ON ST. PEREGRINE THE CONFESSOR
IN THE NOCERA DIOCESE OF UMBRIA.
12TH CENTURY.
CommentaryPeregrine, in the Nocera diocese of Umbria (St.)
D. P.
[1] Besides several Saints, whom the Christian religion of their parents marked with the name Peregrine, that by the very use of it they might be admonished, that they as pilgrims upon the earth ought to tend to the heavenly country; So called from ignorance of the proper name, there are also found some, to whom making pilgrimage to the venerable places of the Saints when amid the labors of their journeys death had befallen them, and the miracles following this had made known to men their Sanctity, but not likewise the proper name of each; it pleased the pious faithful, that by an appellative word as by a proper one they should be called Holy Pilgrims. Such seems to have been he, whom brought from Greece to Rome, and thence into Sicily, the town of Caltabellotta venerates as Patron on the 30th of January, as we have said there. Such perhaps was also another St. Peregrine, whom the people of Piacenza in Italy venerate on the 10th of February. Such wholly it is established was the Saint a stranger from Scotland, who between Lucca and Modena having merited heavenly honors on the 1st of August, gave the name to the Alp of St. Peregrine. To collect more similar ones is of no concern, since concerning him who offers himself today as Patron of the Castle of St. Peregrine, in the Nocera diocese of Umbria, it seems to be held most certain, that he is venerated by that name on account of ignorance of his proper appellation.
[2] His Life, or rather the memory of his death and cult, Ludovico Iacobilli proposes in the Lives of the Saints and Blessed of Umbria volume 1, We give the Life from Iacobilli, citing in the Margin an ancient MS. Lectionary in the convent of St. Francis of Gualdo page 79. By this indication admonished I gave my effort, through our Fathers in the College of Perugia, that from the town of Gualdo there should be sought the things which regard St. Peregrine. But they much and often appealing to the Guardian of that convent, after a long procrastination there were sent, not the Latin words of the ancient Lectionary which were expected; but transcribed, what we now read printed in Iacobilli; no word added whence we might know, whether that very, which I have said, Legendary, and which by Iacobilli in other Lives of Saints commonly is cited and could often be of great use to us, other monuments being alleged: still survives. There is no leisure meanwhile to stop the press for so little a cause, wherefore what we can we give here from the aforesaid Iacobilli, besides alleging the ancient and new Pictures in the castle of St. Peregrine, a tablet in the church of St. Peregrine, the Nocera History of Durante Dorio MS., Celso Placido in the Lives of the Saints of the Church of Nocera, and certain other monuments, whose original words if we still obtain, in the Appendix or Supplement we will give: the Synopsis of Iacobilli is this.
[3] In the reign of Henry, the second of this name, a certain most faithful Christian, surnamed Peregrine, Coming from the Transalpine parts to Rome. from the Transalpine parts led by a desire of suffering much for the love of Christ and of visiting the sacred places, and obeying the Divine inspiration came to Rome: and that he might be in fact what by name he expressed, wholly in garment and habit of body a pilgrim, so long and laborious a journey he performed with bare feet; and intended after the example of the Patriarch Abraham, his country and kindred being left going into the land which God should show him. But after he had devoutly visited the Basilica of St. Peter and the other churches of the city and the bodies of the Saints; his journey he began to retrace, half-naked and living on alms, with great humility and modesty. But when he had come into the valley, where the city of Tadinum once was situated, between Nocera and Gubbio, he visited the body of St. Facundus, once Bishop of Tadinum, and of his Archdeacon St. Juventinus.
[4] Then into the Contranese part, at the roots of the hills of mount Camera he transferred himself, and thence returning, where a certain burg, called Contro, had so coalesced from several cottages, that through a single gate to them entrance was given. This in the late evening was to be closed, all the inhabitants being received at home, except a single one, called Ono, who had remained outside; when there came the Saint, the weather windy and threatening rain, asking the man, that he would suffer him for the love of God and the Saints in his house or stable to decline the night and the inconveniences of the nocturnal air. and excluded from lodging, The miserable appearance of the ragged and famished and from weariness failing Pilgrim did not move the fierce man: but with harsh and contumelious words repelling the suppliant, he closed the gate behind him, leaving him outside. The repulse the Saint patiently bore, and placed himself before the gate, a prayer being premised; as if he understood, that that night would be his last. he dies of cold, And when stretched on the ground he had fallen asleep; suddenly so great a storm of snow and hail fell upon him, that the cold being added to his former troubles constrained, he there breathed out his soul.
[5] There soon followed a great serenity of the air, and a spring warmth dissolving the snows, made that, the waters flowing down into one, a torrent suddenly born wrapped the body, and rolled it down into the fields lying below the burg, together with herbs and straw and mud: with which it covered the townsmen going out to do their work the next morning found; and his staff being seen, [the staff of the body snatched by the water indicates its sanctity by miraculously growing green:] which fixed in the earth had grown green and grew into a tree, their minds being suddenly changed, by a certain affection either of humanity or of piety they began to cleanse it and wrapped in linen placed it on a cart, to be carried up to the burg whence he had been excluded. These things being divulged by report through those places, where some esteem of his sanctity passing or tarrying Peregrine had left; a great multitude of the people flowed together to venerate the sacred body: and certain Clergy and seculars applying to the cart another pair of oxen, conveyed it where he had died, it is carried to the burg, with hymns and songs, to the praise of him, whose judgments are a great deep, and who with infinite goods in heaven remunerates the contempt and labor tolerated by his servants on earth.
[6] But in that very place, which two miles was distant from the church of St. Facundinus, they dug the ground; and a marble tomb being procured, where a church being built he is venerated as Patron, the sacred body in it they buried, building over it an oratory
in honor of St. Peregrine himself. But in the progress of time the Contranese village increased in houses and inhabitants, became a castle, under the name of the same Saint numbering about eighty families, four hundred souls: to whom parochial is the church of St. Peregrine, and his memory there is yearly festively celebrated on the first day of May. Nor is St. Peregrine the Patron only of one place, but also among the Protectors of the town of Gualdo, which about three miles is distant from the church of St. Peregrine; in which in his honor a confraternity registered perseveres with his cult, on account of very many miracles in the carrying of the holy body, and afterward, in that place wrought through the intercession of St. Peregrine.
[7] Thus far Iacobilli; who while he notes the Empire of Henry II, indicates the 11th century of the Christian Era and indeed advanced even to the middle: for if according to the second of this name, not far from the ruins of the city of Tadinum. not Emperor, but King (as the writers commonly) he had wished to be understood, namely St. Henry, who from the year 1014 held the Empire, he would not have called him without a title congruous to his merits. The church of Tadinum moreover, for which solicitous St. Gregory the Pope commends the election of a Bishop there to be instituted to Gaudiosus Bishop of Gubbio book 7 Epist. 87 and 88. It venerated St. Facundinus its Bishop on the 28th of August, on which day concerning the desolation of that city and the translation of the See to Nocera we shall treat: here it is enough to have noted, that there in the place it seems to have been, where now the church of St. Facundinus still survives Iacobilli indicates.