ON SAINT HILARUS,
ABBOT OF GALEATA IN ITALY.
IN THE YEAR 558.
PrefaceHilarus, Abbot of Galeata, in Italy (S.)
By the Author D. P.
Galeata, a village at the roots of the Apennine mountain, now in the borders of Aemilia Romanula, not far from the present Florentine Dominion, on the river Bidens, or Bethensis, or Uticensis, by Livy called Utens, which thence flows down to the little town of Civitella, and the town of Meldula, and afterwards above the Aemilian way and Forum-Livii, which it does not touch, called Ronco, washes Ravenna, and then falls down into the Adriatic sea. But Galeata owes its origin to S. Hilarus, Galeata a monastery built by S. Hilarus, or as it is commonly written Hillarus, or also Hyllarus and Illarus, of whom we here treat, and by whom there a certain monastery was erected, afterwards converted into a most opulent Abbey: so that thirty-six parish Churches were subject to it; and the Abbot was Lord of several villages, and of almost the whole valley.
[2] There Anscausus, Bishop of Forli-Popilio, in whose territory that monastery is situated, with the greatest humility of honor is said most gravely to have received Pope Stephen II, granted by Stephen to the Bishop of Popilio, when in the year 753 he was hastening to the region of France, to redeem at once the Province of Italy and the Exarchate of Ravenna from the hands of the Lombard peoples, and to have abundantly furnished him with the subsidies of the journey: who, having obtained what he desired through the Franks, returning a recompense of a favorable benefit to that same Bishop Anscausus, granted the aforesaid monastery to him to enjoy for the days of his life: which his brother and successor Paul confirmed. and was long subject to its Archbishop, Then he being dead, recognizing the aforesaid venerable monastery to exist of the right of the holy Church of Ravenna from long times, and therefore weighing it to be against all reason, that that venerable place should be withdrawn from the holy Church of Ravenna; those things which before had been promulgated for its withdrawal, incongruously and irrationally, he decreed all to be void and invalid. How certainly these things are said I know not: for although Rubeus begins the fifth book of the Histories of Ravenna with a fragment of a Bull, restored by Paul I to the Church of Ravenna. published thereupon by Paul I, in favor of the church and Archbishop of Ravenna; yet by no means does it make us secure of the truth of the matter, while he himself says this Privilege is signed, as given on the Nones of February, the Lord most Pious Augustus Constantine reigning, by God Crowned great Emperor in the 40th year and of peace (nay P. C., that is, after the Consulate) in the 20th year of it; but also Leo, the greater son of that Emperor, in the 7th year, Indiction 12. For to be silent how incongruous it is for the Bulls of the Roman Pontiff to be signed by the Empire of Copronymus, an excommunicated heretic; all the aforesaid numbers of years fall in the year of the Christian era 759; while it is established that Paul departed this life in the year 757. Yet the fiction itself, if it is a fiction, supported by the antiquity of at least 800 years, easily proves the old fame of the place, and some controversy over it between the nearer people of Forli-Popilio, and the more remotely distant people of Ravenna, and the appellation of Saint attributed to Hilarus from immemorable time. But for establishing the stronger right of the people of Ravenna it makes, that the monastery itself received its first endowment and first possessions from Olybrius, a man among the people of Ravenna exceedingly powerful, who there with his sons professed monasticism, verisimilarly on this condition, that the place itself should be immediately subject to the Archbishop of Ravenna: which also King Theodoric could singularly have established for that same place. Adhering therefore to the stronger right of the people of Ravenna, Hermenfredus the Abbot of Galeata, designated in the year 997, swore obedience and faith to Ravenna by a solemn oath; and in the year 1251, in the porch of the monastery of the Lord Hilarus of Galeata, the Prior, Prefect, and Monks made the Monk Palmarius Procurator, who should ask that the Abbot elected by their Convent, Rainerius, son of Ugo Count of Carpineta, be confirmed by Philip the Archbishop of Ravenna. Again in the year 1324 Arduinus, Abbot of the Lord Hilarus of Galeata, after the manner of his ancestors, leaning on his knees, the book of the Gospels being touched, paid solemn obedience to Aimericus the Archbishop. In the same manner in the year 1334 the designated Abbot of the monastery of the Lord Hilarus of Galeata, Alexander, asked to be confirmed: as these and other things are related in Rubeus.
[3] We give the Acts of S. Hilarus from three illustrious MS. codices: of these the first we ourselves at Rome had described from a Vatican MS. marked number 3044: another there Ferdinand Ughello gave us, Acts from the MSS. which seem to have been sent to him from the monastery of Galeata itself: the last John Gamansius described for us, from a MS. of the monastery of Bödeken. The latter two run in a somewhat more polished style: the first preserves the native simplicity. This therefore we chiefly follow; we use the others to supply its defects or illustrate certain obscure places. The author at the end asserts himself a monk there, and that what he saw and perceived with his ears he has faithfully written, God being witness. the author Paul his disciple, Rubeus names Paul the disciple of S. Hilarus, and inserted an illustrious compendium of his history, afterwards reprinted with the Lives of the Saints of Surius. Peter de Natalibus contracted some
epitome from the said Acts, as also Silvanus Razzius in volume 1 on the Etruscan saints, and Philip Ferrarius in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy on this XV of May, on which he died: memory in the Calendars on the 15th on which day in an ancient MS. Martyrology of the Queen of Sweden, under the name of Usuard, is celebrated the memory of S. Hilarius the monk and hermit. And again Ferrarius treats of the same in the General Catalogue, the monuments of the Church of Galeata and the Vallombrosan Breviary being cited: with which as to the day Rubeus agrees. Others refer S. Hilarus to the XIII day of May, following Peter de Natalibus, and on May 13; in whom it is read that he died on the III Ides of May, and these are Greven, Maurolycus, Galesinius, Canisius, Surius, and others. But Peter followed the History of the Life, evidently corrupted by the transcribers, in that place where Paul had written that after death foretold by an Angel on the third day, on the very Ides of May the Saint departed hence.
[4] S. Hilarus was born in the year 476, as he who in the Consulship of Dinamius and Sifidius, in the year 488, the time of his life and death, was in the twelfth year of his age. But since he reached the eighty-second year of his age, it follows that he fell asleep in the Lord in the year 558; and to the church formerly built by himself began to gather disciples about the year of Christ 497, inasmuch as he was then in the 21st year of his age. What rule, moreover, he then prescribed for himself, is not established. Wion, Dorganius, Menardus, Bucelinus inscribed him in the Benedictine calendars; but Luke d'Achery and John Mabillon omitted him in the Acts of the Saints of the Order of S. Benedict: and rightly. and the monastic order. For S. Hilarus was some years older than S. Benedict, and embraced the monastic life before that one began his Order. Certainly if you consider those few heads of the Rule observed and handed down by him, of which the Life makes mention; you will doubt nothing, that this was singular and proper to himself and his disciples, neither established by writing but by usage: to which accordingly the Benedictine Rule most easily succeeded, when it began to be spread through Italy, which scarcely seems to have been done before the restoration of the Cassinese monastery under S. Petronax.
[5] The discipline afterwards collapsed, as are all human things; so that in a certain Chronicle of the Faentine city, The Translation to the Camaldolese monastery, dug out into light about the beginning of the present century, and handed down in the vulgar tongue by Gregory Zuccolo, it is found noted, Razzius being witness, that from the year 1163 to 1212 the Abbot of S. Hilarus, like some secular Prince, several times led into Romagna troops of horse and foot, himself a horseman, making incursions now into the fields of the Faentines, now for these into the lands of their adversaries. At last into Commendam, as they call it, the Abbey fell, and under that servitude groaned for sixty years, until about the year 1488, when it was handed over to the Camaldolese. This change was followed by a renovation of the place: which that it might proceed more happily, subsidies of money being collected from everywhere, S. Hilarus himself effected it, brought forth into light and by a solemn translation carried to the chief altar, through Peter Delfinus, the General of the Camaldolese Order. Concerning this matter among his letters printed at Venice in the year 1524 by the art and zeal of Bernardinus Benalius, there is extant in order the ninety-sixth, to Francis Piccolomini Cardinal of Siena, by his uncle Pius II created Archdeacon of the Holy Roman Church, then Supreme Pontiff in the year 1503 Pius III: which the Most Illustrious and most Erudite Antonius Magliabechius transcribed for us with his own hand, a benefit so much the more to be esteemed, because the copies are found most rare, so that scarcely after a long inquiry one was found for Alexander VII asking it. described by Peter Delfinus the General of the Order, But Peter was from the 33rd year of his age, of Christ 1477, General, until the 81st year of his age, of Christ 1525: when most holily he died at Venice, in the monastery of S. Michael of Murano on the XVII of January: but his Life, collected from his letters, may be read in Silvanus Razzius, in another work on the Blessed of the Camaldolese, page 149 and following.
LIFE
By the Author Paul the Disciple of the Saint.
From three old MSS.
Hilarus, Abbot of Galeata, in Italy (S.)
BHL Number: 3913
BY PAUL THE DISCIPLE FROM A MS.
CHAPTER I.
The anchorite life of S. Hilarus, the monastery founded and in it Olybrius of Ravenna received with his own.
In the times in which the Roman city was governed by Consuls, by Dynamius and Sifidius, there was a certain little boy, named Hilarus, in the province of b Tuscany, and from his infancy fearing God and withdrawing from all evil: By the reading of sacred Scripture, who, while among his parents he secretly used the Christian rule, there came into his hands the epistles of the most blessed Apostle Paul c, which day and night he used. Then while these things were being turned in his heart, how he might withdraw from his parents, and be able to come to the d worship of God; the divine Spirit instigating, while in the church he had walked to prayer, he heard the lesson of the holy Gospel where the Lord says to the disciples; If anyone wishes to come after me, and does not hate his father and his mother, and the rest together which he possesses, and his own soul, he cannot be my disciple; and he asked a certain old man what this was. Luke 14, 26, The old man answering said to him, Thou, since thou art e twelve years old, dost thou constantly desire to scrutinize what this is? and stirred up by the words of the Gospel, To this the boy answered, Father, the Lord speaks in the holy Gospels, Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me. Mark 10, 13 The old man hearing this, f that there was no doubt an Angel of God had been present, said to him; Son, according to thy will be it done to thee as thou wilt, and set forth to him all things which g it behooved concerning the kingdom of God.
[2] Which heard the boy, filled with great joy, said: Lord Jesus Christ, who art the Leader of chastity, he asks his journey to be directed: the redeemer of sinners, the protector of the innocent, the helper in tribulations, whom the heavens of heavens scarcely contain, who art the unfailing light of all; thee I invoke, thee I beseech, that thou deign to appoint thy holy Angel in my journey, who may direct my ways by thy holy power, that the enemy be not able to remove thy boy, who for the desire of thy h name placed in this place, desire to embrace the solitary institution, that I may be able to fulfill the precept of thy word, who livest and reignest, now and ever, and through all ages of ages. Amen. And when the prayer was completed, comforted by an Angel, there appeared to him the Angel of the Lord, and comforting his soul, said: Be comforted, act manfully: for God completes all the desires of thy will: and behold I am given to thee as guardian, that whatsoever thou shalt wish to do, may be prosperous in thy hand. At the same time also, going out from the parts of Tuscany, he placed himself in the parts of Aemilia: where the place of his habitation shown by the Angel in the mountains and in the deserts, as had been his love, he promptly attained.
[3] But that place which had been shown by the Angel was thus disposed. There was a mountain above, and under it the river Bethesse i running down more or less one mile, he departs into Aemilia where the Lord deigned to grant him so great grace, that within three years on that mountain a church was built; and builds himself a hermitage: and under that same church constructing for himself a cave, there day and night he rendered praises. And when in that same place in the k wilderness he had been placed, trusting in the grace of God, the Lord commanded him there to furnish daily sustenance by the labor of his own hands.
[4] But when he came to the twentieth year of his age, he began carefully to observe the rule of a monastery. l There was a certain man named Olybrius, most powerful, and of noble race, who dwelling in the city of Ravenna was seized by a demon: and the demon began to cry out from his mouth and say, unless I see the boy Hilarus, I will not go out of this man. where betrayed by the demon besetting Olybrius, Then weeping his household or his wife asked him saying: Of what form is the man, or where can we find him? To whom the demon said: In the mountains and in a deserted place he dwells: and that mountain is set over the river Betens, on which mountain he has placed for himself a church, in which place indeed day and night he perseveres in the praises of God: he is about twenty-two years old, but of short stature, and a scant beard grows for him, and the Angels of God accompany him. Which heard the whole household alike, together with their Lord and Lady, hastened to come to that same place, him coming to him, where the holy man used prayers, on the second day, at the ninth hour. But while they had approached to within a stone's throw of that same place, the demon, fearing and trembling and groaning, began with most rapid course to hasten to the man of God. And when he had come before the m gates of the church, the Angel of the Lord did not permit him to enter, until the servant of God fulfilled the rule of his prayer: but the evening song being completed, he so absolved him that he might enter.
[5] But having entered, all that night he continued in vigils and prayer: but the demon cried saying, he frees him, absolve me, most blessed Hilarus, and torment me not with burning scourges. To this B. Hilarus thus answered: Be dumb, accursed and most unclean spirit; go out of him. And true health being received, B. Hilarus began to give thanks to God, saying: I give thee thanks, Lord Jesus Christ, who biddest me thy servant put to flight the most unclean spirit: but thou, good and blessed Father, if by thy command thou hast put to flight this unclean spirit, bid the eyes of his heart to be opened, that he may know thee alone to be his creator, and leave the vain and deaf idols, and adore no other besides thee, Lord. And when the prayer was finished, Olybrius rolled himself at his feet, together with his wife and two sons, and causes him with his wife, sons and household to be baptized, asking him to institute in them the firm rule of Christianity. Which B. Hilarus seeing, filled with great joy, began to think how he might gather them to the grace of baptism. Whence it came to pass that, the Lord prospering, there passed by thence a certain Presbyter, named Julianus, who was walking from Arezzo n to the city of Ravenna. Who when he had come there, caused him o to be renewed by baptism: and the whole household being collected together with their Lord, more or less than ninety souls, all were baptized. But on the third day the wife of Olybrius, Eustasia by name, migrated to the Lord.
[6] But why many words? It is not necessary to relate their work and faith: for Olybrius, together with his sons [p] Jobius and Eunomius, who being made a monk with his sons, persevered in the rule of the monastery
until his passing; but the household and all the money, which they had been able to have, they carried with them from the city of Ravenna, and delivered into his hands. And because not far from that monastery, [q] more or less about a throw of two arrows, although in the deserts, was the possession of that same Olybrius; there he sent his servants to work. Whence it came to pass, the grace of the Lord helping, that those places, which in the wilds had been deserted, within the space of ten years, he bestows his estates on him, were all cultivated: and so great means there the Lord deigned on daily days to bestow, that to the poor [r] and widows they gave. And when through him the Lord did many virtues (for he both restored sight to the blind, and cured every disease in the name of Christ) [s] [there came together thither very many, both to obtain health of soul and of body: and he who with integrity of faith, concerning whatsoever necessity had asked, rejoicing and cheerful returned with the desired choice obtained. This Rule also B. Hilarus instituted for the Brethren, that from morning until the ninth hour they should occupy themselves with the works of the earth, on private days, fasting: but refection being made from the ninth hour, they should most studiously serve God with the evening praises until night, and he keeps the Rule instituted by him. but from midnight until morning they should stand in the praises of God;] until an Angel appeared to him [t] when he had established the true rule in that place.
ANNOTATA.
p. There Junius for Jobius. Rubeus also calls him Junius.
q. The Vatican MS., "Passio," surely by a scribal error: the Ughello MS., an estate.
r. The Bödeken MS., And so great abundance the Lord conferred on that place, that to the poor and pilgrims and all the inhabitants food and clothing were abundantly there ministered.
s. These taken from the Ughello and Bödeken MSS.: for the Vatican here is miserably truncated, and sets forth the first rule thus, That souls from the ninth hour to the evening praises were most prudently increased by the zeal of reading, but at midnight likewise it did not cease from the praises of God.
t. The Bödeken adds, Who daily comforted him, and announced what was to be done by the Brethren.
CHAPTER II.
The fury of King Theodoric against the Saint repressed: his virtues in government and his death.
[7] In that a time King Theodoric coming, that he might build for himself under that mountain over the river Betens a b palace: and when he had imposed many c burdens on the neighboring peoples in building the palace, certain of the peoples, pestiferous men, announced to him saying; d a certain man, named Hilarus, To be seized by command of King Theodoric, having gathered to himself a multitude of his familiars, attempts to obey no command of thy Excellence; but neither in the public works, nor in any of thy commands does he listen: e and, if thou biddest, let us appoint a crowd from the soldiers, which may bring him together with his familiars apprehended to thy Clemency. Which heard King Theodoric was very angry, and an apparition being sent with f forty soldiers, he ordered him to be set before his sight. the soldiers sent for it he turns aside by praying; And the soldiers walking, when they had wished to enter into his little possession, to plunder his household, when they were descending to that valley, B. Hilarus seeing them descend thither, entering into prayer, thus prostrating himself to the Lord said: Lord Jesus Christ, who hast deigned prosperously to appoint thy holy Angel for me to this place, who also showed me this dwelling, to thee I commit thy cause, who art the judge of all: be present in this hour, that the enemy may not rejoice, who wishes to sadden thy servants. And the prayer being made, immediately straying onto another road, for two days they wandered in the mountains.
[8] This heard King Theodoric, filled with great wrath, with most rapid course mounted his horse: and the King himself forbidden to advance, and in that fury when he had wished to hasten to the man of God, before he entered to the g Court of that monastery, more or less about one throw of a stone, the horse groaned within itself and would not go. But the King struck it; whence there is no doubt, that the horse trembled at the Angelic countenance. h And when he often struck his horse, with most rapid fury the horse cast him to that same place; whence neither the King nor the horse could move. King Theodoric therefore seeing this sign, understood, he has him a suppliant. that he had not destined to do a good work: and he sent to him two soldiers, asking him to come, and absolve him. Which heard the servant of God, filled with great joy, at his command went gladly. And when the King saw him coming to him, he ran and rolled himself at his feet, saying: I have sinned, thinking against thee an evil counsel, through the exhortation of evil men; but I ask thee to pray for me to the Lord Almighty, that he may forgive me this sin which I thought. Then blessed Hilarus took his hand, and raised him and led him to his cave, and the prayer being made they made charity. For from that same day the King much venerated that place, but also gave there many monies or possessions, far more than he had had.
But why is it many words for us to relate his venerable life? Among his own he keeps exact discipline, and how in the rule of the monastery day and night he untiringly exercised himself [how studious in hospitality, how cautious and solicitous in the service of God, how discreet in the operation of labors, how provident he was in correction]. Every ordering of the church, gathered in that monastery, was disposed under his governance; and so he commanded each one, that they should wash one another's feet in turn, or perform whatever cause of service one for another. But he himself, not as it were exercising the power of a father of a family, but truly as one of the congregation of the Brethren, exercised a like burden. But none of the congregation without his command worked anything: all exercising humility toward one another, there was no dissension among them. and a sober reckoning of food. But at the time when anyone of the Brethren had been sent to gather fruits, he had such a Rule set forth, that until he presented it to him to be blessed, i he should not thence touch it tasting: but he who had been sent, when he brought it collected to the midst, with the basket veiled they were uneaten: the blessing being made all alike ate, putting in their hand under the veil, but no one looked who took how much to eat.
[9] the demon detected under the appearance of a grape-cluster But one of the Brethren, Glycerius k by name, when he passed through the vineyard at the time when the grape ought to come to ripeness, and it had not yet happened; saw one beautiful grape among the rest and found ripe: and there was suddenly in him a desire of tasting it: but while he made his l Course according to custom, recollecting himself he went to B. Hilarus, saying: It came into my mind to taste a grape, because it was beautiful and new in the time of the first-fruits. Looking up therefore B. Hilarus said: Go, and fulfill the desire of thy flesh; for God will prosper, and will not forsake thee. Glycerius therefore went to take the grape, he drags into the churches, and from that grape was made a huge serpent. But he ran quickly and announced to him this deed. Which heard the servant of God hastened more quickly to the serpent, speaking to no one. And when he had come and seen the serpent standing on its tail, no one m doubting he knew that it was an unclean spirit: and he cast himself and seized it, and began to drag it after himself. But when he sent it into the church while he fulfilled the Course of the day, and compels it to confess its frauds. the demon began to cry from the mouth of the serpent and say: O most ardent fire, why dost thou burn me through Hilarus! O fury insanable for me! Let me find rest for the space of even one hour. Why does the power of my kingdom suffer violence through thee? What I think against thee I find not: I will go therefore and hither henceforth I will not return. To this B. Hilarus said to the demon: I command thee, accursed one, by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, that thou tell me if thou didst put the desire of tasting the grape into him. To whom the demon answered, If I had been able to bring about that he should thence taste, I would have removed him from thy service. Then B. Hilarus the prayer being made commanded the serpent to burst, and the serpent burst, and was reduced to dust, so that there went out of it a smoke blacker than pitch: but all seeing it plunged itself into the deserted places, [that it might no more tempt anyone of the Brethren in such concupiscence.
[10] Innumerable and perhaps incredible things could be said of this most holy Father: but because to doubting minds it is not easily suggested to believe what seems to them impossible]: He commands all things to be conferred in common: these things which we have seen, and from his mouth have heard we announce to you, that the concord of the Brethren
instituted by him, and the constancy of faith, how far it profits.
[11] But the days of his life being fulfilled, that is, eighty-two years [p], the Angel of the Lord [q] appeared to him on the fourth Ides of May, saying: Be comforted and act manfully, comforting thy congregation and the multitude gathered to thee, and in the 82nd year of his age taught by an Angel the day of his death, because after three days I will come to thee, taking thee from this world. Hearing this B. Hilarus, filled with great joy, gathering the multitude of the Brethren said: Dearest sons, be constant: keep the things which are commanded you: let no one fall into the snare of the devil. What more? through the whole day he ceased not to speak, admonishing each one of them. But on another day he went not far from the church, about a hundred [r] stades, and ordered a little place to be prepared for him, not made wonderfully: but he did as it pleased his will. After these things, moreover, he did nothing else, except that in that same place day and night he sang praises to the Lord. But in the morning [s] on the third day, which was the day of the Ides of May, as if having drowsed from sleep, he migrated from the world. Whose body indeed with great veneration laid up with spices we buried. he dies on May 15. I indeed [t] the least of all the Brethren these things, which I have seen and heard, God being witness, have written, to the praise of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom God lives and reigns through the infinite ages of ages. Amen.
ANNOTATA.
p. Rubeus adds, when he had sent Olybrius of Ravenna before to heaven, his life holily spent and most famous by many miracles wrought. Hence Surius made the title, The Life of SS. Hilarus and Olybrius Confessors of Ravenna.
q. The Bödeken MS., On the third of the Ides of May.
r. The Bödeken MS. omits to define the space. The Ughello MS., About a hundred paces.
s. The Ughello MS. simply, on the third day, the rest being omitted. The Bödeken and Vatican MSS., on the third of the Ides of May, which since they are to be disjoined, according to what preceded, I added the parenthesis; and so also understanding the words to be disjoined Rubeus in the second edition of the enlarged work dedicated to Sixtus V in the year 1580, and completed at Venice in the year 1603, put, On the Ides of May: while in the former, of the year 1571, which Surius followed, he had written, on the third of the Ides of May.
t. The name of Paul the writer Rubeus ought to have found in the title of his MS.
ON THE TRANSLATION OF S. HILARUS
The Epistle of Peter Delfinus the Camaldolese General to Francis Piccolomini Cardinal of Siena, Protector of the Order.
Hilarus, Abbot of Galeata, in Italy (S.)
BHL Number: 3915
[12] Since thou rejoicest, most worshipful Lord, in the successes of Religion, I will relate to thy Amplitude, what during these days happened in a certain Monastery of our Order. The monastery being translated from Commendataries to the Camaldolese, The Abbey of Saint Hilarus, situated in the valley of Galeata, and distant about a thousand paces from the little Church town of Civitella, for sixty years was subject to Commendataries. Laboring in that servitude, and desolate as in a hostile devastation, so that the not ignoble roof of the temple fell down, and the whole house as if burned by fire heaped up ruins; at last the Orient from on high shone forth, and the Lord remembered His mercy. For freed first about seven years ago from the hand of strange sons, and restored to the Order, this it has at last most lately been enriched with as a gift.
[13] On the thirteenth day of the past month, when for a long time there had persevered among the inhabitants of that region an opinion, in the year 1495 on April 13 the body is dug up again. and the fame had grown, that there lay in the temple of that Abbey the body of the most Blessed Hilarus, Abbot and Confessor, the Abbot of that place himself with three others set his hands to seek out the relics of this Saint. And what was held for a miracle, in the space of two or three hours they completed a work, which otherwise they could scarcely have done in ten in one day. At last much earth being dug out and removed, they found a great stone upon another stone, both of marble, both most heavy. The stones being then lifted and removed, immediately appeared a leaden box, in which these letters were incised. HERE IS THE BODY OF THE MOST BLESSED HILARUS THE CONFESSOR. The box being opened they found the head and bones, partly entire, partly broken. But beside the box was an earthen vessel, full of dust. Immediately the deed beginning to be made common through the neighboring fields, towns, cities, from everywhere an incredible multitude of men and women began to flow together. I being summoned by several both messengers and letters of the Magistrate of the town of Galeata, whom they call the Antiani: and asked by them, that I should hasten thither with speed, both to honor the most sacred Relics, and to consult what needed to be done concerning their custody, I satisfied those asking. Yet our forerunner was John the Hermit, whom I appointed thither immediately at the first message with a companion.
[14] Not long after, when I was required by other letters upon others, the Alps a being surmounted I betook myself thither with several. The General Delfinus going to Galeata, It appeared from the meeting of the townsmen and the Magistrate and the Praetor that our coming was to all most desired and most expected. We stayed there for four days. The Lord's day b coming, asked by them, that I should celebrate the solemnities of the Masses in that same temple, and show the body of the most blessed Confessor to those coming, as they had ordered to be divulged to many for several days before through all that region as about to be on that very day, he reposits it under the altar solemnly, I fulfilled their vows. Wonderful indeed is God in His Saints. We saw the neighboring hills on the left side of the valley (since the Abbey is situated in a more eminent and conspicuous place) covered with an innumerable concourse of men, so that it was believed that more than fifteen thousand had assembled on that day. Offerings also not slight, both of monies and of candles and torches, were made by those coming, a frequent and famous supplication being first performed through the ridge of the mountain. At last under the altar of the chief tribunal we reposited the Relics, where they had been found, with the box; four citizens being set over the building work, to cover the temple, and especially to adorn the place, where the blessed bones might more decently be preserved. Already the material has begun to be conveyed, and the work let out to an Architect. It is hoped on this occasion that there will easily be a reformation of the destitute and uninhabited place.
[15] and so a beginning is given to restoring the temple, Under the Altar of God I believe the blessed Confessor cried out, that from its ruins he might at last be dug out, and from long oblivion and solitude be restored to memory and fame. Certainly the desolation of so famous a monastery pricked my heart, which is the head of that whole valley, and has a jurisdiction exceedingly great. It excited me to weeping, the collapsed roof of a most beautiful temple, fabricated with skillful ingenuity and much expense. I thought with myself often, what benefices commended to Courtiers, laboring with negligence, produce, saying within me: Assuredly if it were permitted to the Supreme Pontiffs to behold these things with their own eyes, never would they suffer, I think, that the sheep should be committed to wolves to be torn. Yet these things are done daily to the greatest disgrace of divine worship, and the ruin and destruction of the sacred Orders, of those living under the regular life.
[30] But that I may return thither, whence I digressed, on the fourth day after we had gone thither, setting out thence, on the fifth at last to Fonte-bono we returned safe, and the General returned to Camaldoli, writes to the Cardinal. although a perpetual rain accompanied us, and poured down from above most vehemently and rushing. Nor yet on that account did the journey repent us, undertaken chiefly in honor of God and His Confessor; especially leaving behind among that people a desire for us and our companions, who desire as much as possible, that that place be governed by our hands and those of ours living regularly. But of this, if it shall be needful, more at length another time. Let it now be enough, that to signify the finding of the sacred body, divinely revealed in this most recent time, I have perhaps used more words than was fitting for one writing to a most occupied Lord. This is done by a confidence greater than my merits in thy humanity toward me, of which among the rest, whom I have experienced as Prelates and great men, thou easily holdest the chief place. Farewell, my most worshipful Lord. From Fonte-bono, on the XX day of May 1496. d
ANNOTATA.
ON SS. DYMPNA THE VIRGIN AND GEREBERNUS THE PRIEST,
MARTYRS AT GEEL IN BRABANT.
7TH CENT.
PrefaceDympna the Virgin, Martyr at Geel in Brabant (S.)
Gerebernus the Priest, Martyr at Geel in Brabant (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR G. H.
[1] Geel is a populous municipality of Brabant, distant two leagues from the town of Herentals, of which treating John Baptist Grammaye in the Antiquities of Antwerp, Geel famous for the worship of S. Dympna, writes in chapter 10 that it was subject to it, and asserts that with the word "municipium" Henry Duke of Brabant (by whose name three Dukes lived in the XIII century of Christ) dignified the place, and that the liberties obliterated or forgotten by the fault of the times the Emperor Charles V renewed. This place grew by the worship and miracles of S. Dympna the Virgin and Martyr, of whom we now treat, raised into a Barony by the benefit of the Dukes of Brabant, the territory of several villages being attributed. Of its Lords, says Grammaye, he found three stocks, the Berthold, born of the Lords of Mechlin, the Hornan and the Merode, which today possesses it. So namely Catharine Berthold, daughter of Henry and Beatrice of Wezemaal, married to the Hornan Lord of Perwez, drew the Dominion with her: whose great-great-grandson Henry dying without children, the heir Elizabeth his sister, brought Geel to John Rotzelaar, Lord in Vorselaar, Retie and Lichtaart (which villages thence accrued to the Barons). At last their grandchildren dying without offspring, the inheritance devolved to the Merodes, sprung from Aleidis of Horn the sister of the aforesaid Henry. Thus Grammaye. The genealogical schemes of these families almost the same Miraeus draws out in book 1 of the Belgian Donations, chapter 128. There is, moreover, there, Grammaye being witness, there a hospital a famous hospital of B. Elizabeth, founded by Henry Berthold, the letters of William Bishop of Cambrai being extant, approving the deed done in the year 1286 in the month of April. There were at first Brethren in common life, then according to the norm of the third Franciscan rule, finally Virgins of the Augustinian institute being substituted, summoned from Mechlin. Beside the Church is seen the place, and the church of the Saint, where the impious father, trampling on nature buried in shamelessness, brandished the deadly sword on the neck of his daughter S. Dympna. Opposite this, the church famous by the title, burial, Relics of S. Dympna, magnificent and ample, in which John Merode the Baron founded a Vicarial college for performing the divine office, Pope Paul III approving by letters of the year 1537: which, Maximilian of Bergen the Bishop of Cambrai authorizing in the year 1562, Henry his successor in the Barony changed into a Canonical Chapter. And since the frenzied, also the possessed, and those affected or afflicted with other languors, having recourse to the help of the Lady Dympna, very often experience help; to their lodging and care serves the hospital contiguous to the temple, largely endowed by the aforesaid John and his predecessors. That the domestics too struggling with poverty be not destitute of supports, John the Baron, who died about the year 1497, and is here buried before the altar of the Mother of God, left an alms of seven hundred and more florins yearly, to be expended both at Geel and at Westerlo. These and other things Grammaye.
[2] The Life by the author Peter Canon of Cambrai, The Life of S. Dympna was written by Peter, Canon Regular of S. Aubert of Cambrai, compelled, as he says in the Prologue to the Miracles, by the command of Guido Bishop of Cambrai. This is either Guido de Collemedio, successor of William the Bishop, of whom we treated, from the year 1296, who died in the year 1302, whose MS. Dialogue on the Sacraments is said to be extant, or Guiardus, otherwise Guido, of Laon, who presided from the year 1238 to the year 1247. This author used a Life, formerly written in the vulgar idiom; which he turned into Latin eloquence, and as appears from the History of the Miracles, adhered sufficiently accurately to the writings found by him; while there he confesses that he could find neither in manifest nor hidden monuments, in what year or by what Bishop of Cambrai the body was translated into a new shrine. it is given from the MSS. This Life, hitherto never published entire, we give from a MS. codex of the Church of Geel, of which we had the two first chapters also from a MS. of Rouge-Cloître near Brussels. The same we obtained, but contracted, from a Utrecht MS. of the Church of S. Salvator. There is extant also a Legend of S. Dympna the Virgin and Martyr, printed about two hundred years ago, and then reprinted in the year 1496, which Laurentius Surius, the style being somewhat polished in some places, inserted into his volumes of the Lives of the Saints: but these all were reduced into compendium from the earlier Acts: from which meanwhile Lippeloo, Haraeus and others made their epitomes.
[3] Some one of these, or a narration from these translated into Italian, having obtained, John Meagh of Cork an Irishman at Naples, whither a voluntary exile from his native land, Moved by the reading of this John Meagh after Gaul, Spain and Italy traversed, he had betaken himself, about the year 1630, drew thence the beginning of a better life and the hope of one day shedding his blood for Christ. The matter as it was done is narrated by P. Matthias Tanner, in a book printed at Prague in the year 1675, whose title is The Society of Jesus warring even unto the shedding of blood and life in Europe, Asia, Africa and America, against Gentiles, Mohammedans, Jews, Heretics, the Impious, for God, Faith, the Church, Piety. In this, I say, book, in which are contained the Life and death of those, who of the Society of Jesus, in the cause of the faith defended, were taken away by a violent death throughout the whole world, after the narrated desolation of our college of Gutenberg in the year 1639, on account of the destruction impending over it from the Swedes besieging neighboring Prague, thus concerning John it is narrated. At Naples for some time, as if in a safe port, while he lives, he seeks the Society of Jesus by the same event by which the first parent of the Society of Jesus did, he fell upon a book explaining the deeds of the Saints: which before he unrolled, his mind being raised to God, he ardently asked, that there might come to him such a Life of a Saint, the volume being opened by chance, whose examples by living he had ordained to be especially expressed by himself. But when, to him unfolding the book, the Life of S. Dympna the Martyr had come; thinking the life of a virgin maiden by no means apt for his imitation, he was preparing again and again by a new search to obtain another: but always drawn back by a secret impulse, nevertheless the same, although reluctant, he continued to read. In the course of which perceiving, how the royal virgin had fled, a voluntary exile from her kingdom, the incestuous lust of her parent toward her, and had undergone martyrdom for the faith and virginity; he began to think, What if me, fleeing heresy from that same kingdom, God should wish moreover the occasions of sins, by a further flight into some religion, to avoid? what if then, bidding me at some time to return thither, He should deign to crown me with martyrdom?
[4] and in Bohemia he dies a Martyr. Thus far Tanner: who moreover recounting other unexpected chances, by which he was impelled to enter the Society; and how into it he was admitted and initiated into the Priesthood, sent into Bohemia, while the occasion of the Irish mission destined for him by the General should mature; sets forth finally, how, the command of returning into Ireland being received, the Swedish War of Mars compelled him to hasten his departure even by flight from the aforenamed college; in which flight he had scarcely advanced one mile with his companions, when suddenly, attacked by heretical countrymen lying in wait in a wood, the others escaping, he himself reciting the Litanies of Loreto with a companion, at the very first wound, pierced through the breast by the leaden ball of a gun, fell; and found in Bohemia the death which he was going to seek in Ireland, with Martin Ignatius, and a certain Wenceslaus Trnoska, lay religious likewise of our Society, on the XXXI day of May: and they are the more securely to be given the title of Martyrdom, because of the seculars, who were very many companions or leaders of the flight, no one was violated, no one affected with any molestation, but all were dismissed peacefully with their goods safe; the rage of the heretics raging against the men of the Society alone, and against the sacred Relics, of which they were carrying a great treasure, to be deposited in a safer place.
[5] At what time S. Dympna underwent martyrdom the ancient Acts do not indicate. In the Utrecht MS. it is related that her head was cut off on the III Kalends of June, that is, on the XXX day of May, which also in the printed Legend and in Surius is read: Memory in the sacred calendars, on which day in the MS. Florarium of the Saints her translation is celebrated. But in the said Legend it is said that the translation of the body of the venerable Virgin was made on the fifteenth day of May, on which her feast is celebrated. On which day these things are read in the ancient Martyrology of the Church of S. Gudula of Brussels: At Geel a town of Brabant the birthday of the blessed Martyrs Gerebernus the Presbyter, and Dympna the daughter of the King of Ireland. Who persecuted by the King the father of the Virgin, together for Christ with their heads cut off died. Of whom Gerebernus was translated to the Renish Troy, which is called Xanten. But the body of S. Dympna the Virgin at the aforesaid town of Geel, flashing with many miracles, rests. Thus there, to which like but almost fewer things are read in the MS. Florarium, in the Martyrology of Cologne and Lübeck printed in the year 1490, in the additions of Greven to Usuard, and of Dympna alone in the additions of Molanus, with Canisius also and Galesinius with the present Roman Martyrology. Greater eulogies have Molanus in the Natales of Belgium, Miraeus in the Calendars, Saussay in the Gallican Martyrology, and everywhere
others. The feast of the same is celebrated with the Ecclesiastical office in the ancient Breviary of Antwerp with this Collect. Lover of chastity, O God, grant to our supplications, and in the Breviaries. that of the blessed Dympna thy Virgin and Martyr, of whose yearly solemnity we recount the memory, by her merits and intercessions with thee we may be helped. The same is read in the cited Legend, with another concerning S. Gerebernus, which is the second in the Breviary of one Martyr not a Pontiff.
[6] The Translation of both, In the additions made to Greven by the Charterhouse of Brussels there is assigned to the day XXVII of October, the Translation of S. Dympna the Virgin at Geel; and to the day XX of July, the Translation of S. Gerebernus the Priest, the companion of S. Dympna, at the Saints above the Rhine. But the above-praised Grammaye has these things: At Geel in the church of S. Dympna is preserved the head of S. Herbernus the Priest, the body being translated to Sonsbeck. There is also preserved enclosed in a triple bier the body of B. Dympna, visited by Metsius the Bishop, a stone being found upon the breast of the Virgin with her name inscribed. Thus there. Theodore Rhay in the Illustrious Souls of Jülich, The body of S. Gerebernus is kept at Sonsbeck. Cleves and the neighboring provinces, on this XV of May writes these things: Sonsbeck a very ancient city of Cleves, not in the principal but its suburban temple, has the patronage of S. Gerbernus the Martyr, whom the inhabitants and dwellers nearby honor after the manner of their ancestors with constant and special honor. Thus he. Meanwhile below in the Life at number 6 it is said that Gerebernus is held in great veneration at the town of Zanten near the Rhine, and in the History of the miracles the inhabitants of the said place Zanten are said to have fled with the pledges of the Blessed Gerebernus; and when they approached near the Castle of Zantes, the townsmen admonished with lights … carried it to the church. There are, moreover, Santen and Sonsbeck plainly neighboring places: of which Santen is wont to be called ancient, and is among the chief cities of Cleves, which are called to the Assemblies, and in them have a vote. But Sonsbeck, as Molanus writes from the Santen monuments, was wont to be not a city but a village of their parish, which from Theodoric Count of Cleves obtained its own church. Moreover that Theodoric in the year 1320 granted to the people of Sonsbeck privileges of immunity from tolls and the liberty of electing their Magistrate, relates Teschenmacher in the Annals of Cleves, page 173. The people of Santen therefore together with the people of Sonsbeck could have carried off the sacred body, which afterwards they gave to these; where at this time that it is preserved with Grammaye and Theodore Rhay assert Molanus, Miraeus, and Merian in the Topography of Westphalia, and observe that through the error of the common people now not Gerebernus but Bernard is called: and that on the consecrated rings (which against gout and fevers are wont to be worn by the faithful) is read impressed not the name of Gerebernus, but of Bernard; namely since "Sint Gebern" and more contractedly "Sint-Bern" was said, the name of Bernard was unskilfully assumed. But the sacred Relics are wont, with a most frequent concourse of the people, on the Sunday after the feast of S. Margaret, to be carried about.
[7] But in what century or year of the century the martyrdom was inflicted on these, the author of the Life presses with the deepest silence. They seem to have been crowned in the 7th century, In the ancient printed Legend they are said to have been beheaded about the year of the Lord six hundred, but it is to be divined whether the seven hundredth or rather the six hundredth year is to be understood. Saussay in the Gallican Martyrology conjectures them slain, while Charles Martel was administering the affairs of Gaul: which would be some time after the year seven hundred. In the Life printed in vernacular rhythm there is assigned the time of Pippin the Duke, and the six hundredth year, after which he chiefly presided as Mayor of the Palace of Clothar II, Dagobert and S. Sigebert the Kings, from about the year 620, until the year 640, in which he died on the XXI of February, on which day we gave his Acts: and these times of the seventh century please us greatly; since the places near Geel, nay also Antwerp, began then to be illustrated by the light of the faith.
[8] But a greater difficulty arises in the father, a Pagan King, and indeed of Ireland as the Acts have it, whether under a pagan father King of Ireland or at least of Britain, as he is called in the Utrecht MS. For Ireland was then wholly Christian, and illumined by the light of the faith, with the same it illumined the Gauls, Germanies, and Belgium. The Acts of the Saints of Ireland themselves, which we have hitherto published, bear a most ample testimony of this matter. But Britain, or rather of Anglo-Saxony? already before for the most part occupied by the Angles and Saxons, groaned under seven or more Pagan Kings: of whom S. Ethelbert King of Kent received the Christian faith toward the end of the sixth century, dying in the year 616; and at that time the rest of the Kings were still Pagans. For the East Saxons, who under King Sebert had come to the Christian religion, after his death had returned to their former idols. There were therefore then Pagans, the Kings of the South Saxons, of the West Saxons, of the East Saxons, of the East Angles, of the Mercians, of the Northumbrians. Wherefore (if, all things being discussed, some place be given to conjecture) we judge the father of S. Dympna to have been some one of the said Kings of the Saxons: who since afterwards, because the whole Heptarchy had devolved into a single kingdom of the Angles, were unknown to the Belgians, who acknowledged no Saxons except the peoples of Germany; the same seem to have cast their eyes on the Irish then more known, whom they knew not in earlier centuries to have embraced the Christian faith. To our conjecture favors the name of S. Gerebernus, which in the old Saxon tongue signifies one gathering sons, and so are called Gerwinus, Gerlacus, Gertrudis, names noted among the Saints of Belgium; Osbern the writer, and others similar. There accedes also that argument favoring our conjecture, that almost the same tongue was among those Anglo-Saxons, which flourished at Antwerp, Geel and the neighboring regions, so that even for that reason the Saints had traveled to these parts: where perhaps S. Gerebernus, either in Gaul, imbued with the Christian faith, and initiated into the Priesthood, wished to teach these Anglo-Saxons, among whom he could have been born, the Catholic faith.
[9] These things being thus deduced I find in Florence of Worcester (who flourished about the year 1120) at the year 937 these things to be read, or rather of the Danes invading Ireland? that the Pagan King of the Irish and of many islands Anlaf, incited by his father-in-law, Constantine King of the Scots, had entered the mouth of the river Humber with a strong fleet. Which same things have Dunelmensis and Westmonasteriensis, who call him the Pagan King Anlaf of the Irish and of many islands: but by John Bromton he is called Aulaf the Pagan King of Ireland and of many islands. This Anlaf when in the said war he had lost his seven Dukes, sad sought Dublin and made for his own land, as these things are related in the Anglo-Saxon Chronologer, who asserts that King Anlaf was received by King Edmund in baptism in the year 942, or the following, as the authors indicated above relate. This Anlaf was sprung from the Kings of Norway, son of Sitric the first King of the Dubliners. Hence now some doubt arises, whether about the year six hundred and in the seventh century in like manner some of the Danes or Norwegians, Pagan Kings, occupied Ireland. John Colgan in the Notes to the sixth Life of S. Patrick at number 68 affirms, that no author of good faith or note, domestic or foreign, mentions that the Danes, Norwegians, Northmen set foot in Ireland before the year 838. But in the year 812 a fleet of the Danes had attacked Ireland, but overcome in battle it fled. Which if they are true, it remains unshaken, what we said above, namely that all Ireland was illustrated by the Christian faith, when SS. Dympna and Gerebernus lived; nor can the father of the Saint have been King of Ireland, unless she perhaps were much younger than is commonly believed.
[10] The Reverend Lord John Ludolph van Craywinckel, educated in the municipality of Geel, and cultivated in the humanities, then Canon of the Premonstratensian Order in the famous Abbey of Tongerlo, and now Pastor in the village of Oelegem, published in the Brabantine idiom the Life of S. Dympna in the year 1658, The body of S. Dympna visited in the year 1623 and in it in chapter XIII writes, that the body of S. Dympna in the year 1623 on the XXVII day of September was visited by Nicholas Zoesius Bishop of 's-Hertogenbosch, and again by his successor Michael Ophovius on the XXIX of September in the year 1627, and translated into a new shrine in the year 1627. in the presence of Henry vanden Leemputte Licentiate of sacred Theology and Louis Smeyers Licentiate of both Laws, Canons of the Cathedral Church of 's-Hertogenbosch, and the Lords Canons of the Church of S. Dympna and the Aldermen of the municipality of Geel: when the sacred bones, taken from the wooden shrine, and each inspected, were translated into a new and precious shrine, and sealed with three keys, which are preserved with the Chapter of Canons, the Wardens or Masters of the fabric of the Church, and with the Aldermen. And besides this Cathedral church of S. Dympna, 3 temples dedicated to her. another is dedicated to her in the infirmary or hospital, in that very place where S. Dympna beheaded is believed to have been crowned with martyrdom. But a third is constructed to her honor in the middle of a field toward neighboring Mol, in which place the body of S. Dympna, lest it be carried off by the people of Santen, is held by pious tradition to have stood immovable. The same Canon Craywinckel procured for us the monuments of the Church of S. Dympna written in two codices; from which we learned that on the XXX day of May the feast of the decollation of S. Dympna is venerated with a solemn Office. But the chief solemnity is on this XV of May, on account of the elevation and translation of the sacred body, Various feasts, on which day on account of the Indulgences wont to be given by the Supreme Pontiffs there are numbered up to six hundred, seven hundred, eight hundred or even more, who then are expiated and refreshed by the Sacraments of Penance and the sacred Eucharist. A third festivity there is celebrated on the third weekday of Pentecost with a public procession, in which the sacred Relics of this Martyr and Virgin, as often through the year, are carried about. Several Roman Pontiffs also have testified in their Bulls that there those vexed by malign spirits and demons were freed by the intercession of S. Dympna; and among those John XXII, John XXIII, and Eugene IV, miracles are added from the original writings. in the years respectively 1330, 1412 and 1431. Which and other miracles, because they were everywhere known, formerly indeed were not described; but in this century in which by heretics they are wont to be denied, those were more accurately annotated which we give below from the said codices received from Geel, so that to them the several witnesses everywhere noted their names with their own hand. But lest the same formulas should generate weariness, from number XV the names being omitted only the miracles are indicated: to which some are added from the book of Craywinckel. Finally, Pope Urban VIII the Supreme approving, there was instituted a Confraternity of B. Dympna, to which are inscribed about four thousand.
LIFE
By the Author Peter Canon of S. Aubert
From MS. codices.
Dympna the Virgin, Martyr at Geel in Brabant (S.)
Gerebernus the Priest, Martyr at Geel in Brabant (S.)
BHL Number: 2352
BY PETER FROM THE MSS.
PROLOGUE.
[1] To the man of sweetly fragrant memory venerable, and in Christ most dear, the Lord Stephen de
Brava, Person of Geel, Peter Canon of Saint Aubert of Cambrai, The Life turned from the vulgar tongue into Latin. health in Sion and glory in Jerusalem. Once or a second or a third time importuned by you, as if there were not a Prophet in Israel, that for the edification of the Virgins and to increase the devotion of the generation to come, I should reduce from the vulgar speech into the Latin idiom the history of the passion of your Mother, namely S. Dympna the Virgin and Martyr, which through the sloth of those who then were, not yet committed to the sacred memory of letters, had lain hidden under the bushel of silence too long; often deliberating with myself I feared to acquiesce. For I judged it presumptuous enough and unbecoming, if a brutish man should strive to discourse of the mysteries of sacred Scripture: and would easily corrupt in the writing those things which while he reads he scarcely understands, unless the kindness of the hearers should support his folly, and that fire should inflame his ingenuity, which escaping the discipline-mold, invisibly penetrated the breasts of the Apostles. Whence because charity bears all things, nor is puffed up; and, by the testimony of the Prophet Samuel, obedience is better than victim; lest I should seem in this part to refuse what has pleased you, I undertake the present work, likened to an ape, which by chance seems to figure human gestures, and always remains a beast; while so I unaccustomed in such things, as if I were known to savor anything human or to attain anything discreet, do not desist with bestial ingenuity to decorate what others perhaps could with a more fitting title. 1 Kings 15. 22 Yet hope increases for me and drives diffidence far away, that in the old law, for adorning the tabernacle of God, among the very many gifts of the powerful and rich, the poor also are read to have offered the hair of goats, for making the haircloth veilings, in likeness of which, that against the brazen powers I may fortify and inform the minds of the hearers, I, poor, offer what I have, not that I may ascribe to myself the praise, which I do not merit; but to Him who, that He might declare the name of the new-born, opened the mouth of Zachary: because the better and more wonderful the things done by God through man are narrated, so much the more not man, but the Lord, who makes His power known among the peoples, is preached more wonderful. Exodus 31, Since therefore, as you know, vile speech makes a noble matter become vile; it is offered to the censure of Guido Bishop of Cambrai. I beseech your love most earnestly, that you present this work to the sight of our venerable Father Guido the Pontiff of the people of Cambrai: that whatever in it he shall perceive unpolished or rude, which perhaps could make it ridiculous to a hearer, or to a reader, he diligently eliminate; and so the sterile twigs being cut off, he may sow a more abundant fruit: lest while it passes through public sights, I appear rash and insipid.
CHAPTER I.
The Virgin, demanded by her father for incestuous nuptials, flees with Gerebernus into Brabant and tarries at Geel.
[2] After the mysteries of the resurrection and ascension of the Lord were completed, Born of gentile parents, as He had before foretold through the Prophets, when in the whole world now through the Apostles the Christian religion spread abroad was profiting, there was a certain Pagan King in a Ireland: who although, the fear of God being despised, he served the superstitious and vain worships of idols, yet by the glory of wealth and the powerful vigor of secular soldiery surpassing the rest, appeared more glorious than all. He had, moreover, a wife, sprung from illustrious lineage, whom the King himself loved with vehement affection, since according to the rottenness of human flesh she was of so great beauty, that the comeliness of her face and body, to be emulated, allured the minds and eyes of beholders to herself. These indeed by carnal birth had begotten a daughter of comely beauty, very like the mother, in merits and name Dympna, that from the presage of her name she might afterwards succeed worthy of God, about to profit. For when, nobly educated in her father's house, she had passed the years of childhood, not, as such an age is wont and the loftiness of royal magnificence demands, affecting the rushes of dances or jesting songs or the noise of maidens standing with her, secretly she is baptized: did she follow the wantonness of this world; nay, secretly receiving the power of holy baptism, she wholly submitted herself to the sweet yoke of Christ in mind alike and habit, desiring to be applied to Him alone forever, the bowels of piety being diffused.
[3] but her mother dying, Her mother meanwhile, namely the Queen, falling into a sickness of the body, and afterwards paying the debt of death, which no mortal can avoid; the King pining for her with superfluous griefs, how greatly he burned with the fire of her love, like Abraham at Sara dead, or Job once at the sudden death of his sons heard, miserably by the force of griefs he expressed. At length, by the lapse of time, so great anxiety of the King being soothed, lest oblivion should utterly delete in him the death of the Queen, through the several provinces of his kingdom and the nations contiguous to it he ordered legates to be sent, who should diligently inquire for a young virgin maiden, notable in race and in beauty like the now deceased wife, to be matrimonially joined to so great a King, and finding her should hasten to bring her with him with joy. The Soldiers therefore being summoned, polished in manners and eloquence, take up the commanded journey; and traversing the native lands and cities with skillful search, as instructed of the King's purpose, they contemplate the faces of very many noble maidens: as toward the royal majesty, if they fulfilled the command of the conceived legation, about to obtain in common a fuller grace and honor henceforth. from the nefarious counsel of the courtiers And when, long weaving delays, they had gone about very many regions, and affected with weariness had by no means found what they desired, every hope of solace of fulfilling the royal will being taken away, turning back the reins they returned to the King: and entering the palace, he being saluted, with speeches of this kind they promulgated a similar address: O most excellent King, what thy imperial majesty lately commanded, exiled afar we could not find: but if it please, lo, quickly obey our counsel, and thy daughter Dympna, lovely and very comely, and so like her mother, that in her image the dead seems to revive, command to be coupled to thee as quickly as possible by the happy commerce of nuptials. What more? Scarcely had the inciters of turpitude finished this detestable word, when soon the envious enemy and persecutor of all chastity, who in Lot prevailed that he should know his daughters, and in Ammon that he should oppress by force his sister Thamar, inflamed the King's mind with the torches of execrable shamelessness; that so through the King, what through itself it could not, it might recall the Virgin to the worship of idolatry; and violating the temple of God through the father, in the daughter, whom it held hateful, might exercise the uncleanness of incestuous lust. From then indeed the King, more vehemently burning with love of the maiden, she is desired in wife by her own father: began gently flattering to disclose his vow to her, promising to give vestments, treasures in the ascription of dowry, and innumerable wealth, or whatever delightful to see could please her eyes, if she would couple herself to him by the nuptial bond with mutual conjugal turns. Which when the venerable Virgin, who had wholly transferred herself into the embraces of the Lamb of God, learned of the execrable defilement of her father; consternated in mind alike and spirit, she answered that she would never admit him as a spouse: since this was not of justice nor of law, nay rather of abomination and horror, if by infamous commerce of incest a daughter should stain her father's bed. But the most nefarious King on the contrary, as is the custom of the human condition, and she is urged to consent: which always easily strives toward the forbidden, attempted to attain her more watchfully than usual; asserting with all effort, that whether she would or not, it behooved her quickly to acquiesce to him supplicating.
[4] While therefore both together thus contended with altercation of words, and no reason of contradicting prevailed, but the Virgin saw her father's pandering toward herself rage worse; finding a new stratagem (like Judith once, who asked by Holofernes not to fear to consent to him, obtained for three days the license of going forth by night, by a crafty pact promising that she would do whatever was good in his eyes) she asked a respite of forty days for caution, she obtains a delay of 40 days: meanwhile demanding that ornaments or also the other things which pertained to the decency of maidens be given to her, as if at length more brightly adorned with royal apparatus, she wished to appear more gracious to her father. But the King hearing these things, according to that, "love is a credulous thing," exults the more; and every spirit of ferocity and madness being soon converted into mildness, he obeys the petition of the Virgin; and the day of the respite being indicated, displaying to the maidens as to his daughter an affluence of all things, especially whatever befits the use of female adornment, by the authority of royal liberality he orders to be imparted, although she had asked half of his kingdom: clearly insinuating to all by this, that, the cloud of all ambiguity being wiped away, he believed the holy mind would of its own accord be inclined to his luxurious affections. But the venerable Virgin, who exceeding the tender years of her age by maturity of morals, by singular profession of chastity had pleased her Spouse, for no other thing had done this, except that, the wrath and indignation of the King being somewhat lulled, she might be able to restrain his mind, burning with the vice of lust, from his conceived iniquity. and she chooses flight beforehand: For at each moment of time suspending her heart to heaven, she thought to forsake her native land; fearing lest the King himself, agitated by the goads of luxury more shamelessly than was becoming; which subverts childhood, blackens youth, disquiets and overwhelms dead old age; should rise against her as a strong armed man, and by force destroy the flower of chastity. With Job therefore let every prudent one make a covenant with his eyes, that he think not of a virgin, and circumspect let him see how great a crime and peril base love is, and how great malignity arises from lust, and cruelty from pleasure.
[5] She consults S. Gerebernus the Priest: Meanwhile a certain old man and venerable Priest, in Christ of singular conversation, Gerebernus by name, kindled by that fire which Christ came to send into the earth, at that time in Ireland under a hidden cloak bore the servant of Christ concealed, so that some of the Gentiles flowed to him, and secretly baptized by him, consulted him about their salvation, until, that being emptied which in part they bore, they should see with the eye, what now through a mirror in enigmas was spoken. For that most loving servant of the Lord was sparing in food, endowed with chastity, sincere in speech, sound in doctrine, perspicacious in counsel, most ardently given to vigils and prayers, as if ever new like Samuel of old he came to the service of the Lord: of the afflicted and poor he was never unmindful, and whoever troubled by the consciousness of crimes came to him, applying counsel as was needful to each, comforted as it were by the Angel of great counsel they returned. The man of God therefore adorned with so great insignia of graces, the holy Virgin desiring him to be near her, ordered him to be summoned to her; and according as those affairs are more usefully conducted, which are done more by the counsel of the prudent than by the choice of one's own will; asking counsel of the prudent man, she unlocked the secret of her heart; relating with grief, how her father the King, kindled by the ardor of lust, with words softened above oil exhorted her, that she should withdraw from the state of chastity, and consenting to him should fall into the abyss of horrible corruption. Which when the servant of the Lord, who had kept himself
pure and clean from a boy in this world, as a lover of chastity, had fully recognized; pitying and condoling the maiden's lot, he consoled her: saying that she should cast her heart upon the Lord, nor cease from her good purpose of acting; but rather should choose, for preserving her virginity, to lie subject to the peril of dire death, than, the hoarfrost of luxury being melted away, by the blandishments or terrors of the King incline her soul to the long-desired embraces. For the holy man knew, from the time when she had been instructed in the disciplines of the faith, and had secretly received the grace of baptism from him, her state; that what in tenderer age she disdained, the delights and ornaments of this world, by his counsel, she desired ever to be adorned in act alike and habit by Him, whose form, beautiful before the sons of men, was turned before her eyes. Whence touched with anxiety of heart, he not undeservedly condoled with her, fearing and dreading, as it is written, Let him who stands see that he fall not, lest the venerable maiden, to whom counseling flight she assents: placed among the known and friends, who in the royal court abounded with the delights of pleasures, by the fragility of her sex and worldly wantonness ever flattering, deceived by some miserable chance or terror should more easily be bent: for often he is deceived who trusts too much in himself. 1 Cor. 10, 12 How therefore he might guard against the precipice so monstrous, which threatened the body and soul of the Virgin, deliberating with silent mind he thought the more anxiously; knowing that if perchance they could not altogether be avoided, yet less do those darts wound, which coming from afar are foreseen. And therefore lest delay should do harm, his one counsel was and his uniform persuasion, that more quickly she should consult flight for herself, and withdraw to foreign parts: and so, poor in spirit following poor Christ, she should give place to madness, which also Jacob had done in Esau his brother, and S. David in Saul the most pertinacious of enemies, and Joseph the just, admonished in sleep by an Angel, when he fled from Herod.
[6] Many nights therefore passing without sleep the most blessed Virgin, began more diligently to explore the opportune turns of the times: by which finding a place of leaving her native land, she might consign to effect the salutary counsel of the man of God. Then when there came to her pleasure the hour of more conveniently accomplishing what she desired, the companions of her clandestine pilgrimage and exile being summoned, her most familiar one, namely S. Gerebernus (who at the town of b Zanten near the Rhine, secular Canons now serving there, is held in great veneration) and her father's jester with his wife, with him and other companions that under the appearance of jesters they might be able to set out together more secretly, she began the proposed journey. And so hoping that she with her own had wholly escaped the inflexible hardness of another Pharaoh, hastening to the sea, soon with that friendly company, about to cross over the turbulent sea, of her own accord she boarded the fleet prepared at the shores. Wonderful was the ardor of the virginal mind toward Christ and incredible the maidenly daring, she sails over the sea: which, the dread of feminine fragility and age being removed, feared not the long interpositions of land or sea, nor dreaded to be tossed for the worse by the storms of the waves; casting her hope in God and her whole heart, who commanding the winds and the sea made the sons of Israel led out of Egypt cross the Red Sea with dry foot. Truly her love was strong as death, which not only by forgetting her people and her father's house, despised the kingdom of the world and the ornament of the age, but prepared also to endure all things for the Lord, preferred barbarous nations to her native land alone with friends and acquaintances. But while they were rowing among the rocks and waves of the sea, and some of them for love of the native land and the affection of friends were looking toward the port, she kept her eyes turned away from the shore, lest by seeing what no one can ever meditate without motion of the soul, putting her hand to the plough she should make a useless furrow, not unmindful of Lot's wife, who while going out from Sodom looking back, was soon turned into a statue of salt.
[7] Meanwhile the sea was ploughed by the ship with hasty impulses, and every swift speed was held slow by her, she lands at Antwerp: and the striking of the winds was slow, until, the breezes prospering, they put in at the place which is called Antwerp. And going out of the ship, and entering a lodging, there they passed a delay for some time, inquiring more diligently of the inhabitants of this place, what place would be more useful for them to stay: where, removed from the tumult of the peoples, they could more devoutly serve Christ. For the mind devout in Christ could not bear the common people nor the secular noises, which desiring nothing else besides Christ, by fleeing glory, so wished to keep herself harmless from this world, that placed at times among the troops of citizens, she should not stain her life even by a light breath. Taking up the begun journey again, and walking through the dilated solitude of ways and groves, passing from nation to nation, and from kingdom to another people, with speed they came to a town, and thence to Geel: to which Geel is the name once imposed by the ancients: and received in lodging, they gave their limbs, weary from the long journey, to rest. For amid these things Almighty God, who led the elder servant Eliezer of Abraham's house by a straight journey into the house of his master's brother, having pity on those walking in the innocence of their heart, made their journey prosperous through the byways of paths and the waterless places of forests. For the next day morning being made they rose, and with a wandering search began to go around the site of the place. And finding an oratory, dedicated in the venerable memory of c B. Martin the Pontiff, near the oratory of S. Martin he fixes a dwelling, not far from it they accepted a place set apart for them, useful and quiet for leading a solitary life, that at some time, snatched up through the sweetness of contemplation, the Lord might speak to their penitent heart in solitude. But that place was at that time cultivated by a rare inhabitant only in fifteen lodgings, and filled with a density of brambles for almost six miles, distinguished by the woody greatness of trees. The clemency of the supernal Inspector providing, cleansing the place at once from the prickles of thorns and noxious trees, near the said basilica (in which the holy man being a faithful mediator between God and the people, often immolated placable and acceptable hosts) they constructed a dwelling small indeed, but suitable enough for their religion d.
[8] there he applies himself to every perfection of virtues. To a perfect state therefore, according to their measure, the dwelling being completed, sweating in fasts and prayers and the nocturnal watches of vigils, they unanimously conferred concerning the contempt of the world and the salvation of souls, concerning the punishments of hell and the joy of eternal retribution: and to obtain these more easily, all the affections of carnal pleasures being mitigated in themselves, they leaned more watchfully ever on good works: not friendship which savors to the eye or smells of anything carnal did they follow, but in the true love of Christ, the foundation of virginity being placed, they did internal fruits worthy of penance. Whatever pertaining to the state of a more perfect sacred life was persuaded to the Virgin by the venerable Priest, she more solicitously fulfilled; as if with the bodily ear she had skillfully received it from the Lord's mouth. Separated therefore by the dignity and excellence of the mystery, you would see her choosing the best part, like the Evangelical sister Mary then clinging to the sacred feet of Christ: but the most blessed old man, flourishing in the highest chastity of heart and body, like John the Evangelist chaste and beloved before the rest by the Lord, to whom Christ about to die on the cross commended the Virgin Mother, humbly minister with chaste services to the sacred Virgin.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER II.
Sought by her father and at last found she is again in vain solicited.
[9] Meanwhile the King was fed by the concupiscence of his heart, and composing the detestable covenant within the secret of his mind with monstrous pleasure, attempted to fulfill his libidinous affections; when suddenly a word hard and harsh of the departure of the memorable Virgin, spread through the court, flew even to the King's ears. The departure being understood the father is troubled, Hearing which, pricked with unspeakable bitterness of heart the King is troubled: and made thereby more secure of such great rumors (like King David lamenting with covered head for Absalom, and saying; Absalom my son, my son, who will grant me that I may die for thee?) the sacred Virgin of Christ, ignorant what had befallen her, with groaning cries he laments. The soldiers of either condition and sex and the matrons, especially with the maidens who from infancy had borne her charge, and all whom the affection of love alike and nature touched, sighing through the palace are stupefied: and pierced vehemently by the novelty of so dire a wound and by this very sword of compassion or mutual love, with tearful voices they follow her. For piety abounding from the bowels appeared gracious to all, and therefore the innate kindness, by which she excelled both in nobility of morals and of race, alluring the hearts of each to herself, more miserably excited them to grief and groaning. But the magistrates and tribunes of the military magnificence being gathered, to soothe the King's grief, he would not hear them; nay his garments being rent he burst into a graver groan, as if a most savage beast had devoured his daughter Dympna. For unlawful love, which burns up the foundations of mountains, and more vehemently burns the minds of those whom it perceives wholly to sink down to it, admits no solace from impossibility, nor ever takes a remedy from difficulty. For he remembered, and often brought back before the eyes of his mind, how the elegance of her countenance, and the simplicity of her aspect, and the moderate composition of her morals wounded his heart: and therefore prevented by the goads of impure love, he was more irremediably urged.
[10] By continuous groans of laments therefore the force of love satisfying its grief, he seeks his daughter, to investigate concerning his daughter through the divers nations of peoples he orders legates to be sent, who might bring back to the King himself something of her life or death. Why do I delay longer? Messengers and expenses are prepared: the labor of the journey is undertaken, lest they seem to go against the royal commands. To execute which work likewise the King himself also, fenced with military pomp, took up the said journey, riding through the regions of cities and towns
or the wooded solitudes of mountains, and since the way of the land did not extend further, he disposed for the rest to undergo the way of the sea. and crossing the sea he lands at Antwerp: At length hastening to the shore the King, with his manifold company, boarded a fleet laden with necessary things. The sailors going on with all their strength with the helms of the oars leave the port, spread the sails, fly through the deep sea; and so with wonderful speed rowing through the blue waves of the trembling sea, even to the castle, they call it Antwerp, they sail the straits. At length their triremes being set down to land, the King forewarned by the sailors goes out: there follows the loftiness of the military dignity, they mount their steeds, there is a tumultuous concourse of the people, as is the custom, desiring to behold the King himself hastening to the lodging. But since to one loving it does not suffice to have once sought what delights, by the prolongation the force of love, burning for the worse, multiplies the growing intention of seeking.
[11] Placed therefore between hope and fear of attaining to those things which he often meditated with thirsty mind, through the provinces lying around that place he again admonishes more messengers than the former to go, indicating to himself the highest solace and relief, if he should hear prosperous rumors of the Virgin's return. For it is customary to love, through messengers always to think that it finds what it loves: because as we have learned by poetic relation, it is hope that nourishes the lover, and it lacks reason, knows not judgment, knows no measure, fears what it loves, nor loves what it dreads, flees duplicity, for it does not endure long, hates detraction, expels sadness, federates concord, nor can it ever think anything besides that which it desires. The messengers therefore setting out by the King's command through uninhabitable and deserted places, some perchance of them came to a rural town, to which Westerlo of old imposed the name, the publication of the ancients, received in lodging at Westerlo, and there received in lodging they passed the whole night joyful, as if now their mind in this part foreknowing the future, by a certain exterior motion of completing the business of their undertaken legation openly belched forth something to all. But when the dawn of the following day shone, the soldiers about to set out rose; and the little clients being called who should reckon the prepared furnishings of expenses, that with royal liberality for the bestowed benefits from the money which they had brought with them they might satisfy the host, they admonished them. Which received when that host had more clearly beheld, from like money offered by her and these, immediately he related to them that he had coins very like to those, whose form and value and the description of the image he was wholly ignorant of. To this indeed the legates, now with foreknowing spirit somewhat suspecting their journey to be in some measure expedited, from whom he had received such money, began diligently to treat with him. But the host, not knowing for what cause they asked this, set forth to them the manner how a certain foreign Virgin, coming from the parts of Ireland, dwelt in a deserted place, set apart from them by the interval of one mile, who often sent to him for buying victuals such coins. To these again investigating of what face and stature she was, moreover whom and what kind of helpers she had in her company; he soon brought forth, that very beautiful in aspect and body, she enjoyed only the company of a certain venerable Priest of old age, in morals as in the number of his days reckoned, and of one jester having a wife; adding at the last, that if they should ask the place, they could try her with the eye. Scarcely had he finished these words, he comes into knowledge of her dwelling: when a guide of the journey being summoned, who riding through the place of horror and vast solitude should go before, they hastened to the dwelling of the memorable Virgin. Which when with the highest cunning they had more solicitously explored, and had recognized the Virgin from afar among the rest, confirming by sight what they had learned by hearing, they returned to Antwerp, then about to relate to the King awaiting their return the things seen alike and heard with joy.
[12] What the King bore within in his heart, the suppliant countenance with certain enough judgment, the frequent meditation, the lean face, and the assiduity of vigils outwardly indicated: for love knows not how to hide its heats, and altogether if it has learned, yet long lukewarmness is wont to be suddenly conquered by heat. Thus affected therefore, as the thing itself by evident signs denoted, by the truthful assertion of the intervening messengers it is announced, that those are at the doors, whom before, bound by oath, he had commanded to be appointed for seeking his daughter through the places of that region. For the King had not yet given an answer, when the messengers being immediately introduced before the King, he being saluted honorably enough as was fitting, demanded silence to be given them: for with swift course flying fame had already in part insinuated to the hearing of the courtiers the thing done: whence all clamoring for joy, one excited another to gladness and tumult. Yet silence being indicated by hand the faculty of speaking is granted by the King; and so the burdensome labor of the journey and the finding of the memorable Virgin is explained in order before all by the legates. One might estimate with how great a dance the King's mind then burned, when he should know that his daughter, glad he goes to his daughter: whom he had believed dead, was alive and unhurt. These things heard the King and all who were present began to wonder, the King's spirit reviving, when he heard that the holy Virgin lived. Soon with his own he took up the said journey, which led to the place, where with her venerable company the most blessed Virgin dwelt. He persevered skilfully to seek, and therefore it happened, that what long with his whole heart he had coveted, he found: for desires by no means decrease by prolongation, nay, Gregory being witness, rather are augmented; which if perchance by delay they fail, they were not desires. Coming therefore to the dwelling of the Virgin the furious man of Belial, and seeing the handmaid of Christ, saluted her: and with famished aspect beholding the brightness of the virginal beauty, as if soon wounded by the dart of love, he wholly raged in heart, and the interior habit of his mind he showed by a sure enough signification outside, suffused with redness of countenance. For the beauty of the Virgin to be emulated fed his mind and eyes, fixed on the beauty of her face, with the thirsty refection as well of love as of profane affection. Yet he meditated and in the little cabinet of his heart often revolved, he desires marriage with her: that if he could not by gift or promise incline the mind and soul of the Virgin to consent to marriage, the most nefarious one would at the last thunder terrors and death to her refusing. For a libidinous mind persecutes an honest one: therefore how it may punish the honest and chaste it scrutinizes with violent meditation, which King David, depraved by the concupiscence of the eyes, exercised in Uriah, while for his wife Bathsheba through the prince of his army Joab he perpetrated homicide.
[13] For the King having contemplated the maidenly face, which had expressed the likeness of the beauty of his wife, when he had a little turned his eyes from her, touched with the fire of his impure breast, began to address her very sweetly in this manner: O my daughter Dympna, my love, he strives to entice her with blandishments: my desire and sweetness, what necessity or will moved thee, that, the honor of royal dignity being despised, thou shouldst by begging postpone the land of thy birth to strange and unknown nations? What so learned or so gentle persuasion seduced thee, that, forgetful of filial love, thou shouldst leave thy father the King, and cleave to this decrepit old Priest as a daughter, and obey his commands in all things? Why, being about to have the helm of the kingdom after thy father, hast thou cast away the royal court, that thou shouldst inhabit a house planted with little branches and even deformed by the vileness of foul mud? Quickly therefore acquiesce to our counsel, and with us to the native land, which thou childishly leftst, wisely return. For if thou shalt give the denied assent to paternal affections, crowned with the royal diadem, over all the princely matrons and virgins of my kingdom thou shalt hold the princedom: among the goddesses moreover I will command a temple of notable marble to be fabricated for thee, and in it of gold and precious stones a statue of a scepter-bearing image to be erected to thy effigy, to be adored by all. If a slave or freeman or a person of whatsoever condition or sex shall neglect to adore this, nor pay to it the service of due veneration, as our sanction shall arrange and establish, he shall receive sufficiently the appointed vengeance for the inflicted injury.
[14] To these things immediately when the holy Virgin would object, the servant of the most high God most blessed Gerebernus, anticipating the Virgin's answer in the spirit and power of Elijah, who reproved Ahab and Jezebel for the most nefarious union, against the ignominious King, as it became a true lover of chastity, forthwith rose up: S. Gerebernus champions the Virgin's cause. and with countenance alike and voice hurling the words of harsh rebuke, he burst into these words: O most wicked King, author of all monstrosity, and enemy to all virtues, contriver of lust; why dost thou labor in vain to overturn from the way of purity the holy mind of so blessed a Virgin? Why, unhappy and senseless one, dost thou assail virginity dear to God and the Angels, which accommodates honor and glory to all ages? For flourishing in infants and boys, it nourishes holy innocence; in adolescents and young men guarding against a fall, it strives to extinguish the motions of the flesh; in the advanced and old preserving honesty, it acquires sanctity. For this indeed I beseech, exhort, and admonish the Virgin, that she keep this, love it, and follow it, and in it ever, until the hour of death shall come upon her, most constantly persevere. For virginity is a treasure useful among the honest, which whoever shall once have lost will not henceforth be able to recover. Be not therefore a reproach and disgrace among Kings, and bring not a crime upon thy majesty: presume not further to speak such a speech, which it is wicked and an abomination to think, not only to the chaste and clean, but even to the lustful and fornicators. For I am secure and certain, that the faithful and pure mind of thy daughter Dympna, to whom for God whatever the world suggests of pleasure has now become wholly vile, will neither be terrified by the harshness of threats, nor acquiesce to promises or gifts. And, kindled by the ardor of lust, thou wouldst perhaps cease to persuade her this, if, led by zeal of justice, thou hadst dreaded the sword of Phinees, with which seized he transfixed both together the iniquitous transgressors of the holy Law, raging with the torches of turpitude, after them entering into the brothel b.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER III.
The Martyrdom and burial of SS. Gerebernus and Dympna.
[15] This salutary admonition therefore being completed, soon the execrable tyrant, Gerebernus is proclaimed guilty of death, moved by vehement fury, blazed against the Priest of the Lord: and the ministers of foolish severity being summoned he consulted, that they should advise what they judged should be done upon this: that by the counsel of that old man Dympna his daughter
refused to obey his impure admonitions, so that neither by fear nor by the blandishment of any thing could she be softened. But those iniquitous counselors, partakers and consorts of those who in the Lord's passion took counsel that they might kill Him, crying out that the holy man was worthy of death, as a guilty man and malefactor and a subverter of the blessed Virgin, accused him likewise before the King. For they strove to extinguish, not set under a bushel, but burning upon the candlestick, the lamp of virginity; thinking perhaps by this means more easily the purpose of the handmaid of Christ, the companion being slain, to be recalled to consent to marriage. Which counsel although it was detestable, the profane King accepting, soon commanded the servant of the most high God B. Gerebernus, and is ordered to be beheaded: forbidding unlawful marriages, to be beheaded by detestable ministers.
[16] Whom forthwith approaching with swollen lightning-like speeches the iniquitous accusers, together like the cubs of lions roaring to seize, gnashing their teeth upon him, before brought forth the atrocious question proposed in this manner to him awaiting the sword: O inveterate of days, of what condition or race, and whence is in thee so great a daring of presumptuous rashness, the reproaches cast against him that thou fearest not to attack our Lord the King with the circumlocutions of empty words? Is it not enough for thee alone, shameless one, that having recalled his daughter Dympna from consent to marriage, thou broughtest her with thee to this province, unless by the injuries of reproaches thou again provoke him to anger and fury? Does it become thy hoariness, unhappy one, that before thou hast left thine own, thou shouldst reprove the contagions of others? Does the King not undeservedly pine with griefs, to whom by fallacious suggestion thou dost not permit the love conceived in his soul to be consigned to effect? Let the strifes therefore together with thy circumlocutions of words henceforth be lulled to rest, since it would better profit thee to obey the royal decrees, than, rebellious and contumacious, and wise indiscreetly, to sustain the detriment of so advanced an age. Which hearing the worshipper of God, who neither feared to die, nor refused to live; animated by the constancy of divine virtue, he modestly answers: to those objecting these things answered: O nation without counsel and without prudence, if a strange tongue in vain implicates those, whom their own conscience does not accuse; why do ye attack me, forbidding the crimes of defilement, with criminal objections as a guilty man and malefactor? Is not by you the members plainly known, how evil a power dominates in your head the King? For if anyone shall have seen another vicious, is not the same to be most greatly admonished that he leave his vices? And if often admonished he does not leave his vices, ought he not as a publican and a heathen at the proper time to be avoided? With the iron indeed of harsh admonition are to be cut off the members, which take not the fomentations of medicine, before the rest of the part be corrupted: and a fault should be struck more harshly, to which a swift satisfaction does not succeed.
[17] At these words the ministers of wickedness, made more demented, to the man of God uttering such things forthwith subjoined: How long shall so great an imposture of evil lie hidden in thee? why, senseless one, does thy tongue not yet cease to resound folly? ordered to persuade S. Dympna to marriage, Knowest thou not, most wretched one, that it concerns the Powerful to bridle the pride of their subjects, and to chastise with due vengeance the audacity of him whose cruelty still redounds upon the King? Study therefore as quickly as possible to recall the mind of the King's daughter, which hitherto thou hast withdrawn from paternal love, to consent to marriage: or know thyself in the present guilty, if thou shalt have neglected to persuade her this, to be punished with a capital sentence: because when the excess of one is diligently corrected, the evil way of offending is more easily closed to the rest. To whom the most reverend old man, girt not with a sword, but with the glorious ardor of faith, answered: Far be it from me, sons of darkness, that the maiden, whom for my power I ought to instruct to virtues, I should form to vices; and to whom I am bound to suggest perseverance of chastity, I should persuade the incentive of lust and incest. For the purpose of honesty is by no means to be broken by pestiferous persuasion, he constantly refuses: but rather to be sustained by paternal aid, lest in faith while one trusts another, by him he be in something supplanted: and where one esteems himself to receive the greater fruit of religion, there ought everyone with fuller confidence to sow. Although ye should promise me all the exquisite kinds of torments, yet the true love of Christ, which is never divided from the filial fear of Him, has imposed such a law on those loving, that friends in God toward one another for the confession of the faith should suffer the disadvantages of injuries. For he dissolves and separates himself from the body of Christ, who permits Christians to be oppressed by the impious, and for his power does not manfully fight against the enemies of the Christian faith.
[19] But the men of blood and deceitful, these things heard, as catchers of the Royal benevolence, soon unanimously rushed upon the chosen Priest of Christ; beheaded, and casting violent hands upon him, harassed with injuries they slew him. And so the glorious martyr of the Lord, receiving a triumph over the tyrant, completed the course of his life by the memorable beheading of his head. Which also we read was done of John the Baptist, when Herod absorbing his pious blood into the cup of cruelty, for Herodias, whom he had taken as wife from his brother Philip, he is compared to the Baptist. commanded his most holy head to be cut off. Although therefore the herald of Christ John, greater than a man, equal to the Angels, the title of chastity, precedes the most blessed Gerebernus in sanctity and merits; yet an equal comparison of the combat of the two is recited. This one whom the hand of the Lord in his mother's womb consecrated, John preaching and baptizing, prepared the way of Christ in the desert: that most approved Priest of Christ, predestined to life before the constitution of the world, in solitude, by distributing the seeds of the word of life, incited to penance the peoples flocking to him. That true Nazarene of Christ, clothed only with the hair of camels, never drank wine and strong drink, nor ate anything unclean from his mother's womb; this master of sanctity the Priest not only abstaining from the unclean and unlawful, macerated his flesh with thirst, hunger, haircloth. That herald of the Judge John, the evening of the law, the morning of grace, struck Herod burning with the torches of lust by admonitions not by accusation, wishing to correct him not to destroy: this worshipper of the Lord Gerebernus, the form of justice, the example of chastity, detesting the wickedness of defilement, reproved this incredulous King for the commerce of incest, not from hatred but from love. For both continent and just and worshippers of the desert, as defenders of chastity, incurred the wrath and hatred of Kings, and at last for the justice of modesty falling by the swords of detestable ministers, in this equal, by an equal punishment of the head, rendered their holy souls to God. These are the men of mercy, whose justices have not received oblivion: and whom a most holy life led venerable to death, and a glorious setting made to be perennial.
[20] The King, his fury which vengeance had diminished being a little tempered, ordered the venerable spouse of Christ S. Dympna to be quickly presented to his gaze. S. Dympna, her father asking marriage, For hiding a sad soul within over the inflexible depravity of her father, her face full of graces, suffused with the pleasantness of rosy beauty, appeared wholly desirable to all. Struck by whose sweet serenity the unhappy tyrant, the little fire of unlawful love inflaming his heart, by displaying blandishments thus began to address the Virgin: O my daughter Dympna, why dost thou suffer thy father long to be increased with so great griefs? why dost thou refuse to have mercy, and abhor him, whom thy love allures and torments unwearyingly? Only consent, dearest, to me, and what of wealth and glory the world has, truly I promise to thee that I will give. Moreover I will command thy famous name to be numbered among the most sacred goddesses, through all the confines of my kingdom, of which with me thou shalt rule. To whom the most devoted Virgin, who rather chose to be afflicted for the Lord, than to have the pleasantness of temporal sin, to him persuading such things with indignation answered: Why, unhappy tyrant, dost thou attempt by fallacious promises to subvert me from the purpose of modesty? she constantly resists: Thinkest thou, wretch, that I shall recoil from the stability of my purpose by the appetite of secular glory, and by polluting my body, offend Christ my lover? Believe not therefore that there is in me the levity of a feminine soul: I trample the sign of thy glory with the foot of my mind, and the promises of my Lord Jesus Christ, which surpass all affections, now with all my bowels I covet. To be seen a goddess I reject, and the honor of the image I make light of. Presume not to persuade me further such a speech, since it is easier enough for anyone to retain what he has, than when he has lost the same to recall it.
[21] Then the fierce King, his soul given to lust and a chief worshipper of idols, the more he knew the faith of Christianity to fervor in her, so much the more, an enemy man oversowing tares, against her with all his strength rose up, and said: Weary us not henceforth, malicious one, with frivolities: at once fulfill what I desire, or thou shalt incur the offense of paternal indignation; like that detestable Doctor of thine, who rebellious and contumacious toward the decrees of our command ill ended this life by the beheading of his head. To the flower therefore of thy consular youth, having this for an example, and sacrificing at the altars of our gods, put incense; or stand secure that thou shalt be given to perpetual confusion, and so by the example of thy perdition all daughters of Kings will henceforth dread to oppose paternal commands. To him thundering threats in such manner and ruin, the Virgin of memorable memory answered: For what cause, detestable tyrant, hast thou slaughtered the chosen Priest of the Lord, in whom thou foundest no crime? Thinkest thou to escape the judicial sentence of Him who beholds all things? Thy gods and goddesses as a figment I detest, and to the Lord Jesus Christ, for whose love I languish, with all devotion I commit myself. He is my spouse, and my glory, salvation, desire and sweetness, I desire nothing else besides Him: He alone suffices me, prepared to die for the faith of Christ: on whom that sacred army of Angels desires to look. Since therefore the order of law seems to demand, that someone should be judged not by examples but by laws, on me however exercise thy tyranny: all punishments, which thou canst inflict, with glad mind I am prepared to endure for the Lord: for those whom a true faith and an identity of souls placed faithfully in Christ united living through all things, the dissimilarity of death nor the distance of places ought to separate.
[22] The King indeed made senseless by the Virgin's answer, and not bearing further the disgrace of his deception, her thus speaking, as is said, to avenge the injuries of his gods, he ordered quickly to be beheaded. But since none of those who were present in the King's college presumed to fulfill so monstrous a command, the King forgetful of his ancient nobility, which is wont to war down the proud and spare the humble, staining the royal piety with most atrocious cruelty, rushed upon her in place of an executioner. For all feared, by a certain piety of heart to die together, to exercise so enormous an endeavor of crime of their King against his daughter: lest, while they fulfilled so great a command, by which he gnashed in indignation appeased, they should incur his wrath repenting after the deed. Which the unfaithful tyrant weighing, with the deadly dagger with which he had been girt, she is killed by her own father: he cut off the sacred head of the glorious Virgin, imploring the mercy of the divine regard: and so at once the King with his detestable company returning to his own, left the flesh of the servants of Christ, namely S. Dympna and the most blessed Gerebernus,
as food for the beasts of the earth and the birds of heaven. O most wicked and cruel father, The bodies of both unburied, without any affection of paternal piety! who, agitated by the nefarious ardor of lust, under the pretext of a judicial sentence, by vengeance, the griefs being tempered, seeks praise; and by the very endeavor of crime esteeming himself to be pious, to the burial of their bodies denied the office of humanity. Grateful to God and the Angels is truly this society of the blessed Martyrs, who as in Christ they loved one another in all their life, so also in death they were not separated; nay drinking the cup of the passion of Christ, for the gift of their merits in heaven now with Him with perpetual pleasantness rejoice. And when for several days, the Divine clemency disposing, the little bodies of the blessed Martyrs, untouched by beasts and birds, they are buried under a cave: long unburied lay upon the bare ground, by certain dwelling near the place over the holy Martyrs, whose death they knew to be glorious in the sight of the Lord, with diffused bowels of piety they were less worthily buried in an earthen cave, because then it was the custom to bury the bodies of the dead.
[23] But many after the courses of years, for the stupendous showing of signs, which Christ for their sake wrought there in whatever kinds of languors people were occupied; lest the lamp set under a bushel should lie hidden longer, a multitude of either sex and age both of Clergy and people being gathered, certain ones fearing God, and who had learned the place of burial, sought the little bodies of the Saints slain by the sword. about to elevate them, they find them enclosed in white sarcophagi. A wonderful thing and most worthy of the vehement stupor of all admiration, nor by any mortal otherwise comprehended by hearing or sight! When with spades seized digging, they had cast out the earth outside with rakes; prepared by Angelic hands, whiter than snow and cut from the rock two sarcophagi appeared, fitting worthily enough the virginal whiteness, since there were not in all that native land but only rocks blacker than soot. In a wonderful manner the sarcophagi being drawn out without any difficulty soon from the earth, with stupor and ecstasy beholding more clearly round about, they found in them no trace of binding or fracture: nay sound and entire and containing the pledges of the Saints, as little stones are wont to be contained in a huge rock. To these things indeed then those present who were there turned to joy and grief, wondered that they had seen a thing unheard of from the age: but that they might wonder more astonished at this deed, weeping alike and rejoicing in the Lord, they conferred among themselves with one another, how without any dissipation or injury of the stones the precious Relics could have been placed within. Which beholding with the eye, discussing for a long time, that it was by no means done by the ingenuity of human reason, to the divine power which unfailingly works where it wills, they attributed so evident a miracle, returning thanksgivings in common with joy to our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns through all ages of ages. Amen.
MiraclesDympna the Virgin, Martyr at Geel in Brabant (S.)
Gerebernus the Priest, Martyr at Geel in Brabant (S.)
BHL Number: 2353
BY PETER FROM A MS.
PROLOGUE TO THE MIRACLES.
[1] Since it is much more useful, for the honor of any author, to undertake no enjoined work, than from a thing begun afterwards with the shame of disgrace to recoil basely; I judge it worthy enough to follow what I began; lest if the envious and the whisperer should see this work imperfect, they should immediately begin to mock me crying out, Behold this is he who, the foundation being laid, began to build and could not consummate. Whence although, compelled by the command of the man of conversation and life to be imitated, our father, namely Guido the Pontiff of the people of Cambrai, I have committed to the memory of letters the history of the glorious passion of S. Dympna the Virgin and Martyr; much more prevented by the affection of devotion, by completing her miracles to the end, lest in the process of time they slip away, by the debt of reason I am compelled to propagate them to posterity. In the precept of the old law indeed the tail of the host was once ordered to be offered in sacrifice, and a long tunic to the ankles we read holy Joseph to have had, by whose mystery there is designated to us, as holy Gregory expounds, that a good work is to be duly carried through to the consummation of the action. Since therefore we determine to write few of many, yet first it is to be known, that the opinion of a laudable life and good conversation is to be sought not in the demonstration of signs, but in holy and good works: because there are many in the world, who work not virtues, nor from those frequently working them are deservedly discordant. For Peter once walked over the blue waves of the turbulent sea with dry feet; and in the sea, equal to him in martyrdom and chief in doctrine, Paul suffered shipwreck. But since a perverse generation seeks a sign, we ought to recite, Out of very many a few are selected. not as becomes or the multitude of signs demands, which we know from the series of the relation of the ancients to be so great, that they could scarcely be comprehended by the capacity of a volume; nay as much as that supreme Distributor of all graces shall have granted, who makes the tongues of infants eloquent, and wonderfully dilated the mouth of Balaam's ass to speak. For it is established to be excellent and useful, as ye know, to insert into codices the combats of the Saints: by which the praise of God thus diffused may become known to all and be more widely spread, that they may glorify Jesus Christ wonderful in His majesty, and the faithful Christians may be in common excited to the worship of living for the better. For this cause I undertake the present work, fearing lest the detractors of biting envy, of which once the Sicilian tyrants found no greater torment, should turn their bleary eyes upon me, if taught by a man I relate what I have not seen, since Mark and Luke, whose praise is in the Gospel, learned not by sight, but by hearing the Gospel which they wrote. In these things therefore solicitously to be described intending to set in order rather the truth of the matter, than the narration by the simplicity of speech, I beseech the studious hearers, that if by rusticity of speaking, or by transgression of the rules of Donatus or Priscian, I who have not known letters, have offended in anything, they spare my folly: since not fully instructed in their rules, I have learned neither the wit of rhetorical color nor the ornament of Tullian eloquence.
THE HISTORY OF THE MIRACLES.
[2] The bodies of the Saints, namely of S. Dympna the Virgin and the most blessed Gerebernus, being delivered to burial divinely, as is said; the miracles, which through them the Lord deigned wonderfully to work, spread far and wide, at that time resounded to the hearing of very many. For whoever to the place in which the holy Martyrs rested, with purity of faith came a petitioner, obtaining the salutary effect of his petition, was soon healed from every injury of body. Therefore when to Zanten, a town placed over the river Rhine, the fame of so many virtues frequently flying came from everywhere; certain inhabitants of the said place, by a motion of piety, by common counsel decreed to seek the holy Martyrs of God; establishing among themselves, that if they could, by force or by theft they would carry off their sacred Relics with them. For they believed themselves too happy, if they should merit to be enriched with so sacred pledges, which the peoples of the lands from divers regions venerating held in reverence and love. Very many therefore being gathered together, who were held powerful in strength, sharper in spirits, exulting they came to the rural castle, to which Geel is the name, with the greatest haste: and a prayer being made under the pretext of pilgrimage, sagaciously exploring the site of the place, for some days they kept watch before the sacred pledges. At length a fitting time being obtained, they carry off the sarcophagi, in which they could more securely consign their vow to effect; those perhaps who then guarded the sacred Relics being intent elsewhere, placing the precious bodies with the stone coffins on a wagon, with quick step with immense gladness they withdrew. Which being learned, the inhabitants of the said place, as if made demented, soon ran together to arms; and with kindled spirits manfully pursued the fugitives from behind. But when those who had fled heard the sound of the immense multitude, terrified the bearers of the Martyrs, seeing the thing to be for them a matter of life, those two sarcophagi which they had taken, from the wagon as quickly as possible they lifted off: and setting them down on the ground, and S. Dympna being left, one only they reduced to fragments, and leaving the other sound and entire, in which were the pledges of S. Dympna, with the pledges of the Blessed Gerebernus quickly they fled. And when they approached near the castle of Zanten, with the body of S. Gerebernus they flee. fatigued both by the way and by the fear of those pursuing they stopped, intimating to the townsmen of the said place the prosperity of their coming by a messenger. Who forthwith went out to meet them together, and the lights of candles, censers and the Cross being received, with an immense multitude of people the holy body, exulting in the Lord, with hymns and spiritual Canticles they carried to the church, and there honorifically placing it returned to their own.
[3] Then the people of Geel, who had followed them, coming to the place where the precious Relics lay, The body of S. Dympna before immovable, the vessel of the most blessed Gerebernus being broken, found the stone coffin of S. Dympna without any trace of injury. Which when rejoicing they wished to carry back to their own church, the body stood immovable like a stone, nor permitted itself to be moved further, as if it were held fixed by the roots in the earth. All are stupefied, all wonder, and adding all the horses they could profit nothing, ignorant what to do upon this matter. But there was a certain old woman in that same town, who when she was one night depressed by a light sleep, a pleasant voice sounded to her saying: Tomorrow thou shalt rise early, and shalt yoke to a wagon this calf which thou hast in the stable, and shalt command thy son to bring back the body of the Virgin Dympna, which those laboring in vain cannot remove. And when the woman was awakened, and wondered at the things she had heard, morning being made she rose: and her son being called she narrated in order the event of the aforesaid vision, which in sleep she had learned, bidding him quickly fulfill the things understood from the Lord. Which when the boy heard, believing his mother to rave, that she should henceforth be silent about that matter he most instantly begged: asserting that if she would do this, both together would be held a derision among the people. the wagon drawn by the calf, it being placed thereon, To whom his mother unwilling to obey, immediately caused a young calf, lately producing horns and hoofs, to be applied to the wagon; and so undertaking the way, which led to the place where the country people astonished stood around the body, she came. There followed her the greater and the small, commonly reputing her as an idiot and foolish, and mocking her wondering they awaited the issue of so great a thing. What more? Coming at length to the place, where, distrusting both their own strength and the vigor of the horses, they invoked the clemency of God alone; they being saluted with joy, she set forth the vision which she had heard in the vision of the night; supplicating, that the venerable body placed on her cart they would quickly carry back to the place of due veneration. Some laughed, and having her in derision upon this matter believed her to rave, until overcome by the prayers of the woman resisting, without any burden they lifted the most blessed body: and set down on the wagon, with immense gladness and the due service of veneration, they brought it back to their own church. it is carried back to the church: Seeing the animal fit for no burden or labor, with the greatest lightness carry a huge weight
and those following wondering, and confessing this to have happened to them for the crimes of their faults, they rendered praises to God alike, who chose the contemptible things that the strong might be confounded.
[4] and after a new church was erected, At length her basilica being enlarged, which after the likeness of a tiny hut was small, and adorned with the beauty of a greater and more decent structure, the elders of the said town, the more noble and richer, gathered into one, concordantly decreed to translate the holy body into a new vessel of gold. For it was unbecoming that the body of the holy Martyr, which shining with so great virtues could not lie hidden, should long lie shut in a stone vessel; and that what still lived for the salvation of many, should longer be enclosed in a stone coffin. At length disposing at their expense in silver and gold and precious stones, it is translated into a golden shrine by the Bishop of Cambrai: they caused a second propitiatory vessel of most pure gold to be fabricated, in which they might more decently lay up the precious Relics of the blessed Virgin. Which being accomplished, decently coming to the Bishop of Cambrai who then was, they treated of the translation of the Virgin to be recalled: a certain day being indicated by that same Bishop, on which they could fulfill this to the end. At length the day and hour falling, on which this ought to be done, that venerable Bishop himself, marked with the Pontificalia, before all the Abbots and Clerics and noble persons of either sex and age, with an immense company of the ignoble common people, the body of S. Dympna honorifically lifted from the stone coffin, translated into the new golden vessel. Thus Moses the legislator raised the brazen serpent on a pole, that those who were struck by the fiery serpents might look upon it and be healed of their languors. But when this was done, or the names of the persons who were present at the elevation of the glorious Virgin, I ought not to commit to the memory of letters; because I could not find them in manifest or hidden volumes: yet I know, as in the present it appears, that when the stone vessel was broken by force, shining with too great whiteness and entire without any joint; there was found lying in it the venerable Virgin Martyr of Christ. Whom when the aforesaid Bishop of the place wished to draw out with immense fear and reverence, upon the breast of the Virgin was found a red a tile, on which was this written: Here lies the holy Virgin and Martyr Dympna. Indeed in the white marble there agreed to the virginal honor the testimony of chastity, and in the red tile the indication of the passion, because both by the whiteness Virginity, and by the redness Martyrdom is designated.
[5] Again a certain necessity occurred, that the body of the holy Martyr, in a procession, most decently placed in a golden coffin, the inhabitants of the said place, with immense gladness and an assembly of the people, should carry outside their basilica. Which when it was to be carried further off, a certain man wavering in faith and unlearned, into these words of distrust loosening his tongue, a member small and greatly exalting, into these words before all let loose: O how foolish ye all are, on account of the distrust of one immovable, who carry this bier, and know not whether there be in it or not the honorable body of S. Dympna. At this voice of doubt, the bearers likewise distrusting, and setting down the most reverend body from their shoulders, stood. But when at length they wished to raise it again to their shoulders, the sacred body of the glorious Martyr immediately stood immovable like a stone, as if it were held fixed to the root of the earth: which when with all their strength they strove to raise, though a stronger hand was added, they could be fatigued not move it. And when they labored long in vain, one soon subjoined to them saying, that for the fault of his doubting they bore so great losses of their journey. What more? At these words of pious accusation each one immediately runs together to the arms of prayer, and prostrate to the ground with humility, prayer being made it is moved: they humbly beseech the glorious Virgin that she would permit herself to be removed. At length their prayers being completed they rise, they put their hands to the bier: and what before they could not remove with labor, to whatever place they wished they carried without any burden of weight. By which thing it is clear to all, how greatly is to be frequented the prayer of faith, which saves the sick, by which also Elisha struck with blindness the chariots and horses sent by the King of Syria with the strength of the army, that they might bring the man of God to the King.
[6] A certain man, the wood-roofer of the basilica of S. Dympna the Virgin, was wont on the days of the sabbaths to expend the labors of his hands as services: the roofing of the basilica consumed by age or by rain he often repaired: in all other things, which seemed necessary and needed bettering, he was always very solicitous. For freely and from a noble devotion, not hired by a quantity of reward or by the hope of any temporal remuneration, to the glorious Virgin he expended so devout a service toward God, awaiting only the retribution of his salvation through the prayers of the holy Martyr. But on a certain sabbath day, when he had ascended on high, about to render service to the work of the often-said basilica, by an unforeseen chance it happened, that with an iron instrument, which he had with him, he cut off his thumb. But when the severed part fell from on high to the ground, the name of S. Dympna the Virgin being invoked, taking the cut piece he fitted it to the mutilated thumb, the thumb cut off by chance is restored. and so immediately received his former soundness: for it appeared so sound and entire, that in it no trace of injury remained.
[7] There was a certain b carpenter, Henry by name, surnamed Suagher, a captive is freed, who exhibited assiduous service in his work to the glorious Martyr. He is seized by a certain lord of his, dragged, and unjustly consigned to prison custody, and with a cruel chain fixed in the wall his neck is cruelly chained by it. Destitute therefore of all human aid, that he might be freed by her, he often began to invoke S. Dympna with tears and devout intercessions. And behold, he persevering in prayer and exceedingly grieving, the glorious Virgin Dympna wonderfully consoling him appeared, and the chain being broken and the door unfastened commanded him to go out free, and so powerfully snatched him from the hands of his lord. Having obtained this benefit Henry, to God and his glorious Martyr and liberatrix B. Dympna with cheerful mind paid the heralding of praises.
[8] one possessed is freed, But a certain woman by the just judgment of our Creator was delivered to the malign enemy of the human race, to be vexed rather in time, lest she should be destined to eternal punishments. The enemy therefore rejoicing, showing himself the possessor of the wretched woman with wicked and horrid motions, frequently busied himself to terrify those approaching, to emit voices with menacing gnashing. Then her own, consternated in soul, in common decree, that the woman, full of the worst demon, should be quickly conveyed with credulous hope to the mausoleum of the most blessed Dympna. Why do I delay with many words? For when they had set her down before the blessed body of the Martyr, with many tears imploring her patronage; suddenly by divine power, the merits of the sacred Virgin and Martyr aiding, cleansed and healed they brought her back to her own with joy.
[9] It is worth while not to suppress in silence the great works of God, the holy fire is healed. which openly among the people, B. Dympna interceding, were wrought in a certain nun, whom twice the holy fire had pervaded with a horrible plague. This disease is wasting, under the stretched livid skin separating and consuming the flesh from the bones; and with the delay of time taking increases of pain and of burning, at every moment compels the wretched to die; but to those desiring death it does not come, until, the limbs being devoured, that swift and pestiferous fire invades the vital members. This nun therefore, of whom I speak, straitened by molestation of this kind, by this fire called holy, which is execrable, in a certain part of her body had been as it were boiled. Yet placing the greatest hope in the holy Martyr Dympna, she went to her sepulchre, and soon brought back the joys of soundness, the fire being extinguished indeed by divine grace. After she returned home, after some time so great a heat pervaded the part before sick, that she feared herself again kindled with the aforesaid devouring fire. Again therefore to the aid of her healer with suppliant mind she had recourse: who when with earnest prayers she insisted for a long time again on weeping, was cured by the antidote of full soundness. But not long after a miracle so pleasant, a certain boy was said to be kindled with the infernal fire: for that fire has among the physicians several names: for it is called the holy fire, the Persian fire, and the infernal fire; and there is one which is called "ester" in the Greek tongue; yet more truly would he have spoken, who had called these aforewritten the kinds of that fire: but "ester," if it shall have girt around the pervaded body, immediately kills. But the boy of whom we began to make mention, kindled with such fire, was carried to the body of B. Dympna, where a Presbyter at this point of the day preached the word of salvation to the people. But the good men seeing the misery of the infant, prayers being poured forth by them, B. Dympna interpellating, the pestiferous fire was extinguished, and the little one was fully healed.
[10] Few indeed seem to attend, to what the divine page enjoins to parents, to expend solicitous care on their little ones, lest at the beginning depravedly and unfittingly educated, they be afterwards oppressed with the bundles of many crimes. Not so, moreover, venerable Sara, the wife of the patriarch Abraham, is proved to have been negligent, when she saw Ishmael the son of Agar playing with her beloved and only son Isaac, but with a just severity praised by God she expelled this one from the house. Therefore let parents take care above all to resist the evil beginnings of their children, two boys possessed by a demon are freed: lest after they have been ensnared with many crimes, they suffer the gravest disadvantages. For two boys, of whom one had been a demoniac, were playing together, with a play not solacing or recreating, because one to the other in mockery gave a drink, and received the same infirmity, that is, like his consort he was possessed by a malign spirit. After this execrable play therefore there followed the miserable lament of the parents: whence from the inmost affections of their hearts they run to the oratory of the most blessed Dympna the Virgin, imploring patronage from her most kind. Job 31. 18 But when would she deny help to the wretched, who with truthful eloquence could speak with blessed Job: From infancy mercy grew with me? Soon therefore from her spouse the omnipotent Christ she obtained, that that malign and wicked spirit should give glory to the living and true God, forthwith fleeing from the boy. Nor is it wonderful if Christ hears her, who Him while she lived here most vehemently loved: for whose love she not only shed her blood, but also was most ready to endure all kinds of torments. Behold now several signs are narrated: but yet there remains one, greater than the rest, which I subjoin.
[11] A certain little boy meanwhile, incautiously running about, unexpectedly fell into water, and was submerged. Which being learned the parents of the boy, another submerged is resuscitated. with grave mourning drawing their son from the waters, would have been affected with inconsolable grief, unless they had had the greatest confidence in the blessed Martyr Dympna. They pray therefore the most clement Virgin, that with her wonted piety to the dead
boy she would obtain the benefit of life. But this for them, this very thing the multitude standing by with weepings and sobbing sighs demanded. What more? They were assuredly not defrauded of their desire, but the prayers of the sacred Virgin restored the infant revived from death unhurt to his parents. But these few things from the multitude of signs, which the Lord our God deigned to work through the most holy Dympna, as we could, we have plucked, to the honor of Him, who not only glorifies His Saints in heaven, but also in the present wicked age ceases not to honor them: to whom with God the Father and the Holy Spirit be praise, honor and power. Through the infinite ages of ages. Amen.
ANNOTATA.
MORE RECENT MIRACLES
Translated into Latin from the Codices of the Church of Geel.
Dympna the Virgin, Martyr at Geel in Brabant (S.)
Gerebernus the Priest, Martyr at Geel in Brabant (S.)
FROM MS. INSTRUMENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Those healed from the year 1604 to 1641.
[1] To all and singular about to see the present, health. We the Praetor and Judges (commonly the Drossard and Aldermen) of the municipality of Geel with most certain truth declare, that today there appeared before us Tilmann Bernarts, otherwise Craens, a citizen of Maaseik, who before us by solemn oath, with fingers raised, without any simulation, inducement, or persuasion, but from truth and for the future memory of the matter declared and affirmed, as he declares and affirms by these presents, that he the declarant with his son Jacob Bernarts, being about fourteen years old, out of devotion on the third of June the year one thousand six hundred and four now passing, came to this municipality of Geel, Dumb, deaf, lame and with dimmed eyes for 7 months, and to the infirmary of S. Dympna because the aforesaid son was plainly dumb, lame, deaf, and with dimmed eyes. He himself leaned on this hope, that God Almighty by the intercession of S. Dympna, the immaculate Virgin and Martyr, would free his son. Which diseases or defects of nature the aforesaid declarant affirmed had befallen his son a little before the feast of S. Martin, in the year one thousand six hundred and three past, not knowing on what occasion. But there was a suspicion that the son had been touched by the hand of a witch woman: which yet he dared not affirm for certain. Wherefore he betook himself to the aforesaid infirmary of S. Dympna on the third of June, taking care that the diet and reckoning of food be observed according to the formula of the aforesaid immaculate Virgin and Martyr and Patroness S. Dympna. And on the eighth day of the observation of the said diet, namely the tenth of June following, the aforesaid son about dinner, he is healed on June 10 in the year 1604, by the grace and benefit of God, was freed from all his diseases, so that he was no more dumb, deaf, lame, or with dimmed eyes; and from that time so perfectly recovered speech, gait, hearing, sight, as if he had never labored with any defect or disease. All which the aforesaid declarant affirmed and deposed to be so without fraud and guile.
[2] These things being thus related we the Drossard and Aldermen of the municipality of Geel above-written declare, that on the eighth day of June in the year one thousand six hundred and four we saw the aforesaid youth most miserably affected, carried among several wretched pilgrims in a chair into the temple of S. Dympna, before the bier and the reverend body of the aforesaid Virgin and Martyr and Patroness S. Dympna. Moreover we declare that we saw on the tenth of June following that great miracle, granted to the aforesaid youth; and on the same day we addressed him, and saw him freed, in the manner in which above by the above-written Tilmann the declarant in these it was declared and affirmed. To which end the Lord Vice-Dean, and the other Lords of the Chapter took care that the bells be rung, and instituted afterwards a general procession. In testimony of the truth of the things which are aforesaid, we the Drossard and Aldermen of the municipality of Geel here impressed the common seal of our municipality, and took care that these be subsigned by the hand of our sworn Secretary, on the XII day of June in the year 1604.
It was signed Cauwers The place † of the seal in green wax.
In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ Amen. To all and singular about to see or hear these, health. Be it known that before us the Dean and the Lords of the Chapter of S. Dympna, and in the presence of the Lord Cornelius van Couwegom Drossard of the municipality and territory of Geel, Possessed by several demons, freed from them successively in various places: and before me the Notary and the witnesses below named there appeared Jacob Wouters, born in the town of Goch, and using a domicile near Rheinberg. Who under a solemn oath, made for this end into the hands of the aforesaid Drossard, declared it to be most true, that for about seven continuous years he had been possessed by malign spirits: and meanwhile that to be freed from them he had gone to various places, and namely had been at Rheinberg adjured by the exorcisms of divers Priests; then at Zanten by a certain Presbyter of the Society of Jesus, called Father Bommart, among exorcisms had been freed from two malign spirits, who at their departure took from the deponent's mouth a tooth, and from a window a square pane of glass. Afterwards in the monastery of Marienbaum, a certain Lord Michael exorcizing, another malign Spirit departed; as also another, when the possessed man poured forth his prayers in the Church of Aspricollis. Afterwards experiencing himself to be still possessed by other malign spirits, he was led into the city of Geldern; where, some Priests exorcizing, he was snatched from the infestation of six malign spirits, who departing carried with them six little beads of a rosary, yet the little cord being not broken or dissolved. But the other remaining spirits clearly indicated that they would not move from the place, unless they were led to Geel to S. Dympna. Wherefore the possessed man himself conveyed by cart to the infirmary of S. Dympna, there for some days remained. At Geel he is freed from the last in the year 1619, And when the wonted diets were observed, and the solemn exorcisms applied; at length on the ninth day the malign spirit migrated, drawing out and carrying with it some corner tooth. That man remained about fourteen days in the said infirmary, without any motion of any malign spirit, or sense of any vexation, but with the grace of God and the intercession of the Virgin and Martyr S. Dympna fully snatched from all molestation. In testimony of this matter there appeared Henry Kerckhofs and Amandus Meus, wardens of the church of S. Dympna, likewise Judocus Mertens, Anna vande Wyer and Maria Breugelmans, administrators of the said infirmary in medicinal matters; and at the same time declared, and under solemn oath affirmed, it to be true, that they saw the said Jacob Wouters carried in a cart bound, in such a constitution, that he appeared horrible to see, and by four or five men could scarcely be held: and by force applied below the relics of the Virgin and Martyr S. Dympna had to be hurried and held. But after the wonted solemnities had been applied to this end, the said Jacob Wouters was freed from the malign spirit; and relieved from all fear of molestation, enjoyed and rejoiced in the free use of his senses and ingenuity, as far as exteriorly appears. But since in this matter now recently done it is divine to afford testimony of the truth, the said appearing parties consented that I the Notary should make a public act of this testification. Done in the Church of S. Dympna on this XIX of December of the year 1619, in the presence of the aforesaid Lords and witnesses, and me the Notary juridically stipulating.
Which I attest, Ooms.
Likewise the aforesaid Jacob Wouters, today the VIII of June of the year 1620 again appeared in the church of S. Dympna, and in thanksgiving for the aforesaid freedom from all vexation of malign spirits, visited the aforesaid Relics, and offered a liberal gift in the presence of the Lord Arnold Bloem the Coadjutor, the wardens of the church and many others, and me as Notary required for it.
Which I attest, Ooms.
[3] In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ Amen. By the tenor of this present public instrument be it known to all and singular, that today the VIII of June of the year 1620 before me the Notary, admitted in the Councils, and likewise Notary of the Chapel of S. Dympna, dwelling in the municipality of Geel, and before the witnesses below to be named, there appeared the honest maiden Petronella vander Haghen, a maiden of Antwerp possessed 3 years, sufficiently known to the others aforesaid, of the age of about 21 years, born and hitherto dwelling at Antwerp; and declared and under solemn oath taken into my hands the Notary affirmed, it to be most true, that for three years continuously she had been possessed by a malign spirit, and most miserably tortured and vexed, and therefore had betaken herself to the municipality of Geel, to visit the Relics of the Virgin and Martyr S. Dympna. In which place when she had resided for some time, she is freed in the year 1619, and daily visited the said Relics, she asserts herself with a notable miracle freed from all infestation of the said malign spirit a little after the feast of Pentecost in the past year 1619, nor from that time felt any sign of possession, fully and entirely snatched from these miseries: in testimony of which matter and in thanksgiving she had come again to visit and honor the said Relics. At which time also there appeared Amandus Meus warden of S. Dympna, Arnold Goos, John Jansen and John Gilis dwelling near the said church, and in place of an oath, which they were always ready to take, affirmed under their attestation of manly truth, that the said Petronella had been seen by them many and various times, most miserably possessed and vexed by a malign spirit, and the same a little after the feast of Pentecost in the said year 1619 freed. But because it is divine and worthy to attest the truth, the said appearing parties consented that I the Notary should make a juridical instrument. Done on the day and year above indicated, in the presence of the Reverend Lord Arnold Bloem the Coadjutor of the Dean, and Bartholomew vanden Nieuwenhuisen and many others in the choir of the aforesaid Church of S. Dympna.
Which I attest, W. Ooms Notary.
[4] By command of John van Hove the Drossard, and John Smolderen the Alderman, there appeared Paul Vercuilen, son of Hubert, of the age of about thirty years, another after 2 years in the year 1626. residing in the parish of Hontenisse, in the territory and jurisdiction of the city of Hulst in Flanders, at the instance and request of John Aerts and Matthew Lanen Wardens of the Church of S. Dympna, in this municipality of Geel: and declared and under solemn oath affirmed, as by these he declares and affirms, it to be most true, that in the year 1624 about the feast of S. Mark he was seized with so great epilepsy, fury and vexation of a malign spirit, that he had continually to be bound with firm and strong bonds in hands and feet; and that these notwithstanding he applied so much strength and violence, that from time to time he broke the very bonds and fetters, compelled by the too great fury, madness and persecution of the malign spirit, showing even now the traces in his hands
and arms, which by too great violence he had inflicted on himself. At length three months having elapsed, at the instance of the Pastor of his parish and his friends, he was brought to the municipality of Geel, that there by the grace and help of God and the intercession of the Virgin and Martyr S. Dympna he might be snatched from these miseries. And when more or less for three weeks he had remained there, and within that time had suffered so great vexations and persecutions, so great dementations and furies of the malign spirit, that he asserted, it could not be expressed in words; at length from so great an evil he was relaxed and freed, and restored to himself entirely, so that he felt no remnants of the evils or even the least vexation any more: but he declares himself to obtain the full use of his five senses and memory, as these also seemed to appear to our Aldermen. He himself moreover is ready, where and as often as he shall be required, and necessity should be, to declare this his declaration under oath, before whatever Lords and in whatever tribunal, consenting also that of these a public instrument be made. Done the XXII of May in the year 1626.
[5] I John Boem, dwelling in the village of Waterloos, confess that in the year 1637 I visited the church of S. Dympna in the municipality of Geel, destitute of his senses in the year 1637, when I was weakened in senses and mind, led by the work of my friends: and when there I had offered my devout prayers, and was refreshed by holy Communion in the same church, I was helped by the intercession of the holy Virgin and Martyr, and in sign of the truth I confirmed it by my name and signature, in the presence of Walter van Wyer the Lieutenant of this municipality, and William van Namen, as witnesses called and implored to it, on this XXV of May 1638. John Boem. And I Michael Boem, brother of the aforesaid John Boem, in virtue of my manly truth in place of an oath, asseverate the same to be most true, the signature of my hand being added &c.
[6] the 26th of May in the year 1638 Before Amandus van Tungerloo and Nicholas Meer, wardens of the church of S. Dympna, there appeared on the XXVI of May in the year 1638 Dympna van Opstal a widow, dwelling in the Dominion of Ulimmeren, and to the honor of God and the holy Virgin and Martyr declared, that for more than three years about the feast of Pentecost she had been weakened in mind and brain, and by the work of her husband had been brought to the church of S. Dympna: and after the ordinary ceremonies of the same church applied, placed in the infirmary there, was healed by the intercession of the said Virgin, and recovered the due use of her mind and senses and hitherto always preserved it. But because it is divine and just to give testimony to the truth, especially when it is demanded, the said Dympna declares this to have happened thus truly, ready always, if she be asked, to confirm it by oath, and in sign of the truth she subscribed with her own hand, in the presence of William Kerckhofs and Martin van Noort, as witnesses deputed and asked to it. Done as above: and it was subscribed Dympna van Opstal, and William Kerckhofs as witness, and Martin van Noort as witness, and me present G. Verbraeken.
[7] Before me the public Notary and the witnesses below indicated there appeared Maria Peeters, of the age of about thirty-six years, dwelling in the village of Sem of the territory of 's-Hertogenbosch with her husband John van Passel and her father Francis Peeters: two women, who at the instance of Arnold van Tungerloo and Nicholas Meer, Wardens of the church of S. Dympna, declared it to be most certain, that she herself had been touched by epilepsy, fury and privation of the senses, so that her hands had been bound with ropes: and that these notwithstanding, by the intercession of the Virgin and Martyr S. Dympna, she had been healed of this epilepsy, after she had been in this municipality of Geel, in the house of John van Passel an inhabitant of the aforesaid municipality, twelve days, having used meanwhile all the ceremonies wont to be applied to this end. She affirms finally together with her aforesaid husband John van Passel, that it so truly happened, that she is ready always before whatsoever Lords and tribunals to attest, if she were asked it. Done the XXVI of May in the year 1638, in the presence of Walter vande Wyer the Lieutenant, and Amandus Lans as witnesses, asked to it and me the Notary below indicated.
Maria Peeters The mark † of Francis Peeters John van Passel Walter vande Wyer Amandus Lans G. Verbraecken Thus I confess, Cauwegom.
[8] I Gerard Peter Reynders van Nunnen, today the XXVI of May in the year 1640 profess, likewise a man in the year 1640 the 26th of May that I went out of the infirmary of S. Dympna fully sound and perfectly using my mind and senses, who to that infirmary was conveyed on the day before the feast of S. Dympna, then seized with so great fury, epilepsy and privation of the senses, that I had to be tightly bound in hands and feet: but by the kindness of God and the merits of the Virgin and Martyr Dympna snatched from these miseries. But because it is divine to afford testimony to the truth, I affirm that it so happened, ready always to assure it with an oath: and in confirmation of the truth I subsigned on the day and year already indicated, in the presence as witnesses of Reyner Peeters and Lambert van Dungen: and thirdly I declare that this epilepsy was of this kind.
The mark † of Gerard Rynders The mark † of Reyner Peeters his brother Lambert vanden Dungen. The same said Gerard Reynders confirmed in the year 1646, then returned on account of the benefit received to give thanks, in the presence of the Lord Cauwegom the Dean, Father Henry Remmens and others.
[9] In the year 1640 on the XXVI day of May Maria Geerts appearing declared in the word of truth, and a woman, that from the last feast of All Saints she had been vexed by a disease, sometimes injuring the mind and brain, sometimes bringing a pain of the heart, at other times affecting the arms or even the whole body with torments, and at length about the middle of Lent had fallen into such madness, that her hands and feet had to be bound with tight bonds, and for several days she was subjected to the treatment of a surgeon: and so persisting in insanity, bound she came conveyed from Bergen op Zoom on the very Sunday Laetare into the infirmary of S. Dympna in the year 1640: and there within a few days, all madness being driven away, having attained the full soundness of her mind and intellect, so by the intercession of the Virgin and Martyr S. Dympna in possession of herself and well sound she returned to Bergen op Zoom: asserting that by the governor Roel, called van Ost, she had been destined for Geel; ready always to confirm all these things by oath, and now by some subscription to signify it to be most true, in the presence of the witnesses Lambert van Dungen and William van Namen.
The mark † of Maria Geerts Lambert van Dungen The mark † of William van Namen. The same Maria Geerts about to give thanks, returned to the church of S. Dympna and to honor her Relics in the year 1642 in the days of Pentecost, and the following year on the XXIV day of May on the very feast of Pentecost, and declared that she enjoyed full soundness.
Which I attest, Cauwegom.
[10] Andrew van Erum, from the village of Soldery, was in this infirmary for twenty days seized with great madness, likewise the demented on the day of Pentecost, and then on the XXIII of May in the year 1640 attained full soundness. In testimony of this truth there subscribed on the very day of Pentecost in the said year 1640 with this mark † Reyner van Millo, Andrew van Norim.
P. Vercuylen I attest.
Elizabeth Hubrechts, of Beringen, weak and seized with delirium of mind, twice bound with chains lay in the infirmary nine days, exhaling such a stench from herself, that scarcely anyone could stand there. and the 18th of September: She in the year 1640, on the XVIII day of September went out, having attained sufficiently convenient soundness. The truth of which matter they attested with this mark † Elizabeth Hubrechts, John Gordansen, Anna vande Wyer with this mark †, William van Namen.
[11] Cornelia Jansen, wife of Anthony Adriansen, from the village of Oosterhout distant two leagues from the city of Breda, about the feast of the Ascension of Christ in the year 1641 in the morning about the eighth hour was seized with so vehement madness and fury, that she had to be bound with bonds in hands and feet: and so afflicted, was by her husband, another the 31st of May in the year 1641. and Cornelius the brother of the husband, Joanna Jansens her sister, and Nicholas the Schoolmaster of Oosterhout brought in a cart to the municipality of Geel, and on the XX of May led into the infirmary of S. Dympna; where after the wonted ceremonies applied she so recovered, that on the XXXI day of May she departed from the infirmary plainly sound, and free from all madness. The truth of which matter they attested on the V of June with this mark † Cornelia Jansen, and Lambert van Durgenen. The same Cornelia in the year 1643 on the XV day of May about to give thanks, returned to Geel, enjoying the desired health, Couwegom being witness.
CHAPTER II.
Those cured from the year 1641, to 1646.
[12] To all and singular about to see or hear these, health. We the Lords Arnold Bloem, Nicholas Segers, Louis van Couwegom, Gerard Gossens, Before the Canons and Aldermen, Peter Vercuylen, Willebrord Vertessen, Peter van Dungen, and Jacob Verschuiren, respectively Dean and Canons of the collegiate Church of S. Dympna in this municipality of Geel, likewise the Drossard Couwegom, John van Hove, John Vennekens, Gerard Goos, Peter van Broeckhoven, John Lauwen, and William Bertels Aldermen of the said municipality of Geel, by these signify and assert for sincere truth to be certain, how on the XII of May the Sunday before the feast of Pentecost there was conveyed hither from the village of Zeeland, situated in the district of Ravenstein, a certain one, John Christiaens by name, of the age of about 57 years, in hands and feet nay also in all his members filled with so great misery, there appeared on May 12 a paralytic, dumb and demented, that he could neither walk, nor stand, nor move himself in any way, but bowed in his whole body and immovable had to lie; and besides, plainly dumb he could not even speak any word, nay like a little boy he appeared plainly destitute of all judgment and manner of acting. According to the ancient custom therefore, as with others of this kind it is wont to be done, he is placed in the infirmary, with the hope of obtaining his former soundness, by the grace and indulgence of God and the intercession of S. Dympna the Virgin and Martyr and Patroness of this church. When he there lay during the double, as they call it, novena, or eighteen days of continued prayers, sometimes by others, since he could not walk, he was carried to the Relics of S. Dympna, namely on the feast of S. Dympna and on the solemnity of Pentecost: and within that time the evil of lameness was greatly diminished, who being little by little free from lameness, and he departed to the house of Gerard Steffers, distant not far from the said church. Which his lameness little by little so began to cease, that daily on foot he went to the said church of S. Dympna, that there with pious devotion he might offer his prayers to God. At length on this day the second of July, on the feast of the Visitation
of the most blessed Virgin Mary, on July 2 he received speech, the aforesaid John Christiaens about the eleventh hour, when in the same church he had been present at the sacrifice of the Mass, suddenly, who hitherto had been dumb, recovered speech entirely perfect. Which miracle being known all the bells soon rung sounded, and canticles of thanksgiving to God in the said church were recited, on account of the grace and mercy granted to this wretched man. Then in the concourse of whatsoever men in the said church he was publicly heard and seen to speak, and to whatsoever propositions accurately to answer. Then with a clear voice he confessed, that about four years ago, on account of his two daughters extinguished by the plague, seized with a certain grief, he had fallen into a difficult disease; and from it had drawn lameness not only in his feet, but also in the rest of his members a certain paralysis; so that from that time he could neither walk, nor stand on his feet: to which evil three years and a half ago there was added an impediment of the tongue; which increasing he was made plainly dumb, and about the beginning of October or the feast of S. Bavo a fourth year will be completed, before, for almost 4 years dumb: that he could speak no word. There acceded at intervals of time a certain madness and perturbation of the brain. Meanwhile all remedies were applied, both human by physicians and surgeons, and spiritual by various exorcisms made by religious men, that to the aforesaid diseases relief might be applied. He had undertaken various pilgrimages to the same end, and had visited places famous for the miracles of the Virgin Mother of God, such as Duffel, Gemert, Stiphout and elsewhere; but he asserted that he had nowhere experienced any remedy, except only in the municipality of Geel and the church of S. Dympna: by which counsel and judgment of the Guardian of Velp he had been conveyed: where, as above related, on this day by the benefit of Almighty God he was healed after the solemn Mass heard, and another following, celebrated by the aforesaid Lord Louis van Couwegom: to whom descending from the altar meeting him he said words like these: Good day, Lord Louis, grant me the faculty of kissing the sacred cross of the high altar. Which the said Lord Louis with great admiration understanding, led him to that altar, and offered him the sacred Cross to be kissed: and then he proceeded promptly to speak all things.
[13] There appeared still on the same day Anna vanden Wyer (to whom all the care of the pilgrims and sick brought to the hospital was committed), Gerard Steffers and Maria Meus his wife: this three witnesses confirmed, who as it were with one mouth confirmed, and with solemn oath affirmed, it to be most true, that the aforesaid John Christiaens had been for eighteen days in the hospital, and to him were applied exorcisms and solemn wonted ceremonies; nay that he came there dumb, lame and bowed in body, and holding his head both sitting and lying inclined to his legs; and so they were compelled to carry him into the church, and before and below the shrine of the Relics of S. Dympna the Virgin and Martyr and our Patroness. They added, that the same for eight days lay, with eyes closed and not even once opened, nor by any sign showed anything to be desired by him; finally that like an innocent boy he seemed to them without any capacity of interior mind. They affirmed also, that within the aforesaid eighteen days, little by little the defect of lameness was diminished, and the aforesaid Maria Meus was present today in the church, and with great admiration heard the first words pronounced by the aforesaid John, addressing the mentioned Lord Louis van Couwegom: which same also others then present attested, and these without fraud and guile. and the Canons and Aldermen the seals being affixed, Wherefore for certain notice of this matter we the Dean and Canons of the aforesaid Chapter, and we the Drossard and Aldermen above mentioned, took care that our seals each be affixed, and subsigned by the sworn Secretary on this II of July in the year 1641: and it was subscribed Van Gerven, and two seals appended, one of the Chapter, and the other of the Community of Geel. as also he himself, plainly healed, I John Christiaens, of the age of about fifty-seven years, hitherto residing in the village of Zeeland of the dominion of Ravenstein, on this day the second of July, in the year 1641, on the feast of the Visitation of B. Mary, profess in the church of S. Dympna, under oath, that I have been freed from all dumbness and madness, with which defects I was seized for three years and a half or about four years: and I affirm all things to be true, as is held in the attestation made, both with the Aldermen of our village and with the Drossard and Aldermen of the municipality of Geel, ready to declare the same at all times under oath: and there subscribed John Christiaens, and the witnesses John Aerts, Henry Raeymaecker and Lambert van Dungen: these Couwegom subscribed.
[14] We the regents together of the village of Zeeland in the dominion of Ravenstein, which same is affirmed by his fellow-countrymen. under the judicial court of the place of Uden, and especially the Lord John van Gemert Pastor in Zeeland, Jacob Rutten the judicial Messenger, Arnold Aerts, and John Joannis Aerts aldermen, Henry Lienverts and Nicholas Dircx Consuls, John Wilms and Peter Dircx Wardens, John Driess and John Diercx Almoners, with all submission indicate to all about to read or hear this attestation, and under oath taken in the acceptance of our office declare, that John Christiaens, before he had fallen into his miseries, was a good man, pious, upright and Catholic, of good name and fame, sprung from good, honest and Catholic parents in this our village, in which even now he has many good, honest and Catholic friends: with whom unanimously we declare; that the said John Christiaens fell into a grave disease, and was afflicted by it for half a year, and from that time persisted in a miserable state, nay continually fallen for the worse for four elapsed years, namely from the beginning of the disease up to this point. Wherefore various remedies being applied in vain, we consulted the Father Guardian of Velp near the city of Grave, persuading us that we should bring the aforesaid John Christiaens to the municipality of Geel, to the upright and honest men dwelling there: whom we most humbly ask, that they deign to help this wretched man, that he be in due manner preserved and obtain an honest sustenance, and we promise full payment of all expenses, trusting that there he may recover his soundness. In certain testimony of the truth we the Aldermen of the places of Uden, Zeeland and Boekel, affixed the seal of our office. Done the X of May in the year 1641. The same John Christiaens, on the day before Pentecost in the year 1642, about to give thanks, Couwegom the Dean testifying, again visited the church of S. Dympna enjoying good health, which he always after the disease left enjoyed: as afterwards on the XIV of August in the year 1650 he again came, recognizing the benefit of soundness here received.
[15] Others are healed in the year 1642 In the year 1642 a youth Adrian Adriani, born in the village of Gilze, conveyed hither from Roosendaal, when for about three weeks he had lain there through madness, went out sound from the hospital on the XXVIII of June, before fortified with the Sacraments of Confession and Communion. So testifies Couwegom the Dean. In the same year Francis Fransen, son of John, from the village of Blaarthem near Eindhoven, the 18th of June, on account of madness was conveyed bound, and dragged by a certain force around the church: who when for more than twenty days he had remained in the infirmary, restored to himself and his mind, after Confession made and the holy Communion taken, was led back by his father very glad on the VII of July. Subscribed by Couwegom the Dean, Lambert van Dungen, Jacob Verschuiren, Anna vanden Wyer, and by the healed Francis himself, and his father and brother. In the same year Hubert Matthaei, otherwise Tiewens, Schoolmaster of Zonhoven, of the age of twenty-four years, the 7th of July, through certain vexations fallen into frenzy, bound with bonds and placed in a cart, by his brother John and his brother-in-law Peter Tys and his neighbor John Leis was led away to Geel, and placed in the infirmary: whence after twelve days, his health recovered and in possession of his mind, confession of his sins being made and the venerable Eucharist taken, on the XII of July he returned home. The witnesses of which matter were the aforesaid Hubert healed, John his brother, Aegidius Bommens Consul of Zonhoven, and the three others of Geel above named with Couwegom.
[16] in the year 1643 the 14th of April In the year 1643 on the X day of March, Joanna Segers, wife of John Vergouts, of the age of 31 years, having a domicile in the village of Deurne, was seized with delirium, without any use of her mind, and for this cause was led by her friends to Antwerp, that there she might be freed from her disease, but in vain. Placed therefore on a cart and bound in it, she was conveyed to Geel plainly demented; and placed in the infirmary, within nine days little by little she was freed from her insanity, and that as she trusted by the intercession of S. Dympna the Virgin and Martyr. She confessed therefore before the Lords Canons on the XIV of April, that she had been healed of all evil, and had as perfect a use of her mind as ever she had: and after due thanks given, and confession of her sins made and the holy Eucharist taken, she subsigned with the Dean Couwegom, and eight others. In the same year Peter de Roey, of the age of about 37 years, dwelling in the village of Vremde, about the feast of the Purification of the blessed Virgin Mary was seized with great frenzy, and vexations and anguishes of the breast, so that he could rest neither by day nor by night. Which evil increasing he had to be bound, and bound conveyed in a cart to S. Dympna: where placed nine days in the infirmary, after all the ceremonies applied, on the XVI day of April having attained his former soundness, he appeared before the Lords Dean and Canons, and the 16th of April, and other honest men: and confessing all things, subscribed with Adrian van Bauwel and Jacob Jansen, who had conveyed him to Geel. There subsigned also Couwegom the Dean and seven others.
[17] Cornelia Snellarts, wife of Livinus Simons a citizen of Antwerp, her mind being moved insane, in the year 1645 the 7th of February, and bound with fetters, was conveyed to Geel, and first into the house of John van Passel, then to the hospital of S. Dympna, where nine days: and then again with John van Passel she remained about three months. During which time she did certain wonderful and foolish things, dancing, leaping and exercising similar trifles, and that equally in the church and street as at home, without any discretion or rational respect. But afterwards she was compelled to observe the pious and devout ceremonies, in the said church and infirmary wont to be applied to such ones perturbed in mind and brain: and what was a singular grace of God, she recovered the full soundness of her mind and senses: and after confession of her sins made and the holy Eucharist taken, she appeared before the Drossard van Cauwegom, and before the Reverend Lord Dean and the other Canons of the collegiate church of S. Dympna, and
others: who all subsigned with the public Notary van Hove, on the VII day of February in the year 1645.
[18] Anna Claes, a Beguine of Mechlin, lay sick on account of an abscess, growing under the left arm like a fist. At first a kind of plague was believed, but the evil after three months having devolved to the breasts, there for eight or nine years persisted, somewhat diminished however, it began by three Physicians and various surgeons to be held a kind of cancer. There acceded about two years and a half ago a tumor, and a certain dissolution of almost all the members, except that the use of the hands remained: and then remaining in a chair she was carried. Meanwhile for about six weeks creeping by herself, she had some use of her feet: and then divers physicians and surgeons judged some witchcraft or diabolical possession to be at the bottom: and therefore exorcisms were applied, when from time to time she vomited little needles and similar things, and spoke in various tongues. Then indeed her as certainly possessed, believed possessed, the Lord Pastor took care to have placed on a bed, and conveyed by cart to Geel: where she came in the year 1645 on Maundy Thursday lame, and then for three weeks dumb; but in possession of her mind, what with her tongue she could not express, she indicated by writing: and so in time past for about nine weeks she had been dumb. she is healed in the year 1645 Led into the hospital, she showed herself by gesticulations and insipid clamors, with the admiration of all, as if she were truly possessed. At length so lame and dumb she began on the third weekday of Easter to speak and walk: and with a little aid, on account of too great weakness, around the shrine of the Relics, exposed in the middle of the church, she proceeded: and so little by little free from her miseries, as if soundness wholly recovered, with the admiration of all she spoke, and walked strong for all things. Which to have so happened before the Lords Dean and Canons there declared Anna Claes herself, and her sister Elizabeth Claes, who through the whole time of the disease had had her care, and subsigned with the Dean Cauwegom the Canons Hildevunt and van Dungen, and six other witnesses.
[19] Margaret Ulemminx of Mechlin, of the age of 14 or 15 years, in the year 1646 the 15th of June, in the year 1646 on the feast of Pentecost fell into a disease, from which she became dumb, blind and lame: and by the judgment of the Physicians, opining it to be pleurisy, blood was drawn from her veins. But the disease growing worse, and the pain migrating from one to another member, there was a suspicion that some witchcraft was at the bottom: and therefore for a whole month twice daily the Capuchin Fathers exorcized her lying sick with sacred prayers. Who themselves at length, the disease enduring, opining witchcraft or diabolical possession to be at the bottom, persuaded that she be conveyed to S. Dympna. She came accordingly to Geel on the XV of June, lying in a cart, not without various gesticulation, often swelling up, and from time to time speaking a word: and so almost dumb and lame, in the house of the Lord Dean Cauwegom about the tenth hour of the morning placed in a seat, after a few prayers recited by the Dean and a blessing received, of her own accord she rose, and went to the church of S. Dympna: and there after an exorcism performed for half an hour, all disease being driven away she received soundness, and remained twelve days, daily occupied in pious exercises, and with her hand subscribed together with Catharine Gommarts, to whose care she had been commended. There subsigned Cauwegom the Dean and three others.
[20] likewise the demented the 27th of June, Maria Fransen, born in the village of Son, of the age of about fourteen years, seized with frenzy, and privation of mind and other vexations for three weeks, was conveyed by her friends in a cart to Geel, but so out of her mind, that she knew not by what means or by whom she had been brought there. There she was led by her friends around the church of S. Dympna: and the disease little by little decreasing she offered her devout prayers to God in that same church, and so received her former soundness, this attested before the Lord Dean and others, on the XXVII of June in the year 1646, together with John Artsen Verberct her kinsman, and John Mertens, who had conveyed her: and there subsigned Cauwegom the Dean, two Canons and some others.
CHAPTER III.
Miracles wrought from the year 1652 to the year 1668.
[21] Viverus Adriansen, from the village of Drungen of the age of 42 years, In the year 1652 the 25th of May seized with intolerable frenzy and fury, conveyed to Geel and placed in the infirmary, after nine days of exorcisms recovered the full health of mind and body: and then on the tenth day, after confession of his sins made and the holy Eucharist taken, on the XXV of May in the year 1652 glad he returned home, when he had signed it with his own hand with two witnesses. and somewhat after two frenzied ones are healed, In the same year on the day before Pentecost there was conveyed to Geel from the village of Lommel, Gisbert John Muys, seized with such frenzy, that he had to be bound with bonds, and by force applied his mouth opened that the ablution might be poured in. And when for eleven days he had lain in the hospital, he obtained his former soundness; and with great gladness, Praise be to God, returned home, which to be so the Dean Vercuylen as witness subscribed.
[22] Francis Huiberts from the village of Geervliet, born about 26 years, from disease dumb, and demented the 12th of December, lame and demented, carried in a cart to S. Dympna, and in a chair by three men carried three times around the church, and then placed in the infirmary, and for nine days exorcized with the wonted ceremonies, from the fifth day of August in the year 1652: and when he did not yet recover, carried to the house of Gaspar Verdonck in the Deanery, and thence often led to the church, that the wonted ceremonies might be applied. At length when he had remained there about three months, on the X day of December he suddenly attained soundness of mind and members, with the admiration of all present, and in the following days strengthened in the same soundness. In testimony of the truth of the matter there subsigned on the XX of December Francis Huiberts himself, Peter Vercuylen the Dean, the mentioned Gaspar Verdonck and two others.
[23] In the year 1653 a woman sick from witchcraft, Clara vander Aelst, a nun at Brussels in the monastery of S. Elizabeth on Mount Sion, of the age of about twenty-four years, was seized with an unknown disease, arisen from some witchcraft, and so perturbed by it that by night she could not take sleep, and by day eat or drink or stand in church, wont often to suffer some choking of the breast, by which lying on her back she was cast to the ground. Which suffering enduring for three years, and various consultations of Physicians made, also exorcisms of divers Priests applied, but in vain; since it was judged that the disease had come by some witchcraft, she came to Geel to S. Dympna, that by her intercession and various Masses offered to that end and exorcisms made, she might recover her former soundness. But afterwards she began so unbecomingly to gesticulate, that she was believed possessed by malign spirits: and so remaining for five weeks, free from all molestations and diabolical vexations, and having attained her former soundness; she returned to Brussels on the XIII of January in the year 1653, first having attested the matter done in order: to which Vercuylen the Dean subscribed.
[24] Elizabeth Betens, born in the municipality of Roosendaal, other demented persons in the month of September, of the age of 24 years, for about four months sick had lost the use of intellect and memory, and therefore led away to Geel had lain nine days in the hospital of S. Dympna: where after the wonted ceremonies applied by the Lord Dean Gaspar Claes, by the intercession of S. Dympna snatched from all evils, she had recovered the use of intellect and memory: and the fetters being cast off, free, in the year 1653 on the XXII day of September, after confession and the holy Eucharist taken, she returned to her native land. Of which disease and soundness received the witnesses were Francis Raymakers and Elizabeth Verhoeven, in whose house she had lodged, as also Elizabeth Betens herself and five others.
[25] Adrian Luiten, born in the village of Nederwijk, came to Geel on the XIV of April in the year 1653, of April, seized with great fury and insanity, so that he could scarcely be contained in bed, desiring continually to flee, and the same could neither sleep nor eat or drink. And when amid so many lamentations and tears he had been there ten days, by the intercession of S. Dympna he attained quiet and entire soundness. To which matter there subscribed this youth's father Peter Luiten and the Dean Peter Vercuylen. Seized with a like disease came to Geel on the XIV of September of the said year 1653 Helena Smits, born in Zelem beyond Diest: who when for X or XII days she had been in the hospital of S. Dympna, by the intercession of S. Dympna healed and expiated by the Sacrament of penance and refreshed by holy communion, glad giving thanks to God returned home: this attesting the said Vercuylen the Dean. In the same year on the VIII day of October, from the village of Meerbeek near Mechlin, in a cart bound with iron chains to Geel was conveyed, seized with intolerable insanity and fury, Louis Verryl, born 46 years, who uttered the highest wailing and lamentation to the commiseration of all. He carried from the cart into the house of Amandus Broeckhoven and set by the fire, of October, after one hour of rest all insanity being driven away received his former soundness, which was attributed to the divine goodness and the intercession of S. Dympna. Meanwhile he remained nine days, and all the ceremonies applied to him, after which and other pious exercises expiated by the Sacrament of penance, and the holy Eucharist received, he was inscribed in the Confraternity of S. Dympna, and subsigned on the XVII of October with the Lord Vercuylen the Dean and others. Maria Wils, born about 30 years, in the city of Diest, of November, reduced like a little boy to a certain innocence and madness, could not pray or sleep: who led to S. Dympna, after the wonted ceremonies applied for a whole month, recovered the perfect use of mind and memory, and with full judgment having confessed her sins and refreshed by holy Communion, after due thanksgiving returned to Diest, attesting the benefit with her husband Matthew van Rappel, and the Dean Vercuylen on the X of November in the year 1653. Helena Briers, born about 28 years, at Wezemaal seized with horrible frenzy and placed plainly outside all use of reason, and bound in hands and feet, of December conveyed to Geel on the III of December in the year 1653, remained in the hospital of S. Dympna: who after the wonted ceremonies applied for XVIII days, freed from all frenzy, obtained entire soundness: and made partaker of the Sacraments of penance and the holy Eucharist, subscribed, and the witnesses applied were the Dean Vercuylen and others.
[26] Pereina Peters, seized with frenzy, nor showing any use of reason, Others in the year 1657. bound in hands and feet, from the village of Zundert near Breda in a cart was conveyed to Geel to S. Dympna on the XVIII of June in the year 1657, and set down in the house of John Brugelmans. Who after exorcisms applied for XIV days and Ecclesiastical remedies, freed from all frenzy, with other Catholic men visited the Churches: this attesting
Vercuylen the Dean, Adriana de Wocker her husband, John Peters who had conveyed her, and two others. In a like manner Cornelius Andries, frenzied and furious, nor speaking any word of right reason, from the village of Willaer on the XX of May in the year 1659 with hands and feet bound was conveyed to Geel, and to the hospital of S. Dympna: Others in the year 1659 at the end of May, by whose intercession, after the wonted exorcisms and remedies of nine days, free from all evils of mind, recovered his former soundness, and having confessed communicated, and served the Priest celebrating Mass: in the sight of very many men, and giving thanks to God. Which Cornelius Andries himself subscribed, with the Lord Vercuylen the Dean and two others.
[27] Barbara Mangelers, wife of John Balens, of the age of about thirty-eight years, at Brussels for some months lived insane without any use of mind, intellect, and memory; and then bound with iron chains, the 17th of July in the house of Francis Raymakers under the sign of the Angel, in the municipality of Geel remained, for about five weeks, in the same madness, so that she could scarcely sleep, always restless, and in all actions showing the said madness. Besides for nine days she lay in the hospital of S. Dympna: by whose intercession and the kindness of God she recovered the full use of mind, memory, and the interior senses: and after confession of her sins often took the holy Eucharist, having stayed at Geel so sound for three weeks. All which before a Notary, on the XVII day of July in the year 1659, she attested and there subscribed Barbara Mangelers herself, and her mother Barbara Stevens, who had always stood by her. The same things attested under oath Francis Raymakers and his wife Elizabeth Verhoeven, in whose house the said Barbara had remained; and Anna vander Wyer, under whose care in the hospital for nine days she had been sick and had recovered. The same after two others attested Thomas van Bylen the Notary.
[28] To the greater glory of God and S. Dympna, by this public instrument let it be clear to all, and in the month of September. that in the year 1659 on the XV day of September there appeared, before me the undersigned Notary and the witnesses below named, the very Reverend Lord Martin Doye a Presbyter, sprung from the town of Ath of the region of Hainaut, who under priestly faith declared, that about three months ago he had not been in possession of his mind, sense and intellect, and so for three months for the sake of recovering his soundness was brought to Geel to the Relics of S. Dympna; and the divine clemency shining forth, and the intercession of the Holy Virgin and Patroness S. Dympna, he had recovered his former soundness of mind and intellect: so that (praise be to God) I the undersigned for two continuous months daily frequented the choir of S. Dympna, sang the divine Office there, very often took the Eucharist, made confession &c. In faith of all which the aforesaid Lord Martin Doye subsigned before the Reverend Lords Peter van Dungen and Judocus Coenen, and John Leysen the host for that time of the aforesaid Lord appearing. After whose subscription the same attests Thomas van Bylen the Notary, who made this instrument in the said words in Latin.
[29] Maria Lambrechts an unmarried maiden in the village of Dunken, in the year 1660 the 6th of June now often mentioned seized with frenzy, tore and corrupted her own clothes, and whatever she touched. Who with hands and feet bound brought into the infirmary of S. Dympna, after the wonted ceremonies applied for nine days, received her former soundness; and having confessed with due reverence, took the Eucharist. In testimony of the truth of the matter there subscribed on the VI of June in the year 1660 Maria Lambrechts herself, with her brother, and the Dean Vercuylen and others. in the year 1661 the 20th of April, In the same manner from a like insanity after the wonted exorcisms there was freed a youth William Segers, from the village of Putte conveyed to Geel, and after three or four months of madness recovered the former use of his mind, and the sacraments of Penance and the holy Eucharist taken, subscribed on the XX of April in the year 1661, and the same attested the Dean Vercuylen and two others. in the year 1662 the 9th of January, Jacob Haeghmans, born thirty years, at Beveren in the dominion of Waas, seized for some months with great insanity and fury, had torn and corrupted clothes and shirts and other things, and therefore bound with iron chains had been conveyed to Geel to the patronage of S. Dympna. Where after the wonted ceremonies applied by the Lord Dean, he recovered his former soundness, and the full use of intellect, memory and the rest of the senses: and expiated and refreshed by the sacraments of Penance and the holy Eucharist, subscribed on the IX of January in the year 1662. The same attested Peter van Gestel and his wife Beatrix vanden Wouwer, in whose house at Geel he had stayed, and two others, with Thomas van Bylen the Notary.
[30] Francis van Binnenbeeck born in the town of Lier, in the year 1664 the 21st of January of the age of twenty-five years, taken in mind, and deprived of memory and intellect for eight months, was brought to Geel to implore the intercession of S. Dympna in the month of June in the year 1663 to the hospital: and after the wonted ceremonies applied to him for nine days, was translated about the feast of the Nativity of S. John the Baptist to the house of William Wuyts, where bound with iron chains, in his folly he remained until the month of January of the year 1664: in which he received full soundness, made in possession of his mind, as under oath before a Notary he declared and subscribed on the XXI of January. The same attested William Wuyts the mentioned, Anna vande Wyer the healer of the hospital and two other witnesses, with Thomas van Bylen the Notary. Catharine Heuvelmans a Beguine of Diest, of the age of about twenty-eight years, and the 23rd of December. seized with the often-indicated madness, by two Beguines Anna van Gestel and Maria Shertogem, on the V day of October in the year 1664, was brought to Geel to the house of Lambert van Dungen: and when at some time she had entered the church, to be present at the sacrifice of the Mass or other divine offices; by her ineptitudes she perturbed all, so that she was no more permitted to go out of the house. Set down afterwards in the hospital of S. Dympna, after the wonted exorcisms she recovered her former quiet of mind and soundness. Which on the XIII of December she attested and there subscribed the said Catharine Heuvelmans. The same attesting there subscribed Gaspar Claes the Dean, who had performed the ceremonies, John Godtussen and Walter Ooms Canons, Lambert van Dungen and his wife Anna Verdonck, in whose house she had lodged, and at last Thomas van Bylen the Notary concluded.
[31] Clara Maes, a devout Virgin at Antwerp, of the age of about forty-five years, In the year 1665 the 22nd of September, demented and furious brought to Geel to the patronage of S. Dympna, and set down in the hospital, after the wonted ceremonies applied by the Lord Dean for eight days, received her former soundness: which then about three weeks having elapsed she attested on the XXII of September in the year 1665 and with her hand subscribed, as also Walter Buyens and Walter Ooms Canons, and three others with Marcellus the Notary. Peter Praet, born at Moerbeke, of the age of about 35 years, had fallen into so great delirium, that he had to be bound with bonds and fetters. Who lodged with Peter van Passel, and in the hospital of S. Dympna: where after the wonted ceremonies applied by the Lord Dean, in the year 1666 the 26th of July, he recovered his former soundness, fit to whom the Sacraments of the Church might be administered. Which to be true he declared before a Notary and witnesses on the XXVI of July in the year 1666, and there subscribed Peter Praet himself, as also Peter van Passel and his wife Adriana Franken, in whose house he had stayed, two other witnesses, and at last Loovens the Notary.
[32] in the year 1667 in the month of June, Vexed with a disease of like madness John van Scheurwegen, born in the village of Deurne near Antwerp, by his friends on the last day of May in the year 1667 carried to Geel, and set down in the hospital of S. Dympna, after the wonted exorcisms bestowed, on the thirteenth day from his coming, free from all defect of madness recovered his former soundness. Which in writing attested both John van Scheurwegen, and Adriana Gerinx, otherwise Vrancxs the healer of the hospital, and other witnesses, and confirmed the Notary Loovens. and the 3rd of August, Seized with a like madness Maria Magdalena Cecili, of Tienen unmarried, of the age of about thirty-four years, after nine days of exorcisms, and another ten or fourteen, sound and unhurt from all frenzy with great piety comforted by the sacraments of Penance and the holy Eucharist, and ready always to confirm by oath, subsigned on the III of August in the year 1667, with the Dean Gaspar Claes and two others. Likewise seized with a like madness and alienation of the brain Anna de Truch, sprung from the village of Egher, was set down in the hospital of S. Dympna, and by the wonted ceremonies for nine days approved by the Lord Plebanus. and the 30th of November, Who at length after about three months all madness being driven away, restored to full soundness, often with full judgment took the holy Eucharist: and ready at all times under oath to confirm these things, subscribed on the XXX of November in the year 1667, which after three witnesses attested Loovens the Notary.
[33] in the year 1668 the 20th of June, Jacob Ramont, sprung from the village of Lokeren, of the age of about twenty-one years, for a whole year seized with great delirium and a certain fury, bound with fetters and other chains, at Geel lodged in the house of Peter van Passel more than two months, and in the infirmary of S. Dympna with the ordinary ceremonies for nine days exorcized by the Lord Dean, obtained his former soundness, and in possession of his mind took the holy Eucharist. All which before a Notary and witnesses having confessed, he subscribed on the XX of June in the year 1668, as also there did Peter van Passel, and his wife Adriana Franken, in whose house he had lodged, and after three witnesses there subsigned Loovens the Notary.
CHAPTER IV.
Various miracles of healings: rendered into Latin from the book of Craywinckel.
[34] The possessed freed in the year 1614 A certain pilgrim from the Meuse tract was brought on the XXI of June in the year 1614 to Geel into the church of S. Dympna, so perturbed by the vexation of malign spirits, that he could scarcely be contained or brought by four men, often barking like a dog: who placed in the hospital, on the ninth day of the exorcisms in the morning about the ninth hour, when he was about to receive from the Dean the drink of ablution, often crying, This is my last day, my last hour, I must go out, I must go out, with a great crash and the chains dissolved of their own accord, he was freed, the Dean being present, John Aerts the Warden, Maria and Anna vande Wyer healers of the hospital. Anna Oyen, wife of John Lemmens, dwelling in the territory of Diest in the place Kaggevinne under the village of Schaffen, was suddenly in the year 1624 seized with great madness, and in 1624, and believed possessed by malign spirits, continually saying that a black raven was seen by her, spitting in the face of whoever, and exercising similar trifles. She in a cart, seven or eight guards being added, was conveyed to Geel, where
at the cemetery of S. Dympna her insanity began to increase and to appear more: and when by dancing, shouting and tumultuating she exulted, nor could be restrained otherwise than by the striking of rods; then her hair being cut off, and by force dragged below the shrine of the Relics, and purged by exorcisms, she was restored to her former soundness, and returned to her native land. Testimony of which matter the Aldermen of the place Kaggevinne gave on the XI of March in the year 1628, a seal being affixed and Buycx the Secretary subscribing: which very original testimony John Ludolph van Craywinckel has.
[35] a frenzied man in the year 1622, Henry van Brynen, sprung from the village of Maarheeze in the territory of 's-Hertogenbosch, of the age of 36 years, was seized with great madness in the month of February in the year 1619, and bound with iron chains in hands and feet, was conveyed to Geel to S. Dympna: by whose intercession, after exorcisms of IX days, he recovered his former soundness of mind, memory and senses: which he subsigned on the IX of May in the year 1622, before Arnold Bloem the Dean of the Church of S. Dympna, Jacob van Hove and Walter van de Wyer Aldermen, John Wentelberchs and Amandus Meus Wardens, who all subscribed, as also Mars the Notary. in the year 1624 a possessed man, A certain youth, born about thirty-five years, for two or three continuous years labored with a disease of the heart, and a certain contraction through all his members: who exposed to exorcisms cast out hooks of little needles, fragments of glass, parts of silks and hairs and the like, and at length was healed in the month of October in the year 1634. In which year also on the XXIII day of November there went out sound from the hospital of S. Dympna Anthony Vlemminx, 2 demented persons who from Peer had come there seized with great insanity: as also it happened on the XXXI of March in the year 1635 to Matthew de Kempis, sexton of the Church of Rumst.
[36] others in the year 1635. Andrew Wendrix from Heist-op-den-Berg, also for insanity subjected to exorcisms nine days, obtained soundness on the V of May the same year 1635. But afterwards on the IX of May there came to Geel from the village of Schoonbroek John de Volder, attesting that for eight or nine years elapsed, on account of madness and fury bound with chains, he had lain in the hospital of S. Dympna, and there had recovered his soundness, which hitherto he had enjoyed. A certain religious woman, for many years sick, 1636, after various remedies applied came to Geel; and there, after various filths and dregs cast out, on the eighth day was healed on the XIX of May in the year 1636. A certain woman of Turnhout, 1637, sick for half a year, scarcely taking sleep and plainly weak, came to Geel; and after three days vomited various spittings, but a little after having attained her former health, on foot returned home, in the month of March in the year 1637: and then yearly on the feast of S. Dympna returned to give thanks. At the same times a certain man from Hove of S. Laurence near Antwerp, vexed with intolerable insanity, for some time bound to an oak before the church of S. Dympna, was led to the hospital, where within nine days of exorcisms he received soundness. A certain apothecary of Antwerp, in the year 1639, on account of insanity naked like a beast lay at Geel bound in straw, because whatever he touched he would tear: but healed in the year 1639 a little after Pentecost, and having attained his former soundness, returned home. At the same time a certain widow received soundness, who from the village of Poel had come to Geel, and there for a whole year had remained demented. in the year 1640, In the same manner Adriana Michiels, from the lesser (as they call it) Brabant had come to Geel; and after six weeks almost healed, departed thence on the Kalends of January of the year 1640.
[37] A certain nun of Louvain vehemently vexed by malign spirits, in the year 1636 came into the hospital of S. Dympna on the VII day of October: who within a few days vomited many little needles and nails, and bundles of hairs glued together with blood: and so, although not entirely healed, began to fare better. A certain married man from the very municipality of Geel, after a long disease and the presumption of witchcraft, came to the church of S. Dympna: and after the second day of exorcisms began to be shaken with great terror, to cry, to shout, to tumultuate, and to repeat often these words: This man pertains to me, I will not go out. On the very Kalends of July of the year 1636 he vomited many filths, and on the third of July after foul and sulphurous dregs cast out, he received full soundness: but after nine or ten months he relapsed into some, but not so difficult, disease. These from the printed book. The following from the written codices of the Church of Geel.
[38] the demented healed in the year 1650, Adriana Peeters van Roosendael, who here wholly insane and disturbed in brain for nine days lay in the chamber of the sick, thence went out totally healed and in possession of her mind, and aptly communicated on the XXX of January in the year 1650. Which I attest, Cauwegom the Dean who in these words wrote these things in Latin on page 68. In the same year on the XXXI of January Gisbert Gerts van Buel, after the ninth day went out sound from the hospital. 1651. In the year 1651 on the VII of June there entered the hospital Michaelina Dessel, from Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-Waver, seized with intolerable frenzy and fury; who after nine days was led away from the hospital to the house of Adrian van Dael, and after three weeks perfectly healed. Joanna Wilboorts, in the same year on the XX of July, from Herenbeek brought to Geel on account of insanity, in a carriage bound with ropes, and seventeen days in the house of William Huybs having stayed, departed having attained full soundness. Mencia Thys, a devout virgin, seized with frenzy, came from Antwerp to Geel to the hospital of S. Dympna on the XIV of October in the said year 1651, who within nine days reduced to her former soundness, after confession of her sins performed and the holy communion received, returned to Antwerp.
ON S. HIDELBERTUS OR ARIBERTUS,
BISHOP OF TORTONA IN INSUBRIA.
8TH OR 10TH CENT.
CommentaryHidelbertus or Aribertus, Bishop of Tortona in Insubria (S.)
D. P.
Among the other offices of humanity, with which the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Carolus Septala, Bishop of Tortona, deigned to follow us departing from Italy in the year 1662, was that through the very Reverend Lord John Baptist Chapuis, Theological Canon of his Cathedral, he took care to have us instructed concerning all and singular the Saints of his diocese, of whom in the Church of Tortona either was formerly or even now is performed an Office: Among 17 holy Bishops besides whom there are also very many others, in the catalogue of Bishops inscribed from the older among the Saints, of whose birthday it is not well established: for among the Bishops of Tortona seventeen Saints are numbered: whom in the same order, in which they are seen depicted in the hall of the Episcopal Palace, at the end of the said little Commentary the aforenamed Canon refers, and describes word for word, what concerning them has the tablet of the Bishops of the Church of Tortona, set up in the Synod of the year 1659. There, moreover, after the eulogy of S. Martianus, who is believed to have been the first Bishop, and to have died a Martyr under Trajan (as on his birthday March VI it was said) and before S. Ammonius, who about a hundred years after Martianus is believed to have flourished, and is venerated on January XIX, of some one of them in the middle these things are read, as of the second Bishop of Tortona.
[2] S. Hidelbertus, only eight years after the palm of the Divine Martianus was elected by the people and Clergy, S. Hidelbertus is set forth: a man most famous for the praise of all Pastoral virtues, and especially for the zeal of defending the faith. The mitre being put on he had nothing more in his desires, than, the darkness of impure superstition being scattered, to diffuse the light of the Christian religion, not only in the province subject to him, but also among the neighboring peoples. Then he fixed much solicitude in this, that the ecclesiastical discipline either fallen should rise again or grown obsolete should reflourish: wherefore he himself went before: and by what force of examples, by what ardor of sermons, the storm of very many persecutions being overcome, he wonderfully propagated the Christian cause. The unspotted flower of virginity he perpetually preserved: in mercy toward the poor he shone forth, whom he embraced with all the offices of charity. After he had administered his Church twenty-five years and more, with great grief of all he closed his last day: and by common suffrages he was called a Saint on the XV day of May, from the Calendar of the monastery of S. Francis of Tortona.
[3] whose relics were translated in the year 1554. An epitome of these, seven years before, in volume 4 of Sacred Italy, Ferdinand Ughello had given among the Bishops of Tortona; varying only in this, that for May XV he puts the 5th, adding, that the Relics are venerated, translated from the old into the new Cathedral church. This was done in the year 1554 by the Bishop and Cardinal Hubertus Gambara, after the old church, which above a hill in the center of the city raised itself, was converted into a most fortified citadel: and another, placed now also in the center of the city otherwise conformed, the 17th of July. more magnificent arose. Of this Translation, moreover, common to S. Marcianus and several others, the day is recalled on July XVII, and of it also Ughello in the Prologue makes mention: but both here and there he names him Aribertus, and indeed in the Prologue enumerating the translated bodies of the holy Bishops, of Marcianus, Innocentius and Aribertus, sufficiently shows, that to those, by whom that translation was described, it had not yet come into mind, to place next to S. Marcianus him, whom they named after S. Innocentius, of whom as having died about the year 350 we treated on April XVII.
[4] That he too greatly hesitates in doubt concerning so great an age of Aribertus or Hidelbertus, as is set forth, His age uncertain, Ughello sufficiently shows, of the 45th Bishop writing thus: Eribertus whether perhaps he be the same with Gibertus, I leave to others. Nowhere had he either before named Gibertus or afterwards names him: so that he seems altogether to treat of him, whom others called Hidelbertus; nor to write that name more accurately, than he wrote Eripertus for Aribertus. Meanwhile he indicates that in his time it had been disputed concerning them. I would so consent to those asserting thus, that at the same time I maintain that none of either name was among the ancients: since it is manifestly Lombardic, nor except most ineptly can be attributed to the II century. and ill attributed to the 2nd century: I judge moreover that those who between SS. Marcianus and Ammonius interjected Hidelbertus, had no other cause of doing it, than that, the name being written diversely, they believed diverse persons to be indicated; of whom one since he held a sufficiently certain place and time in the uninterrupted series after S. Ammonius, it seemed consequent that before him that other had sat.
[5] rather to be referred to the 10th century But of Eripertus, or (as I think it should be written) Aribertus, Ughello speaks thus: This one the often cited tablets have to have flourished in the year 984, and to have sat in this church 8 years 5 months, and as it were a Saint formerly in this Church venerated on the 10th day of the month of March: of whom no other memory is extant, nor of him does Ferrarius treat in the Catalogue. But neither of the other: only in the Topography of the Saints under the name of Tortona, by him is placed
on March 16 (verisimilarly in place of May 15 by a similar error of the typesetters, by which in Ughello 10 for 16) Eribertus the Bishop. But that this same is held by him with Hidelbertus the aforepraised Canon signifies, while, no mention being made of Eribertus, he writes, that of Hidelbertus mention makes Ferrarius in the Topography, and calls him Aribertus.
[6] Since therefore they venerate only a single holy Bishop of Lombardic name, or the 8th century. and a single body under such a name however written; let us say that one was that single one, and flourished in the X century verging to its end: unless thou prefer to say, that this is altogether not to be numbered among the Saints, but another of the same or a similar name, who flourished in the time of Charlemagne, sprung from the Lombards, and after Tonderus was the second or third Bishop of the same nation, since up to that point all are reckoned of Latin name and so also of blood; perhaps less rightly called Robertus, to whom the year of Christ 799 and the 9th year of his See are ascribed. From this conjecture, moreover, in that eulogy which we gave first, especially to be expunged would be the name of Marcianus, and the mention of persecutions endured; and the remaining virtues could be believed explained on so much the better foundation, nor by an altogether light author, the further he is removed from the first centuries: of which so distinct a knowledge, without a written Life, ought not to be presumed to have been able to be had.
ON S. CÆSAREA THE VIRGIN
NEAR CASTRO IN CALABRIA.
PrefaceCæsarea the Virgin Martyr in Calabria (S.)
D. P.
The worship of this holy Virgin, as certainly it is renewed every year on the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, so on an uncertain day it wanders, since that feast is movable; yet so that almost always it falls in May, rarely in June, in April scarcely once in single centuries. But the history of the same has the greatest likeness with the history of S. Dympna, like S. Dympna, as far indeed as pertains to the father burning with incestuous love of his daughter; yet by so much the more detestable, as it is fouler that among Christians a crime could be conceived, which among Gentiles nature abhors. And so, uncertain of the time in which Cæsarea lived, I subjoin her to S. Dympna herself on this same day. Of the worship and the place of the worship Antonius Galateus makes us certain, an erudite Physician, familiar to Hermolaus Barbarus, and (as our Beatillus wrote to us) born in the year 1444, she is venerated on the feast of the Ascension dead in 1517. Which therefore I here add so expressly, that if anywhere thou findest a history, in which S. Cæsarea is said to have been born in the year of Christ 1450, thou mayest understand it to be plainly incredible; hearing him, who lived at the same time, Galateus, speaking of her, without any indication of so near a time; near Castro, but as we are wont to speak of the ancient Saints. The place, near which S. Cæsarea now has her chief worship, is called Castro on the extreme shore of Italy, distant six miles from Otranto. The words of Galateus concerning this and her, in his little book on the situation of Iapygia, are these, according to the Basel edition of the year 1558 page 44.
[2] Thence Castro is an Episcopal town, which at the second milestone has another temple of the Divine Cæsarea: nearby is a spring of warm waters, which experience teaches to be useful for several diseases. The spring is in a cave, which having no other entrance than from rocks overhanging the sea, is approached by hanging boards and thrown bridges, nor except once in single years in the month of May. In this the Divine Cæsarea is said by the inhabitants to have lain hidden, where is her cave and in it a salutary spring: while she fled the fury of her father. Nor are there lacking those who testify that they saw there the Divine bearing a lamp. The cave can be approached only by a calm sea. A storm suddenly arising the terrified mother is said to have left her son there, whom the Divine herself is reported by fame to have nourished for a year. To her our Hymn is extant in Sapphic and Adonic verse, of which this is the beginning: The Divine lurking in the extreme hiding-place &c. Thus he: who the same on page 38 had said, that between Taranto and Gallipoli there is a village on the Neritan shore, which from the Divine Cæsarea received its name, destroyed by the people of Gallipoli, as they say.
[3] To this older testimony another more recent will add faith, sent by the Bishop of Castro himself, to whom a solemn pilgrimage interrogated about these things, in the year 1676 to the then Rector of our College of Lecce Vincent Galeota, in these words: From the city of Castro about three Roman miles if you keep the way by land, a mile and a half if by sea, there is a cave, into which the sea enters, and within it a great spring, full of sea water, and having sulphur mixed. To it from holy Thursday until the feast of the Ascension the people flock, out of religion toward S. Cæsarea: and the scabby and the lepers are washed in the said spring, and many are healed. But on the very day of the Ascension is celebrated the feast of that Saint in a church dedicated to her, twenty paces from the said cave. Which church indeed was once great, but now lies ruined, and in one wing of it only now there remains a single chapel, to which there is a more frequent concourse on the aforesaid solemnity, and that not only from the neighboring places, but also from other dioceses. There comes then also the same the Chapter of Castro, is instituted from the city of Castro. and fairs are there celebrated, and the Captain of Parabita comes there with all his cohort, the necessary expense being furnished by the Community of Cerfignano, which is a village of the diocese of Castro. The chapel of Lucugnano, In the village also of Lucugnano, of the diocese of Ugento, there is a chapel sacred to S. Cæsarea: and in the territory of Scorrano of the diocese of Otranto, a fief now desolate, distant X Roman miles from Castro called Francavilla.
[4] This nearness of place makes it verisimilar to me, that this rather is the native land of S. Cæsarea, than another much more remote Francavilla, of the diocese of Oria: which yet by its greater fame seems to have prevailed, that before the place of now obscurer fame it is believed to have first received the Saint being born; even showing a house converted into a chapel, which had been her father's. And to this opinion the author of the Life consents, and Francavilla. describing the flight of the Saint, and marking the intermediate places. Indeed I would not deny those things, which in such places are said to be extant, traces of the Saint: but whether these were left by her fleeing, or impressed on other occasions, I think can be doubted: for nothing of the whole matter sufficiently ancient, nay nor verisimilarly sufficiently devised, is extant. Yet we have some Life, in this or the preceding century composed in Italian by a certain Archpriest of the said place, such as from the papers of P. Antonius Beatillus of our Society we give in Latin. To this he had added, in his little annotations, that the narration agrees altogether with that, which as a boy he said he had heard from his elders a certain Father grave with age and learned of our Society of Alessano, his native city in the territory of Otranto, and he added that by tradition alone it is believed that there the Saint died and was buried. The Life from the Italian, of what kind. But if the Saint and her father, as is said at the end, after she escaped from his hands, no one ever saw; I do not see, whence so distinct a notice of persons and actions could flow into the common people, and at length be handed down in writing; unless from the mouth of Benignus the Hermit, who foretold the virgin to be born, and divinely admonished of her peril gave her the counsel of fleeing. But neither could he know, the things which after his departure were secretly done between father and daughter, if he did not learn these too divinely: and then it would be more wonderful that concerning her death and the place and manner of her burial something likewise was not taught. Hence it comes that I fear, lest only this certain tradition retained, that to that cave, the sea perhaps opening a way, Cæsarea having entered, the fury of her pursuing father being eluded, led there a life more known to God than to men: but the other circumstances from verisimilitude human invention added, and perhaps the very names of the parents and the hermit a like liberty devised. Let the judgment be with the reader, I under caution of this kind render back the deposit, such as was committed to me, wishing nothing detracted from it or added by me: and only, to justify my doubt, subjoining a briefer narration of the same Saint, sent by the Bishop of Castro: which seems to have so much the more likeness, the more it abstains from explaining those things, which whether they could humanly be known we with the greatest right doubt.
LIFE
From an older Italian MS.
Cæsarea the Virgin Martyr in Calabria (S.)
FROM THE ITALIAN MS.
[1] S. Cæsarea the Virgin was born of parents at once honorable and opulent, at the town of Francavilla a of the extreme of Italy, She is born at Francavilla in Calabria. where the sea stretching itself between the Ionian and Adriatic, from Otranto, the chief city of the Salentines, is now called the Land of Otranto. Her father was named Aloysius b, but her mother Lucretia, when they had passed a whole decade together in a barren bed, that they might be blessed with offspring, profusely liberal toward the needy, communicated their vows frequently and with ardent prayer to God and the Heavenly ones. By whom heard by no obscure indication, they first preconceived a firm hope of certainly obtaining offspring. For a certain Hermit of holy life, called Joseph c Benignus, from his nearby solitude, as it happens, going at times into the town, bade Lucretia be of good cheer; and (since he himself, as inhabiting an oratory consecrated to the Mother of God, was wholly given to her worship) to place a not common hope in the patronage of the most merciful mother of God. from a barren mother obtained by the patronage of the Mother of God But confirmed by exhortation of this kind the most pious woman, much more frequently and more fervently than she was wont, became a suppliant to the great Queen of heaven for that end. And when on a certain sabbath day with surer hope of her vow she mingled tears with prayers; entering to her supplicating in this manner the aforesaid Hermit said: At length, Lucretia, I call thee happy, because thy prayers have been heard in heaven: thou shalt bear a daughter, and shalt call her by that name, which for the time and on the spot thy mind shall suggest. But she, grateful at the unexpected voice of the man and the most auspicious tidings, about to give testimony of a glad mind, raising her hands to heaven fixed a kiss on the earth: and relating the matter with joy to her husband and attesting it to her neighbors, made it openly known, that the offspring, which whether male or female she should bear, she would consecrate to the Virgin Mother of God. She determined besides to retain the custom of the sabbath fast undertaken in her honor, and to remain in the office of liberality hitherto exercised toward the needy. and piously educated, she refuses to marry:
[2] The solemn time of childbirth therefore being passed from the conception, when amid the gravest pains Lucretia was in labor, recalling to mind the things which she had heard Benignus before foretelling: I shall, she suddenly said, bear a female, and I will that she be called Cæsarea. And suddenly freed from all pain, she most happily brought forth such a child as she had said. S. Cæsarea therefore, born about midnight, d on the eighth day of December, after she had been
duly washed in the laver of Baptism, delivered to a certain nurse Catharine Felix, a pious woman and loving God, to be educated, increased in age by years, and in her propensity toward the cultivation of virtue by no obscure indications after the example of her mother. Then letters, when by an age capable of them it was allowed, by her parent's care she learned with a certain upright and erudite Priest of the town of Francavilla: and in the fifteenth year of her age sought by some for marriage, that she might be free from a bond of this kind, she pretended the lower years of age not sufficiently mature and that she was asked to be the spouse of the chaster Christ: and asked how she knew that she was asked as spouse by Christ, she answered that her mind dictated this to her.
[3] [the last admonitions being received from her dying mother concerning the worship of the Mother of God,] There was meanwhile the last day for her mother Lucretia, and the journey of eternity to be undertaken, for which fortified with the Sacraments she had prepared herself: wherefore her daughter being called to her about to instruct her with last admonitions: By the pains, she said, which I bore bringing thee forth, I ask, ever worship the Virgin Mother of God as a mother, and the sabbath fast every week consecrate to her. Each thing S. Cæsarea, for the love of each mother, undertook to do. Lucretia moreover admonished her husband, that, if it were his mind to bind himself by the bond of another marriage, he should choose a wife, in whom looking not to beauty but to probity he should have one like to herself. Benignus at last being summoned she singularly commended Cæsarea, and asked that, continual prayers being poured forth for her to God, he would have her in his protection. Aloysius meanwhile, his mother being dead after these things, when he reckoned with himself, both that by some fate his only daughter could be snatched from him, and then, if she had not left offspring, that there would be lacking one whom of his family he might write heir of his opulence, her and Christ with a set fast and affliction of the body she venerates: more keenly began to spur S. Cæsarea to enter marriage. But she to her parent often thus importunate, said that no other loves or spouse than Christ pleased her: and avoiding the company of men, she dearly loved domestic solitude. She poured out much of her wealth on the poor, she worshipped the Mother of God by continual recitation of psalms, before her image which she had at home wont to magnify the sacred praises of the Virgin: to Christ who suffered for her she consecrated the day of Friday every week with a fast: and then repeating by pious meditation the torments which He had borne for our race, she repaid to the same tears from her eyes, and the blood profusely shed from His beaten body. taught divinely by the Hermit of her father's lustful mind toward her,
[4] But Aloysius, since he burned with desire of a second marriage, and distrusted that he could easily find such as the dying Lucretia had commended: turned his mind kindled with incestuous lust to the love of his own offspring: about to wring those out even by force if he did not obtain them by voluntary consent. Wherefore he commanded, that after the manner of maidens of her age she should adorn herself, and then toward evening should present herself to him, as if about to receive certain commands of his, not against custom unwelcome. The daughter, always prompt at her father's nod, had begun to obey, suspecting nothing in him of so detestable a crime: but God, who preserves the upright in perils, an Angel being sent from heaven to Benignus commanded that as quickly as possible he should go to the virgin, and explain, how great, if she remained in her father's house, a peril of her chastity to be snatched by her father she would undergo. He flies therefore forthwith to the virgin's house, and finding her in a chamber feeding her mind with the reading of some sacred book, thus addresses her: Cæsarea, a messenger sent from heaven has opened to me the mind of thy parent devising nothing good toward thee: the lustful one lies in wait for thy chastity; nor canst thou be safe so long as thou remainest within these walls: by swift flight seek another seat, and in it place thy safety: certainly thou shalt be in the custody of Him, who bids me say these things. S. Cæsarea to these things, I have indeed thanks, she said, both to God and to thee, Benignus, that ye indicate the peril in which ignorant I am engaged: but alone and unknown to what place shall I betake myself? To Him, said he, to whom heaven shall direct thee: only dare, and with God as guide and protector thou shalt go. To him saying these things her parent came upon them, and he (lest he should betray anything of those things for which he had come) as if for the cause of asking alms he had been present, having prayed well for both, and alleging the inclination of the day toward evening, betook himself to the hermitage. she repudiates his love;
[5] Aloysius then the house being shut summoning Cæsarea to him, and fixing his lustful eyes on her adornment and beauty, in his mind also figuring in her the deceased wife, explained his incestuous mind in words of this kind: Dearest daughter, although, if thou allowest, hereafter to be called rather by the sweeter name of spouse to me, I have exchanged my paternal love toward thee with the marital: it is my mind secretly from all to lead thee into the bed of Lucretia thy mother, and by a marriage secret to me, that I may say all in a few words, to couple thee: thou henceforth call me Aloysius thy husband and spouse, but I will hold thee in the place of spouse and wife: come, while it can be done, let us make the loves of each of us common to us. Cæsarea with an intrepid answer to these things, Is it so indeed, wretched, she said, father, dost thou cast thyself down to so great a crime? dost thou not see, even by designing it in thought alone, how great a punishment with the severe God thou establishest for thyself? That thou mayest find satiety of infamous lust, is it to be sought in thy daughter? See into whose and how chaste ears thou pourest these things: she is thy daughter, and she who will never commit that, contaminated with so infamous a crime, she should irritate God against herself: accordingly bend thy mind to better things, and think what fires for a crime of this kind burn among the infernal. Cæsarea after these things sighing and weeping the father terrified with threats: Nothing, he said, do these tears of thine move me: to the love of him who so greatly loves thee, thou oughtest to repay love; and unless thou doest it, I prepare forthwith the force which I can.
[6] But here gathering her mind Cæsarea, and flight being taken began seriously to think of flight: and that she might make it secure, simulating consent to her parent's demands, Go, she said, into thy chamber therefore and thy bed, father; and there await me, until I put some little delay in washing my feet. Here that she might deceive her parent, she quickly cast two doves, their wings bound not tightly, into a basin filled with water; which by the noise and clapping of their wings, that they might express as it were her washing herself, she believed would make a deception for her father, meanwhile while she prepared all things for flight: but the substituted sound coming briefly to his ears, when it had roused him angry from the bed, Cæsarea meanwhile, the bolt being dexterously drawn from the door of the house, through the darkness took to flight. Whom he after he had in vain tracked in the house, judging at last that she had fled to some of the kindred somewhere, ran about the houses of each; and not even there finding her whom he sought, returning home he seized a sword; and with it, wherever he should catch her, threatening death to the fugitive, by her pursuer about to be killed he fell upon a demon falsely feigning the human appearance of a citizen of Francavilla. This one to him inquiring, whether he had seen any maiden, who was his daughter, having a journey this way and with whom? He says he had seen, and led by some noble suitor, as it appeared, she had proceeded further: whom he had also heard saying; Come Cæsarea, even with thy father unwilling let us proceed where we have begun. The father kindled by these things with graver wrath, when not having advanced much thence in his course to overtake the fugitives, inquired of another similarly demon meeting him what of the first, understood that he was near to her whom he sought; for it was not long, since she hastening had gone before that way: if he should hasten a little, certainly he would overtake her.
[7] Accelerating therefore his step, not much after he had the fugitive in sight: and at the promontory of Castro, which citadel on the Otranto shore overhangs the sea, crying with a great and menacing voice, he commanded her hastening further to stop. But Cæsarea e since she saw herself about to be soon in the hands of her angry father, nor had any protection of the peril placed in a man, turned her vows and prayers to God: by whom forthwith in the appearance of an armed youth a sent Angel was present. From whose sudden sight when she increased her fear: the cave in the sea shown by the Guardian Angel she enters; Be of good cheer, said he, Cæsarea: whom thou seest is thy guardian Angel; I have come armed, that I may ward off from thee the arms of thy angry father: quickly into that cleft of the rock, which shines there with copious light within, hide thyself: there thou hast a safe refuge from the twin peril both of chastity and of life. But indeed, thanks being given to God and the Virgin Mother of God, her flying thither still her father pursued: and when with drawn sword, because he thought it now opportune for a stroke, he wished to strike; suddenly surrounded by a dense cloud, he lost his daughter from his eyes. Who also from that time when she entered the cave shown by the Angel, never afterward, as also her father, came into the sight of men. Whence by the faith thence transmitted to posterity, the inhabitants held persuaded, that the parent absorbed by the waters, into which in the fervor of pursuing his daughter he had thrown himself, transcribed his unhappy soul to the infernal regions: but holy Cæsarea was there secretly buried by him who had led her thither, the Angel. where dead and venerated by the yearly concourse of the inhabitants, But at that time, and in the month of May, and on the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, on which the things related f happened, the place for the sake of worshipping the Virgin is approached by a frequent crowd of the inhabitants. And some narrate, that about that same time a burning lamp in the cave is seen by those approaching, illuminating the place with the same light as at first. It is also handed down to memory, that a certain woman, the boy deserted in the water she preserves alive for a whole year, when through the bottom of the sea retreated for the cause of seeking safety she had brought her son, suddenly surrounded by the waters flowing in again, leaving him to save herself took to flight, and the year turning at last found the boy there safe and unhurt. Many oratories dedicated to S. Cæsarea are seen in the territory of Otranto, various ones have adopted her as their tutelary Saint; among whom before the rest those who inhabit Lucugnano.
ANNOTATA.
ANOTHER BRIEFER LIFE
From a more recent Italian MS.
Cæsarea the Virgin Martyr in Calabria (S.)
Francavilla on the Gallipoli shore In the Salentine fields, whose head and metropolis is the most ancient city of Lecce, is Francavilla: in which humbly born S. Cæsarea led her life under the education of an inhuman father, as a rose among thorns or a lily of the valleys. For burning with impure love, and unable by any exhortations of the most chaste Virgin to be drawn back from his incestuous purpose, what he could not from her willing, he wished to extort from her unwilling. She fled therefore from her father's house, through the fields seemingly almost to fly, until she came to the shore of the sea, to which from that time by the people of Gallipoli was given the name of S. Cæsarea, by whom yet was destroyed the village, which the inhabitants had built, delighted by the fertility of that very sea, and the pleasantness of its bays and islands. thence fleeing to the Castro country, Hence her course being checked thirty miles of land journey toward the other shore of the sea having traversed, she came to Vitigliano, a town of the diocese of Castro, to which at thirty paces a mountain adjoins, which opened a way for her about to pass through, capable of one cart, even to the other side, by the space of a whole mile. This she entering, and on the very entrance bending her knees to give thanks to God, impressed their traces on the rock, and at the side the whole image of her body slightly hollowed out, and that in three places where she successively prayed. Then through the open plain again two other miles running, [on the rocky mountain opening itself to her she imprints the lineaments of her body,] when she had nothing further whither to tend except the sea, she cast herself into the very waves: by which restored to land, she found a refuge within a mountain, opening itself to her, whose entrance soon a bituminous smoke occupied and shut. Nor yet so believing herself sufficiently safe Cæsarea from the fury of her father pertinaciously pursuing; she demanded of heaven, that it should animadvert upon the wicked one before he should come thither: which also she obtained. For still distant half a mile, and the cave being entered, he cast himself into the sea mad, in that place where even today turbid and sulphurous waters smoke, fit rather for killing than for curing bodies. The cave into which Cæsarea hid herself is under that mountain, which they call Saracen, having of height and breadth about twenty palms. Thither for twenty paces the sea insinuates itself, then the ground is raised higher, protecting the place, which there is small, and having only thirty palms in circuit, and gushing with waters sulphurous indeed, yet not foul-smelling, but (which thou wouldst wonder) breathing a sweet odor, salutary for every kind of disease. But so far does the cave recede within that no end is seen, but it is believed to reach even to Francavilla. The heroic constancy of the Virgin Cæsarea for preserving chastity was soon divulged: and therefore the place itself, conscious of so great a thing, began to be visited as holy from all Iapygia, her fellow-countrymen ascending the mountain, and with a tearful voice calling out to Cæsarea; who seemed to themselves to see a light proceeding from the cave, thence to proceed with a light to the neighboring church she is seen. and beholding it to be filled with interior consolation. Without delay, a church was erected nearby, where above the high altar even now is seen the effigy of the Saint expressed, in imitation of that, which we said is seen impressed on the mountain. The care of that church certain religious had for some time; but they were at last compelled to leave it, on account of the frequent incursions of the Turks. Meanwhile by many and often S. Cæsarea has been seen, to proceed from the cave toward the church, as if for the cause of praying, attended on this side and that by two beautiful youths, bearing a kindled torch. Of her body no notice is had; yet she is believed to have died on the very day on which the Redeemer ascended to the heavens, when solemnly her memory is recalled.