ON BLESSED DODO OF HASCHA, OF THE PREMONSTRATENSIAN ORDER, IN FRISIA.
YEAR 1231
PrefaceDodo of Hascha, of the Premonstratensian Order, in Frisia (Blessed)
[1] Utrecht, a spacious and powerful city, contains illustrious churches, among which the Cathedral of St. Martin and the Collegiate Church of the Holy Savior, which was also called that of St. Boniface, are preeminent. The Canons of this Church were formerly diligent and solicitous to obtain the Acts of any and all Saints, the Life is given from a manuscript of Utrecht: most of which they condensed, thinking them thus more suited to their use. We have many of these extracted from manuscript codices, and among others is the Life of St. Dodo of Hascha, honored there with the title of Saint for nearly three hundred years. The same Life exists in a manuscript codex of the Charterhouse of Cologne, from which George Colvenerius obtained it, a Doctor of Sacred Theology at the Academy of Douai, from whom Hyacinth Choquet obtained it, collated with another: and published it, but in polished style, in his book On the Saints of Belgium of the Dominican Order, chapter 26, and he acknowledges the author as anonymous. We give it collated with this. Jean le Paige, in book 2 of the Library of the Premonstratensian Order, page 532, prefixes this title: Life of Blessed Dodo, Canon of the monastery of the Garden of St. Mary, then hermit at Bakkeveen and Hascha, from that which exists in manuscript in the libraries of the Charterhouse of Cologne and of George Colvenerius, Chancellor of the University of Douai, and which is found in Thomas of Cantimpré, book 2 On the Bees, chapter 1, part 15, Martin Hamconius, and Abbot van der Sterre in the Hagiologion and Birthdays. The same Life was inserted into the Ecclesiastical History of Belgium at the year 1231 by Dionysius Mudzart of the Premonstratensian Order. his memory among writers: Rosweyde in the Belgian Ecclesiastical History, Gerard van Herdegom in book 1 of the Blessed White Virgin and Patron of the Premonstratensian Order, page 105, Maurice du Prein in the Brief Annals of the Premonstratensian Order, Peter de Waghenare on the Persons of the Premonstratensian Order Illustrious for Holiness, page 206, and others also remembered him.
[2] Three places in Western Frisia are distinguished by the dwelling of Blessed Dodo: places of his dwelling: the Garden of Blessed Mary: the first of these is the monastery of the Garden of Blessed Mary, commonly called Mariengaarde, built two leagues toward the ocean from Leeuwarden, the capital, in the year 1163 by Abbot Frederick: whose Acts we illustrated on March 3. The fifth Abbot of this monastery was the most holy man Siard, whose sacred relics are held in great veneration partly in the Abbey of Tongerlo in Brabant and partly in the Abbey of St. Foillan at Roeulx, a town of Hainaut. We shall illustrate his Life on November 13, written by his successor Sibrand, the sixth Abbot: Bakkeveen: who reports that he founded an estate situated near Trent in the heath and gave it the name of the Grange of St. Mary at Bakkeveen. Sibrand Leo adds that the Sylvans, captivated by love of this man on account of his reputation for holiness, voluntarily offered him the most extensive fields at Bakkeveen: whither, having gone, he established a new chapel called Mariengaarde. This was the second residence of Blessed Dodo, there leading the hermit's life. Bakkeveen is situated in the third part of Frisia, called the Wooded or Sylvan region, in the small territory of Opsterland, and Hascha: adjacent to the territory of Groningen and Drenthe. The third and last station was Hascha, in the same part of Wooded Frisia, toward Westergo and the town of Sneek, where both New Hascha, Old Hascha, the Convent of Hascha, and the small territory of Haschaland are named, and he himself took the name of Dodo of Hascha.
[3] he died on March 30: He died there in the year 1231, on the Sunday after the Annunciation of Blessed Mary, which in that year fell on the Octave of Easter or Low Sunday, and the thirtieth day of March, when with the Lunar cycle 16, Solar cycle 8, and Dominical letter E, the feast of Easter was celebrated on March 23. At the said March 30, the Abbot van der Sterre has this in the Birthdays of the Saints of the Premonstratensian Order: inscribed in the fasti: At Hascha in Frisia, the Birthday of Blessed Dodo, hermit and Confessor of the Premonstratensian Order: who, having been made a Canon of the white Order in the monastery of the Garden of Mary, and an outstanding disciple of Blessed Father Siard, afterwards by his consent instituted a solitary life with a wonderful rigor of penance. The fame of his holy manner of life became widely known, and besides many miracles with which he was honored by God, he also had the sacred five stigmata of Christ miraculously impressed upon him. he is honored with an Ecclesiastical Office: That his feast is celebrated on this day among the Spaniards in the Premonstratensian Order with the rite of a double is read in the Order of reciting the Divine Office, printed at Madrid in 1636 and 1646. Saussay in his Gallican Martyrology adorns him on this day with the following praise among the Pious: On this very day in the Diocese of Utrecht there died Dodo of pious memory, Canon of the Garden of St. Mary of the Premonstratensian Order, who by assiduous preaching, which his remarkable piety recommended, made such progress among his Frisian nation that he greatly softened them from their fierceness and adorned them with Christian manners. Blessed Dodo once lived under the Bishops of Lower Utrecht or the jurisdiction of Utrecht, but now the indicated places would be under the Bishops of Leeuwarden, if the orthodox faith flourished in Frisia. Martin Hamconius, in his Frisia, or On the Famous Men and Affairs of Frisia, page 80 in the second edition, says this about the fruit of his preaching: the praise of Hamconius:
Moreover, pious Dodo performed wonders in the hermitage of Bakkeveen, Driving away diseases and even defiant demons: Here, working great things in the forests bordering Hascha, He extinguished that grim custom by divine power, By which the Frisians were accustomed never to consign a slain man to the earth, Unless death had first been avenged upon the perpetrator, Or a brother, or some others joined by blood to the perpetrator.
[4] and of Cantimpré: Thomas of Cantimpré is cited in the margin, who in the edition prepared by George Colvenerius writes these things: I also saw another blessed man of the same Order, advanced to a very great age, named Dodo, a Frisian by nation: who by assiduous preaching made such progress among his Frisian nation that he greatly softened them from their fierceness. For from the most ancient time the Frisians had this most monstrous custom, that when a man of one community was killed, the body of the slain man was not buried by his own people from the other community, but was hung in a coffin and dried in a house, until from the opposing kindred, in vengeance for the slain man, the adverse kindred slaughtered several or at least one in vicarious death: and only then did they first commit their own dead man to the due burial with great solemnity. This most cruel and unheard-of custom the said Brother removed from that nation, and promoted it to a milder state by frequent exhortation. unless this should be understood of another Dodo: So that passage. Colvenerius had four manuscript copies and three printed ones, and asserts that he restored this example about Blessed Dodo, which had been omitted, from the manuscript of the monastery of the Holy Sepulcher in Cambrai. Hence, because the example about Brother Aegidius, the Dominican preacher of Ghent, precedes, and because Blessed Dodo is said to be of the same Order, Colvenerius thought him to be a different person from Blessed Dodo the hermit, or the one whom the Premonstratensians celebrate. But since that praise is produced from a single copy, it could easily have been placed out of its proper position, or perhaps other praises are missing.
Why indeed should there not be missing the praise of Blessed Siard, who died only one year before Blessed Dodo, to whose Life that of Dodo could have been appended and he said to be of the same order? Choquet, having said much in favor of his own Order, which largely falls apart from what has already been said, leaves the judgment to others in this obscure matter, nor can we determine whether the one mentioned by Cantimpré and the one we treat of here are one and the same person.
LIFE
From the manuscript of St. Savior's, Utrecht.
Dodo of Hascha, of the Premonstratensian Order, in Frisia (Blessed)
BHL Number: 2206
FROM THE MANUSCRIPT.
[1] When Dodo was still a layman in the house of his father, from youth devoted to piety and virtues: he was a man of good conscience, very charitable toward his neighbors, kind toward the poor; he frequented the church a great deal, prayed, fasted, and was obedient to his parents, and energetic in all the works of God. After his father's death he was compelled unwillingly by his friends to contract a marriage: he contracts marriage under compulsion: after a few years he applied himself to the religious life, fleeing the world as Lot fled Sodom. He joined himself to the Brothers of the Garden of St. Mary together with his wife and mother, there serving God day and night in fear and reverence. After this, desiring a more secluded place, where alone he might better and more perfectly serve God alone, he asked the Abbot with his wife and mother he becomes a religious: to send him to some place where, sequestered from the crowd, he might more conveniently serve God. Whence he was sent to Bakkeveen, the place so named, and there he built he seeks solitude: a small cell for himself, in which he led a solitary life for many years: for there he endured many and diverse infestations from evil spirits day and night.
[2] On one occasion, going out from his cell through a small door into the church to pray; he is troubled by demons: having completed his prayer, when he was returning, he found the door shut and could not gain entry. At length, with force he threw himself against the door, and so the entry opened, and he heard the evil spirits fleeing with great clamor and laughter, who had barred his entry. A certain matron possessed by a demon came to him, to intercede for her to the Lord God, that he might cast out the demon from her, by which she was greatly vexed: but when he could not do so, after many adjurations, the evil spirit answered: Neither you nor anyone in the world will cast me out of this unclean vessel, but I will remain in her until three days before the day of her departure: a and this came to pass. This demoniac predicted to him many things that afterwards followed: he comes to Hascha: and she told him that he was going to depart from that place to this place of Hascha, which also came to pass.
[3] He led a harsh life there in food and clothing and on a hard bed: he tamed his flesh by fasting, he lives austerely: keeping vigil, scourging himself, in genuflections and beatings of the breast, in weeping and inconsolable lamentation, groaning and praying for himself and the entire holy Church of God. Each day content with one meal, on alternate days fish and beer, in food: on alternate days bread and water: on Friday he ate nothing. His clothing was as follows: first, seven iron circles girded his flesh around his sides, two around his arms, clothing: over this was a hairshirt, then he put on an iron coat of mail, and lastly he had two woolen tunics and over them a scapular, and so he remained day and night without change of clothes. His bed was hard, without the softness of a pillow: bed: for indeed he had a mat for his bedding, at his head a hollowed piece of wood, and in that hollow a garment placed under his head with a cushion, after the example of our Lord Jesus Christ, who was wrapped in cloths and placed in a manger. in vigils, prayers, and genuflections: At midnight he was always accustomed to rise for Matins, and afterwards without any rest he extended the night until the time of the Masses, praying, disciplining his body, and making genuflections of various kinds. Five hundred genuflections each day and night, and often more, he performed. His knees had become hardened in the manner of a camel, and because he was a true worshiper of God, the Lord performed many miracles through him.
[4] The aforesaid Brother Dodo came by divine revelation to the aforesaid place called Hascha, when it was still uncultivated and there was no structure there except a small sanctuary: the image of the Crucifix speaks to him: in which stood two old images, one of the Crucifix and the other of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Then on one occasion, standing before the Crucifix, when, called by his companions, he wished to depart, he heard a voice as if sounding from the image of the Cross: Why do you hasten so? For you are to remain in this place for a longer time. Likewise a certain possessed person predicted to him, while he was still enclosed in his cell at Bakkeveen, that he was to pass from that place to this one. Likewise while he was still there, on the Vigil of All Saints and on the Vigil of the Nativity of the Lord, water at his table, when the sign of the Cross was made, was changed into the flavor of the sweetest wine.
[5] Afterwards, when many years had been completed, he was called to this place of Hascha by a certain great and notable Cleric of pious memory, Lord Wibrand of Hascha. water is converted to wine: He came here therefore around the feast of Blessed Andrew, when there was a frost of one night, and he crossed all the ditches on the ice of that night, so that all who heard it marveled. Then he grew so much in virtues the ice of one night bears him crossing: that the fame of his holiness was spread throughout the whole land, and the sick, burdened with various infirmities, began to flock to him, various infirmities are driven away: of whom he cured very many.
[6] A certain girl was brought before him who had the falling sickness, who was healed by his prayers. A certain Cleric from distant parts came to him with swollen skin, the falling sickness: so that from every part of his body he appeared as if leprous: leprosy: and he was healed through him. The daughter of the Priest Pipperid of b Gersloote, who was paralytic, was restored to health by his prayers. A certain sick man from c Westermeer was brought to him bound hand and foot: paralysis: who, overcome by extreme illness, being as if out of his mind and insane, was healed through the image of the Blessed Virgin and his continual prayers: insanity: so that he who had come to him bound in a boat, on the return journey steered the boat himself; who, as soon as he arrived home, sent back to the aforesaid Brother a white and choice cow in honor of God and the Blessed Virgin. Another man from the same region was suffering from a similar disease, who through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and his prayers was similarly cured: who, giving thanks to God and the man of God, sent back a cow in honor of the Blessed Virgin.
[7] On the night of the Lord's Resurrection, after midnight, while Brother Dodo was lifting up the Cross, as is the custom of the Church, the Cross is lifted from the ground of its own accord: and carrying it around the outside of the church; when he had come to the eastern part of the cemetery, he saw a cross ascending from the ground and proceeding a little distance to another place, and it soon vanished from his sight. This meanwhile was seen by several who were with him at that time. At another time two women saw the same vision as if in the same place.
[8] In the year of the Lord 1231, therefore, Brother Dodo, a man of good conduct and approved life, he dies crushed by the collapse of a roof: on the Sunday after the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was crushed and killed by the collapse of the walls of the old structure: he who had previously led a monastic and solitary life in the same place for five years, serving God and the Blessed Virgin day and night, with the greatest affliction of his body, and so, as it were martyred, he ended his life with God and for God. When therefore he had been crushed by the stones from the collapse of the sanctuary and was dead, the wounds of Christ found expressed on his body after death: they found open wounds in his hands and feet, and in his right side, in the manner of the five wounds of the Lord, which perhaps he had borne for many years in compassion with the Crucified, so that he could truly say with Paul: I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body. But before the day of his death no one knew of this except God alone, who knows all things.
[9] After his death, the Lord Wibrand of Hascha, of good memory, the foundation at Hascha: gathered to himself two Clerics with their families, the Lord Siricus and the Lord Sifrid, and a few laypeople: who, all of one mind, renouncing the world and offering themselves and their possessions to God as first fruits, founded this place, namely Hascha, for serving God and Blessed Mary and all the Saints forever and ever. Amen.
Annotations