ON BL. SANTUCCIA, ABBESS, PROPAGATOR OF THE CONGREGATION OF BL. SPERANDEUS, UNDER THE RULE OF ST. BENEDICT.
YEAR 1305.
PrefaceBl. Santuccia, Abbess at Rome.
[1] The Via Julia (cutting through in a long stretch that part of the bank of the Tiber which is now contained between the bridges called of Sant'Angelo and of Sixtus) gave the surname by which it might be distinguished from very many of the same name to an old church there, The church of St. Mary in Julia, which, called St. Mary's, the Knights of Jerusalem, commonly called Templars, once possessed. This church they handed over about the year 1263 to Blessed Santuccia and her companions, on this condition only, that every year they should offer one wax candle of two pounds to the church of St. Mary on the Aventine, to which, under the title of a notable Priory, the other had until then been subject. The year is given by Jacobilli, to be cited presently; the rest also by Ottavio Panciroli in the description of the tenth Region of the City; now of St. Anne, who counts this as the first monastery in it, which now, from the more celebrated cult of St. Anne, on an occasion to be told below, and from the craftsmen who used to twist ropes there, is called St. Anne of the rope-makers. Those who ascribed this monastery to the third Order of the Servites, namely Ottavio himself, Arthur du Monstier and others, were deceived by the name by which Blessed Santuccia called her disciples Servants of the most blessed Virgin: although all professed, and still profess, the Benedictine institute; it has nuns of the Benedictine Order: namely under those ordinances which Blessed Sperandeus, Abbot of St. Peter of Gubbio, to be commemorated in the supplement of January on the 15th day, gave to several monasteries of men and of women: from whom the Congregation called of St. Sperandeus had its beginning.
[2] Now in the Roman monastery already mentioned Santuccia spent the last years of her religious life: and having died in it on the 21st of March, whose Foundress is called Blessed, she would without doubt have a more celebrated cult, had not the chief festivity of St. Benedict hindered a more solemn memory of her. In addition, it is not known with enough certainty in what part of the church her body is buried and to be honored: whose garments, however, the nuns preserve there with great veneration, and use her name only with the title of Blessed: which also you may find written on her images printed and published in the City itself. Since these things are done under the eyes of the Apostolic See, whose office it is to pass judgment on the lawful cult of the Saints, we do not hesitate to number her among the Blessed, and indeed on this day: although Lodovico Jacobilli, in volume 1 of the Saints and Blessed of Umbria, ascribes her to the 2nd day of March (by a slip of memory, namely, of one figure, as if he had found 2 for 21), but in volume 2, presenting her Acts more accurately collected, died March 21. placed her at the 8th of September: to which we also dismissed her among those passed over at the 11th of March: but, being informed from Rome that Jacobilli had done this, not because Santuccia was really venerated on that day, but because the private piety of certain women had suggested it to him as more suitable, so that she might be venerated together with the Virgin at her birth, whose image had special veneration in the said church on that day, we therefore thought that this very day of her death should be retained.
[3] The Virgins of the Roman monastery we have mentioned, desiring to have a Life, which none of the ancients had written, searched all the manuscript records in their own archive and in that of the whole congregation of which it is the head, The Life recently collected from MSS. and collected whatever Instruments and writings they found making mention of the name or memory of their blessed Foundress: from which, duly signed with their own hand by Lady Clarice Boccapaduli, Abbess, Lady Maria Drusilla del Bufalo, Prioress, Lady Porzia Pinelli, Mistress of Novices, and Lady Maria Giulia Scarinci, Dean, a life was woven together, which, out of his kindness toward us, the Reverend Father Jean Nadasi, a celebrated name among the present-day writers of our Society, put into Latin. This we shall illustrate with some notes from another, more prolix one compiled by Lodovico Jacobilli.
LIFE
Collected from manuscript records and from tradition.
Bl. Santuccia, Abbess at Rome.
[1] The native place of Blessed Santuccia was Gubbio, a noble city in Umbria; her father Terrabotus, Of noble stock of the wealthy and very ancient house of the Terraboti there. In the sacred font the name Santuccia was given her, which is as much as if you should say Santa in the diminutive. And indeed such was both her upbringing at home and the life afterwards spent in marriage with a husband no less pious than noble, that she illustrated with great virtue the name received in baptism. There is a very old report, and in marriage, which has come down from the first age of the monastery of St. Anne until today from the elders to the younger, that a little daughter was born to Santuccia of this marriage, called Julia in baptism, who scarcely passed beyond the years of infancy in living. They say that she, as soon as she came into the light, when she was being washed according to custom in her first bath, said with articulate voice: Jesus, Mary.
[2] Moved, moreover, by the example of Sperandeus and Januaria, noble spouses of Gubbio, who by mutual consent withdrew into religious enclosures in monasteries, Santuccia also with her excellent husband came to the same decision, having entered a monastery with her husband's consent, the counsel also being taken of the Abbot a of Gubbio, in whose monastery, called St. Peter's, her husband embraced the institute of St. Benedict, while Santuccia, with the assent of the b Bishop, turned her means to building a monastery on a mountain near the city c; and there she dwelt under the discipline of St. Benedict with some chosen companions of the same Order, and placing herself and her companions under the patronage of the Virgin Mother of God, she willed that the place be called Madonna delle Serve d. The day on which Santuccia, having entered the building now finished in every respect, received the habit and the Rule of St. Benedict, and she herself receives the habit in another that she built: was sacred to the same Saint, namely the 21st of March. And she received the Rule according to the norm prescribed by Blessed Sperandeus of Gubbio: and therefore her followers were, and still are, sharers of the privileges granted to the Congregation of Cassino.
[3] When those heavenly souls had hidden themselves in that sanctuary, she is set over the rest: Santuccia, elected by the common vote of all as Mother of all or Superior, was also distinguished with the common name of Abbess: and likewise all, with a wonderful striving of wills, began to aim solely and perseveringly at the one love of God, under the guidance of Santuccia, who with great prudence spent herself and spent herself over again for all most fittingly, according to the times and the dispositions of those whom she ruled. Thence the name of Santuccia and the discipline of the Order began to be propagated more widely: she propagates the institute: wherefore in the year 1262 Sperandia e, likewise a nun of the Order of St. Benedict, gave Santuccia as a gift an oratory which she had erected at the Perugia gate in the place called Bulgatiano. There she raised a monastery under the name of St. Mary Magdalen: which place afterwards took remarkable increase both from the virtue of the nuns and from the liberality of the pious.
[4] At the same time, matters there having been very well settled, when Santuccia had come to Rome, the church of St. Mary called in-Julia, together with the adjoining buildings, was given her by the Templars, she obtains a monastery at Rome, where it was increased with very many daughters of great virtue, and also enriched with means by James de Molay, Master of the Templars, and other pious persons. The name which we mentioned remained to the monastery, until the popular devotion to St. Anne growing there changed its name, which happened on this occasion. There was kept among these daughters of Santuccia a silver ring of very ancient workmanship, which pious tradition asserts to be the one with which the happy Mother of the most happy Mother of God was espoused to Joachim. The nuns grieved that this had been lost in the sack of the City under Clement VII: and while, as happens, they were complaining sorrowfully among themselves about so great a loss, suddenly they saw a raven flying toward them, which, after various circlings in the air, at length settled on a stone that was there: and, depositing the ring there, ennobled by the Ring of St. Anne; went away again in swift flight out of the sight of all. When the matter was discovered, the Nuns, astonished, could for joy scarcely cry out anything else than, A Miracle, a Miracle. Roused by these cries, the others presently sang the hymn of thanksgiving, We praise thee, O God, and gave thanks to the Mother of God, to St. Anne, and to St. Benedict, who formerly made use of the like ministry of a raven bearing bread. Hence the report, spread through the City, so stirred the minds of the people to renew the cult of St. Anne there and to frequent it with singular zeal, that, the memory of the former name being gradually abolished, this latter came into use f.
[5] The aforesaid Blessed Santuccia also raised several other monasteries, she founds others elsewhere, and namely at Fabriano the one called St. Angelo in Dominica, and in the city of Cagli the monastery of St. Mary Magdalen, and at Rimini g that of St. Mary the New and a certain other, whose name could not be read in records eaten away by age: then at Arezzo about the year 1269 that which was called St. Mary h of the Green Valley and afterwards Agnus Dei; another of St. Mary at Urbino, and likewise one dedicated to the same Saint at Cortona in the year 1270: and also at Città di Castello the monastery of SS. Philip and James, and in the year 1273 that of St. Agnes in the city of Siena. A catalog of the other monasteries exists even today, preserved in the aforesaid monastery of St. Anne together with the institute and the Papal Bulls: from which it is learned that among them there was a second at Rome in the Campo Vaccino, likewise a second at Rome, called St. Mary Deliver us from the pains of hell; which afterwards, when affairs were disturbed, was given to the Oblates of St. Frances of Rome, who are at Tor de' Specchi.
[6] She also founded on the Tiber island a monastery,
the third, And the third: called Saint Mary at the river, from its church, near which a stable once had above the gate an image of the Mother of God, embracing the little Son in her bosom; before which the piety of the neighbors not infrequently lit votive candles. These, they say, when the river once rose to a great height, burned even under the water. When the veneration of the citizens had been increased by this, and the nuns were obliged to move from there to the monastery of Saint Anne in the year 1573 (Gregory XIII so decreeing by a Bull, which is extant), Whence the miraculous image of the Blessed Virgin was received: the image was also translated to the same place, and it was decreed that it should be placed on the main altar there, with the image of Christ affixed to the Cross removed to another place. But by no effort, however many labored at it, could what they wished be accomplished — until the Crucifix was returned to the more prominent place of the altar; under whose feet the Blessed Virgin very easily allowed her image to be placed. This image, already famous by more than one miracle, the Canons of the Lord Peter adorned with a double golden crown, of which one covers the head of the mother and the other of the son; the Crucifix, however, was some time later brought to the choir of the nuns.
[7] Amid these cares of erecting monasteries, which are numbered up to twenty-four, She governs the whole Order: the heart of Santuccia blazed with an immense love of God; whence it came about that as many monasteries as she herself governed, so many were gymnasia of divine charity. And the labor of ruling them she continued through her whole life with great spirit, and one wholly unbroken against the fears unjustly struck into her. This she showed most of all at the time when the Abbot of Gubbio pronounced a sentence of anathema against her, and she nobly defends its liberty: because she denied that she was subject to his jurisdiction. But Clement IV i declared Santuccia innocent and the anathema void, and that she and the monasteries subject to her were immediately subject to the Apostolic See. Her trust in God also she proved by this clear argument. Napoleone, a Roman Knight of the family of the Malabranca, had given to her Roman monastery certain underground recesses: in which, since some kind of monster or other not only frightened the nuns from approaching the place but moreover spread terror through the whole house, she took her crozier, and, furnished with the rest of the solemn array of Abbesses, went down to where the beast lay hidden: she kills a monster with the sign of the Cross, which, when she made the sign of the Cross, burst asunder, and in place of the fear of itself induced a great reverence and esteem for the Blessed woman in the minds of her wondering daughters.
[8] More than forty-five years had now passed from the day on which Santuccia, first clothed in the religious habit, had consecrated herself and her companions as Servants to the Mother of God at Gubbio. Having spent the greater part of these years in the Roman monastery, and in the 45th year of religion she dies at Rome: there, on the same day of St. Benedict, duly furnished with the last Sacraments for the final agony, she most lovingly admonished her daughters in Christ to keep the closest union with God and among themselves, and, having prayed well for all, she left this life and passed to the immortal life in the year 1305 k. Solemn funeral rites were held for her after her death in the church of the same monastery: then a tomb was prepared for her, as for a Blessed, under the high altar itself, as at least the common opinion holds.
[9] There Bishop Boccapaduli, Nuncio of the Apostolic See to the Swiss, as a favor to his Sister, the Abbess now ruling, placed the bodies of Plautilla, Tiburtius and Caelestinus: which the figure of a palm added to the names persuaded him were of holy Martyrs: of whom they venerate Plautilla on the 20th day of May: as though she were the one of whose martyrdom, together with that of her daughter Flavia Domitilla, a celebrated mention is then made in the Roman Martyrology: which, although we do not approve it, yet we desire to obtain the documents that may be had about her and the others. For Panciroli writes that they also have the body of St. Lucy, to be venerated on the 14th of September, and notable Relics of SS. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, and of Gallicanus, glorious Martyr, and some others.
Annotations