CONCERNING S. OTHO, SOLITARY, AT ARIANO IN THE KINGDOM OF NAPLES.
AROUND A.D. 1120.
Preliminary Commentary.
Otho, Solitary at Ariano in the Kingdom of Naples (S.)
[1] The region that lies midway between Naples and Siponto, cities each placed upon a different sea, we now call the Ulterior Principate; the ancients appear to have called it the land of the Hirpini. The capital of the region is Benevento, The location of Ariano, from which Ariano is only fifteen miles distant, placed upon three hills of the Apennines, from which it also took its coat of arms. Some think it is the Tuticum of Ptolemy: others, lest even the name of the city should seem new, invented long ago that before the times of Diomedes (whom Servius makes the founder of both Benevento and Equi-Tuticum), one of the Janiculan Princes, departing from Sutri under King Italus, led a colony of five hundred men there and gave it its name from a temple and altar of Janus dedicated there. Such fables aside, this town has the solid glory of having had as its inhabitant, S. Odo the Patron, and still having as its Patron, S. Otho or Odo: whose body in the Cathedral basilica formerly had its own chapel and solemn veneration on the eleventh day before the Kalends of April, as David Romaeus reports in his index of the Saints of the Kingdom of Naples; except that, because in Italian he is called Santodo in one word, he thought the Latin form should be S. Thodus, as also does Paul Regius, cited by Ferrarius in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy.
[2] Peter the Deacon of Cassino, who composed the discourse on the discovery and miracles of S. Benedict and who survived beyond the year 1140, whom S. Benedict commended to a certain captive as most observant of his Rule, narrates a memorable event for the commendation of this Saint in section 42, which we shall not hesitate to relate here: "A certain soldier in Apulia, captured in a certain conflict by a most wicked man and bound with chains, was thrown into a pit. And when he had been held bound in the same stocks for many days, and anxiously implored the aid of the most holy Father Benedict day and night, one night he appeared to him, saying: 'Are you sleeping or awake?' And the man replied: 'As you see, my Lord, in the secret of my mind I am contemplating death rather than the repose of sleep. But who are you who have deigned to come to me? Reveal yourself, I humbly beg.' And the Saint said: 'I am Brother Benedict, whom S. Benedict praised to a certain captive, whom you asked to come to your aid. Now rise quickly: the chains with which you are bound, since on account of the length of the journey you cannot carry them to my body at Cassino, hang upon the tomb of Brother Otho the recluse, who most excellently observed my Rule: and for your liberation, hasten to Cassino to render praises to God.' When he had said this, the soldier immediately rose, and invoking the name of our Redeemer and of the Blessed Benedict, and ordered the broken chains to be hung at his tomb, the chains that were on his feet were at once loosened: and immediately rising, he took care to fulfill with all diligence what had been enjoined upon him; and coming at last to Cassino, he rendered the greatest praises to God and Father Benedict." That this is indeed the same Otho of whom we treat is suggested by the location of places and the reckoning of times: for the captive in Apulia, even in the stricter sense of that region alone which now bears the name of the Capitanata, was very near to Ariano, while Cassino was perhaps a hundred miles distant. And since we shall demonstrate that the Blessed Otho died within the beginning of the thirteenth century and its twenty-seventh year, and immediately after death shone with very many miracles, nothing is easier than to judge that S. Benedict ordered the chains broken by his favor to be hung at this man's tomb: since this miracle is reported by Peter as the penultimate in the order of others, as though of more recent memory and of his own age, whose first year of Peter fell in the seventh year of the said century, as is clear from what either he himself about himself or another about him appended at the end of his treatise on the illustrious men of Cassino.
[3] Moreover, Ferdinandus Ughellus mentions the Blessed Otho, intending to set forth the series of the Bishops of Ariano in volume 8 of Italia Sacra; His body, taken back by the Beneventans around 1452, asserting that his body was carried to Benevento when the Saracens were devastating Apulia, and rested there until the year 1452; when King Alfonso gave a letter, signed at Pozzuoli on May 12, to Antonio, Cardinal Priest of the title of S. Chrysogonus, of Lerida, in these words, of which we have a threefold copy:
"Most Reverend Father in Christ, Lord, and our dearest Friend. The citizens of Ariano desire in the greatest measure that the body of the Blessed Otho the Confessor, which in the time when the infidels were invading Italy was translated from the church of Ariano to Benevento against the will of the citizens of Ariano, be restored to the Church of Ariano: for this is honorable and pious. We therefore ask your Paternity, with all the vehemence of mind we can, that you interpose your good offices for this restitution to be made, both with our most holy Lord and with the Archbishop of Benevento, so that the said restitution may follow without fail: which will be to our singular satisfaction."
[4] The arm was restored. The Archbishop of Benevento at that time was Giacomo della Ratta, son of the Count of Caserta, and the Pontiff was Nicholas V. The authority of the King and the intercession of the Cardinal, owed to his distinguished learning, prevailed with these to the extent that at least the arm of their Patron was restored to the citizens of Ariano: which, received into the treasury, is devoutly preserved, says Ughellus, and his feast day is celebrated with solemn rites in the aforesaid church on the 13th (he meant to write 23rd) day of the month of March: which, because while the citizens ran through the entire city with weapons of war and a banner carried by the Master of the fair, the feast was transferred to the Octave of Easter, it disturbed the discipline of Lenten penance, it was recently transferred to the Octave of the Lord's Resurrection. So much for Ughellus, who places his death under the third Bishop of the See of Ariano, Bartholomew, who attended the Lateran Council in the year 1179: evidently following Ferrarius, who describes his Acts in a brief compendium: which he professes to have taken from the records of the Church of Ariano, written at considerable length about the person of Odo himself. Fabius Barberius, unknown to us, whom the same Ughellus says published at length the Acts and miracles of S. Otho, manifestly shows he followed the same, when from them he attempts to establish the origin of the city as older than the truth.
[5] We have a double copy of these Acts: one transcribed at Rome from the papers of Constantinus Caietanus; Acts ascribed to Otho himself, the other transmitted from Naples by Antonio Beatillo, a most zealous supporter of our work, under this title: "The Life of the Blessed Otho, which he himself wrote on the Ides of September in the year from the Nativity of the Lord 1180; which was found after his death in the church of S. Peter outside the walls of the city of Ariano, which he himself inhabited and where he also departed from this life: which Life is preserved with other holy Relics in the reliquary of the greater church of Ariano." Considering this to be the true and genuine writing of Odo himself, when we had begun to illustrate it, adorned with marginal additions and divided into chapters, also with annotations, we discovered it to be a pure and utter fabrication of some insipid storyteller wishing to lend credibility to his fiction about the origin of the city indicated above and to be refuted more fully below.
[6] And indeed, taking upon himself to describe the state of the Church and Empire torn apart by schisms from the very beginning of the twelfth century, teeming with very many chronological errors, he everywhere stumbles so badly that we found nothing sincere in that account except the names of Pontiffs and Princes; but everything else in the utmost confusion. For first, he casts this aspersion upon Roger, Count of Sicily (who is known to have been appointed heir by William, Duke of Calabria and Apulia, the last scion of the family of Robert Guiscard, dying without children, in the year 1127, and was disapproved by Honorius II for the sole reason that he had occupied a fief of the Apostolic See without authorization, as if by inheritance): upon this Roger, I say, he casts the charge that he despoiled his nephew William, son of his uncle, who was absent and Count of Apulia, in order to exalt himself as King of both Sicilies. He then says that Peter the Roman, son of Peter Leonis, pretended especially concerning the Antipope Anacletus, that Pope Innocent had died in the battle fought with Roger (in which indeed Innocent himself, truly defeated and overcome, remained captive for many days), and thus, deceiving everyone, compelled them to declare him Pope: wherefore Innocent, once restored to liberty, secretly transferred himself out of fear to Lothar in Germany. But it is established that Innocent III was not defeated in battle, but deceived by a pretense of peace and detained as a captive, until he should confer upon Roger the coveted title of Kingdom,
which he conferred upon Roger by feudal right in the year 1139. It is also established that the Antipope Anacletus (for this was the name Peter assumed) was promoted by schismatic election in the same year 1130 in which Innocent was created, and protected himself by the power of the aforementioned Roger. It is established thirdly that Innocent never even saw Germany, but fled to France, to Louis the Fat, and remained there until the year 1133 of that century, when King Lothar brought him back with him to Italy, and in turn was crowned Emperor by him. It is established finally that all these things were done before the captivity of the Pontiff.
[7] We were, however, excusing these very things among ourselves after a fashion: because it did not seem all that remarkable if a solitary man, taken from the world in the very flower of his youth, they are proved to be spurious, in his decrepit age should remember less well the events of his childhood. But when we arrived at the passage where Otho is introduced writing: "At this festivity" (he is speaking of the coronation of the Emperor, which he says was performed in the church of S. Peter with the greatest pomp) "many young Roman Patricians, and I with them, were adorned with the golden military girdle, in the eighteenth year of my age": when we arrived at this passage, I say, there was no longer any room for excuse. For who does not see that it was absolutely impossible for him to forget the place in which so solemn and rare an act was performed, and he himself, a young man of that age, was adorned with so distinguished an honor, to be remembered for all his life -- not to mention the time of the Pontiff's captivity, which is here placed earlier, whereas it followed by a full six years? And yet Otto of Freising, a writer of those same times who died in the year 1158, expressly testifies that Lothar was crowned in the Lateran, not the Vatican basilica, in book 7, chapter 18, where he says: "The King, trusting more in his resolve than in his soldiers, advanced all the way to the City; and there, having accomplished what he could with a few men, strenuously, in the church of the Holy Savior, which is called the Constantinian, he was crowned by the Supreme Pontiff Innocent and obtained the name of Emperor and Augustus." For Peter Leonis had at that time occupied the church of the Blessed Peter, where it was customary for Emperors to be crowned.
[8] Why Otho is ascribed to the Frangipane family in these Acts: Consonant with this is the Vatican document which Baronius cites, speaking thus of this same coronation: "This is the oath which the Lord King Lothar, in the time of the heresy of the son of Peter Leonis, took before the Lord Pope Innocent, before the doors of the basilica of the Holy Savior, which is called the Constantinian, on the day on which he was crowned by the same Innocent, before receiving the crown; the Lord Cencio de Frangipane administering the oath, and Otto his nephew and the other Roman nobles being present." Then follows the formula of the oath, whose already-cited title not only confirms what we have said, but leads us to the very source of the entire fiction. At what time, namely, the holy Otho had lived was not sufficiently established: regarding whose family the matter is entirely uncertain, tradition held that he was born in Rome, and indeed of noble family; from the profession of military service from which he had fallen into captivity, those who composed his Life for use in the Ecclesiastical Office inferred his background: yet they denied having discovered the names of his parents or the nature and extent of his lineage. Therefore, when the architect of this Ottonian fable had read that a prince of the Roman youth named Otho was present, he believed he had a firm enough foundation upon which to build the remaining mass of poorly stitched lies.
[9] Other very grave errors concerning Alexander. With that foundation uncovered and overturned, it is not greatly necessary for us to labor in setting forth and refuting the remaining anachronisms and hallucinations of that deranged mind, which follow in numerous paragraphs thereafter, without a single word about the Life of Otho himself, up to the time when Alexander III, having subjected the Emperor Frederick and the Antipope Victor to anathema, departed to Philip, King of France, and was received as a father. He had been elected in the year 1159, and against him Octavian of Monticello had been schismatically elevated by the Fredericians: compelled finally to yield to their violence, he sailed to France in the year 1162, three years before Philip II, called Augustus, was born from his father Louis, son of Louis the Fat; and before the latter had completed his third month of life, he returned to Rome, which had been recovered through a Legate upon the death of his rival. And concerning the time when Otho was captured: Under the same Alexander's auspices, the Romans besieged Tusculum in the year 1167: but here by the arriving army of Frederick, and there by the sallying Duke Rayno of Tusculum, they were struck with such a disaster that Alexander himself, writing about it, denies that such a one was ever recalled from the time when Hannibal defeated the Romans at Cannae. In this battle, if the same Otho who was said to have been present as a youth of eighteen at the coronation of Lothar had been captured, he would then have been in his fifty-second year of age. While he is held in prison, moreover, he is imagined to hear the news of Milan captured and overthrown by Frederick: which is known to have happened in the sixty-third year of that century, almost five years earlier than the Romans besieged Tusculum.
[10] And all this is prefaced in order to arrive at the purpose of the entire fiction: other things less consonant with the readings of the ancient Office, and first, Otho, freed from prison by the aid of S. Leonard (Ferrarius substitutes Bernard for Leonard), is said to have passed by Rome and betaken himself to Ariano, and immediately built a little cell for himself at the church of S. Peter. But in the Readings he is said to have traveled for a long time visiting holy places, and to have lived laudably among the citizens of Ariano for some time, leading a civic life, supporting himself and the pilgrims he sheltered by repairing shoes of the common folk: which ignoble craft, if he knew it before being captured, he is said to have been noble without reason; if he learned it after escaping from prison, he learned it by several years' practice before coming to Ariano; nor should he who wished, as is imagined, to leave the history of his life to his future clients, have forgotten his sojourn among the citizens.
[11] The fiction about the city's nomenclature from the Altar of Janus. When Otho was now living as a solitary, Count Jordan is introduced, with singular zeal excavating the ruins of an ancient temple, dedicated to Janus, as tradition held: whose two-faced image was found, and a cubit-high altar, and a stone inscription five cubits long and three wide, carved thus: "Q. BABRIVS COR. AMIANTVS. PA. QVAESTOR. P. R. EX S. C. IN. P. A. S. HE." which should be read as: "Quintus Babrius Cornelius Amianthus, Patrician, Quaestor of the Roman People, by decree of the Senate in the provinces of Apulia, Samnium, and Etruria." As for such a stone, if any exists or ever existed outside this fable, nothing milder can be pronounced about it than what Ughellus says: that more sensible students of antiquity do not consider that inscription to be genuine, but a clever invention devised for the glory of talent. As an attentive investigator of ancient remains will find in these letters almost as many traces of falsity as there are characters, so he will have no doubt that the remaining more elaborate narrative of the same stone was fabricated with equal audacity, in which it is said that the city, founded as indicated above, was destroyed by Pontius the Samnite general, and restored by Praeter at his own expense in the five hundredth year from the founding of the City.
[12] But lest this so prolix and so elaborate inscription of a single stone should seem to be obtruded entirely without purpose, the fictitious Otho proceeds to narrate the popular joy at its excavation, and the vanity of the Arianensians corrected by Otho, and to commemorate the image of Janus affixed to public and private buildings and inserted into banners and standards: and the boasting of the populace, while recalling the deeds of their ancestors, about Sappia, a colony of the Beneventans ten miles from Benevento, destroyed in the time of Totila and its inhabitants transferred to Ariano. The repentance of the people for this idolatrous vanity and empty boasting was aroused by Otho through a most effective oration; he was also the author of changing the seal and assuming a three-peaked mountain in place of the image of Janus: in such a way, however, that A and I, for the preservation of the memory of their ancient origin (which Otho did not wish to be entirely extinguished), were inscribed on the middle mountain. From that point the Pseudo-Otho begins to play the prophet, prophecies falsely attributed to him, and to predict a future siege by the Agarenes with almost total destruction, and the earthquake of the year 1456, by which the city was almost completely overthrown; and this under the beginning of a Prince from the West who would be raised to the Kingdom of Naples, indicating Alfonso of Aragon: and finally that the people of Ariano, as followers of the French, would be subjugated by the Imperialists, looking to the times of the Emperor Charles V and the Duke of Guise. He does not dare to touch upon further events, lest a false prediction of things not yet done should convict the prophet of falsehood. Finally, having collected many formulas from Sacred Scripture, he blesses the city and its inhabitants as their Protector.
[13] This is the sum of that profane writing, and having seen these things, we hope it will be removed from the sacristy. With this disposed of, nothing remains for us but the Ecclesiastical Office: whose nine readings exhibit a good part of the Life in such a way a more sincere Life to be gathered from the most ancient Office that they sufficiently show that the rest, with his miracles performed before and after death, was written in a similar manner. This, now lost, or at least not found by him who most diligently arranged for everything to be copied for us, Antonio Beatillo, we supplement as best we can from the Responsories and Antiphons as well as the Hymns of the same Office, combined into one, whence greater authority may accrue to the Readings themselves. Having been composed, namely, at a time when under the name of Apulia some tracts of the ancient Samnium and Campania and nearly Naples itself were still reckoned: whence Otho, coming to Ariano, is said to have come to Apulia.
[14] He came, moreover, in the time of Count Jordan, as even the very fable we have refuted agrees, and thereby perforce destroys itself. Age determined from the age of Count Jordan, who died in the year 1127. For this Count flourished from the very beginning of the twelfth century, known for his deeds in the Chronicle of Fulco of Benevento, appointed Judge of his homeland by Innocent II, and recording events of his own time up to the year 1140; where he narrates the death of Jordan, who rashly sprang at a certain gate while assaulting the fortress of Florentino and was there overwhelmed under a hail of stones by the defenders, under the year 1127. And Otho was worn out by old age when he came to Ariano; and therefore when the Count died he was either already dead or very near death. So that it is plainly evident that the impostor who concealed that writing in the church of S. Peter was not only a man of brazen impudence but also utterly ignorant of the history of his own homeland: who did not see that it followed from the age of Jordan that perhaps Otho had ceased to live before the impostor makes him born.
[15] As for the time of the body's translation to the city of Benevento, Translation to Benevento around the year 1230, if the cause of this translation was fear of the infidels, as King Alfonso writes, it must have occurred around the year 1230 under Frederick II, when the Saracens were devastating Apulia: before whose incursion, unless the Office had been composed, it could not speak of him so absolutely as resting at Ariano
to speak. In certain manuscript additions of Father Rosweyd to Usuard's Molanus, these words are read: "On the twenty-third day, at Ariano, the feast of S. Otho the Roman, An altar at Rome, Protector of the people of Ariano: whose altar and image is at Rome in the church of SS. Martin and Sylvester on the Hills." When Father Daniel de Virgine Maria, Provincial of the Flemish-Belgian Province, was consulted about this while attending the General Chapter convened at Rome in the year 1666, he replied on May 22 that the religious whom he had questioned, who had lived in that convent for twenty or thirty years, knew nothing of any such altar or image: that the church had been entirely renovated a hundred years ago by S. Charles Borromeo, and again twenty years ago; and that, while the altars of SS. Sylvester and Martin and of the Blessed Virgin Mary were retained, most of the others had been made new and dedicated to Saints proper to the Order.
LIFE
From the Office and proper Readings.
Otho, Solitary at Ariano in the Kingdom of Naples (S.)
BHL Number: 6391
[1] The illustrious man of the Lord, Otho, as has now been made known to oura ears, was born and raised at Rome: A Roman by birth, but the names of his parents, and the nature and extent of his lineage, we have neither discovered nor endeavored to record for posterity; yet although their station is unknown to us, his offspring demonstrates how great they were. For the most holy Otho, placed in the flower of his early youth, was most influential among his fellow citizens: a soldier by condition, for if he had not been born of noble parents, in so great a city, which is the capital of the world, he would not have been endowed with military rank.
[2] For such was the divine ordinance promulgated from the very earliest origins of the City, that the sons of veterans should be enrolled in the military through successive generations. And when, at that time when the Blessed Otho was serving in the military, a certain nation that owed submission to the Roman Empire refused to bend its neck, resisting the magistrates and the decree of the Senate, and an army of the Roman military was sentb to subdue it and subject it to the Roman Empire and its dominion: the Most Blessed Otho, going voluntarily with the rest of the soldiers to that campaign, is captured by the enemy, was captured by the enemy together with several of his companions when the war began. Which let no one believe was done without the Lord's guidance: for whom the Lord loves he chastises, and scourges every son whom he receives.
[3] With his hands therefore bound behind his back and his legs constrained by the dire iron of chains, He invokes God in his grievous prison, they shut them long in the custody of a dark prison: but when his companions were ransomed, Otho alone remained there. At last in that same place of confinement, worn down by the privation of hunger and the weight of his chains, he besought God, the Redeemer of all, with tears, saying: "Jesus Christ, Lord, only-begotten Son of God, if it please you, do not permit me to linger long in the torments of this darkness, nor ever deprive me of a share of your graces: but deign to lead me out of the straits of this prison, that I may always be able to bless and praise your holy name."
[4] He is visited in his sleep by S. Leonard. And not long after -- indeed on the following night -- when he had given himself over to sleep, S. Leonard came to him, that consoler of such wretched ones, and burst forth with these words: "Do not be afraid, Otho, your prayer has been heard before the Lord: but hear what pertains to your salvation. Take care, I say, that you no longer serve as a soldier for the passing world, but henceforth walk with a simple heart and a pure body." Awakened then from sleep, he believed that all he had seen was done by human agency, and turning it over in his mind, he fell asleep again. And the Saint, coming again, roused him from the bosom of the dark prison, and is freed: and by his power led him, still slumbering, into a certain wooded glade. When the Saint had returned through the thin breezes of heaven whence he had come, the Blessed Otho broke the fastenings of his chains with a stone and began to reflect upon how these things had been done.
[5] Thenceforth serving God alone. Moreover, when morning came, not unmindful of the benefit received, leaving behind the density of the shady forest, he began to visit as a suppliant the shrines of the Saints throughout the regions of the world: at length, now worn out by long old age, coming by divine Providence to Apulia, he entered the walls of the city of Ariano. Its situation and soil so pleased him He comes to Ariano in old age, that, wishing never to leave, he established there a hospice for the reception of pilgrims, at whatever expense he could manage: and since he lacked material resources and had nothing to give to those in need, he cobbled the shoes of the inhabitants of the aforesaid city; he receives pilgrims hospitably: and with what he earned therefrom he provided food for the guests he received: likewise, carrying loads of wood on his shoulders, he also prepared beds for them at night.
[6] He himself, however, not wishing to indulge himself in these things, endured the greatest pains of fasting, cold, and wakefulness, practicing the cobbler's trade for three years, hoping and firmly believing that at the strict judgment he would reap what he had sown; when the King exalted above all Kings, sitting on the seat of his majesty and weighing all our deeds in the scale of justice, shall render to each according to his works, and shall say to those who are at his right hand: "Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world: for what you did for one of the least of mine, you did for me." And when by living thus for the course of three years he had led an innocent life among the citizens of Ariano, moved by the most holy inspiration, renouncing the society of men, he came to the church of the Blessed Apostle Peter, seven hundred and sixty paces from the city.
[7] Next to it he built himself a little cell, and wished to be enclosed there to lead the solitary life: in which he often felt the tyrannical threats and mockeries of demons beyond number: afterward, having built a cell: for the devil visibly attempted to deceive him with a thousand lying arts. But then the illustrious Confessor of Christ, persisting in vigils and prayers, protected his whole being with the sign of the Cross, and afflicted all the members of his body with sixty leather straps tied together. He lives as a solitary. He fasted six days of the week and was content with the most meager provision of food. In that cell he had also made himself a tomb as a reminder, which he left open day and night, so that in him the Scripture might be fulfilled which says: "Son, in all your works remember your last end, and you shall never sin." Eccl. 7:40
[8] But how much he suffered in that same enclosure, our tongue cannot narrate: When a soldier climbs his roof to retrieve the Duke's hawk. therefore, passing over all these things, let us turn our pen to the miracles which the Lord worked through him. At that time, then, when the noble Jordan, Count of Ariano, was governing the reins of the city, while a certain soldier of his, named Servatius, was going out hawking with his hawk, and released it into the air to catch birds, it happened that it did not proceed to catch them, but instead alighted upon the cell of the blessed hermit Otho. Distressed by its idleness, the soldier recalled it in the usual manner. And when his voice was now failing from calling out, and the hawk would not come as it usually did, he immediately resolved in his mind to approach; he irrecoverably loses it, nor did any delay detain him, but climbing up he leapt upon the roof of the nearby cell. After the Saint asked him who he was and why he had climbed up, he immediately prayed to the Lord that the man should not be able to catch it.
[9] Immediately, in a wondrous manner, the bird which he had already thought he held in his hands, until he humbly supplicates the Saint, he saw flying through the open air. After he saw that there was no hope of its returning, he descended sadly to the ground. And when, searching through the hollows of the valleys and the heights of the mountains for three days, he had diligently sought it and not found it, he went in shame to the hermit, whom he humbly besought with tears to placate the wrath of the aforesaid Count toward him by his prayers. The hermit, hearing this and moved by compassion, said: "Go quickly to the spring called S. Peter's, and there you will find it bathing in the water; and when it sees you, it will immediately come to you as usual." Hearing this, the soldier went to the indicated place, he deserved to recover it, and just as the Saint had predicted, he found it. Then the soldier, returning with joy, gave thanks to him and to the Son of the Most High God.
The rest is missing, and can be supplied to some extent from the responsories and antiphons in this manner.
[10] A certain young man, deprived of the light of his eyes, was healed He heals a blind man and a woman with fever: when he was signed by the latter with the Cross of Christ. While the Blessed Otho poured forth prayers to the Lord that he might take away the fevers from a woman, he immediately perceived the power of God to be present; and when he arose from prayer, the woman was freed from her infirmity. Because from boyhood he took care to please the Almighty, he deprived himself of all fleshly ambition. Like flashing lightning, this Saint penetrated the heavens when his soul departed from his body. When the funeral of the holy man had reached the ears of the populace, The body of the holy dead man is brought into the city, immediately gathering together, they proceeded unanimously and brought his body in a vehicle and placed it in a monument. A girl, moreover, languishing and exhausted by the burden of a demon, was made well by the merits of the Blessed Otho; and when she raised herself from the ground, she immediately blessed God along with the multitude of bystanders. He frees a demoniac. O reward received! O life pleasing to God! Through whose merits the sick, afflicted with various sufferings, are healed as they devoutly run to you. O Ariano, most excellent city, in which so many praises of virtues shine forth, and Otho drives demons from the possessed! O with what great joy the people of Ariano glory, because they are always aided by the patronage of this Saint!
[11] From the Hymns composed for Vespers and Lauds, it is also useful to excerpt the following:
"To the festival of Otho the whole country hastens, That it may praise his merits along with his own city. Epitome of life and miracles collected from the hymns. This man, Roman by birth, inspired by the nourishing Spirit, When he was a noble recruit, and also young in age, Admonished in a dream by the most holy Leonard Not to bind himself to the world but to serve the Lord, Spurning human glory, he left his homeland, And came into Apulia, to lead a heavenly life. In the province of Samnium stands a city so mighty That it cannot be conquered unless it itself consents; Near whose fortifications Otho, the holy worshiper of Christ, Enclosed himself in a cell, praying for the whole homeland. He afflicted himself with fasts, spending nights in vigils, And on continuous days scourging himself with leather straps. Among the many wonderful miracles he performed, He restored sight to a Jewish woman who had persisted in her faithlessness. What the Count had thought and had told no one, He shines with the gift of prophecy, Othod swiftly reveals, as the same Count testifies. When the magnanimous Count and all the people heard, They believe Otho to be a diligent and true servant of God. So he did in the matter of the hawke that had fled from the soldier, Designating by name the place in which it was staying: Showing those who sought it that it was washing itself at the spring."
"He also restored sight to a wretched blind man, And extinguished the burning heats of fever from a poor woman. He did many other things as well, which cannot individually Be proclaimed in full discourse, on account of their magnitude. He led an angelic life there for many years, And afterward, rendering his soul to God, he lives for all eternity. His sacred little body is carried to thef episcopal church: Where many miracles are performed through his merits: He exercises power over demons, For through his merits demons abandon the possessed, Driven to black darkness, they are plunged into the pool of fire. Wherefore the most devout little people of Ariano, Paying their due vows, seek your intercession: Succor your own city, in which you rest in body, He is venerated as the patron of Ariano. And preserve all the people of God in perpetuity. Amen."
Annotations"The blessed Otho, while with bound hands He stood, enclosed in a dark prison, And while he prayed to the supreme Creator, He saw great things."