ON BLESSED ANDREW, ABBOT OF THE CONGREGATION OF VALLOMBROSA IN TUSCANY, IN THE YEAR 1097
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Andrew, Abbot of the Congregation of Vallombrosa in Tuscany (Blessed)
BHL Number: 4373
§ I. A disciple of Saint Arialdus the Martyr, he renders the last offices to his Master.
[1] At the time when the city of Milan marveled at Saint Arialdus contending most fiercely against the Simoniacal heresy and the depraved morals of the Clergy, at that same time Blessed Andrew gave an excellent proof of his virtue and zeal, disciple of Blessed Arialdus, Martyr, surnamed the Ligurian by Hieronymus Radiolanus; but commonly called of Strumi, from the Abbey which he afterward held; of Parma from his Fatherland. That he was a disciple of Blessed Arialdus is written by
Arnold Wion in his Lignum Vitae, and from him Ferrarius in his Catalogue, and he himself testifies about himself. That he was not only a disciple but also a companion in laborious preaching and glorious combat is most clearly established from that letter which Syus the Priest wrote to him, which, from ancient parchments, together with the Life of Blessed Ariald written by Andrew, John Peter Puricelli, Archpriest of the Laurentian Basilica, published in print; in which the following is found:
[2] on his account he risked his life three times: Moreover, concerning his death secretly carried out, who is better informed than you? Who for this gave yourself to the danger of death three times. For once you escaped, having been somehow captured: but on another occasion, because it was said that he was secretly detained in Travaglia, an impregnable fortress; inflamed by desire for him, having completed a long journey and crossed many mountains, you presented yourself before its very gates; and because you dared to look in, and were recognized for who you were, and therefore captured, and led into the highest tower of the same place, you were lowered through an opening with ropes into its very depths; which seemed to be more a tomb than a dwelling place: for the bed's support was mud, the pillow was stone: he endures a difficult prison; for there was no means by which one's bodily functions could be concealed, nor above a roof by which rain could be repelled. There indeed, on account of the excessive horror, your face and stomach so languished and withered that you could by no means taste the food lowered to you by ropes, and therefore in the middle of the night they drew you out, and so let you go half-alive. On another occasion, however, you crossed the lake; recognized and captured again, you could by no means escape until you had bought yourself out for a price.
[3] Thus he, things for the most part done after the death of Ariald (for between that and his captivity no more space intervened than intervened between the night preceding and the night following the Vigil of the Holy Apostles) concerning which, however, because it was not wholly so certainly established that there was no suspicion of any kind, he inquires into his death, while more atrocious things were being bandied about by his enemies, in order to terrify the minds of Arembald and others of right opinion; Andrew seems to have undergone these dangers while he was exploring rather zealously where he was, whether alive or dead: although he himself, a despiser of his own praise, passed them over: but of the first danger, which was so joined with the captivity and death of Saint Ariald that it could not be kept silent without loss to the history, he himself speaks thus in chapter 29, so as cautiously to conceal his own virtue, but to declare more manifestly his zeal toward his excellent master: Hearing this (namely, that Ariald had been captured and brought to the greater lake) I at once left the tumultuous and confused city, and followed him. Hastening therefore with haste on that same day and the following night, I reached the aforesaid lake as the sun was already rising: and while I was walking along its shore, and was near Stationa, where the kindred of the wicked Guido lived, I met a man named Martin, who said that he was a Priest. He asked me and from a criminal Priest whence I was, and whither I was going: and in order that I might inquire the truth of him safely, I lied in part, saying: I am from that Plebs, and my companions have sent me here, that I may be able to know clearly whether what has lately resounded among us about Ariald, the enemy of the Clergy, is true; namely, that he has been put to death, and whether they ought to rejoice fully over this.
[4] But he said, Turn back with me; and when you have returned to the church he learns the manner of the slaying: which you left a little behind you, you will be very well instructed about this. And then, as I was returning with him, he said to me: For yesterday a joyful voice resounded in our place, saying, Ariald, the adversary of the Clergy, is held bound in a ship, and on the very bank of the lake. I immediately ran down to him with many others; and, having seized a very sharply pointed stake, with raised hand I wished to drive it into his breast: but I was not permitted. For five men were at once sent by the Lady, the niece of the Archbishop, of whose ferocity she herself had no doubt, to separate him from the soldiers and lead him to the place which she had ordered them. This was done without delay: and he was at once led into such a solitude that there is scarcely ever any approach of men there, and only of those sailing by; but only the habitation of wild beasts. Why should I draw you out longer with words? There they made his corpse to be without ears, without nostrils, without eyes, without right hand, without genital member. If you have ever seen anyone live without all these members, do not believe that this man is dead. For in the evening I could by no means rest, until those who had perpetrated these things upon him made me so secure that there is no longer anything from which my mind can now doubt. But you, return to your people, telling them these things, and make them secure and joyful. And after this we parted from each other, and until he had entered the church I pretended to go back.
[5] But afterward, not wishing to trust the words of the treacherous man, and he learns similar things from others who were weeping for him. I returned to the road which I had left. And as I was entering the aforesaid village, I found beside the road a church dedicated in honor of Saint Peter, from which a multitude of Clerics and laymen was then going out in procession. There I found two women apart, conferring and weeping about the things that had happened: approaching them, I asked what was the matter with them, and why they were weeping? One of them said: Truly you are of that Order which, though it ought by its good words and deeds to lift all into heaven, on the contrary by its evil examples casts all headlong into hell: for in this place, by the machination of your perverse Order, so great a crime has been perpetrated in these days that we anxiously wait for almighty God to plunge all into the abyss for it: and you say: Why are we weeping? Seeing therefore the faith of the women, I made known to them that I was a disciple of him for whom they were weeping; and I asked them whether the things I had heard from the aforesaid man were true. They, at once becoming very well disposed toward me, testified that all things were true, except that they were still uncertain about his death. They showed me therefore the way leading toward the aforesaid solitude, and earnestly begged that on returning I should make them informed of that about which doubt still remained in them. But hindered by the obstacles of huge rocks, I could not approach there by going over land; and I could not find anyone who would dare to carry me across there by ship: and therefore, beyond what has been said, I was not then able to know fully about him.
[6] The body having been found after ten months, When these things had been done in the year one thousand and sixty-six of the Christian Era, in the month of June (to which month we reserve the Life of Saint Ariald), and in the tenth month afterward wonderful things were being told that had been seen about the incorrupt body of the Martyr: I who wrote these things (Blessed Andrew continues), when I had heard them, taking a companion, went there quickly: and having found shepherds, I diligently and cautiously inquired whether the things I had heard were true: and they, answering, asserted that all were without doubt true: and I said: If they are true, where then is he? And they said: Behold the place where, as we watched, he was laid in the evening: but returning in the morning, we found the place indeed, but nothing of him. This only we think, that on that same night he was carried up into the fortress. Having heard these things, I returned swiftly and narrated all things in order, whatever I had heard, to Herlembald, a prudent man. This Herlembald was the chief protector of Saint Ariald and his disciples, he takes care of his translation; supported by great wealth and a body of retainers, created Standard-bearer of the Roman Church by Pope Alexander II in this very year, against the schismatic Guido and his rebellious followers; and in the same cause, ten years after, he died a glorious death. How he brought the body of the holy Martyr into the city of Milan with solemn pomp, at which Andrew was always present, it does not greatly matter to explain here: I add one thing which he writes was done by himself by name, in chapter 32.
[7] and exploring its incorruption On one of these nights (namely, those on which the venerable body lay exposed in the Ambrosian basilica, to be seen by the piety of the people running to it), fearing greatly lest perhaps, to the reproach of Christ and His servants, it should stink, remaining there long through the summer season: taking a light, when very few were keeping vigil, I approached it, and having found the opening which his brother had made under his armpit, so that he might know how his inward parts were, I looked inside: and behold, his entrails were white as snow, while the liver had the color of bronze; and when I had rubbed these with two fingers inserted, and had put them, drawn back, to my nostrils: he perceives a prodigious odor. I call to witness the truth, which is God, that I perceived such and so great a fragrance of odor emanating from those fingers as I do not remember ever to have perceived elsewhere. And as my conscience then testified, and now testifies, if those fingers had had the edge of a twice-sharpened sword, my nostrils would by no means have escaped without a wound: because the sweetness of the odor was so delightful that my nostrils were stronger to draw the fragrant fingers into themselves than the strength of my arm to draw them back. For many days, that I might long be delighted with so great an odor, I kept them from all liquid.
§ II He becomes a monk and writes the Lives of Saints Ariald and John Gualbert. Miracles and cult of Blessed Andrew.
[8] While these things were being done at Milan, and through Insubria, under the leadership of Herlembald, undefiled religion was triumphing over the rebels; He becomes a monk of Vallombrosa like contests against the simoniacal plague were being undertaken through Tuscany, and above all at Florence, by Saint John Gualbert and his disciples; which we shall give fully described on the 12th of July in his Life; and I believe that Blessed Andrew was drawn by their fame to go to him, with Rudolph as companion or encourager (as Locatelli insinuates in chapter 10 of book 2 of his history), formerly Abbot of the monastery of Moscheta, known in the Acts of the same John Gualbert, and afterward his most worthy successor: concerning which matter the Priest Syrus speaks thus in the letter cited above: Who would be found so senseless as to say that you have written false things? if he knew that you had left the world for this reason, that you might be free not only from lying words, but even from idle ones: especially since you did not seek urban and lax monasteries, but the famous and celebrated coenobium of Vallombrosa, removed by a journey of five days from your native soil.
[9] The Acts of Saint Ariald This Syrus, with his companion Herimbert, had written about the Venerable Ariald, as Andrew himself shows in the letter given to him: and he had written long since, that is, immediately after the most glorious triumph of Ariald carried back to Milan; and when Andrew read these, being himself a great part of the events, especially around and after the death, he found that he had passed over many things which ought to be said: Whence it came about, he says, that at the command of Father Rodulf of blessed memory, he dedicates it to Abbot Rudolph, whose soul
who now rejoices with Christ, I have attempted to express many things, both concerning those things which you have omitted and those which you have said: which, sending them to you, I beseech you through charity that you carefully inspect them, and if they are true, bear testimony: for just as I had him as a master to command me to do these things; so I wish to have you as an asserter that they are true: so that even if the composition is rightly despised for its uncultivated speech as being the work of rottenness and a worm; it may be accepted out of reverence for two holy Priests, the one commanding and the other affirming. Moreover, that Andrew began this composition while Rudolf was still alive, and indeed before the November of the year one thousand and seventy-six, on whose twelfth day Locatellus writes that he expired, is clear from the preliminary letter.
[10] Not only that he had begun, but also that he had completed the work undertaken, those words seem to indicate by which, and completed it while he was still alive, after rendering an account of his name concealed throughout the whole book, he says: because in this there are very many things in words and deeds useful for edification; I pray that you grant it to the twelve monasteries over which the heavenly judge has placed you, for reading: so that when they hear what others in our time have said and suffered in defense of the truth, they too may be fired up to say such things and, if necessary, to suffer similar things for the same truth. but after Herlembald's death. However, the year was somewhat advanced when he began to write these things: for in chapter 16, speaking of Herlembald, who had been killed around the Easter festival of this year, he says: Many things, good things, I came to know familiarly about this man: but because he was lately crowned with martyrdom in defense of justice, I leave them to another volume as well as to another writer, because I desire to complete the life of Blessed Ariald quickly: in which words, because the Most Eminent Baronius, using an uncorrected copy, had read: I leave them written in another volume: he was compelled to doubt about the author of this life, and to ascribe it to the Priest Syrus: he would not have doubted had he read the letters which, transcribed from the old autograph itself, we have cited in this place.
[11] When Rudolf died, Abbot Rusticus succeeded, Abbot Rusticus he too numbered among the Blessed of Vallombrosa, of whom we shall treat jointly on the first day of August, when their solemn elevation is honored with an ecclesiastical Office, since concerning the cult of each and the day of the cult we cannot bring forward sufficiently certain testimonies. Rusticus held the helm of the Monastery and of his Order until the year one thousand and ninety-two of the common Era, being carried to the heavenly ones on the 12th of March: and while he held it, emulating the example of his predecessor, who to the nine monasteries either built or united to the Congregation under Blessed John Gualbert had joined three, he joined to it seven others, and among them the Abbey of Saint Fidelis of Strumi in the diocese of Arezzo, near the fortress of Poppi, on the river Arno; he sets Andrew over the Abbey of Saint Fidelis of Strumi, and to the monks who were asking Vallombrosa for an Abbot he gave Blessed Andrew.
[12] Into his government fell those most troubled times of Italy, when the Emperor Henry III was moving arms against the vicars of Christ, the Roman Pontiffs; amid which, since it was difficult to preserve concord among the neighboring cities, minds being drawn this way and that into parties, by diabolical instigation discord arose between the Florentines, who constantly adhered to the Pontifical party, who between the Florentines and the Aretines and the Aretines and other tyrants and factious men, says Hieronymus in his little work on the Blessed of his Order; against whom neither the commands of magistrates nor the laws of cities availed: so that all things were held in suspense with fear and dread at so great a sedition: and since the holy Father himself was involved in it, he never ceased from mutual entreaties until it was decreed that there should be negotiation of peace between them. And when a treaty had at last been struck between both parties, he came in a short time into such favor with all that he was exceedingly dear to both parties; and even (what is greater and more praiseworthy) while he lived this miserable life, he bound them, at peace among themselves and most dear, by his excellent prayers and examples. Making opportune use of this favor of all, he makes peace; he not only increased his monastery of Saint Fidelis with notable privileges: but also joined to its rights various churches, priories and hospitals, both in the territory of the Casentino and within the borders of the dioceses of Arezzo, Florence and Città di Castello, as Locatellus says.
[13] Distracted by these and other public and private cares, he did not altogether cease from writing: but applied his mind to writing the Life of Saint John Gualbert: driven both by his own devotion toward his most holy Master and induced by the exhortation of Abbot Rusticus: and he writes the Life of Saint John Gualbert. who, it is scarcely doubtful, asked this of him, since in composing the Acts of Blessed Ariald Andrew had given the whole Order so excellent a proof of his talent and judgment. But Jacobus de Franchis rightly complains that this so splendid work is now desired in vain: it certainly still existed in the year 1418, when from it, and from the life composed by Saint Atto, Bishop of Pistoia, and from the records of the Archive of Vallombrosa, Andrew of Sant'Ambrogio composed that Life, whose autograph, happily recovered, the same Jacobus de Franchis congratulates himself upon. And would that only this Life were now wanting, whose lack can be supplied by that other which we know to have been composed by Blessed Atto, and not so long ago printed: the loss would surely be lighter: but now all the records that were written about Andrew himself have perished; and unless Hieronymus Radiolanus, writing around the end of the fifteenth century or the sixteenth, had seen them, he is famous for miracles: he could not have professed that in this, as in others, he was passing over very many signs and marvels which the Lord Jesus showed through him.
[14] By which signs indeed he merited that his body, raised from the earth, should be in great veneration to the whole Casentino and the district of the Valdarno, as long as the monks remained in that first place of Strumi; but when they migrated from there into the town of Poppi itself, and transferred thither the Abbey of Saint Fidelis, on which the old church of Strumi, converted into a parish, should depend, namely on the occasion of some war or fire: they likewise transferred thither his venerable bones (which we, having venerated them in four gilded caskets, understood to be exposed upon the Altar for the people's veneration on all the greater festivals) but they kept no day or rite of particular cult, his bones translated to Poppi: perhaps because Blessed Torello of Poppi, for whom, on the 16th of March, there is greater veneration among his fellow townsmen in this new church, obscured the cult and memory of Blessed Andrew, brought from elsewhere, although from nearby and almost from the outskirts. Eudoxius Locatelli of Santa Sofia, treating of him in the history of Florence printed in the year 1583, cites no one besides Hieronymus Radiolanus, and does not even add the day of his death, which he says was met by him around the year one thousand and ninety-seven.
Arnold Wion, in the Lignum Vitae printed at Venice in the year 1595, referred his name to this day, inscribed in the calendars on 10 March. reciting the Tables of Vallombrosa, which, if we had found them surviving, we would certainly not have neglected to transcribe: now they, like many other things of this kind, have perished, and they seem not to have survived even in the year 1613, when the process was made concerning the finding of the bodies of the Blessed, which we have promised to give on the 1st of August, in which, among the points proposed to the judges, the fifth was: How from the year 1530, in the siege and war of Florence, the said Abbey (of Vallombrosa) was in the greatest part demolished and burned, and especially the library, and successively the books and almost all the writings were burned and set on fire; so that the writings, documents and records of the Blessed of the said congregation, which were preserved there, were lost.
§ III On John, Hermit of the Celle
[16] From the aforesaid Wion, citing the same tables, John, Hermit of the Celle Gabriel Bucelinus in the Menology, and Benedict Dorganius in the Calendar of the Benedictines, took Saint John, formerly Abbot of the Holy Trinity at Florence, as Locatellus is the author, a hermit famous for miracles: whom Ferrarius seems to have omitted in the catalogue, because he found nothing about him at Vallombrosa: nor did we hear anything about him in the Abbey itself, or find mention of him in the aforesaid process: only we are in doubt whether we were not told that in the church of the Celle (which, cut in the stone of the rock overhanging the monastery, we were not able to visit because of the shortness of time) his head is preserved together with the head of Blessed Melior, of whom there is express mention in that process. whether Blessed? If this is true, it would also be a probable conjecture that the rest of his body was preserved among the other bodies of the Blessed, and, the inscriptions being lacking, was by no means recognized: which, however, I would not rashly pronounce. And so we shall call him neither Saint with the aforesaid authors, nor Blessed with Locatellus: yet, lest we should begrudge posterity the example of outstanding penance, receive this compendium of his Life from Hieronymus Radiolanus, as we transcribed it in the Medicean Library of San Lorenzo at Florence, around the beginning of the year 1662.
[17] this man, on account of a grave crime This hermitage of the Celle, of which we have spoken, was inhabited by another John by name, whose deeds were at first foul and obscene, then most celebrated and honorable; so that if I wished to disclose each one, as indeed ought to be done, surely time would desert me sooner than matter. Wherefore I will write out in a few words what he did at Florence, and then in the hermitage. This man, then, was a Florentine: and since he was endowed with a wonderful acuteness of intellect, among the many codices and volumes which he had turned over in long and diligent study by lamplight, he also, by diabolical instigation, read through certain volumes of necromancy: in which, as he went far astray in madness, what is shameful even to say, he caused a young virgin to be carried to him and to come in to him in the darkness through demons, in his violent intemperance. At length, the demon deceiving him, so great a vice was detected, and the Abbot of Vallombrosa (Michael, the twenty-fourth from the holy founder, who had come down for this reason to the monastery of San Salvi near Florence, he is consigned to prison; as is found in Locatellus), having been informed of so foul a crime, ordered him to be summoned to him according to custom for the purpose of taking counsel, and with a stern countenance said to him: Shameless and wicked man, ungrateful for the benefits of Jesus Christ, were you not ashamed until now to lead yourself into a pure life? This man, then, led at first by obstinacy, denied it: but when he knew that his crime had truly been detected, prostrate on the ground with tears he confessed that all things were true. From this, a most foul prison for a year rendered him so rough, so squalid, so sick and emaciated with hunger and thirst and foul stench, that he could scarcely stand on his own feet.
[18] At length the Father Abbot, moved by the prayers both of many monks and of citizens, whence released, ordered him to be drawn out of the prison: and as he trembled before his feet, he chastised him, rebuked him, and threatened him thereafter with death, unless he should desist henceforth from so shameful and wicked a thing. But when he,
and wished to restore the monastery to his monks, he utterly refused, asserting that he wished to imitate the life he had led in prison: and he added these things: For this I learned in that foul and prolonged prison: that nothing is better, nothing holier than solitude; and in it I intend greatly to learn and emulate the divine studies: for now free from the bonds of the world, with Christ the Lord helping, I shall allow no time to pass empty. The Abbot approved his plan, and all who were present approved it: and by his own will and the counsel of all, in a reverse of roles, another venerable man (who afterward, upon the death of Michael, succeeded in the Abbacy of Vallombrosa, he chooses to lead an eremitical life, and thus in the Generalate of the Order in the year 1370, and held that supreme rank for seventeen years), though unwilling (lest he should lose the sweetness of the repose which he had acquired by many labors), was appointed in his place; to whom this most blessed hermit John afterward wrote letters, containing exhortations and praising the eremitical life: for his name was Simon and he was a hermit of the cells.
[19] Thus therefore, seeking the hermitage of the cells with the highest hope of himself and all the monks, in which he performed severe penance; he advanced so quickly that he was a source of admiration and amazement to the other hermits. For some admired his continence, some his assiduity in reading, his vigils and fasts: and what he had learned in his long prison, he now voluntarily and willingly imposed upon himself: for he rested on the ground upon straw, covered with a woolen cloak, clothed: and the wantonness of the flesh he suppressed with fasts and bodily labors, and now, with continued studies reading only divine things, and always turning over in his mind what the sacred writers believed and what they desired, he became in a short time so learned and skilled that he seemed inexperienced in no sacred discipline. By examples, therefore, and by grave speech and by letters, written elegantly to the citizens of Florence now in the vernacular tongue, now in Latin, he roused the minds of all to the divine records and to the worship of Jesus Christ: but the wicked and those corrupted by various vices he reproved and sharply condemned. There are extant even in our time his letters and sermons, skilfully and ornately written in the vernacular tongue, and especially to a certain Guido de' Guidi, he writes letters, a man of great age; in whom, as now in you (he is addressing Lorenzo de' Medici), the hope and resources of the city were placed: and at Florence and elsewhere, in the hands of many, both citizens and religious, they are read in continual reading:
[20] So indeed at that time: but now those works of his, says Jacobus de Franchis, writing in the year 1640, perished in the hands of Antonio Benciveni, Vicar of the Archbishop of Florence, according to what the Abbot Valeriano Salaini writes in the Chronicle of Passignano, page 13. He also wrote to others whom I pass over, especially to Domitilla, a most holy Nun; and the life of Saint Domitilla, all of which letters I believe, since you are excellent and religious, are counted among your possessions. He also published the life of Saint Domitilla, niece of the Emperor Domitian, not in unpolished and hasty speech and disordered language, as some do; but in Latin adorned with the highest dignity, with all the things that pertain to the ecclesiastical Offices: in place of which work I fear that there has crept into the aforesaid Didacus de Franchis a treatise on the conversation of the most holy Virgin, and that others have taken this antonomastically for the Blessed Virgin Mary: I would more easily believe that the work which the same says was entitled On Penance is different from the letters; or rather that those are the earlier hortatory letters written to Simon, of which mention was made above. whose sight he often enjoys: And he was so familiar with this most holy Virgin (namely Domitilla), that she often deigned to be seen by him in vision. Locatellus adds that many years after these things, when the oratory of his cell dedicated to Saint Domitilla had by chance burned, the image of the saint was preserved unharmed by the flames, nay, was carried by the hands of Angels into the principal church of the Celle: which was attributed to the merits of John the hermit, who had shed so many tears upon that altar while offering sacrifice, on account of which that image is still preserved in great veneration in that place.
[21] He was also familiar with Saint Catherine of Siena, as is read in a certain Life of hers in these words: A certain most holy man, He knows the glory of Saint Catherine of Siena. an aged monk of the monastery of Vallombrosa, greatly mourning the death of this most holy spouse of Christ, merited consolation from her, and clearly knew her glory: as that most holy father recounts in a letter to a certain Barduccio, a Florentine: and this is what Arnold Wion intimates is also signified in the Tables of Vallombrosa, that he was most familiar with the aforesaid Saint. Hieronymus goes on to weave his eulogy in this manner. There was in this man, among the other most excellent arts of mind and body, a certain nature suited to the time and the person, an admirable clemency, cheerful speech, and an exceedingly pleasant old age, so that you would call him another Socrates. But, his body now half-consumed and almost broken by age and incredible penance, the time of his dissolution came, died after the year 1380 and amid the psalms and commendatory prayers of the Brethren he passed happily to the heavenly ones, with his most holy Domitilla accompanying him. Of the miracles, however, with which he was famous in the year 1376, as Wion has it, I find not a word in Hieronymus Radiolanus or Eudoxius Locatelli: and the year expressed by the same Wion, if it is taken for the year of death, departs from the truth: since Saint Catherine of Siena is said to have met her death only in the year 1380, which will be examined more fully on the 30th of April at her Life.