ON BL. UGOLINO OF THE ORDER OF HERMITS OF ST. AUGUSTINE, AT CORTONA IN ETRURIA.
ABOUT THE YEAR 1470.
CommentaryBl. Ugolino, of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine, at Cortona in Etruria.
[1] Not Margaret alone, Penitent of the Third Order of St. Francis, whose Life we gave on the 22nd of February, illustrated the city of Cortona with her holiness and miracles: but Ugolino, renowned in life and after death with a like splendor of prodigious works, merited a like appellation of Blessed and a like cult there: The little book of miracles has perished: in order to obtain ancient records of his life and miracles about him, if any happened to be preserved in his own convent, we wrote confidently, on the strength of a friendship contracted at Rome, to the Reverend Father Giovanni de' Giudei, Assistant of the Most Reverend Father General, of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine: and received from him an answer no less courteous and prompt, and were instructed so far as was possible after the fire in the sacristy, by which about a hundred years ago most of the Instruments pertaining to the accounts of the church and of the relics preserved in it were lost. The loss of the aforesaid Instruments was heaped up by the loss of a little parchment book, formerly kept in the Library of that convent and containing the miracles wrought by the aforesaid Blessed man in life and after death: which little book Brother Stefano Tomasi, as Vicar in the absence of the Prior of Cortona, writing to the aforesaid Father Assistant, rightly complained had been taken away by some chance or fault.
[2] The same Vicar sent from Cortona a likeness of the Blessed man, printed on a spread sheet from a copper plate engraved by the hand of Agostino de Romanis in the year 1635, in place of which there is an image with the inscriptions of some, and dedicated to the Most Illustrious Lady Angelica Badia de' Cioli: which image ten scutcheons surround, by which the things done after his death are shown after a fashion, and declared briefly by Latin inscriptions placed beneath. These inscriptions, therefore, will supply the loss of the said little book until perhaps it is still found, to have a place in an appendix or supplement: and they are such. I. Six lustres having now been passed in the tomb, a lily sprouts from the most chaste body, which was snatched by an incautious youth. II. While the fresh lily was being cut, a certain woman deprived of sight is given light, as the Blessed man foretold to her the night before. III. They find the body untouched and whole, from whose heart two lilies were springing. IV. Baldassare of Castiglion Fiorentino, suffering from the stone, entreating the Blessed man with prayers, recovers excellent health. V. A certain woman of Viti, named Viva, struck in the throat with a mortal wound, a vow having been conceived, obtains good health. at Vitiano, and at Castello Fiorentino, Now Viti, or, as it is called below, Vitianum, is a town midway on the road between Cortona and Arezzo, seven miles distant on either side: before you reach it you must pass a castle which the geographical maps name by its true name Aretino, but which here seems to be called Fiorentino, because together with its head Florence it is annexed to the Duchy, different from the other, which, in the territory of Perugia, set beside Lake Trasimene, is called Castiglione del Lago. The woman, moreover, of whom there is question here is shown in the image having a dagger fixed in her throat, and kneeling with arms outspread imploring help.
[3] The inscriptions of the other five scutcheons are such. VI. Mark of Castello Fiorentino, a vow having been taken up before the Blessed man by his mother, is freed from a violent disease: this Mark, a man in the full vigor of age, is shown lying in bed, and near him his mother kneeling, in the likeness of an old woman. VII. Antony of Vitiano, four months of age, and of things done at Cortona at his invocation. a vow having been made by his mother, is immediately freed by the Blessed man from a long fever. VIII. Mariotto of Vitiano (here he seems to be a beardless youth), suffering from a flow of blood, commended to the Blessed man by his kinsfolk (a man and a woman kneeling beside him as he lies), is at once restored to his former health. IX Galitia, mulier Cortonensis adumbrata sibi corporis parte humiliter se Beato recommendans, optatam recipit sanitatem. [IX. Galizia, a woman of Cortona, a part of her body being overshadowed, humbly commending herself again to the Blessed man, receives the health she desired.] Adumbratio the Academicians of the Crusca in their Tuscan Vocabulary explain to be consternation, and would have it, thus used metaphorically, applied to men and beasts of burden terrified and as it were stunned by a vain and sudden fear: but both the thing itself and the little crutches for the armpits painted beside the woman lying in bed indicate the powerlessness of a side struck, or deprived of feeling and motion; for averting which the husband of the sick woman is seen in the scutcheon entreating before the Blessed man, visible from the clouds to the girdle, who also bears a leafy branch with a double lily: as also in the preceding
is depicted with seven signs, and in the tenth, where Petrinus of Vitiano together with his wife Francisca, when their little son had died with original sin not yet removed, obtain not only bodily but also spiritual life. And the baptism of the infant is shown; while in the background his parents are depicted kneeling before the altar, before whose steps they seem to have placed the dead child.
[4] These things are depicted there around the image, as I said, of the Blessed one, standing in the habit of the Augustinian Order, with his whole countenance radiant, The homeland of Blessed Ugolinus is Mantua: and holding in his right hand a heart, from which two flourishing branches rise, which he contemplates in wonder, with this inscription: BLESSED UGOLINUS OF CORTONA, ORDER OF HERMITS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE. He is called of Cortona, certainly, by a newer appellation on account of his place of habitation and veneration; for by the older name (which it is the custom to take from one's homeland), that he was believed and called a Mantuan, even by the brethren of the convent of Cortona itself, is shown by these words of Giles of Viterbo, the General of that same Order, transcribed from the Roman archive by Thomas de Herrera in the Augustinian Alphabet, page 494, as dated December 17 of the year 1508: At Cortona, climbing the hill, we saw the body of Ugolinus of Mantua, The body, uncorrupted after thirty years, is exhumed: having opened the sepulcher; whose face indeed, although it had lain in the earth for thirty years, was nevertheless preserved so intact that not even a red hair of his beard was harmed. In beholding which, such great grace of mouth and countenance appeared that he seemed most worthy that God should honor him with so great miracles. And most unworthy is the negligence of the Order, which suffers a divine man to lie hidden, and does not take care that he be enrolled among the Saints; who appeared divine both while he lived and after his death by most clear indications; dearer to strangers than to his own: for him whom the Brothers left neglected, the citizens of Cortona this year took up by decree of the Senate as advocate and protector of the city.
[5] So he: from which, as having been done not long after the elevation of the sacred body, Herrera rightly infers died about the year 1470. that he seems to have departed this life not long before the year 1478, but that it cannot be put off after it; and so that Brother Ippolito Donesmondi, in book 6 of the History of Mantua, page 40, did rightly in saying that he flourished at the year 71 of that century, where he also says: After he had exercised himself for many years in the acquisition of virtues, and had breathed forth the sweet odor of holiness in many cities of Italy, full of days and of good works he fell asleep in the Lord in the convent of his Order at Cremona. Where there is no doubt that by a slip of memory he wrote Cremona for Cortona; as there is none either that this is the same man whom Ambrogio Coriolano, in the chronicle published in the year 1481, numbers fifteenth among the Blessed of the Order renowned for many miracles; and whom Alonso de Orozco, in a similar chronicle cited by Herrera, says was most pious toward the poor and the sick, whom he served with great charity.
[6] Yet Girolamo Seripando, General of the Order, afterwards created Cardinal by Pius IV and President of the Council of Trent, in the list of Saints and Blessed printed at Rome in the year 1551 after the Constitutions and the commentary on the affairs of the Order; Whether another of the same name, distinct from him, and likewise Giuseppe Panfilo, Bishop of Segni, weaving a similar catalog at the end of the Augustinian chronicle published there in the year 1581, make Ugolino of Mantua and Ugolino of Cortona different men. But Nicolaus Crusenius, in his Monasticon Augustinianum, part 3, chapter 10, although he mentions only one, yet places him at the year 1300, using these words: In this year lived Blessed Ugolino of Mantua, a man of wonderful abstinence and chastity, after whose death very many miracles happened through the mere contact of his body: among which this is worthy of note, that he had his breast open on the right side: from which, still seventy years after his death, there flowed continually the freshest blood, as if from a living body, with an indescribable sweetness and a wonderful power, restoring their step to the lame, as also their sight to the blind. These things Philip Elssius took as proper to the man of whom we treat; and rightly: since Herrera, in the description of the Convent of Cortona, designating surely this very man and no other, speaks thus of him: His precious remains exist in the body of the church on the Gospel side, who flourished in the 13th century, is Blessed? and are kept under the custody of five keys (of which the Magistrates of the city possess four, the Prior of the place the other). The body endures unimpaired, with the eyes whole and the teeth unmoved, and in the side of the breast a wound is seen, inflicted rather by the work of a friend than of an enemy: which the aforecited Philip, interpreting it of Christ, adds was a sign of his intense contemplation of the Lord's side. But why should not 70 have crept in for 30 in Crusenius by the fault of one figure; and why should he not likewise have been deceived in fixing the time of death, reading Hugh of Mantua, who after the death of Blessed John the Good was elected General by some, and confirmed by the Apostolic Legate in the general chapter held at Bologna in the year 1252, and for the common good of religion humbly and devoutly gave up the office, surviving perhaps many years after this.
[7] However that may be, only one is venerated at Cortona; of a cult of the other in another place we have found no trace anywhere: only one is praised by Herrera as Blessed, and treating of only one, Andrea Gelsomini, a son of the convent of Cortona made Bishop of Ascoli, in the Treasury of heavenly devotion toward the Blessed Virgin, page 240, wrote thus: Lilies sprung from the heart of the dead man, The Blessed servant of God Ugolino of Cortona, of my Order of Hermits of St. Augustine; because he was a most devout venerator of the Blessed Virgin, and a most tender lover of Angelic purity, was glorified by God not only with the gift of miracles in life and after death; but also with a prodigious soundness of body, made known thirty years after his burial, when his most chaste heart put forth a white lily, spreading a heavenly odor far and wide. Which, because it had been rashly cut off by someone who suspected nothing beyond nature, the same heart sprouted again, they become the occasion of elevating the body: as before: and on that very night the Blessed man appeared to a certain blind and devout woman, bidding her see to it that she be brought to his sepulcher; where, when the second lily was cut, she would receive her sight. When this had been done, the novelty of so evident a miracle caused it to be decreed that the body be exhumed: which was found as sound and whole as if it had been buried recently, and, placed in a fitting spot within our church, it is venerated on the very day on which he had once been laid to rest, the 21st of March, with an annual feast until the present day, and is honored with a public procession and a votive offering customarily made by the Magistrate in our city; he is also everywhere painted throughout my whole Order with a lily sprouting from his heart.
[8] in which, translated in the year 1598, Now in the year 1598, in the month of April, the second translation of the blessed Body was made, with a solemn procession of the whole Clergy and a concourse of innumerable people, gathered even from remote parts: and on that occasion, when the body had been stripped of its old garments in order to be clothed in new ones, the Most Illustrious Lord Cosimo de' Angeli, Bishop of Cortona, a Prelate most well known for the praise of virtue and learning, showed to me, then a novice there, and to the other Brothers there, two scars in the breast, opposite the heart, whence the two aforesaid lilies had burst forth: the scars are recognized where the lilies had come out. which I believe was done by divine disposition, so that I, who was to write about this matter, might confirm it by the faith of eyewitness testimony. So he: which things are confirmed thus by Alessandro Mancini of Siena, Prior General, in his register, in Herrera, under the note of the same year, on the 13th day of June: We reverently inspect the Body of Blessed Ugolino, to see which there came also a great concourse of the peoples.