CONCERNING BL. HENRY THE HERMIT,
AT VERONA IN ITALY.
IN THE YEAR 1350.
CommentaryHenry, Hermit, at Verona in Italy (B.)
D. P.
Of the holy Bishops of Verona the ancient monuments, and of other Saints, whose bodies, and of some whose Churches are held at Verona, by Raphael Bagatta, Archpriest of the church of the holy Apostles, From the monuments of Verona collected by Bagatta and Peretto, and Baptist Peretto, Rectors of the church of St. Teuteria, collected, therefore often by us are ascribed to Augustine Valerio Bishop of Verona, in erudition no less than in piety famous, because he (as to the reader they premise, and even the very book's title speaks) of most of the by them indicated Saints the histories, in a rude formerly style written, into a more elegant form he reduced; and ascribed to Augustine Valerio the Bishop, which thus polished constitute the second part of the book, by the aforesaid at Venice in the year 1576 to be printed cared for: and these follows, as a third part, the Index of the Holy Relics, which in the same city's churches are found. These to premise it pleased for the notice of the book, whence almost all is drawn the notice of the above-titled Saint: there is had notice of this Blessed that what is its own to each be attributed, nor longer to Augustine the Bishop be imputed what is not his. No part certainly he had in Henry, whose neither a Life any he found, none also he polished: but in the former, which I said, part, by the aforesaid Archpriest and Rector thus we read written.
[2] Bl. Br. Henry of Bolzano the Hermit's body reposes at Verona, and of [his relics and cult,] in the church of St. John in the Font, which on the last day of June 1407, in the place of St. Felix on the Mountain, while the foundations were being dug, in a certain small monument, with a garment of chains great iron, and a small scourge was found: and (as from the stone of the same monument) he died in the year 1350; from an ancient manuscript Chronicle, from Francis Corna, and from the table of Saints in the beginning. We also from the Rector of the said church, on the 17th day of February 1574, received that there is held in the Inventory of the said church a little case with the Relics of Bl. Henry: which he himself in the trunk of the altar of the blessed Virgin deposited, near the place, where in the wall first they had been stored in the said church. In the case, where are the said Relics, are kept also an iron scourge, and a hair-shirt of iron chains, with which Bl. Henry was clothed.
[3] He had died at Treviso, about 60 thousand paces from the city of Verona, but confused with the cult of another of the same name. in the year 1315, on the 10th day of June; and buried, with similar shone miracles, of the same name a Hermit another, of Boceno or Bauzano, in German Botzen, in Tyrol born: whose place's name to the Italians is Bolzano; little or nothing different from a Veronese territory's village, called Bolcano in the maps, otherwise, and perhaps more correctly, Bolziano, on the very confine of the Vicenza diocese 10 miles from the city; could have augmented the occasions of confounding each into one person; persuading it also of the Germans toward their fellow-citizen the piety, whom each city to itself allured, the Tyrolean Henry to itself arrogating, of whom some Life in hands was, none of the Bolziano Henry. Of this confusion witnesses are the Veronese Priests aforenamed, while the begun about their Henry narration thus they pursue: "On the same day, men most worthy of credit to us narrated, a great of Germans concourse in those upper former times to that same church to have been: who a great number of Masses, to the memory of Bl. Henry, out of devotion and vow to be celebrated caused, large there offering alms. An image among the Saints. On the aforesaid altar is an altarpiece ancient, on which on one part is St. Antony, on the left St. Peter Martyr, in the middle the Bl. Virgin Mary; at whose feet is an image with knee bent of one man, with garment Eremitic clothed, with a hat to his arm hung: which indeed image is said to be of Bl. Henry."
[4] The Translation from the Church of St. Felix to St. John. Now as the translation concerns of the body into the church of St. John, namely the Baptist, the Cathedral nearest, and from the Font there for the whole city baptismal surnamed "in the Font"; made was that from the Church of St. Felix on the Mountain: about which church thus write the same Priests. "St. Felix Bishop of Verona died on the fourteenth before the Kalends of August … and from the name of him today at Verona is extant a temple on the highest hill: from it also the name received the citadel, in which the temple is placed." About this citadel writes of the History of Verona the Author Hieronymus della Corte, book 13, after that one in the year 1393 destroyed at the year 1393 p. 220, that John Galeazzo Visconti, to whose Dominion Verona then was subject, solicitous how he might restrain those, whom in the city he knew to favor the adversaries and exiles; decreed to his security to provide, for the cause of fortifying the citadel, by building across the river a castle, and by restoring the other of St. Peter, by age now almost collapsed; because the prior Lords had used almost only that, which of St. Martin the Water-bearer name bore; and most excellent from everywhere craftsmen and material being summoned, on the summit of the mountain ordered the beginning of the structure to be given, around the most ancient church of St. Felix the Bishop, who there the greater part of his life in prayers and fasts most severely had spent: stuck however the zeal of the better structure to be completed, by the opportunity which afforded the more quickly restored Rocca of St. Peter, as being of a numerous garrison capable. When
but in the year 1400 into the Venetians' Dominion of their own accord had yielded the Veronese; once there built. by the same advisers was hastened the citadel of St. Felix: about which, and about the other of St. Peter, it helps to read Josse Hondius, in his description of Italy, p. 335 thus speaking: On the highest slope there are two citadels most noble, of St. Peter, and of St. Felix: of which the former on the Adige almost rests, by Can Scaliger raised (to the Emperor Berengarius it some attribute), the latter on a more eminent place and as if on the brow of the valley sitting, upon us the walls looks down, and far and wide into the around-Po fields and almost all Cisalpine Gaul spreads its prospect.
[5] There he lived and died, Henry, From the convenience which there had once St. Felix of exercising himself solitarily, is given occasion of suspecting, a similar there life to have led St. Henry, of whom we treat, and therefore there also to have been buried; and similar something seems also to have suspected Ferrari, writing his general Catalogue of the Saints, who in the Roman Martyrology are not. For after in his prior published Saints of Italy Catalogue, on this day he had treated, as of one only St. Henry the Hermit of Boceno at Treviso and Verona… from a Life printed in the year of the Lord 1600: in the other later, from the same Life on the day June 10 he wrote; "At Treviso in Venetia, of Bl. Henry Confessor"; and on the day 30th, "At Verona of Bl. Henry the Hermit": and in the Notes, when he had indicated the diversity of each cult, as to the day and year of death and the place of burial, thus he concludes. "It is fitting therefore the Body of him from Treviso to Verona secretly to have been conveyed, and that deceived about the time were the Veronese: since the Trevisans, with whom he lived and died, in this matter to be deceived, less probable is. Unless one two of this name Hermits to have been should say, of whom one at Treviso, the other at Verona died; where this one is venerated with the rite of a semidouble, as appears in the tables of that Church."
[6] Our Janning, when in the year 1686, on August 10 the Veronese churches more curiously he went around, whose body under the altar in the year 1686 inspected P. Janning. about to report into Belgium what there of the Saints more notable he had seen; led to the church of St. John in the Font, saw there under the altar, which to the major altar is at the horn of the Gospel, a most beautiful of red marble shrine, thus inscribed; "Of St. Henry the Hermit the body," of which to inspect the opportunity when liberally made the Parish-priest, the altar's ornaments being removed, he discovered that the cover could be moved. It therefore as much as was needful being lifted, he saw of human bones a heap, and upon it placed a skull whole, with a chained hair-shirt and iron circles. He exulted at the sight of these the Parish-priest, by the unhoped-for spectacle gladdened: for he confessed that about that holy body nothing before he had known himself. Instead of the ancient picture of the altarpiece, which Bagatta describes; today over the altar is seen a panel, the Mother of God the Virgin sublime representing, to whom on the left St. John the Baptist, on the right stands St. Dominic; in the middle indeed kneeling Henry, with his iron clothed hair-shirt, but without rays; which on the old altarpiece found Bagatta. He was said to have been by profession an Augustinian: which as I received it, so I report it, and I wish it could be proved in the silence of the very Veronese writers, whatever in their age was reported collecting. Nor indeed sufficiently agrees such an assertion, with the Augustinian Hermits' life, which in the 14th century it is established to have been cenobitic, not indeed solitary, such as by Henry to have been led persuade all things above related.