CONCERNING B. AEGIDIUS OF THE ORDER OF PREACHERS
OF SCALLABIS OR SANTAREM IN PORTUGAL.
YEAR MCCLXV.
PrefaceAegidius, of the Order of Preachers of Scallabis or Santarem in Portugal (B.)
By the Author D. P.
[1] Of the excellent Virgin and Martyr Irene, whose feast on the day 20 October with annual celebrity is to be recalled by the Portuguese, so great was long ago the fame, that the place enriched with her sacred body, Died 24 May, which antiquity called Scallabis, thirteen leagues above Lisbon at the river Tagus, was named from her; at least after in it, snatched from the Moors about the year 1184, the Christian rites were restored, and the ancient cult of the divine Patroness, whom they vulgarly call Santarem. But at that very time, in which I said Scallabis was recovered, was born, if Georgius Cardosus in his Portuguese Hagiology rightly drew the years, Aegidius, about to add new illustriousness to that place, especially after his death, which eighty years thence, after the Incarnation of Christ 1265, is said to have happened, on the glorious day of the Lord's Ascension, then falling on this 14 May. it is venerated from of old on the Sunday after Ascension. Yet that the inhabitants might more freely give themselves to venerating this their second Patron, it pleased long ago (as below from the Life num. 65 will be clear) to transfer his anniversary memory to the following Sunday; which even today is observed the aforepraised Cardosus writes in the Commentary on this day; and that it was in use, that then a Mass of all the Saints was said; and this use lasted until the times of the Lord Friar John of Portugal, Bishop of Viseu.
[2] It was begun to be acted for solemn Beatification in the year 1628. For he, says that one, since he was singularly devout to B. Aegidius, in the year 1628 sent to Rome Friar Augustine of the Cross, who afterward was Bishop in Armenia, with full power of acting before the Sacred Congregation of Rites, that he might solemnly be referred into the Album of the Blessed; a most beautiful letter being written for that end to the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, the Presidents of that Congregation, of which a copy transcribed for me once while I was staying among the Viseu people I keep. But the death of the aforesaid Bishop stopped the course of the well-begun business, and the matter remained in this, that in the Santarem convent of the Order of Preachers Aegidius could be venerated, or wherever his sacred Relics were. That this had already before been granted, in the General Catalogue of the Saints, who are not in the Roman Martyrology, on 15 May Ferrarius indicates, in the notes thus writing: Illustrious by miracles he is venerated by Ecclesiastical Office by the license of the Apostolic See in Portugal. Since Ferrarius says he had these things from notes sent to him from Rome by a person worthy of faith, and himself printed that Catalogue of his in the year 1625; it follows that that license had already before been granted. Meanwhile Ferrarius errs in this, that he surnames Aegidius of Poncella from his country; since it was called Vaozela, a village between the cities of Viseu and Coimbra midway nearly on the road. Tamayus Salazar also erred, when in his Spanish Martyrology he referred the death of the Blessed to 16 May, and accuses the copyists of error because they wrote 14: for that it ought truly to be written thus teaches the Pascha of the aforenoted year falling on 5 April, and so referring the feast of the Ascension to 14 May.
[3] But it is done from that time, says Cardosus, on the said Sunday the whole Office double, and a double Office of the common was granted. with the office of the Common of a Confessor not a Pontiff, and the Prayer, Thy Church O God, as of B. Antony of Padua, only the name being changed. But formerly it had a proper Office, composed by Friar Balthasar of S. John and dedicated to Master Friar George Vogado Prior of Benfica: and from this Office I judge the following Prayer taken. O God who recalled B. Aegidius thy Confessor from subjection to sin, granting him special grace of obtaining pardon of his perpetrated crime: give by his merits to obtain here thy mercy, that by detestation of our excesses we may redeem our perpetrated crimes. That crime was, that the youth desirous of quickly attaining great knowledge, entered a pact with a demon, signing a written bond with his own blood: The Conversion, inscribed in the Portuguese Hagiology on 25 June, whose pardon he understood he had obtained in the seventh year of his Religious life, the written bond being received back at the feet of the Marian icon. Cardosus referred the memory of that matter to the day 25 June, following the authors whom he alleges in the Commentary Father Stephen Guerricus in the Treasury of Marian piety page 315, Father John Eusebius in the Marian Trophies book 4 chapter 24, and others, and calls it the Conversion of B. Aegidius.
[4] the translation 1 July, His third feast, or rather a private commemoration (for I do not think on any other day than the aforesaid Sunday anything is publicly done in church) the same Cardosus was about to note on 1 July, when in the sixth year after his happy passing, the Lady Joanna Diaz, Mistress of the town of Athaugia, wife of Ferdinand Fernandez Cognomius, Lord of Chaves and Greater Prefect of Coimbra, cousin of Aegidius, built for him a little chapel and a marble sepulchre, which first to those entering the church of the Friars through the side door occurs. But only six months of the Hagiology Cardosus completed and published, who if he could have lived longer and proceeded in writing, we would now perhaps have a more accurate notice of the monuments pertaining to this Translation of the body, after which no other is known to have been made. Therefore, if any Relics anywhere are extant, it is likely that they were then already separated from the rest of the body. One bone certainly from the Santarem Convent the town of Vaozela, the country of the Blessed, long ago obtained, and it is kept under key by the Lords of the Caballaria estate, a bone in his country Vaozela, on account of the close consanguinity by which these touch the Blessed, says Cardosus: who from the book of the inquisitions of Alfonso King III brings forward these words. Ferdinand Canellas procured in the time of the Lord King Sancho, the grandfather of that King, the villa of Pinhiero (this is near Vaozela) and the manor of Caballaria: and now the sons of John Fernandez de Almeida have that inheritance.
[5] But the aforesaid relic is kept in a hermitage, bearing his name and so contiguous to the public prison, that the captives have a prospect into it, within a hermitage near the prison: and can hear quietly and reverently the sacrifice of the Mass wont to be done there: as I myself out of devotion offered it there in the year 1644, says the now often-said Cardosus. Over the door is seen within a niche an image of the Blessed, in the year 1578 sculptured of stone, of that figure, that having under his feet an infernal dragon prostrate, he seems to transfix the same with a lance which he holds in his hand. The altar much more recently was adorned in the year 1663, over a small little crypt in which the aforesaid Relic is guarded. There is also in honor a chamber, in which by a happy birth this Blessed was born to the world, within that same Caballaria estate which I mentioned, converted into a chapel, dedicated to the Holy Spirit: which when it threatened ruin, was restored in the year 1645, and there was placed over the altar an image of the holy Friar Aegidius. a memory in ancient and public writings as of a Saint. There is extant besides an ancient Diary of the Kings of Portugal, kept in the Tomb tower, in which it is thus read: S. Aegidius of the Order of Preachers migrated to Christ, on the day 14 May in the year of salvation 1265. Finally in the Calendar of the Cathedral of Coimbra these things are had. In the year from the Nativity of the Lord 1265, on the 14th day of the Month of May, on which day at that time occurred the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, died Master Aegidius, Presbyter, formerly Canon Treasurer of that church: who departed a Friar of the Preachers, and left to the Chapter 60 pounds,
and for his anniversary the inheritance of Cernella, with all its rights and appurtenances etc. who lies in the monastery of the Friars of the Order of Preachers at Santarem.
[6] The history of his Life an ancient anonymous author wrote briefly, The Life and miracles formerly more rudely written more cultivatedly translated, after the history of the miracles, divinely wrought by Aegidius or at the invocation of Aegidius in life and after it, composed in rude and barbarous Latin, by an author much more ancient, and coeval with the Blessed himself, who is understood to have been Prior of the Santarem Convent, and called Friar Peter Paez or Pelagius from num. 60 and 85 of his Life which we will give, received and contracted from the four books, into which this argument, illustrated with various additions and extended into the form of a dialogue, divided the author, following the faith of the old MSS., the barbarism being moderated, Master Andreas Resendius. Master Antonius Senensis praises this man in the Library of the Order of Preachers page 18, and says that he was a most learned man in the politer letters, illustrious by knowledge of languages, a wondrous investigator of all kinds of antiquities, a most excellent herald of the word of God, and preacher of John III King of Portugal, who was illustrious until the year 1567. The same, besides other monuments of his genius enumerated there, also this work concerning B. Aegidius, by Andreas Resendius, also wrote Histories of the Saints, which are publicly read in the churches, and the Breviary of the Church of Évora, by the command of the Most Serene Cardinal Infant Henry, he reformed. But the books which he wrote concerning B. Aegidius, the autograph of them in the year 1585, when the Library was published, the Santarem Convent still kept: but a copy badly kept about the same time finding in Gaul Friar Stephen de Sampayo, drew it into an occasion of publishing in the year 1586 at Paris a book, whose title is: Thesaurus arcanus, published by Sampayo: shining with Portuguese gems, in which the stupendous history of Aegidius, formerly a magus, a Theurgist, embellished with various dialogues, and the deeds of other holy Fathers of the Order of Preachers from the same Portugal, and many other things most worthy to be known are contained.
[7] What Sampayus afforded to Resendius, what Resendius to Pelagius, each declares in his own preface. I for the zeal of brevity, the parerga being cut away, with which the form of dialogue was adorned, restored that manner of continuous discourse, which Resendius had given, before he came into the colloquy of a certain physician Pyrrhus, whence was taken the occasion of the dialogism. I should have preferred to exhibit here the very ancient writings, however barbarous, unchanged: and therefore I had asked the Reverend Father Antonius Macedo Rector of our Lisbon Novitiate, formerly known to me at Rome (the very one whom the Queen of Sweden Christina first deigned to make conscious of her holier counsel concerning changing her religion and abdicating her kingdom, the ancient MSS. sought in vain. using him for a year and more most familiarly, until she sent him to Rome to the General of our Society, about to deliberate what would be to the purpose) I had asked, I say, that the old MSS. in the archive of the Scallabis convent he would take care to have sought and transcribed. But that diligence was vain; for nothing of the kind was found there, nor anything which smells of antiquity. Only in the convent of S. Dominic at Lisbon was found a copy of a certain examination, instituted with a view to the solemn and public canonization in the year 1627, concerning the fame of the sanctity of B. Aegidius, and the ancient cult and veneration of the peoples, and the miracles attributed to his intercession. But since not even one of these in particular was expressed, that Father did not believe it worth the cost of expense to make a description of that interrogatory. Nor indeed was it worth the cost: unless someone perhaps wished briefly to gather the chief heads of the proofs, just as I did on 7 April after the life of B. Hermann the Premonstratensian Canon of Steinfeld. For if I shall receive any such thing, here also I will gladly subjoin it.
[8] Cardosus enumerates in a long order the writers, who touched the life of B. Aegidius. other writers concerning the same Blessed. The chief ones and known also to us, are Abraham Bzovius in his Annals on the year 1265, Castellius in volume 1 of the History of S. Dominic from page 427 to 433, and Tamayus de Salazar in his Spanish Martyrology: who all took their things almost verbatim from the edition of Sampayus, and that in the Latin language in this our century. But in the preceding century the same life Friar Didacus de Rosario published in Portuguese at the end of his work on the deeds of the Saints, in the year 1585 with that appendix augmented, or another for him, adding that it was printed just as it is written in a certain authentic book, treating of the Lives of some saints of the Order, and seems extracted from that which written is extant in the Santarem convent: which is not to be understood of the autograph of Resendius, but of the compilation of Pelagius the Prior himself. For since at the end in the very words of the author it was set down, in what manner Thomarius taking breakfast, by a bone fixed in his throat Aegidius being invoked was freed, as is reported by us at num. 84, the said Portuguese life is thus concluded: We do not know how that Religious was called, who wrote these things of himself and compiled this history (because in the book, whence this life was translated into Portuguese, such things are not expressed) yet he seems to me to be a man of great authority, who saw himself many of the things which he narrates, and others he received from persons most worthy of faith. Finally in the French language and in a new order Friar John de Rechac of S. Mary digested the Life and miracles of B. Aegidius in volume 2 of the Lives of the Canonized Saints of his Order, in the year 1647. Others who touched more briefly the memory of Aegidius it is not worth while to commemorate singly, since all wrote in this century, and added nothing of a new thing.
LIFE
By the Author Master Andreas Resendius of the Order of Preachers.
Aegidius, of the Order of Preachers of Scallabis or Santarem in Portugal (B.)
BY ANDREAS RESENDIUS.
PREFACE OF THE EDITOR
Friar Stephen de Sampayo the Portuguese.
You have in this volume, pious reader, the Aegidian conversion, interwoven with many and most useful flowerets both of Theology and of the humaner letters. With how great labor it cost me, unto the revelation of little ones (to use the words of Christ) and the derision of the wise of this age, This Life by chance found by him, I could not easily say. Matt. 11, 25 For when in a certain castle of Poitiers in days past I had solicitously sought certain of my lucubrations, near the monastery of Belvecuria by chance and unexpectedly, among the hands and feet of soldiers, this history of the holy man, brought thither by chance, and once written by the most learned Master Andreas Resendius, I found, gathered, and redeemed. But although by the name of its author and the beginning of the history and the Greek verses being deleted, it appeared so shapeless, that it did not seem easily able to be recognized by me or repaired: yet the common origin with D. Aegidius of native soil enticed me to this work of patching and vivifying it. Then another particular reason, which not without a great mark of ingratitude I should think to evade, urgently moved me to this. For ingenuously I confess that by the merits of that same Saint I, or at least my right eye, for many years now have safe and sound. For when I was still a young recruit in religion, who owed a safe eye. about the year 1560 our Provincial chapters being at hand, to be held in the Scallabis monastery, in which the sepulchre of this holy Father is venerated, I was ordered to go thither from my Lisbon convent. But there is within the enclosures of the monastery a certain well of deep depth, which by the tradition of the ancients the common people boast was, from the inmost parts of the earth, as is still seen, dug out, of squared stone from the top even to the bottom by the malign spirits, through the obedience of D. Aegidius, in one night built. For the cause of seeing this thing moved by a certain youthful curiosity, when I once hurried thither, there was there by chance a certain familiar groom of ours, who with one of two buckets hanging from a very long rope, drew water from that same well. But when now near the middle of the deep depth one bucket, full of water drawn up hanging, and up to then held firmly, he incautiously let fall from his hands downward; the full vessel going down with such force, that the iron semicircular hook of the other empty one ascending from which it hung, caught me looking in through the hollow of my right eye, and raised me a little into the air, before I could beware the danger. by an evident miracle of B. Aegidius. My mind therefore from its state by this concussion thrown down, as if through sleep from the previous catching, the name of D. Aegidius I began afflictedly to invoke. The Religious ran up, and judged me by the fracture of the skull soon to die, or at least to be bereft of my right eye; not a little wondering that I had not fallen into the well, in whose low mouth up to the belly I lay prostrate. Finally for the space of three months half-alive lying on the bed, the surgeons and physicians now thinking my life was done, they applied only doubled linens, for catching the pus, from the center of the eye with a horrendous stench unceasingly flowing down. Yet I did not cease the help of D. Aegidius, in whose house and at the edge of whose well (for the well is called of Friar Aegidius) I had suffered this kind of injury, to implore. Nor was the faith vain. For that lethal and incurable contusion, against the hope of all began to appear curable more day by day: and the flow of pus being dried, that central wound and horrendous gap to close. Afterward at length not only was the wound cured, but also the scar abolished almost vanished. God is my witness that I speak the truth, and truly the heavenly physician, as Solomon counsels, on account of the infirmity I honor, which by his suffrages, as it was judged by all, beyond the order of nature was eluded and exterminated. Eccl. 38, 1 For I have always persuaded myself, that a great inconvenience and scandal to the Church of God invented miracles generate. It is altogether better to narrate the histories of the Saints, as they truly happened, truly, but not to wish to render them more commendable to the unskilled common people by fictions. These deeds of D. Aegidius a certain ancient Father, in some things corrected it is published. Prior of the Scallabis convent, faithfully, as an eye-witness of many things, wrote; but afterward in a very short time for us Master Andreas Resendius, many things being purged, left them to us more illustrious by his lucubrations, wholly perfected. Yet because, by the occasion of familiar colloquy, with a very biting and satirical style he used them in these, both for the favor of the reader and of that same author, many things I was compelled to invert, add, and change. For with Erasmian liberty (saving the peace of so great a man) he wished to call some things into doubt, or to mark with a censorial rod, concerning the books of Dionysius the Areopagite, of which without grave scandal of the Gauls it is now not allowed even to mutter; concerning the extermination of the Templars, concerning many other things also; to which an antidote of solution is applied, which the curious reader will not unfruitfully inspect.
PROLOGUE OF THE AUTHOR
When in days past I was going to Almeirim, a courtly village in Portugal, beautifully built only for the hunting of Kings, surrounded by uncultivated and very wide fields, full of various kinds of wild beasts; the business for which I had gone thither being finished, I also went to the city of Scallabis, which now Santarem
they call, Having obtained the ancient writings concerning B. Aegidius, that the sepulchre of the holy Father Aegidius, which is in the temple of the convent of our D. Dominic, for the cause of religion I might visit, and at the same time that the book of his deeds I might ask on loan from my fellow-monks. For I desired to write the history of the holy man in somewhat more polished discourse, partly because I owed that to my country, partly also out of a certain particular affection toward him. But there presided over the convent a religious and well-learned man, who when he had received me courteously and pleasantly, by our old friendship; the book which I asked, not only with a willing and eager mind he handed over, but also, what I of my own accord promised, with many words himself began to demand. I promised then, that I would do it; and bidding him farewell, I returned to my city. But afterward when about the Lenten holidays, for the cause of the sacred sermons, I had betaken myself to Viana, and it behoved me to preach thrice in the week; it came about, that more tardily I fulfilled my promise: nevertheless yet in the spare hours, in which I was free from the burden of sermons, I undertook the matter; and in a month and a half, with interrupted study, I finished it. As soon indeed as I could I would have published it; had not the occasion happened of turning the style and changing the manner of the discourse, that the conversation held with my dearest friends about that matter I might put into writing. For when I had returned to the city, and had betaken myself home; on a certain day at noon time I was sitting thoughtful, comparing that book with my new history; there came in moreover Loisius Pyrrhus the physician, a man to me both by the grace of his luculent erudition and by the facility of his manners not only a friend, but also pleasant. He having congratulated my arrival, and having seen the very old book, written on parchment, in a plainly barbarous style, half-eaten by moths, How, said he, you are always like yourself! But from what hiding-places have you dug out this most ancient prey? From the conventual ones, I said, Pyrrhus. I expect, said he, some treasure: for you, unless the most elegant things, are not wont to plunder. A treasure indeed, I said, though you call it: but if you expect anything of elegances, hear. Then I read some verses of prodigious latinity, nay of most monstrous barbarism. For the book was composed by I know not what author, a good indeed and religious man, who, the miracles by a witness eye-witness of most of them, as far as appears, the man of God Aegidius still acting among men, not only had familiarly known, but also was an eye-witness of his admirable life. He therefore set about to write the deeds of the blessed man, in Latin discourse indeed, as the custom of that age bore; but scatteredly, disorderly, with solecisms, stammering, and plainly barbarous: nor was there any other care to the writer, than to tell the truth, with many named witnesses, in whatever manner. But the series of his life, his country, parents, studies and conversion, were described by another more recent one, in the same character, that is, plainly barbarous. Pyrrhus, and containing the life more recently composed, as he is unaccustomed to a rude discourse, By Jupiter, said he, a charcoal treasure! Be silent, I pray you, and rather do you, what this barbarous book contains, speak out. The Life, I said, and miracles of the Blessed Father Aegidius of Scallabis. And he, This Aegidius I have heard was a magus… But in this, I said, the divine power and piety shines most especially, that men most perverse by their own fault, it renders by purifying grace most upright. It is so, said he: wherefore, unless it is troublesome to you, I should desire to hear the series of his life, but in a more polished and from your workshop discourse. he undertakes to publish them more Latinly. For a rude and unpolished discourse much detracts from things, otherwise excellent. Certainly by barbarism and slothful composition, even though the faith of the things said is not diminished (although that too) yet the affection grows cold. That very cause is, I said, Pyrrhus, why I have undertaken this work. Let our Priests of the holy Dominic have therefore their barbarous book, and keep it as a testimony of faith: I have given my work, that the name of Aegidius through the ears of the learned, of this most fastidious age, may be able to go somewhat more without offense: but do you attend your mind to the discourse, although I do not take this to myself, that I confidently shall make it so trim, that it may be able of itself to make for itself a hearing.
CHAPTER I.
The adolescence and conversion of Aegidius: His Life in the Order led even to his death.
[1] The Blessed Father Aegidius therefore was born about the year one thousand one hundred and ninety at the confluence of the rivers Vagus and Zela, Born at Vaozela, in the town Vaozela, which seems to have its name conflated from both rivers. But the town is in the diocese of Viseu, near the baths of Alaphoe. His parents, according to the dignity of the world, were both most noble in family and most religious in morals, and by the amplitude of fortune among the first illustrious. For the father, Lord Rudericus Pelagius Valladaris by name, son of Lord Suerius Pelagius Valladaris, was of the chief of the court of King Sancho the elder, and his counsellor, besides Royal Major-domo. He was also Prefect of the citadel and city of Coimbra, but not Praetor, as that barbarous book wrongly has. For a Praetor is for declaring justice: but Prefect is a military word. That it is so, the inscription of the sarcophagus shows, which, when I was a boy, at Coimbra in the convent of the Canons of S. Cross was discovered. But it is of this kind: Here is set Lord Rudericus, the Father of Friar Aegidius of Santarem, Greater Prefect of the citadel and city of Coimbra. For this is what the Punic word Alcaide sounds, which was in the inscription, which even now in that administration we Portuguese use. But his mother was called Lady Terasia Gilia or Aegidia. He had also two brothers, Pelagius Rudericus, who had the father's name inverted, and John Rodericus elder in birth. To him indeed from the mother's surname the name was given: but the father's name passed into a surname: for Gilius or Aegidius Rodericus he was called. So I find in the book of families or genealogies, written by Peter Count the bastard of King Dionysius. I consulted also concerning the same matter D. Antony of Lima, of the most noble family of the Dynasts of Lima, who composed a book on a similar argument, in the native discourse indeed, but more accurate and more accommodated to this our age. Aegidius had another brother, the mother likewise noble, and I know not whether only a brother from the former wife of the father, or also full brother, Dean of the church of Lisbon. His mother (which conduces to the clearness of the things to be said) was of the friendship of Lady Joanna Didacia, mistress of the town of Athaugia, an illustrious woman, who in the court accompanied the Queen wife of Alphonso III, whom Lord Vernandus Vernandius Cognominius had had in matrimony, from whom he had begotten Vernandus Vernandius the younger and Nunius Vernandius the Cognominii. That Nunius Vernandius under King Dionysius was Admiral of the kingdom and of great name: but Joanna, the mother of Nunius and cousin of Aegidius, built the little chapel and marble sepulchre, in which the blessed Father Aegidius after the translation was buried, for the cause of religion and kinship. This therefore I have commemorated, Pyrrhus, that both our Cognominius, and the illustrious family of the Athaidii, in whom by hereditary right the dominion of the town of Athaugia is derived, may understand the blessed man to pertain to them by no small kinship.
[2] from the Coimbra study Sprung of such ancestors B. Aegidius, began to frequent masters from his very first boyhood at Coimbra, in which city, as being at that time the seat of the Kings of Portugal, the studies of letters then flourished. But by his own genius and his father's institution he followed philosophical studies, but especially medicine; in which in a short time he advanced much, even unto the fame of his name. Which when it had pleased the King in a wonderful manner, to whom for his parents' sake he was familiarly known, and when he already proposed to himself that he would be his Archiater, his studies liberally he fostered. I find by the King's benefit he, still within boyhood, of the churches of Braga, Coimbra, and Idanha was made Canon, and of the church likewise of the divine Virgin and Martyr Irene of Scallabis, and of the Cherusca church also was Rector. Therefore when from his studies he had fallen in love with the sweetness of fame, which he had already tasted; about to cross to Paris, he resolved to set out to the celebrated Academy of Paris, that there both more learned in letters, and fuller of experience and more skilled he might return to his country. Having set out therefore with a becoming retinue, according to the dignity of his family and fortune, out of an immoderate desire of fame and name he began to think in mind, in what manner before his King, above the rest of the learned men of his age, he might become illustrious. Nor did it stand by him, as the human mind is more prone to perversity, but that this might be effected even by evil arts. To him turning these things over with himself the demon, the author and instigator of his lust, of conspicuous form, in the dress of a traveler, going the same way, appeared. And he being courteously greeted, a demon joining him on the way and a familiar colloquy having arisen (as is the custom for those making a journey), the demon having heard the cause and desire of his journey (which he himself secretly kindled) vehemently praised his purpose, but did not approve so far-off and long a pilgrimage; especially since he could attain the summit of natural philosophy and of the medical art, with a great compendium both of the way and of time, arrive. Moreover hidden and almost divine arts, which certain vain men, as unlawful through ignorance odiously persecuted, he promised that he would attain, by which both to drive away diseases, and to foreknow the events of things, and to work wondrous things above all mortals he might be able. That not far off was the city of Toledo, in which in those arts he could be instructed, only if he obeyed his words. Aegidius understood that magic arts, from which at that time in Spain men did not shrink, were spoken of by that companion of the way: and for a little while indeed thoughtful he halted, but then most badly persuaded acquiesced in the worst counsel. Wherefore the begun journey being omitted, he turned aside to Toledo, he is persuaded to learn Magic at Toledo. and to the masters of the impious and most wicked discipline, frequenting subterranean places and remote from the sight of men, according to the imposed laws by a horrendous and nefarious sacrament he addicted himself, and devoted himself to the destruction of his soul, by a written bond, made by his own hand of his own blood, given to them in testimony. The space of seven years being run through, well instructed for acting ill, and permitted to go away whither he wished, the Paris journey, which before he had begun, he undertook; and in a short time, with the greatest applause of the whole Academy, he obtained permission, that as a Doctor of the medical art, he should both be called and be. Created doctor of medicine at Paris, But in exercising the art when partly by the exact knowledge of natural philosophy, partly by the favor of the then propitious demons aided he worked most happily, and foresaw the crises of diseases most easily, he drew all both learned and unlearned into admiration of himself. Nor content with cures, miracles for the ostentation of his name he did very many, both in graver matters, and for jest and the sake of the ridiculous: and whatever things had pleased his mind, the account of the good and equitable being set aside, he permitted himself.
[3] Meanwhile the time approached, in which it pleased the Lord, to change that vessel of contumely into a vessel of honor. It happened therefore while he still dwelt at Paris, that he saw a spectre of this kind. There was on a certain
day in his library alone and with the door shut: and by a twin apparition ordered to change the state of his life, and behold there was offered to him the appearance of an armed man, made as far as it seemed of marble stone, sitting on a marble horse, who brandishing a lance in his hand, spoke these words to him with a terrible and threatening countenance: Change the state of your life: Change, I say, the state of your life. And these things being said he vanished. But he then indeed sad and astonished pondered the things seen with himself, and from the conscience of his crimes was deservedly terrified: but afterward entangled by the enticements of a more pleasant life and the bonds of sins, he began to reprove himself, as if by too great religion he feared the mockeries of phantasms. He hardened therefore, and confirmed his mind in his former life. Few days intervened, when in the library reading there was present again that armed man, with a similar apparatus, but with a far more terrible expression of countenance; and his horse being driven at him, Change, Change, Change, he said, the state of your life, otherwise I will kill you. Then indeed stupefied, I will change, he said, Lord; and I beseech you to pardon me, that to your former command I did not more maturely obey. Whom when that fierce horseman saw bearing himself more submissively, with the point of his lance he lightly pricked his breast above the heart, and at once departed. But he so pricked, thought the wound had descended into the inmost heart. Wherefore weeping and wailing he began to call his servants, and to command, that they should at once prepare for departure: for he wished to withdraw from that land, and to return to his country. And a copious fire being kindled, he burned the books of magic superstition, and his baggage being quickly composed he secretly departed, straightway by great journeys hastening into Portugal. And while he was on the way, from sadness, and fasting and weariness he incurred a quartan fever: on account of which however he never interrupted the contention of the journey, as one wounded in heart, and fleeing himself, and uncertain of mind, what most of all was to be done by him for his salvation.
[4] Meanwhile he came to Palencia, where then very newly the Priests of the just-arisen Order of Preachers, He embraces the Order of Preachers at Palencia: according to the institute of the most holy man Dominic, were building a convent. Whom when Aegidius saw laboring in the work, and ministering sedulously to the masons and the other craftsmen, without any haughtiness of blood, of rank and of knowledge; he desired to join himself to them; and morning being come, he met the Rector of the convent, and asked anxiously, that he would receive his Confession. And when he had laid open the stains of his life led thus far, and his recent purpose, that religious man, desirous of making gain of him, consulted his fellow-monks, whether it pleased that he be received. Soon with great joy of all, his head shaved and his lay garments laid aside, with the regular habit of the Order he was clothed, and coming to the door of the convent, his servants consternated by that deed and weeping much, he bade them farewell, all his furniture being divided among them. To this he gave letters to his father, in which he narrated in order the things which had befallen him. But he himself punishing in his flesh his former indulgence, gave himself wholly to fastings and works of penance; reduced to so great humiliation and lowliness of himself, that he seemed more cheerful to every most abject ministry, than he had been before more desirous of human praise and glory. He used a most sparing diet, partly of his own accord, partly because the monks were pressed by such poverty, that almost, the coarser bread and a little wine excepted, nothing was set before them at dinner more sumptuous, than for each a leaf of cooked cabbage, sometimes anointed with a little oil, sometimes only from boiling water and salt macerated rather than seasoned. With an iron girdle, broken in four joints, under a hair-cloth garment, over his bare flesh he girt himself, so buckled that it could not easily be opened or unbuckled. That as long as he lived was wholly unknown and hidden, after his death, while he was being prepared for burial, it was discovered. Of which we will speak in its place. The annual catechesis being completed, thence sent to Scallabis, which before he was initiated according to the canonical sanction was to precede, when he had vowed the institute of life, he returned to his country; and the Scallabis convent, then celebrated by regular discipline and the frequency of most grave Fathers, he chose to inhabit: which convent indeed, in the first beginnings of the rising Order, the most holy Father Dominic still living, B. Dominic of Cuba his disciple and companion, and by him sent into Portugal, not many years back by Royal favor had built, where also buried he rests.
[5] In this therefore Aegidius afflicted himself with wondrous harshness: but grievously the covenant entered into with the demon, and the unhappy written bond, he is much tormented on account of the written bond given to the demon: which written with his own blood he had given to him, anguished him. Wherefore with an abundant river of tears he anxiously besought Christ, that he would have mercy on him; yet the Mother of God, as being more specially the patroness of the Order of Preachers, he venerated with a peculiar and most ardent affection, in whom he had placed very great confidence that by her merits that written bond would be blotted out. Therefore an assiduous watcher in the chapel built for the daily chapters, the place is called of the Chapter, in which hung let down from the tower through an opening the rope, by which the cymbal is struck, prostrate before the altar of the blessed Virgin, almost whole nights he passed sleepless; when yet meanwhile most grave slanders of the demons he suffered, contriving to drag him to the pit of despair. For as he himself afterward, when he exhorted the younger ones to the endurance of temptations, with simple mind and familiarly related, who under various forms tempts him, he suffered various assaults of the devil, now showing him chaos and horrible darkness, now souls burning with their bodies in eternal fires: sometimes the wicked enemy set himself in the appearance of a very great and very large tortoise, sometimes in the image of a fierce archer attacking him with formidable arrows, and like one now about to shoot, he set himself before his eyes: but sometimes, having confessed who he was, he tore him with reproachful vituperations and curses: so that he afterward asserted, that he would rather a thousand times undergo a capital sentence, than fall again into the foul image of such spectres and the savagery of the demons. At whose wicked terrors, and manifold illusions and forms, by which they set themselves conspicuous to him, terrified and from the conscience of past things fearful Aegidius, with a querulous anxiety much more fled to the refuge of the most holy Mother of God. For after almost seven years from his conversion, on a certain nocturnal vigil to him praying more afflictedly and importunately the demons were present, with strong clamors crying out that he did nothing thereby: he should remember, that he had bound himself to hell by a most evil deed, he should remember Christ abjured by an inexpiable crime, he should remember the Christian religion held for nothing; that there was now no place left for any penance however great, that he afflicted himself in vain, in vain wearied with prayers heaven wholly shut to him.
[6] These and like things when they cast forth, by which he being cast down from the grade of constancy might defile his afflicted soul by the extreme crime of despair; and to him praying before the image of the Blessed Virgin Aegidius to the statue of the Virgin, which was on the altar, for a little while raised; amid most bitter sobs, with what voice he could, Most holy, he said, Queen, indeed when I weigh my crimes with myself, all things worthy of my deeds, which these object, I myself acknowledge: but when of the omnipotence, when of the mercy, when of the placability of your Son, when also of your piety I am mindful, I cannot but resume great hope, I cannot but hope for better than I deserve. Show, most clement Virgin, according to your Son's sentence, that they are both liars and the fathers of a lie: and your servant, adoring you with the greatest anxiety of heart and spirit, fleeing to this altar to be venerated with your sign, imploring afflictedly your heavenly deity, with good hope, and with the good help you can, console. Why do we delay with many words? Amid the voices of those proudly thundering and threatening, consternated through anguish and terror the suppliant Aegidius, was little short of breathing out his soul. But behold the written bond of the unhappy pact before the altar of the Virgin appeared, let down through the aforementioned opening by those reproaching, and complaining that violence was done to them by the blessed Mother of God. There will not be able, I do not say my eloquence, which indeed is very small, but any human eloquence to explain according to its dignity the gladness, the tears, the thanksgivings, and the sound madness for the sweetness of the divine Mother, with which Aegidius was affected: to whom a new light to his eyes was offered from heaven, that he might understand, that to the most benign Father the sober penance of a returning son did not displease. Yet his affection toward the blessed Virgin was much increased, which already before seemed not able to grow. So much that if to sacred things it is allowed to ascribe love-madness, nowhere was it more, than in Aegidius alone to be found: so wholly did the love of the divine Mother guard him with special care. For in return for that seven years, exhausted by persevering endurance of urging temptations, in another seven years by the grace of the undefiled Virgin he was so rewarded, that perpetually from God a certain light, in the manner of a kindled lamp, everywhere he beheld present to him, as a sure and present fortification against the nefarious powers; until at length, the dread of the foul spirits being laid aside, not only at their sight was he not terrified, but he himself rather was a terror to them.
[7] So great a burden, by which by the greatest reason Aegidius was anguished and pressed, by the grace of Christ and the merits of His Mother being taken away, daily becoming in mind more quiet and more cheerful (not that on that account he intermitted the rigor of penance, or permitted himself to be carried away by desires, nay he thenceforth macerated himself the more, the more confidently also now) but yet become more cheerful in mind, the divine studies of sacred theology he undertook, with so great avidity, that day and night, as much as he was free from prayer, nothing else either he did or meditated. That he might do this more expeditely, to Paris again he betook himself; Having returned to Paris and by the college of the Dominical Priests, recently indeed there built, but flourishing with the greatest geniuses of his age, somewhat helped by his former fame, and the royal commendation through letters, kindly he was received; and to Jordan of holy memory, who had succeeded the blessed Dominic in the rule, on account of the conspicuous sanctity of his life made dear. he was familiar to Umbert afterward Master of the Order, Yet a more familiar friendship he contracted with the venerable Umbert, who also after the same governed the Order with the highest praise. But of his holy conversation at that time chapter 2 of the fourth part, of the book which is called, the Lives of the Brethren, his name however being suppressed, these things are had. Concerning a certain Spanish Brother, a man of eminent sanctity and illustrious authority, who in the world was in a great state, the venerable Father Master Umbert (who was his companion and very familiar long in the Paris convent, and with him in the same chamber infirm) narrated that he was of such great virtues, that when the Brethren were in the schools, he himself went to the chambers, and those he found defiled he cleaned, and the filth of the infirmary he carried out: which were set before him, although contrary, and he was a physician, with thanksgiving he took. When anyone needed him in anything, at once all things being dismissed he showed himself wholly to him with a prompt mind and a glad face: and not only bodily things, but also prayer and devotion and the like, on account of fraternal charity, to be dismissed by deeds and words he taught. Offending no one, to his superiors
in all things acquiescing, who describes his sanctity with many things, always either praying, or reading, or teaching, or meditating, reputing less useful study and for little, although he was of great learning. The Lives of the Fathers and Saints he heard and related gladly: to hasten to preaching and fruit concerning others, himself being neglected, he very much reproved. Strengthening all by his holy conversation, to the love of the Order, and of holy poverty, and of true obedience he animated them. Scarcely ever were tempted novices led to him, but that much consoled they returned. The infirm moreover he himself infirm much with his consolations refreshed, admonishing that they should not care about medicinal things; but in the faith of Christ, whatever was set before them, gladly receive; and it would profit them best. Because (he said) grace can do more than nature; Christ, than Galen. But when some poured themselves out through rumors or secular words, being silent and somewhat enduring, little by little and insensibly as if mingling words about God, most courteously he transferred them to a more salubrious matter: so that in his presence idle words could not endure. Scarcely could it be noted, that once in a year he said an idle word. From his place he never withdrew for any recreation or otherwise, except for the cause of necessity or use. But he was so rapt in holy meditations and contemplation, that sometimes the Brethren, coming to visit the infirm, even sitting also beside him, he did not notice: and after he returned from another world, he rose to them and received them joyfully, as if they came anew.
[8] These things in the aforesaid book, in part written, in part approved by Master Umbert. in the book on the Lives of the Brethren. With which companion of studies he used such dexterity of genius, the divine grace already also more special cooperating in him, that in a small course of time by the Chancellor of Paris to the summit of Doctor he was promoted, and of the sacred Letters, by the authority of the Fathers of the Order, through Spain he was ordained Lector. Concerning this, which in his history I had found, when I had somewhat doubted; that book, which we mentioned above inscribed the Lives of the Brethren, confirmed me; whose words are these in book 4, title On the virtue of prayer: These things Brother Aegidius of Portugal wrote, a man simple and upright, and fearing God, in the world great in the arts and physic, and in Theology in the Order a Doctor. And likewise in the title On diverse visions; Brother Aegidius the Spaniard, who was in the world great in the arts and physic, and in the Order in the sacred Page a Lector, who was Provincial Prior twice in Spain, a religious man, pious and truthful, to his companion, Brother Umbert Master of the Order, sent in writing these following examples. Where also it is to be noted to those who read that book, both in these places which I have brought forward, and in others, where Aegidius is cited as a witness in that book, that some miracles, which Aegidius himself, the author's name being suppressed, commemorates, were done by that same one himself: as will be plain to those, who shall have compared the things, which we write, with that book.
[9] Returned after these things into Portugal, by acting, teaching and preaching, Thence returned into Portugal to double the talent committed to him even above a man's measure he studied. The ancient assassin of souls envied so great successes, and so much the more, as the ampler and severer dominion he had once exercised over Aegidius: which at length having lost when he was tormented, nothing did he not do, no snare did he omit. But when now in open war, he in no wise profited against him, who had fortified himself on every side by the virtue of the spirit, by more hidden mines he attempted. There was therefore at a certain time the man of God in the Coimbra convent, on the divine letters and the ministry of the word a not undiligent nor unfruitful work bestowing. Which because it displeased that evil one, the man of God meditating in a secret place, in the feigned image of a certain monk, he assailed; and gradually growing hot, reproaches and injuries most insolently against him he cast, the blessed Aegidius wondering much at that insolence, and most dishonorably harassed him. he is assailed with revilings by a demon Yet the slanderous knave did not win what he wished. For Aegidius, answering nothing immoderately, departed from him; and the colloquy of the religious Father Friar Dominic Pelagius the Convent-head being asked, he most instantly demanded the faculty of going away to Scallabis; affirming that he would no longer stay at Coimbra, unless from obedience he were compelled, meanwhile making no mention of the injuries inflicted. The Prefect of the convent wondering at the novelty of the request, and suspecting (which was so) that something unworthy had befallen him, equally instantly the cause, why he so greatly wished it, inquired. Then he, Never, he said, did anyone hear greater reproaches nor heavier vituperation from anyone, than I just now from a certain brother. To him urging, a demon appearing under the appearance of Friar Julian, and inquiring, who that Brother was; He himself, he said, is Friar Julian the Gaul. The Prefect caused him to be called thither, and standing by; Prostrate yourself, he said, to Father Aegidius, and ask pardon from him. Julian prostrate, a very upright and modest man; The cause, he said, I should wish to know, and what complaint Father Aegidius has of me. He has, said the Prefect, assailed by you today with most atrocious injuries. By the holy Son of God, said Julian, I today made no word, whether good or evil, to Father Aegidius, whom before this hour I have not addressed: and a better mind I hope the Omnipotent will give me, than that I should come to such madness. They began therefore to wonder; at length the tricks of the evil demon were detected, busy both to impede the public utility, and in the soul of the holy man to fix the sting of thorny hatred against a brother. But its iniquity lied to it: for both with ampler charity thenceforth Julian himself the man of God loved, and a great heap to the labors of teaching and preaching he added, so that to that good man that small and to his Brother vain illusion turned.
[10] Therefore the fame of his sanctity increasing daily, twice of all Spain (for not yet into Provinces was the administration of the convents divided) Provincial Rector, and made Provincial of Spain, not so much by the suffrages collected on the index tablet, was proclaimed, as by the living voice and consent of all proclaimed. In which magistracy or rather ministry, scarcely can it be said with how great labors he exercised himself, never abusing the honor unto pride; but daily casting himself more below himself; even in maturer old age now, wherever Spain is, on foot making the journey, unless very rarely by sitting on a vile little ass from too great fatigue he were relieved. a second time he asks to be absolved and obtains it. Yet the later magistracy of this kind, which not many years after, when he had finished the former, he was compelled to enter, that it might be allowed him to renounce it, in the general Chapters with difficulty he obtained; but to him asserting that through too great old age he was not equal to bearing it, it was permitted, that from it he should abdicate. Thence however to his own at Scallabis withdrawing, the rest of the sepulchre for his wearied body, and for his soul, which had performed great labors, the heavenly reward, when it should be pleasing to God, glad he awaited.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER II.
The ecstatic love of B. Aegidius toward God, attested by frequent and long rapture.
[11] In yesterday's discourse, when the acts of our Aegidius almost from the cradle, so to speak, even to perfection I had deduced, I promised that his conversation and virtues more particularly I would today narrate. B. Aegidius burning with charity Whence therefore should I more aptly begin than from that greatest charity of his, by which toward God he was so affected, that often from a vehement desire of supernal things he incurred a languor, nor could rise from his bed for some days; having no other cause of languor, except to desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, to whom only now to live was Christ and to die was gain? Certainly as often as either he gave himself to prayer, or somewhat more attentively contemplated divine things, most frequent ecstasies he suffered; sometimes raised from the earth two cubits, that fiery spirit and soul burning with divine love, the corporeal mass now almost not weighing at all: and when scarcely after the space of many hours he awoke from the sleep of contemplation, He suffers frequent Ecstasies. he grieved that that sweet drunkenness of the spirit had been taken from him. But whether prostrate he prayed, or with knees bent and set on the ground, or upright and standing, or with hands expanded, and finally in whatever other state and posture of body he was, when he was rapt thereby, he remained immovable: nor then was there to him voice, nor breath, nor any exterior sense. Only when to the sense of humanity, from that sweetness of divine contemplation, his mind was forced to return, frequent sighs and groans even afar were heard, as of a soul taking it ill to return to corporeal functions: in which manner an infant grieves and complains, if in the highest desire of milk, from the breasts of its dearest nurse it be torn away. And just as he himself, in contemplation, enjoyed the greatest sweetness, so others to it he himself exhorted; and asserted that contemplation of supernal things anywhere is by no means to be deserted; but in whatever place God instilled it into the mind, the Divinity is to be obeyed. A more fitting retreat indeed, if it can conveniently be had, is to be sought; if it cannot, it is to be guarded, lest while a more convenient place is sought, the ardor kindling the mind grow faint, and that most sweet fruit be lost. I will relate some examples, as wondrous to tell, so also pleasant to hear.
[12] The venerable Father Friar Peter of Osca, Provincial Rector of Spain, when for the cause of visiting the convents he had come to Scallabis, and the Brethren narrating the wondrous raptures of the blessed man he by no means believed; it happened on a certain solemn day, Thus rapt at Scallabis, after the salutary Sacrifice performed, that the holy man in the odeum, that is the place of the choir, which was built more capacious than before, according to his custom alone remained; and when standing upright he prayed, by the vehement force of contemplation he was absorbed and rapt. Which when some of the monks had learned, hastily they went to the Rector; and whether he wished to be made more certain of that which he did not believe, they asked. He when he had answered that he wished nothing else, ran up; and stretching out his ear, to the mouth, and to the nostrils of him alienated from his senses he applied it. And when he had perceived neither breath, nor any respiration; with the hammer of a carpenter, by no force or noise could he be brought back to himself: there among the other carpenter's instruments left on account of the celebrity of the day, on the planking near the man of God with often-repeated blows great sounds and noises to be made he ordered, yet in vain. Then indeed handling him with his hands, and hither and thither frequently and with great force pushing him, and at last with a vain attempt wearied, at length bursting into pious tears, Let us leave, he said, him to himself happily resting in his ecstasy. A happy suspension indeed his soul has chosen, and the best part, which to be taken from him I judge most unjust. And he departed, he still in that most pleasant abstraction of mind from the body enduring.
[13] On another day indeed, when in his bedchamber to reading the books of blessed Dionysius he was free, the same befell him reading a book of S. Dionysius, by whose reading beyond measure he was affected, he fell upon that place, where that writer commemorates the divine love to be ecstatic and singular, and besides this sweet and illuminating. There Aegidius for a little while tarrying, suddenly into a most voluptuous rapture of mind was abstracted. There came meanwhile his companion and minister, brother Peter Joannides; and him raised from the earth in his whole body above the table, on which the book lay open, with hands stretched out to God, he found: and from the page of the open book he understood the occasion of the ecstasy. And when by the fringes of his garments drawing he strove to set him down, nor in any way could; having gone out of the chamber, hastening he began to seek the Rector of the convent, Friar Stephen; that he might announce to him what he had seen, and adduce a witness of so wondrous a thing. And when by seeking longer he delayed, Friar Peter Crutius and Friar Alphonsus of Toledo, meeting him, he led thither: but the man of God now in his chair again reading they found. Seriously and from the soul Friar Peter grieved, that he had lacked that admirable spectacle, and to his unworthiness imputed that unhappiness: yet in process of time given as companion to the holy man, a like thing he merited to see. and walking in the garden; There was contiguous to the dwelling of the man of God a little garden, fenced round with high walls, which the King (for in great honor with him and in great reverence he was held) had caused to be built and planted, that either for the cause of relaxing his mind and contemplating more quietly Aegidius might go there. Therefore after the evening synaxis, which the received use of the churches calls Compline, the aforesaid Friar Peter in the temple after prayer for a little while remained, and coming to the chamber of the man of God, found him in the little garden under the open sky and hanging in the air, with hands joined before his face and raised upward. Whom so beholding and in vain anxious lest he should fall, he went to the hurried Friar Marcus Martinius the Subprefect of the Convent, and the things he had seen being related he brought him with him, that he might contemplate the appearance of a deified man, and at the same time that he might help to place that sacred body without senses on the couch. Therefore both, from either side hither and thither pushing, with difficulty at length could move him: wherefore him not yet feeling anything, by feet and head in what manner they could dragging, to the couch they led; and his shoes being drawn off, with his beloved Jesus to rest they suffered him.
[14] As often as the most sweet name of Jesus was named by others heard or himself named it, which he was wont most frequently, incredible to say how his whole soul was liquefied. likewise hearing the name of Jesus; Therefore when according to custom he visited the place where the sick are cared for (the monks call it the infirmary, we the valetudinarium, or if it does not displease you let us say νοσοκομεῖον or νοσοτροφεῖον in Greek) all being run through, both from the art of medicine (for he was a consummate physician, as in the former discourse was shown) and from the spiritual storehouse, to some he relieved the sickness, to others the ailment also; he sat by a certain Friar Martin of Lisbon, whom by an exasperated disease he perceived to be more sharply pressed: and amid consoling words (for a singular grace God had conferred on him, in souls affected either by pain or grief to rouse them to endurance and equanimity) it happened that the sick man through the vehemence of pain, O Jesus! said groaning. Turned to him Aegidius, Do you know, said he, Brother, how sweet a name you have uttered, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus? And saying these things he rose, and standing put the staff which he carried in his hand under his elbow. Then the name of Jesus not ceasing to repeat, before all who were present into so great an abstraction of mind he was rapt, that neither pushings, nor any pullings did he feel even the least. There was in the same Scallabis convent a certain Friar Vincent of Lisbon, and before the Royal physician most skilled in the art of medicine (for he had been the King's physician) who could by no means be brought to believe these things which were narrated of the most holy man. While he therefore still remained in that excess of mind, which we just now set forth, Vincent was hastily called thither. He came, he saw: and trusting little to his eyes, the staff on which the holy man seemed to lean, swiftly he drew from him, hoping it being drawn away, he would suddenly fall: but when he wondered that he had remained in the same state of body, he began to push him hither and thither, and his nostrils being seized to tear them, of him not yet awaking from his happy sleep. Then a needle being snatched the hand of the blessed man frequently and vehemently he pricked, stupefied and applying a candle. those not approving who were present this kind of harshness. But he from contumacious become more savage, applying a kindled candle, his fingers he burned, of him feeling nothing at all. Then at last after so savage an experience, that obstinate mind acquiesced, and by penance of the danger done began much the more harshly to reprove itself.
[15] At a certain time when going to Coimbra, he had come to Lerena, Likewise at Lerena beheld by many running up: which town is at nearly equal spaces from Scallabis and from Coimbra, he turned aside at a noble and religious matron Pichena by name. And when at sunset having entered the chamber, sitting on the edge of the bed he meditated a little;
behold suddenly he was so vehemently absorbed, that raised from the earth, with none supporting him, he hung immovable. Which beholding his companion Friar Andreas Petreius of Scallabis, unaccustomed to these things, the matron being called and the household servants, with some pushings and pullings he strove in vain to set him down: for not only could he not be moved from his place, but neither even slightly inclined. Which when it became known to the neighborhood, so great a multitude suddenly ran up, that since neither the chamber nor the doors could hold the crowd, the roof itself was broken open and uncovered by those zealous to see so wondrous a thing. And he so enduring even to much of the night, those who had come to behold, partly being entreated, partly by sleep now creeping on admonished, each betook himself to his own house. But after he, awaking, learned from his companion what had befallen him, with an ingenuous rather than necessary shame, he much grieved that he had been caught by the common people; and guarding lest even the least sweetness of human praise should creep in, if the day having risen he gave opportunity of being seen, at once from the third watch, the night still being deep, he departed. Cauca is a city of nearer Spain, and at Cauca, which later ones with a fatter appellation called Conca: to this when the blessed Father Aegidius, then Provincial Rector, by the demand of office had come, and the next day in Cauca was to preach the word of God; at the beginning of night, a candle being received from his host Peter Garcia for studying, he entered the chamber; and meditating a little, as those who are to preach in the near future are wont, for the cause indeed of invention or strengthening the memory, he walked about. Then leaning on the bed, not without a miracle the fire being hindered lest it harm. when he had given himself to reading, from the more intent meditation of divine things he foresensed the force of the soul gradually to be called to contemplating the Divinity. Wherefore lest he should be seen by anyone, his arm stretched out he placed the candle on the pavement under the bed, but more negligently, since the coverlets hanging from the bedstead the flame of the burning lamp touched. His companions perceived that matter Friar John Romus by nation a Galician, and Friar Peter Bellocius; out of reverence however of the holy man to approach thither they did not dare. A fourfold miracle there happened. For both he himself until morning remained in his rapture, and just as long a time the candle burned, otherwise scarcely about to last the space of two hours; and when so long it had burned, no diminution at all was made: besides the coverlets, from so long a contact of the flame, not only not burned, but not even scorched were found.
[16] and at Ottilia In the village Ottilia, of the Coimbra diocese, when for the cause of religion he had gone to the church, and with knees bent before the altar he prayed, into a sudden excess of mind he was absorbed. There was present Lady Marina, a most noble matron, wife of Lord Consalvus Menendius the Royal Chancellor, and the holy man's own cousin, and four of her sons, men in military discipline not unvigorous, and of the servants and attendants very many. Great admiration held all, and they awaited whither the matter would end. But he so long alienated from his senses endured, until Friar Bartholomew his companion came, and pressing and drawing with great force at length with difficulty roused him, fearing lest by a longer delay those who were present should be burdened, since they almost waited past the hour of dining out of reverence. A like abstraction he suffered in the convent of Aroca, of the Cistercian institute, and at Aroca: the whole assembly of nuns being present, rejoicing and wondering at a thing so unusual. A like also at Scallabis, when at some time Friar Bartholomew Petreius, Friar Matthew, Friar John Dominic, Friar Matthew Gaudinus, who from secular nobility had assembled, and some others still novices in religion and religious conversation he taught, and concerning divine things instructed (for amid words seized by a vehement desire of divine things, at the unusual face of the matter astonished he tarried long) at length after a long expectation, thinking he had fallen asleep, they departed. But if as before you will not be loath to hear the gross Minerva of our Fathers, and at another time likewise on the way, listen. A certain Brother (it is so reported in the book called the Lives of the Brethren) who had been his companion in life, told Master Umbert, that he himself once had seen him sitting on the way, suddenly rapt in spirit, not attending to exterior things, and afterward returning to himself with much groaning, as if grieving over that he was drawn away from those supernal and inner illuminations. The holy Father himself also, still living, wrote from Spain to the same Master, that there was a certain interior light, by which even in this life the hearts of the Saints are illumined; just as the exterior eyes by the exterior light; and of this he was sure, that he would not assert thus, unless he had experienced it.
[17] In the Scallabis convent, before he had ceased to be among mortals, almost twenty years, when on a certain day he was in the odeum or choir of the monks, and in the Scallabis sacristy, and after the solemn sacrifice of the sanctifying body of Christ, that familiar attraction of the spirit to God to be at hand he foresensed; by a kind of impetus he went out that he might seek a more accommodated place, in which by the divine force rushing into him, from the sight of men more secretly and without interrupters, he might be occupied. So when the repository of the sacred vestments and the rest of the temple furniture, the monks call it the sacristy, he had set about to go to, and had found the doors shut; on a seat joined to the door he leaned, now almost wholly absorbed. There was opposite a little door, and in its panels a little latticed window, that where by those who were in the temple, the sacristan, the little door being shut, concerning the things which were of his office, more honestly could be addressed. It happened moreover at that very moment that Elvira Duranda, a most choice and religious woman, whether by chance, or to give some charge to the sacristan, or the divine will doing it, came to the little door, and through the little window what had befallen the blessed man beheld. where also he was seen wholly to become fiery. Wherefore by a religious curiosity moved, more attentively she began to inspect, whither that matter would end. But behold a column of most splendid light descended into Aegidius, which so visibly penetrating his whole body illumined it, that no otherwise than purest crystal, struck by the solar light, it radiated. The woman remained stupefied, until after nearly two hours gradually the light departed, and Aegidius awoke with a great groan emitted, as he was wont to do, as often as from the sleep of contemplation he was roused: and rising that he might go away, he began as if blind to feel the wall: which also always befell him, for a longish space after these divine ecstasies, just as it is wont to happen to those who from the most splendid and clear light of the sun enter some dark place. The prudent woman understood, that not in vain to her as it were an idle spectatress was shown that pledge of the divine reward: and therefore, although she lived in most chaste celibacy, the world being spurned, and the remainder of her age changed into a stricter institute of life, by vigils, fasting, and assiduous maceration of the flesh, and the rest of the works of charity she strove to emulate Aegidius, or if this is too much, certainly to follow him shut up in a narrow little cell, near the temple sacred to the holy Trinity: but what concerning him God had shown to her, she did not reveal until he put off humanity. For then, now not for the favor of man, but for the honor of God working such things through those dear to Him, she made the whole matter plain before many witnesses to the most holy man Bernard, of whom a longer discourse deservedly were to be had, did not the order of the narration call us to other things.
ANNOTATIONS.
Go far, you to whom is hateful the venerable Name of Christ, and in verse you somewhat fear to set Jesus, lying causes and foreign words. Pyrrhus moreover laughs at Longolius, who disputing against Luther, an oration being printed at Rome preferred to decline Jesues, Jesuis, Jesui, Jesuem, Jesue, rather than to use the indeclinable JESUS according to the custom of the Church.
CHAPTER III.
The visions of Saints and predictions of things to come.
[18] This grievous burden of the human body, when by the hereditary vice of its origin in not a few other matters it has much inconvenienced us, in this certainly chiefly harms, that as long as in this dark domicile of the flesh the soul is enclosed and contained, not only is the sharpness of the mind, overspread with a certain mist, depressed, but the corporeal sight itself also is prohibited from more divine things. For although somewhat obscurely that Majesty can be conceived and to some extent understood, yet by the fragile sense it can in no way be beheld. To the purer minds however, as a fuller notion and intelligence of Himself God always instilled and signed, so also to those who were endowed with excellent virtue and innocence of soul, or who by all abstinence and continence so attenuated the body, that wholly it was governed by the empire of the spirit, often in some form conspicuous to mortal eyes He, otherwise invisible, did not disdain to show Himself: often to the same to see, to address, and to handle those substances not concrete and not handleable, which, after the manner of the sacred Scriptures, we call Angels, it was granted: of which divine gift incapable are an ampler food and surfeit, and impurity of life. When therefore our Aegidius still in the body acted as if outside the body, In ecstasy he sees Jesus and Mary. heavenly things were frequently set before him as visions, even waking; and those minds separated from our sight, with his very corporeal eyes sometimes he saw. In the Lisbon convent, when on a certain day during the noonday rest he lay on the bed supine, his eyes lifted to heaven Jesus our savior, and the undefiled Virgin His mother towering over him he beheld: and suddenly with so great joy he was affected, that a man otherwise of admirable severity, into effuse laughter was loosed, and again and again clapped his hands with immense jubilation. Finally stretching upward his hands, into these voices also gesturing he burst, O my Jesus! O most sweet Jesus! O Jesus to be written and carried in the very heart! O most pious Mary, mother of my most pious Lord! O most holy Mother of God! O most glorious virgin, queen of earth and heaven! what thanks therefore shall I a wretched little man render you? When he thus exulting with himself repeated these things, with eyes fixed on the roof, his companion Friar Peter, who slept apart, terrified by the novelty of the matter ran up, and with simple mind asking, What, said he, is the matter, Father Aegidius, that you so laugh, clap, gesture, and speak? do you see anything? And he, Go, Brother, and sleep: what is it to you? Thus rebuked he withdrew, nor did he dare to ask further. From the words however which he had heard, he held for certain that which the matter was, on account of
the presence of the most pious Jesus and the super-blessed Virgin, that with that inner and outer joy he had exulted.
[19] King Sancho had a daughter, Sancia by name, no less illustrious than for her other virtues, by virginity devoted to Christ: of whom, although the sanctity and innocence of her life was most celebrated, yet she was of such modesty and almost lowliness of soul, that if any whom religion and virtue commended, them not only with wondrous affection she worshipped as pious, loved as fathers, but also received as sent by Christ, looked up to and venerated as Lords. Such she had shown herself toward those blessed disciples of the most holy Father Francis, who afterward in Africa were made Martyrs, such she also showed herself to our Aegidius, Visited by the soul of Queen Sancia to whom always so great honor she gave, that not only did she rise to him coming, but also with knees set down suppliantly fell before him, adding forthwith. Pray well for me, Father: bless me, Father: pray to God for me, Father. She after she had migrated from this life to the nuptials of her heavenly Spouse, as if with Aegidius she still wished to contend in benefits, to him lightly slumbering, and not yet asleep, appeared; and into an embrace she descended to him now waking in her presence. Aegidius was somewhat disturbed at the beginning; but soon when he recognized her, And how, said he, O Sancia, are you well? But I, said she, by the grace of Christ and your prayers, O friend, am most well. Peace to you: he is freed from the sting of the flesh. and having kissed his face she departed. So great force had that virginal meeting, and this address of a woman now become immortal, that all motion of the rebelling flesh not now in the mind, whence also of old that affection was banished, but not even slightly in the body, much time afterward did Aegidius feel: as he himself secretly related to Friar Bartholomew his companion, a religious man and worthy of faith, who narrated this after his death.
[20] At Lisbon in the convent of the Regular Priests of the Divine Augustine, there lived at that time a man of conspicuous sanctity, Consalvus Menendius: who from boyhood dedicated to God, He sees the soul of Consalvus Menendius when he had led very many years most innocently his life, his merits demanding, was made Convent-head. In which administration when neither by power nor by any depraved desires he was carried away, after the manner of those who abuse honors unto pleasures and pride; but rather composing himself, that day by day he might become better and holier, at length after a course of forty years, in which in the stadium of holy conversation he had toiled, to the heavenly palm he was called. In the hour of his death it happened, that the man of God Aegidius in the Scallabis convent was serving the sacred altars. And behold into a sudden abstraction of mind rapt, he saw the soul of Consalvus just now mentioned by us, the earthly mass now laid down radiating with most shining light, borne to heaven. through the spaces of this immense air by the hands of Angels borne upward. Which seen wondrously affected with pleasure, after he had tarried some while in that rapture, he returned to himself; nor for the magnitude of joy could he contain his laughter. The Rector of the monks, who to see his rapture had been called by the sacristan, when both contrary to his manner of sweetness, and contrary to the custom of his other raptures, after which frequent sighs and groans we have commemorated above were wont always to be heard, he wondered that he just now had laughed; the Sacrifice being performed him not only by earnestly asking, but also by authority interrogating he urged, that he should indicate the cause of the untimely laughter. Then he with simple mind related what he had seen; and the hour being noted it was found, that at the same time that man dear to God had migrated from this life. He who before us wrote the Life of the holy man, says, that he heard this from Martin Archdeacon of the church of Lisbon, a most learned man and in words and deeds of the best and most approved faith, in a frequent crown of Priests and many other men, confirming that the matter was thus.
[21] The Scallabis convent, as it is illustrious by antiquity and its founders, so by the frequency of most holy Fathers of old could so glory, as anywhere in the world especially. Among these therefore, when to the venerable Father Dominic Alfonsius, Subprefect of that convent, after the completed course of religious warfare, the last hour of life was at hand, and to him the monks had run together, and according to custom a litany was performed; that matter the holy Father Aegidius, both because by night it had suddenly happened, and because he himself had a chamber farther separated, was ignorant of. But behold to him lying there appeared the most religious Father Dominic Comesius, formerly Prefect of that same convent, now deceased, of whom even still holy and recent was the memory; and the arm of the man of God being seized, with cries roused him, and that more quickly to the νοσοτροφεῖον he should go he admonished, for the Subprefect was now giving up the soul, and all the Brethren there gathered, he alone was absent, whom that one especially desired to be present. that he might assist the dying Subprior. Aegidius snatched himself from his bed, and the minister being called, Matthew, said he, rise hastily, and let us go to the Subprefect, who awaits us, about to die at once. And the minister, Speak good omen, Father. He does not die. And he, Good, said he, omen I speak, since to Christ he migrates: and that I should hasten thither forthwith, Friar Dominic Comesius exhorted, who just now came to me. Going therefore they found it so, as in the vision had been shown him. So when Aegidius, the supreme farewell being said, had prayed the peace of the Saints for the dying one in the Christian manner, those who were present answering, Amen, he breathed out his soul.
[22] So far had Aegidius advanced in degree, that not only these divine visions were familiarly communicated to him, but also the horrendous forms and images, by which the demons strove to insult him, and by which he had at first long been afflicted, he now wholly with great confidence despised. When he ruled the province of Spain, and from Zaragoza (to which place for holding a provincial assembly he had set out) was returning into Portugal with his companion of the journey Friar Andreas the physician; some days in the Zamora convent he stayed, partly for office, He drives away demons like flies. partly for the cause of health somewhat affected from the journey. There when he sat alone in the valetudinary, that solitary leisure to reading and meditation after his manner bestowing; he rose suddenly, and his cloak seized with both hands, he began to the right and left vehemently by waving to move it, as if some importunate flies with some linen he were driving away. There came up meanwhile his companion, and wondering at that labor vain in his opinion, because the place seemed wholly empty of flies; What is it, said he, Father, that you weary yourself in that manner? And he, do you not see, said he, how many demons have assembled, who deride me with gestures, and with dishonest sayings attack me? But I retorting the same curses upon them, am busy hence to drive away the impudent ones and to shut them out by force. That this so happened, when the same Friar Andreas afterward most constantly related, he who before us committed these things to writing, asserts for certain that he heard from him.
[23] That not hidden from our Aegidius were many things, which each one kept with himself as most secret and done with no witnesses, among the miracles of holy Friar Bernard I found written. Endowed with the spirit of prophecy, That he certainly foreknew things to come, either from things foreknown, against a certain novice from the snares of the demon, which we will relate, when of the efficacy of prayer a little below it shall be treated, or by the example which I will now subjoin, can be proved. I think you are not ignorant, that Sancho later of this name, a man indeed not bad, was a King not good: which when I say by no means understand any tyrant (for not by his own nature was he such) but from the best auspices of the kingdom, not without suspicion of poisoning, fallen into so great pusillanimity and sloth of soul, that addicted to certain Palatines, whom he had raised to a power more than just, by their judgment and lust as if by prescription he did all things, no account of the good or equitable being had, no care of administering justice. To him, after to the frequent complaints of the Portuguese commonwealth Honorius III, and after him Gregory IX, and Innocent IV the supreme Pontiffs, by admonishing profited nothing; it was necessary in the Council of Lyons, a helper and successor being destined, to provide for the lacerated and collapsing Kingdom, as from our histories, and from that rubric on supplying the negligence of Prelates, chapter Grandi, in the Sext, you could know. In these when by the Legates and Bishops to Aegidius it had been commanded, that privately first, soon also publicly in sermons the Pontifical letters he should publish; he foretells the death of his mocker: a certain Martin Rool, of those who by flatteries and depraved counsel had abused the Royal facility, savagely against the holy man, in casting contumelies grew hot. By silence and patience the man blessed broke the assault about to proceed to further things: and turned to Friar Andreas the physician, who was his companion present, Believe, said he, me Brother, for this man a most foul and violent end is at hand, which in a short while he will not escape. Nor a long while after, that man by the King's command driven to the gallows, by a noose his neck being broken, perished.
[24] That to those who love God, all things turn unto good, Paul testifies, namely to those who according to the purpose of God Himself are called holy: for whom He foreknew, he says, He also predestined, to be made conformed to the image of His son: but whom He predestined, these also He called; and whom He called, these also He justified; and whom He justified, these also He magnified. Rom. 8, 29. In general the Apostle spoke: but if toward our Aegidius the purpose of God and dispensation with a more attentive mind we weigh, not easily will it occur, where more closely this may be allowed to behold. For since the Lord knows who are His, He foreknew Aegidius, to be at some time great in His church, and so foreknown to great things He predestined. Which without doubt God's purpose, as it preceded the vocation, so at length the same vocation also it behoved by the thing itself to follow: but when to Him calling the obedience of the called was at hand, not into a long delay was the justification deferred. Moreover the justified one how greatly the most ample bounty of the Justifier magnified, will shine I think to those considering, how always as if at hand he had God, after He began to him, so to say, to become familiar. Hence to him at his requests the never-failing presence of the Deity, and prayers to God, I do not say now permitting itself to be entreated, but to be entreated of its own accord inviting, by no means void of effect. Under the end of the first Chapter we noted, that Aegidius for the cause of sacred studies to the city of Paris had again returned, and in a grave danger of famine, where for the merit of eminent knowledge and ascertained sanctity the title of Doctor, which however he did not seek, he was compelled to receive; and the office of teaching being publicly imposed through Spain, when he made his return, together with his companion he came to the borders of Poitiers. But when from earliest dawn even to the sixth hour making the journey they had begun to hunger; Aegidius, who on account of the rigor of his accustomed abstinence was of a weaker body, by weariness more than by hunger was pressed. He counseled therefore
that to a neighboring village, although little frequented, they should turn aside, where with food begged from door to door they might rest a little from fatigue. On the contrary the companion, because he was both more well-conditioned and more corpulent, since he was less weary but hungered more, said it was to the purpose to go farther to a more frequented and more abundant village: for from that ignoble little hamlet what was to be hoped, whereby the present necessity could in any wise be provided for: then if nature were less satisfied, there would be danger, lest the strength for the way should not suffice. Aegidius admonishes him not to collapse in mind; God being indeed powerful in so small a place, even above what they needed, to supply. He confessed indeed that He was powerful: yet that He was not so wont. Fear not, said he, dearest one, here Christ will abundantly supply for us.
[25] While among themselves they thus consult, there came up a noble heroine, refreshed copiously by a noble youth, Lady of the castle of S. Maxentius in the Poitevin territory, with a great retinue going elsewhere. Who from the Preacher family, toward which she was religiously inclined, recognizing them to be by their dress, halted; and salutation being said officiously, with Aegidius, whom his more advanced age and the gravity of his aspect commended, for a while conversing, from the weight of his words she easily understood the sanctity of the man. And turned to her son who came along, Peter son, said she, these servants of God, by making the journey very weary, for the reverence of God and the love of me provide for: and reverently she departed. But the youth, at his mother's command at once departing, a competent place of noonday rest being prepared, having led them to the castle refreshed them with a copious banquet. For the best pasties, stuffed with good fish, which had been prepared for his mother, he took; and wine, and cheese, and eggs, and bread too fresh, and other fish he offered to the Friars abundantly; and not only making the servants minister, he himself also eagerly both stood at the cups and ran about for the dishes, inviting and beseeching, that with joy they should receive the things offered, since they were the poor of Christ, and there remained for them a difficult and laborious way. Therefore being sumptuously refreshed, when they had given thanks to God, he presages that same one will become religious. Let us pray, said Aegidius to his companion, the Lord God and the most clement Virgin, that this youth who so profusely ministered to us, they may guard by their benignity and make peculiar to themselves. Then with knees set down, and a Hymn being said, Come Creator Spirit, and the Antiphon, Hail Queen, with prayers fitted according to custom, they bade him farewell. After this a three-year period being passed, the man of God Aegidius, when he held the Provincial magistracy of the convents, from Spain to Paris, to the general assembly of the Priests of the Preacher institute, in that place appointed, set out. In which setting-out when to the Poitiers convent he had come, that youth, now a professed monk, having learned from the scattered fame of his coming, ran up; and for joy weeping, the Prefect of the convent being present, fell at his knees; and, Do you know, said he, me, Father and Patron? To whom Aegidius: Not enough indeed, Brother, except that I seem to recognize your face: but where in the world I have seen you, I do not hold in memory. And do you, said the youth, remember the Lady of the castle of S. Maxentius and Peter her son, for whom with bent knees you prayed? Behold me, and by your prayers I believe it was effected, that into this holy society I have been chosen. Which heard Aegidius with the highest eagerness admitted him to the kiss of peace, and exhorted him to the study of virtues and religion.
[26] When by Office he had visited the Barcelona convent, and to Majorca, the other of the Balearic islands, he proposed to go, he embarked with his companion and some others, who for the cause of honor and observance had joined themselves to him. The anchors therefore being raised they had begun to make sail, when one of the passengers clearly sneezed. That sneeze the shipmaster and some merchants who were carried along, taking as an inauspicious omen, Sailing the sinister omen being despised, resolved to turn the ship to shore. Then the man of God began to admonish all with wondrous doctrine, that they should hold their course; nothing was to be feared, from that that man had sneezed; that dreams and auguries were a thing most full of vanity, and so by those who had professed Christ ought to be alien from the mind. He was obeyed: by shame however more than by will. They had now wholly given themselves to the deep; and behold, by the devil's, as I believe, cunning, the winds rose, and the sea from the bottom was moved, in an unwonted manner swelling with mountains of waters. By a foul tempest therefore tossed hither and thither, when they despaired of safety, of the merchants one, whom impudent madness and a genius prompt to crime made bolder than the rest; with an angry and insolent countenance the man of God and his companions with reproaches he set about to assail, sparing no words, however dishonest and contumelious; himself and the rest much reproving, who foolish, persuaded by the discourse of one cowled man, had come into the present and inevitable danger of death, and had not believed sneezings, a thing by many experiences before proved. Therefore they were paying worthy penalties of their folly: but more foolish were they and too cowardly, who against the authors of their death set before their eyes neither took vengeance nor cast all those monks to a man into the sea. he calms the tempest arisen: And scarcely did he restrain his sacrilegious hands from the crime. These things Aegidius when he had heard, and saw the shapeless tempest on every side, spreading his hands to heaven, Does it please You, said he, Lord, that by this most savage storm of the sea we be overwhelmed, and the malign ostentator of auguries conquer? Succor, I pray, Your servants, Lord Jesus, whose hand is most powerful, whether on land or on sea, to give in the extreme of despair safety.
[27] When with eyes raised upward, all hearing, he had uttered these words; suddenly from its fury the sea stood, and the winds being silent the waves subsided. At so wondrous a thing astonished all who were in the ship, gradually from fear breathing again, ran up to the man of God, and some besought that he would stretch out his hand for kisses, but others to have touched the fringes of his cloak held it surely enough; yet before all that merchant before insolent, by penance of the deed and shame confounded, fell at his knees, and amid the greatest sobs asked pardon. and pardoning the injury done to him, he knows and cures an inveterate hatred. I will pardon you, said Aegidius, if you also will pardon those who have sinned against you; for that man bore inexorable enmities with a certain kinsman of his, by whom he had been struck grievously on the head, so that he had remained lulled by the wound, and some bones and a particle of the cranium broken had been taken from him in the cure: and although the Bishop of the city, the chief of the citizens, kinsmen and brothers, frequently had labored to appease this man with his kinsman, yet by no prayers of anyone could he be entreated, but the time and occasion of avenging himself with capital hatred he watched. And now restored to life, which a little before had been despaired of, besides touched with religion, and into the hope of having his sin pardoned raised, he broke the hardness of his soul, and the old offense to his kinsman for the favor of the holy man freely remitted. Aegidius embraced the man, and both him, and all the rest, that the mercy of God toward them they should praise together, he exhorted: then thereupon by a gentle and prosperous wind having unexpectedly obtained a favorable weather, to Majorca they were borne.
[28] At Scallabis when he was, at a certain time he had as companion Friar Geraldus, a man well lettered, who afterward with the title of Doctor of sacred Theology, his merits demanding, was distinguished. It happened therefore on a certain evening, the holy Father being more familiarly addressed by Geraldus for the cause of instructing him, that he prolonged the discourse to much of the night. His dwelling at length, which longish separated, was his, we have already said, when according to custom he went out to look, whether all things were right with the sleeping monks; so great a crash suddenly with terrible voices sounded, that Geraldus, who lit the way before him, by terror almost fell down astonished; and the torch which kindled he carried, from his trembling hand fell. divinely understanding a novice to flee, And he, Fear not, said he: Our sheepfold that rapacious wolf has set snares for: someone from the convent he is contriving to drag out whom he may devour. He commanded therefore, that he should kindle the torch, and follow. Meanwhile Friar Dominic Alfonsus, the Subprefect of the convent, of whom a little before we treated, lamenting came up; and indicated with many groans and sobs, that a certain one of the catechumens or novices, amid the darkness having climbed the roof had fled. He was of a disposition and genius very excellent, and by no small token of virtue had raised the minds of all to the greatest hope: whose excellent beginnings the enemy envying, him, under the day of his imminent profession, with so vehement a temptation struck, that he impelled him in the nocturnal silence through the tiles to go out. When this the Subprefect lamented, Not me, said Aegidius, the roaring lion has deceived: but check your tears (for those who were present were weeping) now I from the unjust prey and spoil, in which he vainly rejoices, will strip the robber. And at once falling down, suppliantly the return of the Brother from God he insisted to demand with confidence, nor until master of his vow and victor did he desist. For the fugitive, who above the roofs had escaped, the places of his future flight being first noted and observed, long wandering about in a kind of vertigo, he promises that he will soon return. when at length he came to leap down, before he was to leap his mind being restored, he began as if from a writing set before his eyes thus with himself: Whither now traitor? Was this that for which, when you betook yourself hither, lying at the knees of S. Aegidius, that into his trust he would receive you, suppliant you adored? Was this that for which the divine man, to pray to God for you, so often you solicited? Return to your patron, inconsiderate client: prostrate yourself to your father, fugitive son. Not he to you, although you deserve it, will close the path of his accustomed piety. And by a sudden change of mind, he who tremblingly in silence had gone away, fear being laid aside with great wailing returned to the cloister; and hastening to the dwelling of the blessed man, still found him for him in prayer prostrate. And it being narrated, with most abundant weeping, what had befallen him, the following day willing and gladly to the vow of sacred servitude he bound himself, and gave his name; and to the former, which he had borne, expectation with great increases day by day he by no means was lacking.
ANNOTATIONS.
to Cologne of that institute we believe. But in the Obituary book, as they call it, of this Convent it is thus written, On the 8th Kalends of March died Lord Gundisalvus Menendi, Prior of S. Vincent in the year 1249: whom on account of the things which here are narrated concerning him Cardosus referred into his Hagiology on the day 22 February.
CHAPTER IV.
Miraculous healings, obtained at the invocation of him present or absent.
[29] Before the convent at Lisbon was built, some who for the cause of preaching had been sent thither by Aegidius, He frees a woman from a flux of blood. used the lodging of Lady Urraca, a powerful matron, who therefore had yielded to them the other part of the house, because she was both rich, and the mother of Friar Dominic Martini, who had given his name to that same religion. There was therefore at Lisbon a woman of honest family, who for nineteen years suffered a most harsh flux of spontaneous blood, by a contumacious disease and superior to all cure. She met Urraca, and with many prayers begged from her to be reminded, when the man of God Aegidius had come; that she had conceived confidence, that by the touch only of his garment the long-lasting flux would stop. The wish of the afflicted one was carried out: and it being announced that the holy man had come, when she had run up, she fell at his feet, and kissed the lowest garments. Aegidius drove her away, not that he despised the woman, but that from modesty he turned away the great honor. But her excusing the deed, to which not so much by rashness as by desire and hope of remedy she had been made bold, those who were present aided, beseeching that the good little woman and suppliant he would not be loath to help. May Christ help her, said he. Go, daughter, and according to your faith be it done to you. The woman going away, at once felt the flowing blood to be restrained, nor by that inconvenience besides the fixed law of the months was she any further afflicted.
[30] A noble matron, Maria Antiocha by name, when through ten years she had remained barren, and (as the nature of women desiring children bears) with medicaments conducing to conception long with vain labor had wearied herself; at length the frustration of the physicians being perceived, she esteemed the remedies of sterility rather to be sought from God. She had a singular affection of religion and piety toward the most holy Father Dominic, the founder of the Preacher institute, very lately at that time referred among the Saints: she had also toward this our Aegidius a like, and almost equal. Wherefore with many prayers she begged from him, that he would beseech the holy Father Dominic, to bring help to her long-lasting sterility; and if by the merits of both she obtained a son, she would consecrate him to D. Dominic under the discipline of Aegidius himself. Nor did hope frustrate the woman, nor did the woman frustrate the faith of her promises. For she conceived and bore a son, to whom she gave the name Dominic: whom he who before me wrote these deeds, testifies, that in religious conversation he saw a youth of approved disposition. But the fame of the obtained miracle of conception being spread abroad, other unfruitful women also took occasion of asking like things. There were returning from Seville Friar Stephen Virducus, and Friar Martin Consalvius of Lisbon: and when they had come to Faro, a town of the Turdetan territory at the Cuneus promontory, and at Diodocus Alfonsius the Prefect of the castle being received in lodging they turned aside; his wife Mecia leading them apart to a colloquy narrated, that from her girlish years she was exceedingly studious of the Order of Preachers, and inclined to deserve well of all of them; yet Aegidius, whose fame then was celebrated, neither known by face, nor ever seen, with a wondrous affection of soul specially she observed, and whatever of him she had heard by reports she admired and revered. Then she greatly desired to be made more certain, whether a certain Maria Antiocha had obtained a son by his prayers. When they asserted that as a thing ascertained, Would, said she, that as much my prayers prevail with him, for many years now I am in an unfruitful matrimony, and I fear lest on that account I be hateful to my husband, otherwise a good spouse. They, having exhorted her to be of good cheer, withdrew, that they would carry her request to Aegidius. When thus they had come to Lisbon, according to their promise, to the blessed man both the benignity of the lodging, and the bereavement of the honest house, and the propensity of the religious matron toward the Order of Preachers and so toward Aegidius himself they set forth. Moved to mercy Aegidius, Come, said he, Let us pray the most clement Virgin Mother of God, that to this family she be present, and the sad spouses with offspring granted she console. With knees bent therefore before the Virgin's altar, all the Friars who were present he ordered, to chant Hail Queen, himself subjoining a prayer. The following night, as afterward was ascertained, the woman conceived; and when she had borne a son, on the lustral day of holy baptism she called him Diodocus Aegidius, the father's name being given, but the surname from the name of the holy man, by whose prayers she by no means doubted she had conceived him.
[31] The man of God Aegidius had a brother, younger in age, Dean of the church of Lisbon, whose was the village Azoia in the Scallabis territory, to which for his brother's sake not rarely Aegidius came, for the cause of sacred sermons. So when there at some time he was, and not only in the temple of divine things and virtue he discoursed, but in the open also wherever some had come together to hear him he perceived; it happened that a cock, near him having a sermon not ceasing to crow, made noise and disturbed: which that he might put to flight Aegidius his staff being thrown, with a blow surer than he wished, struck on the head he killed. The killed one, some of the crowd removed far from sight, lest by that any sadness the holy man should be affected: but he the sermon being finished asked, where was the cock which he had struck. Those answering that it was dead, he commanded it to be brought; and set before his feet, he began to reprove himself, O holy Mary, he raises a dead cock. surely I have done ill, that against a bird void of reason I so grew hot. Then looking up to heaven, for a little while within himself like one praying, with his staff he struck the lying cock saying, Come rise now, rise, and performing your wonted office of voice, with your singing praise your creator. At once the cock rose, and with wings clapped repeating its song, was a most pleasant spectacle to the wondering crowd. In the book which is inscribed the Lives of the Brethren, I find that to a certain unnamed Brother, this happened at Majorca, while he prepared himself to have a sermon before the Sisters, who had received the habit from the blessed Father Dominic: but since there it is said, that this by Friar Aegidius the Spaniard, a holy and true man, among other things was written; I have often doubted with myself, whether for the cause of avoiding glory Aegidius, what he himself had done, the author not being named wrote, just as at other times he was wont, as in the former volume we noted; or whether in the very deed a like thing wholly befell another Brother at Majorca. For this which we have here narrated of Aegidius, is read to have happened at Azoia a village of the Scallabis territory, in the presence of Friar Bernard of Morlanes a holy man, Friar Bartholomew Petreius, Friar Dominic of Siseria, Friar Peter Crucius, Friar John de Marbilla, Friar John Turrius, who after the death of the holy man asserted the matter so done: which also he who before us collected these things, testifies that he heard from Hermensa a good woman, an inhabitant of that village, who had been present at the miracle.
[32] That Aegidius was a most skilled physician, has been said more than once, wherefore daily by diverse persons he was visited, flocking to him, both on account of his skill and the facility of his manners and gratuitous cure, and on account of his sanctity, from which they held it most persuaded that medical help proceeded. On a certain day therefore there came to him together two men, With blessed oil he cures a hunchback and a bleary-eyed one, one from too great and continual distillation of the eyes with so grave bleariness, with sight so ruined, with orbits so white-spotted, hairless, and languid rather than lights, that from one wholly blind he was the least distant; the other by an inveterate and not of one kind disease with a sharp hump so curved, that in no wise could he either raise his breast, nor move his head upward beyond what was bent, nor look out. Both pitying the man of God, for a little while with discourse suppressed he stood: then to Friar John the doorkeeper, Go, said he, Brother, and bring a little oil. The brought he sanctified by a short prayer with the sign of the Cross Aegidius, and with it the eyes almost dead he anointed, Friar Consalvus the physician who was present wondering, and why against the precepts of medicine an accomplished physician did it, asking. To whom he, This, said he, faith prevails over art. What? Did not also against the rules of the physicians our Christ with clay anoint the eyes of the blind? did he not foretell to those trusting in him death-bearing poisons to be drunk without harm? To this oil therefore, at the invocation of his name, he will deign to confer the power of healing. And with great confidence his thumb being dipped, the shoulders and breast of the other with a Cross he signed, just as the almost despaired eyes of the other: nor did the event frustrate the faith. For straightway that one the body raised into tallness, restored to himself and free, looked up to heaven; to this one, the importunate weeping suppressed and the lights reformed, the clear sharpness of seeing was restored.
[33] At Coimbra a youth still unripe Consalvus, by name John Pelagii, he heals a scrofulous one, the son of an honest citizen, destined to the Priesthood of the divine Bartholomew, by the importunate disease of scrofula had contracted so great a tumor of the throat, that to go forth into public very often shamed him. To whom when after a long and vain cure nothing of help remained in the physicians, hired indeed at no small price, persuaded by someone, pitying the deformity of his age, and taught what he ought to do, to the convent he came. Whom Friar Stephen Befa led to Aegidius. He perceiving himself sought, What, said he, good youth, do you seek? To whom the boy falling at his feet, and showing the most badly affected place, Behold, said he, Lord, by this grave disease I am pressed, nor is any hope now in physicians left to me: to your faith and humanity a suppliant
I flee: for the touch of your hand, if to touch you will not disdain, a sure remedy for me it will be I surely know. Not difficult did the blessed man show himself, but the sign of the Cross being impressed on the youth's throat, he ordered him to go away. In a very few days thence the scrofula, breaking out into a putrid ulcer, was wholly dispersed, and the youth perfectly healed, scars only remaining for a sign. And that we may not depart from Coimbra, and a mother and daughter from a fever. Maria Gaudina, daughter of Gaudinus Pelagius the younger an honest man, by a most grave and long infirmity was held, which had eluded all the diligence of the physicians thus far, the woman's body being attenuated to extreme leanness. Her mother, Major Sueria, when she had thought to lead her to Aegidius, but awaited a convenient vacation from family business, and therefore with a more remiss mind long protracted the matter; herself also seized by a vehement concussion of the body and a fever, at length with her daughter to the man of God came, and more earnestly the imposition of his holy hand besought. Always prompt to mercy Aegidius, with his right hand over their heads the sign of the Cross fashioned, and to both straightway restored entire health.
[34] He was dining on a certain day for the cause of office Aegidius at the house of Martin Consalvius Cancinus, his cousin, a man of the equestrian Order of the highest nobility. Who exhilarated by the coming of so great a guest, especially a kinsman, He takes out fish-bones clinging to the throat of two men: after the manner of men who live in a more splendid fortune, calling together a good many, from the fish-store abundance, because he was not ignorant that the man of God from the eating of flesh by his institute abstained, he caused a banquet most lavishly to be set up. The feast being prolonged a good while, while hither and thither the host of the feast looks about, while he exhorts, while he asks, a morsel more inconsiderately with a most sharp bone he swallowed, but soon from the jaws turned in the throat the bone vehemently stuck. Which when neither to pass through nor to throw up he could in any way, and with eyes protruding and breath shut off, in the extreme hope of life he had stood; all who were at that reclining of the feast present, disturbed by such a case, grieved. But Aegidius his hand stretched out touched his throat, and with his thumb making the sign of the Cross, Come, said he, in the name of Christ, cough, brother Martin. He coughed most painfully, as he could; and suddenly the morsel with the bone was thrown up; and the man, the breath freely admitted, was loosed from all torment. By a like case was imperiled Friar Vincent, that physician, whom somewhat refractory to believing the things which of Aegidius by constant fame were said, we have above set forth. For although by that bitter and savage experience the virtue of the man of God for ascertained enough he ought to have held; yet by a kind of more rustic hesitation, sometimes to those narrating he showed himself difficult, a man otherwise good. It happened therefore at a certain time, when in the Coimbra convent he was, that some honest citizens, by an affection of religion more liberally provided with food, dined with the monks; to whom for the cause of honor came Vincent, as being of an aging age and by the merits of his learning in the number of the first at that time held. To whose throat likewise during the eating a bone of fish hard and oblong was fixed, so that neither by often coughing, nor by drinking little, anything did he profit: nay leaning back to the wall of the dining-place, his head through anxiety with changed color grew pale; and being asked by the guests why he did not eat, not so much by word as by signs, that he could not and was wondrously tormented, he answered. But since sometimes, according to the prophecy of Isaiah, vexation alone gives understanding; it came to mind to think, how often by his hardness he had given little faith to those narrating, how great grace God had bestowed on Aegidius to heal affections of the throat. Is. 28, 19 Therefore when he judged himself to be tormented now deservedly, he began thus with himself; Succor me, Christ, through the immortal merits of your servant Aegidius, that I wondrous you in him, the obstinacy at length conquered, may proclaim. Having only prayed this, with a light cough the bone bloody he ejected, and the dinner being finished, what had befallen him being narrated, the bone shown to all in testimony of the future time he kept long with himself.
[35] In the village Azoia, which a little above we said to be of the Scallabis territory, a certain plebeian man, to another a bone likewise clinging, when of beef pottage the broth more avidly by gulping he engorged; a fragment of bone, not indeed sharp on the one side, but on both very sharp, occupied the whole gullet; so that even the artery, by which the breath passes, it greatly narrowed. When this for many days now enduring fixed it clung, the wretch could neither speak, nor send down anything of nourishment: nay the throat swelling into a grave collection, and scarcely the breath passing, it was little short that wholly choked he should perish. Set therefore upon a beast of burden, to Scallabis he was led by his necessaries: who coming to the door of the convent with the man now despaired of, the colloquy of the man of God with tears asked; and it being set forth what had happened, they prayed a remedy for so great an evil. There was present to the man of God that holy Friar Bernard the Basque and Friar Peter Crucius, the companion at that time of Father Aegidius himself. Turned then to Bernard the holy man, What, said he, Brother, can we do for this man, that he be saved? And he, Let your faith help him, Father: for from the medical profession, what of help or hope is left to him else, I indeed do not see. Yet nonetheless Aegidius ordered some little mouthfuls of bread to be given, that if he devoured them, the bone also together would descend. But when by that thing he so profited nothing, that rather the throat being stopped up and the path of breathing intercepted, with a greater harm the man was afflicted; he asked for oil, and his thumb being dipped the abscess with the sign of the Cross he anointed. the cappa of D. Dominic being applied. Then, Lead him, said he, within to the sacristy, and take care that the cloak of the holy Father Dominic be put on him: for that cloak, which the monks call a cappa, Aegidius when he ruled the province of Spain, from John of holy memory, a holy man who coruscated with miracles after death, by nation a Teuton, the general Master of the Order, for the cause of esteem and familiar friendship, given as a gift at Bologna, had carried to Scallabis, where also now it is reverently preserved. So they had begun together to enter the temple, when to the man a little cough arising, that whole collection inwardly was dispersed, and amid the redundance of the bursting putrid matter not yet ripe, that fragment of bone bloody he threw up. And what more befits to be wondered at, Aegidius compelled the man, to the touching the cloak of the divine Father Dominic to come: as if indeed not by his own merits so unhoped a safety had come. I doubt not, but that worthy of admiration, as it truly is, to you deservedly it seems, that with so great grace and familiarity with God flourished any mortal, that by a very light little prayer sometimes, the greatest things far above nature he effected.
[36] But how much more marvelous that, Aegidius being absent, and not yet having put off mortality, that others obtained the things which from God, Aegidius being named, they asked, or even something also frivolous, provided yet it was his, with reverence and faith asked, they held with themselves! as if indeed either to anyone the Deity were held in debt, that by human merits it could rightly be required to answer; or if any merits there are, they have not from God Himself that by which they are approved. He relieves the gout of King Alfonso To King Sancho, of whom a little before we reported, succeeded Alfonso his brother, called from Belgium, where having married a wife he held the County of Boulogne at the Morini and the Gessoriac shore, a man of immense spirit, and of the commonwealth, which under his brother was going to ruin, not only to be propped, but also to be raised sufficiently fit. He bore so much to Aegidius, that in a familiar colloquy the staff of his, by which he supported his limbs worn out by age, he asked as a gift. For when he was vehemently gouty in his feet, he hoped the gout would depart, if carrying the staff of the holy old man, with his sick feet he strove to walk. Nor less than his hope befell him: for after a little time the disease wholly ceased. his own staff being given: The King however not now by necessity, but by religion, used that staff frequently in domestic walks. Which I should believe to have been the chief cause, that the same King, in the fifth year after he had returned to his country, the third in which he reigned, began to build the notable convent of Lisbon; for which the decade being completed, both the things which pertained to the worship of the Deity, and those which the necessary use of the monks needed, as then to those professing poverty was enough and more, by royal munificence he provided; of which matter there is extant there in the peristyle this inscription, Strenuous Alfonso, the fifth Portuguese King, Illustrious Lord of the County of Boulogne, Who enlarged the kingdom of his father, and repaired it, And rooted out the wicked, overcame the enemies: Of this church he made the foundations with great Costs, the excellent one, completed it in twice five years. The years of the Lord a thousand and ten times twenty And fifty less one gather full, When the King beginning brought this work into being, Making three years, from when the King had begun to be.
[37] He restores sour wine to its savor. At a certain time when the holy man went to Coimbra, with his companion Friar Bartholomew Petreius, he turned aside to the fellowship of the Canons of S. Augustine, in the village which they call Colmenas: whom the Canons of that place with great honor and cheerfulness receiving, during the ministering asked pardon for themselves, that they served him with changed wine. For their wine-supply had soured for them, nor easily could it be provided from elsewhere. Aegidius gave thanks for their zeal, and that nothing else was needful: when food and drink failed sweeter things for the belly to be sought, the chief seasoning of these being the very desire and the best will of the hosts, that he by no means stayed for more laborious feasts nor more ambitiously thirsted. The meekness and facility of the man of God touched one of them, the Provost of the wine-cellar, with a deeper religion: and an occasion being seized, when he had seen him sewing I know not what, as if he did something else, he asked that he would lend him a needle to use. Then having entered into the cellar, to a most capacious cask, in which all the wine was stored, which by a spontaneous fervor corrupted little by little also from sourness was turning vapid: Behold, said he, Christ almighty, in your name and that of your servant Friar Aegidius this needle, which his hands handled, into the cask I cast: by his merits I pray you, that this wine to amend by your clemency you would deign, lest the Priests and servants of yours, in this place serving you, by want and inconvenience of the annual course be affected: and the needle being cast in he went away. The next day when into use he had drawn the wine, by taste it was found most sweet. Then to those wondering at the novelty of the matter, straightway both what he himself had done, and how amply and magnificently Christ for Aegidius had repaid in turn the kindness of hospitality, openly he set forth.
[38] Friar Michael Joannides of Oporto and Friar Robert, coming to the village Ansidium of the Canons of S. Augustine near the Douro, and he removes a bone from the throat being invoked once, were received in lodging, and humanely cared for. And when for the cause of honor many sat with them at the table, and ate the fish shad, of which there the Douro abounds, a certain one of those eating, allured by the sweetness of the fish (for the shads going up the Douro and the Minho, are deservedly preferred to the others of the other rivers of Spain both in size and in savor) when more avidly he engorged, a bone harder in a half-chewed mouthful clung to his throat. Which when to throw up by coughing he by no means could, and with his whole mouth had grown red, and with bulging eyes he seemed to be choked; those who were present being disturbed by this case, Come, said Michael, name Brother, with what voice you can, Friar Aegidius, and by his merits God will succor you. And when, though with difficulty, he had named him; he straightway threw up with the mouthful the bone, and forthwith freed restored to the guests the lost cheerfulness. But the religion of all increased, and toward Aegidius absent the affection of piety was augmented. There are in the Turduli more ancient two towns, of which to each the name is Turres: but for the cause of difference, that they call Turres veteres, this Novas: again I should more gladly say in Greek Palaeopyrgos and Neopyrgos, if the legislation of imposing names on towns either the consent of the learned, or the sometimes placable faction of the unlearned would permit me. At Neopyrgos therefore, or if this I do not obtain, at Turres novae there dwelt a certain Pelagius Martinus, who over the collectors of the Queen's revenues in that same nome was Provost. For that through the nomes are distributed these Provosts, who the revenues either by collectors already gathered or by farmers still owed exact, if you do not know, to this my neighbor I will lead you: whence these things I lately learned, when to beseech him I had gone, that he would act more gently with certain debtors, nor strip the wretches of all their fortunes. Who then to me some titles of the Royal law, and the necessity imposed on himself of urging the bondsmen who were left showed, and so distinctly went through the several heads, that I also now think I can show myself a strenuous Prefect in collecting revenues. He therefore Pelagius Martinus to the monks coming to the town for the cause of preaching courteously and very humanely afforded lodging. Reclining therefore on a certain day with Friar Michael Martinus and a certain other, by a bone of fish vehemently fixed greatly he began to be tormented. Those monk guests suggested to him, that he should name Friar Aegidius. He named him in what manner he could, and suddenly with the name of Aegidius coughing, the bone bloody he threw up, and a third and fourth time spat out blood.
[39] To Alacri-portus, a town of this Transtagan province noble for wool-working, and a third time. for the cause of preaching came Friar Durandus Stephanius and Friar Nunius, and used the lodging of Lord Andreas, the first Priest there of the church of the Virgin Mother of God. And when on a certain day they had reclined, the fish being set before them this shad, the chastiser of the gluttonous; a certain one of the Priests reclining together, Dominic Joannides, while more inconsiderately he feasted, contracted harm by the morsel with a somewhat hard bone going astray from the gullet into the artery. Which when first lightly, then with all his might by coughing, to throw up he could not, and the breath most difficultly passed; he was compelled to rise, and sitting outside at the door from anxiety he began to sweat and tremble, and to make wheezes rather than cries: for he was almost suffocated. Whom when a great crowd now of passers-by and neighbors had surrounded, and a tumult arose; the guests disturbed by the case rose and came together to him. Durandus therefore seeing the man in so great a danger of life, Come, said he, the salutary sign of the Cross make over your throat, and name Friar Aegidius, to whom a peculiar grace in these throat-harms God has conferred. He signed the place with his thumb, and with a hoarse and ill-formed voice when he had begun to say, Holy Friar Aegidius succor me, at his name, the bloody and recurved in the manner of a hook he threw up into his hand set to his mouth: which he showed to all, giving thanks to God, and extolling absent Aegidius, those who were there present all wondering at a man still mortal: for many years after this the holy Father survived, and absent (in so great grace with God he was) freed him. As witnesses of the miracle are cited the same Durandus and Nunius, and Friar Peter Vernandius, with his companion Friar Dominic, who the next day came to the town; and Friar John of Alacri-portus, who as a boy, at the time this happened, was present.
ANNOTATIONS.
And the Shads, the food of the common people, hissing on the hearths. There are cited also Paulus Jovius, Franciscus Massarius, Petrus Gillius, and Guilielmus Rondeletius, physicians both learned and diligent, long commentaries being published on this question.
CHAPTER V.
Revelations concerning the Sanctity of Aegidius, before and after his pious death.
[40] God glorifying Aegidius even from afar, That glory is the shadow of virtue, which even the unwilling accompanies, the most sententious author Annaeus Seneca by a translation said, and that virtue to no one both living and dead has rendered favor, who only has not adorned and painted himself, but in good faith has followed it. This sentence agrees with the divine philosophy of our Savior: for those who without any disguise, seriously and for the sake of God, cultivate religion and virtue, a most sure and indubitable glory awaits; not only that which is hoped from God alone, after into his heaven, whence to it the beginnings, the soul shall have been received; but that also, which holy men as it were a reward of virtue obtain, namely the zeal exerting itself for them and as it were the bounty of the most faithful rewarder lavishing itself. This toward Aegidius abundantly God afforded, whose through all Spain eminent virtue had become illustrious, into the Gauls also and Italy in some part had now penetrated, but among his own, that is among the monks. This not seeming enough to the divine goodness, unless also to foreigners it became known. At Rome therefore in that time, a man of noted sanctity led his life in retirement, which kind of men the Greeks call ἀναχωρήτας. He when at some time before the morning twilight to prayer and contemplation he was free, by a light sleep seized, saw the heavens opened, and our Savior Jesus standing, and assisting him the Virgin Mother, with raised hands as if adoring; under whose right arm he saw a certain one in the habit of the Preacher institute, shining with wondrous light, who the arm of the Virgin as if with hands placed under sustained, as when Aaron and Hur sustained the arms of Moses praying. The anchorite wondering, who that one was, who in so great honor was held, that the arm of the Virgin Mother of God he sustained; he received an answer of this kind from that same Virgin: This one whom you see in so great familiarity with me, is Friar Aegidius the Portuguese, of the Order of the Preacher Priests, the servant of my son and peculiar to me: and just as he himself sustains my arm, so the Order of Preachers by prayers
and merits of his is sustained and grows. as one returned from Rome related who had heard it: This vision he pondering with himself, desired more fully to be taught concerning Aegidius. Wherefore when some days after he was before a certain Cardinal and many other grave persons, having beheld some Portuguese who were present, of whom one was Master Peter Vincent, a canon of the church of Braga; he asked whether they knew Friar Aegidius the Portuguese of the Order of Preachers: and they answering, that they knew him very well; the form to them, and the habitude of body, and the age of Aegidius very graphically he depicted. They saying, that the matter was so, he before the Cardinal and all who were present, what had been shown him, with the admiration of all related. Which the aforesaid Master Peter, having afterward returned into Portugal, Aegidius still living, to the religious Fathers, namely Friar Martin Martinius Prefect of the Coimbra convent, Friar Lupus Doctor of sacred Theology, Friar Bartholomew Petreius, Friar Aegidius of Thomar, and Friar Stephen of Rates, and the other monks of that same convent, confirming with an oath narrated.
[41] That between the soul and body there is a certain natural and so vehement friendship, that most painfully the one from the other is separated, both the philosophers have taught, and we by long and almost daily experience understand. Yet a great distance intervenes, that the souls which have given themselves to pleasures and corporeal enticements, as bondslaves to the bodies are held liable, nor to the hope of a future and far better life are raised: but those well constituted, and which to earthly stains have not enslaved themselves, and how greatly he desired death upward like fire flash out, mindful of their origin. There is added that those, from the contracted filth and the trembling conscience of a badly led life, to go out of the body to punishment dread; but these polluted by no stains, but safe in innocence, to the divine reward due to virtue hasten. And so it comes about, that as long as in this body they act, they think not so much that they live in a dwelling, as that in bonds and custody they are detained. Aegidius therefore, besides that by age and labors he had come to satiety of life, by weariness of this pilgrimage, panted to be dissolved, and to Christ now not through faith and in an enigma, but by a clear and open vision to be joined: which thing also to the glory of his servant to show the world God willed. There was at Lisbon at that time a noble and rich matron, Stephana Bocharda, who her husband being dead what remained of her age in widowhood, such as the Apostle describes, persevering, had grown even to the opinion of sanctity. She for the regard of God, in her own house in a separate little cell nourished a certain blind man, Stephen by name, not indeed a beggar of those who from door to door proclaim their food with a stentorian voice and firm sides that they may seem to make a proclamation, but honest by modesty; who although with corporeal eyes he was blind, his mind certainly he had illumined, that by what way he was to go to God he discerned very well. He therefore the servant of God when on a certain day in prayer he persisted, it is revealed to another; seemed to see the heavens opened, and a most luminous globe of fire ascending from the earth to heaven with a most rapid impulse: which when to the confines of the highest heaven it drew near, a certain Angel waving a most white napkin, from the entrance repelled it, again and again into the earth depressing it. To him wondering as if at a contest of the up-flying fire and the repelling Angel, and to him praying at greater length, that he might be taught what that vision meant to him, thus answered that Angel: This fiery globe, which you see, is the soul of Friar Aegidius the Portuguese, which wholly with the fire of divine love kindled, continually contemplates God, and hastening to God hastens to lay down the earthly mass. But I have been sent, that I make the panting one wait for a while, until many souls he gain to God, with an ampler glory from that delay to be crowned. This vision with the highest eagerness the blind man soon to his patroness Stephana related, and she to him who before us wrote this history, and at the same time to Friar Consalvus Martinius of Scallabis. But Aegidius survived after this almost a whole five years.
[42] By this which I have just related as an example, it was indicated that the fervent desire of Aegidius of returning to heaven was suppressed, for the sake of gaining souls. Another now I will relate, by which the imminent term of this exile to him by an oracle uttered God signified. Not far from Alcobaça is a mountain, Ceira vulgarly called, and on the mountain a shrine sacred to D. Martin. and a third time his transit near. A solitary life there led a certain man very pious and of approved innocence, Martin by name. He when after his manner from these humble things the mind drawn away to the contemplation of the heavenly life he had called; into a thought of the sanctity of Aegidius he fell, which both by himself he had seen, and by very many arguments had experienced; and since it was in the mouth of all the people, he heard daily to increase. Yet nonetheless when to be made more certain still he desired, a divine concerning that matter either answer or some indubitable indication he sought. Therefore a light sleep after prayer being taken, a certain hall of glass coruscating with an unspeakable light he seemed to himself to have entered, in the midst of which Father Aegidius sitting in a most beautiful chair he found. At whose feet when glad he had fallen, from an inner chamber a youth of excellent form going out he beheld: who reverent and wholly shining, when to Aegidius he had come, thus addressed him; Come, Friar Aegidius, come, because you are called. Aegidius leaped from the chair hastily, and the messenger who had called him most glad accompanied. And when they had drawn near to the open door of the chamber, there appeared a hall, far more capacious than that former, and adorned with a more admirable variety. Then the youth, Enter, said he, Friar Aegidius. Him being admitted, the anchorite, who thither had followed behind, with all his might panting strove to enter after Aegidius. But another youth of similar form, who as far as it seemed performed the office of an Admissionary, repelled him, saying, Go away you, and wait: for not now will you enter: and the door being shut within he left him outside, not a little anxious about the repulse. But when a voice the index of his grief he tried to emit, he was roused from sleep, and understood the man of God soon to migrate to his country, and the glory laid up for the highest sanctity to attain. And so in the very deed it happened. For scarcely a two-month space afterward being completed, the holy Father departed from life. These things that upright man and innocent anchorite often, with tears mixed with joy, with living voice related.
[43] But I since by the pleasure of narrating beyond measure I am affected, I fear lest I be injurious by prolonging the life of the blessed man too long, An octogenarian he is seized with a disease in which he to tarry so long indeed how bitter he had thought, unless the nod and will of God by patience he awaited. Wherefore since my today's discourse of the things which in life he did I have now made long enough, more conveniently to his departure from life, let us pass. Therefore as under the end of the former volume we said, at Scallabis a private and quiet leading his extreme old age, when the day destined to him he awaited, an octogenarian now and more, he fell into a slight disease: of which to congratulate himself greatly he began, since from it, to the perpetual and lacking all evils life he was to pass, he understood. The hour of his imminent death being foreknown, on a haircloth couch he ordered himself to be set down, and by the rite of Christian piety the Sacraments being received with reverence, the grieving Brethren most blandly consoled, and all to the worship of God and the study of true piety being admonished bidding farewell, his hands he stretched to heaven, pronouncing, with no faltering of voice, Into your hands, Christ God, I commend my spirit. Then his now collapsing arms being composed in the manner of a Cross, without any sense of death, as if he had fallen asleep, the last breath of life he gave; and, to speak Christianly rather than Ciceronianly, he exchanged life, in the year from our Savior born 1265, on the anniversary day on which Christ to have ascended to the heavens, the Christian religion commemorates. in the year 1265 and piously dies Whose body neither by the least grimness deformed, nor stained by any foul flux, but rather grateful to the nostrils, breathing I know not what above an earthly odor: the embalmers, more by custom than because there was need, when to wash it they had set about; that iron girdle, of which in the former volume we treated, found: which even now covered with silver is preserved, and is in great use for women in childbirth, bound with an iron girdle. whether over the garment applied to the womb, or hung from the neck, or with confidence touched with the hands. Buried with a most frequent assembly of the Scallabis people of every kind, he was afterward translated to a little chapel and a marble carved monument, at her own cost taking care Joanna the mother of Nunius Vermandus Cognominius, an illustrious woman and the blessed man's own cousin, as in the beginning of the former volume we have already said.
[44] His departure from life to some pious men, both at Scallabis and also at places by no small interval divided thence, by signs, and indeed by no means ambiguous, God laid open. In the Coimbra convent Friar Dominic Mansillinus, a man of integrity and of ascertained probity for many years now, about the twilight of the dawning day, [At the same time at Coimbra to two Fathers that death becomes known through a vision:] on which the holy man finished the course of life, when from prayer he had lightly fallen asleep; he seemed to himself to see the temple of the Scallabis convent, with silken tapestries of various colors wondrously wholly adorned, and the pavement strewn with shorn carpets of like variety: then a most beautiful horse without bridle, without saddle, going through the midst of Scallabis, which now hither, now thither, with the highest eagerness and glad neighings turning itself about; drew the wondering people all behind it for the sake of beholding; until having gone out of the gates of the city, and to the convent which is situated near the outer suburb the people following coming into the temple, as I said adorned, it hid itself. This vision Mansillinus weighing with himself, nor what it portended yet knowing, was silent. But the religious Father Michael Suerius, at that time Prefect of that same Coimbra convent, when on that same night about the matin synaxis he rested half-asleep, thought he saw the blessed man Aegidius in the first seat of the odeum, which is of the Convent-heads, standing, and to the matin lauds with a very sweet sound chanting first, O God come to my aid. But the Prefect himself, on account of the authority of the holy man, to him both in place and in the office of chanting first seemed to yield, another seat being chosen at his left. Yet with himself silently thus he thought, What new thing do I see? Father Aegidius, who so greatly the Prelates was wont to honor, in my presence has occupied my seat and the office of chanting first? And when thus he wondered, he awoke; and reckoning what he had seen, no slight suspicion this vision moved in him, as if it were truly a prediction, not however a dream. Which matter when afterward on that same day to the Brethren somewhat anxious he had related; It is a wonder, said he, unless Father Aegidius either has migrated to the Lord, or quickly is to migrate. Then the aforesaid Mansillinus also what had been shown to him explained, and so the increased suspicion on the third day thence confirmed a messenger coming, who about the dawn of the Lord's Ascension that the blessed man had departed from life brought word.
[45] At Scallabis in the parish of the divine Virgin and Martyr Irene dwelt John Stephen, likewise to a pious man at Santarem, a man upright and of unblamable morals. He at the same twilight, in which the blessed Father Aegidius migrated from life, pressed by no grave sleep, seemed to himself to go forth from the temple of the Preachers, and in the outer burial-ground, which by Christian custom we call a cemetery, three youths of illustrious form to meet him, who carrying cubit-long scepters in their hands, imitated the Royal apparitors in figure. By whose unusual form and the novelty of their coming moved, he seemed to ask them in this manner, Of what kind are you men? To whom they, We are the runners of the King, who has sent us hither, that this Friar Aegidius we may soon present to him, a little after that other one about to call. To which answer when the man turned himself about, he beheld the holy man Aegidius, shining with immense light, coming forth to meet them; and another Friar, with face half-covered there also striving to come forth. But the man turned to the youths, Of what King, said he, do you declare yourselves the runners? And they, Of the heavenly namely and everlasting. To this the man, This Friar Aegidius we have always esteemed a holy man among us and dear to God. There are not in the whole circuit of the lands, three better than he, they say. And this we wish you to know: those who at his sepulchre shall have implored mercy, will experience him to be powerful, with the King of heaven by praying, to bring help and aid. These things said, Aegidius being received, to a certain grassy plain, and with fragrant flowers on every side green and painted when they had come; the man who followed, beheld an innumerable multitude, in stoles both white and purple coming to congratulate the coming of Aegidius, and a copious troop also of men clothed in the garb of the Preacher institute, who in a certain manner before the rest hastened to meet him. Which when that man wondering beheld, approaching the three youths, I beseech you, divine runners, he said, what troops are those, which to Friar Aegidius so glad come to meet? And those messengers, Those who proceed, are Angels and the other Blessed; but that hastening troop, are the Preacher monks, of whom he himself led many to that institute of life and discipline: but all these for the cause of honor have assembled, that Friar Aegidius with us they may present to the Lord. At these words the man being roused, while glad he reckoned the vision, he heard in the convent of the Preachers a little bell struck for a good while, as is wont at the death of monks. Then he his wife being called, Come, said he, spouse, let us rise; Father Aegidius just now has died. To whom she, And whence have you learned that? And he narrated the visions in order: And behold, said he, the little bell is struck there. They rose forthwith, and coming to the convent, the now lifeless body of the holy man placed on a bier in the place of the choir, which by a Greek word more expeditely we said above the ὠδεῖον, they found, and the monks gathered around weeping chanting psalms. But the just funeral rites being performed according to custom, the man to a most religious old man, Friar John Pelagius, who was wont to receive the secret confession of his offenses, the series of this matter set forth: to the holy man also Friar Bernard, of whom in the foregoing we have made mention more than once, to Menendus Suerius also Priest of D. Irene, and to Elvira Duranda, who a holy woman within the enclosure of a small cell confined herself, and to many others the same he related. He who these things committed to writing before me, attests that he often asked that same John Stephanius about these things, at different times however, whether he would vary, for the sake of testing; but since he always said the same things, and in the same manner, faith was given him. And when a few days after had died the most religious old man Friar John Pelagius, by us just now mentioned, it was understood, that he was that other Friar, whom the heavenly messengers had signified they would call a little after Aegidius.
[46] In the foregoing we said, that the holy man had sometimes used as companion Friar Andreas the Physician, To his companion Friar, a man learned and grave. Him as he had had a witness of his mortal life and actions, so also of his attained immortality and glory he wished to make a beholder. For on a certain day to him lightly slumbering, after the matin synaxis, with a most beautiful countenance and very splendid face and most white garments he appeared, and shining seemed to address him. To whom Andreas, And how, Father Aegidius, are you not now dead? And Aegidius, Do not err, said he: for by no means am I dead, but I live: and now Scallabis being left, I go that through the towns and villages round about the word of God I may preach; which said he withdrew. The Friar understood by these words, not only that of the glory of the man of God he was made more certain, but that he was admonished also of the Office which perhaps too slowly he was performing. To Elvira Pelagia the widow, and a woman of holy conversation, but to a devout woman. who dwelt at Scallabis at D. Nicholas's, a vision not unlike the foregoing befell, at once after the death of the holy Father Aegidius. In the atrium of the Scallabis convent, opposite his tomb, she beheld a ladder broad and erect, and from the porch of the atrium even to the height of the heavens reaching, and on the steps of the ladder not far from the earth, two Angels of wonderful beauty shining forth: but at the lowest foot of the ladder she saw the holy Father Aegidius, and S. Dominic of Cuba, the disciple of the great Father Dominic and the founder of the Scallabis convent, of whom in the former volume we made mention, who before Aegidius some years now had departed from life, standing clothed in much gold and purple; and she heard the Angels in this manner address them; Come, Brethren, ascend: for the Lord calls you. They so called, the one hence, thence the other, their right feet to the step contiguous to the earth moved: and the ladder being seized hastily they climbed, the Angels going before, and into heaven were received. This vision that upright widow often, with the highest veneration of the holy men and a pleasant recollection, related, just as by the attestation of God adjured she related, in the presence of the holy man Friar Bernard, and Friar Martin Petreius, and the author of this history, and many others worthy of faith.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER VI.
Miracles wrought in the first year after the death of Aegidius.
[47] In the foregoing discourse many things, which our Aegidius even living had wrought, when we have now pursued; to those now let us turn our discourse, which after death either he himself, or for him and through him God put forth. From the country and kindred of Aegidius himself let us take the beginning. At the baths of Alaphoe a noble matron, A boy submerged in the hot baths, Lady Therasia Martinia, the cousin of the blessed Aegidius, wife of Rodericus Alfonsius surnamed Capo a man of the equestrian Order, in her own house as an adoptive son nourished Peter a boy, son of Lawrence Alphonsius Capo, her brother-in-law. This boy, together with another little boy his kinsman, when with infantile simplicity to the baths he had drawn near, and both at the edge of the lake of the baths sufficiently deep on the steps more incautiously played, fell into the water. Peter was wholly submerged: the other when still near the steps on the top water floating now swam, now was submerged, by certain men coming up half-alive was drawn out, and for dead carried home to his own. Suspended therefore by the feet, the drawn-in water little by little he vomited: but Peter submerged at the bottom, for the space of one hour lay hidden, until that other boy recovered both sense and speech, a small harm received from the heat of the water, because it in the top of the lake from the blowing of the air is made more tepid, and because before harm he was taken up. Who being asked where he had left his companion Peter, said that they both, through the steps of the lake had fallen: what of him was done afterward, that he knew not. There ran to the baths a certain maidservant, and from the solar rays finding the water clear, she saw Peter lying at the bottom. By wailings therefore and womanly outcry returning lifeless, what was so, she related. Many ran to the lake; and when the vehement heat of the water they feared (for the nature is so hot, that in it both eggs are cooked, and hens and geese without any trouble of feathers and wings are stripped) a certain noble Priest, son of Lord Julian, stripping himself descended through the steps, and the boy being seized drew him out not only now dead, but in face and in the whole skin of the body blackened and livid, and almost half-cooked. This when to Therasia it was announced, with a clamorous lamentation she also came: Aegidius being invoked he revives, and seeing the boy dead, whom most tenderly she loved, over him she fell, beating her breast, plucking her hair, scraping her cheeks with her nails, and through grief biting the earth. And when by the bystanders, lest she should act indecently, she was admonished, she gathered herself; and her knees bent to the ground, O Lord, said she, Father Friar Aegidius, if you are holy and dear to God, as we surely believed you to be, give me this boy, whom I was rearing for a son: for I believe and trust, if only you will, that you can to me restore him alive. Scarcely had she finished, when the boy beyond the hope of all began to gape, and from his mouth to throw up water: and after a little, his eyes opened speaking clearly, his mother and his nurse he called. The admiration and joy of all, I being silent, you can yourselves conjecture. But the father seeing the boy alive, To you holy Father, said he, Aegidius, and to the Order of Preachers, this boy I devote, and from me I emancipate, that when by age it shall be allowed to him whose life was restored by you, he may serve a religious servitude. He gave therefore his son to a teacher: then coming to Scallabis, with many men of the equestrian rank, friends and kinsmen, who had been witnesses of the miracle, at the sepulchre of S. Aegidius to the Prefect of the convent, Friar Dominic of Calaroga, kinsman of the divine Father Dominic, the monks being present he offered the boy, and the whole series of the deed set forth. There were besides witnesses of so great a miracle, Lord Julian, the father of the aforesaid Priest, who held the dead boy in his hands; and the same Priest, who had drawn him from the lake; Lady Therasia also aforesaid, and Lady Maria Sarriana the mother of the boy, and the whole neighborhood round about. But the boy, as long as afterward he lived, had a pallid and discolored face, although he was well; for a sign I believe to those who had not seen, as if by that pallor and discoloration the wrought miracle he proclaimed.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER VI.
Miracles wrought in the first year after the death of Aegidius.
[47] In the foregoing discourse many things, which our Aegidius even living had wrought, when we have now pursued; to those now let us turn our discourse, which after death either he himself, or for him and through him God put forth. From the country and kindred of Aegidius himself let us take the beginning. At the baths of Alaphoe a noble matron, A boy submerged in the hot baths, Lady Therasia Martinia, the cousin of the blessed Aegidius, wife of Rodericus Alfonsius surnamed Capo a man of the equestrian Order, in her own house as an adoptive son nourished Peter a boy, son of Lawrence Alphonsius Capo, her brother-in-law. This boy, together with another little boy his kinsman, when with infantile simplicity to the baths he had drawn near, and both at the edge of the lake of the baths sufficiently deep on the steps more incautiously played, fell into the water. Peter was wholly submerged: the other when still near the steps on the top water floating now swam, now was submerged, by certain men coming up half-alive was drawn out, and for dead carried home to his own. Suspended therefore by the feet, the drawn-in water little by little he vomited: but Peter submerged at the bottom, for the space of one hour lay hidden, until that other boy recovered both sense and speech, a small harm received from the heat of the water, because it in the top of the lake from the blowing of the air is made more tepid, and because before harm he was taken up. Who being asked where he had left his companion Peter, said that they both, through the steps of the lake had fallen: what of him was done afterward, that he knew not. There ran to the baths a certain maidservant, and from the solar rays finding the water clear, she saw Peter lying at the bottom. By wailings therefore and womanly outcry returning lifeless, what was so, she related. Many ran to the lake; and when the vehement heat of the water they feared (for the nature is so hot, that in it both eggs are cooked, and hens and geese without any trouble of feathers and wings are stripped) a certain noble Priest, son of Lord Julian, stripping himself descended through the steps, and the boy being seized drew him out not only now dead, but in face and in the whole skin of the body blackened and livid, and almost half-cooked. This when to Therasia it was announced, with a clamorous lamentation she also came: Aegidius being invoked he revives, and seeing the boy dead, whom most tenderly she loved, over him she fell, beating her breast, plucking her hair, scraping her cheeks with her nails, and through grief biting the earth. And when by the bystanders, lest she should act indecently, she was admonished, she gathered herself; and her knees bent to the ground, O Lord, said she, Father Friar Aegidius, if you are holy and dear to God, as we surely believed you to be, give me this boy, whom I was rearing for a son: for I believe and trust, if only you will, that you can to me restore him alive. Scarcely had she finished, when the boy beyond the hope of all began to gape, and from his mouth to throw up water: and after a little, his eyes opened speaking clearly, his mother and his nurse he called. The admiration and joy of all, I being silent, you can yourselves conjecture. But the father seeing the boy alive, To you holy Father, said he, Aegidius, and to the Order of Preachers, this boy I devote, and from me
I emancipate, that when by age it shall be allowed to him whose life was restored by you, he may serve a religious servitude. He gave therefore his son to a teacher: then coming to Scallabis, with many men of the equestrian rank, and he is offered to the Order. friends and kinsmen, who had been witnesses of the miracle, at the sepulchre of S. Aegidius to the Prefect of the convent, Friar Dominic of Calaroga, kinsman of the divine Father Dominic, the monks being present he offered the boy, and the whole series of the deed set forth. There were besides witnesses of so great a miracle, Lord Julian, the father of the aforesaid Priest, who held the dead boy in his hands; and the same Priest, who had drawn him from the lake; Lady Therasia also aforesaid, and Lady Maria Sarriana the mother of the boy, and the whole neighborhood round about. But the boy, as long as afterward he lived, had a pallid and discolored face, although he was well; for a sign I believe to those who had not seen, as if by that pallor and discoloration the wrought miracle he proclaimed.
[48] At Lisbon in the parish of D. Justa a noble boy when he was gravely ill, likewise two others dead. on a certain evening, the disease growing strong, breathed out his spirit. Whose death both his grandmother, who loved him as her highest delight, and his parents beyond measure sad lamented, and passing the night beside the corpse, with bitter lamentation awaited the day, that they might pay the supreme office to their beloved. Meanwhile by the stroke of the little bell, a signal being given at the convent of the Preachers for the matin synaxis, the minds of the bystanders religion touched, and there came the recollection with confidence of the merits of the holy Father Aegidius. From the convent therefore suppliantly those being summoned who should bring the Relics of the holy man, these when to the cold corpse they had applied, and praying with tears for a while waited; the soul being suddenly resumed the boy alive again rose; for whom the parents and the whole household, instead of the funerals now expected only, thanksgivings in the temple of the Preachers when the day had risen celebrated. They bore testimony to the miracle both they themselves and the frequent crowd of neighbors, for the cause of duty gathered to them. From whom when the matter in order grave men had received, Friar Peter Vernandius and Friar Paschasius, they themselves to the congregation of the Fathers and Brethren related it. At Sthermocium, a noble town and near to our city, a certain youth, when by a strong infirmity seized and attenuated, the disease growing heavy, had died; and for a long space by his parents bewailed, at length to the embalmers had been delivered, that he might be washed, and the funeral and obsequies prepared; a noble matron Lady Anna, with the parents of the deceased consternated by the death of their only son having compassion, entered there, bringing a certain particle of the body of the holy Father Aegidius, which with herself with the highest veneration, as a precious treasure, she kept. And approaching the corpse of the deceased, religiously reverent imploring Aegidius, on the dead one she laid it. A wondrous thing. There rose at once the youth alive and well, and after the fulfilled gladness of the parents a little before desolate, and faith made to the throng running together at the astonishment of the miracle, his journey to Scallabis he hastened with his own; and falling at the sepulchre of the holy Father, before Friar Alfonsus, Friar John Suerius, Friar John of S. Julian, Friar Martin the sacristan, Friar John of Scallabis, and others not a few, this wondrous resurrection he narrated. I, said he, when I was dead, saw the venerable Father Aegidius stand by me in the habit of the Preachers, who my soul now separated from the body by his command brought back to me: and behold I live, and the greatness of my Patron in the presence of all of you I extol, to whom after God this grace I profess that I owe.
[49] You understand, I think, the excellent power of our Aegidius in raising the dead. There remain now those things, which less stupendous by the common people are thought, To go negligently to his funeral which yet that same excellent force and divine power, beyond and above nature, works. On that same day on which the holy Father was loosed from the bonds of the flesh, namely the anniversary of the Lord's Ascension, when all the citizens to pay the just rites had betaken themselves to the monks; a certain Martin Consalvius Quecha, who at the gate of the city, called by the Punic word Thamarma, dwelt, the affair of his family business being preferred to the funeral of the holy man, out of the city went; but suddenly there invaded him a pestilential and acute disease of the angina, and an intolerable pain of the throat and breast, with too great inflation of the affected parts, so much that with the breath shut off and crushed he was almost strangled. he is seized with the angina, and is freed by a vow made, In this manner the savage torment the evil growing heavy, touched by religion the man began to reprove himself, and to his own merit what he suffered to impute, that one of all the citizens to the funeral of the divine man and the parent of the true country he had neglected to go, and in the public mourning of the city the cure of a domestic, and not indeed a great, matter to the morrow at least had not deferred. His madness therefore and contempt himself accusing, a rush which by chance he found about his neck he bound, and by a vow he obliged himself, in these words: If Friar Aegidius is holy and dear to God, may he himself deign to free me from this present danger of death; and I a wax torch, to the length of this rush, to his sepulchre will bring, in testimony of the health restored to me. He had finished, and the breath he drew freely, and his throat and breast gradually subsided, and in a small moment of time wholly the disease broke out: and he who by the evil thought himself just now conquered, by it wonderfully now relieved, to God and the holy man Aegidius giving thanks was not satisfied: and coming to the tomb the next day he discharged his vow, and to the writer of our history, and at the same time to Friar Dominic Abonemarius and others, what had befallen him narrated.
[50] On the same day also at Scallabis at the chapel of D. Stephen a matter of this kind happened. Peter a boy, son of Michael Grainus, on the same day blood flowing from the nostrils of an injured head, had been so gravely struck a few days before in the head, that to him by a surgeon eighteen bones and fragments of the skull had been extracted, and of the skull itself to lay bare and inspect the things to come the skin in various places cut. The time thence proceeding, when the harm now ceased to be in a strait, the boy from a better hope of getting well become negligent, by boyish restlessness less from motion and from his hands abstained. For the evil being irritated and the veins cut, the blood through the nostrils flowed in so great abundance, that with hands placed under in turn, to receive the unceasingly running down, the mother did not suffice. Who in so great a danger of her son's life and so great consternation of herself placed, from want of counsel, as the human mind is skillful in straits, to the seeking divine help her mind roused: and Aegidius being recalled to memory, who buried that day had been, she sent who with the highest speed at least from the tomb earth should bring. There came up at this a certain virgin of most innocent conversation, of eminent simplicity, and of approved faith, Dominica Martinia of Thomar, a chip of the sarcophagus being applied it stops. who with the parents of the boy lodged, and who on that same day had been present at the burial of the blessed man, and of the wooden bier in which he had been laid, certain shavings and a little dust, with no small trouble of the crowd attempting the same, had kept. Who when the anxiety of her hosts and the womanly tumult in the house she perceived, that whatever it was to the mother of the boy she offered to be applied. Then all together as they were present raising a clamor, Aegidius they invoked, by no means in vain. For straightway the fountain of the boiling blood was dried up, and the boy from the danger of present death freed at once recovered: whom the mother presenting at the sepulchre, to the writer of these deeds and the other monks with a grateful and pious narration the miracle related.
[51] At Alanokerca, or if you prefer as the common people call it, Alnaquerium, a certain honest woman, when from the beast on which she rode she had fallen, her loins broken a great and notable debility of body had incurred; a woman with broken loins is healed, so that for a whole year lying down, of herself from the bed she could not rise. Whom when a certain matron of the neighborhood for the cause of piety had visited, and counseled her that with full faith the venerable Father Aegidius she should invoke; the woman persuaded the man of God with the highest affection began to invoke, and soon herself from her infirmity she felt wholly freed. Sound therefore made, by a journey of one day to Scallabis she came to the sepulchre of the holy man; and there what had befallen her, to Friar John Suerius and Friar Velascus, with most abundant weeping and wondrous piety she set forth; and very many women, who then in the temple were present, to religious tears she stirred. The same woman afterward, and fallen from a height is preserved. when at some time on a very high upper-floor she sat, less cautiously fell on her head: but since from the memory of the former benefit most frequently in her mouth the name of Aegidius she had; falling, Holy, said she, Father Aegidius, save me. There ran to her lying on the ground some men, and whom from so great a fall with broken neck and brain scattered they believed they would find dead, alive and unharmed they found.
[52] Beyond the castle of Maruan, which is situated on mount Herminius, is the town of Valentia, which they call Alcantara: there in the family of John Petreius, a noble man, a girl Maria Dominica, kinswoman of Maria Sueria of Scallabis, was seized with a most grave carbuncle, which in Greek we should call anthrax, an evil sharp and which in three days is wont to carry off those it has burdened, two women are healed of a carbuncle, if we believe Pliny. It arising between the shoulder-blades, by hardness and inflammation creeping into the neck and throat, the breath being crushed, even unto death afflicted the girl, who the third day now had lost speech. Which seeing her patron, his knees bent to the ground weeping, thus prayed: Lord Father Aegidius, grant, I beseech, to this wretched girl health, lest from this savage evil she die, and I your sepulchre with wax candles, in testimony of the health through you given, will worship. The vow being uttered suddenly the pustule of the carbuncle broke, and all the virulent pus burst out. The huge little belly of the affected place being emptied, soon the girl began to speak perfectly, by a very light cure restored to perfect health. He who these things before me composed, attests, that together with Friar Pelagius he saw the girl, and both from her and from her aunt Maria Sueria relating heard. By a like disease was seized: at Scallabis, in the parish of D. Bartholomew, Justa the wife of Menendus Joannides, a horrible anthrax arising on the neck; which the parts so occupying every way with insane torment vexed the woman, that within two days she seemed about to die. Wherefore a Priest being called, and a Confession of sins made in general, the imminent death to her in every hour she dreaded. But her husband, anxious for the danger of his beloved wife, his horse being mounted hastily to the sepulchre of the holy man came, and falling on the ground with laments help for his wife prayed: then a little earth from the sepulchre receiving, home he returns, and the little dust in a little linen cloth to his wife's neck he bound. Forthwith that virus, by which it threatened destruction, the pain being wholly extinguished, was dried up, and the woman the despaired health suddenly obtained. Nor did she defer to give thanks to her helper: for she came at once to the monument with offerings and candles, and the benefit conferred by Aegidius publicly attested.
[53] Martin Joannides Priest of the church of Bologna in the diocese of Oporto, incurred a most savage
kind of sacred fires, A Priest from the fire of D. Antony. which from its voracity the common throng of certain physicians calls the wolf, others more honorifically the fire of D. Antony, for that reason perhaps that this Saint peculiarly heals this evil. To me it seems this ulcer is to be referred to that which the Greeks call θηρίωμα from beastly savagery, and also ἕρπητα ἐσθιώμενον, because by creeping it eats away the flesh to the bones, of which clearly Celsus. That sacred fire therefore at the vertebra of the left hand, when the arm it had seized, so had devoured the flesh, that it left the bones bare, and the hand from the joint now separated, and almost cut off hanging cast it down to the ground. And when the foul ulcer and the indomitable evil crept further, the muscles being eaten and the brawns of the arms wholly to the bones, it was decided to cut off the arm at the elbow with iron, lest the unceasingly creeping fire into the upper parts with the harm of the whole body should pass over. The friends suggested, that he should implore the help of Aegidius. The man bent his knees with groaning and tears, and vowed that if from that pest by the merits of Aegidius he were rescued, his sepulchre he would visit. And no delay: after the vow uttered that voracious fire, which had hitherto raged in the flesh, was extinguished: and new flesh began to grow up, and the bones of the arm foully laid bare to be clothed, and through hastened moments to be covered. He came therefore to Scallabis, as he had vowed, and falling at the tomb of the holy Father, the religious men being present, Friar Bartholomew Petreius, Friar Michael whose surname was from the village Citofacta, Friar Geraldus of Oporto, Friar Peter Vitalis, and Michael Joannides, Priest of the church of the blessed Virgin at Marvilla, seriously the matter set forth, and showed the arm with tender and reddening flesh even now covered. There was present at that time in the convent Friar Dominic of Calaroga, of whom a little above we made mention: he then was Provincial Rector, and these things in writing to memory he caused to be consigned.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER VII.
Other various miraculous cures.
[54] A year nearly being passed from the departure of the blessed man, to a certain Peter Suerius of the village Taucium, An incurable cancer in the nostrils is cured, which is twenty miles distant from Scallabis, there arose on the top of the nose a most sharp cancer, a vice which spurns medicine; whence the physicians made for it the name, Touch me not. Rightly indeed that, for by cures it is irritated, as clearly Celsus says. A foul pustule had inflated the whole face, and about the place with the veins curved back with a foul roughness had rendered it deformed. The man went to Scallabis, and turned aside at Stephen Nonius and Lady Gaudina, in the parish of the blessed Virgin at Marvilla. Martin being called thither, then a noble surgeon, with a most subtle scalpel having set about to eradicate it, so far profited nothing, that by agitating he the more excited it. For more gravely the face swelled, and the throat being seized the breath failing it suffocated the wretch. The hosts pitying the afflicted one, a part of the tunic being applied. a little portion of the tunic of the holy man, which their daughter Maria Vincentia as a sacred thing with herself religiously kept, taking, over the man's face they stretched: and behold suddenly the throat and face subsided, and the sick man recovered, and the following day, namely the sixth feria, on foot home returned. But when he felt himself wholly sound from so foul a disease on the morrow, he returned the day after to Scallabis, and to his hosts wondering exulting himself fully cured he exhibited: with whom the tomb he went to of his liberator, with wax candles and a most ample thanksgiving. But the aforesaid hosts Stephen and his wife, afterward Friar Pelagius Pensus and his companion Friar Peter Crucius being received into their lodging, in order to them related, the health obtained by the benefit of Aegidius: from all whom the founder of our history says he received it.
[55] To this surgeon Master Martin it was a good experience to have learned, that the imploration of the divinity prevails over human help, however great. Likewise a foot swelling from a horse's heel, He rode at some time at an equal pace with another, whose horse by nature more restless by snorting and wantonness disturbed the conversation of the surgeon. The rider wishing to chastise the wanton one, drew back the reins of the bit, and to its sides he pressed the spurs a little inconsiderately. For the horse stimulated with the recently shod heel, the foot of the surgeon at the ankle with a prevailing impression struck. From which when vehemently the foot had swelled, and the man with so grave a pain was tormented, that neither to sleep nor at least to rest in the bed he could, and neither from himself nor from others by medicaments applied to him even the least part more mildly did it pain; the remedy of art being at length spurned, to the help of Aegidius, which to that Peter he had seen had profited, to implore he turned himself. He had himself therefore by the hands of friends carried in a chair, and sitting on the ground the foot enormously swelling he stretched out, with a submissive voice help seeking. Nor was he frustrated of hope: forthwith indeed the foot began to subside, and the pain which long had vexed, was quieted. Meanwhile when much people, who in the temple were, he perceived to run to the divine service then being done; to try himself also he wished, whether in any wise to some one of the altars he could approach. But to him timorously striving to rise not only the foot yielded, but wholly also the swelling being suppressed and the pain put to flight and the vertebra corrected, through all the altars he ran, thanks to God and the holy Father sound and glad giving, and a proclamation of the miracle making with a great voice.
[56] At Scallabis at S. Antony's a woman Therasia, when a long while she suffered an acute fever, an apostem in the throat the disease always with intense magnitude and a multitude of noxious humors, which at the throat in the manner of apostems had been collected, almost despaired of lay; so much that abandoned by the physicians, that day she was believed without any doubt about to die. This also asserted Friar William, a not unlearned physician of that place, hinting to the bystanders that about her they should keep watch, without doubt in the following night about to die: but behold that collection from the affected throat was loosed, and the fever wholly departed; and she who now was said about to die, obtained entire health. In the same village a certain Maria Martinia from a long sickness, a ringing of the ears, a roaring of the ears and a vehement tinnitus had incurred, even so far that for much time now neither did she understand, what to her even by those crying out into the ear were said, nor took sleep but most painfully, and was held for wholly deaf, and from long sleeplessness lean, was believed not long to live. To this matter faith was made, that to those two evils a third had been added, a noxious appetite of eating earth: by which so far she was vexed, that by no one's suggestion or chiding could she be deterred, but that daily a great quantity of clay and potter's chalk she ate. The despaired health therefore kindled the woman to religion: she came to the sepulchre of the holy man, and with as great affection of mind as she could into prayer she prostrated herself: and straightway the continual thunders of the ears ceased, and she slept well; and that insane hunger of eating earth so far was taken away, that not only from it thenceforth she shrank, but also at the recollection she nauseated, nor could endure by anyone mention of clay in any wise to be made. In the same village also Martin Petreius, a pain of the shin, side and head, a mattress-maker, a man poor indeed, but upright and in spirit toward God wondrously intent; when he had a shin much inflated and with vehement pain affected, supported by a staff, as he could, to the sepulchre of the blessed man came; and earth from the tomb scattered over the gravely affected shin, suddenly healed he withdrew: and after some time burdened with an acute pain of the side and head, to the medicine now ascertained to him he betook himself: for a prayer poured forth at the tomb of the holy Father; straightway home unharmed and glad he returned.
[57] At Scallabis in the parish of holy Salvator Dominica Petreia, an apostem in the hand. wife of Silvester Petreius a scribe, an apostem grave having arisen in the left hand above forty days so was tormented, that through the force of the pain to rest in no wise she could. She came to the monument of Aegidius, and scattering over the hand and arm earth from there, suppliant with tears the blessed man prayed, that he who not only of souls but also of bodies in life had been a physician, and many from the art of medicine had cured, many by word and prayer; now, since more powerful with God he was, to her suppliant her ills he would deign to heal. Amid these words there was burst of its own accord the most grave apostem, and rising the woman shook her hand, and threw out a fragment of putrefied little flesh, and another little flesh like a longer worm; and straightway the place of the apostem being solidified she was healed.
[58] Martin a little youth, son of these Silvester Petreius and Dominica Petreia, frequently seized by the devil miserably was vexed. A man possessed is freed, Whom the mother to the sepulchre of the Patron leading with her, earth from it to the son's neck hung, with maternal affection beseeching, that with the same piety, by which her at another time most badly affected he had helped, he would deign the wretched youth from that horrible evil to free. The youth carried bound to his neck the little dust, and a whole year now from the horrendous vexation of the evil genius immune, the amulet of the little dust to carry neglected. Which the enemy perceiving, more atrociously assailing him so savagely
afflicted him, that twice sometimes in a day he dashed and tore him. The mother finding out, that the earth of the sepulchre at his neck he by no means carried, chiding asked, what had become of it. And when he confessed that through negligence he had thrown it away; the mother stimulated by grief returned to the tomb, and the dust taken from it with great confidence to the son's neck again bound, threatening lest he cast it away. The youth was on his guard, and many years after free from the vexation of the evil demon and unharmed survived. This his mother at the holy monument narrated, before the religious men Friar Dominic Pelagius the Subprefect of the convent, and Friar Bartholomew Petreius, and before the writer of this history, before also Lawrence Dominic a public notary, and Lucia a noble matron, and others.
[59] In the parish of S. Stephen, Maria Sueria, a poor little woman, when by a demon appearing to her once and again wondrously terrified, and by nocturnal images frequently deluded, a whole six years now a continual fear of heart suffered, and agitated by diabolical spectres. almost fell into madness; the evil demon doing this, that to the supreme crime the wretch he might draw and most badly concerning her life she should resolve. For sometimes she beheld herself called to the noose and hanging, sometimes she imagined all her bowels by the enemy entered within to be poured out for her, sometimes struck with slaps, even by day as if she fled an assailant from the house outdoors she leaped. From which into so great a dread and consternation of mind she had come, that neither color was to her, nor any good habitude of body in her, but with a ghostly pallor and leanness she was consumed. But she went to Friar Andreas, a good man and a skilled physician, and by frequent and too scrupulous confession to weariness in narrating these things she dulled him. To whom when neither he himself, nor likewise Master Dominic by any chidings profited, that a better or quieter mind she might recover; at length they counseled that the tomb of the holy Father Aegidius she should frequent. Which when she diligently did, two or three days after to her sleeping there stood the blessed man, with an illustrious face and a most beautiful habit; and she approaching, the lowest part of his garments being seized, on her head she laid it, saying; Holy Father, have mercy on me, and the mockeries of the evil genius which I suffer from me dispel. To whom Aegidius, Go, said he, and at my sepulchre seek me: for there you will find me. The woman rose, and candles being taken came to the monument, and with tears the vision related, and from that hour herself she felt wholly from these savage illusions of the devil freed. This happened the month not yet completed, from the passing of the man of God.
[60] In the parish of holy Salvator, a certain girl of nearly ten years, Maria Dominica by name, daughter of Maria Petreia, by a grave and unexpected chance had wholly lost the use of speaking; besides with most vehement pains rushing into her, when neither by speaking what pained her she could explain, Help is brought to a mute possessed girl, nor at least by clamor and complaints the savagery of the pains mitigate; as if raging and insane moving her body and clapping herself with her hands, even unto death she was afflicted with anxieties. Her kinsmen seize the girl, and to the sepulchre of Aegidius hasten, a great multitude of both sexes following, pitying the lot of the noble girl. So sharply moreover she was vexed, that she was thought about to breathe out her soul before the sepulchre should be reached. There was then sacristan Friar John Petreius, a man of simple and approved life, of that kind whom the monks call Conversi. He when he had seen the tumult of those coming, the cause being known to the Prefect and the monks related it, asking that someone in sacred orders be sent, who the cloak of the divine Father Dominic to the mute and likewise possessed girl might put on. To whom the Prefect, the same founder of this history; Go you, he said, Brother, and the cloak itself reverently put on. And while he went, the girl prostrate over the tomb of Aegidius he found, surrounded by an accompanying crowd. Wherefore the cloak being omitted, a little dust from that tomb snatching, with it the girl's face and head with his hands he rubbed, a little dust of B. Aegidius's sepulchre being applied to her. and a part of the dust diluted with water to be drunk he offered. Which done wholly the pains were taken away, and the rage was quieted, and the girl who long had been mute, the bond of her tongue being loosed, the name of Father Aegidius to repeat ceased not, all rejoicing and stupefied who were present. Nor was this done in secret, but before Friar Dominic Pelagius of Coimbra, Friar John the sacristan, Friar John of Alacri-portus, and the author of this history then Prefect of the convent, and above forty of the town's citizens, who with her had come, wondering at the threefold miracle suddenly wrought, namely the speech restored, the insane rage put to flight, and forthwith full health following.
[61] In the same parish of holy Salvator, Francis a youth, son of the widow Bartoleta, by a vehement flux of blood was oppressed: for whole seven days unceasingly to vomit and through the nostrils much blood to throw up not ceasing, Two dying men are helped from a flux of blood. from the abundant flux he was believed about to die. They suggested to the mother Marina the wife of Stephen of Salamanca and certain others, that the youth to the tomb of the man of God she should take care to have carried. The woman persuaded, made her son lie stretched over the tomb a while: but she herself prostrate, with abundant tears suppliant prayed Aegidius, that to the dying youth he would deign to bring help. Then a little earth received from the tomb, into the mouth of him vomiting blood she put with confidence. Straightway that importunately overflowing flux of blood was restrained and dried up, and the youth made whole. By a like case was imperiled a boy, John by name, son of Peter Suerius of Renus, grandson of Martin Menendus and Dominica Petreia dwelling in the parish of D. Irene; the blood flowing down through the nostrils with so great force, that if the nostrils for the cause of restraining the flux with the fingers were pressed, the wave of blood turned into the mouth more vehemently burst out. Whom the mother to the convent of the Preachers led by the hand, that from the Friars Andreas and Bernard physicians counsel she might seek, who two, and together Friar Martin Petreius, and our author, the boy, from the nostrils and mouth throwing up blood, and trembling in his whole body, nor with his feet able to stand, when they had seen; over his calamity, from the flux of blood (as it appeared) soon about to perish, moved with mercy, the counsel of medicine being given, they ordered that he should hasten home, and what they had counseled, do. Nevertheless however, said Andreas, enter, good woman, the temple, and Friar Aegidius venerate, and from his sepulchre earth to your son's neck hang; perhaps he will have mercy on you and will succor the boy. She entered, and the sacristan being found asked that the earth to her son's neck he would bind. Which done, and briefly having venerated and as a suppliant she departed; that what the physicians had ordered, she might hasten. Scarcely had they proceeded thirty paces, when that river of blood stopped, and home safe was led back the boy, who hopeless and almost dying, as if he were being carried out, a cancer is healed, had gone out of the house. A woman, Major Pelagia by name, near the same church of holy Salvator, had a cancer in the mouth, from which neither by the physicians of the convent, who were well learned and religious, nor by others could be cured. Who when on a certain night she was greatly afflicted, at length lightly slumbering, seemed to herself to come to the tomb of the holy Father Aegidius, and a little earth from the sepulchre on the affected place to put, and straightway from the cancer of the mouth to be freed. Wherefore waking and reckoning the vision, to the sepulchre she came, and the dust being put into her mouth, suddenly from the incurable disease she was wholly healed.
[62] incurable scrofula, At Coimbra a certain Dominic Consalvius a painter, deformedly scrofulous, to be cut on each side of the throat to Martin Garcia a surgeon had given himself; but by a long and vain cure, the hope of health being deluded, by grief and shame half-consumed, from the public he abstained. And scrofula upon scrofula from time to time arising, and ulcer upon ulcer, and through the open wounds of the throat pus continually flowing, he was reduced to this, that even of life now he was weary. He had a friend, Bartholomew by name: he when on a certain day for the cause of duty he had visited him: Come, said he, friend, since by human help nothing thus far you have advanced, to the divine flee over; the sign of the Cross in so many places to the broken throat with confidence impressed, the holy Father Aegidius invoke, by whose merits that you will be cured do not doubt. At the mention of Aegidius the man raised into hope, vowed, if by his merits he were cured, that he would go to his sepulchre with as great devotion as he could. The vow uttered, in the same place and day he was restored to health: and coming to the sepulchre of the blessed man with certain others, to Friar John Petreius Prefect of the Oporto convent, who then was at Scallabis, and to many other monks the benefit, to him through the merits of the holy Father Aegidius suddenly and unexpectedly conferred, with a pious and grateful discourse he laid open.
[63] Menendus Petreius, a man of the equestrian Order, son-in-law of Martin Dada Prefect of the Scallabis citadel, familiarly to the holy man while still he was among men, was known. a lethal disease, Whom since Menendus as a Saint piously worshipped and venerated, on a certain day he complained in familiar colloquy to him: Behold, said he, Father Aegidius, you have come to extreme old age, and by the order of nature there is at hand for you the term of this course, desired by you, by me and to my life perhaps inconvenient. I bid you be of good cheer; Aegidius replied: for after my departure hence, the more I promise that I will accommodate you, if ever with prayers you shall knock upon me. Therefore after the death of the holy Father it happened that Menendus even unto death was ill; to whom when Master Vincent the physician had come, and of his life had despaired, to those who stood by he affirmed, that within the next five days without doubt he would die. Which hearing Menendus, very sad made, for dead and despaired of on account of the physician's authority wholly held himself: and recalling the promise made to him, O Father, said he, Aegidius, to you I flee: to your promise I beseech give faith: for neither did you falsely promise, nor do I doubt you to be powerful to obtain from God what you wish. This prayer performed, the blessed man in a splendid habit showed himself to him, and with a cheerful and likewise shining countenance; Behold me, said he, Menendus, fear not: with you is God, who will make you whole from this hour. Aegidius departed, and the sick man who was all but giving up the soul, felt himself wholly cured: and having a hen prepared for himself he ate, and rose whole and well: and coming after these things to the convent, amply provided with food he dined with the monks, and with the highest piety these things related. At Palaeopyrgos, or Old-towers, a town of the more ancient Turduli, as before we said, Julian a boy, son of Dominic Petreius, lying in a grave disease, when eight days had passed from which he not only had eaten nothing, but could not even swallow a poured-in draught; without ambiguity with death itself now he wrestled. The mother anxious about her son, to the mercy of Father Aegidius, with vehement affection and tears, as much as by maternal piety she availed, turned herself; vowing, if her son to her he would restore now despaired of, that she would bring him to his sepulchre. The vow uttered, the boy unexpectedly leaping from the bed, sound and unharmed to his mother came; and food being asked refreshed, suddenly recovered. Whom the mother, amid astonishment
and joy scarcely master of her mind, straightway to the sepulchre of the Saint sent: but she herself followed, having taken with her Maria Martinia, the wife of Geraldus Suerius; and all the things which had happened, both to that Maria and to many of the convent's Priests, in order set forth.
[64] The Subprefect of the Royal fisc in the Coimbra nome, Dominic Martinius, a grave hernia. when for the cause of exacting grain, which to the cellar the ploughmen were bound to give, the fields and threshing-floors he went round, it happened that on a certain day, his companions and ministers being sent with the beasts of burden laden to the cellar, he himself alone remained. Meanwhile from the grain collected in the name of the cellar, into a sack somewhat more capacious two medimni, that is twelve modii, he puts; and alone striving to set it upon a large pack-horse, by the magnitude of the weight he ruptured on both sides the membranes: and the bowels into the scrotum by the force rolling down, with a vehement pain he was tormented, and by a perverse shame to show himself to the physicians by no means did he bring his mind. But the scrotum being drawn down and distended day by day to an enormous magnitude, when whole now fifteen years with that disease he was afflicted, at some time the bowels with greater force descended. And when beyond the wonted manner the groin they thrust, and he tormented far more sharply, the divine help in this or that manner querulous would implore, it came to his mind to recall the miracles of the holy Father Aegidius: and with as great lowliness of mind as he could. O Father, said he, Aegidius, show toward me that piety of yours, which never those invoking you has abandoned: consult my modesty, succor the afflicted, heal the wretched, set in such long pains: that by the help of your clemency cured, your sepulchre glad I may go to, and the benefit conferred on me with a grateful proclamation I may pursue. Aegidius looked upon the prayers of the afflicted man, and suddenly the hanging intestines into the belly gathered themselves, and the ruptures of the groin as if just now firm so far were consolidated, that no trace of the past evil remained. He came therefore to Scallabis on the anniversary day, on which the celebrated memory of the blessed Father Aegidius is kept, and his wondrous works and virtues to the people are preached: which is wont to be done on the Sunday, following the feast of the Ascension, on which day then it happened to D. John the Apostle at the Latin gate to be sacred: and wax candles being kindled a good many, he prayed, to Aegidius giving thanks. Whom when Friar Dominic Pelagius of Coimbra had seen, to whom, for the cause of a common country, he was known and familiar, the cause of his coming he asked. He related the matter plainly, the author of this history being present, and many others both citizens and the Priests of that convent.
[65] The Blessed cappa being applied a possessed man is freed. The same also related, what at Coimbra not long before had happened to Dominic Joannides, the Prefect of the same Royal fisc and the publicans. He the blessed man still in this life journeying both familiarly had loved, and for the grace of his conspicuous sanctity with a pious worship had always revered, and on his account toward the monks munificent and liberal. He had obtained moreover from the man of God with great prayers, that the cloak, which the monks call a cappa, a new one he would deign to receive; and the one which he wore, by use now worn, to him as a gift give: and given it as a sacred thing in his own house he kept. After some years therefore from the passing of the holy Father, it happened that a certain Dominic Petreius, a neighbor of that Joannides, seized by the enemy of the human race was unceasingly vexed. Which vexation when by the hidden judgment of God a long while the wretched man suffered, on a certain day the demon more atrociously and savagely pressing on, Joannides moved with mercy, that cloak over the seized man stretched; and straightway the wicked spirit from its savagery desisted, and with a roar and indignation went out, nor did he dare any more to assail. So remained the man from that savage tyranny of the evil demon wholly free by the benefit of Aegidius, in the cloak, which once he had worn, exerting his wondrous virtue. Each of these two miracles, by Dominic Martinius so related, on the same day the people being gathered to hear when it was publicly in the sermon narrated, so great a concourse to the sepulchre of the man of God with glad acclamations was made, that with some pushing others, the very throng of those rushing in not a few hours remained, and the railings were utterly broken.
[66] Raymond the Gaul from a town of the Narbonese province, A Gaul a pilgrim to S. James, which Montpellier, or Montpessulanum, by a more received appellation in this time, even the throng of the learned calls, when one of the groins with an unseemly magnitude he had ruptured, and a pilgrimage to D. James had set about, came to Zaragoza. In which place when he had heard that there were surgeons who to every kind of hernia by incision applied medicine; out of desire of health twice he suffered the groin to be cut for him. Nor indeed did the incision much profit him: for thence toward Galicia having departed, from the fatigue of the foot journey the omentum into the affected groin not only descended, and more vastly than usual swelled, but the other also with the greatest tension protruded: by which evil both slowness of going, and a wretched health he incurred. The shrine of the Apostle therefore being visited, at length into Portugal he came, hoping that at Lisbon there would not be lacking a ship, by which to his country he might be carried. But having entered Scallabis, when in the ptochodocheum by those pitying him of the power of Aegidius he had been taught, his sepulchre he went to, at the sepulchre of the Blessed he is healed of the hernia. and began for his reverence daily, while the Sacrifice was being performed, sixty times the Lord's prayer to recite. On the sixth day therefore the Mass finished, when at the sepulchre he prayed, suddenly he felt and found himself cured; and weeping for the unhoped joy, he ran to the doors of the convent, and to Friar Simeon the doorkeeper related it. He called thither Friar Menendius the Doctor, Friar Martin Joannides, Friar Roderic Vernandius, Friar John Martinius, and the writer of our history: to whom the man the matter openly set forth, very many of the townspeople hearing, who at his glad cries had run together. The next day divinely cured he returned to the sepulchre with wax candles: and since on that day was kept the memory of the Translation of the holy Father Dominic, and a sermon was to be had to the frequent people, the miracle from the pulpit in order was narrated, the man publicly standing by, and what had happened asserting.
[67] At Scallabis at holy Salvator's, Pelagius Nonius a charcoal-burner, a man indeed poor, likewise to another a poor man. but of good faith and blameless life, when in nourishing his little family from the magnitude of continual labor the intestines through one of the groins had slipped down, at length came to this, that to work in no wise he could, by which his poverty he might sustain. Counsel being communicated with his wife Maria Dominica, he resolved to sell a few and frivolous things of the very slender furniture, which only remained, and to migrate elsewhere, lest his kinsmen with the reproach of poverty he should seem to dishonor among the known. Between the shame therefore of imminent beggary and the purpose of deserting his country, a counsel suddenly arose to his fluctuating mind, that to the tomb of the holy Father Aegidius he should betake himself, from whom for his afflicted affairs he should ask help. He came therefore, and dust received from there over the ruptured groin he sprinkled. The following night there appeared to him by no means sleeping in a visible form Aegidius, and with his finger more vehemently pressed into the ruptured place, the slipped intestines upward he gathered, and into the omentum put in. By the violent pressure of the finger struck the man, began with a loud voice to cry, Woe is me! woe! Friar Aegidius, you have cut me through! And he, fear not, said he: behold you are made whole. At the man's cry his wife being roused, asked, what suddenly had happened, that thus he lamented. He struck, said he, just now for me Friar Aegidius the injured groin with so great force, that for pain to contain my cry I could not. And these things said his hand being cast he handled the place, and the membranes and the membrane of the abdomen being wholly consolidated, wholly sound he found himself. The same man when afterward on a certain day without shoes he went, to whom also an injured foot is cured. a most sharp bone entered one of his feet, and fixed too deep in the sole so injured it, that the whole foot and the ankle with the shin swelled, and the man from the bed to rise without torment could not. And mindful that from the dust of the monument of the holy Father at another time medicine had come to him, thither he sent, and with the dust the painful parts, the name of Aegidius invoking, he sprinkled; and suddenly healed he rose, nor did he blush before the people each of these two benefits of the holy man toward him in a public sermon to confess.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER VIII.
The remaining miracles of the third book.
[68] Foreign from my institute perhaps it may seem, if of another than Aegidius the wondrous works to this narration I insert: but so, The mother of a boy cured by B. Peter Gonsalvius, the things which I shall now say, are connected with those to be said a little after, that even that this leave be given me I need not to ask. At Scallabis in the parish of holy Salvator dwelt Maria Vernandia, a pious and of upright morals woman, sprung from a town of Galicia, which by the ancients was called the port of the Artabri, the nearer centuries preferred Pontevedra. She had a son, Dominic by name, most tenderly loved, both because unripe, and because after her husband's decease left outside her country and her own he was the only one, by whom alone her widowhood and solitude she consoled. His one foot that worst kind of sacred fires, of which above we discoursed and θηρίωμα to be called by the Greeks we said, so far had eaten away, that the joints of the sinews being corrupted eighteen bones from it fell out: and when in vain the art of physicians she had employed, the hope of health day by day rushing into worse, the long-deluding work being despised, divinely she sought healing; and the blessed man, Friar Peter Gundisalvius of the Order of Preachers, who in the chief temple of the city of Tuy is buried, and whose in Galicia the name is most celebrated, nor in Portugal not celebrated, in cities especially maritime, with daily weeping she prayed, and as from a fellow-countryman for the cause of fellow-citizenship she confidently asked help, that her son's foot might not wholly perish. That Blessed one heard her, and in a few days without the work of medicaments, by which deluded often and a long while she had been, the foot for the boy preserved, and entire and sound rendered. Of which benefit the woman grateful not unmindful, the Order of Preachers greatly venerated, her son's mind to these morals training, and that the Priests of his institute he should frequent exhorting. Which the youth when sedulously he did, solicitous about her absent son, and himself little by little had given, delighted by so great a token the venerable Father Friar Bartholomew Bishop of Silves, took him with him to the Turdetani, in those times not yet, the Saracens being expelled from town to town, pacified, nor by so daily, as now, commerce frequented. Where when
a good while he had stayed, and the mother knew nothing of him, she was anguished with suspicions, in the womanly and to mothers accustomed manner.
[69] and commending him to B. Aegidius, On a certain day therefore when the anxiety of mind she could not bear, she ran to the monument of the holy Father Aegidius, and prostrate prayed, that at least through a vision more certain her he would deign to make. Aegidius did not spurn the maternal solicitude, but the following night this appearance offered to the woman. She beheld her son in a certain little boat, without rudder, without sails, without oars, with many others coming; the little boat however within was full of the greatest brightness. But the mother terrified cried, Alas! my son, in what manner will you escape the storms of the sea? And the son, Fear not, my mother, with us goes Friar Aegidius: he will lead us to the port unharmed. So the little boat came to a certain most pleasant port, and on every side surrounded with green and flowery meadows, into which the son being set down was received. Nor much after the youth put in at Lisbon, whence to Scallabis to his mother he came. A few days passed, and the mother always anxious in mind for her son, by a twofold vision she is taught that he will enter the Order of Preachers. at the sepulchre of the holy Father Aegidius weeping prayed, the early adolescence of the youth to his deity commending. To her not sleeping therefore, but plainly waking a vision of this kind was set. The Sacrifice of this day being finished, under the monument of Aegidius she beheld a great subterranean chamber, made in the manner of a chapel, shining with the greatest light, and in the midst an altar prepared for the Sacrifice, to which approaching a certain Brother Priest the divine service performed, answering him and ministering a certain Brother youth, whom she herself thought to be her son, who at the elevation of the consecrated Host a little candle according to custom kindled held. The Sacred being performed and that adventitious vision being taken away, the place of the vaulting, just now open, was closed, as when a book is folded together. But behold the next day, at most the day after, the mother not expecting it, the youth having humbly asked the habit of religion was by the monks received, that each vision was not vain it declared.
[70] By that vision Aegidius signified, that he had cared for the youth commended by the pious mother. By this, which I shall now relate, the same concerning a certain merchant by like visions Aegidius reveals. he wished to declare, how much to Dominic Julian the merchant he favored, and how much for his soul's salvation he procured. He toward the holy man still living had been well disposed, and his dead memory venerated, but by the fetters of earthly gain bound less care of his soul he bore. Not long therefore after the decease of the most blessed man, Lady Catharine, sister of the religious man Friar Peter Bernardius and Lady Maria Bernardia, of whom in the following we will make mention, a vision of this kind saw. She beheld the blessed man in a linen ankle-length tunic most white, with a gilded belt and a silken military cloak put over, and in his hands ampules of consecrated oil and chrism having; likewise two boys over the habit of the Order clothed in white linens, kindled wax candles before him holding, and on this side and that a copious throng of Preacher Friars: to whom looking, Let us go, said he, to Dominic Julian the merchant to be anointed. And when they had come thither, the unction performed, with the habit of the Order him the holy Father seemed to clothe. One day or another had passed, and the merchant stripping himself of human burdens, to the convent came, the habit of holy conversation humbly asked, and to the conventual warfare gave his name.
[71] At Lisbon when among the Preacher monks the celebrated memory of the translation of the holy Father Dominic was kept; a certain goldsmith admonished by neighbors that he should not on that day work, A goldsmith of Lisbon, for the neglected cult of S. Dominic, but rather should go together to the frequent sermon in the convent, despised it nor desisted from working. Whose contempt vengeance followed: for a fragment of glowing coal leaping from the little furnace, into the open eye at the pupil clung to him: in which straightway a rather large blister arose, and the eye so far from the burning swelled, that now neither by the eyelids was it covered nor did it twinkle, but from the inflation and vehement pain it seemed to leap out from the head. The man could not contain himself at home, but the gold workshop being shut and his hand placed over the eye, he went out as if insane, nor sufficiently constant in mind where he was going, until that bitter vexation was turned into religion. Wherefore he who had gone out mad with pain, burned in the eye, whithersoever the impulse bore him; to the convent straight he betook himself, and found a monk from the pulpit preaching. Who when weaving other things from others also to Aegidius turned his discourse, and certain things had brought forward worthy of admiration; the man, those hearing who were around, If true, said he, are the things which that monk concerning Friar Aegidius asserts, and me Friar Aegidius himself look upon, and my eye from so sharp an injury restore, B. Aegidius being invoked he is healed: in conceived words I vow, that as soon as he shall have healed me, so to his sepulchre on foot I will go. The vow uttered when home he betook himself, the pain suddenly taken away and the wonted twinklings returned wondering, from a mirror the eye wholly sound, without a blister, without any inflation, with the highest joy he beheld. And no delay, before he tasted anything of food, the journey to Scallabis he took, and at the sepulchre wax candles being kindled prostrate, the clemency and power of Aegidius toward him he narrated. To the miracle bore testimony Friar Alfonsus of Zamora of Lisbon, then Subprefect of the convent, Friar Pelagius Pensus, Friar Stephen Rodericius, and Friar John Joannides: who saw the man after the sermon finished, and that he should be of good cheer, have good hope, exhorted him: the writer also of our history says that he saw him whole at Scallabis, when at the tomb of Aegidius he gave thanks.
[72] The Saints are not wont, and especially those reigning with God, the injuries inflicted on them by little pious men in a human manner to avenge. But if sometimes the harmful ones vengeance follows, this happens for this, that admonished by the scourge, they may understand their own impiety to have displeased God, and salutarily, unless of a despaired mind they be, repent. To a certain courtier this happened, who when on a certain solemn day in the church he was, where the holy man Aegidius rests, and saw the frequent people to kiss his sepulchre run together, began first within himself to hesitate, whether he was a Saint to whom so great that reverence was bestowed. Then, as the devil the inciter of evils is wont minds once lightly impelled by him to the supreme crimes and disgraces to carry up, against this man a blasphemer he is gravely punished. from hesitation he burst into blasphemy, the murmur being now badly suppressed, that unworthy of that honor was buried the little friar, and that those fixing kisses on a stone were plainly superstitious. While he casts these things, in body shaken he collapses: and when of his eyes also the light a great vertigo had taken away, the man by no means stood firm, and neither in any way to go out, nor a little at least could from the place advance; but of himself wholly then both in mind and body powerless, he stuck. At length religion struck his mind, that he acknowledged whence that sudden affliction had befallen him: and his mind little by little recovering, what in others from rashness he had condemned, with a saner counsel he himself tried to do. And trembling and tottering, scarcely on his feet sustained, he begged that some should help him with their work, that to the sepulchre he might approach: at which prostrate, the sanctity of the buried one he confessed, and his madness openly with profuse tears he reproved; and prayed to be freed, that he who had been a detractor of virtue, of the power and clemency a herald thence might become. He was heard, and whole and well rose: and thenceforth as often as occasion fell, that from a like impiety they should beware the rest he exhorted.
[73] Benedict a little boy, son of Lady Major of Guimarães, who at Scallabis outside the suburb near the temple of the holy Trinity dwelt, watching in the hippodrome, a horse incited more sharply in a bridleless course turning aside to the other part of the course, propelled and trampled him, and his arm crushed to the ground broke. By the work of the surgeons indeed the broken bones came together and were consolidated somehow; but from the grave injury of the sinews the hand so was numbed, that neither to close it, nor the fingers to bend, or anything with them to grasp in any wise could he. Of which matter when from the soul the mother grieved, to the sepulchre of the holy man suppliant she approaches, At the sepulchre a contracted hand is restored, and a little earth taken thence to her son's arm she bound. Soon and at the same moment perfect health obtained, the hand as it pleased him, now into a fist to press, now to open he began, and the fingers either to contract or to extend, and in every way the use of arm and hand at his will he recovered. The same boy afterward in process of time with the pernicious disease of dysentery when a long while he labored, he is healed of dysentery and dropsy. whether from the much water which he drank, or for some other cause, so far had swelled, that the belly at a light touch, no less than a drum struck by the hand, sounded. In which affliction the same mother recalling Aegidius, whose clemency toward her son already at another time she had experienced, over the tomb prostrate made him lie a while. She returned thence home, and behold after a few hours the inflated belly of the boy subsided, and the dysentery which now had grown inveterate, was suppressed and wholly amended, and wholly the boy both in color and good habitude of body recovered. But the mother, a noble and pious woman, of each received benefit by no means unmindful, to the sepulchre returned, and her son whole and in best health both before and now openly showed. Of each miracle an eyewitness our author with very many others confirms that he was.
[74] Through Aegidius's staff the gout is cured, In another discourse before this we said that King Alfonso, by the staff of the blessed Aegidius still living from a grave gout had been freed, and for that reason had kept the staff at home with himself. It happened therefore after the holy father's decease, that a noble knight Peter Martinius, surnamed Paetarinus, Prefect of the municipality of Ourense, of the number of those who were the King's counsellors, and who to him was most pleasing and peculiarly a friend, with the disease of gout labored. Whom the King when he had seen most painfully dragging his feet, pitying him, Take, said he, this staff of Friar Aegidius, perhaps it will profit you: to me certainly through the carrying of it the Lord deigned to bring help. So the Prefect carried Aegidius's staff with great remedy of the gout. Meanwhile at the same municipality of Ourense a certain Dominic Matthaeus, when on a Sunday on the third of the Nones of June, a dinner being more sumptuously prepared, the half-chewed flesh too greedily he went on to swallow, and a bone clinging to the throat is taken out a bone in the middle of the gullet crosswise clung, so that neither to descend, nor to be thrown up could, nor the breath let pass. There was called thither Stephen Martinius, the Priest of the temple of S. John there, that his Confession he might receive, before the breath should be wholly shut off: but he in no way could speak. There came together at the sudden case from the neighbors many, and the tumult reached Lady Stephana, the wife of that Prefect Peter Martinius; who having heard the man's straits, that staff from her husband asked, and to the throat of the now almost suffocated one applied it: and forthwith the vehemently fixed bone was thrown up, and the man wholly freed. Who however the crimes to confess before, necessity urging, had not been able, from religion afterward
straightway now free confessed: and he who from the table sad had risen, to the table with his friends returned, of his health and unburdened conscience glad. This to himself and Friar Roderic Vernandius his companion narrated our author writes by the same one who was so cured, and by his wife, likewise by the Prefect of the municipality, and by Stephana his wife, by the Priest also who received the Confession, and by John Vernandius the chaplain of the aforesaid Prefect, and by many others inhabitants of the same municipality, who at the man at that time had come together.
[75] A like thing happened, when the same matron Stephana was at Rivus-major a mountain village, to another likewise running up to the sepulchre where there is a wondrous fountain of most salty water, from which are made not a few salt-works of most white salt, and which to the marine is preferred. For of her clients and attendants one, John Martin a citizen of Ourense, when flesh likewise he ate, and more voraciously gorging (as is wont among the followers of nobles, who thus their own part rightly consulted think, if by their voracity and gluttony at the common table and set dish they suffer no later ones) a bone with flesh occupied the gullet, and fixed tenaciously that throat it tormented in wondrous ways, him making now these, now those gestures. To whom when the patroness had come; Indeed, said she, what remedy I should apply to you, I truly know not; hasten as much as you can, to the tomb of Friar Aegidius (for not many miles is that village distant from Scallabis) where I hope you will be healed. Who when the journey hastily he had taken, and from speed and pain weary a while had sat down, while a little from the fatigue he rested, he fell asleep: in a short while however awaking, wholly sound he found himself. Which to himself had befallen afterward with a grateful mind he related, just as in very deed to the founder of our history and his companion he related, before his patrons the Prefect of Ourense and Stephana his wife, and John Vernandius their chaplain, and very many citizens of that castle.
[76] A certain youth, April by name, of Vernandus Vernandius a man of the equestrian rank a client, at Thomar fell into a sudden and by the physicians little understood evil. For there seized him a dire pain of heart and bowels, and like a frenzied and rabid one he was so maddened, that by many men he could not be held, but that he himself and the bystanders with biting he tore. To those not knowing the cause of so sudden an evil, this only token he gave, that seized by some wicked spirit he seemed. Lest therefore against himself or against others through rage he should rave, those who were present his arms, hands, and feet one by one to wooden columns bound, indeed also his head by the hair to the ground with bonds they pressed, lest with bites himself he should tear in pieces. When thus for many hours detained from fury and rage he did not desist, there came up Lord Lawrence of Thomar, Procurator of the Convent of the Friars of the militia of the Temple, a pious man and of eminent authority: he dust from the tomb of the holy Father Aegidius, which with himself he carried, over the breast of the seized one placed near the flesh under the undershirt. by whose dust the man vexed by a demon is freed. By the touch of which dust that raging man and possessed by the evil genius wholly was quieted, and with a placid and gentle voice, O great God, said he, I am made whole. And his discourse turning to Lawrence, Either some very great virtue in you, Lawrence, you have, or something of very great virtue in your hand without ambiguity you carry: for by the touch of your hand from a savage torment me you have freed. To whom Lawrence for joy weeping, Do not, son, to me any virtue, which indeed I have not, attribute: to God and his great servant Friar Aegidius your health you owe know. God has shown in you, with how great merits he prevails, whose sepulchre's dust, through me to you applied, from a horrible vexation you has freed. Loosed therefore the youth from the bonds by which he was held, sat quiet. When him again the wicked enemy assailed, his shin and knee so strongly he constrained, that it was little short but that he broke it. also a third time. Then the youth began to cry to Lawrence, Here I beseech, here over the shin the holy tomb's dust put, lest it be broken: for that the enemy contrives. The dust being applied the pain was taken away, and the malign spirit put to flight. But after about fifteen days, when home the youth wished to enter, he saw within demons besieging the door, and his entrance awaiting: wherefore outside before the door he cried out, that he dared not enter the house full of demons. There ran up his neighbor Lawrence, and to his neck earth he bound; and straightway the throng of importunate demons vanished, and the youth thenceforth was freed from terrors of this kind.
[77] In another before this discourse at Neopyrgos, a town of the Turduli, we said dwelt Pelagius Martinius, Prefect for collecting revenues, who the monks coming for the cause of preaching thither into lodging courteously received. When therefore there was the author of this history, together with his companion Friar Roderic Vernandius, there came to the same lodging with a great retinue Peter Joannides, an Athaugian noble the husband of Christina, The glands of a horse are cured, kinsman of Lady Joanna the Mistress of that town, whom that she was the cousin of Aegidius elsewhere more than once has been said by us. He had a noble horse, which the larger glands arising between the jaws and the bottom of the throat, a kind of quinsy, which our veterinarians not badly call olives, almost suffocated, so that neither to eat, nor to drink in any way could it. Of whose now sure, as it appeared, death the Lord grieving our author counseled, that to the holy Father Aegidius he should supplicate, a vow being made of visiting his sepulchre. As soon as the vow he took up, the horse with no loathing the barley began to eat: and water having drunk largely refreshed, straightway recovered; so that the next day with its former eagerness it carried the rider to discharge the vow.
[78] At Scallabis in the parish of the blessed Virgin at Marvilla, near the house of Menendus Martinius a noble man, dwelt Dominic Munio a herald, and Maria Dominica his wife. an infant who had swallowed a ring, They had an infant son scarcely yet two years old, Geraldus by name, who taking a ring carelessly placed, his hand lifted to his mouth in infantile manner the ring he swallowed, which being retained within the narrow of the gullet the infant was strangled. At whose weeping and the mother's outcry when a crowd had gathered, from the neighborhood came up Maria Sueria, an honest virgin, who candles to the sepulchre of the holy Father was bringing, that she might give thanks for the health of a girl of her family. She when she saw the tumult and the infant's straits, approached, and a candle unfolding with it the little one's neck she girt, thus praying; O holy Lord, pious Father Aegidius, behold I to your sepulchre go, that this candle I may kindle for your benefit to my family; look also now, I beseech, on our piety, and on this little one's innocence: succor his necessity, mindful of your beloved our Savior, who on infants the divine hands with the highest benignity laid. When she had said these things, the little infant from the bottom of the throat threw up the ring stained with blood: which the parents to the sepulchre of the holy Father brought together with these women who had been present, Lady Gaudina, Maria Petreia, Maria Galdina, and Maria Sueria whom we mentioned; who the matter done narrated before the author of this history, and before Friar Stephen Pelagius, and Friar John Dominic, the infant being shown openly and the ring still bloody.
[79] At Coimbra Dominic Petreius, surnamed Colar, the angina, had a grave collection in the throat with vehement pain: whom when Friar Peter Crucius had visited, he counseled him, that he should vow himself to Scallabis to go to the monument of the holy man. The man vowed evening approaching, and straightway the swelling collection was suppressed, all pain being calmed: and on the following day the sick man perfectly healed went to Friar Peter, and showed himself to him wholly cured. Dionysius the Infante, son of Alfonso King of the Portuguese, a King also himself afterward second to none in his time, when at Lisbon with his parents he was, and ate fish, a bone in his throat turned and fixed itself. and bones clinging to the throat. Which when he was vehemently afflicted, and his whole face reddened and was changed, they suggested to him that Friar Aegidius he should name. Forthwith therefore with the name of Friar Aegidius the bone was thrown up, and the boy from all danger freed. Of this matter bore testimony Lady Joanna, an illustrious woman, whom at the beginning I said was the cousin of the holy Father Aegidius, and the Queen, the wife of Alfonso III, was wont to accompany. Friar Aegidius Hermigius in the Scallabis convent when he ate fish, and a bone most tenaciously within the throat had clung, afflicted came to the tomb; and prostrate over it, with his mouth touching the earth, prayed in mind (for with words he could not) and soon coughing the bone infected with blood threw up. Two of the monks, Friar Roderic Vernandius and Friar Britius, when at Cornaga a village near Óbidos they dined in the house of John Munio, with him and John surnamed the Abbot, the Priest of that place; a bone of the gilthead fish, of which the Óbidos lake abounds, to the throat of Friar Roderic most strongly was impressed. Which when all diligence applied in no way he could throw up, and with the force of anxiety he was in a ferment, the sign of the Cross over the throat being made, the name of the holy Father, as he could, he named; and coughing, the bone being straightway thrown up, he was freed.
[80] At Scallabis at Marvilla Maria Dominica, the wife of Lord Stephen a rich merchant and honest citizen, for a perpetual five years a flux of blood having suffered, The flux of blood being restrained, from conceiving had desisted. Wherefore as the custom of women bears, especially those flourishing in age, in two ways she was afflicted: for both the disease itself by itself was full of danger and loathing, and deprived of conceptions, little pleasing to her husband on that account she thought herself. And so after the vain and empty diligence of many physicians, both lay and Dominical monks, namely Friar Andreas and Friar Bernard, into despair of health she had come. On a certain Sabbath therefore after the Lord's Ascension, when by the immoderate redundance even so far she was vexed, that the strength failing from the emptied blood she was thought about to die; the mother who was with her, Behold, said she, my daughter, tomorrow the anniversary memory of the holy Father Aegidius is kept, let us go to his tomb, and a vow being taken up, beseech him, that health for you from God by his merits he may obtain. She went on as best she could, leaning on her mother and the maidservants, and lying at the tomb with tears prayed, saying: Hear me, holy one of God, Friar Aegidius: if me God by your prayers from this wretched and ignominious condition will have freed, an annual fast I vow to you, which content with bread alone and water alone without relish, at all time of my life on the day before your anniversary I will keep, and daily for the reverence of your name three times the Lord's prayer I will say. When by this vow she obliged herself, without delay health followed: to a certain matron fruitfulness is restored, for on the same day restrained, the before unconquered exuberance stopped; and on the morrow the redundant humor being wholly dried up; to the sermon of the frequent people at the convent glad she came.
From which day not even a trace any more of that disease she felt: and she who through the five years, the trouble lasting, had been impeded from generation, soon conceiving made her husband glad with new offspring. But she faithfully fulfilling what she had vowed, her past danger, and the benefit received from Aegidius, with the highest gratitude of soul tears mixed with joy, as often as occasion fell, proclaimed; as our author of her often that he heard testifies.
[81] A year turning the same woman, the sinews of one side being loosed, to the same a hemiplegia is cured: fell into another kind of paralysis, which they call ἡμιπληξία, so that neither the arm of that side could she sustain, nor lift, nor to mouth or breast move, nor any work with it do. But having experienced in herself, how much with Aegidius a humble prayer had availed, to the tomb she returned; and weeping even now medicine she prayed: with a vow not vain she had returned home, and forthwith health following, the free and ready use of the just now useless arm she received. In this manner to the holy Father now made familiar the woman, when any weaker health either to herself or to her own she foresensed to arise, straightway to the protector and pillar of her health and house she fled, with tears for whatever obtaining efficacious. She had a son of nearly thirteen years, Lawrence by name, who from an incurred disease, by a long pain of the head, ringing of the ears and continual sound, had fallen into a deep deafness; so that of all the sense of hearing deprived, neither outcries, nor even clamors made into the ears did he perceive; nay it behoved that to him, no otherwise than to a mute, if anything were of use, by nods it be signified. to her son hearing is restored: By a long course of time therefore the vice not ceasing, the mother nodded to him, that with certain other boys, whom with instructions she had instructed, to the monument of the holy Father he should go. He went, and as he saw the others doing in order, his knees bent and on the tomb his face and head wounding he rubbed, into the inner holes of the ears the dust with his fingers putting. The blessed Father looked upon the faith of the mother made peculiar to him and the boy's necessity; and the dust which otherwise by its natural force would impede the office of the ears, against nature the dead faculty of hearing opened, so that straightway sharply whatever was said, and without any token of the former deafness, he heard.
[82] Martin Stephanius of Guimarães when to Scallabis he had come, a dangerous inflammation of the ear is cured was received into the lodging of Stephen Nonius his kinsman, dwelling in the parish of the divine virgin at Marvilla. He from a certain contusion in the inner right ear an apostem with inflammation had suffered: from which badly cured the inflammation to the face and neck more gravely extended, with so great pain, that neither could he sleep, nor rest, but rather by fever and sleeplessness into madness and death was being precipitated. Lady Gaudina, the wife of his kinsman, of whom at another time in this today's discourse we made mention, moved by the danger of her guest kinsman, counseled him, that to the convent of the Preachers going, a diligent confession of crimes being made, with a little dust from B. Aegidius's tomb the affected places he should besprinkle, daring to promise that remedy would be immediate. He used the counsel of the upright and kinswoman woman: for the stains of conscience being uncovered to the Priest, prostrate at the tomb, the dust he sprinkled over the inflamed ear. And forthwith all that collection by a swift derivation turned itself into the left armpit; and straightway suppurated, very lightly touched with a scalpel it burst; whence flowing for three days the putrid matter, soft lint being applied, the man unharmed to his country returned: and the aforesaid Stephen and his wife Gaudina publicly this to many and to our author related.
[83] Martin Dominic of Scallabis, from the village of S. Irene, who on the Tagus practiced the boatman's trade, and an incurable dropsy. the disease of dropsy contracted, with cures vain both his family substance and the hope of health had lost: for by fasting and abstinence from drink long macerated, and nine times about the groin and above the ankles the skin being cut, and in several places the belly ulcerated, by the work of Peter Martinius and Maria Martinia, and of a certain Jew who at that time in this matter was held most skilled, even so far had profited nothing, that the disease growing inveterate worse day by day he was, nor now was there one who the man to be cured wished to undertake, the hope of dispersing the water under the skin being wholly removed. But a certain Martin Vernandius, his neighbor, an upright man and who from humanity for his lot grieved, exhorted the gathered one to go to the sepulchre of Aegidius, who from how many men various and pestiferous sicknesses he had driven away. To the right counsel of his neighbor he indeed acquiesced; but when not a few days by procrastinating he had deferred, again fortified and reproved, as if by his negligence his own health he delayed, at length he obeyed; and little wax candles being taken with offerings to the tomb he came, and with as great compassion and lowliness of mind as he could prayed the help of the beneficent deity. And when home he had returned weary (for with difficulty on his feet he went) he sat a while, and fell asleep. To whom through sleep an image of this kind was set. He seemed to himself toward Gallicana (that is the name of a village not far distant) sad to go, and on the way the holy Father Aegidius, accompanied by some other monk, to be met by him. Whom when he had seen most beautiful and clothed in an illustrious garment, running he submitted himself to his knees, saying, O Lord Father Friar Aegidius, I was going to you. And Aegidius, Behold I to Scallabis go, but what is it, brother, that you wish of me? I was going to you, holy Father, he answered, because I am very dropsical, as you see, and most infirm; that by your piety, with which to those imploring you you are wont to be at hand, to me, by all abandoned and all but despaired of, you would deign to bring help. Then the holy man stretching out his open hands, his swollen belly touched, saying, Go from me whole, nor for the rest to physicians or surgeons give anything. At these words awakened from sleep, the vision with great joy with himself he reckoned; and straightway by a sudden loosening of the belly seized, frequently for three days with small intermissions by sitting down, the humor under the skin he emptied; and the belly being attenuated and the inequality of the body suppressed, wholly whole he was made, those wondering who had known him at the sudden after that three days the cure of so bad a state. These things when openly before the monks and very many others the man with living voice had related, Friar Bernard for the sermon to all the people set forth, the following Sunday, the feast of SS. Cyricus and Julitta.
[84] a bone being fixed in the throat he is freed. He who before our Aegidius's miracles to writing committed, of himself these things related. When for the cause of preaching at Thomar he was together with his companion Friar Martin Petreius, on the Paschal days in the lodging of the Friars of the militia of the Temple of Jerusalem (before their shameful extinction) and sat at table with certain others who for the cause of honor together had reclined, fish was set before them from the institute of religion. With which when he fed, and to the questions of some to answer he wished, a mouthful more incautiously he swallowed, in which was a stronger bone: which with such force to the throat was fixed, that neither by great and frequent spittings, nor with all his might provoked by coughing could it be expelled. Compelled therefore to desert the table and to go out outside, his hand through the mouth to the tonsils driven, ejection he procured: but neither so anything did he profit. Therefore his right hand raised the sign of the Cross depicting, he began thus with himself with not well-uttered words, Lord Father Friar Aegidius. He was about to add, Help me, and from the danger of imminent death free me; but medicine forestalled the prayer. For the bone amid the very words vanished, nor was it sufficiently ascertained to him whether it descended, for he did not feel it: but thrown up by no means it was; for it would have appeared. Before to the convent for fear of death to betake himself hastily he was thinking; to the table he returned, and the guests just now sad exhilarated, to God giving thanks and as health-bringing to himself praising Aegidius.
ANNOTATIONS.
ends for Resendius the third book: who then begins the fourth from an excuse of his absence for some years, and of other supervening impediments, by which delayed was this last labor; which without the form of Dialogism to weave through he proposes for those reading, the dry dignity of the matters themselves, even besides the pleasanter byways of discourse, about to esteem.
CHAPTER IX.
The miracles comprised in the fourth book by the author.
[85] At Ceice, a village of the Ourense territory by a religious temple of the Mother of God memorable, but otherwise ignoble, a woman Sanctia Sebastiana by name… daughter, the wife of John Martinius, when with a most difficult childbirth she labored, the fetus neither by nature's rite into the head, nor at least into the feet proceeding, but with the wrapping of its body folded blocking the way of going out; the third day now she was tormented, and her strength wholly exhausted, in a wretched manner with cries she drew her last breath. Five women perilously giving birth are freed, At length the midwife and the throng of neighbor women crying around: at that same hour journeying that way passed by, from Coimbra toward Thomar, Friar Stephen Virducus, Friar Roderic Vernandius, and Friar Vincent of Oporto: and hearing from the way the cries and tumult, they asked, what the matter was. And when the grave danger of the wretched woman they had understood, moved with mercy they approached, and all but breathing out her life they found. Then the elder, Come, said he, woman, with confidence invoke Friar Aegidius, that he may help you. She began most painfully, but frequently, to say, Blessed Friar Aegidius, help, I beseech, me, bound to visit your sepulchre. Scarcely had she bound herself by a vow; the Friars, that she should be of good cheer exhorting, went out, and before the doors awaited the event of the matter. Behold suddenly the birth corrected itself, and made a free going out. Who therefore now for three days lethally was afflicted, in that moment an infant male the woman in childbirth brought forth, and unharmed and mindful of the benefit as long as she lived, the Preacher Friars piously worshipped, and those passing that way into lodging kindly received. In the same village of Ceice Maria Petreia, the wife of Peter Joannides, a vow being made of going to the sepulchre. in a similar difficulty of childbirth and danger set, through three continuous days and nights with perpetual pains without intermission tormented, at every moment to death drew near. To whom when the aforesaid Sanctia, as a neighbor and friend, had come; Use, said she, Maria, my counsel: I in a like danger set, the help of holy Friar Aegidius being implored, and a vow being taken up of visiting his sepulchre, straightway from the very midst of death I was freed, and that little boy of mine I bore. Invoke therefore Friar Aegidius, and vow yourself that you will go to his sepulchre: and believe me, you will obtain it. The woman delaying nothing, so did. And soon all wondering she bore a little daughter, and after a few days with her husband to Scallabis to the monument of the holy man she came, the little daughter carrying in her arms, and with little wax candles kindled before the blessed father she fell reverent, all these things narrating before Friar Bernard, and Friar Peter Pelagius, the author of our history. Again in the same place Maria Menendia, the wife of Lawrence Matthaeus, when in a like danger she was, at the suggestion of the aforesaid Sanctia the help of Aegidius imploring, a son soon she bore. The three which I have just related, and two others, not only from those same women and their husbands, but from others also neighbors and also bordering, our author testifies that he received.
[86] In the second volume it was noted in passing by me, [By a little cloth from the Blessed's garment being touched are healed the angina,] that even of frivolous things, provided they were Aegidius's, with faith the touch to many was salutary: in the third also some things concerning the garments and the sepulchre's earth I commemorated. Which more at length now I will pursue, and that from them a medicine for various sicknesses efficacious proceeded I will narrate. In the village Gallicana of the Scallabis territory a certain woman nourished an infant, the son of Gondisalvus Martinius a knight: who by a grave disease of the angina seized, from the vehement inflammation of the throat and redness neither to eat, nor to drink, nor the breast to suck wholly could. The nurse, as foolish little women are wont, garrulous and superstitious old women went round: from whom when no help she carried back, and sad and lifeless returned; she saw passing and running about Lady Maria, the wife of Dominic Joannides; and her called in to her, first she reproved, that the vanity of old wives' sorceries she had sought; then, I have, said she, woman, with me little cloths from the garments of Friar Aegidius: let us pray the Lord, that through him and his merits this infant he may heal. With knees bent therefore Maria a little cloth on the affected throat placed: and straightway all the swelling subsided, and the throat drew a free breath; and the little boy, who many days now neither had sucked, nor eaten, the nurse's breasts more avidly pressed, and the given pap swallowed, soon from all freed. There another little boy, of about four years, the son of a certain Dominic, a tremor, by an assiduous tremor of the body was shaken, and at moments suddenly was terrified. Whom the mother to the aforesaid Lady Maria carrying, prayed, that as the cloth of the holy Father Aegidius on the son of Consalvus Martinius she had placed, so on this infant of hers she would deign to place it. Which she did most gladly: and thenceforth that evil state of tremor and sudden terror was taken from the boy. Of the same Lady Maria from a daughter Maria Dominica a granddaughter, by a difficulty of urine, στραγγουρία by the Greeks called, was held with a vehement torment, for many days now in vain wanting to urinate. strangury, Her the grandmother caused to be brought, in a wretched manner crying out; and laying her supine extending, over the bared belly the little cloth she placed, and covered it with a shift and garments. Scarcely had she finished, and the girl, all pain being calmed, the urine she emitted most easily. This the same Lady Maria, an upright and faith-worthy matron, to the author of our history, and to Friar Dominic Pelagius, and many others related.
[87] Friar Stephen Menendius, son of Menendus Facundus of Scallabis, a carbuncle, on the anniversary of the Lord's Ascension day, on which the holy man departed as above we narrated, a particle of his scapular for himself had cut off, and religiously kept. And when on a certain woman in the hand had arisen from the kinds of carbuncles and boils a most evil and sharp pustule, which the common people (for the cause I believe of averting the omen) call blessed, while yet they understand it to be execrable, and from the vehemence of pain as if mad she had gone out of the house, it came to mind, to the sepulchre of the holy man to betake herself. Whom when Friar Stephen had seen, the particle of the scapular to the painful and badly affected hand he applied; and straightway the pain, swelling, inflammation fleeing, the former health of the hand she recovered. At Coimbra a noble matron, Lady Major Alfonsia, the wife of Peter surnamed Francis, when she bore a child in the womb, in the top skin of the belly a most grave inflation incurred, a tympanites, whether tympanites we say or a like disease, with the worst state of the whole body. To the pregnant woman moreover medicine to apply when no one dared, because neither did it seem safe, the woman from leanness into a wasting came. Whom when Friar Peter Crucius had visited, and to her of the holy Father Aegidius some miracles had recited; she by a vow bound herself, either by herself, if conveniently she could, or by another the sepulchre of the holy man she would go to. There was present Dominica Martinia, sister of Friar Julian the Gaul, who a little cloth from the tunic of the blessed Father, which she had, placed on the swelling. Three days not yet elapsed the evil was healed, for whose curing a year by no means seemed to suffice. a tumor of the head and throat. At Codessaria a little town not unknown, called from the cytisus growing of its own accord through the fields in abundance, a certain man with an enormous inflation of the head, face, and throat was vexed, so much that his eyes scarcely appeared. There was then in the town a noble man, Lord Martin Alfonsius, who a girdle and a sweat-cloth from the holy Father while he lived, in the place of a gift, with great prayers had obtained, and with a religious affection kept. He when he learned of the disease of the man known to him, ordered him to be called, and the sweat-cloth over his face he placed, Aegidius being prayed. And no delay, all that collection, the skin under the chin being broken, burst out; from which pus most largely to flow did not cease, until the head, face, and throat wholly before all who were present subsided, and soft lint being applied without the work of physicians the man whole turned out. There were present some Jews, inhabitants of the place, who, Lord Martin relating these things, before Friar Dominic de Siserico and the author of this history, bore testimony of the matter done, not a little stupefied at the miracle.
[88] A woman devout to B. Aegidius We said elsewhere of Maria Sueria, that from demonic vexations and terrors of soul, by Aegidius appearing to her she had been freed. Therefore she as one now received into the clientship of the holy Father, from the past benefit him cultivated peculiarly, by vigils and prayers and the other works of penance not a little intent, and in turn the peculiar favor of the holy man seemed to merit. For when at a certain twilight toward dawn she prayed, she saw him through the air coming surrounded with immense light, and with most splendid garments clothed, and together with him Suerius Virgarius, son of Suerius, of most religious conversation and great almsgiving a man now deceased, who living the holy Father with wondrous affection had cultivated. The woman prostrated herself, thus praying, Pray for me, holy Father, that I may be made safe. To whom he, Be of good cheer, said he, daughter, and of your soul's salvation good hope conceive: many others also sinned more than you and with crimes polluted themselves, and yet through return to God and the zeal of salutary penance the Lord's mercy obtained. Made vehemently cheerful, with the dust of his sepulchre she heals in the zeal of piety day by day she advanced, nowhere not the virtue of Aegidius extolling: and confidence taken of him, his sepulchre's earth she carried in a little bag, whence to various sick she hung a little to the neck, a dying woman and indeed they were healed. First a young Saracen woman, the slave of Gundisalvus Solterius, in the parish of S. Stephen, when she had been gravely ill, and the disease growing strong undoubted death was expected, Sueria a little earth to her neck bound in the name of Christ and his servant Friar Aegidius: and behold suddenly from the hour of imminent death the Saracen woman was restored to health, and with wax candles offerings she came to the monument. Then after some days in the same house of Consalvus or Gundisalvus three at once it happened to be ill, and three together in one house sick. John Francus, Peter Vallata, and far worse than these two the Galician youth: to whom when she had bound earth to their necks, made whole, the earth nonetheless even unto confirmed health on the neck they carried. The Galician, whether by chance he lost it, or by rashness to carry it despised, relapsed into an almost continual fever: and now with too great shuddering he was shaken chattering his teeth, now by an insane heat he was cooked, the accessions almost touching themselves without intermission. Again therefore the bound earth humbly receiving, health he obtained. Which seen, Maria Dominica the wife of Gundisalvus, a prudent matron, in the name of the cured household members wax candles through Sueria to the sepulchre sent, and to her that these things she should narrate commanded.
[89] To Maria Consalvia, inhabitant of a village whose name is Villa-nova, of the Veremundian territory, kinswoman of Friar Geraldus Dominicus, Doctor of sacred Theology and among the monks of the Preacher institute sufficiently known, By the same a face is restored from a certain abscess in the face a fistula arose
which when more deeply through the jaw it had penetrated, nor to incisions or burnings yielded, came to such a point an evil unconquered by cures, that round about the rotting flesh little by little fell away, and the teeth foully laid bare, which yet now corrupted and blackened to a man tottered: whence pus of a foul and horrible odor in great abundance flowed. Nay as often as the lint, which to cover the eaten-away face she laid over, it was needful for the cause of expelling the pus to remove, the horror of the stench not even the woman herself could bear. When therefore thus far the work of surgeons among her own had profited nothing, hither and thither running about at the fame of whatever was indicated to her, to Scallabis also she came; and to the Preacher monks skilled in medicine, Friar Andreas, Friar Gundisalvus the Galician, and Friar Bernard, before many deploring her calamity, if anything from art they could, that they should bring help she besought. But the evil was far beyond, than that it should receive a cure, even if the teeth wholly corrupt and almost now useless to be plucked out she should suffer. The woman thus anxious, and of all hope destitute, went to the religious virgin Maria Dominica, shut up in a little cell, whose virtue at the fame had come through the mouths of the common people, that to her prayers she might commend herself. To whom she, Good, said she, woman, I cannot help you, but listen to me: go to the sepulchre of Friar Aegidius, and that he have mercy on you beseech: for I trust the mercy of God through his prayers will not be lacking to you. The woman to the sepulchre of the holy man coming with tears, her deformedly eaten-away face to the sepulchre applied, thence the earth on the corroded places besprinkling. Three days, at most four, this she had done; and the teeth being confirmed new flesh grew up, and filled the deformed hollow of the face; and the lint and little cloths, by which the foulness of her mouth from her eyes the woman turned away, she cast off, her jaws to their former state made even. Wondrous force of faith! wondrous certainly the power of Aegidius! whose sepulchre's earth than poultices and ointments and all the compositions of physicians more happily and efficaciously works. There remained to the woman in the top skin light little scars, which in testimony she was wont to show, and that such he saw her he, who before me set forth these things, attests.
[90] Likewise is healed a girl infirm unto death, We said elsewhere that the son of Michael Grainus, on that very day on which the holy Father departed, was wonderfully cured: I will now relate what in the house of the same Michael afterward happened. At Leiria a certain woman a daughter, Marina by name, gravely ailing when she had; and there a physician, who the girl according to necessity might help, there was not; to Scallabis, as being a more celebrated place and abounding in skilled physicians, with the girl she came; and turned aside at Michael's, whether for the cause of acquaintance, or of kinship. There when the girl was, from the tossing of the beast by which she was carried and the frailty of nature, the disease increasing, she was believed about to die. Then Michael's wife to the mother; Hear, my guest, I when I had my son with the worst flux of blood near to death, the earth of the sepulchre of Friar Aegidius being applied, straightway the blood stopping unharmed I received him back. This with me I keep: put it on your daughter's neck, perhaps she will be cured, just as also my son. What need is there, said the woman, the girl's neck with that earth to be burdened, or what profit thence? Great, said she, if you fail not in faith: believe, I say, me. At her suggestion therefore the earth on her neck she hung: and straightway the night following the girl with the greatest sweat was bathed, and the fever departing she felt herself relieved of her infirmity; and asked food and ate, and the rest of the night well slept. When it dawned, she who began to die, when herself unexpectedly restored to health she experienced, for the magnitude of joy the bed despised; and with her mother and hostess on foot to the sepulchre came, to give thanks for the received benefit.
[91] With the difficult liver disease labored at Scallabis John Laurentii Dominici, as also a boy from a raw apostem now dying. son of the procurator of the Preachers and Minor Friars, from which under the skin of useless matter he had contracted a collection, for four months now of such hardness, that neither by a poultice was it suppressed, nor softened by fomentations, nor by length of time any sign of suppuration did it give. There was not lacking to him the diligence of physicians; since of the Preacher monks Friar Andreas, of the Minors Friar Dominic, each in the art of healing well skilled, with as great skill as they could used, of his health at length despaired, and soon about to die asserted; and counseled the last things and funerals to be prepared, and from him now just about to breathe out his soul not to depart: for neither to the next light would he last. His father Lawrence, consternated in mind, to the sepulchre of the holy Father hastened: and thence earth taken, that swelling and most hard apostem he besprinkled, Aegidius often called imploring, his mind however bathed with religion and somewhat raised into hope. In vain the man was not even for the briefest moment: for he who had now lost speech, and his eyes now closed and hollow had, which are undoubted signs of death, to cry out and wail began, Ah! Ah! Ah! the affect of one greatly grieving repeating. To whom the father, What is it, son? what do you suffer? And the boy, There came, said he, just now to me a certain one from the convent of the Preachers, of form and habit most beautiful, who touching with his hand this painful place for me, his finger strongly impressed perforated it, and a new pain for me made. The father understood the matter, and between fear and hope the event of the matter awaited. And behold all that inner collection was dissolved, and by a salutary discharge through the lower parts emptied and poured forth: and the boy, beyond the opinion of all, from the long and killing vice, suddenly recovered.
[92] Two casks of corrupted wine are corrected, At Scallabis in the parish of D. Bartholomew, John Solerius a large cask of corrupted wine had, whose worst savor, muddy color, foul odor, and to the nostrils was very grievous. The man grieved for the loss of his family substance, otherwise very narrow, which by the price of that wine he could have relieved. And when now to pour it out he was thinking, lest from the drinkers the virulence even of the vessels should make damage; it came to him, as necessity is ingenious, the help of the holy man to implore. Going therefore to the sepulchre, in this kind of prayer to the holy Father he complained; Aegidius most holy, whom I that with God he can do much do not doubt, look, I beseech, on my slenderness, and deign that wine corrupted and wholly lost by your piety to me to restore; that there may be whence the family substance, which is very small, in some part may be consulted. He went away then home, and anxious with solicitude, when scarcely the space of an hour he had rested, a borer being seized the cask he perforated; from which came forth wine pure, unmixed, settled, in taste and odor most sweet. And wondering at the sudden change, the benefit of Aegidius proclaiming, he exposed it for sale. To whose tavern on account of the fame the crowd running together, most swiftly all he sold, and a great sum thence he gathered: but for a token of his gratitude he returned to the sepulchre with candles, and an amphora of that same wine to the monks brought. There also at S. Nicholas Andreas Petreius, when he too had a huge cask full of wine, and by spontaneous bubbling it had soured, it began also to grow musty. Which when to pour out on the ground he had resolved, his wife Maria Petreia, daughter of Peter Arius, touched by religion, the holy man's sepulchre went to, and with tears began to ask, that of her poverty he would have mercy: for a little before by the loss of many things they had remained attenuated. Thence confidence conceived a handful of earth she took from the tomb: that earth in a little linen cloth bound she let down into the cask: the next day approaching when the wine most whole and most sweet she had found, by proclamation for as much as she wished she sold it, and made gain not small. On account of these miracles which concerning the amended wine I have related, it is solemn at Scallabis for those whose wine is changed, the example being now common and useful to various people. to flee to the name of Aegidius. And to such a point has come the affection of the people, that in the right shoulder of his stone effigy, which over the sepulchre's lid is stretched, they have hollowed out a little hollow, into which the imported wine pouring, again thence taken into the casks of souring or otherwise fleeing and perishing wine they transfuse; the example being now translated to other cities, so that they do nearly the same at the painted image, which the Scallabis people do at the sepulchre. With that wine also, which in the little hollow always remains, the bleary and white-spotted they anoint their eyes, with it ulcers and the variously corrupted parts of the body they wash who suffer these things: and each according to his faith is helped.
[93] In these deeds of Aegidius I find, that there was at Scallabis Lady Maria Bernardia a widow, of whom elsewhere we made mention, sister of the religious man Friar Peter Bernardius, who had been the wife of Consalvus Menendius: nor do I hold for certain, whether this Consalvus Menendius was that great Chancellor, the cousin of the holy Father Aegidius, of whom at num. 16 we made mention: but there of Consalvus himself the wife Lady Marina is named, and in the book of the Genealogies of Peter the Count, in title 45 §4 Lady Marina Martinia daughter of Lord Martin Barragan is named: but this Lady Maria, since she is surnamed Bernardia, is shown to have had a father Bernard. Either therefore A pertinacious Saracen, this Consalvus Menendius was another than that Chancellor; or if the same he was, this Lady Maria Bernardia to have been a second wife it will behove. But whether she was, or was not, it does not much matter: certainly both the husband and the wife illustrious, and of an illustrious family to have been, from the persons here named clearly appears. This noble widow therefore had a Saracen slave, with so great tenacity of his Mahometan sect addicted, that to his mistress frequently making words about the Christian faith to be received not only did he not acquiesce, but even at her suggestion his ears with his fingers stopped. B. Aegidius's scapular being applied, And when at length by a grave disease he was seized and in his obstinacy persisted, the mistress the scapular of the holy man, which she had, to the head of the sick man applied, with great devotion saying, Have confidence of Friar Aegidius's sanctity: for either by his merits and prayers God from this disease will free you; or if from it you are to die, by the font of baptism purged, hence you will migrate. Meanwhile a signal being made among the monks for the evening synaxis, Bernardia thither betook herself, that the sacred sepulchre being visited, the slave's either-of-the-two health from Aegidius she might ask. While she is there, the Saracen began with a loud voice his mistress to call, and with the highest instance baptism to demand. At hand to him were Lord Bernard, he receives baptism. Giraldus Suerius, Lawrence Menendius and Lady Catharine, the brothers of that same Lady Maria; Lady also Gontina, and Orraca, and Gilia neighbors. Therefore without delay with great faith baptized, the body of Christ also with wondrous affection he received. And when to him the last things now were at hand, demons appearing into despair him led: at whose terrors the new servant of Christ with the sign of the Cross fortifying himself, reproved them, of the bystanders asking that they help him. Amid these things he saw the whole house shining with kindled wax candles, and by a beautiful vision he is animated for death. and in the midst Christ our Savior and the super-blessed Virgin his mother, bidding him be of good cheer: at whose coming the importunate evil genii withdrew. He saw also Consalvus
Menendius his master, the husband of Lady Maria now deceased, together with her daughter Maria also deceased, standing by him, both with most beautiful form and a glad face calling him. There was present also in the habit of the Preachers a certain one coruscating with most splendid light, who with a shining countenance stretching out his hand to him, said, Come, fear not. All which when to his mistress and to those who were present wondering he had related, they understood the Blessed Aegidius to be present; and that the garment, with faith applied, the man hitherto a wanderer had led to that grace. Thus amid words exhorting to the hope of obtained mercy glad he rested in peace. All who were present in a very great frequency often testified openly, from whom these things our author received.
[94] Lady Gontina, of whom a little before in passing we made mention, a holy and venerable woman, who after her husband's death in the purpose of perpetual chastity persevering, truly a widow by the exercise of good works showed herself, long with the atrocious evil of the stone was vexed; and the more because the natural private part to be uncovered the woman nor a cure did suffer. When therefore to death, another likewise pious woman, from urine for many days now not flowing, she had come; and her bladder collapsed a medicine to be applied by no means could bear; Lady Maria Bernardia, whom we mentioned, her neighbor, the scapular of the holy Father over her extended, saying to those who were there present, Perhaps the holy Father Aegidius will deign from this evil her to free; but if from life she shall migrate, it will profit her certainly to have had this garment of his over herself. So with some matrons together with the household members there passing the night, and the imminent hour of decease awaiting, to Bernardia, lightly sleeping toward the morning twilight, a vision of this kind was set. A ladder from the same house in which the sick woman lay reached to heaven; on its lowest step set to her seemed Gontina, but in the upper parts the holy Father Aegidius radiating with most shining light, who with his hand stretched down Gontina seized upward with himself drew. Bernardia her felicity when with words she tried to congratulate, was roused, and the vision to those who were present related, and Gontina her last breath breathed out most placidly. The same Lady Maria Bernardia, an inflammation of one ear having arisen, suffered a fever, with too great pain and sleeplessness tormenting. Wherefore to the remedy experienced in others fleeing, when she had gone to bed, that scapular over the injured ear she laid. and one laboring from the ear by the same cloth is healed. Scarcely lulled, she beheld Friar Aegidius coming to her, and a new pot full of hot water with his hand offering and saying, Apply your ear over the pot, and by the steaming and vapor of this hot water without doubt you will be cured. Thence approaching, the pot to her she put under; and straightway from the ear burst an abundance of water with pus: and in the very deed it burst without the woman's sensation. Who straightway for joy of the vision awakened, wholly herself sound and well hearing she found.
[95] A convent of Virgins of the Cistercian institute is notable at Olivetum outside the walls of Coimbra, in the place where Ferdinand King of Leon, when Coimbra he besieged, a stationary camp whole seven months had had; for the cause of memory how much of the area the King's pitched tent occupied, was consecrated, and so a round building perseveres: that very convent they call the Cells of Guimarães: to render now the reason of this name, is a business foreign from my institute. Hither the holy Father, when he was at Coimbra, frequently was wont to come, that the handmaids consecrated to Christ to the love of heavenly things by sermons he might animate: toward whom they in turn with a religious and pious affection were held, and him with the greatest reverence observed while he lived, and then dead his memory highly venerated. There happened at some time by failure of rains a great dryness of the year: wherefore in advanced summer, in a time more necessary, the well whence they were wont to drink wholly dried up, and they were compelled to send for water a good way off, with the greatest difficulty on account of the want of water, and labor not slight. In a common aridity In which strait set, in the building whence the blessed man was wont to exhort them, together coming; the Prefectess saying the words first, the rest attentively hearing and assenting, prayed thus; Aegidius holy Father, you to us water springing up into eternal life abundantly supplied living in the world; you also from heaven, where now you better live, us your handmaids devoted to your name to look upon deign, and that well water, which our mortal infirmity cannot lack, to us also supply, Father. All weeping and answering, Amen, and mercy acclaiming, they obtain water by the Blessed's miracle. the Prefectess ordered them to rise, and to the well with her all to approach. O the power of the saints from the divine bounty! The well, of which not even the gravel of the bottom, the veins being wholly dried, was moist; was found with bubbling springs almost to overflow: nor only after that did the water not fail, but also to the needy neighborhood was supplied. By common counsel therefore a wax candle, to the measure of the well's depth making, through a certain handmaid of the convent to Scallabis to the sepulchre of the holy man they sent. After some time thence two Saracen slaves, of those who served the ministry of that same convent, and they recover fugitive slaves. secretly took flight, and long through several places and by several sought were not found: and when of finding them wholly the hope had grown cold, their Patron the religious women humbly prayed, that he would deign the fugitives very necessary to them to recall. Not many days passed afterward, and the Saracens with changed minds to the convent of their own accord returned, of the flight pardon humbly beseeching. Glad at their return the handmaids of Christ, four wax candles of a foot through the above-said handmaid, a thrifty woman, to Scallabis sent, before the sepulchre of the blessed man to be hung took care.
[96] To these things found in the old MS. Resendius adds 3 seen by himself, And these are the things which in that very old book, which at the beginning I mentioned, written by the often-cited author I found: to which it seemed good to add three, of which me the divine goodness a beholder and witness willed to be: which in the same book also at the very time in which they happened, by the faith of a public notary, in the Portuguese idiom written are contained: of which also a witness to me is the Venerable Father Francis Vargus of Lemos, who himself also at them when they were done was present, whom I the day before than I commented on those things, met. From whom to investigate when I wished, whether any of the things, which six and forty years before to us as young men had happened, he remembered; I found with him not only the memory of those things not to be dead, but almost also new and recent. Therefore the year turning after our Savior's birth one thousand five hundred and twenty, in the year 1520; when I the studies' sake the pilgrimage begun from boyhood had resolved to pursue, and at Lisbon, where then I was, awaiting a voyage into Belgic Gaul, a wasting of pestilence had begun to spread; I was compelled to change my counsel; namely that to Salamanca for some years I should betake myself. I came therefore to Scallabis, where over the monks presided, not without a preface of honor by me to be named, the venerable Father Francis Vargus of Lemos. He since a specimen of not bad disposition given by me thus far he was not ignorant, with humanity to retain me he tried: but this only could he effect (because the autumn rains somewhat immoderate my desire of setting out delayed) that with him I should remain even to the end of the year. in which Queen Eleanor the Blessed being invoked happily gave birth. There was Subprefect of the convent Friar Thomas Matus, of whom although the letters were not many, the sermons yet were grateful and very popular. There therefore on a certain day on the fourth of the Ides of October, the Prefect being absent, Matus the Subprefect after dinner visited me, and Friar Roch of Lemos and Friar Cyprian the Celtiberian from the town Cervaria a town neighboring to the old municipality of Tarrega having in his company, invited, that together with him I might visit the masons, in the temple's portico squaring stones, for a certain work which to be done had ordered Queen Eleanor, sister of Charles V, the third wife of the divine Emanuel King of the Portuguese, the mother of this our Princess Maria and incomparable heroine, on account of the easy and happy childbirth which she had had, the holy Father's iron girdle being applied, of which elsewhere.
[97] While we are there at the corner before the doors of the temple, we see a man lying upon straw, not indeed in rags, and a Castilian pilgrim, but clothed in the short habit of a pilgrim, and by an honest gravity of countenance commendable. There was with him a wife and a certain girl. It being asked of the stone-squarers, who they were, they answered, that they knew nothing else, than that they were Castilians, who twelve days back by the force of rains thither had fled, because to enter into the town they were forbidden, as if from Lisbon they came, where, as we said, the plague of pestilence was spreading. The man when he had understood the discourse to be held about him, his wife and the girl helping, to rise he strove, in one part of his body wholly palsied: and by the ministry of the women and a staff, clinging to the walls, to us he crept. Whom the Subprefect with compassion of soul receiving, upon a stone to sit ordered him leaning on his own; and asked whence he was. He his mouth drawn back to the ear most painfully bringing forth words, answered that he was from the town Ursaona of the Baetic province: that he had gone out from home sound and well, and for the cause of religion the oracle of S. James the Apostle at Compostela being visited, when to Lisbon lately twelve days before he was betaking himself, that by some Cadiz ship to his country he might return; the day before the Kalends of October, opposite the convent which they call of the Virtues of the Virgin, struck and blasted by apoplexy, suddenly he had collapsed; his mouth's face twisted by the force of the stroke foully, and the whole part of one side by paralysis vehemently loosed: and at the women's cries and laments some had run up from that neighborhood, and from the convent had been called one who his confession of sins, however he himself could make it, as from one straightway about to die might receive. Then on a little ass, which on the journey for carrying their little baggage they used, set, he had returned to Scallabis, nor was he permitted to enter to any innkeeper, nor at least to the ptochodocheum to turn aside; by the force of the falling rains to that place, which to the poor of Christ and the needy, as he was, without repulse lay open, also he had fled. The man's discourse moved the minds of all who were present to commiseration, and the Subprefect sent who to him what he might eat should bring: and with food and drink refreshed he asks, whether of holy Friar Aegidius, who there was buried, the name among his nation he had heard. Him denying, the Subprefect a few things narrated: at length he persuaded, that with faith to the sepulchre he should approach. He kindled with desire of health, asked to be led.
[98] The sacristan therefore being called that he should open the church, between the hands both of the woman and of those of us who were present he was drawn; and being brought to the Blessed's sepulchre, but so, that twice it behoved him to sit and rest, before to the sepulchre we drew near. At which when it was come, with his whole body he prostrated himself. We who were present, with knees bent the Antiphon, Confessor of the Lord, chanted; the Subprefect the Prayer pursuing. The man then both by the complaints with which his calamity he deplored, and by the tears with which the mercy of Aegidius he besought, all moved deeply:
for no one was of so dry a disposition, but that for the human lot he wept. A quarter of one hour to this kind of lamentation he had spent, when for a little while he fell silent: and behold suddenly a tremor of all his members invaded him, and he began with great voices and wailing to cry, Alas wretched me! I burn, I burn; succor me, pious Priests. We who were present being disturbed, asked, what new thing had befallen him. So great, said he, an ardor these affected parts beginning from the heel has seized, that a burning fire I think not equal. suddenly he received health: And these things said the twisted part of his face he began either way that was pleasing to move, and his arm, thigh, and the whole leg even to the bottom of the foot, now to bend, now to extend, the joints and sinews to their office freely answering: at length vigor and steadiness to the loosed members wholly returned. Which he feeling, leaped up crying; To Christ thanks, I am made whole, O great Aegidius! O powerful! O wonderful! And from the unhoped health, as if moved in mind, for gladness he ran even to the church door. Thence with a swift course he returned to the monument, and with embraces and kisses clinging to the outstretched statue, he ceased not in repeated turns to redouble, O blessed! O holy! O my preserver! Again to the doors, again to the statue, by no means omitting that, O blessed! O holy! O my preserver! we stupefied with admiration. But the Subprefect ordered the sacristan, that the little bell with frequent and not usual strokes he should ring, as is wont to be done in sudden matters, for rousing the people. There ran together therefore a multitude suspecting in the convent a fire to have arisen. And when the man's haste they perceived, and the congratulatory voices they heard, they addressed him. But he deaf to all, intent only on running and the embraces of the statue, answered nothing. The matter however being understood, because he was now known from his lying before the doors of the temple in the past days, so great was the clamor of the crowd raised and the noise of those speaking among themselves, that to make a hearing for narrating not even with raised right hands could we. But the Subprefect from a higher place crying with a great voice, that thus at least he might be heard, the Sunday straightway to follow the people to a sermon invited, the next day however a public Notary of the Apostolic See being called to the place of the Chapter, and the man being produced before the monks and those who for the cause of saying testimony were called, namely of the stone-squarers Alvarus Castrius, George Vernandius, Peter Joannides, George Joannides, and others to the number of about thirty, an instrument to be made for the memory of posterity he took care.
[99] which miracle while it is being published, The following Sunday when a frequent people had assembled, and the Subprefect for the sermon the matter done had set forth, and the man in a raised place whence he could be beheld had ordered to stand; again a clamor by all who were present was raised, and with an impulse there was a rushing in to the sepulchre. There two most beautiful in the eyes of all wrought miracles. A woman had a breast by a most sharp cancer corroded and putrid, by a grave stench to the nostrils intolerable: this approached, and from the little hollow of the statue's shoulder, a little linen cloth with wine (which there to be always wont, above we mentioned) moistening, she pressed it over, and the linen she spread out. And suddenly, before she moved herself from the place, the eaten-away breast was healed; a woman from a cancer, in the place of the spontaneously falling cancer flesh supplied; and the nipple, for the office of nursing very necessary, restored to the breast, recovered its former form, a redness only the new health attesting. The other woman in her arms a little daughter carried, whose left little arm a certain kind of sacred fire, familiar to infants, had defiled; which those who from Judaism among us the medicine have professed, called Hursacrum, a word from the Hebrew and Latin tongue compacted. The disease although not too pernicious, yet much of foulness has, on account of the roughness of the pustules together concreted. The woman therefore having stretched out her hand to the little hollow, the linen being dipped, a boy is healed from the sacred fire. the bared arm of the infant she covered about to go home. But when for a while by the crowd she was impeded, the linen dried by heat she wished again to moisten. Which when to lift she tried, all that series of pustules of its own accord followed on the linen, and the little arm cleansed of all harm whole was left. To both the woman's and the wondering crowd's acclamations we ran up: and that which were the Subprefect's parts to the Notary it was commanded, that to the former miracle to be added these things he should take care. These three, of which a beholder I myself was, it seemed good as a coronis to insert into this history, lest through oblivion to posterity they should not come, as many things which on account of negligence both habitual and of the monks fell away. Now you, holy Father Aegidius, with as great lowliness of mind as I can, I pray, that with what religion and piety in recounting your virtues I have been engaged, with the same you me to the end of this old age may lead: and if I have well deserved of you anything, well, as it befits a Christian Priest, at last that I may die, you I beseech, that you bring it about.