ON BL. THOMASELLUS OF THE ORDER OF PREACHERS, AT PERUGIA IN UMBRIA.
YEAR 1270.
CommentaryBl. Thomasellus of Perugia, of the Order of Preachers.
The most religious Order of Friars Preachers has a remarkable monastery and church at Perugia: The body under the high altar when, in the year 1660, turning aside a little on our Roman journey, we visited it on the 16th day of December, to learn of the relics of the Saints, if there were any there, and to implore their prayers, we were led most courteously to the high altar of that church, which, open behind toward the choir, contained a new and splendid chest, which a lamp hanging beneath the same altar illumined with perpetual brightness. with the body of Blessed Nicholas And lest there should be any doubt to whom this honor was shown, an inscription conceived in these words made it plain: The bodies of Blessed Nicholas of Giovinazzo, companion of our Blessed Father Dominic, founder of this Convent, and of Blessed Thomasellus of Perugia, disciple of St. Thomas Aquinas, translated here from the old church, where they were piously preserved by the faithful, in the year of the Lord 1638. More than this we could not learn, owing to the absence of the Reverend Father Prior, nor were the documents sent that were promised after his return from an old codex of the monastery. Nor indeed, having inspected what Giovanni Michele Pio, part 1, book 1, On the Illustrious Men of the Order of St. Dominic, and after him Lodovico Jacobilli, volume 1, On the Saints and Blessed of Umbria, had most diligently collected, Eulogy from Michele Pio did it seem worth the trouble to wait further on an uncertainty.
So what the former wrote in Italian at §197, we render here in Latin.
Tomasellus of Perugia, by nation a Tuscan, was more renowned, it is doubtful whether for holiness or for learning: his learning he drew from his master St. Thomas Aquinas; his great zeal for holiness and for mortifying himself he showed in this, that, using in place of a hair shirt a cloak woven of iron rings, he went to Naples and returned. Endowed with the Prophetic Spirit, one year before he died he foretold his passing; and, honored with many miracles, in the very flower of youth, being only twenty-eight years old, he made an end of living, about the year 1270, in his native city: where, for the reputation of his eminent holiness, he was buried apart from the other Friars in the old church; then, as the years ran on, he was elevated and translated to a more honorable place, together with the body of Blessed Nicholas of Giovinazzo. his companion in the same tomb, Blessed Nicholas, The Acts of this Nicholas, formerly not well enough known to us, which should otherwise have been referred to the 11th day of February, we are keeping for the supplement of that month: now, as regards Blessed Thomasellus, we add from Jacobilli that he died on this day, and that together with the aforesaid body he was placed above the high altar of the earlier church, in a chest fittingly cut from red stone; Images with rays after he had been brought out here from his own tomb, this from beneath the altar which is said to have been distinguished by his name. He adds that the image of Thomasellus is seen in various places of that Convent, adorned round about with radiant light: and in particular in a larger painting representing various Blessed of the Dominican Order and illustrious men of the Convent itself, with this legend: Blessed Thomasellus of Perugia, disciple of St. Thomas, year 1270.