ON B. PETER THE SOLITARY
AT COLLE OF THE VALDELSA IN ETRURIA.
13TH CENT.
Historical Compilation from Wadding and others.
Peter, solitary at Colle of the Valdelsa in Etruria (B.)
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
[1] Of the Third Order, instituted by the holy Patriarch Francis about the year 1221, the first Professors were, BB. Luchesius and Bona-donna spouses of Poggibonsi in Etruria, Among the first Tertiaries, aggregated in the year 1221, a town once noble of the Valdelsa, now brought down into the plain; concerning whom we treated on the 28th of April, on the anniversary day of B. Luchesius himself. Besides these pious spouses, says Luke Wadding at the aforesaid year number 16, the holy man assumed to the new Sodality, Peter de Colle, a certain Bruno, and another of Martole, and very many pious men inhabitants of the neighboring towns and of the Valdelsa, at whose prayers and instance in this or the following year he prescribed a Rule, afterward somewhat increased and changed by Nicholas IV supreme Pontiff its Confirmer. These things there Wadding: then at the year 1042 [sic] number 20, after the death of the aforesaid B. Luchesius being narrated (in what year he died Wadding confesses that he is ignorant, B. Peter is numbered, but he died in 1260, as became known to us from the more ancient Life) on account of the similitude of sanctity, because he found no more apt place, he subjoins the death of the aforementioned Peter, the Chronicle of his Marianus being alleged in the margin; whose original words, most benevolently communicated by his most worthy successor Francis Harold, I have preferred to exhibit: but they are book 2 chapter 12 folio 209 column 4 toward the end, of this kind.
[2] At the second mile from that Castle of Poggibonsi, in the Castle which is called Colle, there shone a certain other holy Brother, who, recognized by the miracle of the bells sounding of their own accord, named Peter, a man rich in poverty, rigid and austere to himself beyond measure, both in food and drink and in garments; full of the grace of God, and dear to men. He, when he had come to the wished-for end, and his soul had flown over to the joys of heaven, to live perennially, all the bells of the aforesaid Castle, no mortal ringing, of themselves solemnly sounded. By which miracle the whole people being excited, soon ran together to the place, and forthwith began to contend concerning the burial of the man of God Peter: for some in the Parish of the Castle, buried, a swarm of butterflies going before; some in the Parish of the Plain, others in the Abbey, and some in the Convent wished him to be interred. And when they thus much contended among themselves with words; behold immediately the divine counsel showed where he ought to be buried. For God sent so great a multitude of butterflies, packed together after the manner of bees, that it was certainly wonderful to behold: and soon they gather to the body of the Saint: then processionally toward the Parish of the Castle, all seeing, they direct their flight; and entering the aforesaid church, the whole people, the Clergy, and all the Religious followed them with the body of B. Peter. Where being delivered to honorable burial, he shone with the glory of miracles: whose feast is solemnly celebrated on the day of the holy Trinity in the aforesaid Castle. Thus far the Author, who although he first died in the year 1523, yet seems to have made an end of writing about the year 1486, in which he ends.
[3] Wadding, naming at the beginning only the Castle of Poggibonsi, in the Castle of Colle, and then saying that the bells of the said castle sounded, and that to the Parish of the Castle, namely the one already named, the body had been carried, had persuaded us that the first burial was given to the Blessed one at Poggibonsi, which then about the year 1368 being utterly destroyed by the Florentines, the body was translated to Colle: but from the words of Marianus it appears, that the same place, which gave Peter his surname, and verisimilarly also his life, gave him also his sepulchre. But Colle was at that time sufficiently fortified and populous; in whose church
then still parochial, already from the year 1202 there was venerated S. Albert there a Presbyter, to be commemorated by us on the 17th of August. But the fortune of the place by various mischances of the neighbors so increased, that Clement VIII, now an Episcopal city, inclined by the prayers of Ferdinand the first Grand Duke of Etruria, deemed it worthy that he should adorn it with an Episcopal Title in the year 1592, a native Prelate Usimbardi being instituted: who composed most beautifully the diocese, torn off from the Florentine, Sienese, Fiesolan, and Volterran Bishoprics, and had the Cathedral church distinguished with a College of twelve Canons, and three Dignities, the Archpresbyterate, the Deanery, and the Archdeaconry, of which what was the beginning I do not find, but I see S. Albert called by the writers Archpresbyter, verisimilarly by anticipation of a Title introduced long afterward. There was also united to the Episcopal endowment the monastery of S. Salvator in Spongia; which I believe was an Abbey near old Poggibonsi, to which others advised that B. Peter should be carried; as the Parish of the Plain, proposed by others to the same end, is the very one, in which today's Poggibonsi stands, subjoined together with other places to the new Bishopric of Colle. The Convent (for whose church some contended) is to be understood no other than the Franciscan, five hundred paces removed from Poggibonsi, whence it has its name.
[4] he was carried to the parochial church of S. James, What there is today the Cathedral church, and before had been the Collegiate, in the year 1621 was enlarged and restored, under the auspices of the second Bishop of Colle, Cosmas Gherardescius: and on that occasion the body of the aforementioned S. Albert was then found, writes Ughelli, he is silent concerning B. Peter. Nor is it a wonder. For before that church with the Chapter of Canons was founded, another more ancient and Parochial, consecrated to S. James, is proved to have held the primacy from this, that with the body of B. Peter, there placed under a certain altar, was found the head of S. Albert, as if after the translation of the body left in the place of the first burial, as the R. P. Fr. Antonius Tagnocchi de Terrinca of the Order of S. Francis taught me by letters; adding, where also his other Relics, that in the same church of S. James there is still found an old picture of the Blessed one, crowned with a diadem, with the chief deeds round about; and that there he saw in the year 1675 the tunic of the holy Man, the cord and the Franciscan sandals, which on the more solemn days are exposed on the altar. In the Cathedral church also, up to the year of the aforesaid enlargement, there was had a proper altar of B. Peter; whence there still survives a picture, itself also old, verisimilarly expressed from the more ancient one which is in S. James's: and two other images of the same Blessed one.
[5] Provoked by these indications, and not hoping that the Life of B. Peter treated of professedly by anyone could be found; and an old image, I thought that its defect, or at least of the chief miracles after death, should be somewhat supplied by the exhibition of that old picture. And so I wrote to Siena to our men, and asked that someone be sought through whom there should be procured the delineation of a copy to be engraved on copper. But there was found the very Reverend Lord Francis Mary Maximi, endowed with the perpetual Chaplaincy of S. Francis in the Metropolitan church of Siena by the Archbishop Lord Leonard Marsili, and honored by the Senate with a public lectureship of Humanity in the academy of his country. He of Sienese origin, yet born at Colle of the Valdelsa, on occasion of the questorship which his father had been ordered to exercise there for three years for the Grand Duke; although at other times at the request of our men he had several times labored for the Saints, yet on this occasion he first became known to me who he was; while namely the asked benefit, an Epistle had to be added, excusing, that from the very old and now almost vanished picture, this only, which you see, could be carved out by however acute an eye. For the colors of those octagons by which round about this image is bordered have so utterly vanished, that nothing more can be distinguished: only above the square in a triangle there is seen clearly enough, the conversion (as far as I attain by conjecture) of Peter himself, by a miracle of the Crucified inclining himself to him or even addressing him, as formerly happened to S. John Gualbert. But the Castle, which is beheld in the recess, seems to be the very native place of B. Peter, to which he entered by a bridge, by which that Reverend Presbyter judges a brook to be noted, by whose benefit there nearby are turned paper-mills, whence all Etruria is provided with paper; but the diadem about the head either is no longer beheld there, or was neglected by the delineator, indeed against our wish.
[6] In the image moreover, beholding the habit of the Hermit or Tertiary, rather Benedictine than Franciscan; I remembered B. Torello, in the habit of a Benedictine Hermit; whose Life I gave on the 16th of March, and who, having put on a habit suitable to his purpose from the Abbot of Poppi of the Vallombrosan institute, lived somewhat under his obedience, to be ascribed either to no Order or to that one. But why should not the same be judged concerning this B. Peter, namely that he was drawn to the Franciscans verisimilarly by no other right, than that, with them he was wont to confess concerning sins and to use the sacraments? Sandals certainly alone do not suffice, that anyone be said to have embraced the Rule of S. Francis of whatever kind, much less when the rest of the habit tends elsewhere, as here we see. But now from the things already said one might not unreasonably conjecture, whence arose that ambiguous disputation concerning the body, since each had just titles, to claim it for themselves, the victory however remaining with the men of Colle. With these (as the aforepraised P. Terrinca writes to us) both in the city of Colle and throughout the whole diocese was celebrated the feast of B. Peter under a double rite on the 28th day of May, until the decree of the sacred Congregation emanated under Urban VIII: and a memory on the 28th of May, in sign of which thing even today in the diocesan Calendar on such a day is read: Today runs the memory of B. Peter Galgalini of Colle. Namely of a more recent institution were these things, nor fortified by the prescription of immemorial time, and therefore by the aforesaid Decree they had to be omitted. The author of transferring the cult from the movable Sunday of the Trinity, of which Wadding makes mention, to such a day, could have been either the first or second Bishop of Colle, such a day being perhaps found or the body solemnly translated. This therefore we more prudently retain, than that with the author of the Franciscan Martyrology Arthur, no cause shining before, we should defer him to the 21st of August.
[7] Meanwhile some, not bearing equanimously enough, that this presumption of Arthur is more often noted by me (as if it were done with some carping of the Order, which yet, as they say, uses his Martyrology, only as a book of private authority) I would lovingly have admonished, that there are so many who receive that Martyrology, as if generally received in the Order, not only outsiders, but also domestics, that it concerns the public good of the Order itself, that it be known how rashly the Author proceeded, in ascribing the Title of Saint and Blessed, and the day of cult or memory, as it pleased him. temerariously related in the Franciscan Martyrology to the 21st of August, For it must altogether be guarded, lest, as Jacobilli and others, several more be deceived; not doubting to distinguish with the Title of Blessed as many as he relates, although it does not now belong to them by the decrees of Urban VIII: which it is fitting to be known, lest more than is right be deferred to him, lest also that which we behold done at Mechlin without scruple (in those tablets which hang painted around the cloister, having the whole Martyrology of Arthur expressed by months and days) pass into example; and so little by little what by right it cannot, that book obtain by prescription; and so finally it happen, that whoever has not received it with that veneration, with which would be received the testimony of the whole Religion, attesting whom it holds for Saints or Blessed, publicly venerated and to be venerated, be thought among the simpler to do an injury to the Order.
[8] To such inconveniences and to the complaints arising hence, indeed just, our silence cannot remedy, which some desire; but a new Hagiology should be composed, in which, after mature discussion concerning each, made in the very places to which they are ascribed, the publicly Saints and Blessed (as Bolland desired) should be separated from others, dead with the simple opinion of sanctity; whom formerly perhaps it was lawful to call Blessed, but now after the Urbanian decrees it is not lawful, but it would suffice to address them with the Title of Good or venerable memory, by the example of Cardoso in the Lusitanian Hagiology, and that someone at last should supply the defect of the necessary distinction. of Saussay in the Gallican Martyrology, and others. But from such diligence (to which I know some are inclined, if it be committed to them by the Order) this fruit also will exist, that the true days of cult or death of many are to be brought into common light; but for those having no certain day, but a certain and public cult through the whole year, by the decree of the General Minister a certain day can be determined, on which they may be commemorated in a Hagiology of this kind. There will be for accomplishing this not useless also the labor of Arthur, a man indeed laborious, in whom let no one miss diligence in the authors to be cited accurately, but let all deservedly require a selection; and to this we strive to confer something, not indeed to detract anything from the most holy Order, to which we congratulate that more men have fallen, renowned for the public encomium of Sanctity in their respective places, than the skill of anyone hitherto has been able to enumerate all. The aforepraised Father Antonius de Terrinca thought he had work enough if in his province of Tuscia he should strive to perform this: let the same be done in the several Provinces, and, what now perhaps is believed impossible, will appear to be easy.