ON ST. SISEBUTUS, ABBOT OF CARDEÑA IN SPAIN.
YEAR 1082.
CommentarySt. Sisebutus, Abbot, at Cardeña in Spain.
[1] Cardeña is an ancient monastery among the people of Burgos in Old Castile, destroyed in the year 834 by the Mohammedan King Zapha, when, as will be told on August 6, two hundred monks were killed in hatred of the Christian religion. It was afterwards begun to be restored around the year 884 by order of Alfonso III, called the Great, and around the year 900 was finally inhabited. All these things are set forth at greater length by Prudencio de Sandoval in a separate treatise on this monastery of Cardeña, dedicated to St. Peter. Afterwards there lived as Abbot of this monastery St. Sisebutus, who died on March 15, on which day he is inscribed in the Spanish Martyrology of Tamayo Salazar with these words: Sacred veneration "At Burgos in Hither Spain, of St. Sisebutus the Abbot, who, after he had governed the monastery of St. Peter of Cardeña for several years with admirable skill and had led an angelic and blameless life, conspicuous for the honor of piety and most celebrated for the performance of miracles, he merited the eternal acclaim of sanctity." More modestly Ménard in the monastic Martyrology: "In the monastery of Cardeña in Spain, of St. Sisebutus the Abbot." Bucelin gathers somewhat more. He is also venerated as a Saint by the already mentioned Sandoval and by Antonio de Yepes
in volume 6 of the Benedictine Chronicle, at the year 1076, chapter 2. The Acts of St. Sisebutus are preserved in the monastery of Cardeña on very ancient parchment, Life which Yepes testifies he received from there through Father Friar Juan de Arévalo, and published in the Spanish language; which in turn Tamayo had translated back into Latin, from which we publish them here.
"Sisebutus, who was the third Abbot, in the time of Bishop Don Gometius, flourished in the reigns of Ferdinand I, Sancho II, and partly in the reign of Alfonso VI, and governed this monastery of St. Peter of Cardeña for several courses of time, Virtues in governance conducting himself in the discipline of life, in the completion of religion, in the observance of the Rule, in the morals of the monks, in the care of the monastery, and in the exercise of his ministry, in such a way that to this day there is scarcely the memory of anyone who, before him or after him, so maintained monastic integrity or more felicitously carried out the standard of the institute. Those who lived in his company entirely neglected to commit to writing the order of his life, nor did they record for posterity the miracles which God performed through his intercession. There was therefore at that time among us a common negligence and a universal listlessness, just as there is now a lamentable indolence of our elders. And although diligence was lacking on papyrus documents, nevertheless they commended the greatness of the holy Abbot's sanctity to marble sarcophagi. For they did not bury his body among the other Abbots of the monastery, but, having deposited him in a tomb different from theirs, they offered him the veneration due to a Blessed one. The most holy Abbot Sisebutus died on the fifteenth of March in the Year of the Lord 1082. Burial The sacred relics lay in the chapel of St. James in a stone monument under a marble arch, where they remained exposed to the veneration of all. A paralytic woman is healed How many afflicted people, coming to his tomb, were freed from all miseries, and having fulfilled their vow, returned in good spirits! The miracle of Doña María Franca is remembered: she, deprived of her limbs by paralysis, daily commending her affliction to Blessed Sisebutus and clinging to his tomb, was immediately freed from her bonds and walked freely and nimbly through the church, giving thanks to God. Likewise a paralytic and a mute man This most illustrious woman, mindful of so great a benefit, had a hospice built at her own expense near the entrance to the Chapel for the aid of pilgrims, on the flat surface of whose wall she had the miracle expressed in the excellent colors of painting. And she set a lamp to burn perpetually before the holy Abbot's urn, and endowed it with a regular payment, and donated other things not to be despised by hereditary right — until, taken from the living, she ordered herself to be buried within the entrance of the hospice she had built, beneath the painting of the miracle. Tradition also still observes and affirms other miracles: namely of a certain paralytic and another mute man, who — the one his feet, the other his tongue — received back. The body is placed on the high altar After some time, during which the Saint's remains had been venerated there with honorable devotion and visited day and night by pilgrims attracted both by the affection of devotion and the reputation of miracles, the monks transferred the sacred relics from the Chapel of St. James, enclosed in an honorable and decorated reliquary, to the high altar beside the tabernacle of the sacrarium, where they rest."
[2] Moreover, as Tamayo adds, both before and after the translation, the Convent used to go every Saturday after the Office of Vespers to the sacred relics, where an antiphon and prayer were sung in its own proper form. Invocation of patronage Furthermore, in the Breviary of the year 1327, the name of St. Sisebutus is read in the Litanies among the Confessors, and in the Suffrages of the Saints with its own proper Collect. The same things are found in the Breviary revised in the year 1498.
ON BLESSED MONALDUS, FRANCIS, AND ANTHONY, OF THE ORDER OF FRIARS MINOR.
YEAR 1286.
CommentaryBlessed Monaldus, Martyr of the Order of Friars Minor, at Arzengan in Armenia.
Blessed Francis, Martyr of the Order of Friars Minor, at Arzengan in Armenia.
Blessed Anthony, Martyr of the Order of Friars Minor, at Arzengan in Armenia.
BHL Number: 5991
[1] Arzengan is a city of Armenia, honored by the glorious death of these blessed Martyrs; how this came about will be shown by Brother Carlinus de Grimaldis in a letter which appears in the Annals of Luke Wadding, as follows: "To the Reverend Father in Christ... Guardian of the convent of Genoa, greeting and peace. Since, as I believe, it has not been possible for it to come to your notice how the holy Martyrs, Friars of our Order of Minors, namely Brother Monaldus of Ancona, Brother Francis of Petrillo or of Fermo, and Brother Anthony of Milan, Three Friars before the Cadi delivered their bodies for Christ: I therefore write truthfully the manner of their martyrdom, as I first learned by diligent investigation from the Armenians and Greeks who were present, and also from a faithful messenger specially sent by us to investigate the truth of this matter. Know therefore that while the aforesaid Friars, proposing to expose themselves to death for the truth of the Catholic faith, were staying in the city of Arzengan, they used to go every Friday of Lent to preach there to the Saracens; they preach Christ to the Saracens because the Saracens solemnize that day as we do Sunday. They proposed before the Cadi, that is, their Bishop, how Christ is the true God, and was crucified for the salvation of all; and that those who do not believe these things are not in the light of truth. The Saracens, on the contrary, denied that Christ was God. And the Friars: 'What we say is attested by many Prophets and many miracles, and we, confirmed in the light of this faith, are prepared to die for this faith. But your Mohammed — who was he? How often did he deceive others, thrusting himself forward as a Prophet? What law, what Scripture, what miracles attest to him?'
[2] Then the Cadi, seeing the Saracens present disturbed, said to the Friars in a troubled voice: 'Depart hence as quickly as you can, for such words are not to be spoken here: go about your business.' And so the Friars withdrew; and this was on the first Friday of Lent. On the second occasion, the champions of Christ returned to the contest of faith they dispute about the faith and, repeating what they had said, added many other things for the explanation of our faith and the confutation of the Mohammedan law. Then the Cadi, having summoned the elders of the Saracens and the Falqueris, that is, the Religious, a long disputation and debate about our faith took place between the parties. At length, with the Saracens raging and threatening the Friars, those men, filled with the Holy Spirit, repeatedly and fearlessly replied: 'Behold, we are in your hands; kill us however you wish, for you will find us ready and glad to endure whatever tribulation and death for Christ.' Then the Saracens who were present, inflamed with fury, wished to rise up against the Friars; but the Cadi forbade it, saying they should not be hasty. The Friars, however, dismissed by him, withdrew.
[3] Afterwards the Cadi, having summoned the Elders and the Falqueris, held a council, they are condemned to death to which many of the people also flocked; and having heard what was proposed against the Friars, all together cried out: 'Let them absolutely die and be eradicated from our land! For they vilify and despise our Prophet and our law as mud; and having been warned many times to desist from such things, they have continually been more defiant; and they publicly confound us and our law, which is by no means to be tolerated: therefore let them be swiftly destroyed.' Then on the Friday before the fourth Sunday of Lent, that is, the fifteenth of March, they sent for the holy Friars, who prepared themselves joyfully for bodily death; and coming, they boldly preached the Catholic faith to the Saracens who were hastening together, asserting that this alone was the way of salvation, for which they greatly desired to die. 'Your law, however,' they said, 'leads you all to eternal death.' And so, constant in faith, they received the sentence of death.
[5] Then throughout that entire land it was proclaimed by many: they are led to execution 'All who wish to avenge our disgrace through the blood of those dogs who regard our law and our holy Prophet as the mud of feet, let them go immediately to the field.' Meanwhile the holy Friars were led to the Mardanum, that is, the square or field, not dragged or bound; they were joyful, as if invited to a feast, and they said: 'Now our desire is fulfilled.' When they had reached the place of martyrdom, they were surrounded on all sides by Saracens rushing toward them with drawn swords. They, placed before the tribunal, fearlessly confessed the faith of Christ. Then very many rushing upon them began to stab them cruelly with swords and wound them grievously. A certain Saracen, however, perhaps led by natural piety or divine impulse, who rebuked the executioners and killed because they were treating the holy Friars so inhumanely, was killed in a great assault by the Saracens. But the Friars, kneeling and placing their sleeves before their eyes, then raising their hands to heaven, delivered their spirits to the Lord, and all the Christians fled in fear to their homes.
[6] their extremities are cut off Then, their hands and feet and heads having been cut off, they hung the severed members on the gates and walls of the city, leaving the mutilated bodies. The priest of the Armenians, because he seemed to have been favorable to the most holy Friars, was seized together with a companion, and with the head of one of the Martyrs tied to his neck, they led him naked through the entire territory, beating and scourging him. they are buried by the Armenians The Saracens guarded the bodies of the Saints throughout the entire day and night, saying: 'Lest the Christians steal them and venerate them as Saints.' Then they left the holy bodies to be gnawed by dogs and birds. But the said priest of the Armenians, with a great multitude of armed men, secretly collected the bodies of the Saints, and also other scattered members acquired by prayer or purchase, and committed them to an honorable burial. One Armenian, however, out of great devotion stole the heads of two Martyrs and did [not] bury them; but through many prayers he secretly brought the said two heads to us, out of fear of the infidels.
[7] sight is restored to a blind man When the said Armenians deposited the other relics of the holy Friars at Arzengan, in the sight of many, heavenly lights descended upon the sacred place (where the relics had been deposited and where the blood of the Saints had been shed and the severed limbs had afterwards been). Those who were present also report that, when the Cadi said to the Friars before their death, placing a certain blind man before them: 'You say that your faith is confirmed by many miracles; make it so, then, that this blind man receives light, and we will believe you.' The Saints replied: 'Christ the Son of God is powerful, if He wills, to illumine this blind man.' And after prayer and the sign of the Cross over the eyes of the blind man, a sort of water began to flow from his eyes, and then blood, and so he recovered his sight. Terrified by this, the Saracens cried out that the Friars should die quickly, otherwise their faith was confounded. They also disposed of that blind man so that from then on he was not seen.
[8] When the sacred relics were being brought to us, we went out solemnly to meet them with all the Latin people. the relics are translated With two Priests from among us carrying the ark
in which were the sacred heads and relics, adorned and covered with a precious cloth, and others singing, the faithful exulted and wept with devotion: but the infidels were confounded. The Greeks, moreover, venerated the sacred relics. After a solemn Mass was sung on the Sunday when the Gospel "I am the good shepherd" occurs, and a sermon was given, on the next day the Bishop of the Armenians came with the clergy and all the people to the place of burial of the holy Martyrs, showing great devotion and reverence to the sacred relics. The Armenians hold the said holy Friars in great reverence, and their Patriarch canonized them in his own manner, and they fast the vigil out of devotion to them.
[9] Was it at Jerusalem? So far Carlinus, who wrote from where and when we cannot know, because his letter lacks an ending. Wadding's continuator and epitomizer Aroldus suspects he lived at Jerusalem, where the Friars Minor then had a convent: and he strengthens the suspicion from the concourse of nations — namely of Latins, Greeks, and Armenians. But Arzengan is so far from Jerusalem by land journey alone — six hundred miles distant — that we could scarcely bring ourselves to accept that suspicion as having any truth; especially since the Armenian Patriarch had his seat in or near the city to which the Saints were brought. Or at Pera? And so I would rather suspect either the ancient metropolis of First Armenia, Melitene, today Malatya, a few miles above the mouth of the Melas river where it flows into the Euphrates; or the seat of all Armenia and the Eastern Empire, and rival of Byzantium, Trebizond on the Euxine Sea, one or two days' journey from Arzengan; or finally — what seems to me most likely of all — Pera, the Genoese city opposite Constantinople, where, after the extinction of the Frankish Empire in the East, we know that remnants of the Latins survived until Constantinople was captured by the Turks. And there is no doubt that the Minorites had their own convent there, which had continuous communication with the Genoese Friars: just as it is certain that there are many thousands of Armenians at Constantinople, and they have their own Bishop who calls himself Patriarch.
[10] For nothing was easier than for bodies brought to Trebizond to be transported by the ships of Genoese merchants, who conducted their business throughout the entire Euxine Sea, to the other side of the Euxine, perhaps in the year 1314 after sailing the length of the Pontus. This conjecture is supported by the fact that the letter is addressed to the Guardian of Genoa; and at the time the blessed Martyrs suffered, Greeks ruled in both the city of Constantinople and of Trebizond. Wadding made the time ambiguous for us when, having first reported under the twelfth General, Bonagratia, that they suffered in the year 1286 according to his Order's Memorial, he then presents the history of the same — that is, Brother Carlinus's letter — in the fourteenth year of the following century, with no reason given for departing from the ancient records of his Order. He seems to have been moved by the chronological marker with which Carlinus sealed this martyrdom: March 15 falling on a Friday before the fourth Sunday of Lent — which never occurs in the entire five-year term of the twelfth General, nor indeed in the rest of the thirteenth century; but it did occur in the third year and in the fourteenth which he chose.
[11] But, notwithstanding that reasoning, I consider we should absolutely stand by the older, or rather 1286 and therefore more certain, memorial, whose very words I wish we had: for I believe that mention is made of these Martyrs in connection with the Generalate of Bonagratia, which extends from 1279 to 1284, not because they completed their martyrdom under him, but because they were then sent on that expedition; for, as Wadding writes at the final year of this General: "Brother Bonagratia had sent many Friars to the northern regions, to Asia and Armenia, to spread the Catholic faith, which they diligently did, and they expanded both the faith and their fellowship with great growth. But in many places they were afflicted, distressed, frequently in dangers, more often in prisons; they fed on the bread of sorrow and the water of tribulation, until they offered up their very lives for the Lord whose cause they were serving, with the greatest joy." Among these the glorious trio of whom we treat did they suffer at Arzengan? had Arzengan as the place of their contest, to be completed within a few years — the city which the geographical tables showing the image of the Turkish Empire call Arazeng, or a few miles below it Arzingan, which Nigro in Ortelius calls Arsicha, and Ptolemy Aziris. Of these places, the latter corresponds to Theodosiopolis, mentioned in Procopius's Book 3, and the former to Claudiopolis, called Sinibra by Ptolemy. Whichever you choose, you choose a city near Trebizond, on the right bank of the Euphrates, as it bends southward toward Melitene.
[12] But what will become of the fourth Sunday, which does not permit our Martyrs to be assigned to the year assigned by the Memorial? Was it before the Sunday of Lent, the third or the fourth? I reply: the same thing happened to Carlinus as to very many others — that, not being fully conversant with the Greek custom of naming weeks and beginning the Lenten fast, he believed it was the same thing whether he wrote the fourth week or the fourth Sunday; and that the reckoning of weeks was the same among us as among the Greeks. And thus he made it appear that those who died in the second week of Lent according to us — but the third according to the Greeks, and before the Sunday that is the third for both (for in naming weeks, the Greeks look to the following Sunday, we to the preceding one) — that, I say, these men appeared to have died in a year when Easter fell on April 7; whereas Easter should be found falling on April 14, as it does in the year we prefer. Nor indeed, if you correctly count the weeks which the author of the letter rather accurately enumerates, will you find the matter to be otherwise: for the Friars' first encounter with the Cadi was, he says, on the first Friday of Lent — after Ash Wednesday, that is, which week the Greeks call the first of the fasts, and it truly is the first, since the whole of it, not merely the half as with us, is fasted. Since, moreover, he said above that they used to go to preach every Friday of Lent, it is clear that the second occasion, on which the Martyrs disputed with the Saracens, fell on the Friday of the first week of the Latins, the second of the Greeks. Between this and the day of death, no further encounter is interposed: but the decree to take their lives was conceived and carried out on the next Friday, which preceded the fourth week of the Eastern Lent but only the third Sunday.
[13] The Sunday on which the Gospel of the Good Shepherd is recited, and on which the holy bodies are narrated as having arrived, Was the head of Monaldus taken to Ancona? is the second after Easter, and fell on April 28 in that year. Some say, as Wadding reports, that the body of Monaldus was translated to Justinopolis in Dalmatia, and the head to Ancona in Italy. As for Ancona, what makes this claim plausible is the right of his homeland, which could easily have obtained, and should have, some part of its citizen, crowned with so glorious a martyrdom — especially if the relics were preserved at Pera, as we believe. Was the body translated to Justinopolis? As for Justinopolis, it seems that around these times or somewhat later, a certain Monaldus, a native of the aforesaid city, was famous in the Order of Minors, who by whatever influence he possessed could have procured this good for his homeland: that it should possess, in whole or in part, a Saint of the same name as himself — especially if to this was added the dignity of an Archbishopric in the Church of Benevento, as Possevino in his Apparatus believes, having been persuaded by Rodulfo.
[14] But since Ughelli in volume 8 of his Italia Sacra asserts that there was indeed an Archbishop of this name at Benevento, and that he ceased to live around the year 1333, various persons named Monaldus having died in the parts of Tuscany, and says he was a Minorite by religion but an Orvietan by homeland, I would as easily let myself be persuaded that he is different from the Justinopolitan — author of the Summa Monaldina and other books enumerated by Possevino — as I consider it entirely certain that the Monaldus of whom we treat was neither an Orvietan nor a Justinopolitan, but an Anconitan, and was unskillfully confused with both the aforesaid. Arthur du Monstier enrolled all these persons named Monaldus among the Blesseds of his Order, treating of each on different days: but of this Martyr and his companions Francis and Anthony, he treats on March 16, no less to be corrected in this than Francisco Gonzaga in Part 1 of his Seraphic Origins, where he is faulted for having written Andrea instead of Antonio.
March II: March 16.
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