Himelin

CONCERNING SAINT HIMELIN, PRIEST, AT FENACUM IN BRABANT, IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY

Himelin, Priest at Fenacum in Brabant (Saint)

[1] About two hundred years ago there flourished among the Canons Regular of the monastery of Rouge-Cloitre in the Sonian Forest, two miles from the city of Brussels, John Gillemannus, who with the utmost industry and labor collected very many Lives of the Saints. Among these is the Hagiologion of the Brabantines, in the second part of which he published the Life of Saint Himelin the Priest,

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

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,

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: