Supper num. 17. The Principate was being conducted at that time in Poland by Mecislaus the elder; who by oppressions not only the Ecclesiastics, but also Knights, so had vexed; that they had necessary to take away from him the fasces of empire, to confer on Casimir. His impotent dominion, not even his son Otto could sustain; but against his father he took arms, and stripped him of the principate, going over to the parts of Casimir.
CHAPTER VIII.
With Episcopate dismissed, the eremitic institution of the Camaldolese Bogumilus embraces.
XXVII.
[52] Nor in Italy did a happier state of affairs receive the rule of Bogumilus, Italy disturbed through schism, introduced by Frederick II, with most grave schism in the Church fostering Frederick II, called Barbarossa, Dlugossus calls him Ahenobarbus. He opposed to Alexander III, the true and undoubted Pontiff, four Antipopes with the highest contention; Victor III, who died in the year of Christ 1164, in the fifth year of Alexander's Pontificate; Paschal III of Crema, who before had been called Guido, Cardinal of the title of holy Calixtus; who when he had sat five years, died in the tenth year of Alexander's Pontificate; Calixtus III, who as John the Monk, had been Abbot of Strumi, Bishop of Tusculum; who when he had sat seven years, died in the sixteenth year of Alexander's Pontificate; Innocent III, who at length to the true and legitimate Pontiff Alexander rendered due obedience and reverence, in the 17th year of his Pontificate, of Christ in the year 1176, after the desired peace conquered by the Venetians Frederick had restored. It was miserable to look upon the mystical body of Christ, with the highest violence to be torn away from the Head by the Emperor, thus against those obedient to the supreme Pontiff raging, that not even his faithful counselor he spared on this account. Peter then Vinea of Campania, born in an obscure place, but in doctrine and eloquence, as much as that age bore, on account of the right of investiture pretended by him, notable, was a participant of all his secrets and moderator. He through envy, which both arises in the court and has nourishment, and is the perpetual persecutor of virtue, brought into suspicion, as if he sympathized with Pope Alexander, with whom Frederick was waging war, was deprived of his lights of eyes; impatient of which thing, and on account of it turned into fury, at holy Miniatus, which is a town in Etruria, he killed himself. Namely the Emperor wished to use the authority, and custom, and authorial privileges of the Emperors, who from Charles the Great, (who after the Greeks of the Kings of the Franks reigned over the Romans) for three hundred years already had reigned under 63 Apostolics; and to give Bishoprics and Abbeys, by ring and rod, were wont. Thus Otto received the Episcopate of the Bamberg Church from the hand of the Emperor, scarcely consenting, on account of that contention which was between the Kingdom and the Priesthood, on the cause of investiture and erection of Churches; which to evacuate, and claim for himself more than was equitable, the Imperial authority strove. Who then coming to Rome to Paschal the supreme Pontiff, at his feet the staff and ring he cast down, seeking pardon; and there again invested by him and confirmed, on the very day of Pentecost was consecrated.
[53] Pseudopope Leo VIII had given the greatest handle to the Emperors' pretension; Simoniac heresy had prevailed who by the power of the Emperor having attained the peak of the supreme Pontificate, that by the same he might stabilize the pride of his ambition, had brought forth an edict, that the Emperor alone should choose the Pontiff and alone should confirm: by which decree to the two nefas heresies of Simon Magus and Nicholas of Antioch he opened the way, since one who by price had bought the See, by price likewise the Sees would distract. Nor is it wondrous from such a venomous fountain the origin of the aforesaid sins to have gushed forth; since with the head vitiated, the rest of the body necessarily is vitiated. So namely whenever the religiosity of Pontiffs fails, and the regular strictness of Abbots withers, through their examples the rest of the people stands forth a transgressor of God's commands; and concubinary; although before him Adrian the Roman Pope, with the whole Synod, handed over to Charles the Great the right and power of choosing the Pontiff, and of ordaining the Apostolic See, and defined, that Bishops should receive investiture from him. But when Louis the Pious, Otto the Great, and holy Henry considered, that that privilege of Adrian the First, just as also of Leo VIII, had been extorted by great iniquity of times and by oppressions of Pontiffs, on account of the dissensions of schismatics and heretics, by whom the Church of God was endangered; they renounced that right and custom, and resigned that right to the Roman Clergy and Ecclesiastical electors: at length however all that custom and privilege Adrian II abrogated. The other evil, from the connivance of Simoniac Pastors, had advanced into the Church of God, the incontinence of Priests; when nearly all Clerics, with public wives or harlots (which are heretical marriages) led their life ignominiously.
[54] And when thus with impunity in the Christian orb two destructive plagues of heresies, against extirpating them are zealous SS. Romualdus and John Gualbertus. simony and concubinage, were running riot, that Christian religion, and especially in God's Churches, was filled at that time with most foul men and covered with every crime; God raised up the spirit of Enoch and Elijah, burning with most ardent zeal for propagating his glory, S. Romualdus and S. John Gualbertus his disciple, Abbot of Vallombrosa, who would extirpate the venom of these crimes from the root. For S. Romualdus among others, sharply reprimanded the Clerics, who through money had been ordained; and them, unless they should desert the Order willingly, he asserted to be entirely damnable and heretics. Some Bishops also, who through the Simoniac heresy had invaded sacred Sees, came to him for the cause of penance; who also entrusting themselves to the venerable man, both to desert the Episcopate at a fixed term, and to hasten to the order of holy conversion they promised. S. John Gualbertus, as one of the Seraphim, with the flame of divine love incomparably burning, convicted Peter Archbishop of Florence, of Simoniac heresy through fire.
[55] Moreover although then the Simoniac taint had not found place in Poland, with diligent consideration of merits, of those who were chosen to the Bishoprics, excluding it,
when Prelates and Canons, conferred such sublime dignities on men conspicuous for exercises of virtues, not powerful with opulent census of riches, Poland pure from Simoniacs, with the liberty of suffrages unshaken; nevertheless other most grave crimes were defiling clergy and people; the Priests indeed incestuous nuptials, more truly sacrilegious and public concubinage; the Knights however with extreme license, and a certain insane fury of running riot in the goods of the Churches. but teeming with concubinaries and plunderers, What should the anxious Pastor do amid inane cares? when neither the Priests promised hope of better fruit, and the Knights did not suffer themselves to be restrained from plunderings either by admonitions or by ecclesiastical censures; and from the Apostolic See he saw that no remedy could be hoped? when the persecution of the Supreme Pontiff, which he sustained from the Emperor, removed every manner of chastising the wicked and restraining crimes, without hope of remedy, that with impunity each one did what was pleasing; the Archbishop himself however more gravely day by day, with frequent rebukes and rebukes, kindled hatred against himself; that not only admonitions of salvation by the wicked were despised, but even the very authority of the admonisher among the obstinate and pertinacious was now held in contempt.
[56] Bogumilus resolved to desert, Solicitous therefore, that, if they would not come to themselves, at least in his person the occasion of gravely offending God to the raging souls he might subtract; the matter long debated with himself, and with religious men consulted communicated, the example of his fellow-countryman S. Adalbert, deserting the refractory Pragans, he resolved to follow: and therefore to Alexander III, then staying at Venice he went; to whom with the obstinacy of his Priests and people set forth, and from Alexander III obtained absolution. and the superfluous labors of pastoral care recounted, he asked release from the bond of the Church of Gnesen with humble supplication, that he might attend more tranquilly to his salvation, freed from the useless cares of another's. To whose petition Alexander did not give difficult assent, taught to commiserate with another's calamity, by his own persecution which meanwhile he was tolerating. Returning from Venice, he proceeded into Hungary, where Camaldolese Hermits, sent by holy Patriarch Romualdus were staying; from whom he learned the eremitic manner of living: and thus with the license of the supreme Pontiff obtained, he withdrew into the Dobrov hermitage, where two rapid whirling rivers Warta and Nyr converging, intercept every approach to the people with tortuous and deep meanders; as if he had heard a voice fallen divinely to Arsenius in his vocation; Arsenius, flee tumults, and you shall be saved.
He digresses here through six entire Chapters our Author, to the Camaldolese, indeed of the whole Eremitical institution, origin; and its beginnings among the Poles and Hungarians, with martyrial blood, and the propagation of faith glorious: which all is not relevant to reprint here, since from the very Acts of the holy Founder Romualdus, illustrated on the day VII February, can be had. Yet the number of Chapters, which the Author began, I shall continue in the margin.
XXVIII.
[57] Thus wearied with the calamities of the Church, to which remedy at that time could not be applied; Renouncing the Church of Gnesen, diligently in mind weighing Bogumilus, that the solicitude of pastoral care is nothing else than affliction of a fluctuating mind, where with proper conveniences omitted, to attend to others' is necessary; and fearing that, lest he, involved in the waves of another's tempest, force without counsel into eternal precipice might draw him; according to what about himself writes Jerome to Eustochium; Know that I should now be of the number of the damned, if I had been of the number of the Bishops; he abdicates from the Archbishopric of Gnesen, and into the hands of the Apostolic Nuncio, what long before with mature counsel he had deliberated, he resigns, and into the hermitage of the Dobrov solitude withdraws. For the lofty palaces of Princes, a cheap little hut he exchanges; for splendid and precious dress, a rough tunic he puts on; for an undergarment, a hair-shirt he assumes; he withdraws to the Dobrov hermitage, for the conversation of Magnates and Dukes, to the society of beasts and wild animals he is added; his head wearied with vigils and prayers, for a soft mattress or pillow, on green turf or a sack stuffed with straw he reclines. He rises with modest quiet refreshed, with brief sleep, not broken, but completed; says Petrarch and sometimes, by the songs of the philomela spending the night aroused; and with torpors driven away, in the hours of quiet beginning to sing psalms, the porter of his lips, that to the morning praises about to enter he may open, devout he asks: and the Lord of his heart into help he calls; and trusting in nothing of his own strengths, and conscious of imminent dangers and fearing them, that he may hasten he beseeches; intent on weaving no deceits; but God's glory, and the praises of the Saints not only by day but by hour, both with indefatigable service of tongue, and with pious obsequy of mind repeating: lest sometime perhaps by ungrateful soul, the memory of divine gifts should vanish; and often meanwhile, full of secure fear and tepid hope, and mindful of the past, and foreseeing the future, with joyful (wondrous to say!) sorrow, most sweetly to be occupied with morning prayer, with happy tears he abounds. Thence looking up to heaven, and the stars, and the Lord his God dwelling in them, with whole mind sighing; and thinking of his country, and from the place of his exile with ardent tedium panting toward it, the admirable majesty of the Creator of things he venerates, and adores: more frequently bursting into the voices of the divine Psalmist: O Lord our Lord, how admirable is your name in the whole earth! Because your magnificence has been elevated above the heavens.
[58] Then his strengths refreshed by modest food, to the study of pleasant reading he confers, with peace to be refreshed near midday; and the fire of love by recollection of divine benefits he stirs up; and the conceived sparks of it, with the affections of zealous will, into eminent flame he blows; with tears meanwhile, drawn from the burning of the boiling heart, by the vapor of divine spirit, in refreshment of the kindled countenance, through cheeks with sweet sweetness flowing. At length with thanks given to God, and the parts of the day brought back to the count, by what virtue in individual things he has profited or failed more accurately examining, and with limbs poured on the ground intervigilating, what during the day he had read repeating in memory, with much tranquility of soul he awaits the beginning of the coming light. O hermitage, the delight of holy minds! O inexhausted sweetness of inmost sense! O torrent of pleasure, and again to be cherished with celestial delights in the evening, flowing forth from the fountain leaping into eternal life! No one believes except who thirsting approaches, with what abundance of God's house, with the most pleasant delight of internal taste, you refresh and inebriate your cultivators. One drop of your refreshment is more precious than all balsam, more pleasant than all the delights of Kings and Princes, incomparable with the treasures of the whole world: If a man shall give all the substance of his house for love, as if nothing he shall despise it. Here here are fulfilled the heats of the desires of the celestial Spouse: I will lead her into solitude, and there I will speak to her heart. Here the Spouse unequal to divine delights, calls celestial spirits into aid: He has introduced me, saying, into the wine-cellar, he has set charity in order in me. Stay me up with flowers, surround me with apples, because I languish with love. My soul has melted, as the Beloved has spoken. Here the Spouse and Bride pledge mutual pledges of the eternal covenant and never to be dissolved nuptials. The Spouse offers a ring, Place me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm: the Bride receives most sweetly smelling from the Beloved a little bundle of myrrh, which smelling and placing to her heart, most tenderly embracing such a pledge, joyful she sings; A little bundle of myrrh is my Beloved to me, between my breasts he shall dwell. She offers in turn to the Spouse apples and wine; far from all perturbation. All apples new and old, my Beloved, I have kept for you: I will give you a cup from seasoned wine, and the must of my pomegranates. O love! O pleasure! Whom such love inebriates, how happy is he whom it satisfies! how deep that it may grasp! what sweet Jesus may savor! Not importunate there are the flies of vain thoughts, perturbing among praying the tranquility of the soul tending to God; not is the mind shaken by anxious anguishes, lest to someone about him cause of complaining it has given; not does it darken the serenity of conscience, the solicitude of restitution of another's fame; not is it struck by the pernicious tumult of harmful cupidities. Composed is the quiet of the breast, absent are quarrels, silent are suits, contentions are exiled: Mine, and Yours, pronouns stirring war, are not heard. Not finds, whose excellence to prefer itself, pride: not has, against whom distorted glances to brandish, envy: not finds wealth, on which to apply its heart, avarice: not the anger of furious vengeance stirs up fires: not does sloth recline the belly fattened with diversity of foods: not has the irritations of voracity or drunkenness gluttony: lacking are the fuels of alluring luxury: secure quiet, tranquil station, cheerful peace laughs at the inconstant waves of the tumultuous world, foretasting the sweet delights of the eternal peace of the celestial Jerusalem.
CHAPTER IX.
Bogumilus's eremitic life; his death, and the miracles following this.
XXIX.
[59] Of great and heroic virtues, in this withdrawal to the hermitage, S. Bogumilus exhibited a specimen, and first of all of poverty, which is the foundation of Apostolic perfection: according to the manifestation of the Prince of the Apostles S. Peter, Despiser of every earthly thing, constantly adhering to Christ: Behold we have left all things, and have followed you. S. Bogumilus left not only the hope of having, but the very possession of those things, which the world promises to its followers; and to obtain which with the whole effort of an ambitious mind they pant, with the hope of eternal pleasure trampled down, the lovers of the present age. Matt. 19, 17 He renounced the ancestral splendor of birth, that among the poor, whom the only-begotten Son of God wrote as heirs of the celestial kingdom, with more secure confidence he might dwell. He deserted ample possessions, that in the house of the eternal Father of many mansions he might be an inhabitant. He went forth from his house and paternal kinship, that among the citizens of the Saints and the household of God, he might be reckoned not doubtful coheir. He spurned the lofty peak of dignity, posthumed the frequency of friends and servants in numerous accompanying troop, that to him, who when he was rich for our cause became needy, he might appear most similar. He despised with heroic magnanimity falling wealth, that he might exhibit himself worthy in the poor as a minister to Christ. and embracing poverty, For no one else is worthy of God, than one who has despised wealth. He is of great soul, who laughs at riches; great, who in riches is poor; more secure, who is without them. It is good to disburse faculties with dispensation; better it is for the intention of following the Lord at the same time to give; and absolutely, in solitude to be needy with Christ. The holy man knew that abundant fruits in poverty come forth; preservation from sins, conservation of virtues, quiet of heart, fulfillment of celestial desire, participation of divine sweetness, exaltation, celestial inheritance; which all with great pleasantness he tasted; and now, blessed possessor of eternal inheritance, with abundant reward strenuous triumpher of the world, he obtains the immense riches of the celestial Kingdom, promised to the poor.
[60] But if nothing is so of a narrow soul and so small, as to love riches; nothing more honorable and more magnificent, than to despise money, if you do not have it; if you have, to confer on munificence and liberality; with vast amplitude of soul it is necessary that Bogumilus have had, whose desire's heat, whatever is below God, not to say to extinguish, his all things liberally he disperses among the poor, but not even to mitigate could. Too capacious and lofty is the soul, which content with the will of God alone, the painted and unstable of the whole world
disdains its beauty; and if it becomes a generous man not to despise unpossessed money, and to be carried by no cupidity for it; how far more glorious and above every human peak more sublime is Bogumilus to be esteemed, who cast away what he possessed, dispersed, gave to the poor? and not only of money, but also of all riches, possessions, cities, towns, villages, estates, gardens, granaries, necklaces, gems, gold, and the opulence of silver never applied his heart; indeed to all these he renounced with heroic fortitude, that naked with the naked devil, the unconquered athlete of Christ might wrestle in the hermitage. The love of the present life became cheap to him, the more fastidiously, and pants only for eternal things. the more to the secret riches of celestial goods he was carried up in mind, and from the sweetness of divine love all the felicities of the present age became bitter. Nothing savored to him, except seasoned by meditation of the Lord's law; nothing delighted the man of God, except what would draw flesh away from the delights of senses; that with the faculties of the soul subjected to the obsequy of the cross, and with the senses reduced to the servitude of the Crucified, not unjustly he could be seen to use that Apostolic elogium: I live, no longer I; but Christ lives in me: for so all senses he had subjected to the command of reason, and to the example of the Crucified had bound, that he used them only for his service.
Hence furthermore Bogumilus is described to overcome huge temptations, leaning on hope and faith, and with no less constancy, and to imitate the Romualdine abstinence in solitude; where, by the defect of particular history, the Author diffuses to commonplaces, by no means opportune to this work. Therefore I skip over the other four Chapters, hastening to the end.
XXX.
[61] Nevertheless he readily serves the Dobrov Parson, Although however he had given up the announcement of Archiepiscopal dignity and solicitude entirely; yet the care of the salvation of neighbors he did not utterly cast away, reflecting in mind, that the token of special love toward God is reckoned by the love of neighbor; and therefore Peter first by Christ was examined about the love of him, before he had committed sheep to be fed to him. For whoever endowed with virtues refuses to feed the flock of God, is convicted of not loving the supreme Pastor. There was already another pastor of the people of Dobrov, whom Bogumilus, after he had ascended the peak of the Archbishopric, had instituted; that incumbent on the administration of the Sacraments and other Parochial offices, the fruits ascribed to the Curate by foundation he should receive; yet if in any matter the Parson wished to use his work, the humble Hermit by no means refused to bestow it. On the preaching of the Word of God with his license he insisted the more fervently, the sweeter pleasures of celestial sendings, in the hermitage he had experienced; and with mind expedited from secular businesses, to the consideration of supreme goods he more freely intended. He came forth from the hermitage like John himself, a master to be feared for the severity of the anchoretic life; his face wasted with fasts was pale; like the Baptist coming forth from the hermitage, his countenance hung emaciated with long vigils; his forehead with skin drawn together furrowed wrinkles; his cast-down eyebrows verged to the ground; his eyes, as projecting from deeper caves, struck the mouths and countenances of those looking with oblique splendor; his unshorn head and beard, bristled with the rigor of hairs; the very composition of countenance and bloodless mouth in the man of God, announced penance to the people: whom he so deterred from vices with such vehemence of spirit and contention of voice, that very many of the hearers dissolved into tears, proposing serious emendation of life, returned from his sermon …
XXXI.
[62] Thus when in the harder exercises of hermits, and the austerer observance of Romualdine discipline, for twelve years, After 12 years thus passed. after he had abdicated the Gnesen Archbishopric, he had passed his life, and the end of it already imminent he had recognized, tried by a slight fever; with companions called, who in the neighboring little huts of the same solitude dwelt, a few things about the riches of celestial goods, by brief labor and patience to be obtained having premised, and exhorting them to constancy in the studies and occupations of solitary life; to the last conflict by prayer and frequent sighs he was disposing himself; duly fortified with the Sacraments; to the most blessed Virgin Mary the Mother of God, in whose veneration with more propense will he was always carried, to holy Adalbert and Stanislaus, and also to the five Martyr Hermits, the end of his life religiously commending. With which now imminent, he saw the glorious mother of God Mary, surrounded by a frequent assembly of Angels, with the boy Jesus clinging in the hands of his mother, inviting him to the rewards of the celestial kingdom. he dies happily in the year 1182: And so with these words: Jesus, Son of God and of the Virgin Mary, be the receiver of my soul, the present life with the eternal he exchanged. Whose soul, in the form of a white dove, was seen to have penetrated into heaven on IV nones of June, in the year of Christ 1182.
[63] in the Dobrov church buried, The last honor of burial he received in the Dobrov church of the most holy Trinity, in which while living, before and after the Gnesen Archbishopric, he had labored: whose man's sanctity God deigned to honor with very many miracles. For at once from his death, by a certain secret impulse of the divine spirit, to visit his sepulcher, the greatest multitude of people, by his help and merits, in various necessities, calamities, anguishes, and various diseases, to receive aid and consolation from God flowed together. Which concourse of men, in such great frequency is wont to be continued until the present, for the tenth of June; that by the testimony of most grave Senators, who beheld the present crowd, to eight thousand persons, sometimes ten, the number was reckoned to reach. Of whom very many narrated, that they never, without some consolation and refreshing of mind, departed from the sepulcher of the Saint. But when the place of burial daily shone with more miracles, Fulco the Archbishop of Gnesen, under Alexander IV he is elevated; the fifth successor from him, who lived in the times of Alexander IV, raised his bones; and on the southern side of the church in a higher sepulcher buried, with the sculpted image of the Pontiff with Episcopal insignia superimposed. Besides votive tablets, wax offerings, and the crutches of the lame, suspended on either wall of the temple; very much money to the tomb of the Saint the people offered, which threefold yearly was wont to be distributed by ordination of the Archbishops. One part went to the sustentation of the Parson and other ministers of the Church; another, for the fabric of the collegiate church of Unietov, in whose Archdeaconate the parochial of Dobrov is situated, was converted; the third, for the temple to be built in honor of the Saint was reserved. Wax, after it sufficed for the use of the church through the year, and with great concourse is visited on June 10. the rest was sold, and was added to the pile of reserved money. God is wont to work very many at the place of his burial, to the praise and glory of his name, the honor of the Saint, and the utility and consolation of the peoples flowing together to implore his help, miracles; of which here one, and another, must come to be unwoven.
[64] Vincent Cotus the Archbishop of Gnesen, Cardinal of the S. R. Church, had ordered, and together with the Metropolitan College of Prelates and Canons had sanctioned, In the year 1403 the miracles are collected, in the year of the Lord 1403, that the venerable Lord Albert Parson at Turek should diligently and faithfully write up the signs, which through the merits of S. Bogumilus were happening, and place them in the protocols. But this book, in which they were described, perished by fire; as from the most grave reports of illustrious men and great office-holders in the Republic, officially confirmed by oath, it is evidently clear. One eye-witness sufficed for many, the Illustrious and Magnificent Lord Sebastian Glembocki, Treasurer of Brest, sixty-four years old sworn, not processed, not excommunicated, possessor of hereditary goods of one hundred thousand Polish florins, confessed and refreshed with the holy Eucharist, in the Collegiate Church of Crusfic, on the eve of the feast of the B. Virgin Mary purified thus deposed, interrogated at the request of the Fiscal of the Court of Matthias Lubienski Archbishop of Gnesen, who, since with singular propensity he was addicted to the Saint, but the book perished by fire; whose bones he placed in a tin urn; and with greatest diligence sought the book, wishing to publish it in print to the Christian orb; for great and many things had been there described he had heard. Many, said he, miracles done by holy Bogumilus I know; for I had the book of descriptions diligently, from two hundred and more years: which perished by the fire of my palace, in the village of Glembokie; in which I recall that more than two hundred lame, received health, through his intercession; and their crutches on which they leaned, as a sign of gratitude and the bestowed benefit, left there. I recall also the blind to have received sight, and the dead resuscitated; which book, given to me by ancestors, I also gave to others to read.
[65] And the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Alexander Glembocki, Archdeacon of Gnesen, Dean of Posnan, Cracow, and Plock, Canon, Secretary of the S. R. M., sixty-seven years old, sworn, not excommunicated etc., recognized, that when he was Commissary, by the formerly Illustrious Lawrence Gembicki Archbishop of Gnesen, together with the Illustrious Lord John Crzeciewski Archdeacon of Lancicia, Canon of Gnesen, deputed to the examination of the miracles of the Saint, by sworn depositions of old men he understood, but especially from Faustus Suski son of Stanislaus, who already had a hundred thirty years; and from another Brictius Fastek, who already was passing the twenty-fifth year above the hundredth, (both born in the Dobrov village) innumerable miracles, at the sepulcher of S. Bogumilus to be done continuously: to very many sick, and very many anathemas through the carelessness of the Parsons. through his intercession, health was restored. Whence the lame, as a sign of regained gait, had left very many crutches on which they leaned: which afterwards by the Parsons, as obstructions of the church, were burned in their presence. Many other signs of wax, like eyes, heads, feet, and other members, are left by pious faithful. Since therefore the memory of ancient miracles perished, either by the carelessness of the Parsons, or by the iniquity of the times, especially by the incursions of various enemies; as of the Crosshearers, who through almost two hundred years, devastating greater Poland, towns and villages with frequent fires most miserably afflicted; and of the Tartars, who atrociously devastated all Poland with iron and fire; it will be sufficient to have brought forth one or two.
[66] One Martin Baron, a Polish Cleric of Jaroslaw, reports, One thirdly reprinted is remembered, in the book which he wrote on the lives of the eight Polish Martyr Hermits of the Order of holy Romualdus of the Camaldolese, and by the authority of the Most Illustrious Lord Bernard Maciejowski; Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, Archbishop of Gnesen edited, first at Rome in the year of the Lord 1602, by Brother John Maria of Vercelli, Master of the sacred Palace, seen and approved; then at Cracow in the year of the Lord 1604, by the Most Illustrious Lord Claudius Rangonius, Count, Legate of the Apostolic See of Paul V, Bishop of Reggio and Prince, to the most Serene Sigismund the Third King of Poland, with his vigor confirmed; and at length in the year of the Lord 1610, by the Reverend Lord Andrew Schoneus Doctor of Theology and Both Laws, about the horse resuscitated after skin removed for then Rector of the University of Cracow of the general study, admitted to be published into the light, Basil Skalski printed it at Cracow, in the year of the Lord 1610. At a certain time, a man pious toward holy Bogumilus, Stanislaus Vach, citizen of Cola, was leading a cart too much loaded with cloth, with six horses drawing. And while near the village Dobrowo, where the body of the holy Archbishop rests, he was proceeding; one of the horses pressed by the burden fell; from which after on the spot he had the hide removed, in the place of a gift it
he offered to the Priests of the Dobrov church, about the year 1396. asking that the health of the rest they should commend to holy Bogumilus; he himself meanwhile with knees bent at his sepulcher, diligently implored God's protection on the begun journey through the merits of the holy Prelate. While with prayer finished he departs from the church, that horse (wondrous to say!) stood at the doors of the temple neighing; whom the master, with thanks given to God for such great benefit, joyful received; yoked to the cart; happily pursued the way; preaching to all through the whole way the wondrous works of God, bestowed on him by the merits of holy Bogumilus. The Priests, that the memory of such great a miracle should endure, caused the hide given to them to be affixed to the doors of the church, in the year of the Lord 1396.
[67] And this prodigious resuscitation of the horse, and the increasing miracles by the help of the Saint, Therefore a new church is built for the Saint, which he ordered to be diligently noted down, moved the Archbishop of Gnesen, especially with the Metropolitan Senate requesting, Vincent Cotus Cardinal of the S. R. E., that he should pronounce Bogumilus Saint; and in his honor a church of baked brick to be built, from the offerings made at his tomb, with the unanimous assent of all the Prelates and Canons, decreed. I myself saw, when visiting the sepulcher of the Saint in the year of the Lord 1644, this hide, of nut-color, affixed to the doors of the church; which the people, commending horses and other beasts of burden to the patronage of S. Bogumilus, was wont to cut, giving it to the animals for medicine. No traces of the hide are now seen at present, distracted into the medicine of beasts of burden. The devotion of the neighboring peoples endures to this day, that as often as they meet to visit the sepulcher of the Saint, so often they lead horses and oxen around the church, trusting that their animals by the prayers of the Saint shall be preserved from pestilent contagion and other diseases. for the old preserved through 478 years three times from flames. Through 478 years the village Dobrowo turned into ashes and cinders three times, brought no danger to the church of the most holy Trinity, built by the man of God of fir planks, covered with flames on every side; that no trace of burning or smoke blackening the neighboring walls appears; which happened the more wondrously, the nearer the rustic cottages, into the temple situated in the middle of the village, from every side cast fuel of fires.
ANALECTA BY D. P.
Bogumilus, formerly Archbishop of Gnesen, Camaldolese Hermit, at Unietov in Poland (B.)
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
§. I. Diplomata of the 12th and 13th centuries, establishing the titles of Archbishop and Blessed.
[68] The same Damalevicius, by whom the Life recently edited we have so far given, of the same a compendium and as if a rudiment about to be premised, among the Lives of the Archbishops of Gnesen, thus prefaces; Lest I should seem rashly to oppose antiquity, and Bogumilus passed over by accurate scrutinizers of ancient monuments, From ancient charters of the year 1153 importunely to insert into the order of the Archbishops of Gnesen; of two famous monasteries of the Cistercian Order in Poland, of Suleiow and Wangrowec, it has seemed to premise the diplomas. The Suleiow charter's from the original writing, with public faith in the Court of the Most Illustrious Primate recognized, the tenor most makes for our matter, both because the title of Blessed, ascribed to Bogumilus within the first 40 years from death, it luminously proves, it is proved that Bogumilus was Archbishop of Gnesen. and concerns the Dobrov foundation; both because it proves, that his brother Boguphalus (which the tradition of the Coronovo monastery also approves) was a Monk. The Wangrowec letters, signed by John Venerable Archprelate of the Holy Church of Gnesen, under privilege caution, in the year 1153, with Boleslaus, Miecone, Henry uterine brothers principating in Poland, only this clause supply to the present history, useful to understand, how in the Life at num. 47 Boleslaus the Crisp is called Prince of Poland, and how at num. 15 is said, that the Principate in Poland was being conducted by Mecislaus the elder, or Mieczo.
[69] For as Matthias of Michovia hands down, in the Chronicle book 3 ch. 15, of Boleslaus the Wry-mouthed there were five sons: Vladislaus, to whom, and this with three sons of Boleslaus the Wry-mouthed co-reigning, as firstborn and supreme among the brothers, with the Cracow, Cuiavian, Simdian, and Lancician Palatinates, fell Silesia and Pomerania: Boleslaus the Crisp, to whom the father attributed Mazovia, Dorbizinium, Cuiavia, and Culma: Miecislaus, called the Elder from the maturity of his morals, who obtained Gnesen, Posnan, and Calisz, by testament: Henry, Lord of the districts of Sandomir and Lubsin: and finally Casimir the boy, to whom by the prophecy of his dying father more than to the rest fell, being made at length Monarch of Poland. But in that diploma Vladislaus is passed over in silence; because seeking the possessions of his brothers, he deserved to be stripped of his own and excommunicated, and with their brother Vladislaus in exile and was compelled to flee into Germany, before that diploma was written. But when Bogumilus yielded the dignity in the year 1172, with Boleslaus the Crisp and Miecislaus still dominating, of whom the first reached to the year 1173, the latter to 1188, compelled to yield the Duchy to the younger brother Casimir; but yielded with two still reigning, in the year 1172 it is clear that Martin Baron vehemently erred, when he attributed the cause of abdicating the dignity, to the hatred of Premislaus II, Prince of Posnan and Greater Poland, who ordered Lucardim, his chaste consort, because she had taken no offspring from her, to be killed. For this man, grandson of the aforesaid Miecislaus by his son Premislaus, only in the year 1257 succeeded the dead father in the Principate of Posnan and Gnesen; and wife Luchardim, not on account of the uxoricide of Premislaus committed in 1283: led in the year 1273, he ordered to be cut down by his own footmen in the year 1283; that more than an entire century Baron erred, connecting things so far separated among themselves.
[70] More true therefore is the cause of departure revealed by Damalevicius: but he withdrew to the island of Unieovia 15 leagues distant, who the same in the series of Archbishops above praised, the place of his very withdrawal he calls a hermitage, neighboring to the Dobrov village, in the dominion of the Archbishop's goods, of the Unieov tract (which Baron asserts is distant fifteen Polish miles from Gnesen) where there is shown until now an opaque island, among lofty oaks surrounded by the Wartha river, into which to attend to harder exercises to withdraw the Saint was wont; whence the zealous imitator of Saint John, more fervent in preaching the word of God to the people, coming to sacred things in the Dobrov village, would come forth: which place now is on account of the memory of the Blessed, with an image of suffering Christ, by mandate of the Most Illustrious Matthias Lubienski (to whom under the year 1641 ordained Archbishop Damalevicius dedicates his Series) marked.
[71] Vladislaus Duke of Poland in the year 1232 These premised, I come to the promised at the beginning charter of the Suleiow cenobium, about to prove the ancient title of Blessed given to Bogumilus from the year 1232, which is such. In the name of the Lord. Amen. I Vladislaus, by the grace of God Duke of Poland, son of the formerly illustrious Duke Odo, wish to be known to all faithful of Christ, present and future, that of pious memory B. Bogumilus, formerly Archbishop of Gnesen, his own church and of the Gnesen Church in Dobrowo, with the possessions and inheritances pertaining to it, attests to the donation made by B. Bogumilus namely the very village Dobrowo, Lessno, Rzuchowo, Zadowo, and Kakwzowo, with woods and fisheries, and with the tithes of the same possessions, namely, Chelm, Krokowo, Dambe, Ostrowo, Komorowo, Karszewo, Zakrzewo, Bissecre, Slaventino, Grobowo; likewise Janissewo, Kolnica, Choternino and Weglowa, conferred and gave, for the honor of God and most blessed Mary ever Virgin, to the Cistercian Order, with the use of fruit, fully, freely, in perpetuity to be possessed; and to the hands of Brother Boguphalus the Monk consigned, by the will of the general Chapter of the same Order to be disposed; and that the same Chapter, after the death of Brother Boguphalus, after the death of brother Boguphalus Monk of Lechna aforesaid, the same church with all aforesaid pertinents, to the Religious Lord Father Christian, Bishop of Prussia, Monk of the Cistercian Order, for the time of his life conferred, to be held and possessed, for aid of his land.
[72] This is that Christian, who in the year 1210 with Companions sent to preach the Gospel of Prussia, to Christian the Cistercian, Bishop of Prussia, by Innocent Pope III, and about the year 1222; after Conrad Duke of Mazovia had reduced the Culm and Lubavian tract, nearer Polish provinces of the Prussians, into his power; was constituted Bishop of Prussia, by authority of Honorius III with See established at Culm and then at Lubavia; whence by either name afterwards the Bishops were called, because previously they were simply called Bishops of Prussia. But we know, from the complaint of Gregory IX, by infidels, fearing the Teutonic Knights simulating desire of receiving baptism, about the year 1233 to have been fraudulently summoned Christian; but with the fear ceasing, with the companions beheaded he was given into chains, freed however, to have excellently fructified there, the Cross having been preached against them. He is referred however in the Cistercian Calendar, under the note of the year 1617 printed at Dijon, on IV December with the title of Apostle of Lubavia, and by Chalemot with the title of Blessed, but Manriquez in the Annals absolutely calls him Saint, but the year or day of death he does not note.
[73] He proceeds further in his diploma the Duke: But the same Father, who transferred it to the right of the Abbot of Suleiow: Lord Christian the Bishop, afterwards before me at Posnan standing, and in the presence of the Venerable Father Lord Fulco Archbishop of Gnesen, with the instrument of the mandate of the said General Chapter, the aforesaid church of Dobrowo, with all aforesaid attached, to Abbot William of Suleiow and his Convent, after his life consigned and handed over, by full right to be held, and by the will of the General Chapter to be possessed. To the testimony of this deed and eternal vigor, I have ordered the present page to be written, and by my order and the seals of the aforesaid Lords, Fulco Archbishop of Gnesen and Christian Bishop of Prussia to be fortified. These were done in the year of the Lord 1233, in the fifth Indiction, on the feast of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul: with the upright men and Lords present, Baldwin of Gnesen and Albert of Lancicia Deans, Master Andrew of Cracow, and Stephen my Chancellor; likewise Jarosius of Posnan, Petrone of Sandic, and Vincent of Zbaussin Castellans, Nemera my Cupbearer, Vislao Standard-bearer, Lawrence Huntsman, and many others.
[74] I also with respect to divine mercy, all liberties from my predecessors, and the privileges of the Dobrov church of solemn memory the Dukes of Poland, Miescon my grandfather, Vladislaus my paternal uncle, and Odo my father, to the often said church of Dobrov, conferred on the possessions and inhabitants of them of whatever condition, renew and confirm. Namely that they have full right of fishing and hunting of beavers, in the rivers Warta and Nyr, within the bounds of their possession: nor do they pay any tribute, nor do they pay any payment to me, or to my Castellans and Officials, nor are they cited before them, but only to my presence, by letter signed with my ring: nor do they pay head-tax to me or mine, he confirms to the Cistercians in the year 1232. nor seventy; neither do they build or repair Camps or bridges, nor go to expeditions; but in all things to the church of Dobrov and to the Brothers its legitimate possessors they serve quietly in eternity. These Brothers I take into my protection, and to my successors, in hope of divine retribution, always to be protected I commit: and whoever shall presume to molest them,
let him be anathema maranatha from God and his holy mother the Virgin Mary, and all the Saints. Amen.
§. II. Elevation of the body in the 13th century, and the cult successively continued.
[75] From the premised diplomata we gather, not only the Dobrov church, Fulco Archbishop. together with the sepulcher of B. Bogumilus came into the possession of the Suleiow Abbey; but also how much both he himself conferred, both the Dukes of Poland with respect to him on the aforesaid church: which, as Damalevicius in the place aforecited notes, from then is celebrated by the frequenting and veneration of men, especially of the Coloca townspeople, and the neighboring inhabitants: who by the prayers and blessing of this Saint, fish and crabs in that place to abound, and in flavor to surpass the others acquired elsewhere repeatedly say. But Fulco himself aforementioned, from the year 1230, until 58, held the Archiepiscopal See; and meanwhile, he elevates the bones of S. Bogumilus as is said in the Life at num. 63, raised the bones of the Saint, and on the southern side of the church in a higher sepulcher buried. What furthermore about the frequent offerings to the same tomb is constituted there is indicated in the year 1443; this will be more clearly understood from the following Capitular Act, which by the same Damalevicius, after the first and before the second Life, in such tenor is exhibited.
[76] The Most Reverend Father and Lord in Christ Vincent the Archbishop, to whose monument made offerings in the year 1443 are ordered to be spent with the aforesaid Lords of the Chapter of Gnesen above, having held many discussions among themselves about the offertory of Dobrowo, made such an ordination. That the Parson receive the offertory entirely from the altars, and other offerings. But as much of the offertory which is offered at the tomb of S. Bogumilus, there in Dobrowo, the aforesaid Lord Provost with the abovesaid Lords wishes, and so ordains, that the half of the said offertory which is offered at the tomb, be applied to the wall; for receiving and conserving which half he constitutes the honorable Albert Parson at Turek. partly for the sustentation of the Parson and Vicars, But the remaining half of the said offertory from the same tomb of S. Bogumilus, the Parson Lord Ostha, and his successors should receive, for his uses, and for the sustentation of the ministers of the church convert. But the wax, which is offered there in the church of Dobrowo, for the administration of divine cult is to be received by the Parson and Vicars: from the same wax the aforesaid Lord Albert Parson at Turek is bound to retain wax, for lights for celebrating Divine things as much as would suffice decently. But the remaining wax if it stands, or shall stand, the Lord Albert himself shall be bound to sell: and the money with other moneys which he shall receive, namely the half from the tomb, faithfully shall preserve, and shall gather, and with that gathered with the Lord prospering, he shall begin to wall the church in Dobrowo, by counsel of the aforesaid Lords. But the signs which are made for the merit of the same Saint, the same Lord Parson at Turek faithfully and diligently shall write up, and place in his protocols. partly for building the wall of the church. Done in the General Chapter, after the Feast of S. Adalbert, on the penultimate day of the month of April Wednesday, in the year of the Lord 1443, with the Lords present P. de Grandi Provost, John Dean, John Archdeacon, John Cantor, Andrew Scholastic, John Forman Custodian, John Chancellor Jaroslaw, John of Rudzica, N. Glebocki, Mathias Drya, Andrew Jaczkowski, Lascarius, Stanislaus Bielauski, John of Brizestowo, Lutkon, John Falonis, Master Thomas Strzampinski, Nicholas Niewiess; Jacob of Dambno, and Jarando, Prelates, and Canons, at the sound of the great bell gathered.
[77] This Ordination then, says in the series of the Archbishops Damalevicius, the successor of Vincent John Sprowski, Likewise in the year 1462 a portion is plucked off. with the Chapter consenting in the year of the Lord 1462 thus altered, that 60 marks for the fabric of the Gnesen church, 30 for the church at Uniejovo consumed by fire, and the residual 20 for the structure of the church at Dobrowo were converted. Furthermore Vincent of Seve doctor of both laws, most vigilant Archdeacon of the Gnesen Church, in the visitation of the Dobrov church, to other pious uses, performed in the year of Christ 1608, thus wrote: The Relics of S. Bogumilus, who in the said church formerly was buried and is held for a Saint, are preserved in the sacristy of the same church, in a certain little chest. But from the sepulcher of the said Saint, in the time of Jacob Uchanski the Archbishop (he sat from the year 1562 to 1581) certain things were taken, In the year 1581 the sepulcher is despoiled, such as the Pontifical ring, with a precious sapphire, a golden plate with a certain inscription, and other things, which the abovesaid D. Archbishop, took and did not restore to the church. Nor wondrous, as one who not only is said to have taken little care for eliminating heresies; but from assiduous conversation with heretics to have contracted so much soot, by the Archbishop nearly a heretic. that even when Bishop of Vladislav, he deserved by Paul IV to be struck with anathema; and already as Archbishop of Gnesen, he frequently treated controversies of religion with them, without applying Doctors skilled in them: easy in admitting the arguments of heretics, nor sufficiently prepared to render a reason of the hope, which is in us: against whom even his Canons had necessary to appeal to the Apostolic See, because he had proposed to lease for many years the Village of Konari to his nephew Paul Uchanski.
[78] Under such a head, it is necessary that the members much languished in the cult of religion, The cult nonetheless remains among the Catholics, even of that by which they were carried toward their holy Archbishop: he persevered however among the firmer Catholics, with whom this kind of Prayer to have been in use, seems to indicate Martin Baron, closing the Life with it in this form: God who B. Bogumilus, your Confessor and Pontiff, have raised with the reward of eternal beatitude; grant propitious, that whose merits we venerate on earth, by the aid of his intercession, with proper Prayers for the Saint. before your mercy we may be fortified in the heavens. Damalevicius however, after the first and before the second Life, proposes the following Prayers, as customary to be said in the Mass: I. Hear we beseech, Lord, your people, with whole mind subjected to you, and by the supplication of your blessed Confessor and Pontiff Theophilus guard, that, with heart and body protected, what it piously believes, justly asked may receive. Through our Lord etc. II. Receive Lord prayers and gifts, that they may be worthy of your sight, by the prayers of your holy Confessor and Pontiff Theophilus may we be aided. Through the Lord etc. III. Grant we beseech, almighty God, that for received gifts giving thanks, with your blessed Confessor and Pontiff Theophilus interceding, we may receive more potent benefits. Through the Lord etc.
§. III. The cult restored in this 17th century, the Life edited, the body translated.
[79] With the century being reborn, and with the successor of Jacob Stanislaus Karnkowski deceased; In the early 17th century the religion of the place began to be restored, substituted to him, in the year 1603 Bernard Maciejowski, and in the year 1604 John Barnowski, this one for four, that one for only one year Pontiff, either by the brevity of time, or by greater (as Stanislaus) care for restoring the Catholic matter in all Poland, hindered, could do very little for the Dobrov parish and the honor of Bogumilus. What the elected successors, in the year 1607 Albert Baronowski, and in the year 1615 Lawrence Gemlichi began to undertake, we read in the preface of Damalevicius. From the year 1624 to 41 his three successors, although they did many things rightly, yet are known to have done nothing for S. Bogumilus, until Matthias Lubienski ascended the Cathedra. He, as Damalevicius testifies in Bogumilus. Placed the bones of the blessed Archbishop in a tin little chest; and to public veneration solemnly, in greatest concourse of people, exposed, the bones are translated about the year 1646, about the year (as is written to us from Calisz) 1646; and when the above-praised writer of the Archiepiscopal Series gave his to the press, he was diligently laboring, to have his name inserted into the Catalogue of Saints, with the sacred College of the Metropolitan See alacritously promoting his pious endeavors, and commending the business, to him to whom the Life was afterwards dedicated as we have said, by this kind of mandate.
[80] and the Chapter of Gnesen commits to Lord Iudicki, We the Prelates and Canons of the Nurturing Metropolitan Church of Gnesen, to the Most Illustrious and very Reverend Lord Matthew John Iudicki, doctor of both laws, Archdeacon of Pomezania, in the Vladislav Church, Apostolic Protonotary, salutation with God's blessing.
For three hundred years and more; it was greatly desired by the Prelates, Canons, and the whole Venerable Chapter of the Nurturing Metropolitan Gnesen Church, our most desired Predecessors and Brothers, as is clear from the Capitular Acts, that to the holy man of God Bogumilus, from Dean elected Archbishop of Gnesen, on account of his life's innocence, modesty, and other innumerable virtues, by the whole Catholic Church there be decreed honors; and to Us often deliberating in the general Chapters about this matter, it has been especially at heart; that the cause of Beatification and Canonization of the same servant of God be promoted, and to its due end, with divine aid aspiring, be led. that, the things to be premised premised, And when before the Most Illustrious Prince and Most Reverend Lord Archbishop of Gnesen, our local Ordinary, before to further things in the said cause can be proceeded, the form of the Decrees of the sacred and general Congregation of the holy Office, in the matter of cult and veneration, ought to be fulfilled, and on their observation processes be made, and pronouncement made by the same Ordinary that it has been complied with the said Decrees; with which performed, according to the form of the same Decrees and sacred Canons and the sacred Council of Trent, one can proceed to further things, in making processes on virtues, sanctity, and miracles, to the effect of transmitting them to the sacred Congregation of Rites. Therefore confiding in your prudence, diligence, and experience, by the tenor of these present, by our plenary authority, we constitute you general and special Procurator in the said cause, let him take care to have the Processes formed, so that the generality does not derogate from the speciality, nor conversely, to appear in court and outside, in the name of all our Venerable Chapter, before the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Archbishop of Gnesen, and before any other Tribunal; and to insist, that there be made first the said Process, on the observance of the said Decrees of the sacred Congregation of the holy Office; and then another, on virtue, sanctity, and miracles, preserving the form of the said Decrees, and sacred Canons, and sacred Council of Trent; and to the same effect produce rights and articles, induce witnesses, make them swear, and examine, and do in the premises and concerning the premises, all things whatever shall be necessary or opportune, until the completion of the said Processes; with which performed, take care from them to make a transumpt, and closed and sealed to be transmitted to the said sacred Congregation of Rites; and also generally to do, conduct, exercise, and execute, all premises and any others, even if they should require a more special and most special mandate, with free administration and faculty of giving any oath in the soul of the very constituent, as Procurator of the Chapter. lawful and honest; and also with the faculty of substituting one or several procurators in solidum, to do all the premises, and with all the aforesaid faculties. Promising that whatever by you and procurator, or by procurators to be substituted by you, shall be done, we shall have all that
ratified and pleasing in full. In faith of which we have signed these present, fortified by the impression of our customary seal, by the hand of the President of the Universal Chapter. At Gnesen in the General Chapter of S. Adalbert at Gnesen, on the fourth day of the month of May, in the year of the Lord 1647.
[81] While this is being done, Two years later Damalevicius edited the already often spoken Series of Archbishops, when (as he himself says, ending the elogium of Bogumilus) the begun Process was still diligently continued on the life and miracles of the aforesaid Blessed, daily to be transmitted to Rome, by the zeal and expense of the Most Illustrious Matthias Lubienski aforesaid, his great-grandfather in both family and kindred. But of slow endeavor are businesses of this kind; and the very Archbishop was so distracted then with many and great cares, that his approach as one elected, confirmed, and gifted with the Pallium long before, to the Primatial throne had to be deferred to the year 1653; when to him, among the festive prayers of happy entrance to the Metropolitan church of Gnesen, by the aforepraised Matthew John Iudicki, in an ample folio was offered, sculpted in brass the Life of S. Bogumilus the Pole, formerly Archbishop of Gnesen the Camaldolese Hermit, it is offered to the new Archbishop in the year 1653, of the House of the Roses; who in life and after death illustrious by miracles rests at Dobrov. Under this title, the Saint stands in the middle of the area, Pontifically clothed, and with radiating head, before the appearing Mother of God in clouds; and uttering these last words to the son, whom she holds in her bosom; Jesus, son of God and of the Virgin Mary, the effigy with the Acts engraved in brass: be the receiver of my soul. Under the same area is a dedicatory Inscription: and the ample border by which these are surrounded, fourteen little areas obtain by division, with some part of the life sculpted: of which the first represents the Dean, in the choir of Gnesen attending to the hourly task of the Canons; the last, conspicuous in a bright cloud, and curing all kinds of languors; all, adorned with diadem or rays.
[82] and in 1661 the Life is printed at Rome: In the year 1661 the Life was printed at Rome, with the Master of the sacred Palace approving, and to the same Matthew John Iudicki dedicated, which we have given; with the very Author then perhaps acting his stead there: nor yet anything to the solemn act of declaring sanctity had been promoted; except that it had been approved, with a tacit rather than expressed consent, that the title of Saint be used, which in the year 1644 he had not dared to apply; as neither before him Martin Baron; with both being content to write Blessed. Nor do I think, in the year 1666 a new tomb is erected. anything further was effected at Rome. In Poland as I now understand, in the fifth year after the Life was edited, when already Lubienski the Archbishop deceased, had a successor; a new monument was erected for the Saint, which an inscription of this kind at his head denotes. Once on earth of pilgrim sanctity, now consort of celestial beatitude, to these once sacred ashes of S. Bogumilus Predecessor Archbishop of Gnesen, this tomb built and adorned, Wenceslaus Count of Leszno, Archbishop of Gnesen, in the year of the Lord 1666.
[83] But with this man soon deceased, his successor took counsel, of transferring to Unietov this very new, which soon together with the body is translated to Unietov. with the sacred pledge closed inside, tomb; as explains the title, on his right side thus described. Do not esteem the treasure slight, which through the course of so many years remains unharmed. Even the voracious flame and the insane element spared the sacred deposit; and it shows all too true: The Lord guards all the bones of His Saints, one of them shall not be broken. This Rose flourished, giving the odor of sanctity, in the year of the Lord 1167: now by the care of the Most Illustrious Prince and Most Reverend D. Nicholas of Prazinow, his 49th successor, and with consent of the Venerable General Chapter, hither translated, in the year of the Lord 1667, that it might bloom more. with twofold new Inscription added, The sanctity of his servant, God most powerful, illustrated with many miracles in life and death: and know, that the Lord has glorified His Saint. On the left side these are read: Here he chose to live abject, dismissing all human things; and whatever called him away from the contemplation of heavenly things, lest it should draw him back, he avoided; and for God and himself to attend in the remaining course of life he strove. Do not think him foreign: he is a Pole, of the family of Roses, the tenth successor of S. Adalbert, and his great-grandson, son of the Castellan of Gnesen, paternal cousin of Radost Bishop of Cracow, nephew of Boguphalus Bishop of Posnan: believe, devoted to the Poles. Venerate, Stranger, the prodigy of humility S. Bogumilus, exchanging the Pontifical Mitre, the Pastoral Crook for this solitude.
[84] You would see the very tomb engraved in brass here, Reader, if it had been as easily possible to find a suitable painter in that place; as easily R. F. Rector of Calisz John Kwiatkiewicz, at the suggestion of R. F. Ignatius Diertins, the danger of fire of citizens; from our Flandrobelgic province sent into Poland Visitor, could send the aforesaid Inscriptions received in letters and other notices, of which in his letter, dated May 29, this is the conclusion: of death, a parturient is freed. Indeed and the citizens of Coloca and Unietov, imploring the help of the Saint, freed from fire: the lame likewise gait, sight the blind, and other invalids health, his help invoked received: and in this very year 1690 the magnificent Lady Lethowska, daughter of the Castellan of Plock, in childbirth endangered, and almost now dying, through the invocation of the same Saint, happily having brought forth offspring, also was restored to health. And these may suffice, until Poland transmits more.