CONCERNING SAINT IVANUS
A BOHEMIAN HERMIT IN THE DIOCESE OF PRAGUE.
ABOUT THE BEGINNING OF THE 10TH CENTURY.
A PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
On the cult, age, and writers of the Life.
Ivanus, Hermit in Bohemia (S.)
D. P.
The cave which S. Ivanus, commonly Ivan, the first hermit in Bohemia, inhabited in his last fourteen years, is three leagues distant from Prague, one from Karlstein the Royal fortress, He died on the very day of S. John the Baptist situated between the two; where immediately after his death there was erected over his burial a modest little chapel, and afterward a notable monastery under the name of S. John the Baptist, Benedictines having been brought there about the year 1020 from the Island Abbey of Ostrov near Prague, as John Pessina asserts in the Phosphorus Pragensis. He is thought to have died on the very natal day of the holy Precursor; on which, although the Office of the Baptist hinders the proper one of Ivanus from being made; yet it does not hinder the fervor of popular devotion, regarding him especially. This is attested by the pious writer of Bohemia, Pontanus, to be praised below, concluding the eulogy of Ivanus with these words: He obtained this temple and his most blessed memory, where by his religious clients, there serving God, and by a frequent gathering of the people, he is most devoutly visited and venerated: whose proper festal day is that which is also of S. John the Baptist. Yet our Georgius Crugerius, he is honored in the church of that name; among the Sacred Dusts of the month of June (after which would that another might pursue the remaining two months of the Sacred year, with like zeal and style), transfers the memory of Ivanus to the following day; because the proper Office is perhaps then made in the monastery: for the Church of Prague in its Calendars, on neither day, nor even on any other, mentions Ivanus.
[3] he died, not in the year 910, The Authors soon to be named take the year of his death from the time of the first Christian Duke among the Bohemians, Borzivoius, who is said to have died in the year 910, and in the last year of his Principate to have found Ivanus, about to survive a few days; whence some place his death in that very year, others in the preceding. But those seem to me to have wrongly interpreted the popular tradition concerning the last year of Borzivoius, as if it had been also the last of his life: since they themselves also say, that about the year 905 he ceded the administration to his son Spytihněv, and
and to this one, soon dead, substituted another son Vladislaus, the future father of S. Wenceslaus, for then he himself with his holy wife Ludmilla is believed to have withdrawn to the solitude of Tetin, but probably in 904. to live for God and himself; whence also he merited the honor and cult of the Blessed, buried under the altar in the church of S. Michael, which he had erected at Tetin. But the same one is said to have been promised to Ivanus, twelve years before he died here, by S. John the Baptist, as the future founder of a temple to be erected in that place which he then inhabited; which, that it might be so, it is necessary that he himself survived Ivanus for some time. I would therefore say that about the year 904 Ivanus was found and died; and that the fruit of his pious exhortations was, that the Dukes, esteeming the felicity of his holy death, resolved to send away worldly cares, and to withdraw to Tetin, to be free for prayers and alms and other pious works; among which the first was a little shrine, erected over the cave and sepulchre of the Saint under the name of S. John the Baptist, as had been foretold.
[3] No ancient monuments concerning the Saint survive, except a certain very brief and perhaps not very ancient Legend, from which and from constant tradition, The Authors Hagecius, whatever the authors of this or the previous century wrote about him must have been taken. The first was he who published a Chronicle of Bohemia in the Bohemian tongue in the year 1541, just as we have it itself rendered in German in the year 96 of the same century, Wenceslaus Hagecius. There under the year 909 is read a good part of those things which Benedict Gononus published in Latin among the Lives of the Fathers of the West, in the year 1675 at Lyons in Gaul; received, as he says, from Nicolaus Salius of Prague. Salius. This man was a Priest of our Society, who died in the year 1596; to whom in the Library of our Writers that little lucubration could equally be ascribed, as also others concerning SS. Ludmilla and Procopius, which he submitted to be inserted in the Tomes of Surius; for Salius published nothing of himself, that I know of. Then the Author of the Bohemia Pia, Georgius Bartholdus Pontanus, Pontanus, Provost of the Metropolitan of Prague, in the year 1607, in his book IV on the holy Patrons, in the eighth place inserted an Epitome of the same Life: whom the aforesaid Crugerius followed, Crugerius, Balbinus, and most recently Bohuslaus Balbinus, likewise of our Society; first indeed in the first Auctarium to the history of the Holy Mountain, edited about the year 1665; then in the Historical Miscellanies book 4, entitled Bohemia Pia, and printed about the year 1682.
[4] I omit to recount the little book edited in the year 1666, which Matthaeus Ferdinandus de Bilenberg, Abbot of that place and of S. Nicholas in Old Prague, inscribed to Leopold I, then recently inaugurated King of Bohemia, Bridelius. for it is a panegyric, woven together in prose and verse, and nothing less than a history: which the next year following its author published under his own name, recognized with more accurate care, first in twelvemo (as they say), then more compendiously in sixteenmo, as is understood from the Library of the Society. It pleases me in this place to take up Balbinus, the most recent of all, and to give the whole of chapter 2 of the aforesaid Auctarium, whose title is this: A brief history of S. Ivanus, who long lived in the district of Podbrd, then on his account was founded the old monastery of S. John in the Rock and its memorials: at the last concerning the several rocks and caves of S. Ivanus through the neighborhood, one especially situated in sight of the Holy Mountain. Hagecius says the place was first committed by its founder Duke Borzivoius to secular Presbyters; then came into the possession of the Benedictines. The rest receive as I found, and the Chapter divided by its author into three Paragraphs, as he himself proceeded, with some notes added as seemed opportune.
ACTS
By the author Bohuslaus Balbinus, S.J.
Ivanus, Hermit in Bohemia (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR BOHUS. BALBINUS.
§. I. Ivanus, son of the King of Dalmatia, came into the district of Podbrd with an Angel for guide, and led a heavenly life in solitude for 42 years.
[1] Hunting, the simulacrum of warfare, has always been in the special love of Princes. The commendation of hunting. Doubtless, illustrious souls born for victories and glory, what labor could they love more, than to entangle enemies in flight, but to hold themselves and theirs in a perpetual course of victory and dominion? The most skillful Maro did not omit to add this most beautiful art to his Aeneas, and Pliny gladly ascribed a perfect knowledge of it to Trajan Caesar. Nor only dear to Dukes, but it has often seemed to please the heavenly ones also. Who is ignorant of Eustachius, admonished from a hind of his following fortune? who is ignorant of Hubert, called to Christ by nearly the same example? that the most August, and truly I will say Eucharistic House of the Habsburgs has now for two centuries been born into the purple, that in that August House the Empire is well placed, that the Eagle here has fixed its nest, is owed to hunting. I omit to repeat things long since narrated and known to all. Here too, in our matter, Bohemia would have been ignorant of its treasure, had not hunting betrayed it.
[2] In the year 909 from the birth of Christ Borzivoius, who first of the Dukes of Bohemia had given his name to Christ, had gone out from his neighboring fortress Tetin to seek hunting. He had advanced rather far into the woods, when suddenly a hind of the first magnitude is roused; Borzivoius Prince of Bohemia in hunting falls upon B. Ivanus, which is wounded by the javelin of Borzivoius himself (as the hands of Princes are fortunate). The barking and panting of the dogs follow the fleeing one, and the swifter hounds pursue the wounded one, washing its wounds at a stream which flows living from a certain rock; it even dared to defend its life from the dogs in the waters, while the Prince, borne on his horse, leaped on foot into the river in his ardor for the prey, and dispatched it with his sword: from which wound a great abundance of milk, as if it had then first brought forth fawns, flowed out. While the Prince and the courtiers who had little by little come up marvel at the beast; behold for you, with a wild and grim countenance, which (so to speak) the hairs descending over the face had made horrible, in a long robe, with bare feet, leaning on a staff, an old man comes forth from the cave. He, with a speech befitting his countenance, beginning to rebuke the Prince, asks what he had come into those places to do, about to disturb his rest, and had killed the hind, the sole support of his hunger?
[3] The Courtiers vie with one another, each for himself, to admonish the Prince, he learns who he is; to beware of the beast, that it was a demon of the woods; others more timid even looked to flight. But Borzivoius, full of courage: "Whatever you are," he cries, "in the name of God who created all things, and of His Son Christ Jesus, I bid you stand there now, and answer." The old man immediately, the name of God being adored, "I am a servant," he said, "of Christ, a client of the undefiled Virgin Mary, and of John the Baptist": (he also gave his name) "I am called Iwan." Borzivoius breathed again, and with the curiosity familiar to Princes, and the humanity of questions, detained the old man. "Forty and two years have passed (Iwan continues) since from Dalmatia I came to these lands: (I heard that Neclanus the Duke ruled Bohemia at that time) after various wanderings I came at last into this cave, in which already for the fourteenth year, seen by no one, but neither having gone out from the cave into the light, I serve Christ." Immediately at the mention of the cave, the Prince asks to be admitted into the dwelling of the holy man. He is led most courteously. The place was (which we even today see) suited above all to human life, and so made by nature's ingenuity, that it had a double chamber, distinguished as it were by rocks for walls. Borzivoius marveled at each thing; and when he saw nothing of provisions, he began to ask about food; and that he foreknew his approaching death, "The mercy of God," replied Iwan, "nourished His servant with the milk of this hind which has been killed." Here the Prince was preparing to cast himself to the ground, and to deprecate the fault; Iwan forbade, and bade him be of good cheer, the hind having been killed not by the impulse of the hunter, but by the will of God, as being now no longer necessary to him, who awaited death close at hand.
[4] Then Borzivoius: "Grant this, Iwan, to me," he said, "grant it to my wife Ludmilla, grant it to mine: and mount this horse of mine, he invites him to his fortress. and set out to us." The holy man, pleading many excuses, "If," he said, "it shall be God's will, I shall soon see you"; then, turned to the Courtiers: "This prey of yours, and my nurse the hind, take away," he said, "and distribute among the poor; they will pray to God for me and for your Prince." Then he began to say farewell to the Prince, and to pray well with such pure affections, that his last words drew tears from Borzivoius. But Ludmilla, when she had received the whole order of the matter in sequence from her husband, The next day his wife S. Ludmilla does the same, passed that night sleepless with joy; nor, waiting for day, at the first twilight she sends Paul the most dear Priest, with six servants in all, to go quickly, and bring the holy Man to her at Tetin. This is that Paul, to whom our Bohemia owes its Wenceslaus. He informed in all piety the childhood of the holy Duke, and initiated his life with most holy precepts. Paul the Presbyter being sent to him: In his own little bed he would lay Wenceslaus, and certain little prayers, with a lisping voice, as the little boy could, he compelled him to repeat after him; then, the boy sleeping, he would bend his knees before the bed, and offer the boy to God, and pray that he might reign happily. But let us bend back the course to the history.
[5] Paul coming, Iwan, delaying nothing, is set upon a little ass: whom when he had refreshed with pious conversation, the Princes came forth to meet the one coming, far on the journey, and received him into the fortress with much honor, as was fitting. Not to be long: a banquet is set; Iwan touches nothing, since he kept looking back and thinking on his woods and his groves, except that with most holy discourses he marvelously inflamed both Princes to the love of heaven. Sent back that day, alone with no companion, as he wished, he returned; and since he avoided the commerce of men, and kept the path of wild beasts; being seen by some rustics at the village of Zodnice, attacked by one of them (with a stone harder than the one he threw), he is wounded in the head. The stone sprinkled with Iwan's blood, wont to be shown up to his own times, Pontanus, Dean of the Metropolitan Church of Prague, affirms. Fleeing, and weary of the way, on his return he is wounded: and weakened by the wound, the old man softened by sitting a most rough and most hard rock (which not long ago ceased to be shown), and moved a traveler to compassion, that he raised the one lying, and lent his horse, on which he might be carried back to his beloved solitude. The horse, sent back, came out far better and more useful than itself, and returned to its Master. I know that this whole history is narrated not a little otherwise by Hagecius, but I have followed the authority of Pontanus, and the fidelity of our Salius and of the manuscripts.
A few days had passed, when through the rest of Ludmilla a heavenly Genius appears to the Duke, and admonishes that he send the Priest Paul; and fortified at the last by Paul, who (as the holy Man departing had prayed) should offer the Sacrifice of the Mass to God before him, the old man being about to depart from life in a short time after. Ludmilla obeyed the heavenly admonitions, and immediately Paul is sent, who prepared Iwan for death with the most divine Sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist, and at the same time before him
performed the Divine rites. he discloses to him, The holy Man, glad at so great and so rare and long a felicity, when he had asked for a secret, not to be revealed except after his death, sets forth to Paul the whole sequence of his life; that he was the eldest son of Gestimulus and Elizabeth, rulers of Dalmatia; that he had fled the paternal honors, hating them for love of Christ; that he had cast away the Kingdom which was owed to him, and all the pleasure and will of ruling; in flight (because he was loved uniquely by his brothers) being sought and caught, when he had taken refuge in God's help, not recognized by them, he had long wandered through pathless and impassable places, following the solitudes, until by a holy Angel appearing, he was at last led into this place: here he had remained for fourteen years; but in the first two years there had been so great an envy of the evil demons, that, all hope of quiet being cast away, "I thought," he said, "of a necessary departure."
[7] how through S. John the Baptist he overcame the demons, "And I had already departed when S. John the Baptist, whom I chose for my Patron from my earliest age, met me on the way, gave me courage, and bade me return; at the same time he offered this wooden Cross, which you see, small, which I, about to die, leave to you to be kept, and he added that a temple in that place to the honor of the most holy Cross and the Virgin Mary would be placed by a certain Borzivoius, Prince of Bohemia. I was returning full of courage: but behold, seeing me far off, the demons raise a clamor, why I thus returned? this was their bath; let me go away headlong wherever else it pleased. But I, relying on the power of the holy Cross, as into a most certain victory penetrate the battle-lines, pursue the yielding, and most boldly attack one of all who resisted; into whose gaping jaws I cast the sign of the Cross. He suddenly vomited forth with a most foul breath; and fleeing, opened this chasm (which is even now seen), the very rocks being broken through by force. But you, Paul, say my last farewell for me to the Princes, and remember to commend to them the advantages of their subjects, justice and piety." Three days had not passed, when Iwan, of whom the world was not worthy, and dies holily. flew up from his solitude into heaven. These things concerning Iwan: which very narration the Church of Prague inserted into its old Office (they called it the Legend). It pleases to seal the same with the wish of an old Writer: "You wished to be ours, Iwan, that you might lighten our losses: lighten them, we beseech."
[8] Iwan died in the year of Christ 910, and was buried in that cave from which he had put to flight a legion of demons by the Cross. The traces of him kneeling, praying, and sitting, are seen today in the rock in more than one place. Those traces (that there might be something the pilgrims should wonder at and love) are said to have been impressed by divine power, the hardest rocks being softened. Note at the last from Marianus Scotus, that Gestimulus, King of the Slavs, was overcome and slain by the Emperor Lothair in the year 845. If this is so, Iwan, when he died, His age. must have passed his seventieth year. Note likewise, that Lupacius introduces Iwan speaking with Wratislaus III, not with Borzivoius; so that what Hagecius attributes to the father, he attributes to the son. To which I should accede, I do not know, it is not for me to compose such great disputes between you; the matter is slight, and disputed over a few years.
NOTES BY D. P.
p But, even if we establish that Ivanus died in the year 904, yet going back hence through the 42 years in which he wandered as a solitary, one comes only to the year 862: but the writers speak as if Ivanus fled while his parents were still living. As for the Chronicle of Marianus Scotus; I find nothing such either in the most ancient Basel edition, or in the old Frankfurt edition, nor in any deeds of the Emperor Lothair: but perhaps the successor Ludovicus may be understood, who is also named Lothair by Marianus, from the year 855 to 875: and so that disaster of Gestimulus is better referred to the year 870; which Balbinus too seems to indicate, when in the margin he cites some Marianus or other, certainly interpolated, at the year 870. But supposing that in the year 862 Ivanus first withdrew from his parents, a youth of about 20 years, he would have exceeded sixty by only two years; but by Balbinus's reckoning, he would have been not only over seventy, but over eighty, if he departed from his country before the year 845.
q In the margin Lupacius is cited, in the Calendarium Historicum, 1 August. But it is easier that Hagecius and others, following tradition, erred in designating the year, than in naming the Duke under whom the matter was done.
§. II. The Church and monastery of Skala, or "in the Rock," is founded in the solitude of S. Ivanus, and certain old memorials of that monastery.
[9] A church being soon built in that very place, Iwan, whose virtue when living the Princes honored, dead, and his memory they pursued with even greater cult, and the fame of the man reached so illustrious a place (the divine power approving his heavenly glory with miracles), that, being commonly held for a Saint, he is even today numbered among the indigenous and lesser Patrons of Bohemia. Borzivoius and Ludmilla set up over the tomb of the holy man a first chapel exceedingly narrow, namely as much as the hardest rocks and the other cave which he had inhabited allowed. It long bore the title of the most blessed Mother of God and of S. John the Baptist, or even, as other authors say, together with these of the holy Cross, posterity named it S. Iwan. first to secular Priests, But that the solitude might not be mute to the divine praises, Priests being summoned, the care of the place is committed to them: with the necessary aids added for guarding life, but shortly (perhaps because they had no successors, and those were found with difficulty who could bear so great a solitude) the place was handed over to the Religious men of S. Benedict, and thence the monastery na Stalle, or of S. John in the Rock, arose, Hagecius narrates. But, as many things negligently, he passed over this too, by whose wealth that foundation was completed; here too Sylvius is silent, Dubravius is silent, nor have I found another suitable author who treated of the origin of this religious house.
[10] The Reverend Father Crugerius, a man skilled above all in the antiquity of his country, suspects that the Hazemburgs, then it is handed over to the Benedictine Monks whom he himself calls the Aprugnaei, founded the monastery; Hagecius favors this, but covertly, who commemorates that family, increased with most opulent dominions in this tract, as the reward of a most atrocious crime, because that Tumanus and Cumanus, Nobles of this family, most cruelly slew the Lady Ludmilla, Duchess of Bohemia and of the Christians, (whom Drahomira most bitterly hated) in the fortress of Tetin. The Christian posterity of these wished therefore to abolish the old mark of impiety, and to cover the savagery of their ancestors (which is the best way of correcting) with good deeds. the monastery being founded, as is thought, by the Hazemburgs. This would be a slighter conjecture, were it not strengthened by a clearer and seemingly certain argument: for he observes, that the most ancient Abbots of that monastery, already for several centuries (as is established by the testimony of stones and sepulchral marbles) bore the great head of a Boar in the arms and images of their monastery. A powerful proof indeed for producing belief, and made common by the perpetual custom of all such monasteries, that the religious Houses of S. Benedict adopt the insignia of their Founders: the monastery of Břevnov even today displays the three ancestral roses of S. Adalbert; that of Braunau, two boughs broken off from an oak and laid crosswise; namely the latter regards the renowned family of the Barkar, the former S. Adalbert chiefly as Founder. After this example the Cistercians, Premonstratensians, have borrowed somewhere their Roses, Caps, Falcons, Eagles, from their founders. It would seem superfluous to dwell with several arguments on a matter so clear.
[11] This monastery of Skala, or of S. Iwan, in every age small, narrow, and supplying the place not so much of a monastery, It is older than that of Welitz and that of Teslin. as of an ascetery (as that age was most fond of the silent life) and of a certain religious solitude and hermitage, the very narrow ruins which survive show; for all things cannot so fall to decay through age, that they leave no trace of themselves to the curious; for who in this solitude, outside the company of men, would have snatched away the very soil with its foundations? But however narrowly it was inhabited, it did not reign narrowly, so to speak: for (which is established by the testimony of the Religious themselves) after the destruction of the Island, or Ostrov monastery, not only the ascetery of Welitz of the same Fathers (of which we shall treat afterward), but even that of Teslin, both by right of antiquity and perhaps also of colonies led out from here, was subjected to Skala. Of this, in so vast a darkness of times, some indication of its most ancient right survives even to our age: for the estate of Teslin having once been alienated, and transferred to other Lords, yet a yearly census of six what they call sexagenae, is even today paid not to Břevnov, but to the monastery of Skala. Whether the Ostrov monastery, situated on an Island of the Moldava river, had regard to the authority of Skala, has not been explored. I think it more credible that to Ostrov, as being the one most ancient of all, and older than Břevnov itself, both several other things, and also this Skala, were wont to be referred.
[12] The Hermitage of S. Ivanus marvelous: But let us now return to those things by which S. Iwanus is celebrated,
let us return. This holy solitude commends itself to pilgrims with so pleasing an image of dread, that I think no art can imitate it. With me affirm this all who have seen it, and I can give the most August witnesses to that matter. I know the Imperial saying. Ferdinand III the Emperor, when he had once come to S. Iwan, having contemplated from close at hand the majesty of the place and its holy dread, called it a royal solitude and worthy of a King; and added that it seemed to him, in all the lands he had, nothing was equal to and so apt for a solitude, as what he saw to be found here. I too observe that the style cannot be equal to so great things; and therefore, in despair of art, I lift my hand and pen from the tablet, and appeal to travelers.
On a neighboring hill, his and the Baptist's statues there: where the way to the temple is, of marble (which is itself dug out from the neighboring veins of the mountains) stands a huge and elegant image of Christ hanging from the Cross, and not far from there of the divine John the Baptist, and another image of S. Iwan of the same marble, set in that place where S. John, as I was narrating, met Iwan sitting. Of this marble work he showed himself the Patron long ago in the year 1604, that most happy and generous Leader of the troops against the Turks under Rudolph Caesar, Hermann Roswurmius, whose virtue and unconquered spirit John Czernovicius celebrated with many and great praises in his work on the Pannonian war. But nearer to adorning the holy old man came the Empress Anna, about the year 1616. consort of the Emperor Matthias: who, crowned Queen of Bohemia, placed at the very sacred tomb of Iwan an altar of precious workmanship of white alabaster.
[13] Nearest to our times, in liberality he surpassed all, the most Serene King of Bohemia and Hungary (whom Germany had not yet saluted Emperor) Leopold. He, accompanied by his uncle the most Serene Archduke likewise Leopold, an excellent Prince, came to honor S. Iwan, and of his own accord ordered the foundations of a larger Temple to be designed, and four thousand florins to be assigned for the completion of the new Temple. The petrifying nature in the Rock of S. Ivanus. The Rock of Iwan has (lest this too be passed over) some miracle of nature, which, dripping drop by drop over the Chapel, if it falls upon a stone placed below, with a certain very sluggish slowness it at last all grows together into rock; if it be caught in glass, it will retain both its native wateriness and crystalline transparency. Not unlike is the nature of that Rock, which we lately saw in Moravia at the Kiritein Madonna in those caves of giants, concerning which Oswald Crollius, not the lowest of Chemists, wrote learnedly in his book On Signatures, commending the marvelous things of Bohemia and Moravia to Petrus Rosensis. But that stones should be softened is not marvelous: these are the works of petrifying nature, as I would say with the Poet, which, as of all other things, so somewhere contains within itself the seeds of stones. But greater miracles of grace the Divinity does not cease to perform at the sacred tomb of Iwan: hither nearly all Prague pours out and hastens on the 9th and 8th of the Kalends of June. On all those days and nights one may behold the expressed sorrows of penitents, The concourse of the people of Prague. and the waters flowing from the stony hearts of many, and the floods of tears, which are hardened into gems to be inserted into heavenly crowns. Of that matter I profess myself a witness to the Reader.
NOTES BY D. P.
§. III. Other solitudes of S. Ivanus scattered through this District, and a certain other Stone of his, nearest to the Holy Mountain.
[13] Iwanus spent those very forty-two years in caves after the manner of wild beasts, S. Ivanus inhabited several caves, while in mind he dwelt in the heavens; for fourteen years he lay hidden in this cave, of which we have now spoken: the remaining time he wandered through various wandering (as desire and the force of divine impulse bore him) over the caves and rocks through these tracts of lands, taking precaution against nothing more, than that he should be seen by men. Those who more curiously surveyed the woods, and all the neighborhood round about these places, sailors, woodcutters, and the dwellers themselves (whom we have heard relating) say that several such caves, marked with the traces of the holy Man, appear at the river Misa, and that it is handed down by their elders that Iwanus lived in them, until at last he wholly migrated into the farthest cave. Memorable too is this, that all these caves, which the old man had inhabited, were turned away from the river; for he greatly avoided to look upon the river. They add the cause, that he could not bear to hear the wraths, curses, and impious voices of the sailors (to which disease this kind of men is especially wont to be subject), who daily descended down the river along that bank. Others refer the cause to the men, but turned away from the river, whose sight he could not endure; others to the demons, who even today scatter terror in those caves here and there, and rage with the highest audacity. A cave, not so far from the fortress of Karlstein, and horrible with spectres. at not more than three hundred paces, is wont to be shown by the inhabitants, infamous with the shadows of lemures and spectres: and the fishermen relate, who often pass a whole night in the waters in that part of the river, that they see forms terrible to behold, and especially fire-breathing dragons; which now fly around those rocks, and change place, now drag a most long body through the rocks, with a great crash of falling stones, and the groan and tumult of almost all the nature of plants and trees, than which spectacle nothing is sadder.
[14] But let us come to another notable stone of S. Ivanus, nearest to the Holy Mountain; from which it can be evident, that he was pleasing not to one Blessed Virgin alone, but to the Saints also; and that Ivanus can be named the first, who loved the Holy Mountain. Therefore to those going from the Mountain toward the rising sun toward Bytíz (it is a village of the Raczin family) a wood most dense with the greatest trees and oak-groves, and rough with rocks, occurs; noble for its herds and multitude of wild beasts, boars, especially of those wallowing in summer and autumn through the marshes of the woods. In the middle of the wood (almost two thousand paces from the Mountain, a quarter of our mile) a huge stone presents itself, which expresses a Cross or a three-cornered figure. This is already long ago approached by the most ancient supplications of men: The stone of S. Ivanus at the Holy Mountain. one greater Cross, several other lesser ones fixed in the soil, build up the religion of the place; nor does the common people call it otherwise than the stone of S. Ivanus, the name being received from their elders. They say, that before Ivanus inhabited that rock of Skala, he stayed here very long, spending days and nights in praying to God. The indications of that matter are seen in the stone not a few; so above all by a hand-made work (unless you wish to interpret it divinely made) the stone parts, so that in one place you can lie comfortably, in another, if you please, sit and read, and in another likewise pray. The hollow of the rock, where one lies, admits the head; then the places of the arms, of the legs and feet, for the comfort of those sleeping, the thigh being somewhat bent; the same is observed in sitting. Everywhere the highest comfort is afforded to one lying or sitting, as I have proved. The whole of that business is conformed to the just size of a man.
[15] I will tell a marvelous thing, and most known to all that neighborhood, The Saint sends a man to be comforted in death. whence one may take a conjecture of some more divine care concerning the stone. A few years ago, there lived in a little farm called Bytíz (which is built at the roots of this wood) a man great in age. He once, as old age is wont to be of very brief sleep, and besides anxious with sickness, and thinking much of approaching death, was awake. The night was very bright, with so clear a star that nothing near could escape the eyes: when behold, to him waking, and (as he himself related) seeing, presents himself a venerable old man, with so long a beard, that it covered almost the whole breast. He comes nearer, and applies himself to the one lying. The sick man rises on his elbow; then the elder begins: "I do not wish," he says, "that you dread death; peacefully, if you hear me, you shall die: the stone, neighbor to your village, you shall approach for twenty continuous days, and you shall pray to God for a good and glad death; you will derive, believe me, great solace, and best prepared for death you will depart from life." At the same time he vanished, and left the sick man confirmed. The sick man did what he was admonished: in the morning hours daily, with senile step he approached the place, and piously prayed through the merits of S. Ivanus: at last, when, the disease growing strong, he could not exert himself, yet between the hands of his own he was carried to the stone. At his last time he summoned, from the Holy Mountain, our Priest; and to him having duly confessed his sins, he added also this narration: Why he so often changed his place. and dying, glad and full of hope, a little after departed. I learned the whole of what I have here related from the same Priest relating it. One scruple in the sum of the matter can remain concerning this stone, that we may seem to impinge a mark of inconstancy upon Ivanus, so often changing his place. But this is the fear of the ignorant: who is so foreign in the deeds of the Saints, as not to know that by change of places they avoided tedium, and that often other and other places were divinely shown to them, which they should hold? How many caves of S. Procopius does Bohemia number? How many woods did S. Meinardus consecrate with virtues? How often did Simeon Stylites, according to that
wonder of the World, transfer himself; and not change his mind, nay not even change his sky?