ON BLESSED ERIC OR HENRY, AT PERUGIA IN ITALY.
IN THE YEAR 1415
Historical Synopsis.
Eric or Henry, at Perugia in Italy (Bl.)
[1] There is a parish church in the city of Perugia, near the gate which has its name from St. Susanna; distinguished by the title of St. Andrew, and by the sacred deposit of Blessed Eric; The fatherland of Blessed Eric uncertain, whose veneration there is known and public, although not as of a Saint canonized by the Apostolic See. As uncertain as are all the things about his life which the writers of the Order of Minors build upon most uncertain conjectures, so certain, on the contrary, is the death piously met there, and the public opinion of the people about his holiness that followed his death, from those documents which, collected in the year 1639 by the Guardian of the Convent of Perugia, and transmitted to the Reverend Father Luke Wadding, writer of the Annals of his Order, his most worthy successor, the Reverend Father Francis Harold, showed us at Rome to be transcribed: among which the most worthy of credence is the account of an Anonymous Franciscan, drawn from a source not yet, as it appears, infected by any conjectures of piously curious men: whose words, rendered from the Italian into Latin, are these.
[2] His death met at Perugia, In a certain manuscript book of one of our older Fathers, of our Convent of Monte Morcino, this memorial is found recorded. In this year one thousand four hundred and fifteen there came to Perugia a pilgrim, most devout, in a hermit's habit; and, admitted to the Hospital outside the gate of St. Susanna, he fell into sickness, and within a few days exchanged life for death. That his name was Erricus was clear from certain writings found with him; and he is believed to have been some great Prince from Germany. His head is shown on the feast of St. Andrew, and God has worked great miracles through him; as is proved from an authentic writing. That these Writings, and those which were found with the dead man, were transferred to the Archive of the city, and there perished after five years in its fire, Wadding first asserted. To the miracles undoubtedly belongs what Marcos of Lisbon affirms in book 1, chapter 31. At his death the bells of the nearer church, which was St. Andrew's, his cult there, rang with no one pulling them; and therefore the Bishop, having examined the matter, ran up together with the whole Clergy, and honorably buried in the aforesaid church the body, famous for miracles.
[3] After this Wadding adds from the same Marcos: The Emperor Sigismund, coming to Rome some years later (namely in the year 1433, for the sake of his Coronation), while he was passing through Perugia and heard these things, entered the church, kissed the sepulcher, venerated the Relics, and asked to be made a sharer in the merits of the holy man. and the adornment of the Relics What the form of this sepulcher then was, what its adornment, no one explains. That it was none, or very slight, is gathered from what is found recorded in the public Tablets in the year 1504; when on the 16th day of June the Rector and Parishioners of the aforesaid church asked the Magistrate, Priors and Chamberlains of the City of Perugia to contribute the necessary sum of money for making a tabernacle and placing in it the body of Blessed Erigus: to which the Priors and Chamberlains readily consented by a decree made, for the preservation of so great a good and gift which we have in our city, as they say, repeating the name of Blessed Erigus a third time; whom, when Pompeo Pellini in his History of Perugia, book 2, part 3, at the year 1504, says was a Noble Englishman, he indicates sufficiently that nothing certain about him could be had known up to his times, after which the Casket was renewed and inscribed with verses, whence he is thought to be the son of the King of Denmark; in which he is said to have been heir of three kingdoms.
[4] Namely, since, from a preconceived opinion of his nobility, an iron crown had been placed on the head of the deceased, and some spoke doubtfully about the death of Olaf, son of Margaret and Haakon, heir of Sweden, Denmark and Norway; and not even by the burning of the man who falsely claimed to be Olaf had the credulous opinion been wholly blotted out from the minds of some, that either he himself, withdrawn from the flames, or some brother of his (though Olaf is read to have had none), was still alive, they believed this to be foundation enough to seem to have found a certain fatherland and condition for this pilgrim, and to persuade others of like simplicity. Wadding can be seen disputing these things against Erpold, Pontanus and Krantz on behalf of the writers of his Order, and the constant, as he says, perpetual and firm tradition of all Perugia: how little firmly this can be called constant and perpetual is clear from what has been said before; but still more from the deposition of witnesses and the information made by the Bishop not more than thirty years after these things had begun to be put about by the Franciscans: as we have learned from the rescript of the Guardian of Perugia, whose words are these.
[5] witnesses heard concerning his body in the year 1594: In the name of God, Amen. In the year of the Lord 1639, on the 3rd day of January. I, Brother Giles of Perugia, of the Order of Minors Regular of the Observance, at present Guardian of St. Francis of the Mount at Perugia, bear witness that I found in the book of Visitations of the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Napoleon Comitoli, formerly Bishop of this city of Perugia, that the same Most Illustrious and Most Reverend in the year 1594, on the 20th day of April, visited the Parish church at the gate of St. Susanna near the walls of the city, in which, after the visitation of the most holy Eucharist and of the Altars, he visited also the body of Blessed Henry, as appears in the aforesaid book at folios 298 and 299… and over the same body he ordered information to be taken, and then examined the witnesses written below, whose names and sayings are these, namely:
Dom John Baptist, the aforesaid Rector, set before the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Bishop in the said parish church, under oath, of the age etc., to his appropriate questions, as below etc., namely: that he is now of the age of sixty-six years: and that formerly, when he was a boy, he saw the body of Blessed Henry with a long white beard and with sea-shells, and a crown and a certain staff,
[6] Andrew Sanctes de Brunis, of Perugia, of the Gate of St. Susanna; of the age, as he asserted, of fifty-five years; questioned under oath, having touched etc., said; that he saw the said Body, which was formerly kept upon the altar, and remembers the beard of white color. Further, he ordered information about this same matter to be taken by Lord Pompeo Pellini: and it is seen how it was also decreed by the Apostolic Visitor that information be taken. Before the said decree there was no knowledge that anything had been found about him. Then Dom Vincent Grisaldus, Canon of the Cathedral Church of Perugia, was questioned on the aforesaid; who said that he had heard from his mother, who said that she had many times seen the aforesaid body, which however, she affirmed, lacked part of the nose. In a certain old Missal found in the aforesaid sacristy, printed in the year 1499, ancient cult: in the Calendar at the month of March, in the margin of the said Missal under the 13th day of March, there is found noted in handwritten letters this, namely: On the day of St. Eulalia, virgin, which words are printed, and afterward in handwriting: And of Blessed Henry, whose body is in this church.
[7] The aforesaid Rector asserted that the Most Reverend Lord Vincenzo Ercolani, the body carried into the sacristy around the year 1570, Bishop of Perugia, ordered him to place this Body, laid in a casket and kept above the high altar, and by order of the Apostolic Visitor removed from it and put in the sacristy, at the right of the aforesaid altar, as it is seen placed there today: and that the Most Reverend Lord Ercolani afterward granted that his body be painted there. Thus far the very words of the Acts, most faithfully taken by the Guardian of Perugia from the public records, in which neither in these nor in any others is there even the least mention either of a Royal title or of the third Order of St. Francis: and the Apostolic Visitor of whom the Rector of the aforesaid church makes mention was the Bishop of Cagli, as the same Guardian testifies elsewhere; namely Paolo Mario della Rovere, appointed by Pius V to set Umbria in order, as is in the Italia Sacra of Ferdinando Ughelli: and Vincenzo Ercolani, who ordered the holy body to be brought back to the church, to the place we have said, after ten years it is brought back into the church, having been transferred first from the Bishopric of Sarno to Imola, was promoted thence to the See of Perugia in the year 1579, as the same Ughelli is the author in volume 1 of Italia Sacra, and departed from the living within seven years, in the year 1586, as is clear from the same Ughelli, although the epitaph, printed faultily, is short by 5 years.
[8] From the sacristy, then, to which the Visitor had ordered the body to be removed around the year 1570, as the same Guardian writes, it was brought back to the church after ten or more years, and from that time it rests at the right of the principal altar, in a vaulted wall, as Wadding says at the year 1415: nay, the aforesaid Guardian writes that in the altar itself, where the body had previously stood, and the image is painted: was placed that image which is now seen: which, from the words alleged above, afterward granted that his body be painted there, is indeed very ambiguous; for there can also be understood of the right side of the altar: where, as Cesare Crispolti says in book 1, chapter 16 of Perusia Augusta, printed in the year 1648, the body is preserved wrapped in a red cloth, within a large wooden casket not inelegantly painted: where also an image of the same Saint is seen expressed. Whether on a panel hung on the wall above the deposit, he does not explain: and the cause of doubting is that over the casket containing the sacred bones there has been drawn, as Wadding says in the place above, an outer cover in the manner of a cupboard, on which from the upper part is painted an image of the enclosed body with rays drawn round the head, the tokens of holiness, with this single verse written beneath:
Here the body of Henry: the spirit before God.
But since neither Wadding himself nor anyone else has mentioned a double image: which same perhaps now serves to cover the casket, we can suspect not without reason that that panel, for the painting of which Bishop Ercolani granted the faculty, and which was formerly seen either on the altar in place of the body, or beside the altar above the same body, has been turned into the roof or upper part of the aforesaid cover or cupboard: when whose door is opened, as the same Wadding continues, that the body may be seen, the front panel of the casket in which it is preserved is let down: and on this panel, on the inner side (namely while it clings by its fastenings to the rest of the casket, having some verses on the inside. but on the outer side when it is let down), these verses are inscribed in golden letters:
Qui potuit cælum precibus contingere sacris, Qui potuit Latij regna tenere tria: [He who could reach heaven by sacred prayers, who could hold the three kingdoms of Latium:]
He who, a lover of poverty and a worshipper of this city, coming here, died as a pilgrim. And who shows the way to heaven and to salvation, may he grant us to enjoy the celestial realm.
[9] In which it was noted that "Datia" should have been written instead of "Latium" Present condition of the Body: by the one who, with eyewitness fidelity, accurately transmitted everything from Rome, and he attributes the error to the painter's inexperience. He judges, writing in the year 1639, that everything was painted and written about eighty years previously, and in this he is mistaken by at least a quarter of the time, as is clear from the year of Herculanus' ordination. He continues to narrate how he inspected the body, which had been partially consumed by those who, for the sake of religion, seemed to have taken away certain small pieces of flesh. The head, however, cut off from the rest of the corpse, was placed next to it, its much-consumed flesh covered with a veil, with an iron crown added, very ancient and greatly corroded and in poor condition. The Guardian, by whom the documents cited above were collected, adds that in the same chest, besides the sacred body, there is his rosary, two small shells indicative of a pilgrim, a staff, and a small vessel suitable for a traveler's drink -- all of which are preserved with veneration. And the staff, he says, equaling the measure of his body in length, is exactly seven palms long; the flesh of the body, like dried beef, separates into filaments if one tries to remove any. Finally, above the chest and at the foot of the aforesaid image there are many votive offerings, testimonies of graces obtained through his merits, and among these some of modern date.
[10] These are the things we were able to learn about the Blessed Eric from the original letters, and we preferred to set them forth simply in this way; authors concerning him. rather than to transcribe from Wadding's Annals, or their epitome, varied in some circumstances (as almost always happens), so that it might appear more evidently what, how, and when was written about this Blessed One. Besides the authors already cited, Maurus, Abbot of Monteoliveto, treats of him in his Prato Florido; Ferrarius in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy; Arturus a Monasterio in the Franciscan Martyrology -- all of whom transcribed from the chronicle of Marcus of Lisbon what he has about the abandoned kingdom; sufficiently conformable, at any rate, to the reckoning of the times, since Olaf, born around the year 1340, in the year 1415, if he or his brother had lived, would certainly have been grey-haired and over seventy years old. But to admit that he lived and died as a pilgrim at Perugia, we require firmer arguments than mere congruence of time and a conjecture thought up so many years after his death.