ON BL. BENEDICT, PRIEST, AT LUCCA IN ETRURIA.
BEFORE THE 14TH CENTURY.
CommentarySt. Benedict, Priest, at Lucca in Etruria.
[1] Where the boundaries of the Republic of Lucca, toward the lake called of Sextus or of Bientina, most nearly touch the territory of Pisa, six miles from the city is a town Near Compito having the name of Compito, perhaps from the meeting of the public roads. To the Plebanus of this town was formerly subject the Parish church of St. Leonard of Tripontio, or surnamed "among the three bridges": but now, together with an attached hospice, assigned to the monastery of the Canons of San Frediano, which is three miles distant from the city, it has lost the dignity and rights of a parish; the inhabitants, on account of the unhealthiness of the air, having for the greater part moved elsewhere, and the few remaining being spiritually subject to the Rector of St. Genesius of Compito. in the church of St. Leonard So we were taught by a most courteous and likewise most learned man, Francesco Maria Fiorentini, when asked to bring help and light for illustrating the memory of Blessed Benedict: who, Compitese by origin, of the family of the Amedei, had the care of souls in the said church of St. Leonard, as Cesare Franciotti writes in that work which he published in Italian in the year 1613 on the miraculous images and the Saints and Blessed of Lucca; where at page 448 he has a brief narration about Blessed Benedict, taken, as it seems, from a manuscript codex which is now in the possession of the aforesaid Fiorentini.
[2] This codex contains the Lives and feasts of the Saints of Lucca, rendered into Italian by Lorenzo Trenta of Lucca, the cult of Blessed Benedict's body, who professes that he wrote in the year 1585 and took them from Latin records: yet no diligence has so far availed for finding in Latin the Acts concerning this Blessed man. Wherefore we rightly doubt whether this narration is not entirely Lorenzo's own offspring, as he strove in whatever way to gather together what popular memory preserved about the Saint. For besides treating meagerly and thinly of the merits of his life and the renown of his miracles, and in wholly general terms, as to the particular circumstances of times and of certain persons he has so unhappily gone astray that it readily appears that those whose memory he followed in the year 1383, June 14 were more than a century later than the events. But, passing over these things for a while, let us see the most ancient and most certain document of the cult and reverence shown long ago to Benedict as a Saint, or at least as a Blessed: as it is read in the book of Reformations (so the Acts of the Republic of Lucca and of other cities in Etruria are called, as we saw in Blessed Ambrose of Siena) on page 98 verso, among other Decrees, while the plague was raging, enacted in the year 1383, on the 14th day of August, according to the copy faithfully transcribed by the aforecited Fiorentini.
[3] In like form and manner, knowing that the venerable and blessed body of St. Benedict has long stood and is at St. Leonard among the bridges, it is decreed that it be transferred to Lucca: where nothing but wild brambles and bristling thorns and dreadful owls dwell (which is indeed known to be a detestable and blameworthy thing), lest it remain longer in such a place, but that it may be duly venerated as is fitting, they provided that for carrying and honoring the said Blessed body to the city of Lucca, the Lords may spend from the money of the Commune of Lucca, as shall be expedient, and as shall seem good and please them. That the decree was at once put into execution and the translation made in the same year, Fiorentini thinks there is no doubt at all: Since, he says, the Senate so decreed out of regard for piety, and for obtaining patronage in the pestilence: which raged so atrociously in Etruria that Scipione Ammirato says that at Florence in that year which seems to have been done in the same year, two hundred, sometimes three hundred and four hundred men often died in one day. But however it may be about the year of the translation, from such a decree it seems clear above all that the aforecited authors had no other cause for saying that the Translation of the sacred body took place on the 14th day of August than that on that day the Decree was enacted: and that it was by no means put off until the year 1387, as Franciotti writes; differing in this from the manuscript,
since he does not make the year of death and the year of translation the same.
[4] For, understanding from the obscure tradition of the people that the Blessed Benedict had begun to shine with miracles among the people of Lucca in the very year of the said plague, they were persuaded that he had also first departed this life in that same year. Therefore Franciottus, holding the manuscript suspect of error in this regard, changed the last number, judging that a minimum of three years was required so that in the meantime the veneration of the common people toward the deceased might grow, and that by the celebrity of growing veneration the Senators might be moved to receive that venerable pledge within the walls — after (as both of them fabricate) they had vainly attempted to restrain the throngs of people flocking from every direction to the church of Saint Leonard, out of fear of increasing the contagion. This last point is so far from being true Long after his death: that, on the contrary, it is established from the aforementioned Decree that the place was completely desolate and the body lay there without honor; whose great veneration otherwise, undoubtedly aroused by frequent miracles, is indicated by the appellation of Saint and the other titles of honor that are inserted in the Senate decree. We do not therefore seem likely to stray from the truth if we say he flourished in the twelfth century, or even earlier than the reform of the clergy of Lucca through the Canons of Saint Frigidian would have its beginning: so that in that universal corruption of the ecclesiastical Order, the virtue of this one man might have shone more brightly; and leading an almost uniquely chaste and sober life, he might more easily have come among the common people to a reputation for holiness that was by no means common; which afterward, that it might gradually be handed over to oblivion, the desolation of the place which we have mentioned, coming upon it, brought about, unless perhaps it was itself the effect and penalty of slackened piety.
[5] That Lando Moriconi was Standard-bearer of the Republic of Lucca when the translation of the sacred body was made, when Paul Magliari was Standard-bearer, Franciottus drew from Lorenzo's manuscript; but from the aforesaid book of reformations it is sufficiently established that in the said year 1383, in the months of July and August (for the magistracy of the Ten, namely of the Gonfalonier and the nine Anziani, who are usually chosen by secret ballot out of the whole number of one hundred and sixty Senators, was then, as it is now, only for two months), the Gonfalonier was Polo Magliari; and that Lando is then named there among the Anziani, page 69 verso: whom, however, nothing prevents from having then been Commendatore in his turn, whose office it is to propose to his Colleagues the matters to be brought into deliberation: and if they consent, the Gonfalonier refers it to the Senate: for the Ten by themselves enact nothing, at least of what concerns the citizens in common. This being posited, it is no wonder if, the names of the offices being confused, Lando was believed to have made the proposal to the Senate, and so to have been Standard-bearer or Gonfalonier. A like correction and explanation must be applied concerning the Bishop under whom Trenta and Franciottus write that the translation was made: for the Episcopal records teach and John Salutius not yet Bishop: that Antonio da Riparia met his last day on the 16th of August of the oft-said year 1383, and that after his death John Simonius, appointed Vicar by the Chapter, ruled the Church, until in the following year, on the 4th day of January, Urban VI set over the people of Lucca Brother John Salutius of Fucecchio, of the Order of Minors. But as, while Antonio was still living and commanding, from as early as the year 1381, the aforesaid John exercised various Episcopal functions at Lucca with the title of Bishop of Bethlehem: so he could, in the time of the Vicariate, have led the solemn pomp of the translation as first in order, at the end of August or rather in the month of September, and thus occasion have been given to posterity to speak of him as though he had already then been Bishop of Lucca. I said, or rather in the month of September: both because the preparation decreed for the solemnity required some delay of time: and because in the manuscript Martyrology of Cardinal Barberini, from which we illustrated Bede, at the 4th of the Ides of September there is read, written in by a recent hand (surely after that manuscript was brought from France into Italy for the use of some church): The Translation of the Body of St. Benedict the Hermit: for there is no one of whom this might rather be understood.
[6] The sacred body was translated, moreover, with the devotion of the afflicted people which it is right to believe, to the Cathedral church dedicated to St. Martin; and this to the cathedral church; and placed in a lofty place above the altar of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, it rested there until after about the year 1630. But when it seemed good to open a door to the new and not yet completed Sanctuary on the right side of the church itself, and in that part where the aforesaid altar then was, the same body, with all the ornaments of the sacred tomb, was carried to the left arm of the church, where, before the chapel of the venerable Eucharist, there had long stood an altar erected to St. Blaise, at which now every year the feast of St. Benedict the Abbot is solemnly kept on this 21st of March, where it was placed above the altar: on account of a benefice or chaplaincy erected there under his invocation: but whether out of regard for this holy Priest, namesake of that great Patriarch of the monks, it is difficult to divine without inspecting the Instrument of foundation, perhaps older than the said altar and lost in the very recent translation.
[7] and recently taken down for the sake of inspection, Now what the soundness of the sacred body was, and how far beyond the order of nature, when it was still kept in the church of St. Leonard, it will be clear to understand from its present state: concerning which, that Fiorentini might write us more certain information, he interposed his favor, which deservedly avails very much, with the Most Reverend Vicar, Lord Flaminio de' Nobili, and the Lords Canons of Lucca, and obtained that he might be allowed to judge and inspect everything with his own eyes: since otherwise the sacred chest is not usually opened except at the visitations of Bishops. How this was done, moreover, he set out in a letter dated the 26th of May in these words.
[8] Toward the night of the 18th of May of this year 1666, the Most Reverend Lords Francesco Sarchi, Archdeacon, and Vincenzo Sesti, applying themselves most piously to the work (other Canons also standing by, many being religiously present, namely the Lords Girolamo Palma and Libertà Moriconi, and the noblemen Lord Bartolomeo Franciotti, own brother of the late Cardinal Franciotti, and Carlo Spada, kinsman of the living Cardinal Spada, and other Clerics of the cathedral church), from the upper part of the altar where the body of Blessed Benedict is kept, many wax torches having been lit, took out the inner chest of cypress from the other, larger wooden one, he appeared in Priestly vesture, in which it was enclosed, secured with iron bars, and set it down upon a bench fittingly prepared for the purpose. This casket, being opened, appeared lined all round inside with a purple silk cloth, and displayed the whole body of the blessed man adorned with priestly vestments, that is, a linen garment reaching to the ankles, a white silk stole, a maniple, a girdle, a chasuble of white silk damask cloth; and the head covered with a linen amice.
[9] So it had been ordered to be clothed thirty years before, the old and likewise Priestly vestments, much consumed by age, having been taken off, by Alessandro Guidiccioni, then Bishop of Lucca; as was reported by those who were present by order of the same Bishop, the Reverend Father Sebastiano Baratti, sacristan and beneficiary of the Cathedral, and Girolamo Cremona, Doctor of Medicine and no common anatomist. The whole body of the holy man, except the face, the right elbow and the extremities of the left hand, is not only whole as regards the framework of all the members, but also wholly incorrupt as regards the skin and the flesh beneath and the dried viscera. incorrupt and flexible, The thighs and knees, especially the left, are as white and soft as if the holy man had died yesterday or the day before: the rest appears dried, yet so that the left arm is wholly flexible, upward, downward and at the elbow: in the right the same could not be tested, since in our age the hand and the arm up to the elbow have been taken away by a theft more easily to be pardoned if it were known that it was at least kept elsewhere with fitting honor for the stirring of public piety; as it is, so long as it is hidden where it or the other parts are, we bear that loss more indignantly.
[10] Then through a gap of the dried skin and flesh, open above the collarbones, also as regards the intestines: we saw the lungs and the heart incorrupt, and we judged that the same ought to be judged of the viscera contained within the lower belly: for the funeral was not attended to by dissecting the body for embalming with spices, nor was incorruptibility procured by art. Indeed, perhaps the whole body is still flexible: for while we set it upon the table of the altar, spread with a damask cloth, drawn out of the chest without any trouble, it appeared somewhat curved: and it was drawn out for this purpose, that we might inspect the empty tomb, whether some leaden or kid-skin record lay hidden in it, from which something further might be learned about the Blessed man. But when that hope had deceived us, we turned to considering the right foot, but torn by the importunate piety of the common people: mutilated, its tip torn off together with the toes: in which manifest indications of the violence applied remain in the residual fibers and shreds, which we recognized also in the right hand, itself also maimed of its foremost fingers, of which only the nerves and tendons remain. But nowhere has the insolence of ill-advised devotion and thievish piety raged more freely and more foully than in the venerable face; whose trachea, that is, the pipe through which the breath passes from the lungs to the mouth, is wholly laid bare as far as the throat, the lower jaws torn away; the chin, tongue, teeth, nostrils and the left cheek up to the eye are missing, pulled away by force; while the back part of the head, the neck and the back are clothed with skin and the flesh beneath. The whole measure of the body indicates a man of middle stature: of the age, likewise free of all ill smell: since the teeth, beard and hair do not appear, no conjecture can be attained: Trenta writes that he died at about forty. The cypress chest which we mentioned, likewise remaining incorrupt, gave forth no stench when it was opened, but breathed out its own natural and aromatic odor. Nor, when the arm was brought near to my nostrils for devoutly imprinting a kiss on the sacred hand, did I perceive anything exhaled that smelled of mustiness or age.
[11] This wooden casket is enclosed in an older and larger chest, within a larger chest adorned both with other paintings, which inside is painted sky-blue and sprinkled with little golden stars: on the front side it is secured by an iron grating, and that one in two parts: as also the boards forming the front side of the chest itself are in two parts, and are divided as it were into two little doors: which inside, where they face the holy body, have on each side the figure of an Angel adoring it and offering on either hand a basket full of flowers or lilies. Outside, however, while they remain closed, they display along the length of the chest itself an ancient likeness of the same holy Priest, which represents him in Priestly vesture, namely a linen tunic and a chasuble of the ancient fashion, holding out his bared feet as if for kisses, and holding in his hands a chalice with a paten. and with the very likeness of the Blessed man, The style of the painting is such that to the skilled it shows the age of the first translation or even greater: and the chin, smooth without a beard, and the hair sprinkled with no grey, argue about the years which Trenta noted. Finally, a golden circle, the token of holiness, crowns the whole head, covered with no covering or biretta.
The lid of the chest rises to a peak at the top in an angle; which is entirely draped with silken cloth of purple color, And decently opened: as are also the rest of the caskets of the bodies of Saints in this cathedral; to the front part of whose covering this title is inscribed in silver letters: HERE LIES THE BODY OF BLESSED BENEDICT, PRIEST OF LUCCA. Finally, above the chest hangs a silken canopy or baldachin of the same purple color, for the greater reverence of the sacred body; which, had the face not been so disfigured by mutilation, could by the marvelous integrity of itself have moved the viewing populace to a tender and very great feeling of pious devotion.
[12] These things he reports, to which the highest credibility is due on account of the undoubted truthfulness, which knows not how to deceive, conjoined with a consummate expertise in natural science and anatomy, In which it seems to have formerly lain in public view: which does not allow him to be deceived in judging the cause of integrity — whether it is according to or beyond the forces of nature. And so nothing occurs to add, except that, after due acknowledgment of the kindness, we indicate that from the above description of the larger chest it can be not obscurely gathered that, before the inner cypress chest was made, the sacred body lay for a long time in that larger one, visible through the open doors and the grilles placed before them in the church of Saint Leonard; and thus that those who, in a not very frequented place, had easy access to the almost deserted church, and perhaps also opened the not sufficiently firmly closed doors without difficulty, were given the occasion to tear apart through the iron grilles, with little shears and hooks, those parts which lay bare, especially those of the left side, which was nearer to the grille itself.