ON B. PETER PETRONIUS
THE CARTHUSIAN OF SIENA IN ETRURIA.
IN THE YEAR MCCCLXI
PrefacePeter Petronius, Carthusian at Siena in Etruria (B.)
G. H.
Very many persons of either sex have illustrated the city of Siena, deemed worthy of Ecclesiastical veneration for their exceptional virtue, and to be brought forth in this our work concerning the Saints: of whom hitherto we have given B. Ambrose Sansedonius and S. Catharine the Virgin of the Order of Preachers; Many Saints and Blessed at Siena. him on March XX, her on April XXX; B. Joachim of the Order of the Servants of B. Mary on April XVI, B. Andrew de Galeranis, famous for the Confraternity of mercy he instituted, on March XIX; and enrolled in their youth in the same Confraternity, S. Bernardine of the Order of Minors on May XX; and B. Peter Petronius, of the Order of the Carthusians, of whom we treat on this XXIX of May, on which day in the monastery of Maggiano he departed from this life in the year MCCCLXI.
[2] The Life of B. Peter written in Italian by S. John Columbinus, His Life and the deeds he gloriously performed were written in Italian by S. John Columbinus, Founder of the Order of the Jesuates, aided by Nicholas Vincentus his companion. These two were both joined in intimate friendship with B. Peter, and most thoroughly investigated all things: therefore below they are often treated of, chiefly in chapter 5, and various things are annotated. To each of them his utmost labor was contributed by a certain Joachim, to whom, by divine command, fifteen days before his death, B. Peter opened many of his hidden ecstasies and revelations: and to him he gave commands for admonishing various persons about correcting their life; whose inmost secrets also he revealed to Joachim, to win him credit with them, as is fully described in the Life. This a certain Bartholomew of Siena, Monk of the Florentine Charterhouse, translated into Latin from the Italian, and adorned with a copious style, in his Prologue accurately instructing the Reader about all things: but he distinguished it into three books, and subdivided the books into several chapters, and prefixed to them their own titles. But because the Chapters are shorter than suits our plan, we form a new and to us more fitting division into longer chapters, to most of which we subjoin Annotata, aided also by the Notes appended by the author at the end: rendered into Latin by Bartholomew of Siena. which whole anyone will be able to read in him, for we judge several less necessary. To us indeed it would have been much more desirable, in preference to that Life thus interpolated, to obtain the genuine text of B. John Columbinus himself, and simply to make it Latin: but no diligence hitherto either of the Carthusians or of our Fathers has availed, that either among the Beringherii, whence Bartholomew had received it, or elsewhere, it might be found: whenever, however, anyone shall have found it, let him know it is to be received by my successors as a vast treasure, and to be inserted in the Supplement of the work.
[3] Peter Dorlandus the Belgian, a Carthusian at Diest a town of Brabant, who died in the year MDVII, published in seven books a Carthusian Chronicle. In this, when in the four prior books (as he prefaces to the fifth) he had touched on the praises of the holy Fathers of the greater Charterhouse, The title Saint, Divine, Blessed, then concerning the saints of the diverse houses he sets forth in succinct speech, but the first chapter of the fifth book begins, concerning B. Peter Petronius of Siena, and soon thus begins: Among these the first to occur is Saint Peter Petronius, of Siena, a Father exceedingly venerable for sanctity, truly beloved of God and men … Of this Divine Peter the sanctity so sublime everywhere, and the serenity of his sanctity, shone forth, that it grew bright with much light of miracles among the peoples; and very many recalled from the dark gloom of vices, it might recall to the true splendor of justice, which is Christ. Behold how even then he was called Blessed Peter, Saint Peter, Divine Peter. Thus Bruno Prior of the Charterhouse and General of the Order, approving the history of the Life, adds, of Blessed Peter Petronius of Siena of our Carthusian Order. Nay the first Author of the Life, John Columbinus, prefixed to it this title: The Life of the glorious Saint Petronus, Confessor of Christ, but at the end: Here ends the Legend of the venerable Saint Petronus, Confessor of Christ, Monk of the Charterhouse, who is called Domnus Petro. Bartholomew, who inscribed his Latin Life to Cardinal Charles de' Medici, and Tutelary, desires the most Blessed Petronus to entreat as Tutelary for him, and to conciliate the heavenly Interpreter of the Divine Godhead, exhorting that he himself venerate and worship the same as Tutelary.
[4] Images set forth for veneration in the Churches, On account of this veneration, the formula of profession, written on parchment in his own handwriting, is kept in the sacristy of the temple of Maggiano, with this beginning: I Peter promise obedience &c. That several images of him also are set forth for veneration, Bartholomew indicates in the Prologue, then also in the Life num. 11, describing the form of his body. Afterward num. 45, he adds, that Peter is held by the whole city of Siena to be at once Father and Patron, glory, defense, and ornament: and pilgrimages made, whom in image two hundred and fifty years and more they venerate in the temples. Besides, num. 54 and 55 are described, at his sepulcher and the body found, the pilgrimages frequently made with the greatest piety, and very many and most illustrious miracles wrought: all which prove the ancient veneration paid to him.
LIFE
written in Italian by S. John Columbinus.
Adorned in Latin by Bartholomew of Siena.
Peter Petronius, Carthusian at Siena in Etruria (B.)
BY BART. OF SIENA.
DEDICATORY EPISTLE.
To the most Illustrious Prince and most Ample Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, Charles de' Medici, Domnus Bartholomew the Carthusian, Greeting.
The lucubrations which a few years ago I composed, O Charles, August Prince, upon the life and the most holy deeds of B. Peter Petronius, the author desiring the patronage of the Medici Cardinal, of Siena the Carthusian, I was compelled at the request of many to finish, and according to my powers, that they might be brought into light, to emend, not to say to polish. Which since it was much easier for me to do at this time than before, distracted with the cares of domestic affairs; it seemed indeed left over, that according to the old custom, since to Blessed Petronus himself there is enough of tutelage and patronage in himself, I should choose a Patron for these my lucubrations; and this one indeed most blessed in the praise of virtue, in the splendor of family, in the glory of ancestors, but then abundantly powerful with a will propense to all most honorable things. For what in the stadium of virtue, for procuring either glory, is so difficult, or so ample, which a will incited by zeal does not attain? To me reflecting on these things, thou, most Ample Cardinal, camest into mind; whom, raised to the summit of the Purpled majesty, that thou dost equal the highest dignities of empire by the splendor of thy virtues and the excellence of thy genius, we must confess of necessity; thou whom we now know, and whose admirable humanity we have tasted in person, while we enjoyed the offices of thy singular benevolence toward our Florentine Charterhouse. And although thou art such and so great, most Excellent Prince, yet in this honor thou sustainest that person, upon whom fall not only all virtues, but also weight and labor; since, Divine Bernard being witness, never can anyone be in honor without sorrow, in prelacy without perturbation: and therefore thou needest heavenly aid, and it behooves thee to be propped by divine help. Namely that thou doest nothing, thinkest nothing, in which straightway honor and true and Christian piety may not shine forth, which may moderate and rule all thy counsels and illustrious actions: utterly, so that, keeping watch for the safety and dignity of the Church to be guarded, thou be prepared in mind to pour out even thy very blood for it also, when there should be need. For that the very ample insignia of that crimson Hat exact this of thee, thou now knowest very well; that thou perform this, the ancestral religion of thy House demands; this the excelling fame of so many Heroes of thy stock, and the name, or rather the deity, of so many supreme Pontiffs of thy blood, of whose virtues thou art heir and hostage, have, as we see, plainly persuaded thee; this also the cognate examples of the most Serene Great Duke of Etruria Cosmo, namely of exquisite virtue, religion, piety, and singular clemency also, and of beneficence worthy of a most excellent Prince toward the peoples subject to him, most favorably require of thee: and this the generous force of nature, and education well seconding it, have constantly approved, according to the desire of thy most Serene Mother. Which several things it would be laborious, and altogether difficult, for others to perform; but to Charles Cardinal de' Medici, in so marvelous a disposition of a lofty mind, who would think the entrance of true praise not open, who the way of eternal glory not most easy? Which that it may be wholly so (as I most of all desire), I would have our most Blessed Petronus entreat as Tutelary for thee, and conciliate the heavenly Interpreter of the divine Godhead. For with what sanctity our divine man was conspicuous, while he lived among men, and what place excelling in glory he obtains among the Heavenly ones, thou thyself wilt be able through thyself to understand; if ever, through thy very many and most grave occupations, it shall be allowed thee entire, to read his illustrious deeds. For from the tenth chapter of the third book it can plainly be perceived, what rewards await him who has begged his help; and what aids of inward peace are divinely promised on earth to him who has followed him with veneration. Nor indeed is it a wonder. He offers B. Peter as Tutelary. So great a conjunction with the power and goodness of the supreme King, that one imparting it, the most holy men have by right: nay even while still mortals, by an anticipated liberality, they not rarely distribute heavenly gifts. Receive therefore, most Ample Cardinal, our Peter, as dear to God; embrace him with the studies of piety, and venerate and worship him as Tutelary, as I have said, against the deceits of this fawning age, that with most powerful God he may obtain for thee perennial beatitude. But to me, advanced higher than was fitting, for thy singular humanity toward me, I would have thee pardon. But also if any shall think I have done it less prudently, they too will give pardon; since to those running to the goal, and even drawing near, it is agreed that the voices of those exhorting are not troublesome, that applause is not displeasing. Farewell. From the Pontignano Charterhouse near Siena, on the fourth of the Ides of July, MDCXIX.
PROLOGUE.
Behold for thee, friendly Reader, the life and illustrious deeds of B. Peter Petronius the Carthusian: The author, on account of his affection toward B. Peter which, granted to me by a singular gift of God, even from this no inexpert estimator of things will be able to confess; that since from a boy I desired to know what once was on earth the sanctity of so great a man, for the sake of which his effigy depicted truly and skillfully from of old, is everywhere beheld in my native city; yet I found no one who could then sufficiently satisfy me inquiring. Kindled therefore with this desire, a young man, thence twenty-four years born, I embraced the Carthusian
discipline in the Florentine convent. In which when day by day my mind's zeal toward the blessed Man burned the more ardently, from the Florentine Charterhouse nor did I perceive that there was anyone among ours even then, who would relate to me eagerly inquiring this man's virtue and sanctity, at least in some part, except a few things about the admirable finding of his body; I was moved with a certain vehement wonder, nor could I easily be brought to believe, that, of him whom in image the whole city of Siena with the veneration of Christian piety looked up to in the temples, and whom among other pledges of exceptional religion it embraced in its bosom; the industry of writers should have passed over his illustrious deeds. Therefore while I revolved in mind these and many other things of the kind, according to place and time, by the leave of my Fathers I went to inhabit the Maggiano Charterhouse, built near Siena. Into which I had scarcely set foot, and had once and again, full of longings, approached the place of the peristyle, where by hearsay I had received the Blessed man had been buried; when lo for thee, to the convent itself there come, as it happens, some men eminent both for nobility and for virtue, he migrates to Maggiano. to me wholly unknown by face, for the sake of visiting it. Whom when, bidden, I had received to conference, after the offices of mutual speech, and other conversations about monastic matters, and about the life and duties of the Carthusians, one of their number, a most choice young man, whose name was Attilius Beringherius, began to address me chiefly in this manner.
[2] There is at my home, Bartholomew, a very ancient manuscript Codex, in which the chapters are seen elegantly written in rubricated pigment after the fashion of the age: which codex, lately dug out of darkness into light, as soon as I shall have returned home I will most gladly take care to bring to thee; not that thou shouldst merely read it through, but also undertake to copy it, and more elegantly reweave it (so indeed he spoke); which, that thou do, I myself am thy author. For I do not fear, but that I shall do thee a most pleasing thing: he receives the Italian Ms. about the Life, since this is its inscription, and this the title, The Life, namely, of the glorious Saint Petronus, Confessor of Christ, of your order, and our fellow-countryman. But at the end. Here ends the Legend of the Venerable Saint Petronus, Confessor of Christ, Monk of the Charterhouse, who is called D. Petro. Which little book indeed, although it was elaborated very confusedly and in uncertain order; yet we read it written with the best fidelity and integrity, and moreover composed in the native tongue of that happy age. But I myself, as soon as the name of Petronus first sounded in my ears, gladdened with very great joy, lifted up at once my eyes and hands to heaven; rendering immortal thanks to God, that I joyfully beheld unto that day the light of this sky, on which I should see myself in no way frustrated of my vow toward the Blessed man. Soon turned to Beringherius with cheerful brow, I promised him all things, and took upon myself all things (although well conscious of the leanness and poverty of my genius) which were in his desires, provided he stood by his promises; which, the space of the day after the morrow being passed, he most admirably performed. Meanwhile I had read the longed-for codex with so much pleasure, or rather most eagerly devoured it; that among the various motions of my mind this one thing indeed sometimes somewhat bit me, written by John Columbinus and Nicholas Vincentus: namely that on the very first front it lacked the name of its own author. But, having looked a little more keenly at the whole series of the deeds done, I am suddenly suffused with new joys, as soon as I discover that John son of Peter Columbinus, a most holy man; and Nicholas Vincentus, the brother of Francis Vincentus, were the authors of our whole history. Since they, noble and renowned both by family and by Christian piety, were not only contemporaries of that time; but, what is of more weight to our matter, composing themselves to the will and nod of Petronus himself, followed him in treating spiritual matters as leader and moderator of their counsels.
[3] Therefore supported by the authority of such great men, and especially aided by their writings, which being rendered into Latin straightway I turned my mind to the pen; namely that I might hand over to Latin usage the deeds gloriously done by our B. Peter Petronius, undertaking perhaps a greater burden than I could bear; yet I undertook it, not relying on the strength of my own genius, but on the help of Divine grace; thinking I should depart honestly enough, if in writing the Life of this Blessed man, only my rashness should not be reprehended: since whatever labor I have undertaken in publishing this work, I wished it all to redound to the glory of God and to the utility of the men of our Order. But lest any scruple sit within thee, that namely by no testimonies of antiquity, except its own Author, who ought to be to thee instead of all, our history is supported; and therefore thou shouldst either at some time diminish the faith of the whole entire work, or certainly bring it into suspicion: I thought I should do a thing worth the trouble, if the reason of my whole writing should be clear to thee. Which from this can easily be perceived, with what apparatus I instructed myself, before I came to writing, and what zeal I applied, that the things I had determined to consign to letters might not differ from the truth. Although in this place thou wilt perhaps object, unless I am mistaken, this labor undertaken by me in vain, for this reason, that Columbinus, he himself by his illustrious virtues and by his exceptional sanctity, deserves to obtain among all, that in those things which he has testified either to have himself beheld concerning our blessed Father Petronus, or to have heard from others worthy of credit who beheld them, full faith be given to them. But yet I would not be wanting to myself, but that I should show myself desirous, not to say too scrupulous, for confirming it of investigating the truth; since they are for the most part the men of our age, that they seem to have nothing more set before them, than that they everywhere carp at the writings of others, and lay snares for them, so that one can nowhere pass without danger. With this mind therefore I induced my mind first to read through all the monuments of antiquity which exist in the Maggiano Charterhouse, and to shake out all the records, and to investigate the old Mss.; then through suitable men, chiefly zealous for me, I took care that there be searched out within my native seat, from public and private Archives, the things which could be of use and help to me. Nor was the labor fruitless, and the zeal applied in vain. Since I ascertained those things, and my men brought them to me; so that, while I was wholly engaged with the moths and bookworms, I greatly looked up to the providence of the Godhead toward me, and certainly knew it to be present to my endeavors: since, the reason of times being computed, he surveys the ancient monuments: the dignity and condition of persons being recognized, we ascertained that all things excellently agree among themselves, and that all things accord with our history, and second it. That the fruits of this my zeal might appear, for greatly building up the truth of the deeds done, I altogether resolved, using for that very thing the counsel of most weighty men, to weave certain Animadversions at the end of the work, by which anyone can, by no so difficult a reasoning, know that the time, the names of persons, and the places agree with the writings of our Columbinus, and that faith is conciliated to them.
[4] These things I had, friendly Reader, which I wished thee to know at present, not that I might boast and as it were ostentate my zeal or industry, of whatever sort it was; but that I might assert the truth of those things, to which faith is to be given by thee: since I am not ignorant that these are the parts of those who attempt history. It remains, that thou so receive these our lucubrations upon the deeds done by B. Petronus, he gives thanks to his helpers. that, when at some time thou hast read them, thou mayest know that thou owest not a little to Celsus Cittadinus, a man noble both by family and by virtue, who, a most diligent investigator of ancient matters, contributed very much to me, in seeking out and supplying from the public archives of the city the monuments of antiquity. I have besides whereof I myself also give and hold to Celsus the greatest thanks, for his marvelous liberality toward me. But of Beringherius, who first of all was an author to me, and an inciter to attempting that work, what shall I say? For he, a young man of elegant genius, and most devoted to humane studies as by a certain impulse of nature, a few days having elapsed after he came to the Maggiano Charterhouse, and met me in it, with the greatest grief of all to whom he had been known, that is plainly of all in his native country, with great sense of piety, departed. These things it pleased me to add: but the rest, which we promise and which make for the notes, thou wilt have at the end (as we have said). Which all things however I would have thee refer as received from the most Renowned Man Ludovicus Accarisius, who, among the exceptional ornaments of his mind, is endowed with such charity toward his native city, that he willingly contributed his zeal and labor, whereby these very things were committed to type. For he reckoned, a man of exact prudence, that the lovers of Religion would take no slight utility, for cultivating true piety, from these examples of admirable sanctity: which that it may be done, I a suppliant pray God, whose glory alone our industry, of whatever kind it was, regarded in publishing these lucubrations.
OLD DIVISION OF THE WORK
Book I Chapter I The birth of Peter and his education.
II What things he did at five years old, up to the thirteenth year of his age.
III How he gave his name to the Confraternity of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, established in the Hospital, which is commonly called della Scala.
IV He gives his service in ministering to the sick and the lepers in the public Infirmaries.
V Peter gives his name into the family of the Carthusians.
VI He cuts off entirely the salutary finger of his left hand, lest he should be initiated into the Priesthood.
Book II Chapter I His humility and obedience.
II His poverty and what he thought concerning it.
III Concerning the woman going to the Maggiano Charterhouse with dry garments under a foul falling rain, and concerning the sign of the Cross divinely expressed in bread.
IV Peter's abstinence from food; and concerning the tolerance of bodily pains, declared through his whole life.
V His zeal for piety, and in what manner especially he prepared himself for praying and contemplating.
VI His charity toward God and his neighbors; and concerning the exceptional innocence of his life, and sanctity.
VII His prudence, the people's concourse to him, and the fruits of souls made through him.
VIII John Columbinus composes himself wholly to the will and nod of Peter; and chiefly by his authorship undertakes Evangelical poverty to be cultivated.
IX Peter's cousin-sister, by his exhortation and admonitions, embraces the celibacy of a religious life.
X He shines with the gift of prophecy.
XI Peter's virginity and chastity.
Book III Chapter I He predicts his death; he indicates the illustrious visions divinely set before him, Christ shows himself to be seen by him; he contemplates wondrous things; he penetrates the recesses of the mind, and unlocks the inmost parts of the heart.
II He likewise predicts future things; he enjoys the converse of the Heavenly ones, and sees the hidden thoughts of men.
III How Peter for the space of sixty hours underwent punishments and pains, like those of the infernal regions, for the expiation of a certain friendly man, by God's permission.
IV Tumults and dissensions in the Maggiano Charterhouse, concerning Peter's body to be kept after his death in the same buildings.
V Peter, though absent and shut in his cell, all
nevertheless knows divinely the disturbances stirred up at home by the Fathers.
VI Peter's glorious death.
VII His body is handed over to burial.
VIII Concerning the little cloud which appeared in the air about the time of his death, divinely, in the likeness of a column glittering with exceptional brightness.
IX Other wondrous signs concerning Peter's beatitude in heaven.
X Peter, having departed life, shows himself to be seen by many.
XI John Boccaccio the Florentine, by Peter's command and prescription, embraces a more praiseworthy discipline of living.
XII How the holy body of Peter, now sixty years from his death, was found whole and incorrupt, and was translated elsewhere.
XIII To the Carthusians, by reason of the finding of Peter's body, a convent is attributed at Venice, S. Bernardine of Siena being the author.
CHAPTER I.
Peter's infancy and adolescence, devoted to the works of piety and mercy.
Peter, of the Petrona stock, (whom we read the ancients a were wont, namely from the family, repeatedly to call Petronus) at Siena, Born in the year 1311, an illustrious city among the Etruscans, in the year from the redemption of the world three hundred and eleven above a thousand is born, his father being Gulielmaccius b, but his mother Agnes c Malavolta, after the custom of the age and country called Nese; both, by the nobility of family, by riches and glory, eminently flourishing among the chief men of the city. Who when they beheld their infant, even then from his very cradle first born of them, displaying an excellent disposition of mind, and a certain nature also divinely implanted in him toward probity; loved him singularly and uniquely. For of such a kind is for the most part the disposition of those who have begotten, that the virtue of their sons stirs in them keener impulses of benevolence and charity: which charity of the parents toward Peter who would doubt to have been increased, and brought to the highest pitch, both with his education, and with the accession of age, and at the same time of Christian virtue? For indeed when he was handed over to be nursed at another's breasts, the fatherly providence of the heavenly Godhead moderating the matter, it was brought about, that he obtained a nurse so kindled with zeal toward God, and endowed with such sanctity of life, that as often as she offered him the breasts to suck, and the infant piously educated, her face bent into a certain holy gladness, she would address the boy in this manner: Come, son, suck, suck, in the name of Jesus; and thus together with her milk the nurse instilled little by little into the infant her own virtue and Christian piety: and at his still tender age she was now educating him for the one God.
[2] Whence this above all in him is to be looked up to, and indeed greatly to be admired even then, that, breathed upon by the divine Spirit, the innocent little boy began in deed and words to show, at two years old he predicts to his mother another son that he was elected and inspired by God to the illustrious deeds of Religion. For at two years old, as was most thoroughly proved, he began to shine with the gift of prophesying. For his mother, when she was again burning with desire of male offspring, resolved with herself and promised (provided God should kindly nod assent to her) that she would forthwith give the son to be born the name of Francis. Nor in vain indeed were her vows to those Above. For indeed, the divine breath aspiring to her pious wishes, it happened that she, wholly ignorant of her own conception, had conceived. Which that it might redound to the heaped-up and complete gladness of the excellent woman, almighty God Himself brought it about, that the little son Peter at some time stroked his parent's womb with a gentle touch, and the infant scarcely torn from the breast, whose tongue did not yet sound speech, indicated this to her with this caressing address: There is, Mother, in thy womb here enclosed a Francis. By which words of the little boy the woman, soon driven into amazement, inasmuch as she had hitherto laid open her thought to no mortal, knew by the very motion of the conceived foetus, at the same moment of time, that to be now perfected within her, which Peter, illumined by the divine light, had foreseen and foretold. Wherefore Agnes, suffused with huge pleasure, brought forth the longed-for infant in time, and ordered him to be marked at the sacred fonts of Baptism with the name of Francis according to her vow. Who when afterward he had remained surviving Peter by only three years d, was wont gladly to relate his own rising divinely foretold by his brother, just as he had received it from his very parent even from adolescence.
[3] At a still infantile age Peter, namely five years born, At five he gives himself to secret prayer: that he was born, truly an infant of exceptional disposition, (as we said a little before) to perform the works of beatitude, he showed in very deed. Since, divinely agitated, he sought out secret places at home for praying: and shunning the sight of the household, with free and unbound mind, he gave himself long and much to sacred prayers. In which zeal of praying indeed the little boy bore himself so seriously, that an aged maturity already then appeared in him. Meanwhile, the toys of his first age laid aside, scarcely passing his eighth year, he is handed over to a Preceptor to be instructed in the first rudiments of letters, together with his brother Francis at six years old. In learning which he thought he would give his labor on this condition, that he should never separate piety from those common studies: nay even it is established to have been at heart to him, that he should have nothing prior or older than sacred prayers. So utterly, that (as, the same brother Francis relating, was made known) when toward evening he had withdrawn to bed, then at dead of night he would leap from his little bed awake: and bending his knee on the ground, he would give himself wholly to the meditation of divine things before Christ fixed to the Cross; in his 8th year he is imbued with studies: and full of the brine of tears would lead almost whole nights sleepless. But if, wearied by long vigil, he was at some time pressed down by sleep; on a mat spread on the ground within the chamber, prone himself he condemned his prostrate limbs, the parents being utterly unaware of the thing and deed, by the provident and skillful circumspection of the boy. Thence when he was now passing his tenth year, nothing was more amiable than he, nothing more courteous: since he, having obtained a good soul, displayed such gravity of manners, he sleeps on a mat: that he directed his deeds to the norm of the divine law with a plainly wondrous sense: and thereby it came to pass, that his mind was day by day more and more illumined, and so glowed for performing the offices of piety, that during prayer the use of tears grew habitual to him, anointed with the sweetness of heavenly things. Which when the evil demon noticed, greedy of disturbing his quiet, he attempts to assail him with wiles, fixing a grim gaze upon him, because so little a boy had yet attained so great a knowledge of supernal things. And so he pursued him praying with that most fierce hatred: to strike, harass, and strike fear into his mind gaping after heavenly things with frightful things, fierce: and at length came to such impudence one night, that he shattered the glass lamp, hanging from the topmost dome of the chamber to the image of the Crucified, at ten years he suffers the snares of the demon: thence creating many troubles for him, that, terrified by which fear, at length at some time he might desist from his undertaking. But so far was it, that the blessed boy should suffer himself to be led from his purpose by these arts of the most wicked impostor; that even with confirmed and constant mind, in the purpose he had seized of living to the one God in body and soul, on each single day he confirmed himself by repeated zeal, following this norm of waking and praying up to the seventeenth year of his age.
[4] familiar with the pious and the poor, Meanwhile while Peter applies himself with the most intent care to these studies of religion and piety; he was familiarly using those, who both by advanced age, and by honorable institution of manners, and by skill in spiritual things, could inflame him to take up virtues: but especially great intercourse, as far as could be done for him, passed between him and those, who cultivated Christian humility both with inmost feelings, and expressed it in manners and life. Of his own accord also more familiarly for this very reason daily inserting himself into the gatherings and conversations of the needy and beggars; reckoning no doubt that by intercourse with such squalid men his submission of mind would day by day be more abundantly cultivated, for putting on the Evangelical discipline. Which when his father Gulielmaccius learned of; or at some time, as it happens, fell upon him as he tarried densely among the herds of the poor and the ragged; it can scarcely be told, with how unjust a mind he himself bore it, very often receiving Peter most harshly for this same cause; with the indignation of the father: since he, snatched away by ardent zeal of human praise, and by the impulse of daily intercourse with noble men, desired him to appear among the foremost of the youths, who, holding the points of cleanliness and urbanity, eminent in riches, in most elegant clothing of the body, and in form, should be not unlike himself. But Peter nevertheless not only did not bring his mind to institute friendship with those same men; but if any had in any way been already begun and conciliated with them, he did not hesitate to unweave that same, and likewise to turn away from those same men: namely fearing, lest, while meanwhile he followed their allurements and softness in manners, he should thence little by little drink in profane spirits. Even then most learned in friendships our exceptional boy, although he had not yet through age experienced their force and use; since among the many kinds of secular friendships that one is true, zealous for humility, that solid, firm and finally indissoluble, which the likeness of virtues alone binds fast. Therefore Peter, kindled with love of contempt of his very self, and exceedingly zealous of true and Christian humility, had this most frequently in his mouth; namely that splendid garments were to him a huge trouble and indeed punishment; because they rendered to him maimed the intercourse of the poor and the wretched, and utterly weakened it. So far was it, that he should at any time ever be moved from the constancy and degree of humility, through threats and revilings, or through words and stripes.
III
[5] Cultivated by such heavenly institutions almost, Peter however thought it not enough for himself, he desires to be enrolled in the confraternity of the hospital della Scala; unless he took care that some other works of religion be added to others. Therefore to him revolving in mind day and night, in what manner he could do and perform this, it came into his mind, to be enrolled and co-opted into the most praised confraternity of B. Mary the Virgin, established beneath the vaulted arches of that most celebrated hospital, which they call by surname della Scala. Since he knew that so many most excellent men, all of nearly the first nobility of Siena, and excelling especially in sanctity, had proceeded from it, as it were illustrious lights of religion: and he presaged in mind so many future heroes, who from this palaestra of sanctity should come forth armed, that against the most foul monsters of vices, against the most fierce centuries of hell, they might fight the battles of the renowned Lord. But of what sort? Namely e Andrew Galeranus, called Father of the poor; f Peter Pettinarius, an exceptional follower of the contempt of the world and the institute of Francis of Assisi; Ambrose Sansedonius, that man of the most excellent and most holy family of the Dominicans, whose illustrious deeds g, full abundantly of all sanctity, which had so many other holy men associated with it, formerly written by command of Pope Honorius the Fourth of this name, in our time indeed it was willed to be recalled into light, and to have the same man numbered and placed among the Heavenly ones, whom the whole Catholic Church venerates and worships on earth, by Clement the Eighth Supreme Pontiff with altogether constant will. Who thence Bernard h Tolomeus, conspicuous for the glory of the most excellent arts, but more conspicuous for religion and piety? Who Francis Piccolomineus, and who Patricius, of the Patrician stock, the same founders and rulers of the Order of Monte Oliveto? Next to these comes forth our strenuous warrior John i Columbinus, the best institutor and parent of the Congregation of the Jesuate Brothers
of whom there is a mind to add more things to our history according to place, together with his companion and fellow-soldier Francis Vincentus: whom at nearly the same time there followed, with the same piety toward God, in this stadium of Christian virtue k Stephen Maconus: who then shortly after, emulating our Peter, excellently and by plainly divine admonition gave his name to the Carthusian family. And what and how great at length Bernardine Albizescus, that exceptional emulator of the most ardent charity toward God of the man of Assisi, and the repairer and keeper of the whole declining Franciscan family? That Bernardine indeed, a most brave leader and commander, from the time he came down even from his apprenticeship into the contest, always in the battle-line, always engaged bravely and indefatigably in the sun and dust, and fortified as it were with a helmet by the memory and confidence of the supreme and heavenly Commander, to brandish certain most sharp swords of the heavenly and divine doctrine, and, as a shield, so to oppose the constancy of faith and charity to the weapons of the enemies so long, until, after many battles waged against that most monstrous and infernal beast, he poured out his spirit in victory.
[6] To these it pleases to reckon among the number of these most brave warriors a strenuous warrior-woman, S. Catharine of Siena stirring up many to it and Seraphic Virgin, Catharine Benincasa of Siena: who, although through her sex she could not exercise herself in this palaestra, yet could, shut up in the domestic camps themselves, as though placed in the battle-line, wage most grievous wars with the powers of these darknesses: who, when she seemed conquered and prostrated, then a conqueress herself, by the constancy of the very greatest Christian humility, as though girt with a broad and conspicuous cuirass, stood firm in mind, and, persisting unshaken in a certain vigil as it were of assiduous prayers, triumphed over the routed enemies: so that, when she had conquered the contests of the malignant spirits, and likewise overcome their snares, she offered a most beautiful and most delightful spectacle to the Angels, and indeed to God Himself. Thou thyself through thyself understandest, O most noble College (thee I now address), with how great zeal that exceptional warrior-woman would incite thee, that thou also shouldst undertake wars to be bravely waged with the inconstancy and variety of these human things, with the unbridled lusts and these most fierce leaders and standard-bearers of the enemies of the human race; and with how great love, with what wise sentences, full of true piety and sanctity, and finally with what straining of mind and keen zeal she would exhort her fellow-soldiers, that they might show themselves worthy of men of so great virtue and fortitude: since I myself even from boyhood remember to have read at thy place several epistles of this illustrious Virgin, written in her own or her amanuenses' hand to thy elders, through epistles, In them indeed it was to be seen that the same Virgin mingled exhortations not only with words, but also in very deed; now to call the Brothers of this confraternity, the athletes, I say, of this religious palaestra, most dear Fathers, now Brothers, now at other times to call them most sweet Sons; now sustaining excellently the parts at once of a leader-woman and a soldier, now of a parent and a daughter. Therefore I cannot, that I may confess the truth, but say from my soul that among so many most excellent men this most renowned heroine sustains the chief place.
[7] Be bold therefore in mind, illustrious Congregation, be bold in virtue: do what is of thy office, take care that piety and religion abide in thee unharmed: cause, I pray, likewise Matthew Guerra the author of the Congr. of the Nails. that I may hear from this little hovel of mine, that the old discipline of sanctity with thee perseveres uncorrupt and vivid more and more day by day. For thou wouldst scarcely believe, how much pleasure I began to take in mind, when it came to my ears, that not only formerly other and then again other men, conspicuous for sanctity and innocence of life, had proceeded from thee; but that in our memory indeed there had been, before the rest, that soldier of thine, excellently skilled in the spiritual athletics, I mean Matthew Guerra, whom commonly they called Father Teius, author of the Congregation of the Nails l, and our fellow-citizen: by the fame of whose exceptional charity toward the poor stirred, the Supreme Pontiff Clement, by name the Eighth, ordered him to be summoned to Rome by letters of the most Blessed man m Philip Neri the Florentine, for restoring the discipline of that hospital; which the most sacred Prelate of the Catholic Church, formerly Sixtus the Fifth, with that generous excellence of his mind, had built for the nourishing of the ulcerous and beggars n miserably wailing through the cross-roads, as though forced into one place. For the same Supreme Pontiff Clement o did not doubt, but that our Teius, wonderfully devoted to the works of mercy, would restore the place to its pristine institution; as shortly after he most admirably performed, not only by that alacrity of his mind and huge zeal in performing that office, but also by a certain singular sanctity of life: by reason of which princely men and most ample Cardinals loved him earnestly, as a man full of God, and pursued him with great veneration. He however, never elated by these mortal honors, inasmuch as he despised all transitory things, when he had exactly performed the commands of the supreme Priest, had nothing more important, than to return to Siena: where when he arrived, by a death not unlike, in the short progress of time, called away from that life which he had holily led, sixteen years ago, he closed his last day.
[8] Like to these is B. Peter And yet I am carried further: therefore, lest my speech proceed fringed, I return to narrating the rest of the illustrious actions of thy Alumnus and my Father Peter. Which Father indeed, still a boy and passing his fourteenth year, displayed nothing puerile: which, since he had an exceptional disposition toward virtue, he spurned all the allurements of the fawning age; and treading underfoot with the foot of an immaculate affection the enticements of the flesh and of pleasure, he consecrated the unsullied flower of his virginity to the very Spouse of virgins and God. It was to be discerned that the youth, an old man in the maturity of conversation and chastity of manners, applied himself to serious things, attended the temples reverently, assisted at the sacred mysteries piously and chastely, followed integrity, piety, and submission of mind, as we have taught above; pursued his parents with a certain special zeal of observance, showed reverence toward his elders, exhibited gentleness and mildness toward his equals; and, what is by far most difficult, cultivated poverty amid delights and domestic riches; and by a certain severe discipline of life and fasting, excelling in every kind of virtue, by love of virtue, chastised his innocent body; and, that I may comprehend much in few, in every kind of virtue, above his age, above custom, above his strength, by an admirable sense of mind he excelled the rest during that time most of all in his native city. And so even then his virtue and his zeal for spiritual things were so highly esteemed by all; and his most chaste manners had conciliated to him so much veneration, that from the external bearing of his very body, from his countenance and eyes, composed to the signification of modesty and religion, all easily perceived the candor implanted in his mind and the ornament of his soul, he is admitted into the confraternity, and soon thought illustriously concerning him. Which things indeed were the more looked up to in the boy, born of noble family, the more contumacious and haughtier than all his father Gulielmaccius was held. Moved and impelled therefore by these causes, the Chief men, together with the rest of the assembly of the same Confraternity of B. Mary, did not hesitate, him earnestly [p] asking and demanding it, to add him to themselves: although they were not admitted, except those whose age was at the least twenty years, and who were endowed with entire reputation. Therefore they receive the candidate, admit him, and the Brethren, animating him with a grave speech of the President, soothe him with the kiss of peace; and amid the harmonies of the sacred hymns fall upon his embraces.
[9] Which pious youth, having obtained his desire, did not allow that anyone should miss his part in that place; since when he had resolved to lay the first apprenticeships of the spiritual warfare among such great men at a still tender age, he is eminent in pious exercises, he so contained himself in his office, so maturely and chastely bore himself; that according to the custom of the Confraternity he gladly performed there day and night the sacred prayers, the scourgings of the body, and other religious duties of the kind: and he caused, that all with altogether one voice pronounced, that he would one day be the glory and light of the Confraternity. Nor indeed did the opinion deceive them. For how great, and how conspicuous in sanctity he turned out, those left attested to posterity, who survived him in that place: since by the public consent of all, lest any oblivion should ever blot out the memory of so great a man from their minds, and that it might be daily before the eyes both of themselves and of posterity, and there he is beheld painted after his death. they took care that the effigy of the same blessed Man our Peter, clothed in the Carthusian tunic, and supporting his feeble limbs with a staff, be painted after his death partly in monochrome on the wall, partly in a picture with exceptional workmanship and variety of colors: which indeed unto these very times all piously venerate, and worship: namely with a square stature of body, with a face full of dignity to the sight, with an open forehead, with great eyes, and in the white of them a black pupil, with an oblong nose, and slightly curved at the top; with lips somewhat prominent yet without any deformity, with cheeks set off by a discreet leanness, with a color between waxen and white; briefly with dark hair [q]. I would wish that God, beholding and ruling all things, might cause, that I may by writing depict the face of the virtue of our blessed Father, and the grace of his inward beauty. But what shall I, unequal to so great a man enriched with divine gifts not only in genius, but in life at once and in merits? or with what colors of mine, rude, shall I depict the affection of his heavenly mind, who was always affected with one ardor of mind toward God? Therefore it would be plainly very little, or nothing at all, which I should be impudent enough to dare to spread open: since whatever of divine candor and comeliness, whatever of heavenly beauty and dignity shone again in his mind, all of it (lest forsooth human mortality should pluck anything for itself) almighty God Himself, the maker and contriver of things, claimed wholly for Himself.
CHAP. IV.
[10] Through the increases of age and virtue advancing on each single day, our honorary youth, and placing toward God all his care, Nor does he minister there only, all his affection, acts, thoughts, and finally all his love, could not but love also his neighbors, whom the most wise Founder and Maker of all things wills to be loved in Himself. Therefore so great a commiseration was in Peter toward the troubles and calamities of men, that when he cast his eyes upon the languishing, the very most pressed by extreme want, or gravely affected by another disease; he was straightway broken by mercy of them, so that he left nothing of place or diligence remaining, whereby he might not help them, as far as in him lay. Hence it was, that he did nothing as gladly, for relieving their calamities and miseries, both in mind and body, as that he should give himself wholly to them by ministering. For this one cause therefore he went to the hospitals and public infirmaries; but to that one above all, with no companion attached, he had been wont very often to go, which to that time we see dedicated to S. Lazarus, but also to the lepers in S. Lazarus five hundred
paces and more above a mile from the city of Siena. That place he reckoned to be chosen by him before the rest, in which he might fulfill his desire; namely of expending himself wholly in the obedience of charity toward the lepers, for this reason, because it had been founded for tending and nourishing these. Thou wouldst see therefore the most noble youth Peter, as they relate, blandly and amicably consoling the languishing themselves; exhorting these to Christian piety, raising up those worn out by grief of mind with the hope of heavenly goods, stirring others to patience and virtue, washing the same also, and making the beds of the same. Thou wouldst see, I say, him handling, wiping, binding round their wounds and ulcers, and in all ways bringing aid; and, what is the chief thing in so great a deformity of languor, taking his food and drink together at once with them, while he ministered the dishes wearing a linen garment. O great charity of thine, Peter! that no wasting, no foul corruption, no contagions finally of disease to be shunned hindered, but that thou shouldst pour thyself wholly into the ministries of the wretched: prepared even to undergo all the misfortunes, which that foul plague could have brought to those rashly thrusting themselves upon it: just as though nothing were dearer or more delightful to thee, than to dwell domestically among them; since almost no day passed (provided faith is to be had to Columbinus, whom it would be plainly mad for anyone to discredit) but that thou shouldst betake thyself to that Hospital. Nor indeed is it a wonder, for so great a youth would not have lowered himself into so great humility, unless he had first grown warm to the marrow with the fire of the most ardent charity. Nothing is so small or so vile, that he who perfectly loves leads himself unworthy of it.
ANNOTATA.
p. In the Life 3 of S. Bernardine published at 20 May it is said in chap. 1 that this man was enrolled in this Fraternity, after other illustrious men, among whom is numbered Petronius de Petronibus, who, made afterward a Carthusian, illustrated the same Religion. But this is B. Peter, of whom we here treat. The same Bartholomew says is proved through the old monuments and Mss. Codices.
Since the image at the front of the Life published at Siena seems plainly similar to this description, I shall not be loath to exhibit it here, copied thence.
CHAPTER II.
The entrance of Peter into the Carthusian Order, who, declining the Priesthood, cuts off his finger.
CHAP. V.
[11] When day by day our Angelic youth boiled with the ardor of divine love, and reckoned with himself repeatedly, that he could not fulfill his desires and likewise his zeals of piety according to his will, placed amid so many wicked perils of this age; since nothing was prior or older to him, than that it might be permitted him to follow a holier and more perfect cultivation of the life to be led, and to hold it to the very end; he began himself seriously to devise various ways, Solicitous about the state of life to be embraced, by which he himself might manage the matter according to his mind. For this very thing therefore his mind is frequently in doubt, and what counsel he should sometimes take, or whither to turn himself, he knows not. For when many things, and those at times under the appearance of the most absolute sanctity, to pursuing which one thing he conferred all his cares and all his thoughts, presented themselves to his mind; he was for the most part led to this, that, relying on the clemency of supreme God, he did not hesitate to attempt whatever things most difficult, for instituting a new kind of life, in food and cultivation especially most harsh. But again the same things, which he had now with generous alacrity shaken out in himself, while at leisure he recalls them to the reckoning; he clearly perceives, that the plan was by no means free and unimpeded for him, for holding that course of living, which, snatched away by inclination, nay even by a certain will, he had conceived, and proposed to himself as most easy: our youth being still ignorant of those arts, by which the demon uses for deceiving the incautious minds of mortals, those especially, who in spiritual things, trusting too much to themselves, resolve to follow only their own will and their own judgment. Since stirred by a certain admirable zeal to cultivate Christian poverty from the Gospel, he was held by a great desire of seeking the far-off spaces of the lands, where, bound by the laws or oath of no congregation or assembly, he might walk inglorious in a cloak among the dregs of the lowest commons: and after the manner of a Alexius the most holy man and Roman Patrician, he is inclined to imitate S. Alexius, he might pass the nights under the open sky or certainly in some vestibule of the sacred buildings, destitute of all human solace; and so without a household hearth the world might be for a home to him, for a roof the sky, for a bed the ground; and inserted into the herd of the poor he might door to door beggingly collect alms; that with free and unbound mind, whatever leisure should be left over from begging of this kind, he might consume it all in the sacred temples, in pouring out prayers. But the counsels of the pious youth, in so ardent a desire of accomplishing the matter, should fall to nothing, his father Gulielmaccius alone brought about, whose persecutions namely he most feared. Since the boy had long experienced him fretting, on account of the intercourse with the squalid contracted in his very native seat, and even within his very paternal hearth, but out of respect for his father he is deterred. then he conceived him in mind as more crabbed to himself and raging more harshly than ever: as one who, fierce by the forces of power, and contumacious in disposition, and also greedy of increasing day by day the Petrona stock, would by no means suffer the most renowned lineage of his family to be affected by so great a disgrace, from the squalid and most contemptible manner of his son's life.
[12] To Peter therefore anxious with these cares, and seeking all the best things for following the footsteps of Christ and the Saints, saner counsels were sent down by the Father of lights, that thence as it were by an efficacious and salutary remedy he might at length at some time provide for the solicitude of his mind: which indeed was of this kind. The fourteenth year was then being passed, when a man at once most ample and most learned, b Riccardus Petronus, Vice-Chancellor of the holy Roman Church, and Cardinal Deacon of the title of S. Eustachius, of Siena, From the testament of Riccardus Petronus the Cardinal with no less munificence than piety and religion toward the monastic estate, by his testament bequeathed four convents, namely one of Carthusian Monks, another of Cistercians, a third of Nuns of the order of Preachers, but the last dedicated to the Minorites of holy Clare, to be built within the circuit of Siena, or certainly in the very surrounding territory of the city, by his brother's son John, whom in the year of this age one thousand three hundred and fourteenth, on the XVII Kalends of February at Genoa he named heir, where he then died, out of his precious furniture only, and a great weight of gold and silver magnificently chased. Of which, since this Carthusian of ours obtained the chief place, accustomed to go to the Maggiano Charterhouse when constructed, only the ground laid out into plots he attributed to the Fathers of the order for the sake of building the convent, in the field of Maggiano, not further from the native city than five hundred paces, two years c after the death of the most excellent testator, the most flourishing man Bindus, son of Bindus and grandson of Falco, of Siena: who, as the cousin of the same Cardinal, and the indefatigable executor of his supreme will; so in work and expense, was a most magnificent imitator; since he too raised from the foundations the Pontignano Charterhouse, situated on a lofty and pleasing-to-behold mound, at the third milestone from the city of Siena, in the year after Christ born one thousand three hundred forty-third; and assigned revenues and farms for nourishing its Monks d. Therefore that convent of Maggiano, built by his family
and perfected, Peter had been wont to go to frequently: for the nearer it was from the city, the more easily he thought he could run out to it. Having admired the reverence of the Monks dwelling in it toward the heavenly Godhead, both in frequenting the choir of the church, and in treating divine things, he finally felt himself keenly impelled into this mind by a certain hidden instinct, that, his native goods and hearths being left, he should add himself to them as soon as possible.
[13] Nor did he in vain embrace this mind divinely instilled into him. he is drawn to the Order: Since, the Lord having been consulted and propitiated by many prayers, that He should most kindly be present to his undertakings in so ardent a zeal of meriting divine grace, he set out at length once for the Charterhouse, having it fixed not to seek again his native cradle. Since indeed through this flight full of sanctity he came into hope that it would be, that, having become master of his vow, both he might wholly forsake his parents, and might give himself wholly to God, likewise segregated from public and domestic affairs: and might be joined with Him, who alone is most pure, by a most pure intercourse of life, as far as human mortality bears: and from continual prayer, the contemplation of sacred things, the familiar reading of sacred books, he might drink in the splendor of truth. With this counsel therefore prostrated suppliant at the feet of the Fathers of the convent, breathing then something divine, Peter earnestly asks them, that they admit him into their company. Which Fathers, alleging at first that his years were too tender for undergoing the duties of the Order, hold back a little: into which, being 17 years old, he is admitted: then moved by his exceptional piety toward God, by his modesty, by his very great esteem, and by the exceptional disposition which he displayed, they think him, being seventeen years old, to be admitted into their Order; although the decrees of the Order require at least the age of twenty years in receiving an alumnus, that according to the Lord's precept he may be able to proceed to the sacred wars. Then at last he is received, and his hair being shorn, which then according to the custom of the age the males had been wont to comb and nourish with greater care, let grow long, he is clothed in the regular tunic, the sacred band of Monks chanting together: and soon, numbered into the herd of our men, he is likewise handed over to a preceptor to be instructed in the regular disciplines. But the year of novitiate being completed according to custom, Peter swore, and most chastely took the solemn vows of Religion, into the words of Galganus e Vannis who then presided over the house, in the name of the Maggiano convent: and he professes. about to bring more splendor to the same convent by his sanctity, than the beneficence of the most ample Founder had brought to its founding by his name.
[14] But with how great assiduity he then strove to render what he had pledged to most holy God by oath; with how great piety, with how great religion he strove to ascend to the summit of Christian perfection; how he applied himself to obedience, chastity, poverty, to silence and solitude; how he performed all the rest, which become a religious order, with admirable alacrity, it would be long to narrate. He declines the converse and sight of his parents, But this one thing at present I cannot let pass without crime, that as soon as he entered the monastery, he so far abdicated from himself all his native riches and all the insignia of his most renowned family, that, hiding solitary by institute within the walls of his little cell, he never wished to receive even the meeting of parents and kinsmen: nay, when he could at some time have gone to them, seized by a grave disease (which disease drained their life), for duty's sake, namely by the leave of the Fathers; yet he never suffered himself to be brought, to give to flesh and blood, what he confessed he owed to virtue. And thereby it was brought about, that he bore the news of their death with so brave and constant a mind, that he showed himself to all unstruck by any bite of grief; thinking it better to be accused of impiety toward his parents, than once to violate rashly, on account of God the immortal parent of himself and of all, the purpose of solitude he had seized. Nor content with these things only, but, aspiring to lofty things, he spurned also all the rights of kinship, lest, against the law of Christ, the first and oldest of all to him, he should be at some time compelled to offer them the assent of the flesh; nothing of temporary matters, which pertained to the same parents and kinsmen, did he ever wish either to drink in with his very ears, or that speech be brought in his presence. For he very often reckoned with himself, that he had not yet done God's commands from the soul, if, when in body he had left his own home, in mind however he dwelt in it, and at the same time was delighted with the address of his parents (even then desirous of them): or according to the precept of the Gospel, if one who had now willingly and gladly forsaken father, mother, and brothers, that he might be held a worthy disciple of Christ; should still bring his mind to be vexed, when, either softened by the blandishments of his household, or led by a certain softness implanted by nature in the human race, he himself of his own accord should admit them conversing. Matt. 37
[15] By which severity of Peter toward his own it came about, that his parents, ill and grievously bearing so great a firmness of his mind, thought themselves utterly despised: especially because they perceived themselves and theirs to be made of no account by him and repudiated. But on the contrary it can scarcely be told, with how great pleasure he was suffused, what solid fruits of tranquility and inward peace he daily plucked from this discipline of gravity: not ignorant and very well taught by his own experience, stripped of all affection toward them, that no one within the Carthusian enclosures can perceive in his soul the delights of divine things, unless, all things being sent before, like Jacob he remain alone, that he may see God face to face, and be made happy at once by a blessing and by a change of his name for the better; nor like Moses enjoy the converse of God in solitude, unless, first unshod of the affections of this world, and freed from the bonds of dear ones, he approach naked to the naked Christ: since, S. Jerome being witness, the desert loves only the naked. This nakedness of Peter's affections toward human things I would altogether distrust that I could demonstrate more clearly, unless the most weighty authors had, in plain and clear words, as the rest which we have hitherto demonstrated, handed it down to memory; whose words in this place it especially pleases to report, that it may be more plainly clear to all, that Peter constituted for himself no solace and no defense in human things at any time. But if ever (they say) his own brothers, the parents being now removed from the midst, and others who by kinship touched his name and stock, sometimes sent New Year's gifts, little presents, and other gifts of humanity of the kind, to the Charterhouse for kindness' sake; never could the blessed Man, equally severe toward them as toward himself, be brought, even compelled by prayers, nor does he accept the gifts offered by them. to accept them, but with an utterly obstinate mind rejected them; both that the religious profession of votive poverty might be evident, and that he might show in very deed, that he had no account with them: since he loved them only so far, as they too pursued God with charity and the duties of religion. As soon as this had become known to them, they took care that those very gifts be brought in the name of others, who either by daily intercourse of friendship were intimate with him, or were affected toward him by some other zeal of piety; reckoning no doubt that the same would be received by him no otherwise than they did; which nevertheless he judged were to be accepted only with the name of Christ injected. But as soon as he began to be more manifestly bright with the spirit of prophecy, and at once to foresee divinely things future and far-off; so far was it, that they could at any time impose upon him; that, shut up, he foresaw also all their acts and deeds, just as though they were before his eyes, from the very farthest off with the pure gaze of his mind.
CHAP. VI
[16] Meanwhile Peter ascending by these steps to the summit of Evangelical perfection, as has been demonstrated above, and daily making greater progress in the virtue of Christian humility and obedience, it seemed good to the President of the convent, him now promoted to the order of Deacon, to be raised also to the apex of the Priesthood: that through the office of dignity of this kind he might turn out more suitable for performing the rest of the ministries of the Order. As soon as these things come to the ears of Peter, Reckoning himself unworthy, it is wondrous how grievously and sorrowfully he himself received them: laboring only at this during that time, namely by what reasoning he could escape so honorable an office: thinking himself utterly unworthy, to whom so great a burden, to be dreaded by Angelic shoulders, should be entrusted; namely fearing, lest, through this specious occasion, a way should be opened to him to the government of others and the administration of affairs; since it was fixed to him rather to be subject perpetually, than to preside; and at the same time resolved, as far as could be done by him, never to involve himself in the entanglements of temporal things; being wont to use in daily speech, that temporary matters and the cares of them bring very much detriment to a man panting after heavenly things, and despoil and strip him of greater and more precious gifts. Wherefore, since he knew this very thing excellently, he could not but, with all the effort he could, hedge up every way, by which a passage might lie open both to honors according to the custom of the Order, and to the administration of household affairs: by no means doubting, that by this kind of life to be led he would more easily follow the footsteps of his humble master Christ.
[17] In this deliberation therefore, when Peter was of a confirmed mind, he of his own accord meets the Head of the convent; and prostrated at his feet, he urges with the Prior, that he be not made a Priest, he opens to him his counsel; and lays out that it is fixed in his mind, that he never wishes to undertake the dignity of the Priesthood: since, conscious of his own inexperience, he denies, that he can, religion being safe, undergo an office of this kind: therefore he vehemently beseeches and adjures him through Christ the Lord, that he be not compelled to undertake that burden. The office is far unequal to his strength, to be entrusted to worthier, more learned, and holier men: he knows his own vices; and although not ignorant of his weakness, yet he is prepared according to his strength always to receive in the other functions of the Order, which regard the manner of private life, all duties: but in undertaking the Priesthood he is not the man, who could fulfill its parts according to the majesty of the thing: since it exacts an almost divine virtue, and an integrity perfect in all respects both of body and of mind. He is sufficiently and more than enough increased and honored by the order of Deacon, to which degree of dignity he has ascended utterly unworthy, if he rightly remembers what the Apostle writes when to Timothy, he sets forth the manners, integrity, and virtues of a Deacon: finally he does everything, says everything, that he might permit himself to decline an office of this kind. Nor plainly in vain: since the Head of the convent, having sufficiently admired Peter's modesty and submission of mind, nor in vain: and likewise congratulated the candor of his mind, rushes most lovingly into his embraces (since nothing avails as much, for conciliating to us the benevolence of men, as submission and moderation), and exhorts him to accommodate himself to the custom of the Order: since through this, the first of all as also the most excellent among all the functions of Monks, he would have a freer faculty of joining himself more closely to God. But the pious youth nevertheless, far more eager to obey than to command, again entreats the Head of the convent with prayers indeed most lowly, that he suffer him not to be led away from the purpose he has undertaken. At length he obtained this at present most grievously, very many other excuses being brought to frustrate it, that much time intervened, in which he was pressed by no solicitude about the dignity proposed to him.
[18] Meanwhile to Francis Altoviti, formerly President of the house, Francis Turae Montaninus of Siena f is substituted; who, since he by no means approved Peter's counsel, as one who excellently understood, but compelled by his successor, how much splendor for propagating the glory of God, and how much advantage for the salvation of mortals, those confer through the Priesthood, who together with integrity of manners have joined innocence of life and sanctity: not only did he not admit to his mind anything of those things, which Peter brought forth for refusing the degree of the Priesthood, but not even to his ears: nay even he admonishes and exhorts him, that he put his shoulders under the burden, and embrace with a willing and glad mind the counsels of the Fathers. And behold for thee a new contest in Peter of depressing and submitting himself: behold again straits. For by what zeals of humility he thought he could bend the will of the Head of the convent to his own, by those same he much more vehemently inflamed him, that he should compose himself wholly to his judgment concerning the office to be performed. the Godhead being implored, Wherefore when Peter perceived every place forestalled by prayers, and that there was no refuge left for escaping; and it was now nearer that he should yield his hands, than that he should obtain his wishes according to his mind; he kept watch with an inner care than before, in observing more zealously those things, which especially would make him master of his vow. But first of all to explore the will of the Godhead, and to call its help in his afflicted affairs, he applies himself through many prayers: that in the supreme will of executing the counsels of Christ He should inject into him that mind, by which he might both block every approach to this dignity, and likewise pursue contempt of himself, not in words only but in very deed, through his whole life. Nor was the entreaty poured out in vain. For having obtained the space during those days of speaking familiarly with a physician, and the physician consulted, he asks of him, whether, if one finger of one of the hands were wholly amputated from someone, he would incur the danger of death: from whom when he had received this answer, namely that there was no danger underlying in that cutting off besides that of pain; thou wouldst scarcely believe, how he was made gladder than is wont, not despairing that it would be, that especially by that reasoning he himself might accomplish the matter altogether according to the mind. Which from the very Physician, as they call him, he fished out with such dexterity of mind and indeed with certain tortuous little questions, that he could never by thought attain, whither this speech of Peter tended.
[19] What more? Stirred by the fire of humility, as by a certain gadfly, Peter resolved altogether to attempt the matter; all hope namely of managing the affair well being placed in God alone. And so under the great pretext one day of making wooden spoons, he wholly cut off for himself the salutary finger of his left g hand with a pruning sickle; and showed himself so constantly to rage against his own self, he amputates a finger for himself: that, stirred by a generous and lofty spirit of contempt of himself, he seemed to suffer no pain; since, no wailing emitted, no groan uttered, and as if he did not at all feel the force of pain, he bravely bore that section. Nor yet did that exceptional deed of humility then lack its reward. For so great a force of divine sweetness he felt himself suddenly suffused with: that, as he confessed about the time of his death, a new light of divine grace being offered to his mind at present, he received a sure pledge of the future felicity and glory to be obtained in the heavenly fatherland. But, lest anything here be wanting to proving Peter's patience, it came about, that he afterward learned by experience, that that sweetness of whatever kind had cost him very dear: since (as the surgeon, who treated him medically, and who survived him, asserted constantly enough) Peter during the treating from too great pain often fell down to the ground lifeless. And at length by this most powerful impediment he caused and brought about, that he could never in all his life enter upon any dignity: and so rejoicing in his bosom he fulfilled his desire, namely of showing and calling himself the lowest of all and subject to all; imitating Francis of Assisi, whose example in fleeing the office of the Priesthood had always stuck to him in his inmost marrow; then emulating exceptionally Ammonius h the Hermit: but in both following the most profound humility of Christ the Lord, who showed that He had come not to be ministered to but to minister, by words at once and by deeds indeed most exceptionally, while, immortal God Himself, He dwelt among mortals.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER III.
Peter's humility, obedience, poverty, abstinence and patience.
BOOK II, C. I
[20] But now, having narrated the things which Peter did up to the twenty-fifth year of his age, I think it will not be amiss, nay rather I deem it worth the trouble, Although by love of humility if, in pursuing the rest of his deeds in succession, I shall take my beginning from the virtue of humility and submission of mind: since the zeal for this illustrious virtue (as being the surpassing parent and nurse of the rest) he so loved in all his life, so embraced, so finally constantly and perpetually held, that in that one alone he might seem to have claimed the principate for himself. They relate indeed that it is too arduous and laborious, to recount the single virtues of Peter; partly because they were almost innumerable, partly also, because he always strove with all zeal to conceal from the rest his every exterior deed, and at the same time the interior gifts and benefits which he had received from God. Nay even most weighty men assert, that Peter even from boyhood had zealously begged of the Lord, he wished his pious exercises to lie hidden, that he might be obscure to all mortals, and no one detect his zeals and exercises of piety: which the Blessed Father too, divinely commanded near death, did not hesitate to disclose that he had obtained; and that this was especially the cause, why very few of his more hidden deeds were committed to letters. Nevertheless he could not, that I may use the same words of Columbinus, so great a light lie hidden under a bushel, so great a treasure be concealed, nor the precious liquor of such great virtues be hidden in the little vessel of his body, but that in some part it should flow out and overflow: so that mortals should run after the most sweet odor of his deeds, and pluck for themselves whatever they reckoned would profit thence themselves and the salvation of souls. I shall set about therefore to narrate concerning our blessed Father Peter, those things which are set before our eyes, not to be admired but to be imitated: since otherwise I am not ignorant, that those things which we behold done by most holy Men, hedged about by divine defenses, yet these are here proposed for imitation. and which exceed the powers of nature, and surpass the grasp of men, are not to be examined by the weights of our weakness: but in the Godhead of His eternal mind, with whom presiding and leading, nay through the breath of His very self commanding, they themselves suffer them, are rather to be venerated with faith and silence. But it is just that we little men descend to imitate those examples of true piety, of true and solid humility, and of charity toward God and our neighbors: from which let us learn, by what journey we must walk, to arrive at that blessed fatherland if we wish, whither they themselves arrived, who bore themselves holily and chastely. Of these one and the chief was our Blessed Peter, whose exceptional virtues we ought, not to admire, but to imitate; whose manner of life, not to look up to in mind, but also to embrace in deeds; and whose finally acts and operations, worthy of a happy and blessed immortality, as far as we can, and even somewhat more than how much we can, to express in our very selves. Which that they may be more clearly clear, I think we must come first to the humility and submission of mind, as I said, in which more business seems to reside: inasmuch as it without controversy, for obtaining heavenly beatitude, holds the highest place in man.
[21] Peter therefore, made glad in the greatest manner by the cutting off of his finger, because through this kind of mutilation he seemed not only to have excellently hedged up for himself every approach to honors from the sacred sanctions of Pontiffs and Fathers, Free of all ostentation, but also to have opened a wider way to contempt and disdain of himself; wholly concordant with himself, within the bounds of his most dear little cell, he betook himself more freely to contemplate God; and contained himself more gladly in it, and descended into himself there so much the more frequently, the more he reckoned from his soul himself the lowest of all mortals, and especially in need of divine help and aid. Hence it came about, such was the humility of his mind, that although he appeared wonderfully equipped with such great helps of nature and grace, yet he never seemed to ostentate either his sanctity, nor his prudence, in which he was exceptionally strong, nor likewise his knowledge: but to think of himself and his affairs so lowly and humbly, just as though he were one of the lowest commons especially: nay rather he always strove to abject himself, and always to deject; and desired revilings and mockeries to be heaped upon him by others, and at the same time to be torn by the contumelies of words. desiring not only not to be exalted, but also to be despised, I do not say that he despised the most noble lineage of his family even from boyhood, and spurned honors through all his
life; since I know it not to be of so great virtue, to hold dignities and honors in the last place, as to seek disdain of one's very self: for it is more that thou neglect to be ill-received, than that thou not desire to be treated honorably: but that is of the highest perfection, as it has been handed down by the most weighty and most holy men, that thou shouldst long to be most ill-affected. That assuredly our blessed Father sought, and to this with all vows he gaped. But indeed he well knew, that it was not enough for illustrating the glory of God, to hide away virtues only in the recesses of the mind, unless they also burst forth into work, either for the utility or solace of others, or certainly for example. For this very thing therefore, he performs the lowest ministries: lest he should be entirely empty of burden or rather of honor, he obtained this dignity within the convent; and in very deed thus brought it about, not ignorant of true honor and solid virtue, that he should often perform all the lowest duties and servile ministries, which are unworthy even of relation: but to reject the splendid ones, or the honorable, and averse to flee them with hands and feet.
[22] he serves the sick: Nor yet was he content with these; for from the Fathers he begged that the care of the sick be entrusted to him, which he also obtained. Truly from those things which followed, no sound man would not clearly perceive that Peter had sought a place, by which he might more abject himself, and by which he might exhibit more charity in performing that office to the sick Brothers. For he stood by day and night according to the nature of the disease to the sick: he alone the curator of the infirmary to hold out food, to insert it into the mouth; he assiduously to raise up the lying, to build up the pillows; he to purge the chambers with a snatched-up broom; he to exhort, admonish, sometimes even to entreat; nothing was more pleasing to him, nothing dearer, than to help his languishing Brothers and Fathers by every means he could. Sometimes likewise he most blandly addressed, sat by, conversed, and mitigated the pains of the body and the grief of the mind, not by speech only full of humanity and duty, but also in very deed and work much more. Nor further did the matter stop here: for, having meditated other things with a certain wondrous straining of mind, he is set over the mending of clothes: and executed them by the deeds themselves; that by them he might more and more despise himself, and show himself obedient to others on each single day: namely, that he might be set over the mending of the more worn-out clothes of the Fathers, he extorted rather than obtained. O profound submission, Peter, of thy mind! for thou hast established an illustrious lesson by thine own example to the men of the Carthusian institute, namely how much external things profit for reforming internal ones; to be reformed in thee I would not say, which were never deformed and weakened through deadly fault. This is, I shall say with S. Basil, that for acquiring humility external zeals and exercises of humility confer very much; that in external cultivation humility be studied, in clothing, in food, in house, in bed, in the household furniture, and even in the use and intercourse of men, and finally in all things; that in all things alike in work and words the splendor of this heavenly and divine virtue may shine forth, and at the same time the zeal of it the lover of religion may perpetually cultivate.
[23] he praises not his own virtues but others', But now since concerning Peter's wonderful humility, namely of mind and of substance, it has been said; it remains that we make words also concerning that humility, which he always displayed in speech, both for opening the senses of his mind, and also, that he might inflame others to cultivate virtues generally, the torches not of human but of heavenly glory being set under them. That humility therefore Peter showed in speaking, that he proclaimed concerning himself no otherwise than he thought. And as often as he had to make speech concerning the praise of any virtue, kindled with the zeal of stimulating his neighbors to embrace it, he never turned back his speech upon that virtue, which then especially he set before the eyes of his mind to be praised by himself, lest perhaps anyone should ascribe it to him: but he used this supreme moderation of mind in extolling it, that he always bent the whole weight of the matter and the force of speaking upon some man, marked with a virtue of that kind: but if at any time it befell him to see a man cultivated with these virtues; he does not bear to be praised. straightway he would institute speech concerning his praises, and never lay down the memory of him in adorning him with words: and that this was done by him for the example and spiritual edification of those, they relate, who listened to him discoursing. But on the contrary if anyone had at some time wished to adorn him with some praise, or with the reward of virtue, or with the honor of words; it is wondrous, how most indignantly he would suffer it: since, troubled in mind and vehemently moved, he seemed to himself by that praise not only not honored but even burdened. Therefore he never suffered himself to be praised: nay even he desired himself and his to be despised and disdained, said and proclaimed himself to be of no account. And that I may complete this chapter in these few words, those testified, who used Peter familiarly for the Carthusian institute, that they had never seen a man, who abhorred human praises as much as he, or who thought of himself more humbly: which indeed could be conjectured from this one thing especially. There was a certain man excelling in virtue and intimate with Peter, who, since he did not sufficiently approve that he should everywhere descend to all the lowest things, and deject himself with such great humility, since however otherwise he could not but, on account of the excellence of spiritual things and skill in letters, be worthy, he proposes the emptied Christ, to whom all the rest should be at hand and obey him; by a liberal jest once rallied him, plainly requiring greater authority and gravity in managing his affairs. To whom soon Peter; Brother, said he, my Lord Jesus Christ emptied Himself made obedient unto death: nothing more uttered to that effect. Wisely indeed by these words our Peter declared, that the true nobility of a Christian man rests on obedience, but obedience on a certain exceptional submission of mind, so utterly, that man subject himself to man for God's sake. By which illustrious answer, he then shut the voice of the friendly man, and left with him as long as he lived a singular opinion of a certain exceptional sanctity; which he thence very often reckoned with himself, and was wont willingly and gladly to narrate to others.
CHAP. II
[24] Although no inexpert estimator of things, what spirit of voluntary poverty Peter had, and he loves poverty: and by what desire of it he was held, because, captured by love of virtue of this kind, he marvelously desired even from his entering adolescence to go forth from his native soil, and to go to the most remote parts of the world, could clearly know from those things which we have taught above, yet it seemed good to set forth singly concerning it, those things which we have ascertained were once handed down in the monuments of letters: since to this virtue Peter attributed so much, that he, following the sentence of S. Ambrose, esteemed it first in order and as it were the guardian of the other virtues. Of which he showed himself so zealous, so desirous and very loving for all time, that thou wouldst have said he was the poorest of all, provided thou wilt measure the virtue itself rather by the mind than by substance, as is just; nay even in this he strained all the sinews of his genius, that he might take care to express in his very self Christ, whose humility he strove to follow, also through the toleration of poverty, with all power. Which so conspicuous zeal of Peter toward this divine virtue God Himself, according to His singular clemency, seems to have held ratified and pleasing to Himself; since by certain arguments divinely declared He showed, of how great merit with Him this poverty of Peter was, and how much in him to the very end he loved that same thing. Nor only did our Blessed Father always show himself most desirous of this virtue, but also he loved not moderately those whom he found animated to the same virtue; giving exceptional effort, where there was place, that in cultivating it they should be perpetually constant to themselves: being wont besides for this very thing by frequent discourses to use the singular and golden excellence of this virtue; but very often, that a man aspiring to lofty things should cultivate this virtue especially; that one devoted to the zeal of piety, and burning with the love of Christ, ought to follow this, embrace this, and most of all love and make much of it. Which as it is a special impediment to a man, that he should less adhere to these lowest things, which indeed is wont to be the fount of all evils; so in turn an illustrious help, by which his mind may be contained in the love and zeal of eternity. And yet, although from the Carthusian discipline he well knew, that every faculty of seeking food for himself by begging had been taken from him; that in very deed he might more freely, as he vehemently desired, fulfill his desire; yet with all zeal, as far as he could attain by his strength, he applied himself to this above all, that, what was next to it, he should excellently perform; namely, that, what he knew was not lawful to him by the statutes of his Order, he should never distrust that he could pursue that same thing by himself within the very peristyles, that at least even by the very desire he might obtain with God the merit of utterly stripped poverty.
[25] he uses scarcely any furniture, Thou wouldst see therefore our Peter, in his very aspect, in speech, in gait, and even in his very worn-down and mended garments, and in the domestic furnishing of the cell, which after our custom is attributed to a Carthusian cell-dweller, so to reproduce this divine virtue of poverty, that in him alone the same poverty seemed to have established its seat. Since whatever furniture he had in his little cell, while still dwelling among men, and what after his funeral was now elevated had remained in it, thou wouldst reckon scarcely twenty sesterces at the most: unless perchance among them thou wilt wish to number the cheapest trash, set aside in a certain place, namely for mending the worn and torn tunics of the Fathers. These are not my words, but Columbinus's: which that they may be more clearly clear, in this place we wish to insert them turned from Etruscan into Latin. A trifling thing, thou wilt say, to tell. Plainly trifling, I confess myself too: but I would have thee believe me, by no means to be neglected by those most zealous of Evangelical perfection. And whatever, says he, of movable property was for use to him from the institute of the Carthusians, we reckon to be of no more value, to which afterward a heavenly odor adhered: than one florin only. Of which florin indeed the sum, if I should wish to enter upon the computation of the money of this time, it is certain does not fill up a gold piece and a half: provided faith is to be had to the reckonings and the day-books of another age, to which indeed I altogether judge it is to be had: because in investigating that matter I confess myself to have been a reckoner, the same curious and diligent. All which Columbinus professed himself to have almost with him: and although most despised by mortals, certainly by no obscure argument, in what place with our blessed Father this virtue was, and how much he made of it: because they even now (says the same Columbinus) pour forth from themselves so great a fragrance of odor, that no spices or rivulets of balsam could be compared to them, if they flowed through the buildings; since no perfumer, nor any maker of unguents, can conjecture whence the fragrance of odor of this kind should flow
or flow forth. A wondrous thing! But what, I ask, is the sweetness of the poured-out odor; unless that his body, to which these things were applied for a despicable use, while he lived abhorred all mad turpitude and corruption?
[26] he detests avarice and prodigality: And let these things be said at present concerning the zeal of poverty. The rest, which I hold, and which make in a wonderful manner for this very virtue, will be able to be noticed from those things which shall follow next. Nevertheless I deemed it worth the trouble to subjoin certain few things to these, whereby anyone may openly understand; how Peter had always detested avarice, as, as he himself was wont to say, the most foul poison and pest of all virtues; so in turn he never dared to approve prodigality and immoderate expense, nay even to declare that it must be utterly routed: since he affirmed it to be nothing else, than a certain part of incontinence, akin sometimes to turpitude and crime. For when men by lavishly bestowing begin to be in want, they are for the most part either compelled to lay hands on others' goods, or with an utterly mad counsel meditate procuring death for themselves, or certainly in a pitiable manner are ashamed of their extreme want. Therefore when it came to Peter's ears, that nobles, and those especially lovers of religion, heads of families, in his native city, were inconsiderately and lavishly squandering their household substance, induced to this especially by a certain luxury, that thence they might acquire the splendor of munificence, or in constructing buildings and founding temples might gather the fame of religion; straightway sick at heart he would send men, who should demonstrate to them that the matter was full of danger, and teach how much by that lavishness every family is brought into peril, and therefore they should see again and again, what prudence requires in establishing and moderating domestic affairs, or in what state their affairs were, lest they should ruin themselves or others: let them therefore take counsel for themselves, provide for their family, and finally set a measure to their liberality. From which causes it came about, that those who in those lavish expenses wished to follow their own sense, by no means took Peter into counsel: since indeed it was now everywhere divulged (such was the constant opinion concerning his sanctity among all, and his repute) that he bore it ill and utterly refused it.
CHAP. III
[27] Meanwhile when day by day Peter's virtue and name, the domestic enclosures broken open, flowed more widely; A pious woman, bringing bread under the name of alms to Peter, a concourse of people to the Charterhouse began to be made. For some came for the sake of consulting Peter, some met him for duty's sake, some impelled by another zeal betook themselves to him: but more often, that, kindled by his duty and charity, they might be aided by his prayers with God, came to see; often at other times, that by his most chaste discourses concerning divine things they might be informed to the zeal of piety and religion, came before his face. Wherefore I think it by no means to be wrapped in silence, what by reason of this matter a chief woman, named Agnes, who had formerly been wife to Angelo Ugolino, affirmed constantly enough. For she narrated, that she had once been joined in familiarity with a certain woman, exceptionally devoted to piety: which woman, since she burned with a great desire of speaking with Peter, inasmuch as she had received concerning his exceptional sanctity, both by fame and by hearsay, thought this method especially was to be entered upon by her, whereby a freer and more unimpeded approach to Peter should lie open to her. This religious woman had brought certain little presents to be bestowed on Peter, among which was one bread of just size, and neatly made to the appearance, and accompanied by the nurse of the blessed Man, of whom we made mention at the beginning, sets out on the way to the Maggiano convent. As soon as she arrived there, and met the blessed Man at the doors of the house, once according to her vow she gave him those very gifts: which indeed he, wonderfully delighted by the woman's simplicity, and at the same time admiring her kindness, reverently received; because through these he seemed in some manner to be made master of his vow, namely that it might be permitted him to live in some part by begging; and since by his institute, as has been demonstrated above, he perceived in mind that he could not go to others' doors laden with a little sack for the sake of collecting alms, he might at least at the doors of his own convent find one, who should bestow on him alms in the grace of Christ the Lord, just as if he were one of the squalid herd of the poor.
[28] That woman beholding this, suddenly felt herself borne with such great religion toward Peter, and more often, that soon a desire seized her, of returning to the same place not a second and third time, but more often; that, as she wished, it might be permitted her to enjoy the sight of the holy man, and likewise be incited by his most pleasing conversations to lead her life piously and holily. Which woman, that she might more easily satisfy her piety, reckoning no doubt that she would do a most pleasing thing to Peter, resolved every fifth day of the week, under the same name and cause, to make a single bread like that one, and to carve on it during the kneading the sign of the Cross, that on the day thence of Friday she herself might bring it to the blessed Man, on which day she had learned that only the simple food of bread and pure water, after the Carthusian custom, was for eating and drinking to him. Therefore while the woman carefully takes care to maintain this institution of humanity now assumed by her, that happened plainly not unworthy to be wholly omitted. For the same noble Agnes most holily asserted, she goes and returns untouched by the rain, that she had very often beheld this woman, setting out for the Maggiano Charterhouse with the bread now appointed, the most foul rain rushing from the sky and the streets and cross-roads inundated on every side, since however she again perceived her in going and returning with garments and shoes so dry, namely in no part drenched with rain, returning home. Nor indeed a wonder. Since then the rain was afraid to touch the woman; because as soon as it felt the flame of charity, lest it should do an injury, the drop turned itself back. But neither here yet did the matter stop. For another no less admirable thing, the same most choice matron relating, they relate. For when on a certain Friday that woman had gone to the bread-chest, to take the bread according to custom, and she found the sign of the Cross expressed in the bread. that she might carry it thence to the Charterhouse, struck with huge amazement she uttered a most sharp cry: which when Agnes heard (inasmuch as she, by chance, or by God's nod? was then dwelling with the woman) she straightway ran thither, where she found the woman herself like one fainting: and at the same time (a wondrous thing) she beheld the divine power so to have appeared, that in the bread to be carried to the blessed Man, a contrary color expressed two Crosses, and a distinct double variety showed the sign of our salvation: the one namely sprinkled with purple blood, the other elegantly elaborated like the most shining gold and skillfully distinguished. By which illustrious sight Agnes driven into admiration, thought she should wait so long, until the woman were of her mind: who when at length she had returned to herself, openly testified, that she had beheld other things far worthy of greater admiration, which at present she constantly denied that she could utter and publish.
CHAP. IV
[29] When first even from his tender years above his age Peter seemed to be wise, the providence of the Godhead directing him, first of all he reckoned that a contest must be instituted by him against the enticements of the body. Hence in that apprenticeship as it were of age and the childish discipline the vigils prolonged, hence the incredible sparingness of sleep, Accustomed from boyhood to various mortifications, hence the lyings on the ground, and the other duties of removing filth thence assumed, as has been demonstrated above, could be discerned in tending those laboring in leprosy: that namely by those exercises stronger in the following years, his mind might rise up for procuring the most excellent virtues of the Christian life; and at one and the same time he himself might more easily raise the illustrious impulses of his mind to the contemplation of heavenly things. Namely through the hardness of the life to be led, duly undertaken in the name and cause of Christ, and through the labors of the body religiously and chastely drained out for the expiation of the soul, who does not perceive in mind, that either the pristine and inborn candor of the mind is more securely retained, or, lost at some time (which is the fragility of the human condition), is more easily restored; and, as flesh rubbed with salt, the whole spiritual man is preserved from corruption, lest, basely wantoning, he flow apart into luxury? Which since Peter excellently understood, he applied his mind to chastising his body, that, it being mortified and reduced into servitude, together at once with the Apostle Paul, he might live not to himself, but to Christ, and Christ might live in him. Gal. 2, 20 Therefore having entered into this purpose, he resolved to join to the foregoing lessons of the Christian mind others no less illustrious: now a Religious he fasts strictly, namely he thought that fasting and abstinence from foods must be embraced, and tooth and nail maintained to the very end. Of accomplishing which thing he came into the greater hope, the keener the goads by which he felt himself impelled day by day to follow Evangelical perfection; than which a man is stolid and utterly mad, who thinks he can attain it without the defense of this virtue: since so great is the force in this very virtue of abstinence, so great the dignity and splendor, that without it the rest can in some manner neither shine nor cohere. Of which virtue indeed the most savory fruits Peter tasted on each single day so much the more eagerly, the more frequently he approached the most sweet banquets of prayer and contemplation; and so far burned with love of it, that within the Carthusian enclosures he was never not most zealous of all the Constitutions, which were anciently sanctioned for the Fathers of the Order to cultivate this singular virtue of parsimony: of what kind they are, how long and lasting, they themselves understand of themselves, who profess to hold the Carthusian statutes in some part.
[30] Since from the day of the Exaltation of the most holy Cross up to the Ash light, especially at certain times: on the day only once with scant food he sustained his life: the same again from that time, that is, from the head of the Forty-day fast to the most holy solemnities of the Lord's Resurrection, to pass his life much more harshly and roughly; the same the whole week before the festival of the most holy Paraclete; the same on many other and other days in succession, which he himself by a certain private religion on account of the merits of certain Saints was wont to observe, not from porridge only or milk-foods (for to make words concerning the eating of flesh-meats is utterly a capital matter in all his life among the Carthusians, much less to taste anything) but he abstained from almost all food. And in this so harsh and hard kind of living that thing worthy of imitation, that at the common table, on festal days only after our custom, himself reclining in the refectory, he always used those common foods, with which he found it furnished: complaining nothing during the eating, and never seen to display anything of singularity. But in his little cell to retain that reckoning of frugality and parsimony, and to withdraw from himself so much of drink and food, as he had been wont to tame his own body, as a wanton and untamed little ass. A great praise indeed of a Carthusian cell-dweller, to fulfill all the parts of this salutary abstinence, which his own Order prescribes to him. But Peter's exceptional piety advanced far. Not by these bounds only was the religion of his mind held circumscribed: since, kindled with an incredible ardor of suffering for Christ, harsher and
more austere things the cruel arbiter of his own self devised. For indeed, the memory of the most bitter slaying of our Saviour being to be pursued, and he sleeps hard: for the whole five years in taking sleep his head, whether from the left or from the right, from the shoulders along the confine of the neck, raised up no pillow, leaned on no boarding, and finally never adhered to any wall: but sleep would overcome him either standing or sitting. What thou shouldst wonder at first I know not, whether at him standing and interruptedly dozing, or at him fighting with himself and likewise conquering himself, or at length, in the very bed, now scorched by heat and warmth according to the season, now stiff with cold. All things plainly hard and most difficult to do: except that the weakness of the body the mind occupied with God could less feel: but although (which is human weakness) he felt them, yet for the love of Christ he reckoned them most light. But for obtaining more illustrious merits it came about, that by such negligence of his body he fell into a long disease. For the sinews of the neck being long and much stretched, and their connections relaxed, through all his later age with the greatest torment he walked stooped.
[31] When first the Fathers of the convent notice this, reckoning that so great an evil must be succored with all zeal, they send for a physician summoned, sick he spurns the medicines, that he may treat him medically. Which when Peter learned, inflamed with the illustrious hatred of his own self, he resolved to disclose to no one either the cause of the trouble or the pain: fearing, lest while remedies were applied to the body, he should indeed make a grave loss of merits: nay even using upon himself a sharp chastisement of stripes, he thus spoke with himself: Wilt thou be able, Peter, to escape the eternal flames? Wilt thou be able to sustain punishments and innumerable tortures in the supreme despair of all things? If thou wilt be able, take, and apply these human remedies. But if not, whither these things? For what the curings? for what so great softness of mind? What the helps of healers for procuring eternal felicity? Why dost thou not rather resolve that all troubles must be devoured, all miseries sought, and every difficult and good long combat against thyself undergone? Cast down therefore and utterly abject these solaces of the body, shake off sloth, drive negligence far off, and show thyself a man plainly worthy of the Christian name, worthy of piety and religion. Desirous therefore of punishments Peter, seeking to suffer more: entreats Christ Jesus his liberator with the most intense prayers, that according to His clemency He never suffer him to be freed from that and so great a disease; nay rather that He heap others on others upon him in each single hour with troubles: that even by a certain shadowed appearance, he himself a creature not unlike, may reproduce in himself his Creator, formerly enduring on earth such and so monstrous things for him. Nor were the prayers sent in vain. Since as long as he lived, both with pain of the head, and with other languors of the body and most sharp punishments, he was so exercised, that when he was almost fifty years born, thou wouldst have reckoned him sixty and more. Which punishments how nevertheless he gladly undertook, and bore moderately, even from this then could be foreseen. Peter labored at some time from pains of the sides so sharply and bitterly, that, when a noble physician very dear to him, whose name was Angelo of Domino Colletti, came to the Charterhouse for the sake of visiting him; and proposed to him gravely ill many and various medicines, he considers the eternal punishments, for driving away the punishments; he himself, while he reckons himself unworthy of them (such was his humility), suddenly, a great rain of tears pouring itself from his eyes, exclaimed, saying: Remember, son, that thou hast received good things in thy life. Nor spoke more to that effect: but permitted himself to be healed only by nature and time, the remedies of whatever kind for the disease being rejected; so far was it, that he should be cast down from the purpose and degree of his severity, applying himself only to this according to his strength, that he might break the great trouble of languor by a greater consideration of the virtues, even stronger in mind as weaker in body. Therefore let no one wonder, if our Peter is said to have spurned the curings of the exterior man, since to the cultivation of the interior alone he had brought his mind. For which cause neither the rough hair-shirt, nor the woolen undergarment, and the harsh and twisted rope, which he wore girt about his loins in the Carthusian manner, nor finally the leggings and the rest of the clothing, did he ever withdraw from himself, except after a long interval of time; and these, plainly negligent of himself. when especially they were beset with squalor and filthy, it behooved him to be compelled to put off. For so he always abhorred from the delights of garments and excessive cleanliness, so he showed himself averse from the rest of the adornment of the body; that I believe there is no one, who would certainly deny that the hardness, which he exercised upon himself through those same garments pressed to his flesh, was a great trouble to him.
CHAPTER IV.
The gift of prayer and contemplation in Peter, with exceptional charity toward God and his neighbors and sanctity of life.
[32] Through the assiduous languors and the macerations of the flesh, and through especially the very beauty of virtue and the love of it, with which day by day Peter was wonderfully captured, he felt himself to enjoy so great a tranquility of mind, With the highest peace of soul that, all things being peaceful to him, and as if secure he stood in a certain most placid harbor of inward peace; he displayed in words and deeds that he held the state of his affairs happy and pleasant; and although he was on earth, he enjoyed certain first-fruits of that heavenly state, where to the supreme and most perfect peace, through the most august sight of the eternal Godhead, all things are reduced. Hence plainly it was, that, that he might follow Christ calling; and hear Christ, who had now led him into solitude, he meditates heavenly things, speaking to his heart; he expended whatever he had of strength, both of mind and of body, on the meditations of divine things and the contemplation of heavenly goods. Of which what method he kept, to me writing at present occurs that admirable institution of praying, with which, I would say divinely, even from boyhood in his paternal house he had been imbued: which when I myself reckon, that a great accession of divine things was made to him within the Carthusian peristyles I must of necessity say, where nothing has anything in common with secular things, and nothing of human things disturbs a man gaping after heavenly ones; nay even all things afford the faculty of giving oneself to prayer without any impediment. Which, as they are far remote from the custom of the vulgar, so they are most accommodated for containing the mind in the contemplation of supernal things. In these peristyles therefore, as in a certain stadium, through which one runs to the true and solid perfection of Christian virtue, Peter exercising himself, made so great progress in spiritual things, Christ being master and preceptor, and had so great advances in praying and meditating; that this one thing in him was indeed to be admired, among the illustrious and singular gifts and ornaments, which God Himself had heaped upon him with full hand, that he was so devoted to the meditation of divine things; that no thing ever, either prosperous or adverse, could disturb or impede his mind; that he should the less enjoy with assiduous meditation Christ the Lord, to whom he had dedicated himself wholly, and be joined to Him with a certain wondrous sweetness of spirit. impeded by no thing prosperous or adverse, Wherefore it was sufficiently ascertained (as those who had been among his most intimate friends have set forth in the monuments of letters) that he obtained this through this one zeal of praying, not only that he should bear his mind suspended in God and abstracted, whether he stood, or walked, or, shut in his little cell after our custom, conversed either together with the Fathers of the house, or with others who flocked to him: but he came to such charity toward God, that he himself often did violence to himself, lest he should make any word concerning divine things: because he feared, lest by the vehemence of spirit and the inebriation of divine love he should soon be abstracted from his senses; he suffers divine things rather than acts: and so it could even then be said of him, that he suffered divine things more than he acted them. Although, that he might be constant to himself and his humility in all parts, he strove with the highest effort, as far as in very deed by skillful dexterity and zeal he could attain, that no one at all of men should notice, what and what kind of gifts and higher lights, as exceptional monuments of divine love in himself, the most wise Maker of all things imparted to him during prayer.
[33] But concerning so great ornaments and benefits, divinely conferred upon Peter in this zeal of praying, that I may set forth more fully, what during the same time of prayer he himself did, or in what manner especially he prepared himself to perform this divine work most chastely, the whole matter must be begun by me a little higher. Joachim Cianus had been a young man, Joachim Cianus familiar to the Saint, of Sienese birth, and born in an honorable place; who, stirred by Peter's virtue and fame of sanctity, betook himself to him, as he was most desirous of following piety, that he might hand himself over wholly to him to be ruled and governed in conducting spiritual matters. Whose exceptional disposition of the young man toward the zeal of piety and religion Peter congratulated, and so loved him having day by day wonderful progress in virtue, that he judged him worthy, whom he should make partaker of his counsels; and used him as a very suitable go-between, especially for exhorting, entreating, sometimes admonishing, sometimes even rebuking those men, whose salvation especially was at heart to him; or for those matters especially to be conducted in the Christian cause, which by himself, hindered by the reason of his institute, he could not accomplish or unfold. From which causes it came about, that the Fathers of the convent, both reckoning that they would do a most pleasing thing to Peter, and moved by his and Joachim's prayers, called the man into their friendship and intercourse; free power being given him of approaching and withdrawing from Peter at his own discretion, no account being had either of time or of place. That Joachim therefore, since he was held by a great desire on each single day of knowing, what special zeals of piety Peter had during prayer, and by what method especially he composed himself in contemplating heavenly things, and perceived that he could not attain this very thing with the Maggiano Fathers, their little cells being on every part hedged into the very peristyle of the convent; having got the occasion of Peter's migration to the Charterhouse b of Belriguardo, two miles from the city of Siena, which Nicholas Cinughus, following him into the Charterhouse of Belriguardo, a most wealthy and noble banker of Siena, left by testament to be founded in the year of this age from the Virgin's childbearing one thousand three hundred forty-first, Joachim followed the blessed Father thither: reckoning namely that the time had come, in which he might at length be rendered master of his vow.
[34] Nor did his opinion deceive him. Since, the little houses, after the Carthusian manner, not yet during that time in the Belriguardo court, in an even order and with separated intervals, being built, a chamber for dwelling had been attributed to Peter at the house not disjoined from the rest; from which with easy business what he alone did in it, what sighs or what groans he uttered, could namely be discerned and heard by a sagacious explorer. In which matter Joachim using the place in time, toward evening first, then after the morning prayer (which time the blessed Man, whatever leisure remained until light, was wont to give all of it
all not to sleep and rest, but to consume in the contemplation of divine things) keeping watch in mind upon all the acts and works of Peter, he sees him exercising himself variously in prayer. creeping with suspended step to a certain door of his chamber, observed Peter himself, now humbly bending his knees, now lifting his eyes upward, now likewise prostrating himself with his whole body on the ground: sometimes he discerned him kissing the earth, and humbling himself wholly to God; sometimes pitiably beating his breast, and filling the chamber with sobs and groans; but sometimes taking the codex of the Gospels into his hands, and applying himself to the sacred reading so zealously and diligently, that, a continual profusion of tears arising, he most copiously diluted the book during the reading; which, as it was of parchment, so thou wouldst see from the eyes, the rain flowing, crumpled on every side (as Columbinus testifies), just as if immersed in waters. Thence at other times Joachim confirmed by illustrious testimony that he had beheld the blessed Father, standing on his step, soon receiving himself again upon his knees, and motionless in body and mind, no otherwise than alienated from his very self. Sometimes with arms spread out awaiting in some manner divine charisms from heaven: for the most part likewise after wailing and most mournful weepings he contemplated our blessed Man to exult with so great gladness, that, his eyes fixed on heaven and his hands lifted up, he showed sufficiently and more than enough, that he did not dwell on earth mortal among mortals, but reigned in heaven as if immortal. But who now can by speaking attain the ardor of his mind, burning with heavenly fires? who by speech unfold the silent and hidden senses of his divine mind, tasted from the contemplation of heavenly things? who can with mind and thought comprehend the joys, who the influxes of the divine breath, who finally the rays of the heavenly Godhead sent into him? for receiving all which he had not so much to labor, as to relax and expand the bosom of his soul. How often did he commend himself, how often his own, how often the whole Christian Commonwealth to the Creator and Parent of us all?
[35] But what need is there to use another's testimony and work, since the matter itself speaks of itself? himself appearing after death, Let us hear, I say, our very blessed Father, and at the same time let us with open ears let down into our mind those things which, now inhabiting the fatherland of the Heavenly ones, girt with blessed immortality, he wished to indicate. Which things plainly will have to conciliate the greater authority and faith to themselves, and at the same time affect the reader with joy, the more far more excellent and loftier divine things are than human ones: and from him namely mortal man will rejoice to have received these things, who formerly while he was on earth, yet wholly raised aloft in mind, had always followed not a human but a certain divine reckoning of life. Peter therefore, when after his death he had appeared to a certain man, radiant with heavenly light, and then mingled many conversations with him concerning divine things; concerning these among other things (as Columbinus, who narrated these very things under oath, and so testified the matter, that a fair estimator of things can by easy conjecture attain, that it was that same man, still ignorant and rude of heavenly things, to whom these very things befell) that man aspiring to lofty things began to question the blessed Father; Tell, prithee, my most sweet Father, whether one who has now dedicated and given himself wholly to God, perceives, he indicates that those thus praying are affected with the highest delight: when he gives himself to divine and heavenly contemplation, pleasure, or is suffused with some sweetness of spirit? To whom soon Peter; He is affected, said he, with that pleasure, and is captured with that delight, that it cannot be understood and perceived, except by him who with huge sweetness of mind plucks thence the solid fruits of divine pleasure: nay even with so great abundance of heavenly joys, while he insists on divine meditations, he abounds, and is heaped with those divine gifts, that sometimes he can exclaim, that he is by the divine spirit stirred up even to heaven from the ground. So it plainly is. Since both of this mortal life, and of this heavenly and divine one, he procures for himself a marvelous knowledge.
[36] For the sake of this matter it pleases to bring forward an example concerning the most holy Apostle and Evangelist of Christ the Lord John; who, when he had drunk a huge force of the water of divine contemplation, forthwith obtained those notions of the loftiest things, that he began his speech to utter so sublimely, that no other ever before or after dared at any time to attempt it, when he himself full of God thundered, In the beginning was the Word, &c. Which words indeed, which he proves by several examples of Saints pregnant with the loftiest mysteries, none can comprehend with understanding except those who are adorned with a special gift of God, and wet with the perennial and true water of contemplation of this kind: to whose excelling and exceptional state very few are raised, since it is filled with all virtue and perfection: and for this very reason there was never anyone of mortals, who, when he had truly drunk of this pellucid water, had revolted from Christ the Lord. 2 Cor. 12, Hither makes indeed that which the Apostle Paul says of himself: I was caught up, says he, even to the third heaven, that is to the throne of the most holy Trinity: where from the most copious and most pure fount Christ Jesus well drunk I returned; so that, as if drunk with this water of divine contemplation, I wished nothing else thenceforth besides Christ Himself and Him Crucified: and in this place thus exclaimed the divine Apostle, so that he transferred his whole self into Christ Himself, and changed himself; I desire, saying, to be dissolved, and to be with Christ: from whom neither Angels, nor demons, nor contumelies; not death, not hunger, not thirst, nor anything else can separate me; so far has my Christ bound and constrained me with Himself. Phil. 1, 23 Ask Magdalene, who daily at fixed hours was caught up aloft by the ministry of Angels, to contemplate God Himself. Here I would have thee presume in mind how much of this divine and most pure liquid she drained out. Question Francis of Assisi, whose contemplation of divine things obtained an illustrious effect; since with his hands and feet together with the stigma of the side he represented in himself the proofs of the Lord's Passion most conspicuously. c Inquire of Jacopone of Todi, of the same family of Francis a man endowed with the highest sanctity; who, that he might more easily watch over spiritual contemplations, loved most exceptionally above all disdain and contempt of himself, that, dead to the world and to his very self, he might cleave to God alone through such great meditations of divine things. Nor plainly in vain. Since loathing all worldly things, which blind mortality holds in special honor, and wholly absorbed in God, he was for the most part suffused with so great divine sweetness, that wandering through the streets and cross-roads as if mad, in mockery of human things, Madness, he kept crying out, Madness.
[37] Soon then again asked by the man Peter; What savor, and he unfolds what effects of contemplation he felt: added he, has this water of divine contemplation? So many wondrous savors, answered the blessed Father, it bears, that among mortals it cannot be expressed in words. How much, I ask thee, added he, most sweet Father, of this water didst thou drink, while thou didst enjoy the usufruct of this light? So much of it was handed to me to be drunk and tasted, that a thousand times in a day for Christ I would not have hesitated to meet death. So much, I say, that I would have exchanged the whole globe of the earth for chaff. So much besides of divine understanding through this water of contemplation I drank up, that I wished nothing else, except holy poverty, and disdain and contempt of myself in all things. So much of it I undertook to drain out, that I most desired the hatreds of all to be stirred against me, and that I be cast into the very flame of the envy of all mortals for the cause of Christ my Lord. So much plainly of this water I drank deeply, that through it I procured for myself the sweetness of tears; through it I acquired a huge commiseration toward sinners; through it I obtained discretion, through it faith, and through it the desire of martyrdom. So much of this divine water God holds out to His servants to be drunk, that through it the seal of unsullied virginity, which is the sister of Angels, and any other virtue, is acquired. Tell, I beseech, Father, what discourses or what conversations has this man raised to that summit of contemplation? He has those discourses, and what conversations he used, so far sweet and most lofty, answered the blessed Man, that with these words he could sometimes confidently address Christ the Lord: Into a pleasure-garden distinguished with flowers and so planted with fruit-bearing trees thou hast led me, that for the huge sweetness and fragrance of odor I feel myself to languish in it, and utterly to faint; to a fount, abounding with an abundance of perennial waters, that I may be wholly submerged; to a certain most pleasant retreat, in which with grateful shade, with the sweetness of the purer breeze I enjoy with so great pleasure, that I would never wish to set my foot thence. And here at every remission of spirit, the bosom of the heart relaxed and opened, he passes a most sweet leisure; and fixing his eyes on Christ, thus lovingly mingles discourses with Him: For thee I would wish to die, for thee I am prepared to show myself unto every hazard, and to endure any punishment whatsoever, that at length at some time I may be led with thee to that exceptionally cultivated garden, where with wondrous beauty of colors and sweetness of odors roses, flowers, and lilies are perennial. Then he speaks with himself, from the deep of his breast emitting bellowings of compunction, uttering sobs of piety and ardor of mind, and eliciting wailings of satisfaction, sprinkled with the savor of all sweetness. Ask a man panting after heavenly things, what is in his wishes at the beginning; Weepings, says he, and sighs of inward grief, while I insist on prayers and divine meditations: which weeping indeed is then turned into all joy and sweetness.
[38] with the amazement of the hearer of such things. These and very many other things to the same effect Peter said being questioned: shining namely with so great a beauty and splendor of countenance and so divine a beauty of the eyes, and conspicuous with so great a comeliness of face and dignity of the whole body and bearing; that it was indeed no wonder that he, who was the fortunate petitioner and hearer of these things, was caught out of himself, and, alienated from all corporeal sense, fell down to the earth; and there lay lifeless so long, until the blessed Father himself had stirred him up, and brought him aid, that he should rise thence. Which blessed Father indeed is to be thought also (subjoins Columbinus) to have then handed somewhat of this most sweet water of contemplation to be tasted by his faithful servant, concerning which, glittering with exceptional brightness, he had made him words: and these being performed, Peter, shining with the light of the Blessed, ascended the heavens. But now from these things, which we have just demonstrated, it will be permitted by no absurd reasoning to a sensible and prudent man to conjecture, what senses of divine things Peter had; and what impulses of divine love in contemplating heavenly things, still weighed down by the mass of mortality, he sustained; and finally what fruits of inward peace and tranquility from this divine leisure on each single day he received. Who although he received all with domestic address and always cheerful countenance, and among all dwelt familiarly in the convent according to his institute and the time; yet as often as he wished and where the occasion offered itself
of collecting his very self, straightway, his mind and senses alienated, namely wholly snatched away by the vehemence of divine ardor, he was caught up into God. O Man full of God! O Man, I say, utterly heavenly! No otherwise do we hear thee speaking of the contemplation of divine things according to the grasp of human weakness, than thou, while thou didst tarry on earth in body, placed in mind in heaven, didst experience.
CHAP. VI
[39] If anyone shall have intended his mind and thought to those things which a little before we have taught, From a huge love of God, there is no doubt, but that he himself will much more easily understand, with what charity Peter was toward God, and with what desire of Him in each single moment he boiled; than I, void of genius and lacking virtue, could pursue in speech. For what of his most sweet weepings in contemplating heavenly things? what so many labors, so many vigils? what so keen and diligent a zeal of praying? what, I say, those fervid aspirations to heaven, and the wailings sent from the deep of his breast? what finally that vehement desire of suffering for Christ, and for illustrating His glory? With a huge love indeed toward God, with which he day and night most flamingly burned, he wrought these and many other things like these. Since when in Him, whom with the whole affection of his mind he loved, his heart and mind had flowed together; he could not but most pleasantly taste the sweetness of the divine goodness: especially since all human things were nothing to him, separated from all the wicked enticements of this age, he desires to be dissolved: in comparison with the Lord Himself and with the love of Him. From which causes it came about, that on account of the sweet union of divine love he assiduously deplored the long duration of his life, and with grief, repeating these and other things of the kind very often, he cried out: How long, wretched one, how long shall I be detained by the cares of this body? When will that time be at hand, in which I shall enjoy the longed-for embraces of my Christ? I desire, my Lord, my Jesus, my most sweet love, to be dissolved; that at length at some time I may be with Thee, joined to Thee, and live with Thee the life of the heavenly ones. Which words indeed with so great a sense of piety, and with such great motions of mind, raised by an incredible zeal of enjoying God, the blessed Man uttered; that thou wouldst say him almost forgetful of himself, and indeed plainly forgetful, wholly absorbed in the love of Christ. Truly our authors testify, namely Columbinus and Nicholas Vincentus, that they had repeatedly beheld our Peter, wholly alienated from his senses on account of the desire of heavenly eternity: but sometimes turned to God with the most fervent aspirations so far, that for the most sweet sweetness of divine love he seemed utterly to liquefy, and to faint from his very self in mind and heart, and soon to be caught up into God: and this was wont to befall him then especially, when he was asked, whether he desired to die, and, the earthly mass of the body laid aside, wished to fly to heavenly things; just as though he rested secure in the recollection of the one heavenly fatherland. Indeed (they add) we do not hesitate to confirm by public testimony, that we long ago noticed Peter from his sayings and deeds namely, to be led by a by no means doubtful hope, nay even to be certainly assured to himself, that in heaven after his death he would enjoy the fellowship of the blessed Spirits: that he desired nothing more on each single day, secure of eternal salvation: than that it might befall him to migrate to those above as soon as possible. But indeed, that he might obtain it according to his vow, he certainly knew that there was by no means a free will to him: he therefore always took care according to his strength of this, and bent toward this very thing his mind and all his strength, that he should do those very things, which were most pleasing and dearest to God, and apply himself wholly to exploring and executing His will.
[40] By that thing therefore he embraced all mortals with so great love: since he was not ignorant that they, redeemed by the most precious blood of Christ, and therefore dearest to Him, were so; that day and night he was prepared for their salvation to undergo all dangers; to endure hunger, thirst, and the last things; that, all being brought over to duty, all likewise toward loving God, and rendering Him all worship and service, they might in turn incite themselves. From love toward his neighbors, he does everything for their advancement, And thereby indeed it came about, that he undertook more solicitude himself concerning the salvation of his neighbors, and of those especially, whom he found suitable for the good fruit of perfect virtue. These I could not easily say with what ardor of charity he inflamed to cultivate Christian virtues, striving with the highest effort, that he might help them by what means he could, and retain them in the course of a good mind. But those of them, whose salvation was dearest and especially to him, whom he understood to have deviated from the right region, he most zealously gave effort through suitable and sure men, or through epistles, that, their errors detested, they should descend into their very selves, and return to the way of virtue and honesty as soon as possible. But those sinning, whom he perceived he could not help by work, zeal, or counsel, he certainly succored with prayer and vows with a willing mind. For which one cause they relate, that no man worn out with grief, or struggling with a harder fortune, or assailed by temptations, and with solace, had gone to our blessed Father, whom he did not wonderfully console, and embrace with a certain affection of sweetness. And this was done by him not only by that reasoning, that with most sweet words and composed to commiseration he showed himself wholly most mild and gentle to them; but, what is far greater, as soon as they gave themselves into his sight, and beheld him nearer, they soon felt themselves to be tried with such great and so new joys, that all anguish or trouble utterly departed from their minds. But these and others of the kind it is my counsel to pursue a little more fully in their places.
[41] I pass to his sanctity, flowing from the very fount of charity and thence receiving its force and virtue, to those things especially which serve either for propagating the glory of God, or for procuring the salvation of neighbors: since indeed each one has so much of sanctity, S. Augustine being witness, as also of charity; since charity itself, as the Apostle says, is the fulfillment of the law. Rom. 13. With that sanctity therefore was our Peter endowed, and that norm of living he held, made a most bright mirror of Christian perfection. and so illustrious examples of patience, sobriety, gentleness, religion, and of all virtues he afforded; that nothing was ever detected in him, which anyone could justly carp at. Which discipline of sanctity even against their will they confessed by an exceptional and public testimony, and held it ratified and approved, who with changed will with unchaste mouth attempted at some time to tear him, and to traduce him through the mouths of men: especially because he, inflamed with zeal for God, sharply chastised their ruined manners. Whereby it came about, that with altogether one constant voice he was held a most bright and most pure mirror of probity, and a pattern of Christian perfection; whom whoever beheld, would behold the admirable consummation of all virtues. But that conspicuous and far the greatest of all, in my opinion at least, testimony was, which to his sanctity and innocence a certain Priest rendered (his name our Authors suppress, because he himself wished it suppressed), of exceptional religion and faith, who had been to him for Confessions. For he confirmed by illustrious testification, that not once but more often he had received Peter's general Confessions; and also that he had seen a certain little book, written in the same Blessed man's hand; in which the faults of his whole life, however many he remembered to have committed even from boyhood up to nearly the end, he had also noted in order: nor however had he received any deadly sin even from his mouth, or ever found written. Therefore exclaims our Columbinus, There is no reason, says he, that anyone should wonder that God wrought through this most holy man so great, so many and so wondrous things, and even now works; because while he was on earth, void of all deadly crime, he led a heavenly life.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER V.
Peter endowed with singular prudence, both consults well for himself and others, and directs B. John Columbinus and his kinswoman to great sanctity.
CHAP. VII.
[42] But now an occasion offers itself of speaking concerning Peter's prudence, which as it is said to be among the moral virtues the first and as it were the light of the rest, so in Peter it shone exceptionally; that he seemed to have meditated nothing else in his life, than that in undertaking and transacting affairs, which pertained either to amplifying the glory of God, or to inciting men to the zeal of virtue and honesty, and directing them in the right course of living, he should be wholly engaged. Excellently indeed it has been handed down by most holy men, that prudence consists not in reason alone, but also a great part of it depends on a right appetite: Most prudent he consults well for himself and others, and therefore is weakened and corrupted rather through depraved affections, than through forgetfulness: from which it must follow, that in a man liable to sins prudence cannot be perfect. I shall say therefore, that God the Best and Greatest adorned His servant Peter with so great prudence, that it agreed most excellently with his exceptional sanctity: so that one was an ornament and defense to the other, but both made him both dear to God, and conspicuous to men alike and venerable. For if in life and in conducting affairs a prudent man is praised, because he knows what things are to be sought, and what to be fled, and in the actions of this kind of prudence human felicity is placed; why shall we not call a man endowed with the highest sanctity, the highest continence, justice, integrity, and innocence of life, as we have taught above, most blessed and dearest to those above? especially since he fixes all his cares, thoughts, zeals, and all his endeavors in the contemplation of divine things: that at one and the same time he may place those duties of prudence, which with singular piety he treats, in guarding the advantages of his neighbors, and procuring their salvation. And yet, lest I slip too far from the matter, I hold Peter's prudence in this place especially, by which namely he attained not only that he surpassed his equals in his native city, but also those much greater in birth, by the splendor of his name. For so in his time, and in the city, during that time
filled with many men excelling in sanctity, he excelled in glory both in counseling and in exhorting, that he was second to none of them.
[43] Of this matter and by his own example a most full and most weighty witness is our Columbinus among others, as a little after we shall say: to those coming to him for counsel's sake: this same thing others have testified for other causes, namely as consecrated men and zealous of the right. This very many cultivators of the monastic life often did, by illustrious testification indeed, who moved by a constant opinion of the man's sanctity, went to him as to an interpreter of the divine will; and consulting him likewise concerning doubtful and most grave matters, most of all approved his sentence, as one than which nothing was more apt. This also very many, as everywhere private citizens, women too and foreigners in very deed testified, when they approached the blessed Man from far parts, most celebrated for the name and fame of virtue, for the sake of consulting. Which blessed Man, although, from the purpose of his Order, most desirous of solitude and silence, and more eager to hide perpetually within the friendly recesses of his little cell, than to give himself into anyone's conversation; yet he could not but, especially the command of the Fathers urging, receive the meetings of the peoples flowing to him, afford them friendly ears, and at once both consult for them, and help them by whatever means he could. But although the honorable office of doctrine, joined with dexterity of genius, rendered him sufficiently learned, by a doubled good namely, that is, of nature and of industry; nevertheless however, when anyone approached him to seek counsel, he gave that counsel for the most part, adorned with that moderation of mind which he had, that he should namely betake himself to seek that same thing from other men of tried religion: since he thought their counsels better and saner than his own; and to his counsels he adds salutary admonitions: which then especially is related to have been done by him, when consultations of this kind regarded temporary matters. Nevertheless when he saw round about that he could not escape that burden, he yielded his hand, consulted, decided; and the desire of helping his neighbors urging, he imparted useful and salutary counsels: declining no labor or fleeing no contest (provided he heard, that some one of those, who came to him, or were brought to the Charterhouse by the zeal of pious men, had instituted a more praiseworthy reckoning of life, or had at some time emerged from his own filth, and betaken himself, as they say, to good fruit) now admonishing those, exhorting these; but now consoling those who lay in mourning and grief, and making medicine for the sickness of souls by a most wise reasoning. He taught what each ought to flee, what to love, what to follow, and what to embrace; accommodating to them right counsel, right judgment, and right precept also, according as the state and condition of each person demanded. Nor was there anyone, who could justly reprehend Peter's counsels: since those things which regarded the glory of God, and were adorned with much discretion, he rejoiced that they had certainly emanated from him, who was directed entirely by God's nod.
[44] But if his sentence were sought concerning the manner of changing life or its institute, as if anyone wished to addict himself to some sacred family, especially if the consultation was about changing the religious state. he was not light (that I may use the very word of Columbinus) especially when he beheld a man holding a praiseworthy course of living: unless if however sure indications concerning the divine will were clear to him, so that the matter itself wholly depended on it. But when he foresaw a man, himself illumined by the divine light, impelled to making a change of habit, manners, and institutes, and that he was led especially by reason to undergo a stricter discipline, from which the honor of God above all would follow; then it can scarcely be told, with what assiduity and skill he would promote the very work, and with what zeal of religion he would inform him to the solid and true virtues of the Christian life: that God might in him, as was fitting, be honored most of all; but he might perpetually obtain the salutary peace of heart and tranquility of mind. And what in person to this very thing he could not do by himself, he straightway descended to weaving epistles: in which office indeed according to the gravity of the matter he was so serious and dutiful, that good men easily understood, that nothing was more set before him, than to consult by any means for the salvation of souls: since, lest the business once undertaken for supreme God should go away distracted or lie neglected, he was wont by the very letters written so to urge the man, and to flow into his mind with the most powerful arguments and reasonings of the love of Christ, that, polished by salutary institutions, and animated to attempt and hope for all the best things within the enclosures of religion, with no business at all he would betake himself within the camps of God. efficacious in epistles as in conversations, Which blessed Father in letters of this kind it is wondrous how entire and how religious he was; since indeed, if we believe Columbinus (but who, unless void of true piety, would not believe so great a man, whom the Church makes so much of for his exceptional sanctity?) that Christian perfection was in them, and they were smeared with those lights of religion and a certain heavenly prudence, that those who had once read them, all delay cast aside, seemed to be wise, and soon did not hesitate to attempt a certain wonderful institution of manners. And as in epistles Peter, so also in daily speech he used no curling-irons of words, and was delighted by no allurements of speech: but the speech which flowed from his mouth, was above all gentle and sweet: roughened namely by no clamor, and (what is of more value) composed to piety and true devotion of mind in a wondrous manner: especially since in any conversations whatsoever, his voice always sounded the highest love toward God, and the highest contempt of himself and of the world.
[45] They relate besides, that our blessed Father never instructed anyone in some Christian virtue, but most of all by example. without himself excellently knowing that same virtue, and showing it in deed and deeds; most excellently learned, how much for moving minds to virtue deeds excel words. To these things, that his life, manners, acts, and finally all his gestures, were as a sermon to those approaching him, and that they excerpted more of sanctity from his deeds than from his words. Likewise that those, who went to him, always departed from him wholly glad: not from this alone, that they had addressed him, but only beheld him. That no one ever betook himself to the Charterhouse and met the blessed Man, in whose mind he did not either fix some virtue, or at least uproot vice from him. Which they having obtained, while they were with him, returned home far other men, than they had approached him, kindled with pure piety and love toward God, and animated to follow a certain new and more right zeal of living. That those, who moderated their life according to the will and lead of Peter, at no time deviated from the right journey of life, nor strayed through the ruggednesses of vices. Easy toward the penitent, That very many also, Peter being the author and leader, seized a harsh and hard kind of living for the expiation of their crimes, and then by his precepts passed their life up to the very end piously and chastely. To this is added, that not a few would have utterly ruined themselves, whom he with great prudence, and singular discretion at once the moderatress of things, with which God had wonderfully adorned him, ruled and moderated. Besides, of mortals, who were liable to crimes, so great a mercy they relate broke him, that when he beheld them, or their crimes were brought to him, scarcely and not even scarcely could he contain himself, that he should the less pour forth many tears, the most illustrious testimonies of his inward charity toward his neighbors: prepared for this very thing to confer all his zeals, and all his industry, as far as could be done by him, for drawing wretched and ruined men out of the mire of sins, the obstinate he abhors: and for recalling them to soundness of mind. But indeed, those whom he understood, all magistry of conscience cast off, to wallow with impunity in every kind of crime; and those whom, all the bars of fear and duty broken through, he understood to take almost no account of God and of the Ecclesiastical sanctions, but, pertinaciously hardened, to be unwilling to be corrected; he never wished to have any commerce with them: although otherwise he was tortured in his inmost senses, that souls redeemed by the most precious blood of Christ rushed to a voluntary destruction. But those who, Peter's salutary admonitions at some time spurned, had returned to their nature, these indeed, struck afterward with inward religion, seemed in some manner to fear to come again before the face of that very blessed man. For our Peter was, as to good men and lovers of the right an incitement to virtue, and especially diligent in retaining those same in duty; so in turn, when through the highest impudence and wickedness he learned that some crime had been committed, he did not hesitate most openly to detest that same thing, and to chastise the man wantonly sinning with the most ardent acrimony of speech; that, moved by the weight of words and the constancy of the rebuker, he should look back upon himself, and desist from his wicked attempt.
[46] Nor to the exceptional praise of the holy man do they pass over in silence, those who have set these things forth to memory, dexterous in conducting affairs and festive: both his constancy in retaining the intercourse of good men, and at once his dutifulness and dexterity in instructing those same in virtue, redolent especially of a certain sanctity of mind. Nor did anyone ever see him crabbed, or hear him speaking a little more harshly, or behold him more vehemently moved; except perhaps in the cause of God; for which if he were at some time compelled to put on a severer person, he appeared so vehement and rigid, that everyone who stood by him feared him speaking. But these names being removed, he always displayed cheerfulness, gentleness, and a certain festivity, and showed himself utterly alien from all indignation. By the arts therefore of this kind of admirable prudence, and by very many other zeals of human salvation, which the heavenly Spirit suggested to him, he conciliated to himself so great benevolence of his fellow-citizens and of foreigners flowing to him, and effected such great motions of minds, although (what is more to be wondered at) hedged about by Carthusian walls; that his little cell was worn by the assiduous use of men, who not only from the commons but from the first nobility, and even from various families of Religious, and an exceptional master of Christian wisdom, as we have said, most frequently flowing to him as to a master of Christian wisdom, hung upon his mouth and his precepts: they called him the common parent in conducting spiritual matters; with him to communicate the secrets of the heart, and to the Charterhouse, as to a secure refuge and most safe harbor of tranquility, in adversities and temptations to run out; and the blessed man's chamber, to call a gymnasium and a school of true sanctity. But, in an open matter that I be not more diffuse, it pleases in this place to subjoin the words of Columbinus himself, who after many other things commemorated to this very point, added these at the last. Those, says he, Peter brought forth glad and abundant fruits of souls, that now for a long time it is, since in inciting his neighbors to the zeal of eternal beatitude by word and example he had no superior, scarcely even
an equal; although even though several in our age were within his very native seat, who for the exceptional sanctity of life obtained almost admiration. These things he says, which were done by altogether divine counsel, especially through a man, not in the sun and dust, but in the shade and in the very camps of virtue exercising himself, no sound man will deny, provided he shall have diligently bent his mind to those things, which now hence shall be said by us.
C. VIII
[47] Although, the things which we have hitherto narrated, declare indeed how clearly the friendship and intercourse, which had passed with Peter to Columbinus, S. John Columbinus doubtful about the state of life, who among the spiritual alumni of the same Peter obtained the first parts; yet we have thought it would not be absurd, to interweave also into our history those things, which most weighty authors, contemporaries of that time, have left consigned to letters concerning the same Columbinus; and which Columbinus himself, such was his submission of mind, passed over in silence, while he undertook the exceptional deeds of Peter to be written together with Nicholas Vincentus. That Columbinus therefore, from his admirable conversion to God agitated by the hidden torches of virtues, was cooked with a grave care, because he did not yet know at present, what course of living piously and holily he should institute: since many things with an appearance of religion especially presented themselves daily to his mind, which seemed to display the highest sanctity and the highest praise of piety. Wherefore variously distracted, now to take care that the salutary Hosts of the unbloody sacrifice be offered, now to consult consecrated men of every Order, who excelled the rest in Christian piety, now to go to those skilled in sacred Theology or excelling in doctrine for the sake of consulting, and to perform other things of the kind: by which, the Godhead being propitiated, his mind might be illumined, and at once he himself might so excite his own will to the solid Christian virtues, that he might not only daily perfect the wonderful gift of his conversion divinely handed to him, he consults various men, but also polish it with zeals of love toward God, and in each single moment stand forth more grateful and mindful of so great a benefit. From whose answers although he might elicit many exceptional admonitions and counsels, either sprinkled with piety, or full of the praise of prudence; yet he was not content with them. Since, as a generous man, he agitated even then in mind nothing common or scant, but had conceived in mind and thought certain exceptional and arduous things, for propagating the glory of God, from the very beginnings of his conversion: which indeed so stimulated the man day and night, that to him tending to illustrious things such a counsel, by no obscure providence of God, was most opportunely offered. Now during those times especially the virtue and name of sanctity of our Peter was daily in the speech of men, and to him, as a little before we have taught, great concourses of men were sometimes made, and at length B. Peter: that they might consult him as a man especially excelling in sanctity and dear to God. To this man therefore when Columbinus, distracted by a doubtful thought, had approached; he found him at first such a moderator of his counsels and reasonings, as he had long desired. To whom when he had opened the origin and series of his conversion, and then the senses of his mind; to nearly this effect the blessed Father, when he noticed the little fires of divine love to settle in the man's breast, is said to have discoursed concerning the contempt of human things.
[48] There is no reason, John, that thou shouldst hang in mind, whether thou choose this or another institute of leading life, who shows him how great an impediment is the love of riches, by which through the Apostolic footsteps, marked with the Apostolic spirit, thou mayest walk free and unimpeded. For from those things thou must take the first beginning of living piously and religiously, which hitherto have been an impediment to thee, that thou shouldst the less, as one blinded rather, than softened by the senses of human things, have looked to heaven, that is, have panted after heavenly things, and have neglected the salvation of thy very self. I would have thee weigh with thyself, what solicitudes, what labors, what I might almost say miseries, and huge dangers and evils unto this day thou hast undergone, that thou mightest be a slave to the world and its pleasures, that thou mightest be made rich and increased with riches, and well wealthy, that thou mightest block thy own way to heavenly felicity by the very riches, and at one and the same time fill thyself with manifold evil. For what, I ask thee, does that oracle of our Saviour sound, Woe to you rich, except that by this one word Woe, all evils and all good long calamities await the rich? Luke 6, 24 Is not that difficulty enough an evil, and indeed a huge evil, which the same Lord said the rich have of entering into the kingdom of heaven? Matt. 10, 22 Of which difficulty namely if thou wouldst know the causes, examine thy conscience, and call to the reckoning with thyself for a little, who hast hitherto experienced many and grave things in heaping up riches. Canst thou deny, what perils of sinning hang over in buying, selling, in contracting, or trading? which indeed can be avoided with difficulty and scarcely, especially when the depraved lust of possessing has once settled in the human mind. Therefore I wish it to be established to thee, or certainly by the example of others, that men, who with lust especially as leader are much in cultivating gain, sometimes incur many snares of the evil demons: which the Apostle then seems most plainly to have expressed, when he said, that those who wish to be made rich fall into temptation, and into the snare of the devil, and many useless desires, which plunge a man into destruction at once and perdition. 1 Tim. 6, 8 These then, John, are the dangers, which riches bring. But so much only? Other and other things indeed I could enumerate, did I not think I must fear, lest I should seem to thee too much in speaking. But indeed since I have now begun to speak with thee more familiarly, I would not by any means wrap in silence, what perils of sinning also those undergo, who possess the now heaped-up wealth itself, and use it for themselves; what and of what kind they are, I call thee a most illustrious witness, since from thy own words I clearly notice, that my sentence in a matter not so obscure will be approved to thee. I shall say therefore, and the use and possession of them: whether thou hast at some time experienced, how greatly the use of riches, and the administration and possession of them, disturbs the recollection and memory of God Himself? how it extinguishes all zeal of virtue, and utterly dissipates and drives away the thought and desire of all heavenly things? Are not these great and to be deplored? Great assuredly, which flow out and emanate from the care and solicitude of guarding what each possesses.
[49] To these who can ever recount, what quarrels, what lawsuits, and how troublesome suspicions, therefore this is the instrument of all vices. and noxious appetites at once, and hatreds, and to say it once, that insatiable thirst of possessing, which all flow from the same solicitude of riches, and which by themselves distract a man greedy of amplifying money, and divide him into many parts, and render his mind day by day duller for contemplating heavenly things? Hence besides insolence and pride, hence loathing and luxury, and the head of all evils and vices, pride, proceeds. For, as Augustine excellently says, every fruit, every grain, every corn, every wood finally has its worm, but the worm of riches is pride. For these causes therefore it seems must be resolved, so many divine oracles especially illustrating us, and so many daily examples sufficiently teaching us, that riches can be called the instrument of all vices; both on account of the faculty, which gold affords, to which (as it is in the sacred letters) all things obey; and on account of the great incitements to sinning, which they bring with themselves. Eccl. 10, 19 Which since it is so, what remains, my John, except that thou see again and again, what of gain or profit toward the salvation of thy soul up to this time thou hast made by heaping up wealth, and by transacting commerce; since thou hast so often experienced that they are now so noxious, not only for acquiring true peace of heart, but (what is far the greatest of all) for procuring heavenly felicity? Therefore wilt thou, ho there John, escape so many evils and so many enticements of sinning, he persuades that it must be abdicated, and rise to better fruit? Despise those very riches and all transitory and mortal things. Wilt thou respond as best as possible to God the Best and Greatest, and to His exceptional charity, who created thee out of nothing, and whose divine light recently through His inward breath thou confessest has shone upon thee? Thence I pray thou take for thyself the beginning of living well and blessedly, from which thou hast had material wealthy enough, why thou shouldst show thyself averse from it up to this time. This is from thy very fortunes, as I said at the beginning, I resolve that the manner of life must be entered upon: namely, that thou bestow them on the poor, that, little by little led away from the intercourse of human things, thou mayest raise thy mind to heavenly things. Wilt thou become a follower of Christ, and a disciple? Thou must send a farewell to human things: since He Himself has said; He who does not renounce all that he possesses, cannot be My disciple: and in another place to a certain Youth, demanding the zeals of Evangelical perfection, when He answered; If thou wilt, said He, be perfect, go, and sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and follow Me. Luke 14, 33, Matt. 19,
[50] See, I ask, how laborious it is to arrive at the true following of Christ, unless first wealth be distributed to the poor. and that Evangelical poverty must be embraced, Wilt thou be taught Christian wisdom in the school of Christ? It is fitting that thou follow Evangelical poverty, which I judge to be that golden virtue, which is less exposed to the darts of vain and false glory. Nay even among the other virtues I reckon this one is, which by a short way carries a man, endowed with the best will, to the lofty summit of Evangelical perfection: inasmuch as, hateful to men commonly, alien from the esteem of the vulgar, it has no name and no fame, nor wishes or can catch any: nay rather (such is its force and nature) it accommodates all its reckonings and at once all its zeals and endeavors to executing the counsels of Christ: while, wholly concordant with itself, it freely gives itself to the one God. This, I say, is that virtue, which not only removes the place of all crimes and vices, but also brings with itself and introduces almost all virtues; namely temperance, continence, modesty, gentleness, and what is the head, humility itself: which, as it is the fount and most faithful guardian of the other virtues, so most near to this poverty, and as it were its own sister. In which place beware thou think, John, that I discourse at present concerning that poverty, which either necessity or force or some chance brings; because that kind of poverty, altogether ignoble and squalid, and commonly held odious. And indeed with the best right: since not only is poverty of this kind, as being grievous, not such as takes away lust, but rather brings and increases it vehemently; nor does it beget quiet in the mind, but produces anxiety, care, and solicitude. namely the voluntary, such as Christ held; But concerning that poverty it was my counsel first to institute speech, which voluntary Christ the Lord honored by His example, and to us with most ample words to be embraced
He proposed. Who, as the Apostle says, although He was rich, was made for us poor: since that God, the Son of God, coming to the earth from heaven, took it to Himself thus, that from a poor and slender mother, although sprung from royal blood, He wished to draw flesh: and chose also that place of being born, than which none on earth is poorer and meaner. 2 Cor. 8. For He not, the Word of God and the wisdom and majesty of God so great, in some magnificent or ample house, or certainly in a cottage or some hut; but in the stable of cattle, even in the depth of winter and a stiffening sky, was born: and thence passed all His age on earth thus, that whereas foxes have holes and the birds of heaven nests, He Himself however (as He attested concerning Himself at some time) had not where to lay His head: and (what ought to be a great solace to us) was not ashamed to beg alms, that by the alms of others He might most hardly sustain His own life and that of His own. Matt. 8, 20
[51] What therefore do we further seek? Or what to these things shall we say? Shall it shame us to imitate Christ, setting before him sharp goads to this: and to follow Him by that journey, by which He Himself poor walked? O wretched us! whom it shames as disciples to imitate the master, as servants to follow the lord. Why do we delay further? Why in the lethargy of our sloth do we further grow torpid? O couldst thou behold with the eyes the inmost bosoms and recesses of my breast! Would that, I say, thou couldst look upon the most hidden motions of my will! For thou wouldst confess that I desire nothing more, than that I might join myself to thee as companion and comrade in so glorious a work: a comrade, I would say, that namely by squalid begging among blind mortals, we too together might collect alms street by street for food; reckoning then especially illustrious for us, that Christ the Lord should adorn us with so great an office and so illustrious a grace. But I, what in so ardent a will I could effect, hindered by the spirit of my Order, I certainly do not see, except greatly to look up to and admire the mind of the divine godhead in me; and to rest most gladly in His counsel, who almighty God proposed to me at the beginning that poverty to be followed, which the old Fathers, and those most holy Archimandrites of the Monks, it is most well established to have followed. But thou meanwhile, John, from these things, which it has pleased to tell thee in good faith, the divine Spirit above all suggesting, canst by no so difficult a reasoning gather, what manner of life it behooves thee to establish, if thou wilt do a most pleasing thing to God, if consult for thy salvation, if finally be a solace and joy to all, who love thee from the heart. And these things Peter, concerning the disdain of human things and the praise of Christian poverty, with an inestimable sweetness of spirit at present said.
[52] By which words indeed and so ardent sentences, straightway, as the blessed Father made an end of speaking, Columbinus felt himself so affected and impelled, who moved by these things, to embrace Evangelical poverty; that, illumined then by a new abundance of divine light, he no longer so eagerly and ardently gaped after the gains of monies as before, and afterward despised those very things from his soul. For having detested, as the most foul pest of the soul, that depraved lust of possessing, by which in making gain day by day he was more and more carried away; he began little by little to call away his mind from contracting new commerce, which either as a noble merchant in trading he handled, or as a money-changer in occupying and exchanging money he conducted. For as soon as he began to taste the banquets of divine things set forth to him by Peter, so far was it that he should of his own accord love human negotiations, that even in some manner all things grew vile to him; accusing his very self repeatedly, because in conducting affairs and sometimes in caring for businesses, led by zeal of monies, he was led away from the zeal of virtue and the chaste fear of God. Since indeed in repaying money snatched away by too great lust, he was wont sometimes to withdraw something of the agreed sum; which fault that he might expiate, thence touched with inward religion, first he chastises the zeal of gaining, he declared by an evident change, how much he himself desired, by frequent restitution namely, not only to repay double whatever had been subtracted by him; but also both money condoned sometimes to debtors, and with his household substance and the duties of Christian humanity toward the needy, prompt and willing, to wash it out. Which when by occasion it was permitted him, he abundantly performed in deed and deeds; his wife fretting in vain, and often crying out against him, although she had not so very long before reproached the man's avarice and lust, as having once experienced it inexorable to the wretched and too tenacious. and as far as out of respect for his son was permitted he strips himself, Nor yet content with these things. Since when day by day he implored for himself with careful prayers a greater light from the Sun of justice, he was for the most part led to this, that he resolved with himself both to send a farewell to mortal advantages, and also to embrace the Evangelical counsels. But the incited impulses of so generous a breast his one son Peter, not yet of grown age then, retarded: reckoning that it was not yet entire for him through him, to strip himself in a moment of all his fortunes. Nevertheless what in the highest desire of accomplishing the matter he thought he could do, his duty safe, did not stand still through him, but that with a willing and glad mind he committed it to execution. Which when he did daily with huge alacrity, it was not so difficult for him afterward, to commit himself wholly to Peter to be exercised and cultivated in spiritual things.
[53] Therefore Columbinus, captured by the sanctity and intercourse of so great a man, seemed to have attained that understanding of divine things, the same Peter being leader and moderator; that to the other works of piety and voluntary troubles, which he himself had of his own accord undertaken for expiating the luxury of his former life, wholly depending on B. Peter's counsel, he willingly and gladly added these; namely, that he should apply himself with his whole breast to the exercise of praying and meditating. Which zeals of mind lest they should grow cold in him, he had been wont to come frequently to the Charterhouse; where with Peter, together with other men of exceptional piety, not only to agitate spiritual assemblies and to institute frequent conversations with him concerning divine things; but also to bring thither others and from time to time others, whom he found inclined toward Christian piety. Among whom the religion of Nicholas Vincentus (of whom we have hitherto very often made mention), a man of noble family, especially shone forth: together with Nicholas Vincentus: whom when Columbinus had received into a stricter intimacy than before, I would say both certainly had illustrious progress in spirit: since their pious conspiring among themselves and consent was a great help to each, both for stirring up the ardent loves of all virtues in their minds, wonderfully kindled by the word and example at once of our Peter; and also for knowing thoroughly and observing the manners and virtues of the same Peter, that they might then set them forth in letters to posterity. And this course of living Columbinus held up to the death of Peter: who being removed from human things, so far was it that he should remit anything of the manner of life entered upon, that even for undergoing all the harshest things for the cause of Christ, he felt a certain fresh alacrity diffused in himself in a moment; nay then afterward (as has been demonstrated above, and elsewhere we shall demonstrate much more clearly) by the visions of that very blessed Man he was both recreated repeatedly, and instructed to all sanctity: that through these, as through certain heavenly admonitions, he might clearly conjecture, that Peter in heaven was present even to his undertakings, and bore the patronage and care of him, clothed about with blessed immortality.
[54] Meanwhile while, helped by these divine defenses, Columbinus accelerates his step to the summit of perfection; Peter his son, not yet of full puberty, not long after the death of our Peter himself, then his son being dead, departs from life. By whose bereavement the best parent showed such firmness of mind, that he displayed no indication of grief or sadness: nay even he gave the greatest thanks to God, because through the death of his dearest son he beheld that obstacle removed from him, which had hitherto stood in his way, that he should the less give himself wholly to God, stripped of all the defenses of life, as had been in his desire. Therefore as soon as Columbinus noticed himself bereaved of male offspring, conceiving a greater love of God in mind, he resolved both to break off all the commerce of trading, and at once to lay aside and utterly cast away the zeals of transferring and exchanging money; both utterly to forsake the fluid advantages of the present life, and to divide among the poor the human wealth he possessed. he ceases from business: Into which purpose having entered, no slight help was brought by Francis Vincentus, the brother of Nicholas Vincentus. Which Francis, while with a certain silent admiration he reckons with himself Columbinus's life and manners alike changed for the better; felt himself impelled into this mind by the inward instinct of the holy Spirit, that he should join himself as a companion to him in instituting a new spiritual warfare: which he also most exceptionally performed, the same Columbinus exhorting him to Christian praise and honor. With such a fellow-soldier therefore Columbinus being increased, nothing was longer to him, than that he himself should hand over his virgin daughter, who, thirteen years born, had been left to him remaining, and his daughter being placed in a monastery, to the most ancient and noble nunnery of consecrated Virgins of SS. Abundius and Abundantius, which the renowned King of Italy Pippin, son of Charlemagne, took care to be built by divine command, and commonly they call Saint b Bunda. Which when he had done with huge religion, and Francis c had imitated him in this very thing with equal propensity of mind, straightway the exceptional soldiers of Christ, all the faculties they had, in the grace of the same Christ the Lord, partly bestowed on the poor, he bestows all his faculties. partly attributed to pious places and hospitals, in the year from the Virgin's childbearing one thousand three hundred sixty-third. And then, for laying in themselves the solid foundations of Christian humility, both they began to beg alms street by street, and also to descend into those things, which the rest loathe as abject and by no means specious. Of whom then the wondrous deeds, of Columbinus especially, since they have been fully and in Italian written by several, it is not necessary in this place to inculcate: and we have brought into the midst only these things, which we thought made altogether for our history.
[55] Of Joanna Petrona, Among those, who went to the Maggiano Charterhouse for the sake of meeting Peter, there had been a certain noble woman, Joanna Petrona by name, daughter of Catarinus Petronus, and the cousin-sister of our blessed Father, whom a chief man John Bandinellus once had as consort of his bed: who, since she had even from her tender years an excellent disposition for cultivating Christian virtues, then displayed in deed and deeds that she had made no slight gain for herself, when, released from the necessity of matrimony, more freely and much more harshly than before, she applied herself to the works of piety, venerable equally for widowhood and religion: with which most honorable woman's so excellent propensity of mind they relate Peter was wont to be so delighted, that he pursued her with singular benevolence. For our blessed Peter did not regard the rights of affinity, just as
nature has arranged, that he should love kinsmen and relatives: but to demand from them the zeal of virtue, duty, and honesty, rather than the kinship of family; that he might either receive them into his friendship, or, if they themselves wished to be in his debt; otherwise they should hold it most persuaded, that no other place than that of foreigners would be obtained for them with him. cultivated by B. Peter, Therefore that the most choice woman should retain day by day her virtue's excellence implanted in her mind, and daily cultivate it with the zeals of piety, the blessed man left no place for diligence and exhortation. And so he himself gave himself into conversation with the woman approaching the doors of the convent (since the monastic Canon does not grant to women, that an entrance lie open to them into the convents of Monks), informed her with spiritual exercises to the true worship and service of God, excited her to the zeal of prayer and the love of heavenly things, and from time to time inculcated to her the contempt of human things. And indeed by no means with a vain outcome. For she had such progressions in spiritual things by the intercourse of the blessed man, that, polished by his precepts and powerfully driven by his persuasion, she did not hesitate both to send a farewell to human things, and, rejoicing and triumphing, to betake herself within the monastery of holy Martha d, where under the standards of S. Augustine a noble company of virgins and women serves as soldiers. In which woman indeed I cannot but admire the truly invincible strength of a Christian mind, that in her could so greatly avail the beauty of that very virtue by which she was wonderfully captured (but beauty? nay rather even the love of the one Christ), that she counted nothing of weight, not only to leave her most ample wealth, to cultivate poverty, to lower herself into all the lowest ministries of humility, and to cast a dark and rough tunic about her limbs; but, what is the head, she could also leave with great and lofty mind the sweet and dear pledges, which she had now borne. A plainly memorable fortitude, and a greatness of mind more than virile! she advances to great sanctity. But what can not, or does not, the chaste love of God effect in him, who has given and dedicated himself wholly to Him? That natural and tender affection therefore toward flesh and blood, which S. Jerome calls the ram of piety, being overcome by the new handmaid of Christ; it was easy for her in the second place to fly to the standard of the Cross with dry eyes, and to seize the second degree of chastity, sitting at the feet of the Lord with Mary at home; thinking the only kind of piety to be, in this matter to be cruel. Of which cruelty indeed an exceptional fruit by God's benefit then stood. Since when she had survived Peter, by the highest sanctity of life, in which she was exceptionally strong, which she wished to be as clear and attested among all as possible, not without cause having once embraced at once the counsels of Christ, and at once the admonitions of her blessed brother e.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER VI.
The gift of prophecy and unsullied virginity of Peter.
CHAP. X.
[56] Among the illustrious virtues of the Christian life and the divine charisms, imparted to Peter by a peculiar gift of God, the gift of prophecy so conspicuously shone forth in him, that nothing seemed more proper to him, than that everywhere in conducting affairs, Renowned for the gift of prophecy, which made either for propagating the worship and obedience of God Himself, or for inciting mortals to the zeal of heavenly beatitude, he himself now most certainly foretold things future long after, now laid open hidden things, now showed things far removed from sight. Of which things, although many examples are at hand, and we are not ignorant that wondrous things in this kind were done by Peter; yet, a selection being made, we have thought only those things should be inserted into our history, which seemed to us useful, and necessary in all parts for illustrating the man's sanctity: but the rest we have purposely rejected, partly lest our speech be drawn out too long, partly that the reader be not affected with grave weariness. But indeed those things which it has seemed good to set forth to this very point, will be unfolded fitted to their places, since to recount all here is not worth the trouble: especially because others of the kind necessarily require another place in turn. Come now, let us come to the matter. Peter had divinely presensed that a certain Cowled man, of noted probity and great name, he detects a conspiracy for the slaying of a friend: and especially exceptionally dear to him, was vehemently anxious about a certain offense of the greatest moment to be settled. But indeed the blessed Father knew, suffused with divine light, that namely there was a conspiring for the destruction of his friend. Forthwith he orders the man to be summoned, and the summoned man he thus addresses. This was the cause, that I should summon thee, that thou be admonished, not to take any solicitude concerning that offense to be removed, nor in any way to interpose thyself into it: nay even cast away all care of it, I pray, because it is not hidden from me, that for this very thing thou dost incur the last peril of life, the one namely of the parties contriving snares for thee. He, struck by the unexpected matter, because, led by no other thing except the zeal of divine glory and the salvation of souls he had undertaken this business, stuck like one amazed. But when he had collected himself from fear, he straightway applied his mind, to exploring the matter as cautiously as dissemblingly. While he does this, he ascertains that at the same moment of time, in which Peter wished him admonished, a nefarious conspiracy had been already framed against him, that he should be removed from the midst: and the fraud would no doubt have proceeded, had he not by the blessed Man's admonitions timely forestalled the snares. But he himself, freed from the most present danger, ascribed his life, after God, especially to Peter alone, and gave immortal thanks among all to his sanctity: not doubting that the blessed Father had divinely scented out the whole matter. A deed of this kind, the writers add, we have purposely suppressed, lest a new and graver offense arise from it; and I hold for certain that this was the cause why they by no means betrayed alike the man's name and Order.
[57] There was a certain man, in deed and name Bonus, of Pavia, addicted to Religion (uncertain however of what family), who when from Liguria into Etruria through the Florentine territory he was making his journey, got as companion a certain Blasius of S. Miniato, whom commonly they call al Todesco; with whom on various matters, as it happens, Bonus instituting speech, among other things, If I, said he, Blasius, had money to spare, a wine-flask, full of Vernatic wine (that is in Tuscany a most noble and honorary drink, which our men call Vernaccia) I would most gladly buy to be carried to Siena to a man conspicuous for sanctity. To whom soon Blasius, with a loud guffaw rallying our blessed Father, I am amazed, said he, indeed, how it can be, that a Saint should drink Vernaccia? To which Bonus answered: Thou must cease to be amazed, Blasius, since that man is such, that he uses for the most part adverse health: and therefore I would especially desire this very thing, reckoning namely that it would be most pleasing to him. These things heard, Blasius straightway counted out to Bonus so much money, as was enough for buying the wine: thence soon he went up the castle of Miniato, about to remain at his native cradle. But Bonus, having obtained a flask of the longed-for wine, directed his journey to Siena: whither straightway, as he arrived, he went to Peter, and offered him the wine as a gift. he refuses to drink it: Which blessed Father, divinely now taught, what things in procuring it had happened, sent it untasted to another gift; thinking it unworthy of a man named to Religion, to drain thence some solace for guarding the firmness of the body, whence he knew something of trouble to have emanated to the salvation of another's soul. Meanwhile two and twenty months had flowed by, when the same Blasius by a plainly divine instinct came to Siena: and to the most celebrated Hospital, which (as has been said above) took its surname from the Stairs b, he, his father's goods and hearths left, addicted himself by religion; and undertook the institute and habit of the Brothers of the same Hospital house. Where while he carefully and diligently fulfills the task of his office, it came into his mind to betake himself to Peter for the sake of consulting, of whose sanctity he had now heard illustrious things. Nor in vain did he go to the Charterhouse, and this afterward he indicates to that scandalized man. and meet Peter. Since, as soon as the blessed Man saw the man coming to him from afar, soon he began to address him: Hail, Blasius, hail, and may thy coming be fortunate. Know that I not only did not drink, but did not even taste that Vernatic wine, for buying which thou didst pay money, but gave it to another gift; explaining the whole matter so openly and distinctly, just as if he had been present. Blasius moreover, recalling to his mind, what he heard from the blessed Man, for shame stood like one thunderstruck: and with eyes fixed on the ground, silent he revolved in mind, in what manner Peter had called out to him by name, since neither he had ever known the blessed Man, nor the blessed Man him by face. The matter afterward more zealously explored, he understood that Peter had known all things by God's admonition, and openly announced it. Which Blasius indeed afterward embracing the eremitic life, venerated Peter as a holy Man and dear to God: and using him as long as he lived as master and moderator in conducting spiritual matters, passed his life piously and religiously up to the very end.
[58] He looks upon the depraved lust of a Carthusian Procurator, There was a certain Monk, who, although an alumnus of the Maggiano Charterhouse, yet inhabited another convent of the Order, acting as Curator of the household affair: who, moved by Peter's constant fame of sanctity, resolved to go to him,
intending to seek a blessing from him. Whom the blessed Father, leaning before him on his knees and earnestly begging to be blessed by him, having beheld with countenance contracted and composed to severity and sadness, began to go backward. Then having called him aside, whispering in his ear he said: Not by the monastic and Carthusian norm of poverty, son, dost thou cultivate thy life: because I discern thee miserably ensnared by unworthy bonds of lust: and these being uttered, Peter likewise turned away brought back his step. He when he heard these things, touched with inward religion, wasting away at once with grief and sadness, gave way from the place. Then a short time interposed, again the Monk approaching Peter's feet, presses, prays, and asks indeed with most lowly prayers, that he pray well for him. But the blessed Man again refused, and again with a reiterated rebuke chastises the man. The wretch at length reckoning himself despised, with tears flowing even to the ground, goes out from Peter's little cell, and fills the court with wailing and lamentation. Whom mourning so bitterly one of the Fathers having beheld, addresses him in this manner: I am easily led to believe, that thou wilt be master of thy vow, provided thou resolve with thyself and firmly retain to execute that, which thou shalt know to be most pleasing to Peter. Nor delay: for he, with hands lifted to the stars, burst into these voices: I promise to thee, and likewise his inward penitence, Lord Jesus, that I will give effort, as far as can be done by me, that I be obedient to that Father, and persevere in monastic office and faith up to the very end. And these things indeed having been uttered most confidently, the Monk entering a third time the blessed Father's chamber, and prostrated at his feet, with words taken from the Gospel, and the names of the One and Triune God confidently invoked, he prayed well, and Peter gave likewise now dear embraces. But he, increased with the fortunate prayer, glad thence no less than overcome with amazement, because he noticed the hiding-places of his breast divinely laid open, returned to his convent, making no measure of rendering an illustrious testimony to Peter's sanctity.
[59] He refuses sweetmeats bought with a price unjustly acquired, It happened at some time, that, Peter being sick, Crescentius, most skilled in the medical art, whom Columbinus in his native speech calls Master Sensus c, met a certain chief man, whose name the same Columbinus passed over in silence. To him questioning how Peter was, and whether in any matter his work could be of use to him, indeed promising most dutifully his zeal in all things; If he had any sweetmeats, said Crescentius, for restoring his lost strength, I think nothing will be more pleasing and dearer to him than these. Which things he having heard, straightway his purse drawn out; Take these, Crescentius, said he, two gold florins, and with these procure sweetmeats, which thou shalt judge will more profit Peter, and be more pleasing to his will, and to be loved by him in thy own name. Then Crescentius, most desirous of gratifying the blessed Father, the gold being received, bought the choicest sugar confections, and the bought ones through a sure messenger sent to Peter in his own words. Which messenger, when he had outstripped Crescentius, and had now come before Peter's face, thus addresses him by arrangement: These to thee, Father, Crescentius the physician sends. To whom soon Peter, having divinely scented out the bitterness of fraud under the sweetness of the sugar; Bring back, said he, bring back, son, thy step, and carry these back to him, I do not wish gifts, bought with money ill gotten. But the bearer returned to the city, reported to Crescentius, what he had received from Peter: who at once thunderstruck with amazement, took care that the gold florins be sent back to the noble Patrician; and thence with his own money weighed redeemed half part of the same confection, sent it anew to Peter. Which moreover he received with such illustrious grace, that he straightway burst into these words: May the Lord recompense this exceptional kindness of Crescentius toward me.
[60] I think it will seem not absurd to subjoin to these that which our Columbinus committed to letters to have happened to himself, he foreknows that truffles can be had: namely in that very year and month, in which our Blessed Peter departed from human things. I narrate the deed in brief. When on a certain great day Peter was held by a desire of truffles, turned to Columbinus; Ho, John, said he, bring me, I beseech thee, a little of truffles; for I am snatched away by a sharp desire of them. To whom soon Columbinus: Thou knowest, Father, said he, that nowhere, especially in the month of May, which is now passing, are truffles found. To which soon Peter, relying on the fatherly providence of the heavenly Godhead; Go, said he, in a good cause. But on the following light when Columbinus set out on his journey, together with Joachim toward the Charterhouse for the sake of visiting Peter, near the cloth-shop of the same Columbinus both passed by, and there they meet a certain young man, the attendant of the same shop, holding in his hand a great paper wrapper full of truffles: who straightway offered that very thing as a gift to Columbinus. Then he, thunderstruck by the miracle, and at once suffused with joy, received the truffles soon to be carried to Peter: and accompanied by Oduardus, son of Nicholas Striecha Marescotti a noble man, they set out on the way; reckoning with their mind on the journey without end, how namely pious alike and clement the Lord is toward those, who from the heart serve Him; and how loving of them (which even from this then could openly be discerned) He shows their vows alike and their salvation to be at heart to Him. When it was come to the Charterhouse, after the salutation and various conversations concerning divine things held back and forth, asked by Oduardus Peter; When, Father, said he, will the interdict, by which our city is now marked, be lifted? Within five, answered the blessed Man, days we shall all be freed from this public and sad evil. Nor was faith wanting to the saying: since within the foretold time all the cessation of business and the interdict was lifted, Azzolino Malavolta d being Bishop of Siena.
[61] We have just heard Columbinus writing of himself, let us hear the same man relating concerning his son Peter no less wondrous, He indicates who come to him, what they bring, what they have done on the way. than concerning himself: since at nearly the same time, in which our blessed Peter exchanged his life for death, we learn from him that the thing happened. There had assembled in Peter's chamber at once some of the Fathers of the house, at once also other men noble for piety, to hear the blessed Man discoursing concerning heavenly things: when suddenly, about to make an end of his speech, he interjected saying; Wait, I beseech, a little, Brothers: for it will not be long, but that there come to us Joachim, together with the boy Peter son of John Columbinus, who carries to me certain little gifts, to wit almonds, poppies, and a single onion: nay even, our buildings now now standing near, the boy himself at this very point of time chews one of the poppies. These things when the bystanders hear, they straightway began to smile. But scarcely had Peter said these and other things to the same matter, when straightway it is announced at the doors of the convent that Joachim and the boy Peter are standing by. Whom when the Monks behold, and learn, having questioned the boy, that he had eaten a poppy on the way, as the blessed Father a little before had foretold, they are straightway affected with huge admiration. And when soon they had entered Peter's chamber, turned to the boy Peter, for observance's sake bending his knee before him, says: Sing, son, that little song, of which the beginning is, O Divine noble Magdalene; for before thou finish it, there will come to us hither the Priest Marianus, e Plebanus of the Church at Marmoraria. Nor were the blessed Father's words cast into the wind; for the thing so utterly came out, as he had foretold. Since, the boy singing very pleasantly, the Priest was present, a man exceptionally pious; whom, those who were present beholding, are overcome with greater amazement than before; and agitating in mind the exceptional sanctity of the blessed Man, thought him, as loftier than the human summit, to be worshipped and observed by them day by day more and more.
[62] It had almost escaped, that which in this very place seems especially to claim the principate for itself, both for bringing into the midst at least in some part the force and efficacy of Peter's prayers, he foretells he will shortly die against the Physician's opinion: and also that nearly every most prudent man even from this one thing may know, that this grace and gift of prophecy so shone forth in our blessed Father, that he beheld things absent no otherwise than things present from the very farthest off. Peter was struggling with a disease of light beginning indeed, but little by little growing strong, yet it was the last to him. Therefore by that matter when Crescentius the Physician, of whom a little before we have made mention, of whom also at that time the Maggiano house made use, had gone to him for duty's sake, after the offices of mutual speech to the blessed Father, the pulse of the arteries explored; For a long time, said he, I conjecture thou wilt be with us; so indeed I find thee well in health. To whom straightway Peter; May Christ the Lord not wish, said he, thee to work miracles in me, Crescentius. By these words divinely indicating, most well conscious of things future, that the last time was at hand for him, of leaving the spoils of our mortality. Nor were the predictions vain. Since a few days having elapsed after, from the bonds of the body, full of gladness and pleasantness, as we shall say in its place, he ascended the palace of heaven.
[63] Then to Peter inquiring concerning Brother Bartholomew f Mini, who acted as Prior of the Sienese Dominicans at Campo Regio at that time, to the same he indicates the danger of the Dominican Prior, where in the world he was; With the Brothers, answered Crescentius, of the hospital house of Castellione I think he tarries. So it plainly is, said Peter. But on his return, he added, he will incur a great peril of life. But indeed I earnestly pray Christ Jesus, that He bring him aid; and that He will bring it, I certainly know. From these sayings, Crescentius betook himself thence, and hastened to the city of Siena. But on the next day the same Crescentius, wonderfully solicitous concerning Bartholomew's safety, went straight to S. Dominic, to inquire concerning the same Bartholomew. Whither as soon as he arrived, he approached him, whom he had now learned to have returned, and addresses him for friendship's sake in this manner: With this mind, Father, I have come hither, namely full of solicitude concerning thee, that I might ask, what was the state of thy life: for yesterday when I was at the Charterhouse, I received from Peter, that on thy return thou wouldst undergo a great danger of life. Although however he said there was nothing that thou shouldst fear; and I at present beheld him lifting his hands to heaven, and praying God for thee, certain indeed that thou wouldst depart thence unharmed; yet I myself could not but be anguished in mind, until I had been made more certain concerning thee and thy safety: which on the way he had incurred a fall from an ass. but since I have found thee unharmed and rightly well, thou wouldst scarcely believe, what my love in the matter is, with what gladness I am carried away. These things when Bartholomew heard concerning himself, he was vehemently amazed. But, as soon as he collected himself, he answered in these words. Never, Crescentius (I would have thee believe me on oath) have I noticed myself cast into so great a danger of life, except today. For having my journey toward Siena, by a way certainly most foul and rugged, it happened, that the little ass, on which I sat, the step failing, fell down; and I being then shaken off from it, it was very little wanting, but that
I should dash my head against a certain projecting and precipitous rock of larger form, so that, foully thrown to the ground, it would be altogether necessary to stick there on the spot. But at that point of time, my companion of the journey, who performed for me the office of a foot-attendant, and was hastening, dismayed in mind at my fall, while bringing succor to me in peril, his knee striking against the same rock, I straightway escaped thence unharmed by a plainly divine power. And these things Columbinus testifies that he received, not only from the same Bartholomew, whose speech for the man's notable religion had great weight; but also from Crescentius, a man indeed grave and sure, and to whom how much the same Columbinus attributed, can be noticed even especially from this, that in the letters, which a few years after he gave to Blasia Cerretana his wife, while full of the Apostolic spirit he traversed Etruria, disseminating the word of God, and stirring mortals from the lethargy of sins, we read these things among other things given to her in commands: I would have thee bid Matthew the Spicer to be greeted in my name, whom likewise in my words thou shalt ask, that to Crescentius the Physician my Father (whom he calls master Sensus in the vernacular idiom, as we said above) he say a thousand times greeting; and disclose, both that I am a servant and son to him, and that I greatly desire to be helped by his prayers with God. And concerning these things let it suffice to have written in this place.
[64] I think it has not happened to me amiss, that, about to write concerning Peter's virginity, I have undertaken to place it in this place. And again to me thinking, for what cause especially it was done, it came into my mind, that this place fittingly enough ought to obtain it before the rest. For, as it had its origin with Peter, and grew up together with him; He preserved virgin chastity all his life so likewise it preserved the same blessed Man, up to his very last breath, intact and unsullied from all impure contagion of the body, and completed the course of his life incorrupt. Wherefore I cannot sufficiently admire the illustrious endeavors and zeals of Peter, which even from boyhood with so great cleanliness of heart and honesty of manners he conferred, for cultivating this Angelic virtue; since it has been handed down to memory, that Peter from the very flower of his entering age was wont frequently to entreat the Divine clemency, through the highest zeal of sanctity and modesty, with the most ardent prayers, that He should not suffer him in the slippery period of his very age, and thence in the following years, however many namely it should be given him to pass life among mortals, to be at all sprinkled with any stain of unchastity; but should keep him entire and unpolluted for the one most chaste Spouse of Virgins Himself, that the more namely his obedience and service might be pleasing and delightful to the divine Majesty. Nor did the Divine kindness deceive the pious youth's faith. For (as Priests of exceptional probity and faith, who according to the time received Peter's general Confessions, even in thoughts. confirmed by oath, and who were wont to assert this very thing to Columbinus and Nicholas Vincentus) not only did our blessed Father never contaminate his virginal integrity by a base deed, or gesture, or dishonest word, but not even impure thoughts entered his mind. The same moreover Columbinus testifies that he heard from Joachim, to whom Peter near the time of his death, from an illustrious occasion given him divinely, disclosed that he had retained the unsullied flower of virginity up to that very day. Therefore Peter adorned by God with so excellent and exceptional a gift of integrity and modesty, appeared the more august, because virginal chastity among spiritual ornaments ought to be esteemed the most ample and chief; since in those, who cultivate it, there shines I know not what not only seemly and beautiful, but certainly divine and greater than human; which Basil seemed to indicate by most weighty words, where, discoursing concerning true virginity, he says: A great thing in truth and illustrious is virginity, which, that I may comprehend all in one word, makes a man most like to the incorruptible God.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER VII.
About soon to die he discloses to Joachim the revelations made to him, and the secrets of many hearts.
BOOK III, CHAP. I
[65] By these and other defenses of virtues, and endowed with divine ornaments our blessed Peter, and passing nearly his fiftieth year, as we have demonstrated above, In the 50th year of his age he pants for the heavens, revolved in mind nothing else day and night, than that he should suppliantly pray God the Lord and author of life, that He should free him from the watches of this mortal body; that, the earthly and concrete mass being loosed, it might befall him as soon as possible to fly to that lofty dwelling full of stars. Hence anointed with a certain heavenly sweetness, and kindled with a wondrous zeal of enjoying and seeing God; those sacred assemblies of the blessed, that saying of the Apostle he had from time to time in his mouth; Who will free me, saying, from the body of this death? But sometimes: When shall I come, my Jesus, my Creator, and appear before Thy sight? and other things like these. Rom. 7, 24 By which zeals, namely by love toward God and desire toward heavenly things, he so poured himself forth and excited his mind, that nothing tasted sweeter to him, than to make words assiduously concerning God and concerning departure from this deceitful and mortal life. So namely so much in him availed the sense and daily affection of dying, and so vehemently in each single moment urged; that through a certain skull a, which he always had set before his eyes in his little cell, he might recollect that he was born on the same condition (contemplating it with mind and eyes) on which he also certainly knew he would die. Nay even by that salutary meditation our most excellent Philosopher of Christian discipline and perfection attained, that not only he learned thoroughly to die daily, which we read the Apostle Paul also felt, where he said he died daily: 1 Cor. 15 but also the thing itself, as the Wise man says, bitter, nay rather the memory of it most hard, by a certain custom, as if he had contracted familiarity with the same death, so softened, and so prepared himself in all parts to receive it, that he advanced intrepid soon to meet it coming; Eccli. 41. nor as something unknown did he dread it, but full of pleasantness and gladness embraced it; since he was not ignorant that not forces, not honors, not wealth and power, not splendor of family, not kingdoms, not insignia of majesty, could either repel death or retard it; that all things, which seem great and honorable to men, are nothing, the dreams of the raving, and vain images of shadows; that that alone remains, and will always remain, which each had done rightly and honorably. O blessed and happy Man! to whom it pleased to do nothing else, to speak nothing, to think nothing ever, except what in this supreme contest would be a defense.
[66] At length when he felt, agitated by the divine spirit, that that time had now now arrived, fifteen days before his death by God's command he had given to a friend at which time the soul was to be rendered, to Him from whom he had received it; he sent fifteen days before he departed from the station of life, one to summon his Joachim to him, and the summoned man, and ordered to sit very near him, in this manner, about the third hour after sunrise, the other witnesses being removed, he addressed. Do not, Joachim son, wonder, at the things which at present I have thought should be disclosed to thee; and although they be great, and likewise thou hearest them above the force of nature, yet that they all are most certain and most firm, I do not hesitate with all asseveration to affirm to thee. These hitherto I have dared to disclose to no mortal, nor hereafter will I disclose further, nor even at present would I dare to lay open, did not the eternal Godhead of the Divinity impel and urge me to it. Therefore I would have thee know, that in mind and body a virgin most dear son, that from my cradle unto this day, I have served my Christ; and that He Himself has led me, and through all my life, both in mind and in body, has kept me entire and unpolluted, namely defiled by no stain of mad turpitude. And, just as I earnestly begged Him even from my first boyhood, that He should impart so much grace to me, whereby faithfully in all things my service might be dear and pleasing to Him; so on the contrary I did not cease with much prayer to entreat and beseech the same Him, that I myself might effect this very thing as secretly as possible up to my last breath, utterly that no man on earth might ever be able to know me: which according to His clemency toward me He most exceptionally performed for me, both my prayers, and likewise my vows, indeed how kindly hearing: from the age of 16 obtaining from God all his requests. thus I say, that it is now sixteen years, since I have asked nothing ever from Christ the Lord by praying, which I have not obtained according to my vow heaped up; and although meanwhile I feigned as it were to do something else, I so strove to conceal my zeals and likewise all my actions, that of mortals indeed none has had me known; now, when I now feel death to threaten me, these things, son, I am compelled to lay open to thee, impelled to it by an utterly divine nod. Therefore when in the preceding days I was worse, most desirous of seeing Christ, on a certain night after the sacred nocturnal watches poured forth in prayer, I prayed Christ the Lord Himself again and again, that according to His singular charity toward me He should suffer me to be drawn out from this life full of troubles, and concerning the last things asked and should receive my soul into the fatherly bosom of His kindness, but my body should be committed to the earth, and its rotten worms. Then indeed I entreated Him, that He should hold commended certain men, exceptionally dear to me, and should deign to direct and guard them through the right course of living.
[67] These things when performed by me, straightway I myself perceive with my very ears a certain voice thus speaking: certified by a triple sign, Thy prayer, Peter, is heard. But I, understanding these things, at once fearing and trembling, would not give faith to it; not ignorant that it was said by the Apostle, that by no means is faith to be given to every spirit. Then the same voice clearly and openly I understood saying: Go into thy little garden, and there thou shalt have signs from God, whereby
thou mayest know that thou hast been heard. Whither when I had betaken myself, my eyes suddenly lifted to the stars, I behold the sky in a wondrous manner illustrious with stars and brilliantly serene: and soon it, as if pregnant, to pour forth a huge force of rains, with which I found the little garden and myself well drenched. Then I, By these things, said I, yet I cannot be brought to believe. A third time the voice reiterated, Lift up, said it, thy head: for thou shalt behold signs beyond the course of nature. Which when done, as it had commanded; behold I see the Sun and Moon cohering with each other. To these things nevertheless I stand in my opinion, nor do I suffer myself to be moved from that mind, fearing the illusion and conjuring-tricks of the evil demon: since he, excellently instructed by that act, could so dazzle the keenness of my eyes, that I should behold things other than they were. Wherefore, Not even so indeed will I believe, I add, unless I behold the eternal Wisdom speaking those things and indicating to me, which Satan himself can neither speak, nor by any other reasoning display. Then moreover, that I should return to my chamber, the same voice a fourth time commands. I obeyed at once. and finally by Christ Himself appearing to him, Behold for thee straightway Christ Jesus in most bright light through a vision most augustly b offered Himself to me to be seen: whom trembling having beheld, prone forthwith I rush down at His feet, not enduring to bear His exceptional brightness, and to the will and nod of His majesty I compose myself wholly. But He turned to me, with these words, me now taken by the hand, and ordered to sit down together with Him, deigned most kindly to address. I would have thee know, Peter, that thy orations and prayers to me, were long ago heard by me, and that thou on earth, like another Moses, hast always been with me for that people. But yet, abominating the crimes and monstrous wickednesses of it, it is necessary that I draw thee to me as quickly as possible, that thou pour out no more prayers to me for it: for I can no longer endure it, that he understood Him angry with the world on account of avarice: so indeed do I hold its wantonness in hatred, and keep my face averted from its salvation: nay even I have resolved to punish it, on account of, as I have said, its very many unspeakable crimes, but especially on account of the crime of lust and avarice, which throughout the whole world so rages, that there is no evil which through this very thing mortals do not commit: since indeed I perceive it to rage more against the cultivators of the Monastic life, and against men shining with Clerical dignity, than against the other men serving secular things. Formerly, Peter, I detested homicide, then the foul obscenities of the flesh, and afterward I was so disgusted with wicked pleasures, that by that dire deluge of the whole globe of the earth I destroyed the human race; but at present that depraved lust of possessing I so detest as most of all, because through it especially mortals will confess the Son c of perdition, my own name being put behind.
[68] These things being said the Saviour Christ the Lord instituted speech, and caught up into ecstasy, first concerning His own conception and birth from the Virgin, soon concerning His most dire tortures in suffering, then concerning the supper transacted together with the Apostles, how He converted bread into the substance of His body, that is transubstantiated it, then likewise concerning His slaying and resurrection, but lastly concerning the ascension into heaven He made words. But after these things, Approach, said He, Peter, that thou mayest thyself behold all these things. Then from my senses I was soon abstracted, and my spirit seemed to me caught up and transferred into God, not knowing whether in the body or out of the body it was done; except that when I was in God, and likewise my soul and at once its forces and powers were absorbed by the overflowing of the Majesty and the glory of the Divinity; this indeed at present I attained, that I felt myself utterly suffused and filled with a heavenly and most sweet beatitude. Moreover those divine gifts and benefits, with which, when I contemplated the abyss of divine brightness, my spirit was increased, could indeed be felt in mind and in some manner understood then; but now to be expressed in words, just as they were felt, by no means can be: since they exceed mortal nature in all parts. that he beheld the heavenly spirits, Through this admirable and divine rapture I beheld and had known the bands of all the heavenly spirits, and also obtained clearly and lucidly the knowledge of the blessed souls. Swimming in that sea of the Divinity, I saw the infernal souls; and those who, not yet purely expiated, are tortured with purgatorial punishments. And in this place, as Joachim related, Peter expressed by name some existing among the infernal regions; denying that he altogether knew whether the infernal places are placed in the center of the earth or not. Of many likewise he made mention, whom he discerned to be tortured; the punishments of the infernal regions, and what punishments, and for what merits they suffered, he disclosed. Others also he called by name addicted to the infernal punishments, whom formerly when they were among the living, with a second murmur of piety and religion the world had looked up to, detecting them on account of their crimes to have deserved this. Which when it seemed altogether a wonder to us (say our Authors), namely so great and such men, thrust down into that most foul and most stinking chasm; fixed in deep thought we reckoned with ourselves, with what probity, and with what praise of sanctity excelling they were held, while they lived among men; and with mind suspended and wonderfully solicitous we induced our mind to inquire the causes, why Peter indicated that the defiled had departed to everlasting punishments. Which when anxious we agitated, partly in secret, partly openly; we affirm that we ascertained d very many, by the same names, and for the same causes, most direly to sustain those atrocious punishments, just as the blessed Father himself divinely manifested. Wherefore it is sufficiently and more than enough established, that the judgments of God and of men are other. Moreover Peter indicated that the tortures of the infernal regions are so monstrous, and monstrous tortures, that if they should fall under human sight, or any of mortals could sufficiently comprehend them in thought, all assuredly would return to duty and soundness: since that fire, and that mass of punishments there is, that it can scarcely be expressed in words. To these things, just as the heavenly citizens of the heavenly dwelling, seeking some notable thing for the accession of their beatitude, and desiring to fulfill their desires, straightway obtain the wished-for vows; so on the contrary those devoted and accursed ones sinking in the infernal regions, when they devise some punishment or torture, either namely God's justice exacting it) seek a torment more atrocious than the others upon themselves with a deadly rage, straightway in a horrible manner are made masters of their vow. That there is besides no one in those places of miseries, who is tortured with so scant a punishment, but that he holds it persuaded and fixed, that no one is more wretched than he alone, or more bitterly tortured. Above these things that far more are damned to the lowest depths, than what the opinion of men holds.
[69] Moreover Peter held speech concerning the purging fire, namely that the same punishments and tortures are of the same place as in the infernal regions; as of others in Purgatory, except that they are affected with great solace, not despairing that it will be, who there drag their stay sorrowfully, that they may fly to the heavenly realms at length at some time Blessed; while meanwhile in very deed they feel that God according to His clemency brings them great alleviation and refreshment. These indeed are helped by prayers, by works of piety and mercy, besides by the sacrifices of the Mass, by Pontifical condonations, and finally by other suffrages of living men. Concerning Limbo likewise the blessed Father spoke, which children inhabit deprived of sacred baptism: and children dead without baptism in Limbo, who although they are pressed by no trouble, except that they perpetually lack the sight of God; yet they hear the infernal gnashings, and look down upon the dire bitternesses of the pit. And since they are deprived of evils of this kind, they think it goes excellently with them, and therefore give thanks to God without end. To these things that he saw, seeing Christ, Peter narrated, that He penetrated all the works of all mortals, and the inmost recesses of the heart, and the secrets of hearts, and the recesses of the mind. Of which thing this was a most certain indication then to Joachim, namely that he laid open to him all his secret operations and the secrets of his breast, speaking with him in this manner at present. That and a virtue of this kind, son, from the time I gave myself to thee into that conversation, thou hast resolved to embrace with thy mind. Is it not so? To which, when Joachim, plainly thunderstruck with amazement, had answered that without doubt it was so; the blessed Father proceeded to pursue the speech begun; detecting the hidden thoughts of many men, likewise penetrating the hearts of very many, and laying open their thoughts, which besides God no one knew. Many things besides singly giving to Joachim in commands, to be announced into diverse and remote parts of the world, to various and diverse men; especially to those, whom he had never known by face, nor had heard any mention of them or name. Whence it came about, that very many of us ourselves heard (our Authors add) who testify that Joachim announced and disclosed to them those things, concerning whom he bids various things be usefully announced to various persons. which were utterly open to no mortal, except God, who is the inspector and judge of hearts, and to him only. But what things the blessed Man ordered to be announced and indicated, that they redound to the honor and glory of God, and to the salvation of neighbors no one doubts, and we hold this very thing for ascertained: he commanding diverse and various things, variously and in diverse manner to be inculcated: namely this man to be met with cheerful face and bland speech; that one to be gently and courteously asked; another to be reprehended gravely and severely; but another to be rebuked by another reasoning. And indeed an exceptional fruit of the work by God's benefit stood: since they thought it went excellently with them, who were obedient to him. But on the contrary by God's permission it is established that they were most ill received, who neglected to embrace Peter's salutary admonitions; that from these it may sufficiently and evidently appear, that they spurned not the commands and precepts of one mortal man, but rashly contemned the commands of God Himself.
[70] But that more and more Joachim might be made more certain concerning these things, he indicates the saints then living; lest namely his mind should waver with any hesitation in so great a matter; concerning men of illustrious manners and deeds, and concerning their life he spoke, who during that time especially at Siena and elsewhere followed piety with praise; disclosing by what means and by what reasonings they contemplated God, and tasted Him sweet and possessed Him. In which place raised by such force and vehemence of speaking and ardor of mind, Peter discoursed concerning divine things, with sentences so true and grave, with a countenance and eyes so ardent, that he seemed to breathe the fire of divine love on every side; utterly, so that the thing could easily be judged like a miracle. Since by no means, Joachim being witness, wouldst thou believe this could be done, except through Him, who alone is perfect, God; he commends the ecclesiastical power: or certainly through a man, to whom that eternal Wisdom had granted to draw that very thing from that perennial fount and the deepest gulf of the Divinity, and to communicate it with men. Again thus Peter began: Indeed the Catholic Church must be obeyed, and its sacrosanct ordinances and decrees especially feared. The Supreme
Pontiff, he added, and the whole body of the Roman Church, have and can exercise that authority and power formerly left to it by Christ; but of Bishops and Prelates, although we sometimes behold their life and manners by no means directed and exactly led to the right norm of living; yet not therefore is the authority conferred on them void and vain. He reproached besides all those promising and binding themselves of their own accord by oath to follow voluntary poverty from the Gospel; he reproaches the transgressors of poverty, but afterward, all duty and fear put behind, not standing by their promises. With dire and accursed words he fixed those, who in themselves and in temporary things constitute all the defenses of life, rather than in Christ the Lord, on whom alone they ought to rely, and to whom alone to adhere altogether. Woe! woe! most sorrowfully he imprecated upon the rich, refusing to do kindly to the needy and poor. Penitence then (lest I make it too long) with the highest praises he raised to the stars: but above all that effort must be given to breaking the noxious appetites, repudiating pleasures, he praises penitence. and overcoming the passions, and finally the spirit of mortification, as they call it, must be most loved. To these things he added, that the demon is wont to mock those, and to make light of their endeavors, who in the name of penitence rage against their own body, and demand dire punishments from their very selves; while meanwhile, with no one ruling their zeals, they cleave to the mire of deadly fault; nor thence, by which one thing the same demon vehemently rejoices, do they suffer themselves to be drawn out. About to say more after three days, Therefore war must especially be waged with vices; then indeed an exceptional effort must be put, both for procuring an excellent furniture of virtues for oneself, and at once for entering into grace with God. But lastly about to make an end of speaking Peter; Know, said he, Joachim son, that this is altogether the will of God; that after the interposed space of three days, I should use a new kind of speaking, by which I should manifest the crimes of certain men; and make these openly, that most present remedies may be applied to the wounds of their souls. Wherefore there will not be lacking some of the Monks, who say repeatedly, that I am affected by an error of mind and speak alien things: because, since they cannot grasp what I say, they will attempt to carp at it.
CHAP. II
[71] he wishes also S. John Columbinus to be present, I therefore wish thee and Columbinus, as soon as he will be at Siena, to be with me, where no one in the space of five days will be an impediment to you, that you may not be permitted safely to tarry here; about to interpret to each of you at leisure all things, which you shall inquire of me. To which Columbinus also I command to be communicated especially, the things which at present I have thought should be disclosed to thee; whom, although he meditates going to the strait, I am not ignorant will however shortly come to his native city: otherwise I do not doubt, but that if he undergo the hazard of a journey of this kind, he would fulfill his last day bound by the fault of deadly fault. But I most propensely pray Christ the Lord, that he fall not into this evil; and I now feel that my prayer (such is God's highest clemency) has been poured forth not in vain. To him therefore soon returned, all things in order, as I have said, I would have thee report; to which that he may have the more faith, all the thoughts and senses of his mind, just as thou hast received from me, I likewise wish thee to lay open; and concerning his wife Blasia Certana indicate what it has pleased to lay open, and together with me, as I have commanded, you both will be; and in this manner Peter's speech at present was exhausted. * Meanwhile since nothing was prior or older to Joachim, than to exhaust Peter's commands; the province handed to him, indeed worthy of heavenly merits, he reckoned must be straightway undertaken. And yet to him meditating to set about the matter this one care especially cooked him, because he had then nothing certain concerning Columbinus's return; although from the words of the blessed Father he was in the greatest expectation, that he would shortly return to his native city; that what he had received from Peter, he might soon communicate also with him. Cast therefore into this solicitude Joachim, by this especial reasoning escaped free from it. There had assembled after the agreed space of three days with Peter, whom then he foretells will soon be present. together with Joachim and the other Fathers of the house, some men exceptionally pious, for the sake of agitating a spiritual assembly; when suddenly Peter turned to the Plebanus of the church of Marmoraria, of whom we have made mention above; Proceed, on, proceed, said he, together with me to mingle conversations concerning divine things; for before it shall have been finished, John Columbinus sitting on a horse will be present to us. Which when Joachim and the rest who stood by heard, they thought it scarcely credible at all, themselves then reckoning with themselves that Columbinus during those days especially was tarrying at his farms near the Castle of S. John at the Asso river, eighteen miles from the city of Siena; nor was the day at present so far advanced, that he could conveniently have measured out that long journey. What more? Behold for thee, while they were speaking, that the outcome should answer to the presentiment, unexpectedly to the doors of the convent it was brought, that Columbinus, carried by a horse, was present. Whom when they behold dismounted from it, they are at once filled with amazement and joy: and to them inquiring of him, in what manner he had so timely accomplished so great a journey: I, said he, cannot sufficiently reckon out, in what manner indeed it was done by me, that, no cause urging, I rode a great part of the night with the swiftest gait: which it is now plainly a long time since such a thing ever happened to me. The assembly then dismissed, Peter says to Columbinus: I wish thee to meet Joachim, about to hear what I commanded to be communicated with thee.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER VIII.
Peter enjoys the converse of the Heavenly ones, and sees the hidden thoughts of men.
[72] The Fathers relate to John Columbinus that songs were heard in Peter's cell Among these things the Fathers related to Columbinus himself, how Peter had divinely foreknown his coming; that he was decorated with wondrous gifts of the holy Spirit, and exceptionally adorned with all virtue and sanctity. Of which thing this could then most recently be an illustrious argument, that a few days before from the door of his little cell they had repeatedly heard day and night most sweet voices and songs: where when for some time they had stuck listening with most eager ears, at length (such is the lust of mortals to know hidden things) the door being pushed open, bursting into the chamber, they found no one with Peter alone excepted: whose countenance they beheld suffused with so divine a light, that with the most pleasant form of face it seemed to display a certain Angelic majesty: thus, suffused with heavenly light; that like Moses from the consort of God that divine splendor from his face sent most pleasing rays. Whom hedged about by so many divine defenses one of the Fathers, a man excelling in virtue, having beheld; straightway vehemently thunderstruck by the novelty of the thing, burst into these voices: I would choose, Thou God knowest, now now still drawing breath, to be buried in the same place, where Peter, having now performed his fate, should be interred, provided it were certain to me that my spirit would fly thither whither his. O Man already tasting heavenly delights, still dwelling among mortals! O Man, I say, full of God! who, although with all art and endeavor thou didst strive to conceal thyself and thy things, yet thy endeavors had nevertheless sometimes of necessity to be rendered to this very thing vain; because this especially sanctity has of itself, that the more it is concealed, the more widely, carried beyond the mouths of mortals, it shines forth. But let us pursue what was begun. to him Joachim indicates what he had heard from the Saint Joachim therefore was so greatly delighted and rejoiced by Columbinus's unexpected coming, that he did not reckon it should be deferred longer, that by the occasion he might soon set about to perform Peter's commands. Therefore when both had betaken themselves to their native city, he lays open to Columbinus all things in order, as he had received from Peter; namely concerning the thought of going to the sea undertaken, he made words to him seriously; and likewise concerning his wife, which he himself had in commands; and what he was agitating in mind concerning the farm to be bought he laid open; and other things other men's secret, known and explored only to him alone he indicated and detected. And when Columbinus noticed all the recesses of his breast and the counsels of his mind to be laid bare to him, the secrets of his heart: he stood fixed in amazement; because it seemed to surpass the grasp of men in all parts to him, and Peter himself, as a man more august than the human form, he thought to be looked up to by him more and more on each single day; because he attributed so much to his sanctity, that nothing was doubtful to him, but that God through him, as formerly through other His most dear servants, effected utterly arduous and wondrous things upon the human race. But meanwhile we, added Columbinus, will go, and at once will see, what things in the Charterhouse the blessed Father foretold would come to pass; while nothing of business detains thee Joachim, that thou shouldst the less perform the rest of Peter's commands diligently according to place and time.
[73] These things being thus settled Joachim went to Andrew, by surname Taurus, a man of the chief nobility, and during that time at once Governor and a Rector of the hospital of B. Mary at the Steps, of which mention has already been frequently made; and him comprehended by office, first he addresses gravely in this manner: and in Peter's name accuses the Rector of the hospital, What (a plague!) reasoning, my Lord, has impelled thee, that thou shouldst institute thy life otherwise, than the reasoning of office and Christian piety exacts of thee? Is this the kind of living, which the government of the place demands? Knowest thou not, that this house is that one with us, first in antiquity, most august in religion, and most celebrated in beneficence for relieving the needy? Does it escape thee, that it was received into the tutelage and patronage of Christ the Parent? Which all things if they are ascertained and explored to thee, as plainly they are most of all; why dost thou neglect the illustrious occasion of meriting God and His unsullied Mother, not to say men themselves, by so many merits, and so many obediences at once of piety and duty? These things not I, my Lord, but through me to thee to be announced Peter the Carthusian commands by the command of God. What a man, and endowed with what sanctity, is established among all. He through Christ Jesus, and through the salvation of thy soul, and at once the dignity and advantage of the place, asks thee, that, the old luxury being chastised, thou wilt put on more right manners; and humble and subject thyself to almighty God. That thou mayest be able to do this the more easily and gladly, he sets a form for thee, namely of those things which must be performed by thee. Since if thou shalt induce thy mind to obey his commands, unless he correct himself he will die within three months. he promises that not only thou wilt bring back the praises of duty and religion, but also wilt enter into great grace with God: but if (which God avert) he foretells death to thee within the space of three months, and wretchedly threatens it. But the words were cast into the wind. For Andrew indeed
not abhorring from the ferocity and wantonness of the bull (whence also his family had its surname-insignia), and spurning both the salutary admonitions and prayers of the blessed Man, and bearing immoderate spirits with a fierce mouth, adverse health within the time predefined for him so prostrated him, that he paid the penalties of his rash wantonness by his very destruction. But let us come to another matter.
[74] Peter had foreseen that the Abbess, as they call her, of the convent of holy Martha, Again through Joachim Peter foretells, would utterly withdraw faith both from him and likewise from those things, which he had very often commanded to be announced to her unto the glory of God and the salvation of souls. For breaking therefore the obstinacy of this woman, to Joachim on the very day on which he held that divine speech with him, he thus says: Although thou hearest, son, that the Abbess of the Nuns of holy Martha has faith in me in all things, know that constancy in her purpose will be lacking to her: but when thou shalt behold the woman cast down from her sentence and degree, utterly so that no trace of her former faith in me and strength of mind appears in her; then I would have thee straightway meet her, and announce in my words, that, unless she be excellently constant to herself in her former sentence, she will be seized within a month with pains of head and sides most sharply. Nor did the blessed Man sing vain things. For when the same sacred woman was affected toward Peter with a wonderful zeal of mind, and attributed to him most of all; it happened, that, depraved by the wicked counsels of certain persons, she put off all faith and cast away all the piety, with which she seemed to be affected toward the blessed Father on account of his notable sanctity. As soon as this came to Joachim's ears, to the Abbess making light of his admonitions, pitying the woman's madness, he straightway flies to her, and sets forth to her the commands which he had from Peter; and at once exhorts her, to see again and again what she does, and to beware lest by mad counsel she prefer the empty speeches of men and little women to the salutary precepts and pious admonitions of the servants of God; but otherwise to hold it most persuaded that she will be seized by that double evil. These things to the woman hearing seemed so incredible, that in mockery she soon raised guffaws; then to make light of the messenger's words, and at the end utterly to deny them. But the month had not yet passed, when the gibe cost her dear. Since, as Peter had foretold her, the impending pains; the most savage pains of head and sides so seize her and so far torture her, that she remembered she had never suffered anything more bitter in her life; although she strove with the highest effort, as far as could be done by her, struck especially with inward religion, to suppress those very pains. But it was divinely brought about, willing or unwilling, that this should be sufficiently divulged and ascertained to very many.
[75] At Siena there was Brother Francis Guastellonus of the Order of Minorites, a man noble by family, and to a certain Minorite his death after 3 months: but far nobler by the highest probity, life, and most candid manners; to whom when our Peter, Christ the Lord revealing, had presensed that a perennial and unfading crown in heaven, on account of the very many labors which he had drained out in cultivating the Lord's vineyard, was prepared; through the go-between Joachim he had commanded to be announced to him, that he should prepare himself to undergo death piously and holily; the holy Man not doubting, that he would depart from life after the interposed space of three months and pass to the heavenly realms. By which message indeed thou wouldst scarcely believe, with what joy Francis was anointed, so that he could by no means temper himself, but that he should openly disclose the whole matter, as it was, to the Custodian of the convent and the other Franciscan companions; that the presentiment of our Peter might have as many eyewitnesses, as the tried religion and Christian piety made worthy, living under the same roof, to whom faith should be given in all things. Therefore Francis within the established time, the Sacred things, which pertain to expiating the soul, being at leisure duly procured; lest anything for departing piously should be lost, in the crown of the Brothers, glad and rejoicing with the sure hope of eternal felicity, departed to enjoy it.
[79] Among those, who pursued our Peter with a certain special veneration, likewise the mother of Joachim himself had been the parent of the same Joachim, an exceptionally pious and honored woman, and indeed with the best right: since well conscious to herself, how much she was bound to make of Peter; because by him, with God the most clement Maker of heaven and earth, as author and intercessor, she had received great and singular gifts and benefits from God. But no greater benefit, in my opinion at least, stood to her, or appeared adorned with a more pleasing gift, as they relate, than to behold the same woman kindled with the zeal of following Evangelical perfection, and, all her goods and fortunes being sold off, and the price bestowed in the grace of Christ the Lord, to undergo the ministries of the sick and wretched, to render to them the offices of service, which sometimes are wont to be exacted of the lowest maidservant: and herself afterward needy and a hired laborer, by the wage of her labor and hand (only that little gain being reserved to her from her handiworks, which was enough for sustaining life most hardly) to help the destitute and to insist on prayers day and night. Concerning the death therefore of this woman the blessed Father, which he had foreseen would be at hand very soon, reckoning that Joachim, no degenerate son of his parent, should be made more certain by him, spoke with him especially in this manner, when he made words concerning that divine vision: This one thing lastly, son, I judge must be inculcated to thee, and thou must be admonished, namely, that moderately and courteously, as is fitting, soon to die thou bear thyself toward thy mother; because for a short time indeed I know she will be with thee, about to migrate to the heavenly fatherland. But solicitous myself concerning her eternal salvation, I would have thee announce to her and in my words command, that she delay no longer, to wash out by Confession that fault of such a kind, which in these recent days she has contracted. So long Peter was wont to exact this task of her, as soon as by that mind of his, suffused with divine light, he knew that she had sinned in something, he admonishes concerning some sin to be confessed: as long as he was among the living: that namely, partly by salutary detestation of the lapse, partly by sacred confession purged from all stain of sin, she might at length by a happy departure glad obtain heaven. Nor was the exhortation plainly applied in vain. For the most chaste matron, admonished by a gentle chastisement, straightway did not cease by the sacred zeals of religion to expiate whatever she had transgressed, thanks being given to Peter through her son.
[77] But indeed concerning this woman we shall speak elsewhere: it is in this place especially that we too should follow Joachim, pursuing the rest of Peter's commands, and that so sparingly, lest I seem to bring more weariness than pleasure to the reader: for if I should wish to go through singly, the things which he did and performed in caring for the blessed Father's commands within his native seat, I shall assuredly be lengthy; therefore I will apply a measure in this matter, and shall say, that not without cause he undertook this province of deserving well of God and of men in those bitter times, in which in his native city that deadly pest of civil discords, proceeding both from squalid lust of gain, and from unbridled lust of ruling, was dominant. Since during those times especially the hatred of citizens (which is wont always to be headlong toward mutual ruin and unbridled and incautious toward the protection of public liberty) so made the citizens themselves discordant and hostile among themselves; from civil war that it stirred up a war among allies and friends, among kinsmen and relatives, mournful and lasting; and at one and the same time they would open the gate to a foreign enemy. Hence everywhere mad assaults and the bloody seditions of the populace grew strong: hence turbulent commotions and sudden changes of Magistrates arose: hence betrayals: hence the most foul oppugnations of parties, and many other things of the kind, which can scarcely be commemorated without tears, proceeded. But as soon as Joachim sets about to attack the heads of factions and parties, for blunting whose darts he had special commands from Peter; inasmuch as the blessed Man had beheld them pay atrocious punishments among the infernal regions, who had given effort in their lifetime to fostering dissensions of this kind; straightway thou wouldst see some, ferocity laid aside, return into the good grace of those, he brings back many to peace: with whom they were waging immortal enmities; others, their wantonness broken, induce their mind to reconciliation, and, right hands joined, enter into a treaty of peace for all time; very many stir themselves from the deadly lethargy of crimes, and betake themselves to good fruit and soundness of mind. But very many at the very meeting of Joachim, at the feet of the Priests, with great detestation of their misdeeds, straightway cast themselves down for the sake of confessing, and set about better counsels, and undergo a new discipline of living.
[78] But to others the same Joachim concerning justice, temperance, he leads others away from other vices, and submission of mind seriously to enjoin: to others to inculcate that ill-gotten things must be restored, that injuries must be condoned, lusts spurned, harlots left, feuds settled to others: to others indeed other things, now amicably and courteously according to Peter's prescription, now gravely and severely to announce. This man, captured by love of virtue, that he might contain himself in faith and duty, most amicably to exhort; to that one, wavering in the purpose undertaken of serving God, lest he return to his nature on account of the weakness of faith, to add courage and to promise beatitude and heavenly felicity: others (who although they seemed to apply themselves to the zeals of Christian piety with great praise, yet, infatuated by the perverse persuasion of kinsmen and relatives, fostered domestic commotions and civil dissensions) Joachim approached, and them, preoccupied by office, asks from Peter's words, and exhorts as amicably as possible, that they cast away so dangerous a care and see, lest while they intemperately give to flesh and blood what, for the cause of public safety, ought to be given to the common utility, they ruin themselves and at once irritate God against themselves rather than conciliate Him, since great piety toward one's own, is impiety toward God. But to others, who refractory often spurn conscience and the Godhead, unless they at length at some time resolve to be wise, troubles, calamities, and finally the sword of divine justice from the command of the same blessed Father he did not hesitate to threaten. To whose sayings indeed, that they might have the greater faith, more freely to unlock many secrets of their breast, and to lay open the senses of their mind, just as it had been commanded him; that, sprinkled at least with a certain blush, if moved by a less recent bite of mind, they might be recalled from madness.
[79] others from sorceries Nor indeed in giving commands to his Joachim did Peter leave out the conjuring-tricks of the cunning, and passed over the poisonings and bewitchments of witches and hags; nay kindled with the zeal of God by which he was wonderfully eaten away, among other things he commanded him, that, if by no reasoning he could dissolve and utterly overthrow so depraved and execrable a wickedness of so wicked a worship and the diabolical arts, he should at least sharply convict it; now by exhorting and admonishing, now indeed by detesting them, and announcing the heavenly wraths especially intended against those, who gave effort to nefarious bewitchments of this kind, unless they abstained from them. Nor indeed that in vain. Since to the other evils, which during that time especially at Siena, as we have just said, daily grew, this most execrable of all had been added, that very many gave more faith
very often to these maleficent mockeries, than to the sacrosanct mysteries of the divine law: so that with ruined men lying and fables with truth, and the arts of demons at once and of men with right faith almost on equal terms seemed to contend. These things it has pleased to recount, that we may more clearly behold the singular merits of our Peter toward his most dear native country. But why should I say toward his native country, since he had embraced in mind the salvation not of one or another city, but of provinces and kingdoms? Would that Joachim had committed to writing, what he did at Rome, and what he then did at Naples with b Queen Joanna; what he did then with the Supreme Pontiff of the whole Roman Church, he also profits various kingdoms and Princes: tarrying at Avignon during those days together with the sacred Senate of the purpled Fathers; what he soon did with John of Gaul, and thence with Edward of Britain, the Kings, to whom dissenting atrociously among themselves and waging from time to time most grievous wars c, Peter sent Joachim his Vicar, that, their wills being reconciled, he should treat concerning a treaty of peace by the command of almighty God. Indeed by the illustrious proclamation of the very Saviour of the human race and God, and our Lord, and indeed by a plainly divine testimony, thou wouldst say together with me, that our Peter, like another Moses, on earth stood with God for the salvation of all mortals; while by prayers and tears, and other zeals of piety of the kind toward the living, he rendered Christ Himself, hostile to men, placated.
[80] whence it is clear how not useless to the commonwealth are solitary Monks. Wherefore here especially I would wish those to apply their minds and intentions, who not less ineptly than rashly do not fear to speak against, namely that Monks, dwelling within the sacred enclosures, are of no fruit, and bring nothing of utility and advantage to the Christian cause; but rather, as a vain weight upon the earth, sleep the sleep of Endymion d. These indeed, willing or unwilling, of necessity must confess that they utterly hallucinate, provided they should set before their eyes among other and other exceptional men zealous of the Monastic life, our Peter and his illustriously performed deeds, to be inspected. For if he, never emerged from the shadows, stirred up such great motions of minds; what, I ask thee, would he have done if placed in the sun, in the field, or in the battle-line, or had come forth into the arena? Therefore learn even at length thou, who art infected with the corruption of rashness of this kind, how greatly for the Christian commonwealth the prayers and frequent tears of one man dear to God, whether dwelling in solitude, or passing a chaste leisure within the cloisters or the little cell of the Monks, he obtains the salvation of mortals: can avail toward obtaining from God the salvation of mortals. For indeed I would say that these bring far more abundant utility to the world, than if they tarried amid the wicked entanglements and perturbations of this age. For then their mind is made purer for contemplating God with the pure gaze of the mind, when, disturbed by no cares of fluid things, and tossed by no desires of the age or waves of wicked lust, they so adhere to the immortal God, that they are made one spirit with Him; and so join themselves with Him, that with ardent prayers they drive away from the world huge evils, and many calamities, and troubles, and obtain for it so many benefits and gifts at once. Of which things, although most illustrious examples are at hand for us, and we have illustrious testimonies in the sacred letters, as for instance concerning the force and virtue of the prayers of Moses, Elijah, Elisha, and Daniel, and the rest of the Saints and old Fathers, that I may pass over the more recent in silence: and this place seems in some manner to admonish us, that we should by no means pass over all things altogether, for blunting especially the impudence of detractors; yet because we did not at the beginning set about to weave an apology, but it was our counsel to hand down Peter's life to the monuments of letters as best we could, those things therefore at present we let pass, and to Peter himself, lest thou say we stray from our purpose, we return; especially since it is a mind to pursue Joachim also, performing his office, elsewhere.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER IX.
For the salvation of a friend Peter suffers dire things for 60 hours: a domestic sedition, stirred for the sake of preserving his body, he knows being absent.
CHAP. III
[81] While Joachim outside according to place and time cares for Peter's commands diligently, meanwhile the blessed Man himself at home, wholly kindled with the most ardent flames of charity, correcting the errors of the Brothers, suffered no time to pass void of pious zeals, but that for the salvation of souls day and night he poured forth bloody rains of tears; and the more, the more certainly he had known the horrendous punishments of the damned among the infernal regions. Hence it was that, anxious concerning the salvation of certain Monks, he began within the time established by him, by certain unarranged speeches and recondite circuitous turns of words during speaking, now to exhort them, now even to rebuke. But when he noticed that he profited nothing at all by these arts, he soon applied his mind to another kind of speaking: namely that he should detect to them the faults of conscience, and divinely lay open the hiding-places of the mind; that namely from a loose discipline, suffused with a certain blush of salutary shame, they might at once return to duty, at once also, their manners changed for the better, persist in the chaste fear of God up to the very end. But as soon as they hear these things (such are the dispositions of mortals prone to rash judging, when they notice their affair to be treated by a preposterous counsel, as they think) some say Peter has gone out of his own power, others that he labors with a frenzy, he suffers their various judgments: others that he is mocked by an evil demon, others to interpret his words otherwise, namely that he, agitated by the divine Spirit, utters these things, and that these things are done against them by the will of God. Nevertheless the Monks dissenting among themselves with various speeches, as soon as they descended into themselves (what does patience and the splendor of virtues sometimes not bend even iron breasts?) soon to fall down at Peter's feet, and broken by his exceptional gentleness to seek pardon from him, to beg a blessing, and likewise to promise that they would be in their duty in the future; even against their will openly confessing the wonderful sanctity of the blessed Man and the manner of his life perfect in all respects. Nevertheless the blessed Man, partaker of the divine will, more and more macerates himself, and renews prayers, and occupies himself wholly with the keenest zeal in placating God: that namely he might restrain the hands and darts of divine anger from all, that he might deprecate the horrible punishments long since owed to the crimes of the world: but also (which is by far the greatest fruit of charity) for bearing and enduring all things for the cause of God and of his neighbors he was the more vehemently kindled, the more he discerned the time now to draw near, in which like a most brave warrior he should fight the good fight, and for the glory of Christ and the salvation of souls consummate the course of his life.
[82] Then especially having recollected, that when he was absorbed into that most splendid abyss of the Divine immensity, for the expiation of a friend, in which are hidden all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of the divinity; he had beheld a friendly man then still dwelling among men, liable to most atrocious punishments: for whom when with the most ardent prayers he prayed pardon with God, he heard from the mouth of Truth itself, that it was altogether established, that satisfaction must be made to Divine justice: namely that so many torments must be tolerated by him, as his sins demanded to be washed away. Therefore Peter, having pitied with plainly inmost senses the state of his friend, reports the whole matter in order to his Joachim. Which when he heard, straightway he himself also touched with the man's mercy, most zealously adjures and beseeches the blessed Man, that he hold the friend commended by him, and by his prayers with God guard and fortify him. To these things soon Peter: Christ the Lord wishes, said he, sixty whole hours, in the space of sixty hours, for the expiation of his soul, punishments, like the tortures of the infernal regions, to be sustained. If anyone should take this upon himself, indeed the man would be turned to God with great contrition of heart, and salutary detestation of his crimes, and would have very much knowledge of God and of his own salvation: which I would have held by thee, son, for a greater miracle indeed, than if thou shouldst behold any of mortals now departed from life recalled to the vital airs. But indeed to Joachim asking of him, Whether he would wish for the friend's cause to undergo a hazard of this kind? He spoke that, seized by great fear and trembling of mind, because the matter itself seemed not only to him difficult to do, but also altogether horrible to tell. I would have thee know, answered Peter, that I desire nothing as gladly: nay even hold this, son, that I have now undertaken the same punishments to be endured: and from this hour (announcing a fixed time of suffering) what of punishments or tortures I sustain, it will easily be able to be noticed. prepared to bear the punishments of the infernal regions, And when the time divinely prefixed for bringing aid to that most afflicted soul had now arrived; the blessed Father did not hesitate for him bravely to undergo those most bitter punishments by the divine compact.
[83] 6 days before his death And so six days before he exchanged life for death, fortified by faith, alert in mind, conscious of the divine promise, against the incursions and assaults of the whole pit, he put on arms, namely the most ardent prayers; and relying more on mercy, than terrified by divine justice, he descended into the arena to fight. He fell down straightway cruelly struggled with; and like a corpse cast on the ground he lies pitiably. He becomes suddenly livid, these he undertakes: his strength languishes, a bloodless color is discerned in him, his head appears hollow with dire leanness and deformed, his eyes shut inward into their sockets, and his temples are seen depressed with the deepest hollows, and from his spine almost bare hangs his dry breast. His legs could not be moved from the ground, his hands could not be lifted to heaven. What more? He came to such a point of miseries, by the abundance of torments and punishments, that no one could even touch the nails of his feet, but that he would tremble all over atrociously, and so sharply gnash with his teeth, that they seemed to be broken. The voice alone only had been left him, which could be sent only by truncated and almost half-dead utterances, he panting the more grievously; although there were not lacking some of the Monks, who said that Peter at that time was wholly failed in voice. But that these were utterly mistaken, we are eyewitnesses, say our Authors, namely Columbinus and Nicholas, with whom up to the very end he communicated what it pleased. A sad spectacle indeed and mournful, to behold a most innocent man, not only dead
before death, or before burial already buried, but also dying not able to die. Who then, even having a stony breast, would not weep? Who, cut even from flint, would not grieve, contemplating the blessed Man undone with grief? When the Fathers of the convent beheld him lying on a sack, stuffed with straw after the Carthusian manner, most wretchedly damned; vehemently thunderstruck by the novelty of the thing, inasmuch as ignorant of the mystery, they stood plainly fixed in amazement; and contemplating with mind and eyes his most dire torments, they thought him to be most fiercely struck and harassed by demons. But indeed Joachim, Columbinus, and Nicholas, silently considering the matter with huge religion, and at once beholding the common parent cruelly vexed, were vehemently anguished by this one especial reasoning, that no remedies were at hand for them for soothing the tortures of the blessed Man. But although by no means ignorant of the causes of that bitterness, yet they were not willing to be wanting to themselves, that they should the less sit by the blessed Man so long, until they should behold his end. And this was in Peter the horrendous face of his affairs.
[84] then restored to himself, O Man most boiling with the desire of his neighbors and the glory of God! O invincible, Peter, strength of thy mind! Whom the greatness of atrocity, the savagery of the most dire torments, the horror of tortures, the fear and hesitation of mind, could not, I do not say contain, but not even in any part restrain; but that thou shouldst plunge thyself wholly into the waves and billows of the most bitter punishments. Of which most ardent charity's glorious deed, lest there be any place of doubting with the readers, the rest must be pursued by us, which then followed from it. Peter therefore when he had so lain the whole space of sixty hours tortured in a pitiable manner, at length returned to himself. And behold for thee a new face of his affairs. Since with broken voices to breathe again, to lift as it were revived eyes serene to heaven, to spread his arms, to raise his suppliant hands to the stars, he enjoys heavenly joy: and to loose his tongue little by little into the praises and thanks of the Lord; and finally his pristine soundness and comeliness, although by nature he was of weak strength, to resume he began: suffused namely with so great a heavenly pleasure, that he seemed to himself to exult among the choirs of Angels: thus, that silently he exclaimed, Draw me after thee, I will run in the odor of thy unguents, and other things like these. Indeed nothing in this place ought to seem a wonder, if our blessed Peter, having executed the will of God for the expiation of a friend, by which we are bidden to love our neighbors, should liquefy with so great sweetness of spirit, that he now now perceived with his eyes and mind those heavenly and everlasting joys, and the things which with poured-out wailing full of sweetness he assiduously gaped after; especially since there was nothing, which he would not attempt and effect, for procuring the salvation of souls.
[85] and from his death the friend is amended: Meanwhile of the man purged and well expiated in soul this was no obscure argument, that the singular indulgence of the propitiated Godhead toward him clearly appeared. For a wondrous thing! Soon after Peter's death, which happened three days after, with great and sharp grief stung, so great a contrition of mind concerning himself and his crimes began, that, having detested from his soul the manner and counsels of his former life, for several days angry with himself, in squalor and mourning, almost unsouled with grief he lay. But thence vivified by a salutary meditation of his very self, he felt himself so sweetly affected toward God, that it could scarcely be expressed in words; himself openly indicating, that he experienced certain great and unusual things in himself, which he confessed he had never before experienced; and which likewise he denied he could in any way unfold in speech. Which contrition of heart indeed then followed a certain admirable knowledge and skill of God and of heavenly things. For when the special light of divine grace had shone upon his mind during those days, he more clearly received in mind new and likewise certain divine charisms imparted to himself; of which grace so notable a gift, he ascribed to Peter alone after God: since to so great a man's exceptional sanctity no one could attribute as sure a testimony, as Columbinus testifies, as he, although he had seen Peter only once. By which matter, both in a man of this kind and in others, it was sufficiently and evidently established, that our blessed Father had excellently performed, what in the recent preceding days he had indicated to Joachim, as several others. namely that he would be more profitable to mortals after his death, than on earth while he cultivated life: that is that almighty God would not only work miracles, and at once confer heavenly gifts and benefits externally upon those, who had faith in him; but also internally bring wonderful lights of divine grace through him into pious minds, provided they resolved in their souls to pass life piously and holily. Nor did it deceive faith: since, the same Columbinus being witness, there were not lacking those who frankly confessed, that after the holy Man's death many other illustrious things happened divinely, which more and more declared his exceptional sanctity, especially toward those, who had nothing or little faith in his religion, while he was among the living.
CHAP. IV.
[85] After these things it came to the ears of the Fathers of the convent, Peter by the admirable providence of God again lying ill, [The Fathers understanding, that it is treated concerning Peter's body to be carried off,] and hastening to the last things, that Joachim, Columbinus, and Nicholas Vincentus, a sudden band of citizens being made, were agitating, concerning Peter's body itself, as soon as he should breathe out his soul, to carry it within the walls of his most dear native country; no doubt reckoning that the sacred spoils of so great a man would be a great defense to themselves, their dwellings, fortunes, and finally to the whole city. By which sad announcement struck the Fathers turn all their zeal and thought, to exploring the matter cautiously and dissemblingly. Which when done, and that ascertained which the matter was; behold for thee suddenly through the whole convent secret whispers, behold mutterings and clandestine conversations from time to time, every one of them indeed most unjustly suffering that deed. Therefore the Fathers not ignorant that danger underlay in delay, and at once reckoning that by their very dissimulation Joachim's illiberal endeavor would be corroborated, all assemble into the hall of the monastery, that they may resolve among themselves what must be deliberated concerning that matter, the Converse Brothers and the servants of the house being first admitted to them (but we call Converse Brothers, they go off into diverse opinions; those who, not initiated in the sacred orders, are exercised in domestic work with us). There by asking the opinions it was long and much contended. For the Fathers for a great part favored quiet, for which from the discipline of the Order it must be consulted, they affirmed: then openly to exhort, that it must be seen again and again, lest while we kindle for ourselves the hatred of one or another man, we undergo the dangerous hazard of the envy of the whole most renowned city, and cast our common affair into open peril. For indeed if we should think Joachim's counsel must be weighed by us in an even balance, it must be discerned clearer than light, let us confess, that it is full of piety, others consenting that it must be permitted to another, full of religion, full finally of the dignity of the whole Order alike and of the convent. For what else do they contend, than that more honorably according to the man's dignity the clod of his body be claimed and laid? Which since it is not permitted to be done here by us, following the ancient simplicity of our Fathers; what, I ask, is the cause, that we should ill and grievously bear, that others should take care that this very thing be performed in another place? Others mingling counsel with prayers, now to beseech, that nothing of offense, concerning such and so great a matter, by a dishonest deed or unarranged gesture or word, be afforded to the zealous of the right. We all, set forth to all for the example and signification of solid virtue and religion within the sacred peristyles. Since, if any evil thence proceeds through us, from which nothing but good for propagating the glory of God, and illustrating His clemency toward pious men, would be elicited; what in the other matters (which are human vicissitudes), which regard retaining the most pure honor and duty of religion, rather than that it must be impeded with scandal; do we think must be hoped? To these things if Joachim, as the author of this conspiracy, must be punished; punishment enough will be for him, to prohibit him not only from the inner intercourse, but also from all entrance and approach to Peter: which I think must be done with such gentleness and dexterity, that nothing may appear prior to us in the body of our most loving Brother, to be perpetually preserved with us, when he shall have migrated from this life; than that all, together with the esteem of our name, may understand that peace and mutual consent of good were oldest to us.
[87] Others on the contrary, to affirm it unworthy both of the dignity of the convent and the glory of the Order, if to the sense of one man, stirred up under the appearance of piety toward Peter, they should suffer so great a loss to be made. Do you hold in memory, they add, Fathers, that this man was formerly admitted into a part of the intercourse of our most dear Brother, others saying it must be guarded against in any way whatsoever. and admitted within our dwellings by sufferance? Has he now taken to himself such great spirits, that for the fame and glory of religion, to be collected for himself among the vulgar, he repays our zeals of kindness toward him by so unjust a signification of his dealing? Do we wait, until, a band of citizens or populace being made, he drive us to a man from the convent? and beholding the body of our most sweet Brother snatched from us by force, ought we, free and secure of all care, to sleep on either ear? That a rising flame, even by a scant stream at first, then grown and raging, is not suppressed and extinguished except by ruin, is most thoroughly ascertained. Therefore I reckon that the nascent evil must be met according to the matter, according to the place, according to dignity and prudence. Since not undeservedly (and who does not now presume this in mind?) a pious posterity could summon us for the crime of an ungrateful mind, and call us void of charity toward Peter; if by the highest dissimulation of leisure, we should suffer so huge a disgrace to be branded both on our whole Order, and at once on the convent; since it was rather fitting that we pour out our blood and our very life, than, repelled by fear, most basely receive this notable mark. Are sarcophagi or honorary cenotaphs lacking to us, in which according to honesty, if it were permitted by our institute, his body could be laid? Are cemeteries wanting to us, in which according to the sacrosanct ordinances of the Pontiffs and holy Fathers, the bodies of Monks must be buried? But no, believe me affirming, no, I say, more pleasing gift of piety or obedience could we impart to our Confrere, than that we should endeavor to bring him to the line, and to fashion his most chaste virtues in our very selves according to our strength. whose opinion prevailing, By these and other things said to that effect, at length from the dignity and faith of the Carthusian name the Fathers resolve, that Peter's body must be guarded even unto the peril of esteem and life: reckoning it utterly unworthy, that he should be kept in others' dwellings, with however great veneration, whom thirty-three whole years within domestic walls they had most dearly nourished. But there were not lacking those who asserted that the whole matter ought to be known from Joachim himself, lest, the affair being even then entire, they should rashly undertake something to be perpetrated.
[88] By a tumultuary consent therefore they send those, who should summon him, tarrying at that time with Peter together with Columbinus and Nicholas; and the summoned man before them they insist on pressing with an impudent interrogation,
and ask of him, why he had dared to attempt so great a deed, increased namely by them with so many offices according to the time. To these things Joachim constantly enough to deny, Joachim is interrogated bitterly: and to wash away the objections diligently: that he had never thought to contrive any such thing; then whenever he had set about it, he had reckoned it a thing worth the trouble for himself, because a counsel of this kind had been undertaken for the cause of public safety. Whose abandoned audacity in speaking the Fathers having beheld, straightway reckoning the cabal most certain, are carried away with fury and anger; and (such are the breasts of mortals at some time propense to headlong action under the appearance of duty or honor) shouting hither and thither through the hall, they rouse and stir up tumults and furies; and a brawl with harshness of words having arisen, all crowded together they make an assault upon Joachim. Whom, when he saw bitterly minded against him, straightway with a present mind he burst into these voices: I do not indeed wonder, Fathers; nor from these things, which you so unjustly do against me, do I take any grief; nay even I think it goes excellently with me, to whom it has befallen that the cause of the common Father has fallen into so great envy of you: since this very thing in the Charterhouse would be, I remember to have received from the Father himself in these past days; and having confessed that these things were foretold to him, which Father likewise to have now divinely presensed, and announced to me that all things would come to pass, and that much sharper than before a dissension would be stirred among you, I have Columbinus as witness and Nicholas. But this one thing only bites me, that through these things, that I should the less sit by the Father giving up the soul, and render him the last offices of charity, which my piety toward him exacts of me, I am indeed sorrowfully prohibited. But go, it will not stand still through me, that his memory should the less perpetually stick fixed in my marrow, which indeed with every office of love and veneration, as long as I live, I will ever pursue. These things when the Fathers heard, full of wraths, more and more they are stirred by fury; and the things which (as it has been excellently said by Pope Leo the Great) were the cause of illumination, become to them suddenly the material of blindness: utterly so that nothing was nearer to being done, than that they should hurl themselves and even others into absurd errors. he is expelled from the Charterhouse. Since heaping quarrel upon quarrel, together with the Converse Brothers and the servants, they press Joachim alike with hand and with onset, and dragged by force to the doors of the convent, drove him from the roof, harshly received, as they relate, by the very doorkeepers. Then to Nicholas drunk with fury the Fathers turned, and having used the same harshness of words against him, likewise drove him from the doors: yet no harder injury was inflicted on him. But he, as a man equally noble by family and taught by the variety of misfortunes, as also Nicholas, reckoning that the fury and the time of the tumultuous Monks must be yielded to, swallowed so great a contumely with admirable dissimulation; just as if he already then relied on no doubtful hope that it would be, that he should in some way be dutifully present to the dying blessed Father.
CHAP. V
[89] Joachim and Nicholas being driven from the convent, and the Fathers even then altercating; John Columbinus, using the occasion from the matter and from the time, straightway ran out to Peter together with the convent's cook, and one of the Converse Brothers. To whom coming to him the blessed Father, They have ejected, said he, Joachim: but it matters nothing: explaining all things in order knowingly and arrangedly, just as though he himself had been present there. Which seemed the more wondrous, because Peter, shut in his inner chamber and fixed to his little bed, was so far from hearing the monstrous noises from his cell, that he could not even, especially since the rumors grew hot only in that part of the buildings, which was most remote from Peter. As soon as the Head of the convent and the rest of the Fathers, those Brothers relating, learned this, they are soon caught up into admiration; and pretexting uncertain causes, they attempt to clear themselves concerning the expulsion of Joachim and Nicholas. Then a short time interposed, to Columbinus, tarrying with Peter, the go-betweens again began to come. For the Fathers, their minds namely dissenting, and irritated by those suspicions, by which each was drawn diverse by his own sense; so utterly, that they seemed to pass that whole day (which is a huge evil of suspicions, especially if it brings the reprehension of crimes) restless. At length the summoned Columbinus is present: with various questionings they try the man's mind. Likewise it is attempted against Columbinus, But he, reckoning that which was, by a certain invincible pertinacity of mind as if persisting in his step, stands in mind; holding it certain and fixed to swallow first all difficulties, and to devour all repulses, rather than desert the blessed Father set on the extreme line of life, and now wrestling with death. By which firmness of Columbinus's mind very many of them more vehemently irritated, were agitated by a doubtful care in deliberating. At length, fear urging, they invade him with so stirred an onset, that, hands laid on him, they strove by force to drag him to the door of the monastery.
[90] but the sedition growing strong, And behold for thee a brawl in a moment fouler than before: which more and more growing strong, proceeded so far, that some, stirred by mad contumacy, began to run together through the hall, others to shout for arms, others indeed to fly to the bronze bell, as if to sound the alarm. Which as soon as Columbinus noticed, fearing the concourse of the people, straightway having powerfully struggled out of the hands of the Monks, he too flies thither to impede the matter. But it was divinely brought about, that, just as it is held in the sacred Letters, they groped like the blind a wall, and walked at noon as in the middle of the night; for so with uncertain step they were borne hither and thither, that the bell-rope, although it was before their eyes, they yet never found. Isa. 19, 10 Among these things, the other party of the altercators, made savage by anger and fear, raise a clamor; they press, they urge, that Columbinus must be utterly driven out from the dwellings. But indeed one of the Monks, having beheld the foul contentions, and at once, not without God's counsel, having pitied Columbinus's dignity, set himself as an honorary arbiter between the Fathers and Columbinus; he being led back to Peter it is somehow pacified. partly that it should be from him, that he be not driven from the house; partly also, that he might calm the Fathers' minds ulcerated against him, with what gentleness he could. Nor indeed in vain. Since the same Monk being author, and accompanied likewise by the same, Columbinus betook himself thence again into Peter's chamber. Where this thing worthy at once of admiration and of memory happened at that moment of time, that the blessed Father, soon turned to the Monk with cheerful countenance, began thus to speak with fortunate prayers: There is, son, why I should give thee the greatest thanks, and ascribe to thee especially as received, that Columbinus remains with us. May the Lord Jesus therefore according to His clemency recompense this thy benevolent zeal toward us. Which indeed as the same Columbinus heard, he stood like one thunderstruck, because neither had Peter seen the Monk; nor, since he was very far removed, could he have heard him. But now to me reckoning with my mind these contests and contentions of the Fathers it comes into my mind, that not without a certain nod of the heavenly Godhead they contended concerning Peter's body to be guarded with so great zeal and the keenest contention, both that the outcome should answer to the presentiment of the same Peter, and also that more clearly a long time after, as we shall explain in its place, his admirable innocence and bodily integrity might be established. Which that they may afterward be more clearly clear, to narrating the glorious death of the blessed Father I now turn my pen and speech.
CHAPTER X.
Peter's death and the visions and signs that followed it.
CHAP. VI
The dissensions of the Monks being somehow dispersed, Peter meanwhile, Before 4 friends standing by him the more he felt the supreme time at hand for himself, in which from the custody of the body to a certain other life, full and heaped with eternal goods, he should fly to enjoy; the more ardently toward God, through the most pleasant contemplation of His goodness, he was borne. But when on this very day, which was Friday, about the second hour of the night, with Columbinus, Nicholas, Vincentus, and a certain Hermit, whose name was Sanctus a, he had prolonged speech concerning divine things, suddenly exulting with joy, plainly anointed with an incredible ardor and sweetness of mind, suddenly it was divinely brought about, that he began to exult with such and so unusual alacrity, and to be offered so great a joy, as anyone's mind and thought could ever either grasp greatest, or any reasoning unfold: thus namely, that thou wouldst confess there was nothing of weakness or trouble to him, since, as if he had recovered his lost strength in a moment, he exulted to rise from his little bed with a certain wondrous exultation of spirit reverently: and, as if he wished to embrace someone, escaping all sense of the eyes, by his eyes, countenance, and speech to display I know not what divinity, just as glad and cheerful with a certain silent song and pleasure he was about to migrate hence. These things when the watchers, namely Columbinus, Nicholas, and that Hermit-dweller notice, and brighter than light, and contemplate at once the blessed Father surrounded by divine light, and his face like the sun sending forth glittering rays; for the huge sweetness and sweet pleasure of spirit almost moved out of mind, they could scarcely grasp and contain themselves; but that they too, just as if they divinely had some most pleasing vision of the heavenly godhead set before their eyes, leaping with incredible joy embraced one another in turn; and exulting here and there through the chamber, now to gaze fixedly at the blessed Man; now sticking to their step, to lift their eyes and mind to the supernal things; now indeed with hands spread, to stand somehow suspended and fixed in amazement. Thou wouldst say, that the narrow and humble little house of Peter was made a divine hall: thou wouldst say that that chamber had become a heavenly Paradise: thou wouldst say, I say, as if he had Christ and the saints present, that Christ Jesus was present there together with an innumerable multitude of heavenly Spirits; and that likewise thither His most pure and most holy Mother, surrounded by bands of Angels, had come, and the rest of the assemblies of holy men and holy women had shown themselves to him dancing, and had called him to the everlasting joys of Paradise. Nor wouldst thou plainly stray in conjecture, as we shall afterward say. For it was indeed just and almost owed, that Christ, the best Parent of all and Saviour of the human race, should recreate and honor by His presence and that of all the Blessed, him whom He understood to have been always obedient to Him; and who always, while he was among the living, kept himself entire and chaste, and in this mortal body imitated the life of the heavenly ones.
[92] At length when in this most pleasant ecstasy for three whole hours Peter had persisted; soon as if he loathed all human things, the heavenly ones being now perceived in mind and indeed most sweetly tasted, he closed his eyes and held perpetual silence. then he closes his eyes: Then those who were present, perceiving him about to meet death, order the Fathers of the convent to be called at once: who indeed in the evening suspecting no danger, had each hidden himself in his little cell according to custom. But when they understood the supreme hour to threaten their most dear Brother, most mournful they soon run together; and surrounding his little bed, they chant by turns the fixed prayers for the departing. Meanwhile in Columbinus and his companions grief and the fervor at once of piety and gladness fought, because
they beheld their most loving Father and preceptor torn from them. and amid the prayers of his own, But thence there conquered them now the greatness of pleasure and pleasantness, now the effusion of sweet tears: and at once mixedly raising to heaven the praises of huge joy, they did not doubt that Christ Jesus had come to Peter, and that he in turn was passing to the same Christ rejoicing, and fragrant with the odor of divine virtues. Among these things, those prayers being duly and assiduously performed, straightway our blessed Peter, without any sign of horror or trouble, most placidly exhaled his soul: and, as he had long desired, flew to perennial life, he dies 29 May in the year 1361: within the sixth hour of the night, on Saturday, on the fourth of the Kalends of June, in the year after Christ born one thousand three hundred sixty-first. b
CHAP. VII, CHAP. VIII.
[93] Meanwhile Peter's body being duly tended, and clothed in the monastic dress according to custom, it seemed good to the Fathers that it should be committed to the earth as soon as possible; lest, his death being divulged through the city of Siena, concourses of the peoples, both for honoring his obsequies, and indeed (which was next) for the sake of touching his sacred Relics, and soon silently, should be made to the Charterhouse: and that then especially in that place they should again expose themselves to open peril of losing that very thing, for guarding and preserving which with the highest effort and concertation of minds they had lately contended. Therefore lest through imprudence they should undergo a hazard of this kind, it was a care to them while paying the just rites, namely that they should pursue as secretly as possible those things, which their piety toward Peter exacted of them by the Catholic rite. Which being performed, the sacred corpse of the Man is carried to the cemetery within the peristyle of the monastery, Columbinus accompanying and following the bier, together with Nicholas, and the Hermit-dweller Sanctus: who, deluded of the hope of obtaining the precious treasure, applied themselves to this care, he is buried in the cemetery. that, while for a time they fed themselves on the most pleasant sight of the holy Man lying in the coffin, they might deeply let down into their breast both all the things which they had received from him while he lived, and likewise the things which they themselves had drunk in with their eyes. Among these things into the now decreed pit that consecrated clod is cast, and above the Monks heaping up earth compose a tomb according to custom. * While the Maggiano Fathers with all zeal and art take care, lest the fame of Peter's death, gone out from the Carthusian hiding-places, fly headlong through the whole city; God meanwhile, against whom no counsels of mortals prevail, more and more day by day laid open Peter's death by most explicit arguments: that he himself, while he dwelt among men, had always dejected himself to the last things from solid humility, and labored with the highest zeal and endeavor to be unknown to all and indeed wholly hateful to the world: that in him, that which is in the sacred Letters, might at some time stand expressed; namely that the humble in spirit would be received with glory. Prov. 29 And indeed among other divulged signs and illustrious testimonies, which divinely indicated that the blessed Man had flown to the heavenly realms; that the most evident of all, which appeared in the air about his death, is established to have been with very many, and which in this place it has seemed good especially to add.
[94] Now the women consecrated to God, of the noble convent of holy Martha, had received by hearsay our Peter's illness, At the very hour of his death the Sienese Nuns, and from it his salvation so placed in straits, that of him it was already cried out to be over. Concerning that matter therefore they sent one who should declare to him in the name of their own, that he should indeed effect according to his benevolence toward them, that at the time of his death they might have some sign, whereby they should know him to have ascended to the heavenly beatitude: and this especially his cousin-sister c, who, as we said above, having entered that convent by Peter's exhortation had bound herself to God, through a sure messenger, who was held the chief among the spiritual alumni of the blessed Man, indicated. To whom soon Peter through the same man ordered these things to be announced to her: Tell her, son, that she perpetually show herself humble, and especially be zealous of the virtue of humility: and she will thence obtain from Christ the Lord according to her vow all things which she shall have asked. But it was divinely brought about, that at the moment in which Peter exhaled his spirit, when some Virgins dedicated to God in the nunnery of holy Petronilla, and others in other places men of exceptional piety, and especially the Nuns of this convent of holy Martha, beheld a huge splendor, laying bare far and wide all things round about, like the daylight; and suspecting a fire kindled by chance near the convent, struck with fear demanded help. But besides the rest the Abbess, fearing the contagions of the flames, first terrified by the huge light as by a conflagration, by a too hasty despair flies to the little house of the Priest adjoining the convent, who was for them their chaplain, about to rouse the man by knocking, that he should bring succor to those in peril, because the fire was believed to wander from the hinder part of the convent: and to him soon awakened from sleep, Look round, said she, I beseech thee, Father, where the flames rage with impunity: for from the portico we behold a great light, and whence it takes its beginning, we know not. Meanwhile the little Sisters, almost bloodless with fright (such is the timorous nature of the sex) some to look round for flight, others to implore both human and divine helps alike, others now laden with their little bundles and almost wandered to think of the neighborhood: but others, while with curious eyes they survey the places of the monastery, having ascertained that that splendor flashed from heaven from a fiery little cloud, raised aloft in the manner of a column; turned with a most serene brow to the rest of the nun Virgins, Be present, said they, they see the soul borne to heaven in the appearance of a splendid cloud. in mind, Sisters: for Peter has not deceived our faith. Lo into heaven surrounded with glory he is lifted: just now he has died: just now he has exhaled his soul: and yonder is for us the sign of his death sought for. These things as they say, and now begin with their eyes to grasp the column little by little lifted to the stars, and to shine on every side; scarcely masters of themselves for joy, they raise suppliant hands; and falling on their knees, the Angelic hymn, Glory to God in the highest, with a consonant cry they chant: caught by a certain profound contemplation, while they behold the heavenly column without end with fixed eyes, now opening itself, now closing, and within shining again with an exceptional and pleasing whiteness.
[95] Now since we are in this sacred nunnery of holy Martha, it pleases to tarry a little longer within its bounds, since I hold it not doubtful that this very thing was not moderately loved by our blessed Father, while he enjoyed the light of this sky, on account of its notable sanctity. Here therefore there was a certain Nun, wonderfully abounding in the praise of piety; One of these understands that he will be her intercessor there: who, when on the same night, in which Peter died, the vision of the fiery column being beheld, she had gone to sleep after the morning prayer; from time to time felt herself called by a friendly voice: Arise, said it, calling out to her by name, for Peter has migrated to heaven: therefore from Christ the Lord it is now open to thee to seek whatever thou wilt, no doubt about to obtain by the illustrious merits of the blessed Man, whatever thou shalt ask according to thy will: for know, I would have thee, that he, like another Gregory the Great, is with God. Nor did an awakening of this kind fall in vain: since straightway the sacred woman loosed from sleep, whatever grace she had once desired, on bent knees on the ground, she asked, and openly professed that she had obtained it. When in this same convent the same Nun, of whom we have just spoken, together with another Virgin consecrated to God, who was borne with great religion toward Peter, drew vigils far into the night; and concerning Peter's virtues and sanctity, and likewise concerning the illustrious testification of his beatitude in heaven divinely made to her, and the grace soon obtained through his merits, with great sense of piety conversed; her religious Sister, while she related these things, was affected with incredible grief; because Peter, The other, grieving that she was passed over by him before he fulfilled his last day, had given her nothing especially in commands, nor had taught her concerning any matter: wherefore according to his prescription she might pass her life piously and holily; and full of tears she complained, that she had been neglected and disdained by him, expostulating these and other things with herself: Indeed he sent (she means Peter) to the rest of our Sisters, and commanded them, what it pleased them to do and perform; but to me not even a little word. Which when the other heard, she strove to wipe away all grief from the mind of her most sad fellow-companion Virgin, and to address her with familiar and bland speech; raising her into great hope that it would be, provided she betake herself into Peter's faith and tutelage, that she would obtain her wishes according to her vow. But when she noticed that she profited little or nothing by these words, because she sent forth these pious complaints by no reasonings, she straightway applied her mind to writing; that by epistle she might be made more certain concerning Peter's death, and at once might know something certain, whether at that very moment of time, in which she had perceived herself divinely called by name the past night, the blessed Father himself had gone to the fatherland of the heavenly ones. Meanwhile things being thus settled, that companion Virgin, almost unsouled with grief, and wearied with much vigil, withdrew to bed. Scarcely had sleep embraced her, when suddenly she seemed to hear great noises, in her sleep she is admonished to be zealous of poverty. just as though a huge force of men passed near her: and she understood herself to be called out to by Peter, and instructed to piety in this manner; Knowest thou what I would have thee do? Indeed plant in thy little cell a certain tree, whose name is Pauperculus: for from it thou wilt take abundant and especially generous fruits, namely by following the most holy footsteps of Christ our Saviour through the virtue of poverty; reckoning no doubt that it would be, that thou wouldst take thence great peace and tranquility both of mind and of body. Wherefore from these things sufficiently and more than enough this religious Virgin understood, that poverty especially must be cultivated by her: and then she straightway related the whole series of the matter faithfully to her companion Virgin, who a little before had given herself to writing, rejoicing: since indeed by it she obtained a more solid conjecture, besides the things which they themselves had before perceived with their eyes, that Peter was dead, and had ascended blessed to the realms of heaven. But hence it will now be permitted to depart, although other things nearly similar to these, which in this very convent happened divinely, for declaring Peter's heavenly felicity, lest we be longer, we wrap in purposed silence.
[97] Our blessed Peter had given his Joachim among other things, as has been demonstrated above, singularly in commands, that to Francis of Pisa, a most weighty man, who at that very time, Appearing himself he solves certain doubts. in which Peter flew to those above, presided at Siena over the administration of justice, he should betake himself; that he might soon explain to him I know not what doubt in a matter of the greatest moment, for which day and night he was vehemently anguished. Which as soon as Francis heard, and felt himself divinely relieved of that trouble, he is affected at once with amazement and gladness at one and the same time; and the more because he affirmed constantly enough, that no man besides God had ever had that very thing known. And that miracle
might be added to miracle, he narrated, that a few days before, in his sleep at a deep hour of night a certain Monk had stood by him, clothed in snowy garments: who when for nearly three hours he had spoken with him concerning various matters making for the salvation of the soul, among other things he heard this announced to him at the last; Be of good mind; for it will not be long, but that thou emerge from this most grave hesitation. Which said that Monk departed aloft. That it had seemed not vain, through the same faithful go-between Joachim, the matter itself proved. Moreover that our blessed Father was that cowled man, who would doubt? Indeed the same Francis held this most thoroughly ascertained, although neither had Peter ever known him, nor he Peter by face and intercourse.
[98] Likewise to Joachim's mother, And since concerning the parent of Joachim himself, a matron of tried virtue and religion, we have briefly touched a few things above as occasion offered itself; it will not, I think, be amiss, in this place to explain, what we promised concerning her; since manifold good can be drawn thence, partly for declaring the beatitude of the woman herself, partly that we too may indicate that Peter was excellently constant to himself, when he brought in speech concerning this most approved woman; partly also, that we may lay open the heavenly felicity of the same Peter, namely by the illustrious and almost divine testimony of this woman. I dispatch the matter in few words, since our lucubration hastens to its end. Fifty days perhaps had flowed by from Peter's death, when this religious matron on a certain day, which was d Saturday, together with other women sitting in the doorway of her house in the afternoon hours to relax their minds, a certain girl, about three years born, whom she had uniquely loved as the daughter of a certain friend most dear to her and to Joachim and nourished at home, admonished through the Mother of God concerning their near death, descending from an upper chamber of the dwelling, anxious with childish haste, Prithee Lady, began to say; climb quickly to the chamber: for in it I have beheld the Most Holy Mother of God and Virgin, cherishing in her bosom the little Son Jesus; and I heard her announcing to me, that we both very soon suddenly overcome by disease shall depart from life; and that my parents therefore will wretchedly bewail us. These things as they themselves perceive with their ears, first they began to smile, as if rallying the words of one little girl: then they neglected her for a little, pushed back, because she more importunely urged with panting mouth. But faith stood to the saying. For on the second day of the following week both fell into a grave disease; and both at once exchanged life for death. But the elderly woman, as soon as she divinely recognized that she would migrate from this light, took care to wash away through sacred Confession all the faults of mind contracted up to that day, scant though they were. Whereby it came about, the same appearing. that, suffused with a new dew of heavenly joy, from a certain singular light of divine things, offered to her inwardly by God's gift, glad at length in the almost extreme struggle, by words and signs, she displayed that she had merited to enjoy the converse of the Virgin Mother of God appearing to her in a most august form. By which vision the woman wonderfully recreated, she also testified, that our Peter, radiant with most bright light, had stood by her, who indeed on that very day toward night had undertaken to return to her again, before he exhaled his spirit, that he might pray well for her. And so full of heavenly hope, she at once sought the heavenly realms, about to reign through the ages.
[99] John Columbinus also writes, But lest in narrating signs and visions our speech wander too far into length, let Columbinus come last; to whom we have attributed the last place, both on account of his authority which is most weighty, and also because the things which it has seemed good now to set in view, we think suffice by themselves alone for confirming these divine visions of Peter, even if nothing besides had hitherto been brought forward to this very point. For he, although he brings in a feigned person narrating, the things which we are certainly persuaded befell him himself divinely, namely striving with the highest effort (such was his humility) that everyone should believe the thing to have happened to any other rather than to himself; yet in vain he strives to pass over himself and his name suppressed and silent. For the more he strives to conceal it, the more clearly from his mouth it bursts forth, he not perceiving it, but the Lord permitting; that by the illustrious testification of so great a Man he might openly make the glory of his servant Peter. For thus he sets forth the deed in writing. In the truth of Christ the Lord (These are the same Columbinus's words, although written in his native speech) we affirmingly assert to you, that this holy man Peter met very many through a vision; that he often appeared, and concerning his manifestation gave most clear and illustrious signs: nay besides other and from time to time other wondrous visions of himself, very often he offered himself to be seen, to whom the Lord willed this; openly by day and by night manifesting himself clearly and lucidly; and from the inmost senses of him, to whom he appeared, driving away all hesitation, namely through external and open symbols, which plainly at present we deem it altogether unlawful to lay open. But when mortals shall have known these, they will indeed know, what place the blessed Father himself obtains with God. But among the other things, which in his apparition of this kind Peter indicated, such were these. and confirmed the things foretold. That when about the time of his death he showed that unusual alacrity, and in the air that little cloud illumined by divine light appeared in the manner of a column; then especially he beheld the Heavenly ones, who had come to receive his soul migrating from the body and to lead it into heaven. Nay, as God knows (subjoins Columbinus) while this blessed Father with a certain man held much speech concerning the highest and ardent charity of God; and concerning His holy coming; suddenly a clear voice fell upon the ears, thundering divinely these words: O blessed city, which bore so great a man! Plainly blessed, if it knew the gifts and grace bestowed on it; and blessed likewise, who shall have embraced this my beloved with piety and veneration, and shall have fled into his patronage and tutelage; since he will find day by day greater peace and solace of mind. These things Columbinus.
[100] Which since they are so, it is not to be wondered at, that for so many years from of old and thence in the following years, various images of our Peter the Carthusian were painted in various places of the city; since we behold his effigy everywhere now in obscure monochrome on the wall, now in the porticoes, now in pictures and banners with elegant variety of colors, Very many images of him formerly set forth at Siena, and perfected with exceptional workmanship for the time, and fashioned to his likeness; now in the very cross-roads of the city, and the public gates of the walls; now in the Hall, which they call of the Lords, set before our eyes we behold; just as though not only the son, but at once the Father and Patron, the glory, defense, and ornament of itself the whole city of Siena confesses Peter to be. But why do I say the Sienese City? since heaven itself proclaims the blessed Man its light and ornament: since now by the immortal God Himself the testimony of beatitude and immortality has been attributed to him with us. He himself therefore no otherwise than I have brought into the midst by commemoration the illustrious deeds done of our Peter in a picture, and openly set forth to the utility of all, the written Life will serve the same purpose. although well conscious of the poverty and slenderness of my genius; yet relying on the clemency of God, whose majesty and godhead we venerate in the Saints, and whose immense amplitude their life, death, and glory especially shows. For magnificent things in wars, says that great Basil, both orators very often and painters most beautifully demonstrate: these by speech, those by tablets describing and adorning; and both leading more men to imitate fortitude. For what the discourse of history affords by induction, the same the silent picture also shows by imitation. to the city of Siena, The city of Siena therefore will have from this our lucubration his deeds done set forth for imitation, whom in image two hundred fifty years and more it venerates in the temples. And our whole Carthusian Order will have, and to the Carthusian Order, whereof to rejoice in the sanctity of so great a son of it: who, as an illustrious star, shone conspicuously with the rays of so many divine virtues, and bore for it a great name and glory. The foreign provinces also will have, cherishing the Carthusian family in their bosom and embrace, an illustrious testimony indeed, whereby they may understand, that Italy was by no means lacking to the same family in men excelling especially in sanctity.
[101] renowned then for other holy men, For as Stephen Maconus of Siena, exceptionally dear to the most holy Virgin Catharine of Siena, and her secretary, then indeed an alumnus of the Pontignano Charterhouse, then Head of the Charterhouse of Pavia, a man endowed with the highest sanctity; Bartholomew of Ravenna f, formerly Prefect of the Charterhouse of Gorgona; John g, President of the Charterhouse of Vallisgratiosa in the Pisan territory, whom the same Virgin Catharine of Siena, suffused with divine light, recognized as a man supremely dear to God, and most holily proclaimed, and as long as she lived pursued with singular veneration. That I may pass over in silence others in succession, whose deeds done, by the carelessness of I know not whom lie still in dust and darkness; it pleases to bring one Nicholas Albergato of Bologna into the open in this place; then B. Nicholas Albergato, the proclamation of whose praises is far more abundant, than that it should now be expressed in passing. He is that Blessed Nicholas h, whose innocence the Bolognese Charterhouse first experienced with great praise of itself; as one which even from the man's adolescence so formed him to all virtue and sanctity, that by the exceptional splendor then of his deeds and words he both illustrated Italy; and to remote parts of the Christian World, sent as legate for the sake of removing dissensions among princely men, stirred up admirable love alike and veneration of himself with Kings, Princes, and Dynasts. He, I say, is that Nicholas, who by the ornament of his singular virtues so caught the Bolognese citizens into admiration, that nothing more divine (that I may use the words of a most weighty author i a contemporary of that time) could be proclaimed in Nicholas's name in that time: so utterly, that since he himself was everywhere the doer and proclaimer of most holy works, no one asking, none dissenting, but by the one mind and consent of all, they chose Nicholas from his Carthusian convent, over which he then presided, wholly ignorant of the people's decree, summoned into the City under the appearance of another matter, as their Bishop and Pastor, him reluctant altogether and crying out against it still, the supreme Roman Pontiff most greatly approving the matter. Of this most holy Prelate's gentleness, moderation of mind, and equity the most illustrious witnesses were my Florentine Carthusians, buried in the Florentine Charterhouse, by whose intercourse and familiarity in all his life the most mild man was greatly delighted, to whose convent (which seventy years before Nicholas [k] Acciaiolus, a man for his glorious deeds in the discipline of the commonwealth to be compared with any of the Dukes of his age, took care to be constructed with magnificent and very sumptuous work) this our Nicholas, as to a most safe harbor of tranquility in hard matters, was wont from time to time to run out; in
and choosing for himself a tomb in it, he ordered himself also to be laid in it at his death: which also was done with a most ample funeral.
[102] This most weighty old man's justice, continence, frugality, religion the City of Rome at some time looked up to and admired; because the most ample dignity of the purpled Hat in no way diminished or relaxed in him anything of the old discipline, and the pristine rigor and humility of life, which he had once put on within the Carthusian cloisters. praised through Nicholas V called by his name, But with what praises I should extol so great a man's exceptional commiseration and beneficence toward the needy I know not: for both so stood in him, that all commonly called him the Father of the poor, and the alleviation of the wretched. But what to this very point I cannot, may Thomas of Sarzana fill up my part heaped, by one deed only of so great a Prelate's kindness. For him born of the lowest family, and stripped of all the defenses of life, our Nicholas's liberality so far relieved, that he might apply himself to the studies of the good arts; that to the greatness of his merits this also was added, that the most weighty old man then admitted the man into his family; and so was wont to make him partaker of his counsels, that no one was dearer than he, delighted especially by the youth's lively and keen genius. Whose merits when Thomas assiduously retained in mind, then especially he recollected them, when, four years elapsed from the most ample Man's death, called to hold the helm of the whole Catholic Church, he marked himself with our Nicholas's name, as of a man who had deserved most excellently of him; being namely called Nicholas the Fifth of this name, in this loftiest summit of dignity. Finally our Nicholas's zeal toward the House of God, wisdom and erudition the whole Roman Church must of necessity confess, since at Ferrara, where it had first been appointed, he cast the first foundations of the most celebrated Council of Florence, Eugenius the Fourth being Pontiff. with Peter, dead in the year 1443. But lastly Nicholas's fortitude of mind and exceptional piety toward God let the Sienese praise and celebrate together: with whom he closed his last day, with great grief and great longing for him left, on the VII of the Ides of May, in the year from the Virgin's childbearing one thousand four hundred forty-third, the same Eugenius the Pontiff with the rest of the assembly of Fathers during those days dwelling at Siena, and honoring our Nicholas's obsequies, and proclaiming him a most holy man, and a Father worthy of all veneration and laudation. Which that it was given to the sanctity of Nicholas alone no one, who has known the most august majesty of the Roman Pontiff, would deny: since indeed it is most thoroughly ascertained, that the Supreme Prelate of the whole Catholic Church was never wont to be present at the funeral of any Cardinal or of any princely men whatsoever. These things concerning Albergato, having slipped perhaps too far, according to the opportunity of the matter in explaining; but by no means amiss, as I think. For often to use the memory of so great men is nothing else, than to set before our eyes our zeals, labors, and contentions: since, unless we be altogether moles, we shall behold clearer than light, that we toward these most holy Men are only a shadow, and pursue a certain effigy of virtue; but solid and true virtue, I know not how, we shall seem to turn away from. For who of us, embracing in mind and reason the most illustrious deeds and most excellent virtues either of Nicholas or of Peter, would not shake out his very self, and excite himself to the perfection of his profession at some time? Matt. 8. 20 Since no greater exhortation and no keener excitement to all zeal of sanctity and virtue is wont to be applied, than the examples of good men, and of those especially, to whom together with the obedience of God it was never not oldest to guard the primeval spirit of their Order up to the very end? But these things let others. But I myself, lest meanwhile anyone justly miss my duty, judge that our Peter's Vicar, namely Joachim engaged in his office, must be gone to: since by this reasoning especially I shall take care of my faith excellently, as far as can be done.
ANNOTATA.
Glory of warfare, and the lasting fame of his own, Thou shalt pour deep oblivions of Lethe upon offenses, Faithful in counsels, and with the sword to be dreaded in wars, And powerful in eloquence, whom the renowned realms of Loygi Saw a great Seneschal hence Trinacrian, thence Renowned Jerusalem, to be venerated for Christ's Sepulchre. Whom his parent Florence rejoices to have borne a Citizen, This man, sprung of the celebrated stock Acciaiolus, Shut in this Sarcophagus, his ashes Nicholas left, And founder of this church: free he seeks Olympus With his mind, after Christ a thousand three hundred years And six elevens, on the eighth light of November.
CHAPTER XI.
John Boccaccio helped: the body after 60 years found whole and translated.
[103] Joachim meanwhile during this interval made more certain concerning Peter's death, and concerning those things which had divinely happened in him, by Columbinus and his companions, the more tooth and nail maintained his purpose of pursuing the office undertaken, because God by wondrous visions and prodigies from time to time showed Himself a witness of his sanctity among mortals. Therefore when he took to himself day by day greater spirits and courage, for those things which were left to him of Peter's commands to be cared for by arrangement; from Siena suffused with huge gladness and joy he sets out, and seized his journey toward Florence. Whither as soon as he arrived, among others he went to John Boccaccio, a man indeed zealous of letters a, By B. Peter's command Joachim going to John Boccaccio, and at that time easily the chief of Etruscan eloquence; and him comprehended with benevolence, with grave speech, the witnesses removed, he addresses. First Joachim says, that by the command of the man of God Peter of Siena he meets him; whom although he never knew living by face, yet he himself was most well known to the blessed Man, by divine counsel effecting it. Then he demonstrates the same holy Man's life, conspicuous for virtues and sanctity: which soon that man, while he was absorbed into that abyss of immense Divinity, beheld in his matter; and what he had foreseen Christ the Lord demonstrating, he sets forth. That the blessed Man with himself, having pitied the state of his life straying through the precipices of vices, while he was among men, by himself prayed and beseeched him, that in how great a danger of eternal damnation he was placed, he should see again and again, and change his manners for the better. To these things he detects the luxury and at once the blind errors, in which he had wretchedly lain up to that day, by applying himself to amatory studies; and indicates likewise, what occasions of sinning he had offered to mortals, namely by his divulged b lucubrations; and that he would bring greater ones day by day, he accuses him on account of the impurity of his writings. unless he cast away such counsel and mind of writing. Since, having abused that excellence of genius, bestowed on him by a divine gift unto the glory of God and of the Saints; that force and abundance of speaking, which by the help of the same genius he had attained, he still retained for the ruin of his neighbors; and even in the service of Satan, that is, for collecting empty glory and catching honors rather, than in the service of God and propagating His glory, in the open he expended in setting forth his vigils: which lucubrations do nothing else, but deprave good manners, on which the right and chaste reckoning of living depends. Therefore let him weigh with himself with intent care, whether he prefer to ruin his very self, that he may smile upon men of a deplored life, than, by following the zeals of honesty and virtue, to oppose those very men. Nay even see, I ask thee, John (added Joachim) what of reward or praise for procuring heavenly felicity with God thou thinkest thou canst obtain; since thou openly constitutest thy very self the enemy of modesty, the loosening of luxury and lust; and the things which thou hast hitherto published in writing, for which he is to be punished by God are instruments likewise of the devil, for furnishing and alluring souls to venery. I think I must sometimes fear, lest the sword of divine justice be intended against thee, since by thy very monuments of letters thou declarest war on honesty; while thou settest before our eyes intemperance and wantonness, while turpitude and that thy wicked license of words, for stirring laughter, or, as thou sayest, exhilarating minds and souls; and at one and the same time thou fashionest in thyself by manners and words.
[104] as if affording an example of wickedness, Does it escape thee, that the crimes or misdeeds of others,
when they are set before the eyes of men, although we are not ignorant that they are sins, yet have a most powerful force for corrupting even the hearers? either because that now begins to seem the less an evil, which by the custom of very many is now more common and as it were becomes more familiar; or because this also is the disposition of mortals, that everyone follows those like himself with the highest will and indeed pleasure. But however it is in a matter of this kind, this is established with all: that there is almost no sharper goad to sinning, than a depraved example. Thee therefore, who by words, writings at once and manners, affordest the rest an example of turpitude and wantonness, what evils and everlasting punishments, unless thou betake thyself to better fruit, await, I would have thee weigh. I will not spare, John, thy ears, nor ever serve them, that I may consult for thy salvation; and this the more, because these things not indeed I, but through me Peter, while he beheld this light of the sky, ordered to be inculcated to thee. wherefore he exhorts that he let these things go, Wherefore in the words of the same blessed Man I ask, exhort, announce, that thou lay aside the life, which thou now leadest, full of offenses; that thou cast away poetic studies; and, having detested that deadly poetry, which has hitherto been an impediment to thee, that thou shouldst the less (as the reasoning of duty and Christian piety exacted of thee) show thyself to all a cultivator of true virtue, thou enter at length at some time a more honest discipline of thy studies or manners. All which if thou shalt refuse to pursue, hold it most thoroughly ascertained, from the prediction of the same blessed Man, that it will not be long but that thou pay the penalties of thy wantonness; and by a destruction nearer than thou hast conceived in mind, thou wilt end at once thy profane studies and thy soul. Let therefore avail, John, with thee the authority of so great a man enjoining, whose exceptional sanctity God Himself has confirmed by miracles and signs. Let avail the examples of many and especially noble men, who at Siena, having embraced the admonitions and precepts of the same blessed Man, I delivering them, take day by day more abundant fruits of their obedience; and following the zeals of equity and religion, bring back also greater praises of duty: that otherwise, nay even most evilly it has befallen others, who neglected to obey the salutary commands of the holy Man, I hold for certain; just as it would certainly be established that they had spurned not his counsels full of honesty, but the heavenly Godhead itself. Let avail finally the reckoning of thy salvation, to which if to the light of truth divinely offered thee thou shalt prefer the torch of Christian piety; I do not doubt but that God will be present to thee in all things.
[105] and he indicates to him the secrets of his heart: These things Joachim: which indeed could of themselves move a man, especially instructed with the helps of the liberal arts. But nothing as much rendered Boccaccio's mind struck, as the things which from Joachim himself he heard had been secretly detected: namely all the secrets of his breast and the hiding-places of his mind unlocked to him, of which no mortal besides God was conscious, Boccaccio himself asserted. For these were the things, which to Joachim, as has been said above, going to any one by Peter's command, continually conciliated faith and authority. Therefore as soon as Boccaccio noticed the senses of his mind laid bare, he was vehemently amazed: and overcome with huge fear and dread, moved by which Boccaccio consults Petrarch: religion especially urging, groaning he seemed to recognize the sins of his former life: and when he resolved with himself to emerge from the mire of sins, and to return to soundness and duty; then also to forsake all poetic studies, and to sell off all the furniture of books, he induced his mind. Into which deliberation having entered, Francis Petrarch, dwelling at Padua at that time, whom he had been wont to call his most venerable preceptor c and father; concerning the whole matter he wished to make more certain by letters. Which most weighty Man, namely the other light of Etruscan speech, nay rather the not ignoble author of Latinity reflowering in that great time, we know to have written back to him to this effect. Bk. 1 of the Senile Epistles. Epist. v. With great monsters thy epistle filled me, brother, which while I read, huge amazement contended with huge grief: both departed, when I had read it. For with what eyes except moist could I read the mention of thy tears and of thy so near death, wholly ignorant of the matter and gaping only at the words? When at length I bent and fixed my eyes inward on the matter itself, the state of my mind straightway changed both set aside amazement and grief. Now first what was in the very front of the letters, I pass over. And a little after. These things omitted I come to that, by which I said I was so struck at the first reading. [from whose reply it is known that he wrote to him concerning the death foretold to him,] Thou writest, that some Peter, of Siena by native country, a man conspicuous for religion and besides renowned for miracles, lately dying, foresaw many things about many, among whom some things about each of us, and that this was announced to thee through a certain man, to whom he had committed this. From whom while thou didst more exactly ask, in what manner that holy Man unknown to us had known us, thus it was answered. That his purpose had been, as is given to be understood, to do some pious thing; which when he could not fulfill, death being announced to him, as I conjecture; that he prayed God with an efficacious prayer and one about to reach heaven, and concerning the sanctity of blessed Peter: that He should designate suitable vicars for the matters, to whom He should divinely grant the issue of the undertaken or destined work denied to him. And when by that familiarity, which is between God and the soul of the just, he understood himself heard; lest there be anything of doubt in the matter, that he had Christ Himself present, in whose face he had known all things, which are, which have been, which are soon to be drawn into being; not as Proteus in Maro d, but more fully and much more perfectly and clearly. For what, I pray, would he not see who sees Him, through whom all things were made?
[106] at which announced Petrarch suspends his judgment, That he saw Him with mortal eyes, a great thing, I confess, if true: for it is usual and ancient, for the most part to pretend the veil of religion and sanctity over lies and feigned speeches, that the opinion of divinity may cover human fraud: concerning which at present I do not pronounce, since to me the messenger of that dead man has not yet come: whom to thee first, because thou wast perhaps nearer; and the commands set forth, soon to Naples; thence by sea into Gaul and into Britain thou signifiest him to have gone; lastly that I shall see him, and he will bring forth to me in order the useful part of the commands. Then at length, how much faith there will be with me, I shall see. The man's age, brow, eyes, manners, bearing, motion, gait, sitting, the very voice and speech, and above all the effect of the conclusion, and the intention of the speaker, will be called to counsel. Now as much as I elicit from the things told by thee, us two and some others departing from this life that holy Man saw, to whom he should commit certain more secret things to this executor of his last will of this kind, industrious as thou esteemest and faithful. This, unless I am mistaken, is the sum of the history. But what others have heard from this, is in doubt. yet he praises the counsel of preparing for death. Thou as far as it pertains to thy state hast heard these two things (for the rest thou suppressest), that the term of thy life is at hand, this first: that besides the study of poetry is interdicted to thee, this second and last. Hence that consternation and that grief of thine, which by reading I made mine and by meditating laid aside: and thou, if thou lend me ear, nay if to thyself, if to implanted reason thou lend thy mind, wilt cast it away; and wilt see thence that thou hast grieved, whence rather there should be rejoicing. Thus far from Petrarch's letters; which since they are extant rather long, there is no reason that I should now follow each detail: in which the most wise man is wholly engaged, not only that John remain in the purpose and counsel undertaken of changing the manner of life; but also moves every stone, that he may lead him away from the fear of death: in that matter having used the opportune authority both of heathen examples, and of divine oracles e. But to us it has seemed good to insert here only that part of them, which we thought made for our matter.
[107] Having hitherto set forth, the things which concerning our blessed Father Peter from the most ancient writings and approved authors I have excerpted, I reckon I shall do a thing worth the trouble, Moreover from tradition it is held, if those things also I shall interweave into my history, as its condiment, that I may use the word of S. Basil, which by our elders have been handed to us as it were by hand: and which we even now retain with most firm minds; since these very things, as soon as I went as a candidate petitioner to the Florentine Charterhouse, and then was made a cowled man in it, I received from two Fathers of the Order, dwelling there then of a finished age and of Sienese native country. Of whom the one, since he was still surviving while I wrote these very things, eighty-seven years born, by autograph and those most recent letters does not hesitate frankly and asseveratingly to assert to me, what he even from his first adolescence had learned by the firm and sure hearsay of the old Fathers, and which he affirms that he never saw or read committed to writing. Nor indeed a wonder. For that convent of Maggiano, since it was once liable to the conflagrations of wars and the devastations of the territory, inasmuch as nearest to the city; its Fathers were sometimes compelled to leave it to the soldier to be plundered and devastated, that they might snatch themselves from the dire jaws of war and likewise the incursions of enemies; lest I touch at present anything of those things, which the memory namely of our Fathers in former years bore, while the city was girt with a siege. For when the Commander of the Imperial war f had fixed his seat in it; it is certain that the convent then suffered such damages and troubles, all in it resounding with military clamor, that, (for in the military plundering the writings perished) although the unbridled license of the soldiers seemed to have spared its buildings, yet their wicked lust could not temper itself, but that with defiled hands it should violate the ecclesiastical furnishing and the rest of the domestic furniture, and most insolently plunder it, the squalid rabble of camp-followers impelling, gaping after the cheapest gains. In which plundering that very ancient codices, commentaries, and other monuments of deeds done, which with so great labor and zeal are wont to be elaborated and collected, perished, we hold it not doubtful in so recent, as I said, a memory of the Fathers; because from that lamentable loss only some records unto this day are kept at home, by the zeal and work of certain men foreseeing far for posterity, taken away from the dissolute habit of the soldiers. Therefore let no one wonder concerning so great a matter, which in this place I have undertaken to write, that nothing up to this time stands consigned to the monuments of letters, since not even the reckoning of the sacred furnishing was then had. But indeed, however the matter be, from the memory of men it cannot be blotted out, nor will it ever be able to be, the counsel of the everlasting Godhead effecting it; which, as constant fame holds, had this beginning.
[108] that in the 60th year after his death, The sixtieth year was now being passed g from Peter's death, when God day by day more and more illustrated the same Peter's sanctity by most bright signs and miracles at his tomb. By which signs indeed so far
the Sienese people retained its pristine faith and religion toward the blessed Father, that both citizens and foreigners most frequently sought the Maggiano Charterhouse, with the zeal of visiting the holy Man's sepulcher, carrying back thence illustrious testimonies of their piety and faith, both for obtaining the soundness of mind, and likewise of body. And when the matter flowed according to the mind with no impediment, especially on account of the nearness of the city, the Fathers of the convent of those times came to this, that, reckoning with themselves repeatedly in mind, that by the truly frequent access of the peoples to them their spiritual quiet was disturbed, against especially the spirit of their Order; they began to think about Peter's spoils to be translated elsewhere, since they noticed that they could enter no other reasoning; the Fathers about to consult their quiet and to translate the body elsewhere, by which, the esteem of the convent being safe, so great a frequency of men should be led away from an institute continued for so many years. Therefore assembling into one they resolve, that the matter must altogether be done. Therefore when in the cemetery of the peristyle diggers had been secretly applied for exhuming the sacred relics of the blessed Man, lest any indication should flow forth abroad; it came about, that while they urge the work pertinaciously, one of them during the digging struck with his mattock one of the holy Man's legs. Which nevertheless the work begun pursuing with equal care, little by little at length the earth being dug out, the whole sacred corpse gave itself into sight, not only whole in all its members (wondrous to tell!), just as if it had then first been committed to burial; but (what was far more wondrous) as soon as through the withdrawn garments still whole of it, they dug it up whole, they look upon rivulets of purple gore flowing from the struck leg, more and more caught up into admiration, A Miracle, A Miracle they cried out, and soon burst into the proclamations of the praises of God: holding the matter in the place of a notable prodigy; namely that a body destitute of spirit for so many years should be found incorrupt and little dissimilar from its native splendor; since not even the dampness of the earth, whose nature it is to exhale a stench, in the long series of so many years, could in any part corrupt or weaken that sacred treasure, buried in the very ground. A plainly honorable gift of God, who would deny? which indeed argues the clear and illustrious integrity of the dead blessed Father.
[109] to which with others also S. Bernardine came, And when the fame of so great a miracle burst into the city, it came about that troop by troop citizens and populace straightway flowed to the Charterhouse, much more frequent than before, that with bodily eyes they might recognize him exhumed, whom buried with huge veneration they had long pursued; namely glad that their religion of mind toward the blessed Man was openly proved by an utterly divine testimony. Nor therefore was it then entire to the Monks to restrain by any reasoning the multitude flowing together. When it was come to the venerable corpse, some to kiss it, some to apply prayer-beads, some for piety's sake to cut off fragments of the garments, some by another reasoning reverently to touch it. While these things are agitated, stirred by the rumor of so great a matter the most holy Man Bernardine of Siena, he who, as we said at the beginning, raised the declining Franciscan family, and brought it to recall it to the old severity and discipline of its institute, flies continually to the Maggiano Charterhouse; for the sake of seeing him, concerning whom even from then he had heard illustrious things among his companions of the Confraternity of B. Mary the Virgin as a youth. Whither when he came, he rushed into the embraces of the dead body, to fix pious kisses on the virgin flesh; and many sick were cured: nor did he bear himself thence before, than, poured forth in sweet tears, he held an exceptional laudation concerning the blessed Man to the surrounding multitude. Among these things to the old miracles new ones are added, that at the holy Man's corpse sight is restored to the blind, lepers are cleansed, those captive in ears recover entire hearing, the lame receive their step, very many weakened by an incurable kind of diseases attain convenient health, and other wonders of the kind, for confirming Peter's sanctity, are wrought by Divine power. For which causes the Monks, and he who especially then presided over them, cast into greater straits than before, wonderfully boiled in mind. At length reckoning that there was need of divine help at present, lest the house should receive any detriment in its monastic affair from the concourse of men, or by some tumult purposely stirred they should lose the sacred treasure; but the Prior commanding the miracles ceased: that same Father of the convent, together with the rest of the assembly of Monks approaching the dead body, full of faith uttered these words: I pray thee and indeed to thee, most blessed Father, I command, namely by the virtue of that holy obedience, by whose almighty bond thou hast bound thyself to God and to our Order in this convent, that thou desist from working miracles; lest the celebrity of men disturb among us that purpose which thou hast so greatly loved of the Carthusian discipline.
[110] These things when the President said, a wondrous thing! at once the sacred corpse itself ceased from producing miracles, and the body again was buried, at once the multitude flowing together rested from the concourse and onset, all who were present plainly thunderstruck with amazement. From these things performed the Fathers, by a most holy counsel reckoning it would be best, that no longer in the dug-out place that precious pledge should be kept; in a new brick tomb, constructed at the roots of the sacred bell-tower opposite the cemetery, into it retaining nevertheless the rights of Carthusian simplicity, they bury it again by night, the same Fathers of the convent only being conscious of the matter; which also the Moderator of the convent compelled by precept, that they should never lay open to any outsider, in what place again the deposited body was laid; on this condition however, that one to another, the other to another in succession, and that one thence to another, of those only who should for the time be alumni of the Maggiano Charterhouse, should disclose the matter secretly; that by the continued succession of persons both in some part posterity might be consulted for, and indeed the precious pledge the Fathers might guard safely and perpetually unharmed with them. All which things preserved inviolate unto our very times, at length both to me dwelling in the Florentine Charterhouse in former years, as has been said above; and to others, in other places and these especially under the roofs, by the elder of those two Fathers, of whom a little before mention has been made, were indicated; and the place likewise of the sacred buried body was pointed out. Which Father indeed, Ignatius Burghesius of Siena by name, a man grave and sure, passing his eightieth and more year of age, in this Maggiano convent, where he had professed religion, twenty-four years ago, from the life of men with the praise of Christian piety migrated to those above.
CHAP. XIII
[111] Meanwhile Bernardine, of whom we have made mention above, by no means content with those things, which for the praise and proclamation of our Peter in the Maggiano Charterhouse he had performed; two years also after the finding of the same Peter's body, having set out to Venice for the sake of preaching, both in the private circles of noble men, and from a higher place to the Chief men of the most renowned city so concerning Peter's praises and sanctity, and so concerning the family of the Carthusians copiously and vehemently spoke, that he is said to have concluded in these words. You have, most ample Fathers; thou hast, renowned Venetian city, in the islands, which are around thee, how many convents, full of many soldiers of Christ: which convents, as the loftiest towers and most firm bulwarks, from the face of the North are a far greater defense to thee, and a firmer fortification against hostile incursions and the irruptions of the enemies of the faith, than the stagnant waters which from the deep wash about thee on every side with frequent estuaries: since the virtue and zeals of these soldiers of God, are to thee for living well and blessedly, an incitement alike and a lesson; and they fortify for thee the way by the salutary precepts and exhortations of the divine law, for procuring heavenly felicity. But then especially I shall esteem thee perpetual by perpetual defenses firm and well fortified, in praise of the Carthusian Order, if to these strenuous defenders thou shalt join also stationary soldiers; namely if thou shalt summon the Carthusians into the city, whose virtue and fortitude of mind is such, that while, shut in their camps, they contemplate the battle of the other soldiers, and admire their exceptional virtue; they themselves nevertheless without sword rout and finish off the enemies. For this is that cohort of brave soldiers, who when the rest of the city soldiers come forth from their stations, that with the sword of the word of God they may fight the battles of the Lord against the monsters of vices, and the assaults of the most foul infernal beast; these, I say, as well-prepared watchmen for keeping the sacred watches, no otherwise than Moses raising pure hands to heaven, strengthen the hands of the fighters by continual prayer and the contemplation of divine things, so that, the enemies being slain or put to flight, they obtain victory for the combatants. Theirs indeed is the battle, but it is not doubted that the victory is of these: because, that it be given to those to conquer, these merit to obtain divinely. From this veteran cohort and from these Carthusian camps, the century just past saw another divine Moses to have come forth, who certainly by a divine oracle the heavenly wraths, intended against all mortals, by his illustrious merits with God and sanctity, while he was among the living, deprecated, and rendered and conciliated the godhead placated to the world by assiduous prayers: whom when the city of Siena had brought forth, and concerning B. Peter's incorrupt body, in these recent years in the same native seat, with these very eyes I beheld his sacred body by the admirable gift of God whole and incorrupt, although covered with earth for sixty years. Therefore let the most thoroughly ascertained virtue of these soldiers be to thee, most renowned City, a defense and ornament; let their prayers, their zeals and exercises of piety, their, I say, merits and suffrages, in thy hard matters, undertake thy cause to be defended with God; let them protect thee amid the whirlwinds and conflagrations of wars; let them be present to thee, when thou art assailed by the most turbulent waves and storms; and let them obtain for thee at all time pardon of crimes; just as Moses's prayer obtained victory for the Israelites, Joshua being Leader in the fighting.
[112] These things the Divine herald Bernardine: which indeed made such great motions in the minds of the most weighty Senators, the Carthusians sent to Venice, that by the common consent of all they all assented that the Carthusians must be summoned into the City. Which also was done. Since our Order's Fathers being summoned, the island of S. Andrew by surname at the Shore, the greatest of all that surround the Venetian city, together with the convent of the Hermit Brothers, who then therefore were dismissed from it and designated elsewhere, was attributed in the year from Christ born one thousand four hundred twenty-second, in the year 1422. Francis Foscari being Doge of the Venetians. Of which matter two years after Pontifical diplomas were given, by whose authority the convent itself was inserted into the body and unity of the whole Order, Martin the Fifth being Pontiff. And when a short time after interposed they accommodated it to the institute of the Carthusian purpose, the Fathers having summoned to rule it from the Florentine Charterhouse Marianus of Volterra; it can scarcely be told, with what pious contention of minds all the most noble Patricians labored, that they might build for themselves and their stock family sepulchers in it; and how well they wished for our men, I would believe, provoked by the example not moderately of the most holy Man h Lawrence Justinian, the first Patriarch of Venice, who (as fame holds, and is handed down by the writings of many)
used our Carthusians so familiarly, that he could easily be reckoned one of their number; the august Father being marvelously captured by the intercourse of Francis of Treviso, moderating during the same time the reins of the same Venetian Charterhouse, a man not only of notable erudition, but, what is of more value for conciliating and gluing together souls with the inextricable bond of virtue, exceptionally endowed with a certain Angelic purity. These things concerning the Venetian Charterhouse first founded it has pleased to add, namely the suitable opportunity of the translation of our Peter's Body having allured us; whose soul indeed, rejoicing in the heavens, we trust to be clothed about with blessed immortality unto a perpetual age.
Therefore to thee now, most holy Father, I turn my speech and myself wholly. Thee I call, thee, I say most blessed Father, I invoke; The Author implores the patronage of B. Peter. who glad and rejoicing contemplatest thy Author, and at once enjoyest the fellowship of the heavenly ones. Cause, I pray, that we all experience, who worship thee, how much thou availest by grace with the Maker of all things, while we thy zealous ones implore thy help, and demand the aids of thy prayers. Help us dwelling in the solitude of this wretched life. Our Carthusian Order, nay rather thy own, kindly guard. This Maggiano house, thy nurse and keeper while thou wast on earth, and in which thou hast left so many examples of thy wonderful virtues, protect with thy patronage and preserve. The city of Siena besides, the common parent, guard. And me finally, supplicating to thee for my salvation, do not, I pray, exclude; who have known thy deeds indeed by thy gift and leave and have undertaken them to be written, that I might conciliate to myself thy patronage: not relying on my own strength, which in writing is none; but on the virtue of Him, who not only makes the tongues of infants eloquent, but also taught the mouth of a brute animal to utter words: that, the course of my life being finished, I may merit to arrive at that same happy and eternal life, to which thou happy hast already arrived.
ANNOTATA.
He sings the Progeny of the Gods, a marvelous, never Seen work; and the Famous Mothers, and the Misfortunes of Men; Pools, Lakes, Seas, Fountains, the highest Ridges, Marshes, And Rivers and Forests in prose; and Pastures in meter:
that is the Bucolics, having imitated Virgil. But of all these we should perhaps be more easily without, than those which he wrote historically concerning the Wars of Pontiffs and Emperors, of the Lands of the Church rebelling, of the Florentines with the Duke of Milan and the King of Aragon, of the Tartars against the Turks, of the Emperor Sigismund against the same; and concerning the heresies of the Bohemians and the Capture of Constantinople: These, I say, would better see the light, than those which he wrote in the vernacular Italian tongue, full of jests and vanities, and the more harmful for this, that they are stuffed with a mellifluous juice of words and sentences. I know not whether there is extant a Life of the same man by Betussius, in Italian indeed, but most elegantly written: curious also are the things which concerning the same man Gerard son of John Vossius has, in his book concerning the Latin Historians.
Under this mass lie the ashes and bones of John: His mind sits before God, adorned with the merits of his labors. His begetter of mortal life was Boccaccio, His native country Certaldo, his study the kindly Poesy.