ON ST. BERTRAND, OR BELTRAM, IN THE TERRITORY OF PADUA.
CommentaryBertrand, or Beltram, in the territory of Padua (Saint)
[1] Cittadella is a town of the territory of Padua, very elegant, noble, populous, and wealthy, as Leandro Alberti writes of it at least in his own age: and, as Bernardino Scardeone says in book 1, class 1, page 17, most beautiful, girt round with walls and a moat, at Fontaniva in the territory of Padua, with two very strong towers. With which agree the things which Angelo Portenari reports in book 2 On the Felicity of Padua, chapter 10, who also says that the village of Fontaniva is two thousand paces distant from Cittadella, on the Greater Medoacus, which is now called the Brenta: where there was formerly a fortress, which the Paduans destroyed in the year 1228. And in that village, the same writer here testifies, is preserved the body of Blessed Beltrand, of the most noble family of Orenga, now extinct. And in book 3, chapter 1, he again lists Fontaniva among the 70 places of the territory of Padua which were formerly fortified at the expense of the commonwealth or of private persons. In book 9, chapter 49, enumerating the Churches of the villages subject to Cittadella, he has this among other things: "Fontaniva, Blessed Beltram, parish."
[2] Filippo Ferrari, in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy and in the general Catalogue, assigns him to the Kalends of March, St. Bertrand is venerated on March 1, and calls the village in the former Fontaniccum, in the latter Fontanica, Scardeone Fontanina. Ferrari then writes that he was a German by nation, and that, having come into Italy as a pilgrim, a pilgrim from Germany. he was seized with sickness in the said village, departed piously from life, and was buried there, and that his memory is celebrated on this day: not, however, in the Church of Padua, from whose monuments he nevertheless received these things: and that his Acts are wanting.