ON ST. GREGORY OF BURTSCHEID, FOUNDER AND FIRST ABBOT OF THE MONASTERY OF BURTSCHEID, NEAR AACHEN,
AT THE END OF THE TENTH CENTURY.
COMMENTARIUS PRAEVIUS
Gregory, abbot of Burtscheid near Aachen. (S.)
BY A. P.
§ I. Of the history of St. Gregory and of his twofold Vita written of old.
[1] The history of St. Gregory, Lately at last there has been restored to the light of historical truth that saint of whom those who made mention of him before these last years had indeed not a little to narrate, but that partly not altogether true, partly plainly false. They related, namely, that Gregory was the son of Nicephorus Phocas, the Byzantine emperor, and had as his sister Theophanu, the wife of Otto II; that, setting everything aside, he enlisted in the monastic warfare in his native land; that after he had been captured by the Saracens and had borne various misfortunes, he set out for the West and at length came to Rome, where, with his sister Theophanu helping him with counsel and wealth, he built the monastery of St. Saviour; that finally, at the command of Otto II, he betook himself to Aachen and near that noble city was abbot in the monastery of Burtscheid, which the emperor had built for his sake, and died with the praise of holiness.
[2] hitherto sufficiently uncertain Now these things aroused suspicion even from the fact that the name of that prince, of royal blood as was reported, and abbot of no mean standing, was not so much as read in any Byzantine writer, while among the Latins only one [Add a certain diploma of Otto III given in the year 1000; on which see below, no. 13.] before the thirteenth century, and he in passing and in very few words, had mentioned him. Bruno of Querfurt, namely, when in the Vita of St. Adalbert, chap. 17, he praised the holy men who were accustomed to meet with Adalbert at Rome in the monastery of Sts. Boniface and Alexius for the sake of devout conversation, names in the first place, as it seems, our saint among those four whom he states to have been devoted to the rule of St. Basil, in these words: This was the abbot Gregory, this was the father Nilus… [MG., Scriptores vol. IV, p. 603; cf. Acta Sanctorum, April vol. III, p. 192. I can scarcely persuade myself that this chapter 17 of the Vita of Adalbert was rightly interpreted by our Henschenius (ibid., p. 193, note d), Mabillon (Acta, saec. V, pp. 847, 868), Nerini (De templo et coenobio Sanctorum Bonifacii et Alexii, p. 77 ff.) and recently the distinguished E. Sackur (Die Cluniacenser, vol. I, p. 332–3), when they supposed that those four Greeks and four Latins all dwelt together in the same monastery with St. Adalbert. I would therefore believe that Gregory came into the monastery of St. Boniface from time to time indeed and as it were in passing, but did not lead the monastic life in it for any longer time.]. He says only this, and he indeed alone. We ought not therefore to wonder too much that historians, when they read that history of St. Gregory which we have presented briefly above only in the more recent writers, I mean Molanus, Fisen, etc., judged it incredible and willingly banished it among the fables [S. Hirsch–H. Bresslau, Jahrbücher des deutschen Reichs unter Heinrich II, vol. III, p. 55, note 1.].
Further, it happened fortunately that, two Vitae of him lately discovered have illustrated it; two Vitae of St. Gregory having lately been found, both the things in this history that were certainly fabulous were corrected and the things that were true were confirmed, and thus the doubts or suspicions which had arisen about the very existence of the holy abbot were removed. The first, nay even hitherto the only one, to publish those Vitae was the distinguished Holder-Egger MG., Scriptores vol. XV, p. 1187–99.; who discussed them so lucidly and so subtly Ibid., p. 1185–7. that scarcely anything else is left for us than to tread in his footsteps through this whole paragraph.
[3] of which the former The collector of the so-called Great Austrian Legendary alone seems to have preserved the former Vita for us; who inserted it into his volumes under the 16th of April, but, as he did from time to time in other Vitae also, not entire, but lacking its final part. Which we regret not a little; since this Vita is of no slight importance for knowing the deeds of Gregory, inasmuch as it was written not so very long after his death. by an almost contemporary author For the author, although perhaps he had not seen the holy abbot [I would not wish to deny this so precisely as Holder-Egger did. For it could have happened that our author was by no means in company with Gregory in Italy, but afterwards came to know him in Germany. The surviving text of the Vita, of course, breaks off before discussion begins of the things done by the saint in Germany; and since it is not improbable that in the part now lost the author disclosed something about his own acquaintance with Gregory, if there was any, I think I shall act more prudently if I leave the matter in doubt.], had nevertheless learned most of the things he puts forward from three of his Calabrian disciples Chap. 3.; whose testimony also he does not neglect to mention again and again studiously in his narrative Further, chap. 4, 6, 9, 10, 13.; whence Holder-Egger rightly concludes that he wrote before the middle of the eleventh century. and written not by a Calabrian, "That he was not a Calabrian" — so the same learned man goes on — "is already clear from the fact that he used the Latin language; and since in his last words he called Otto III our most pious Caesar, contrasting him with the emperors of Constantinople, to whom Calabria was subject, it appears that he lived either in Germany or in upper Italy." The same distinguished man also thinks it probable that this former Vita was written either by the monks of Burtscheid themselves or at their prompting.
[4] although it is mutilated That little book is read in five codices, at least those we know, namely 1) of the monastery of Heiligenkreuz in Austria, no. 12, end of the twelfth century, fol. 66–67vo; 2) of the monastery of Admont in Styria, no. 24, thirteenth century, fol. 69vo–71; 3) of the Palatine library of Vienna, lat. 336, thirteenth century, fol. 88vo–91; 4) of the monastery of Zwettl in Austria, no. 24, thirteenth century, fol. 75–76vo; 5) of the monastery of Melk in Austria, marked M. 4, fifteenth century, fol. 207–9vo [We have neglected a seventeenth-century copy which we found in our library among the remains left by our predecessors; for, having collected the variant readings, scarcely any doubt remains to us that it is a transcript of the Melk codex M. 4 itself; since it has all but every one of the readings proper to that one; and where it departs from it, it does not come closer to another of the codices 1, 2, 3, 4, but presents a depraved text and manifest errors.]. All of these end mutilated at the same words, all teem with faults, and preserved for us only in faulty codices, which different scribes have tried from time to time to correct in different ways; so that you may not undeservedly conclude that the archetype copy of these codices itself was by no means free of blemishes [We know by experience that the same must be said of many other Vitae copied in the Austrian Legendary.]. In preparing the first edition the distinguished Holder-Egger used codices 1, 2, 3; but this unlucky thing happened, that the one who examined the Heiligenkreuz codex for his sake, when collecting the variant readings, noted almost everywhere the conjectures of the corrector instead of the original writing; which we lately discovered when, through the outstanding kindness of the Most Rev. abbot of Heiligenkreuz and of the Rev. Fr. Gregor Pöck, librarian of the same monastery, we had received into our library, to be examined, the four Heiligenkreuz codices in which the Austrian Legendary is contained. We therefore collated that copy again and carefully distinguished the hand of the corrector who in the thirteenth century applied himself to cleansing the text. The variant readings of codices 2, 3 I took from the first edition, but so that from time to time, when some doubt arose, I went to the codices themselves; which, through the never sufficiently praised liberality of the librarians, we had obtained for use. Codex 5, likewise most kindly sent here, I collated myself; finally codex 4 was most obligingly collated by the Rev. Fr. Benedikt Hammerl, librarian and archivist of Zwettl. Yet neither this diligence nor the emendations skilfully proposed by the former editor were sufficient for us to be able to restore everywhere the words of the original work; which text may someone more fortunate find whole and uncorrupted! Meanwhile there remain some passages from which we are scarcely, or not even scarcely, able to draw out a fitting sense.
[5] it nevertheless records certain things worth knowing; From what survives, however, we are taught chiefly these things: that a certain Gregory, a Calabrian, in the time of the emperor Otto III ruled the monastery of Cerchiara; that the same both worked many miracles and suffered evils from the Saracens who were laying Calabria waste; and in the last words it is finally hinted that afterwards a certain intimacy arose between Gregory and Otto III. Almost the same things, in the same order, but the author of the other Vita but not always in the same way, are related by the other Vita of Gregory which we mentioned; which besides carries the narrative of the deeds of the holy abbot much further. This was preserved for us by the Darmstadt codex no. 205, fol. 154vo–169, of paper, and written in the year 1487 [We learned this from a note subscribed to the Vita of St. Thomas Aquinas, fol. 98. Cf. Holder-Egger, in the volume cited, p. 1186, note 1.] by various hands in the monastery of the island of Niederwerth, situated in the Rhine near Koblenz. From it the distinguished Holder-Egger prepared the first edition, of some of the miracles
narratives and of the hortatory passages having been cut away here and there; but since, according to our plan, the text was to be presented to us entire, we turned over again the codex which the distinguished Maurer, prefect of the Darmstadt library, had sent to our library with the greatest kindness, and we supplied the parts omitted.
[6] had not read the former, That this Vita, however, if it is compared with the former Vita, presents a notable example of hagiography and of a critical question, Holder-Egger rightly observed. For the author had not read the former Vita; he writes namely in chap. 25: A written life of him was indeed held until now, even, as some say, written in letters of gold and silver, in the same church, but afterwards burned by a mischance not well known. But these things which we have touched on from there, … we found on a fairly ancient hanging at Cologne in the church of holy Mary, but he had learned the deeds of Gregory where a choir of nuns serves God, with evident captions. This hanging too the lady empress Theophanu, sister of blessed Gregory, ordered to be made in memory of her beloved brother after his death… And yet that he spoke truly, at least if you look at the substance of the matter, we shall both shortly show and it will be manifest to anyone who compares the two Vitae. "He saw, therefore" — so the distinguished Holder-Egger to the point — "pictures woven into a hanging, such as are seen on the most celebrated Bayeux tapestry [This hanging was, as it seems, not unlike those monuments made in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which the excellent F. X. Kraus recently had reproduced with outstanding skill, Die christlichen Inschriften der Rheinlande, 2nd part (1892), nos. 87, 88, 89, and Der Kirchenschatz von Sanct Blasien (1892), plates 1, 2, 3.], on which the deeds of Gregory were depicted, with short inscriptions [Which he himself calls "capitula"; for in this place that word has this force. See Du Cange–Henschel, Glossarium, under the word Capitulum 2. H.-E.], by which the things represented were explained. The little book composed in this way certainly teems with fables; for the author fancifully imagines that Gregory was the son of the emperor of Constantinople, the brother of the empress Theophanu, and was summoned into Germany by Otto II; but the substance of the matters agrees in a singular way with the Vita of Gregory preserved in the Austrian legendary." For as far as the former Vita extends, so far "almost the same things are narrated in plainly the same order, the same miracles are related in the same sequence in each little book, even the same names of persons and places are mentioned in both [The abbot Pachomius, Bishop David, Scandalis (Sandalis), prince of the Saracens, the town of Bulcinum. H.-E.]; but in lesser matters, in the causes and the connection of things, the later Vita plainly departs from the former, so that you may recognize that its author took a sort of kernel of the narrative from the pictures depicted on the hanging, and fabricated and invented everything else [Someone or other, as it seems, had already earlier invented the royal birth of Gregory; for it is probable that the epitaph which is read inserted in chap. 26 of Vita II was composed before the times of our author.], and did not rightly explain some of the pictures [Cases quite similar to this are not lacking in hagiography; see for example the Vita of St. Mercurialis, bishop of Forlì, Acta Sanctorum, April vol. III, p. 754–6; cf. ibid., p. 752, nos. 4, 5.]. Nor does it seem to me doubtful that the things depicted on the hanging were fashioned with the former Vita as guide."
[7] and adorned with inscriptions, Further, which is consistent with this, the words and style of the two works are altogether different; for, having made a careful comparison, we have found scarcely six passages in which some similarity worthy of note occurs between the two. It will be well to subjoin these:
Life I. Life II.
Chap. 1. … ei de ordine in ordinem ascensum praebere non distulit. … did not delay to grant him ascent from order to order. Chap. 3. … ipsum de ordine in ordinem consecravit. … consecrated him from order to order.
Chap. 2. … angelicae vocis admonitio venit, ut… … there came the admonition of an angelic voice, that… Chap. 1. … admonitione angelica iussus est… … he was ordered by an angelic admonition…
Chap. 3. Nullus clericus morum honestate sibi erat aequiparandus. No cleric was to be compared with him in uprightness of conduct. Chap. 2. … nulli morum honestate inferior videretur. … he seemed inferior to none in uprightness of conduct.
Chap. 7. … ex nimia fatigatione hostis antiqui. … from the excessive harassment of the ancient enemy. Chap. 5. Omnis fatigatio daemonis expulsa est. All harassment of the demon was driven out.
Chap. 9. … statim signo crucis ad locum doloris opposito, sanavit eum. [… at once, the sign of the cross being set against the place of the pain, he healed him.] Chap. 8. Oravit ut vel signum crucis doloris sui loco imponeret. [He begged that he would at least place the sign of the cross on the place of his pain.]
Chap. 10. … leprosum quendam … elemosynam ab ipso petentem. … a certain leper … asking alms of him. Chap. 9. … Contigit ut quidam leprosus … elemosynam peteret. … It happened that a certain leper … asked alms.
These similarities could partly have arisen by chance, and are partly explained by the fact that in some places the author of the later Vita reported, more or less faithfully, the text of the inscriptions depicted on the hanging; which inscriptions, the learned Holder-Egger rightly, as it seems, conjectured, were composed with the use of the former Vita.
[8] which seems now to have perished. We should certainly have derived no slight benefit from this hanging if, as other monuments of this kind survive See above, note 2., it too had been preserved down to our own times. But when we inquired, the most learned men Franz Xaver Kraus, professor at Freiburg, and Alexander Schnütgen, canon of Cologne, replied that there exists absolutely no hanging made in the Middle Ages, either in the church of Blessed Mary in Capitol [For this seems to be designated by the author of the Vita when he says: in which a choir of nuns serves God.] or in any other at Cologne; that no Cologne author, not Winheim, not Gelenius, etc., etc., had seen ours or at any rate mentioned it. Whence it must be believed to have perished.
[9] That Vita, certainly fabulous, But although we lack this aid, nevertheless what we have said above is certainly clear enough for us to assent entirely to what the distinguished Holder-Egger wisely concluded from it: "In these matters, therefore," he says, "which we have related in the former Vita, the later is fabulous and fictitious and of no value; yet it is to be esteemed somewhat, because by its help the final part of the former Vita, which has perished, can in some way be supplied. yet by no means useless, For we learn from it that Gregory the Calabrian came into the intimacy of the emperor Otto, and was sent by him into Germany to establish and rule the monastery of Burtscheid founded by the emperor." We are made certain, namely, who that Gregory was whose deeds are narrated in the mutilated former Vita; for if the later Vita had not been found, we should never have suspected that the first abbot of Burtscheid lay hidden under the person of that Calabrian. And before the distinguished F. W. E. Roth had made the later Vita known to the learned Neues Archiv, vol. XIII, p. 592–3., G. Waitz of blessed memory had decided to publish the former Vita, which he called that "of a certain abbot Gregory," in the Monumenta Germaniae among the writers of Italian history Cf. Neues Archiv, vol. XII, p. 7.. But there is also another usefulness of this little book, namely that it makes plain by what art some hagiographers, when they lived long after the times of those whose deeds they wished to narrate, and did not have at hand anything from which they might be abundantly informed of their history, provided for their poverty by conjectures, devout exhortations and digressions, and finally by passages scraped together abundantly from Scripture; in which matter ours will certainly bear the palm among many.
[10] was written at the end of the twelfth century At what time that Vita was composed, the often-praised Holder-Egger has defined so aptly that, lest we do again what has been done excellently, we prefer to subjoin his words once more: "The later Vita was written by a monk of Burtscheid, as it seems, a little after the bones of Gregory were raised by the abbot Arnold about the years 1180–1190 Cf. chap. 26., at the urging of Arnold himself [Which these words of chap. 25 seem to indicate: But these things which we have touched on from there, both with Wolfram busily at work and with the lord Arnold more ardently bringing it to completion… Which words seem to pertain both to the raising of the bones of Gregory and to the writing of his Vita. H.-E. Yet the words read in chap. 26 cast doubt: The lord Arnold, abbot of the often-mentioned monastery, being in his times a more ardent emulator of the paternal traditions; for Arnold seems already to have died when the author was writing these things.], at the end of the twelfth century. With which time it agrees very well that the language throughout this whole little book is adorned in the usual manner with rhyming syllables. There follow indeed some chapters on miracles done in the year 1261, after the monastery of Burtscheid was handed over in the year 1220 to Cistercian nuns. and afterwards increased by a brief account of miracles. But that these were added afterwards to the little book written earlier, namely in the year 1261 or a little after, is clear at first sight, since the language of these chapters differs entirely from that of the Vita, since no trace of the ornament which we call 'Reimprosa' (in French prose rimée) is found in them, since the Vita is cited twice and its words repeated in one place."
[11] The fables put forward in it Since Molanus had not noticed this, he supposed that the whole Vita was composed in the time of the first abbess [Namely Helswindis, who, as we know from the addition to the Vita itself, presided at least from the year 1220 to the year 1261.]; for I hold it for certain that this Vita, and not some other work derived from it and now hidden, is designated by him where he testified that what he put forward about St. Gregory [Natales Sanctorum Belgii (Louvain 1595), fol. 247vo–8vo; 2nd ed. (Douai 1616) fol. 241–2.] he had drawn "from the history of Burtscheid written in the time of the first abbess." For in his narrative he followed step by step the tenor of the Vita, which he presented in a fairly brief abridgment, adding nothing and often keeping the words of the Vita itself. Long before Molanus, Caesarius of Heisterbach had either read the same Vita or at any rate had heard the fables which are put forward in it. For when in the years 1221 and 1222 he was composing his dialogue of miracles, in book VIII, chap. 76, he called Gregory the son of the king of Greece and the first abbot and founder of the monastery of Burtscheid; besides this, however, he handed down nothing of what is related in the Vita. were held in great honor among the moderns. I have found no later writer, however, except Molanus and perhaps also Trithemius Annales Hirsaugienses, vol. I (1690), p. 117., who read Vita II. For as many as afterwards spoke somewhat more fully about Gregory all drew either from Caesarius or from Molanus: I mean Wion Lignum Vitae, part II (1595), pp. 361, 501., Miraeus Chronicon Cisterciensis ordinis (1614), p. 215–8., Saussay Martyrologium gallicanum (1637), p. 831–2., Fisen [Historia ecclesiae Leodiensis (1642), p. 238–9; 2nd ed. vol. I (1696), p. 148–9; Flores ecclesiae Leodiensis (1647), p. 479.], others, and in more recent time Quix Geschichte der ehemaligen Reichs-Abtei Burtscheid (1834), p. 63., De Ram Vies des pères, martyrs … traduit d'Alban Butler, vol. VI (1849), p. 76., Mooren [Hagiologisches in Annalen des historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein, vol. XXIV (1872), p. 174.] etc. Since, however, in the meantime the former Vita was unknown to all authors, whether ancient or modern, it came about from this that all the elogia of our saint which have been written down to these very latest times need censure and must be cleared of fables.
§ II. Of the foundation of the monastery of Burtscheid.
[12] The abbey of Burtscheid That the beginning of the building of the monastery of Burtscheid was made in the year 973 or 974 was handed down formerly by most writers, and this because, with the later Vita as guide, Trithemius, Molanus and those who followed them
supposed that the emperor Otto II had devoted his efforts to this foundation. But the former Vita has taught us that Gregory flourished not in the time of Otto II, by Otto III but in that of Otto III Vita I, chap. 1., and from the last words which survive it seems possible to conclude that our saint was summoned into Germany by the same emperor Ibid., chap. 13.. But documents worthy of all credit furnish a clearer testimony in express words, so that it is altogether certain that Burtscheid was founded by Otto III. For Henry II writes in a diploma given to the people of Burtscheid on 21 January in the year 1018: That we, for the remedy of our soul and of our senior and nephew, namely Otto the third, emperor augustus, who began to order that very place from its foundation for the service of God [Lacomblet, Urkundenbuch für die Geschichte des Niederrheins, vol. I, p. 93, no. 151.] … With these agree the Acts of the founders of the monastery of Brauweiler, written at the end of the eleventh century; in which these things are related of Otto III MG., Scriptores vol. XIV, p. 131, chap. 10.: He had established a monastery of monks, which is called Burcetum, in honor of St. John the Baptist and of St. Nicholas, archbishop of the people of Myra, because by his mother's blood he was a Greek [Cf. also the diploma of Conrad III given in the year 1138 (Lacomblet, in the volume cited, p. 216–7, no. 326), and a certain chronicle of Aachen edited by the distinguished Loersch in Annalen des historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein, vol. XVII (1866), p. 2.].
[13] founded not long after the year 996; About what year the monastery was founded cannot be defined so easily. If, with the distinguished Holder-Egger MG., Scriptores vol. XV, p. 1190, note 4., we attribute so much credit to the later Vita as to believe that Gregory met Otto III — whom the author of the Vita wrongly calls Otto II — at Rome, it is certain that this did not happen before the year 996, since in this year the emperor first went to Rome [G. Richter–H. Kohl, Annalen des deutschen Reichs im Zeitalter der Ottonen, vol. I (1890), p. 157.]; who afterwards in the years 998 and 999 was again in Italy. About these times, therefore, but rather in the year 996 than in 999, Gregory, leaving Italy, made his way into Germany; since at the beginning of the year 1000, when the monastery of Burtscheid had already been built at least in some part, the holy man had died; for we read in a diploma of Otto III given on 6 February of this year Böhmer, Acta imperii selecta, ed. Ficker, p. 28–9, no. 33.: The monastery of the holy martyrs Apollinaris and Nicholas and of the venerable confessor Gregory, resting in his bodily substance in the same monastery, by whom the same venerable place was built from the foundations … named by the common name Burci H.-E. rightly observes that nominatum is to be read.. By which we are taught again that the origin of the abbey of Burtscheid is to be traced back to St. Gregory, whom Otto III certainly assisted with every resource.
[14] Nor did Henry II show himself less munificent toward the same monastery Cf. his three diplomas in Lacomblet, in the volume cited, p. 92–3, nos. 149–51., so that it may not undeservedly be said that he completed the work begun by Otto III Cf. Hirsch–Bresslau, op. cit., p. 54.. From the diplomas of that holy emperor, moreover, we learn that, although, as we saw above, Gregory in Italy had been devoted to the rule of St. Basil, the rule of St. Benedict observed in it; the monks of Burtscheid nevertheless lived under the rule of St. Benedict; since it is known that it was formerly decreed by the emperor Louis the Pious that this rule alone should be observed in his whole kingdom [Cf. B. Simson, Jahrbücher des fränkischen Reichs unter Ludwig dem Frommen, vol. I (1874), p. 84.]. In the reign of the same Henry II, in the year 1017 or 1018 Hirsch–Bresslau, in the place cited., the consecration of the church of Burtscheid took place, as we read narrated in the Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium Book III, chap. 35 (MG., Scriptores vol. VII, p. 479–80).: In those days (namely in the year 1023) … a not small dispute flared up between Pilgrim, archbishop of Cologne, and Durand, pontiff of the people of Liège, namely over the monastery of Burtscheid, which each strove to subject to his own diocese. But the lord Bishop Gerard, to quell the dispute by the testimony of the truth, declared aloud that the bishops of Liège had consecrated five abbots of that monastery without any contradiction from the archbishop; nay, he himself also, at the request of the emperor and the petition of Baldric, bishop of Liège, in the presence of the lord emperor, in the church of holy Mary at Aachen, ordained the clerics of the aforesaid monastery, and consecrated that monastery itself together with Archbishop Poppo of the people of Trier and Haimo of the people of Verdun…
[15] its first abbots; In this narrative it has seemed rather strange to some Cf. Hirsch–Bresslau, in the volume cited, p. 55, note 1. that at the time when this contention arose, namely in the year 1023, five abbots had already succeeded one another in the government of the monastery; for they judged that this hardly agreed with the time of the foundation as we assigned it above. But strange as this is, we ought not on that account to depart from the chronology, than which we have found none more probable. Of these five abbots, indeed, we know the names of only two [In the utterly false series of abbots which Quix presents, op. cit., p. 73, Wolfram and Arnold are placed between Gregory and Benedict; and yet from the charters of the monastery compared with chapter 26 of Vita II we have found that both presided after the middle of the twelfth century. In Gallia christiana, moreover, vol. III, col. 1028, Benedict is omitted and this series of abbots is put forward, not false indeed, but very full of gaps: "Gregory, Wolfram, Arnold."], namely of Gregory himself and of Benedict; Gregory had died before the year 1000, while Benedict first appears in the year 1018 and held the prelacy at least until the year 1040 Cf. Lacomblet, in the volume cited, p. 92, no. 150 and p. 108, no. 173.. He certainly held the government of the monastery for a long time, but Gregory for a very short one; no one, therefore, will deny that it could have happened that from the year 1000 to about the year 1018 three abbots, whose names are unknown to us, succeeded one another; and if this seems at least possible, that is enough for us.
[16] an empty fiction about its antiquity. Before I finish, it is well to mention in passing the fiction of Christian Quix, who was so carried away by the affectation of antiquity that he imagined that Chlodulf, bishop of Metz, established in the village of Burtscheid a college of matricularii in the seventh century; which our Gregory afterwards raised to the dignity of an abbey [Op. cit., p. 56–62 and passim afterwards. Mooren agreed with Quix, in the volume cited, p. 174.]. To this opinion the diploma of Henry II cited above is certainly entirely opposed, in which he testifies that his predecessor Otto III began to order that very place from its foundation for the service of God. But the arguments, too, by which Quix strives to prove his opinion are, to speak mildly, very slight. This Lacomblet has already clearly shown In the volume cited, p. 56, note 2.; I will add one thing, that in the diploma of Otto I, on which Quix chiefly relies, the discussion is not of the estate of Breotium, but of Hreotium [Cf. Th. Sickel in MG., Diplomata regum et imperatorum, vol. I (1884), p. 183. Certain others have misused the same diploma, deceived by some similarity of names, so as to invent that the abbey of Burtscheid was founded under Otto I; cf. Hirsching, Klosterlexicon, vol. I (1792), p. 641.]; this is namely a village in the present province of Limburg in Belgium, called in German Rütten, in French Russon. Whence it again appears under how bad an omen Quix conjectured that that place was one and the same with Burtscheid.
§ III. Of the ecclesiastical cult of St. Gregory.
[17] The liturgical cult of St. Gregory seems As the author of the later Vita testifies, chap. 26, in the time of Arnold, abbot of Burtscheid (about 1179–1192), Gregory had not yet been canonized by apostolic authority, although he had deservedly passed into the number of the saints. Nor afterwards was he enrolled among the saints by a solemn judgment of the pontiff. But he first obtained the public honors of the Christian people when his body, after the middle of the twelfth century, through the care of the abbot Wolfram, was raised and solemnly translated Vita II, chap. 25.. What cult was shown to him thereafter, both formerly to have been, apart from the later Vita and the additions subjoined to it, no ancient monuments seem to survive to teach us. For of the liturgical books of the abbey of Burtscheid that survive, I find only two mentioned Neues Archiv, vol. XIII, p. 596–7., namely an antiphonary of the twelfth century (now Darmstadt codex no. 931) and a martyrology of the thirteenth century (likewise, no. 1210). The antiphonary is mutilated at the beginning, and lacks the calendar which is from time to time prefixed to books of this kind; and Gregory is nowhere named. In the martyrology these words are read at the 5th of November: Of Gregory, first abbot and founder of this place; whose life was glorious with virtues and signs [Cf. F. W. E. Roth, in K. Vollmöller, Romanische Forschungen, vol. VI, III (1891), p. 494.]. But the distinguished Maurer, librarian of Darmstadt, informed us that these words were added in the margin by a quite recent hand; whence it may be concluded that the codex was not written in the abbey of Burtscheid itself, but was brought there at a later time.
[18] and also today to be rather slight. In the modern martyrologies, however, from the edition of the martyrology of Usuard published by Greven in the year 1515 onward, we meet the often-named Gregory at the 4th of November. On the same day the memory of the holy patron is celebrated in the town of Burtscheid; there is namely "according to custom a High Mass, but of the day, and likewise solemn Vespers, during which the tomb of the divine abbot is incensed; in which tomb rest his sacred bones [On the inscription which is read above the tomb, see below the annotation to chap. 26 of the later Vita.], except for part of an arm, which is now kept in the church of St. Michael at Fulda. The patronage of Gregory is invoked especially in favor of infants who are tried by disease or weak health. Whether, however, the feast of our saint is kept in other places is not known." These things the reverend D. Straub, parish priest of Burtscheid, lately wrote back to us out of his kindness.
THE FORMER LIFE OF ST. GREGORY, ABBOT
Gregory, abbot of Burtscheid near Aachen. (S.)
BHL Number: 3671
Edited from the codices 1) Heiligenkreuz 12, end of the twelfth century, 2) Admont 24, thirteenth century, 3) Palatine of Vienna lat. 336, thirteenth century, 4) Zwettl 24, thirteenth century, 5) Melk M. 4, fifteenth century. Cf.
above, Commentarius praevius, no. 4. The corrector by whom the Zwettl codex was emended was all but contemporary with the first scribe.
Prologue. Although, by the working clemency of the divine goodness (o. c.) c. o. 4., many signal miracles appear to us which ought by right to be commended to the fidelity of the scriptures, nothing nevertheless is more to be admired and commended to faithful writings than the uprightness of character and the holiness sanctitatis 3, 4 before correction. of the works of each of those who strive lawfully and triumph gloriously in the contest of the worldly struggle. Cf. 2 Tim. 2:5. For although concerning these, as the well-instructed diligence of readers knows, there is no lack of books but a great abundance, nevertheless what we hold, tested for its truth, of the life and character of a certain man in these last times, compelled by his holiness we declare to the devotion of our hearers audentium 3, 4 before correction, 5 before correction. [enodabimus 2, 4 after correction, 5; enobimus 4 before correction; (en. dev.) omits 3.].
[1] In the time of Otto III, [We have introduced the division into chapters; the codices begin new chapters only at chap. 3 and 7. H.-E. But in cod. 4 new chapters begin besides at the words Non est adeo (end of chap. 7) and Alia (chap. 8).]. When, then, the third of the Ottos, most august of Caesars and most fervent in all piety and in the steadfastness of the whole religion, was governing the Roman empire with the devout scepter of rule, there was a man (v. v.) vita vita 3. approved for his life and the uprightness of his character, Gregory by name, who in the days of his blooming youth, not aut 1 before correction, 4 before correction. unmindful of his most loving Maker, setting aside all earthly delights, strove by zeal for the best activity to come to the jubilation of eternal sweetness. Gregory, a noble Calabrian, Sprung, then, from a noble parentage, namely from a father called Licastus and a mother called Anna, on the border of Calabria and Apulia, he left to men of every quality as et 1 corrected. examples for imitation the things which he himself, while he flourished, accomplished by most excellent striving. He was, I say, from boyhood until (i. a.) a. i. 5. youth a layman in the array of his garments, but in the soundness of his heart alive to God and dead to the world. How and how far he hated the world, so that et 4 corrected. he trampled with victorious mind the filth of its delights, the judgment of hearers will easily be able to recognize from the account of what follows. For when his father was already feeling the alternating motion and in adds 5. departing by the way of all (u. c.) c. u. 3, 4, 5. flesh, his mother, not a little weakened by her tearful and continual lamentation over the death of her husband, diligently seeking consolations for her grief, hastening that her son should become and be called the father of the household, betrothed to him a young girl of his own age and, as is related, noble and beautiful, and with maternal affection decided that the preparations ita et 1 before correction; apparatu 1 after correction. for the wedding should not be put off. The son, recognizing with skilful foresight the ripeness of his mother's affection in her purpose of preparing the wedding, spurning marriage, leaving aside all the ornaments of betrothal, did not delay to approach, with the reverence of great humility and without his mother's knowledge conscientia 5., the bishop of Cassano a called David, and humbly asked that the clerical blessing be bestowed on him. The bishop, rejoicing at the kindliness of his petition, he is made a cleric gave him the holy blessing with the highest devotion. Blessing him indeed as an acolyte and thenceforth bidding him stay with him, as his cautious foresight recognized that he advanced from virtue to virtue, so he did not delay to give probere 3. him ascent from order to order; and is initiated into the priesthood. and thus finally, when the circle circulum 4 before correction. of one year had fully passed, he was promoted by him worthily and laudably to the office of the presbyterate.
[2] Soon, at an angel's warning, To this man, then, of such merit [(t. m. v.) tanti viri merito 1 before correction; tanto viro meritis 1 after correction.], who in his promotion to this order surpassed almost all his contemporaries in elegance and probity of character, there came, as he was lulled in sleep in the silence of the dead of night, the admonition of an angelic voice, that he should by no means fail dimittent 3. to go speedily prope 3. adire 1 before correction, 3, 4. to the holy abbot Pachomius, who at that time was governing most skilfully, with the cautious provision of his rule, the monastery of Cerchiara Circularemse 2. b of St. Andrew, for the sake of receiving the monastic rule, and that whatever he should prescribe to be done he should fulfil it all with the whole devotion of his mind and every effort of his powers iurium 3, but not 1.. he embraces the monastic life, Having gained no little cheerfulness from this vision, he fulfilled with joy what he knew he had been persuaded persuasit 4 before correction. to by the angelic voice. And coming to the abbot and received by him with the highest prayer of love, after an easy probation he was obediently subjected to the yoke of monastic discipline, not only in the clothing of the habit, but also in the increase of virtues.
[3] and he who as a layman had been most devout, Of what manner of sibi 3. life, then, should I declare such a man struck out with a little line in 1. to be, who while he was a layman had no cleric (er. s.) s. er. 2, 3, 4, 5; s. er. equ. n. in red on an erased place 3. to be compared with him equipper. 1; equiper. 2, 5. in uprightness of character, taking from no one his own, sharing his own with cheerfulness, driving away every iniquity like et the codices; ut 1 corrected above the line. a phantom by justice and faith, overcoming the harshness of enemies by hope and charity, setting sobriety against lust and always virtue against vice, and with God triumphing triumphantem 1 before correction, 3, 4. he exults a glorious victor. Exalted holily and wholesomely with these bands of the virtues while he was a layman, once established in the clerical order he acquired, by God's gift, the sweet tears of compunction, and by his great frugality and by no small assiduity in holy vigils and also in prayers he excelled the order and rule of all the monks. And indeed, as we have learned by the truthful report of three venerable men joined to him in the intimacy of discipleship, namely Andrew the presbyter prespiteri in this place 1, 4., Sabas the deacon, Serius, who had already ita et 1 before correction; qui 1 corrected in the thirteenth century. from omits 5. youth lived with him [ita et 1 before correction; sunt conversati 1 corrected in the thirteenth century.] and were privy to his secrets omits 3., that blessed man Gregory, clothed in the monastic habit not only bodily but spiritually, and having already put aside the active life (i. d.) d. i. 3, 4, 5., placed in the sweetness of the contemplative contemplatione 1 before correction, 4 before correction. life, rejoiced gaudeat 1 before correction, 3, 4, 5. that he had arrived [ita et 1 before correction; provectum (non pervectum) 1 corrected. Holder-Egger writes and punctuates the whole passage thus: omnium quae ante fuerat affectatus, stemmate virtutum earum ad habitum ducente, sancti Spiritus largitate se gaudebat esse pervectum.], by the largess of the Holy Spirit leading him to the possession of them, [at] [I have supplied this, that there may be at least some sense in a desperate passage.] the garlands [ita 1 corrected; stemmate 2, 3; stemate 4; scemmate 5 before correction; scemate 5 after correction.] of virtues of all that quo 2, 3, 4, 5. he had before residuum Gregorii abbatis adds 1, 3 [item 4, 5, which, being too corrupt, seem therefore to have been omitted in 2 H.-E. But in 1 the corrector deleted residuum, and above abbatis wrote: pape.] aspired to.
[4] he showed himself an outstanding monk. But with what fruit of good works he attained this beauty speciositate 4. of the virtues must by no means be passed over preter eundem 3., but must be fully narrated as far as we are able and know. The aforesaid trustworthy men relate that so great and such constancy in holy vigils was his that he rested in almost no repose quiete 1; quetitudine 2, 4; quie//tudine 5. of sleep, except only that he lay down on his bed for the space of a short moment, lest by not sleeping he should utterly deny nature its necessities [(nat. nec. neg. non dorm.) naturam necessariam neg. cūū ñ dorm. 1 before correction; nature necessaria neg. cū ñ dorm. 1 corrected; naturam non dorm. neg. 2; naturam ñ. ē. neg. ē dorm. 3; naturam necessariam neg. non dorm. 4 before correction; nature negaret quod suum est non dorm. 4 after correction; naturam nature neg. non (above an erasure) dorm. 5.], and etiam 1. kill himself with perpetual vigils. Further, rising, as they say, from the sleep of a very deleted by the corrector 4. brief ita et 1 before correction; parvo 1 corrected. rest, and fervently beginning the divine work as if it had never been begun, he spent sleepless what remained of the night, now in jubilation, now in prayer with tears. When dawn was already rising and the sun's ray approaching, having said the psalmody and completed the Mass, he was accustomed to end the day either writing or reading or laboring in agriculture [(in a.) ita 2, 4, 5 after correction; magis cultura 1, 5 before correction; magni cultura 3.], and so in the evening refreshing himself a little by the labor of his hands. For, keeping all the divine precepts with skilful foresight, he did not wish to be disobedient to the edicts of the apostle apostolis 5., who, privy to the divine secret sconcius 4 before correction; concius 4 after correction, commanded in his reminder that whoever would not work should not eat either; for he did not wish to eat anything except what he himself had worked for elaboraret 2, 3, 5. c. 2 Thess. 3:10. For they say that he was a skilled scribe and well instructed in many another art, whence, withdrawing at times from that work to relieve alleviaret 5 corrected. weariness, he enters into the inner leisure of holy contemplation to be free for the Lord.
[5] But having been made abbot Amid these pursuits of devout added by the corrector above the line 4. life ita et 1 corrected; consolationis 1 before correction. it happened that he came to the monastery of St. Andrew d. There, then, both honorably received and, according to the estimation of the unlettered, exalted e, nothing [The whole sentence Igitur. — superbiae is thus rewritten in 4 by a thirteenth-century corrector on an erased place: Igitur — exaltatus, nichil tamen ex huius honoris altitudine acceptius illi erat, quam salubria quaeque fratribus seminare et cuncta vicia negligentis superbie exstirpare (the words neg. sup. exst., which were left over, are written in the lower margin of the leaf). Not badly emended indeed, but from mere conjecture, as it seems.] however tantum 1 before correction, 5. from
the height of this honor was he deceived ita 1 corrected; acceptus 1 first hand, 2, 3, 5. by the arrogance [added by the corrector 1; is missing 2, 3, 5; spiritu supplied by Wattenbach, H.-E.] of a pride neglectful of every wholesome saluba 1 before correction, 3. thing. But while he knew himself greater than all in dignity, he made himself less by ministering to all, namely for the sake of imitating the humility of the Master magister 3. who says: He that is the greater among you shall be your minister. Matth. 23:11.
[6] he performs his office splendidly This man of wondrous and holy foresight, attending more [ita 1 after correction (non maioris); maius 1 first hand, 2, 3, 4, 5; amorem Dei adds in 1 alone the corrector.] to the burden [(a. o.) ita 5 above an erasure; adtendere son// 1 first hand; adtendere solitus 1 corrected; adtendere onus 2 (sic); adtendere sonus 3, 4.] than quia 2. to the worldly glory of so great an honor, was much more fervent in all uprightness of character more 2, 3, 4. and in the diligent performance of good works, because there was to be cared for by him not the soul of himself alone, but a multitude of clergy. Being more solicitous, as we have said, with this care of pastoral pastorali 1. government, he carried out all the pastoral offices, reasonably arranged, in a manner pleasing to God and praiseworthy to the clergy. That such labor of his was not in vain in the Lord deleted by the corrector 1., he himself now knows, rewarded with a worthy recompense by our Lord Jesus Christ, whom he served well I. C. struck out with a little line by the corrector 4.; and from the signs mercifully performed through him by the gift of the Holy Spirit the faithful man does not doubt the greatness of his holiness shown to us clearer than light; let him who is unfaithful est added above the line by the corrector 1 and 4. depart far from here. and he shines with many miracles: And although the signs are innumerable, yet out of many we shall relate a few, which we have learned, I say in qua 3, 4; but in 4 deleted by the corrector., by the report of his aforesaid intimates.
[7] namely he frees a demoniac, A certain youth called Arsaphius, acting negligently about himself and not committing himself to the loving providence of God, found unsigned with the sign of the cross through the cunning of the ancient enemy, was invaded by him, alas! and dragged through uncultivated and trackless places, and miserably torn by (ab i. e. d.) e. d. ab i. 1. him et 2.. His friends and kinsmen, moved with no moderate groaning at the lamentable outcome of this affair and at his still more lamentable condition, seizing him with vehement violence among rocks and places difficult for the sound satis ad 5. to travel and binding him firmly with chains, led him for the sake of his cure to many places of the saints and by no means found a remedy for this kind modi added by the corrector 4. of diabolical contagion. After a long time, however, when he illi 2, 3, 4, 5. was already failing from excessive harassment by the ancient enemy, he was brought to the monastery of St. Andrew, in which we said that blessed Gregory had been made abbot not of his own will f. When the abbot's compassion saw him foaming and uttering diverse things in a disordered voice, he groaned most heavily, and, pouring out a shower of tears, withdrew suffering with him incompationdo 4.; nevertheless, solicitous for his salvation, he diligently considered how he might help him. Beginning, then, to fast that day and duly completing a two-day fast cum adds 4. with the utmost intensity of prayers, then at last, commanding the possessor in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to depart abcederet 2, 3, 4., he freed the aforenamed youth who was beset by the malignant spirit, and afterwards, keeping tenente 2. him with him for the number of twice six bysseneorum 4. days in quo adds 1, 3, 4, 5. and showing him the word of salvation and instilling into him the craftiness of diabolical deceit, he kindly fulfilled all things with the breadth of charity. For he both rescued him tormented by the demon and, having fed him with the nourishment alimonia 1 corrected, 4 after correction, 5. of the divine word, heaped on him the gift of the Holy Spirit, and did not refuse that he should return home with joy.
The elegance of this miracle is not so much to be wondered at as the humility of the man who worked the miracle is to be venerated. He indeed, since he was of wondrous holiness, was able with ease to obtain what he wished, but because he had no spirit of presumption, he therefore laid aside rashness and was afraid to ask suddenly repente 1, 5. for things to be obtained from the Lord (or. a D.) ita 1 corrected; or. Domini 1 first hand, 2, 3, 4, 5. unless wearied with fasting and prayer; whence also his prayer omits 1 first hand, 2, 3, 4, 5; added above the line in 1 by the corrector. was from day to day of greater effect.
[8] and relieves a boy of the falling sickness; At another time also a certain boy called Lenta, sorely alacriter 4. harassed by a demon demonio 2, 3, 4, 5. with the affliction of the falling sickness, was presented by his people to this venerable man; and when he asked them what they wanted of him deo 3, 5., they answered that they both asked and most of all wished this thing, that by the decree of his holiness he would free that boy from so great and such a mighty demonic infestation. To them he said in quid 4.: Be silent, sons, for I added by the corrector 4., a sinner, have no ability to do such things as you ask (t. ut r.) ut r. t. 1 before correction.. But they, pressing their entreaty all the more frequently, kept asking for the help of his bounty; but he, fleeing from them eos 2, 3, 4, 5. and going into the inner parts of the house, fasting that ea 3, 4, 5. day, gave himself more than usual to the holiness of his prayer; and going out on the next altero 4. day, he put the demon to flight and healed the boy of the affliction of his great trouble; and bidding him to be with him (e. s.) s. e. 4. for the space of eight days, he sweetly taught him the words of life (e. s.) s. e. 3, 4 after correction, 5., and wisely instructed him what things were esset 1 before correction, 3. to be avoided, what not q. n. deleted by the corrector 4.; and thus the holy man both put the demon to flight and showed the boy how he ought to put him to flight with the manifold acquisition of virtues and with the speech of good will.
[9] the Saracens also, who were laying waste the neighboring places, From the report of those men we learned what has already been said; from their discourse we have learned what is now to be said. One Unde 3, but not 1. of the chief men of the Saracens, named Scandalis, deputed by his king to the siege of the city of Cassano g, firmly commanded his fellow soldiers delegatis cum milit. 3., as one neglectful of all piety and a wicked persecutor of holy religion, to go and lay waste the surrounding country and to leave nothing in the villages or even in the churches, but that everything, sought out by the scrutiny of careful search and gathered into one — men I mean and cattle, money and clothing — they should bring to be divided by the provision providentie 2, 3, 4, 5. of his majesty. Hearing of this tyranny hac tyrannide 2. and the harshness of this command, all the citizens, stupefied stupefacta 3, 4 before correction, but not 1., took to flight, and all their neighbors, warned by them to flee fugerunt 3, 4, 5., did not hesitate to become partners in their flight. Among them fled also the monks of blessed Gregory; and him, as he fled he himself fled too, with two monks accompanying him. The monastery, then, over which cui ergo 4. he presided, we know to have been only 5 stadia distant from the city of Cassano h. Now as the Saracens went on and fulfilled the desire of their tyranny by plundering deprecando 3. everything, father Gregory, not knowing how to flee, met them; and when they learned that he was the abbot of the monastery, thinking to quench the thirst of their avarice, and then cum the codices to seize apprehendente 1, 3, 5; aprehendente 2, 4. the substance of their suis 4 before correction. gain, they asked him in what place they would find the money gathered by him over a long time multo tempore 4 after correction.. To them he, not ceasing on account of their severity to observe the truth, modestly answered it 1 after correction, 2, 5 after correction; responderunt 3, 4.: Brothers, we ought not to conceal from you the smallness of the money which omits 3. we have; we left 27 tari tramos 1; tsmos 2, 5; t'inos 3; nummos corrected 4 on an erased place. i in the monastery, which we decided to keep for the use of the brothers thus all the codices.; we possess nothing more of money. They, however, affected with great fury at the countable declaration of this small sum of money pecunii 4., shouted these words, uttered with anger ministering them: Take this sluggard tollere 4 before correction. and, afflicted affructum 3; affectum 4 after correction, 5 after correction. with various kinds of torments, make him now show under compulsion coacte 2, 3, 4, 5. what before he would not show of his own will! they had maltreated, When their threats nimis 3. had been utterly brought to nothing anullatus 1, 2, 3, 4. by him, placing him on the rack catastum 4 after correction, 5 after correction. and binding his private parts tightly with bonds uunculis 4., at once their arms remained withered. Then those who had not yet approached, releasing him Q. v. deleted by the corrector 4. vero added by the corrector 4., begged him to bring afferrent 1, 4. the remedy of his intercession for their weakness. Matth. 5:44; cf. Rom. 12:17. But not aut 1 before correction, 3, 4 before correction, 5 before correction. unmindful of the Master's precept praecepta 4 before correction., he returned good for evil and, praying for his enemies, obtained pardon and restored their arms to their former health. he heals wondrously. All being not a little nimium 4 corrected after an erasure. stupefied by this miracle, one of them, sorely harassed by pain of the teeth, asking here for the help of his remedy, at once, when the sign of the cross had been set against the place of the pain, he healed him in every way. These two miracles, by the favor of divine clemency so suddenly begun and mercifully so quickly accomplished, the breadth of charity was the orderer of these added by the corrector 4 above the line., because he not only forgave them deleted by the corrector 4. the things in which they had sinned against him, but also by the grace of his intercession removed from them the vengeance of God against them and restored instituit the codices. them, by God's mercy, to the health they had before.
[10] But after, Amid these things, then, as fame proclaimed and recounted his signs and virtues round about, he was visited frequentabantur 1 before correction. by a multitude of people (a. p.) omits 3. with their diverse diversarum 4. intentions. Some, indeed, wondering at the same time
and congratulating him on the excellence of his virtues, came that they might hear the word of life from him and commend themselves to his prayer; others, impatiently desiring cupientibus 1 before correction. to know not the quality qualitate 1 before correction, 3. of the mind above an erasure in 5. but the size of the body of one who did facientes 1 before correction, 2, 3, 4, 5 before correction. such signs by the gift of God, flocked together in no smaller crowd. Satisfying all added by the corrector 4 above the line. of these in preaching and refreshing them abundantly with the heavenly bread, he made them added by the corrector 4 above the line. return with thanksgiving, in the security of his blessing, to the dwellings mansionis 1 before correction, 4. from which they had come; and they, returning, began to bless him and, not lying, to give him everywhere the name of holiness. to flee the favor of the people, Whence through the [(U. p. t. r. i.) ita 4 after correction; U. experto citius per r. i. 1, H.-E.; U. per r. i. 2; U. perto citius r. i. 3, 4 before correction; U. aperto citius r. i. 5.] compass ambitu 5. of that whole region they named him the second sanctum (sc̄m) 4. Gregory. When the fame of this name was omits 5. brought relata 1. to him as quickly as possible quanto citius 3., at once he most diligently considered how he might depart discederent 4. and flee aufugeret 3, 4, 5. human favor and this name of holiness, and nonetheless labor elsewhere at holy works. Then, having taken counsel with himself, he retained the abbacy for qua 1 before correction, 3, 5; quam 4. the space of one year, meanwhile doing the aforesaid signs; he admitted dimisit 5. a brother [fratrum 4 after correction, 5; I strongly suspect this to be the true reading, and what follows suggests it: prout melius potuit; but aids are lacking for proposing a probable correction of this whole passage.] to set ordinantis 3; ordinatis 5. affairs in order as best he could, and going adeundum 1, 2, 4, 5; ad eundem 3. with five monks to the town of Buccino k, he had moved to the town of Buccino, he stayed manserat 2, 3, 4, 5. there in a certain monastery, never celebrating the service of God better or deleted by the corrector 1. more zealously. The aforesaid venerable men, who were always his attendants and privy omits 1, 3, 4, 5. to his secrets, relate also that there in that place he worked a certain quod tam 2, 3, 4 before correction. miracle not to be concealed. One day, standing in the church for the sake of trimming the lamps luminarum 1, 2, 4 before correction., he cleanses a leper there, he cleansed from leprosy a certain leper who came and asked alms of him, having invoked the name of God and anointed ventum 1 (deleted by the corrector), 3, 4 (deleted by the corrector), 5. him with oil taken from the lamps et adds the corrector 1.; he admonished him with salutary teaching not to sin thereafter, imitating his Master, who said to the leper cleansed l: Go, and sin no more.
[11] he frees a demoniac Having been made manifest there by this sign, forthwith there was a certain man badly tormented who, on seeing blessed Gregory, raged greatly and tore [ita et 5, but after correction; descripsit 1 before correction; r written above by the corrector in 4.] himself, afflicting himself. Moved by the pain of the man laboring so greatly and suffering abundantly with his infirmity, prostrate on the ground he poured out a shower of tears, and rising, he earnestly obnaxe 4 before correction. commanded supply: the demon or the devil H.-E. that he depart quickly from the beset body. He, crying out much and tearing discrepens 5 before correction. dis8epens 4. him, departed, and afterwards did not dare to attack him by reason of his profession (p. c.) ita et 1 first hand; divine protectionis gratia 1 corrected.. For him cum 3., as all whom he cured, he enriched with salutary teaching.
[12] and supplies oil to the brothers by a miracle. At the same time also, when there was a great scarcity of oil, it happened one day that he went to the kitchen for the advantage of the brothers, and he saw that in preparing ita et 1 first hand; apparatu 1 corrected. the third dish of the pottage [ita the codices; ferculo conjectured H.-E., but perhaps in vain; see namely on the "tertium pulmentum" Haeften, Monasticae Disquisitiones, book X, tract. III, disq. 6.], namely in making it with oil conficiendorum 1 corrected., the cooks were idle [coquos socium 1 before correction; eo quos socium 2, 3, 4 (the corrector noted in the margin: hic deest); eos quos socium 5 before correction; eos quos ocium 5 corrected.]; and seeing them idle in this matter, he addressed them with this speech: Boys, why do you delay in preparing the food? Do you not numquid 1 corrected. know scitis 5 after correction. that it is already now time for the meal? On the other hand, the one of the cooks who was first answering said: Lord, since the oil is now failing, we do not know at all what we ought to do about it. To him he said: Is there not plenty of oil set in the jar for this work? When he answered that a little before it had been looked for queretur 4. and he found no liquid in it, he told him to go as quickly as possible and take it and diligently search whether he could find anything in it. He, going and fulfilling the senior's command, finding the jar full, prepared from it that day the food of the brothers frm 1; fratrem 3, 4 before correction. and had the lamps luminariam 3; luminarium 4 before correction, 5. of the church lit from it, and as much as he took that day, so much he took daily through the circuit of the circling year [thus conjectured H.-E.; totius 1 corrected above an erasure; secularis 2, 3, 5; sequentis corrected 4 on an erased place.] for the food and for the need of trimming the lamps luminarum 1, 2, 4 before correction, 5 before correction.; yet tantum 4. the oil remained in the jar no less nihil minus 5 after correction.; for every need of the brothers frm 1; fratrem 3, 4 before correction, 5 before correction. it was poured out like water, but never was less found in it. By this showing of a wondrous sign he was made an imitator of Elijah, the distinguished and illustrious prophet, who, blessing the little oil which the widow had in the cruse lecitho 2, 3, 4., by beseeching God commanded that it should not fail in that vessel nor be diminished until rain should be given by God. 3 Kings 17:14 ff.
[13] A certain Greek tries to bring him to Constantinople. But meanwhile, as he was doing so many thus all the codices. wonders, a certain Greek arriving, whom the aforesaid venerable brothers relate to have been powerful at Constantinople with the dignity of catapan kat. in this place 1. m, learning by the report of the people of the province that this blessed man had flourished florius se 4. with such holiness and had been the worker of so many miracles, having taken counsel with his people, firmly decided decretum 3, 4 before correction, 5. to bring him with him to Constantinople and to present him freely to his emperors n. When this decision of the catapan was being carried out, being disclosed to blessed Gregory by his faithful ones, just as a stag flees the hounds to the wood, so he fled swiftly written by the corrector 4 above an erasure. from the pursuing catapan catapanum 5. to his own monastery, from which he had already departed. Tracking [conjectured H.-E.; serviens 1 first hand, 2, 3, 4; servans 1 corrected; secut//us 5.] his footsteps by keen search, the catapan catapanus 3, 4 before correction, 5. seized him in that very monastery; and him, though he could not resist with strength, yet resisting with words as much as he could, he brought with him to Otranto o and decided decretum 3, 4 before correction, 5. to take him over the sea to his emperors; but si all the codices. God gave him the grace to obtain leave to return, because he reserved him for increasing the salvation of our most pious Caesar [p] saluati 2, 3, 4 before correction..
ANNOTATA.
p. Otto III, whom he has contrasted as our Caesar with the emperors of the katapan. H.-E.
THE LATER LIFE OF ST. GREGORY, ABBOT
Gregory, abbot of Burtscheid near Aachen. (S.)
BHL Number: 3674
Edited from the Darmstadt codex 205, end of the fifteenth century. Cf. above, Commentarius praevius, no. 5.
1. Here begins the life of blessed Gregory, first abbot [a. P. primi: thus written beforehand in small letters in the bottom margin; primi a. P. the rubricator.] of Burtscheid, on the day before the nones of November.
Blessed Gregory, shining by a birth great according to the dignity of the world, was so resplendent with a glorious zeal for the virtues that he whom the fame of a most powerful lineage ought to have made illustrious himself made his lineage illustrious by the splendor of good work. He, sprung from the more noble of Greece, was the son of the Byzantine bigantini the codex king;
whose offspring had not only filled the nations of his native soil, but also ennobled the kingdoms of Italy and Gaul. For the lady Theophanu, a woman illustrious in deed and fame, wife of Otto the second, Roman emperor, and mother of the third, was his sister [Vita I, chap. 1, indicates the parents of Gregory; whence it appears, what no one would otherwise have believed either, that he was by no means the son of the emperor of Constantinople nor the brother of the empress Theophanu. H.-E.]. To her he fled when he left Greece, as we shall narrate later. This holy man, then, in boyhood was handed over by his parents to the study of letters, they intending other things than divine providence had ordained. For they intended not to instruct him in the divine offices, but rather to make him shrewder in worldly prudence prudencie the codex. For divine grace was co-operating, so that it might provide p̄videret the codex for itself a vessel of election and a good and faithful servant, whom it might set over its goods. Cf. Acts 9:15. & Cf. Matth. 25:21 and 24:47. Both divine and human efforts, therefore, agreed in this, although the aims of their intention were unlike. And when, at an already mature age, he is drawn a little out of the discipline of the school and clothed induatur the codex in the palatine toga, as being the greatest of princes, at once, in hope of future offspring, a wife of equal nobility is sought out to be joined to him, and by the arrangement of the mother of the illustrious boy, or rather youth, he is betrothed These things agree with Vita I, chap. 1. H.-E.. For since the father of blessed Gregory had died, these matters depended on the arrangement of his mother; who, as a religious and Christian woman, promoted them with a holy intention. For she noted that the sense and thought of men are prone to evil from youth, and she noted that that race of men, more than all nations, follows the luxury of wantonness. Cf. Gen. 8:21. Whence she preferred that her offspring, nurtured in upright character, should be honorably bound in marriage rather than be worn down or infected by the wandering vice of youth. But blessed Gregory, girded with a manly spirit and having the loins of his mind girt up, was turning over conjectured H.-E., who proposes besides volvebat or volebat; the codex volabat., at the prompting of the Holy Spirit, in the secret of his devout breast, rather to follow the apostolic counsel than to comply with his mother's wishes in such a matter. Cf. 1 Pet. 1:12. He heard the apostle saying: Are you loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife; he heard his mother, by a natural precept, bidding: Son, take the wife to whom you are betrothed! 1 Cor. 7:27. And whom should he rather obey? Certainly if he put first the precepts of his mother before those of the herald, he would hear the sentence of the judge direly threatening, of the leader direly terrifying: If anyone, he says, comes to me, and hates not his father and mother and wife and children and fields, and moreover, what is greater, his own soul, he cannot be my disciple. Luke 16:26; cf. Matth. 19:29. Then he adds: So likewise every one of you that does not renounce all that he possesses cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:33. The servant of God heard this with the ear of hearing, and following the Lord from almost his very boyhood, Cf. Matth. 11:15 etc. he forsook mother and wife and the hope of future offspring, and not only fields, but even the kingdoms of fields and the scepters of kingdoms, esteeming nothing more precious than to cleave with all his vows to him to whom to cleave is good, whom to serve is to reign, Cf. Ps. 72:28. strengthened also by his exhortation, instructed by his teaching, who says: He that follows me walks not in darkness, but shall have the light of life. John 8:12. Comforted, therefore, by this promise, as a strong athlete about to fight in the contest against the spirits of wickedness, Cf. Eph. 6:12. he strove to fortify himself with spiritual arms according to the teaching of the apostle, who says: For he that strives in the contest abstains from all things. 2 Tim. 2:5. Whence first he vowed purity of heart and chastity of body to the living and true God, then paid his vows to the saints, and, fleeing not only his mother's precepts but his mother herself, he sought the solitudes of the desert, as if he were saying: Lo, I have gone far off fleeing, and abode in the wilderness. Ps. 54:8. And while he pursues the vow of this holy intention, he is not thus forsaken by God, but He was present to him as a diligent helper, led and guarded him. For in this flight he was bidden by an angelic admonition Cf. Vita I, chap. 2: there came the admonition of an angelic voice, that… to take the monastic habit and to serve the divine offices in a monastery, to live under a rule and to conduct himself under obedience. Without delay, having heard these things, he turned aside joyfully to a certain monastery, giving immense thanks to the Creator, who deigned to direct his ways. Cf. Ps. 5:9 etc.
2. How blessed Gregory became a monk.
For there was in the same province a certain monastery of religious men serving God as soldiers under the monastic rule, over whom at that time presided a certain abbot named Pachomius [So the abbot of the monastery of Cerchiara is called in Vita I, chap. 2. H.-E. Our author, however, places that monastery, whose name he does not otherwise give, in the same province, that is, in Greece; cf. chap. 1: when he left Greece, and below, chap. 13.], most famous for the equity of his life and the uprightness of his character. When the illustrious youth had betaken himself to him and had set forth to him his intention with his vow, at once Pachomius, as a holy man, touched with immense joy, yet wishing to do nothing without counsel, as wisdom bids, indicated it to his brothers and suggested that he foresaw no small fruit of future holiness in the youth; Ecclus. 32:24. nor did he extol so much the distinguished lineage of the youth as he commended the grace of virtue growing crescrentis the codex in him. At once all the brothers of that place alike gave praises and thanks to God, and said with one voice that the Lord had visited his people and raised up the horn of his salvation, and all with one heart exhorted the father of the monastery to receive him. Cf. Luke 1:68, 69; 7:16. The venerable father, approving so harmonious an agreement of theirs, did joyfully with counsel what he would gladly have done even without counsel, had he not perceived it to be indiscreet, and clothed Gregory in the monastic habit and joined him to the holy flock of those serving God in his church. Soon he is girded with such grace of charity and humility toward all that he seemed behind none in virtues, inferior to none in uprightness of character [Cf. Vita I, chap. 3: No cleric was to be compared with him in uprightness of character.]. He put nothing before virtue, nothing before good work; he cultivated with all intention the love of God and of neighbor and perhaps to be deleted. H.-E. in humility second to none, in piety last to none.
3. How he came to holy orders.
Meanwhile, to be instructed in the divine ministries, he is bidden by the father of the monastery to receive holy orders, and is presented to the metropolitan bishop named David [So in Vita I, chap. 1, the bishop of Cassano who promoted Gregory to holy orders is called. But there Gregory is said to have been initiated into the priesthood before he became a monk.]. When the aforesaid bishop had learned of his life and lineage, wondering both at the diligence of the youth and at the virtue and power of God in the youth, he gave thanks to God and consecrated him from order to order [In this place also certain words agree with Vita I, chap. 1 (he did not delay to give him ascent from order to order). Perhaps the words were woven into the hanging: Bishop David consecrates him from order to order H.-E.]. This done, he is dismissed by the prelate with veneration and joy and, with Pachomius as guide, led back to the monastery. In it, living devout and cheerful with his brothers, he applied himself without intermission to the praises of God. He sighed for God always in heart and mouth, as is sung of the most blessed man Martin: Christ was never absent from his mouth, whether justice or whatever pertains to the true life [So Notker Balbulus in the sequence on St. Martin which begins: Sacerdotem Christi.]. At all times and in every place he blessed God, fulfilling the wish of the psalmist, who says: In every place of his dominion, bless the Lord, O my soul! Ps. 102:22. & Cf. 1 Cor. 14:15. He prayed with the spirit, he prayed also with the mind, taming the flesh, strengthening the spirit, that he might offer in himself the evening sacrifice to God for an odor of sweetness, and, happily exercising himself in that solemn sacrifice, sufficient for the salvation of the whole human race, he might immolate himself a living and holy victim, pleasing to God. Cf. Ps. 140:2. & Cf. Exod. 29:41 etc. & Cf. Rom. 12:1.
4. Of the death of Pachomius, and how blessed Gregory is put in his place after his decease [p. e. d. s.: thus written beforehand in the bottom margin; post eum praefuit the rubricator.]
While, then, blessed Gregory was applying himself with so vigilant a mind to the divine worship, the venerable Pachomius, pressed by the bitter force of fevers, came to the term which he could not pass, and, having committed his flock to God, the best shepherd, fortified with the divine sacraments with religious devotion, and having bidden farewell also to the brothers with the affection of a loving mind, he fell asleep in the Lord. Cf. John 14:5. & Cf. John 10:11. When his funeral rites had been performed with diligent zeal and the highest devotion, at once the brothers serving God there, desolate like flocks that have no shepherd of souls, come together and debate about substituting a shepherd. Cf. Matth. 9:36. Then, as divine grace inspired, which does not forsake in the way of error those who hope in it, all with equal wish, with equal mind, acclaim brother Gregory as most worthy of the pastoral government and honor, whom God had filled with such grace that he knew how and was able to steer the helm of the Lord's flock. Cf. Judith 13:17. He on the contrary cried out that he was unworthy of so great an honor, weak for the burden, and refused with every effort. But the more he refused, the more the devout ingenuity of the brothers pressed him, and to the unwilling man they now commanded, having brought forward fraternal obedience, now amid commands they entreated. He, fearing the favor of men more than the course of labor, prayed with tears to be let go, prayed those who prayed him, in turn asked those who asked him; but he did not succeed, since he was asking against the ordinance of God. For at last, overcome by the prayers of the brothers, he accedes to the wishes of all, though unwilling, and he who would rather have been subject in all humility began to preside in all charity [Cf. Vita I, chap. 5 and 7: we said that he had been made abbot not of his own will. H.-E.]. Then, to be consecrated, he is presented to the aforesaid prelate David; who, receiving him with devout charity, canonically invested him with the pastoral government and restored him to the rejoicing brothers. While they solemnly render jubilations of praise to almighty God with the exultation of all the clergy and people, the brothers prepare to return to the fold with their shepherd, and on that very return the gifts of heavenly grace overflowing in the servant of God unexpectedly manifest themselves and add joys to joys.
5. How after his consecration he healed a demoniac.
When the office of the blessed man's consecration had been completed, and he had been reverently dismissed by the bishop, soon, by a secret mystery of God, there is presented to him a certain man seized by a demon, and he is most devoutly asked by all the people to free him [In Vita I, chap. 7, too, it is narrated that a demoniac was healed by Gregory when he was already abbot; but there the name (Arsaphius) of the demoniac is handed down besides.]. For now in the codex his lamp was beginning to be set upon the candlestick, and the Dayspring from on high to visit the people of his own through his minister. Cf. Matth. 5:15. & Cf. Luke 1:78. When the man of God saw him, and considered considerato the codex the petition and devotion of the weeping people populo the codex, moved at once by mercy, he prostrates himself in prayer and beseeches God, the Saviour of all, to free the man beset. Upon his prayer God, the merciful hearer, at once shone forth from on high, who does not despise a contrite and humbled heart. Cf. Ps. 50:19 For immediately, as he rose from prayer and again blessed the demoniac with the mighty power of words, all the harassment of the demon was expelled from the man Cf. Vita I, chap. 7: from excessive harassment by the ancient enemy., so that not only did no quod the codex sickness remain remansit the codex in him, but that he had never before been seen so sound. Then he who had thus been freed and redeemed by the Lord through the intercession of the most blessed Gregory, touched with immense gladness, made known the miracles which God had done through his servant. Whence the holy man, as though fearing to be dipped in the oil of the sinner, returns as quickly as possible to the monastery with the brothers, put to flight by the dart of fame, stirred by the favor of the people. Cf. Ps. 140:5. The brothers, both those coming with him and those who had remained at home as it were with the baggage, receive him with great devotion and strive to outdo one another in showing him honor. Cf. 1 Kings 25:13. & Cf. Rom. 12:10. But he, discerning their affection with prudent judgment, and pondering that saying: The greater you are, humble yourself above all, Cf. Ecclus. 3:20. strove to outdo with every service of charity those who served him, to minister to those who ministered; showing by manifest token iudicio the codex that he acted in the Church in the place of him who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. Cf. Matth. 20:28. Then, like a good father of a household prfamilias the codex about to set his house honorably in order, he calls the brothers together and treats most wisely of the affairs of the monastery. What he did, or how, it is difficult to say in detail, because even one who had always been present at all his acts could scarcely have set it out. This, however, is credible, that all his works were full of divine grace, because he did wonderful things in his life, and whatever he did, remaining in his innocence, he ascribed not to his own merits but to the grace of God. Cf. Ecclus. 31:9. Whence also the Lord manifested his glory and glorified him with various signs and virtues, so that he who glories in the Lord shall receive glory from him who is glorious in his saints. Cf. 1 Cor. 1:31. & Cf. Ps. 66:36. This also he proved by a certain miracle quite evident, as antiquity has brought it down to us.
6. How he cured a boy of a demon curāit the rubricator
For at a certain time, when he was in the church for the sake of praying, as he diligently did, there was brought to him a boy beset by a malignant spirit [This miracle is also subjoined to the preceding miracle in Vita I, chap. 8; which again alone gives the name of the boy healed (Lenta).], which pressed him with hard and most bitter pains and miserably harried the whole body of the boy with injuries and innumerable torments, so that all who saw it were moved to tears by natural compassion, and together besought the servant of God for his deliverance. He, who as always bore a loving heart toward the afflicted, moved by these tears, turning to the Lord began to pray, and began in prayer to harass himself, began to judge himself unworthy of so great a merit. Yet his robust faith, his unconquered faith, did not allow his confidence to waver. Cf. Ecclus. 2:11. For who has hoped in him and been confounded? He too hoped in the Lord and received strength, obtained from him what he asked, because he asked in faith, nothing wavering. Cf. James 1:6. For having spent a little while of an hour in prayer, he rose, and with the sign of the cross given he blessed the sick one; he worked also with divine words, which he always used in such operation as if with medicinal instruments. At once the demon is driven from the man, the sick one is freed, the guilty one is put to flight, the innocent one is rescued. Cf. John 1:5. When, then, by such miracles the servant of God began to shine like a light in the darkness, being cautious for himself, lest his lamp should become darkness, lest he be harmed by the delight of worldly songs, lest perhaps, counted among the foolish virgins, when the bridegroom came he should not have light in his lamps, he attributed to his Creator, not to himself, the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, whatever of salvation He willed to work through him for the human race. Cf. Luke 11:35. & Cf. Matth. 25:1 ff. & Cf. 1 Pet. 3:21. Whence consequently, just as upon Paul, the apostle of God, to whom was given a sting of the flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet him, lest the greatness of the revelations should exalt him, so there was sent im. est written twice. upon this blessed man too a grievous temptation, lest the multitude of miracles should become an elation of his mind. Cf. 2 Cor. 12:7. What wonder? Blessed Job too, though he was a simple and upright man, and feared God and turned away from evil, was permitted to be tempted by the devil, that he might be seen to be proved like gold in the furnace. Job 1:1. & Cf. Wisd. 3:6. So divine providence frequently permits it to happen in the elect, lest perhaps through long felicity or the quiet of health they grow weary in the cultivation of the virtues. But that, proved by the experience of patience, they may be found fit, like precious stones, for the strong building of God, some of the elect too have been tempted, so that, being proved, they may recognize what they are, and may render thanks to God more devoutly for all his benefits. For Peter the apostle, contradicting the words of Jesus Christ at the moment of the passion, when he affirmed that he would suffer death before he denied the Lord, terrified by the voice of a most worthless maidservant, denied him three times before the cock crowed, and then recognized what he could do of himself; at once he burst into tears, lamenting the rashness he had committed, mourning the weakness of the flesh. So the devout and merciful Lord allows the elect to be proved, so in all things he wills them to be built up. In the same way blessed father Gregory too, though he was most approved in all things, did not escape the labors of temptation and various pains for the name of Christ, whom he confessed.
7. How, held by the Saracens, he was miserably afflicted.
For it happened at a certain time that the nation of the Saracens, having gathered an immense multitude, with dire ferocity burst into the territories of the Argives, stormed fortifications and strong camps with wondrous shrewdness and industry, levelled cities to the ground with fire and sword, profaned the churches of the saints most atrociously, and magnified also whoever excelled his companions in atrocity of crime; besides, they depopulated the peoples, and whatever professors of the Christian name they found they stifled with various torments and instruments of torment; everything was done more atrociously than can be told, since where iniquity abounded, there thus H.-E. tried to emend; est the codex charity is not held in knowledge. Cf. Matth. 24:12. For so great was the ferocity of those raging about that the minds of chosen men were disturbed. These, moved by the weakness of the flesh, lest they be led into a temptation which they could not bear, turned aside from the way of the impious, leave their cloisters and, for love of this passing life, seek the caves and dens of the deserts, trusting more in the solitudes than in the sacred immunities of the monasteries. Touched by this dire terror of report, the man of God Gregory, anxious also for his life, thought to avoid their savagery, and tried, as he saw others doing too, to flee to desert places; but captured in flight by the Saracens, he is brought to the leader of the army, whose name was Sandalis He is called Scandalis in Vita I, chap. 9. H.-E., and is questioned as to what profession and life he was of. He, although he trembled for his life, yet fearlessly professes himself a Christian and a worshipper of the one true God who abides forever, by life, as they could see, a monk; nor did he assert that he professed anything else, even if it were certain that he would die. But the Saracens who had captured him at times threatened him, that he should renounce the Christian faith, at times besought him with blandishments, now offered riches and abundance of all things, now promised honors and dignities and the favor of kings; and if he spurned these, he would undergo a most shameful death. Cf. Matth. 7:25 But the man of God, founded upon the firm rock and strengthened in Christ with the spirit of fortitude, did not fail amid the threats and swords of the raging men, nay he appeared stronger than before, stable in faith he spurned their threats as well as their blandishments and, protected by the heavenly shield, made light of everything that they either threatened or promised; nay, he cried out bravely with a fearless voice that he was willing to suffer for the name of Christ all the evils they could inflict on him. Cf. Acts 5:41. Infuriated by so constant an answer, the Saracens, proposing to torture him with manifold blows of torments, not only grievously but shamefully strip him of all his clothes and hang him naked, with his private parts bare, on a pole [These agree in a notable way with Vita I, chap. 9; but another cause of the torments, and a much more reasonable one, is handed down there. Certainly the author saw the picture of the torment on the hanging mentioned in chap. 25. H.-E.], and from the pole partica the codex they transfer him to the rack, and tearing the whole body of the man with iron hands, they again lay him on the ground, that he might breathe a little. This, however, they did with this intention, that the nature of the torn body, revived a little and taken up again for the sharper punishments of torments, might press harder upon the spirit of the sufferer and drive him by stronger pains to deny his Creator. Whence the power of heavenly grace so held the confessor of the Lord strong in the confession of the faith that the torturers failed before quasi the codex the tortured man did, and felt their own confusion in a weak body. Whence, that they might finish the proposed torments more quickly, wearied as much by shame as by labor and almost failing, they left him beaten with clubs and swords, a Samaritan [The author wrongly had in mind the verses Luke 10:30–35, confusing the merciful Samaritan with the beaten man whom he saved. H.-E.] half dead, thinking him dead. The most blessed Gregory, therefore, though afflicted with so sharp a martyrdom for the testimony of Christ, yet did not leave the way of truth, but following him who also never forsook him, who even amid the hands of the raging men did not fail him as a ready helper and protector, though full of sores, though afflicted with very many blows, though, his limbs failing, breath scarcely throbbed in his bloodless body, he began to drag himself to the enclosure cepta the codex of his fold and began beyond his strength
to labor. Cf. Tob. 1:2. The flock of the brothers too, scattered through the woods by the terror of this whirlwind, he gathered together again with loving care, and taught it by word and example to suffer such things for Christ.
8. How he cured a certain man of toothache.
At that very time it happened that a certain man [From Vita I, chap. 9, we know that this man was one of those Saracens who had maltreated the saint.], oppressed by excessive pain of the teeth, came in pain to the man of God, who was still adhec the codex in pain, and, having shown the disease of his sickness, begged that he would at least place the sign of the cross on the place of his pain [Cf. Vita I, chap. 9, at once, when the sign of the cross had been set against the place of the pain, he healed him.]. At this the devout man, truly full of the bowels of pity, moved by mercy, did not look at his own weakness, but regarded the sick man in view of the divine clemency intuitu seems to need supplying H.-E., approached with tears God, the cheerful giver of virtues, blessed the ailing man with the sign of the cross, and put to flight all the raging of that infirmity by the sudden power of God. Cf. 2 Cor. 9:7. The sick man is at once restored to such soundness of the teeth that, feeling no pain anywhere, he wonders whether anything had ever hurt him. Seeing this, the man of God Gregory ascribed it not to his own merits but to the grace of God, and, fearing to be burdened by the onrush of the people, he commanded, and even humbly begged, him who had been made whole to tell no one. But he, not otherwise than those cured in the Gospel, who, the more Jesus charged them to tell no one, the more they proclaimed it, nowhere concealed the power and miracles of God manifested in the blessed man, nay he spread them abroad everywhere as one who had experienced them and as things to be believed by one who had experienced them. Mark 7:36. Whence Gregory, fearing that as much merit of virtue could be taken from him as he saw outward favor growing for him, perhaps to become the oil of the sinner, thought, by a counsel of mind no less wise than discreet, to flee the throng of men, that he might be able to avoid human glory [Cf. Vita I, chap. 10: he considered how he might depart and flee human favor and this name of holiness … .]. Cf. Ps. 140:5. Accordingly, fleeing the company of the cloistered, he turned aside to a certain secret place, which was called Bulcinum Cf. ibid., and there led the eremitic life for some time. The brothers of his place, however, long saddened over their lost shepherd, at length learning that he was living in the aforesaid place, seek him back with every effort and zeal and compel him by the zeal of charity to return to the government of the cloister and of his fold [Vita I, chap. 13, relates that he returned to the monastery of Cerchiara. H.-E. But there an altogether different reason for this return is put forward.]. But nevertheless the lamp was made plain, and a city set on a hill could not be hid. Cf. Matth. 5:14. And how could he be hidden whom the brightness of divine charity wished to be made plain? That the servant, however, was made plain at that time not by a hard wandering but by the interpretation of the divine will, the splendor of an evident miracle, coming very bright from heaven, confirmed [Vita I, chap. 10, teaches that this miracle, which is narrated in chap. 9, was done not in the monastery of Cerchiara, as Vita II hints, but in the town of Buccino.].
9. How he cured a leper.
For one day, when in his usual manner he was giving himself to prayers in the oratory, it happened that a certain leper at the door of the church begged alms very insistently Cf. Vita I, chap. 10: a certain leper who came and asked alms of him. and wearied blessed Gregory by begging very importunately — for chance had brought him before his eyes. When the blessed man had recognized his sickness both by his voice and by his face, he devoutly dissolves into prayers and suppliantly besought the Lord Jesus Christ that, since he was able to drive away every infirmity, and since by the grace of his power he had cleansed lepers, given light to the blind, cured the sick, he would deign to cure this sick man with the medicine of his mercy. O power of ineffable clemency, O magnificence of divine goodness! The leper did not know whom or what sort of man he was asking; he did not know how near salvation was and how great a salvation was impending for him. For as soon as the man of God Gregory rose from prayer, he blessed the leper and, through the grace of God, restored him sound and whole from all leprosy, so that the power of God left in him no trace of infirmity and changed the gift of mercy into a better gift than was expected spectabatur the codex. This, then, is the change of the right hand of the Most High, by which unhoped-for salvation often comes to the burdened; and what then to those who hope, what to those who trust in him? Cf. Ps. 76:11. Let all, then, hope in you, Lord, who know your name, since you do not forsake those who seek you, who thus come to the help in dangers even of those who do not hope in you. Cf. Ps. 9:11.
10. How he healed a demoniac.
Likewise on the following day, when the blessed man was at prayers in the oratory in his usual manner, a great concourse of people took place, bringing a demoniac bound with hard knots of garments, and with devout prayers they begged that he would lay his hand on him with a blessing and through the mercy of God free the seized man from that vexation Vita I, chap. 11, narrates the same miracle.. For that wretch was tormented with such fury that, gnashing his teeth and roaring in a horrible manner with bloody mouth and contracted jaws, he would attack whoever came in his way and try to tear them to pieces. A marvellous thing, and more marvellous than marvellous! For in this manner, in this condition of fury, this savage man, brought to the servant of God and presented to his holiness, after receiving the blessing, after receiving the sign of the holy cross from the most blessed man, at once laid aside all the fury and savagery of his former insanity, as if the malignant spirit had never had any power in him. And he who before, practising savage acts by the spirit of fury, attacked everyone, now went about like a gentle sheep, speaking sanely, doing everything sanely. When this sign had been seen by all, wonder at the divine miracle in the servant of God began to grow among the people, and now they proclaimed him equal to the prophets, like the apostles, in whom they saw grace for grace, gift upon gift redoubled. This the following miracle also showed ostendens the codex more fully, by which, made like Elijah, he shone forth as much by the spirit of prophecy as by the immensity of the prodigy.
11. How he increased the oil.
When once the brothers' oil was failing and they had nothing with which to buy, they come to the blessed man and consult him as a spiritual father as to what quod the codex needed to be done. Looking at their want and having nothing with which to supply it, he turns to the Lord, he turns to him who gives to all abundantly and upbraids no one, provided one asks in faith, nothing wavering; he prayed and was heard. Cf. James 1:5, 6. He prayed to him in whom he hoped, set forth his own and his brothers' need to the most faithful hearer, nay granter of prayer, who did not on this occasion either forsake him who hoped in him. For a place is divinely shown him at the side of his monastery, where, the brothers having been directed by an angelic intimation, a jar full of most limpid oil is found. This the brothers at once brought back to his presence, as had been commanded, with immense joy of exultation. Blessing it with devout devotion, adding prayers, he made it, through the mercy of God, overflow with such abundance that they could not even have vessels enough into which to pour the oil. And the oil stayed. Here truly the cruse of Elijah is multiplied, here another Elijah is beheld in the house of the Lord, since this one supplied the want of a poor church, that one the want of a poor widow. Cf. 4 Kings 4:6. & Cf. 3 Kings 17:16. For thereafter, in his times and for a long time after supplied H.-E.; omits the codex him, oil never failed the brothers in that place for all the uses of their needs [Cf. ibid., chap. 12, where in the narrative of this miracle, somewhat different indeed, mention is also made of the jar, of Elijah, of the cruse.]. When this gift of God had been conferred through the servant of the Most High, those serving God, consoled, rendered thanks to the Almighty, as was fitting, and honored the blessed man himself with great veneration I do not know whether some word (exhibicione?) has fallen out. H.-E..
12. How a certain Greek wished to betray him.
Amid these miracles of divine power, that ancient enemy of the human race did not fail in the ancient contrivance of his envy; knowing uotum the codex a thousand arts of harming [Cf. Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini, chap. 22: the devil, while he tried by a thousand arts of harming. H.-E.], he arms himself with one against the man of God. For at his instigation one of the Greeks is inflamed with envy against Gregory and, eager to bring to nothing his holy works by his own work, or at least to diminish his good fame, by wicked counsel he arranged to seize eum is to be supplied. H.-E. him and to confine him in captivity [These without doubt are to be referred to what is related in Vita I, chap. 13, about the Greek catapan who wished to take Gregory to Constantinople. The author seems not to have rightly explained the picture of the hanging on which these things were depicted. H.-E.], and aimed at the life of the blessed man with punishments. But the devout and merciful Lord, wishing to reserve him for a greater benefit of the faithful, scattered the counsel of the Greek, and guarded his saint from enemies and kept him safe from seducers. Cf. Ps. 32:10. & Cf. Wisd. 10:12.
13. How, fleeing, he turned aside to Rome [thus written beforehand in the bottom margin in minuscule letters; omits the rubricator.]
Not long after, another of the Greeks, inflamed with the same spirit of wickedness, since he could not seize the saint of God as he had planned, tried by counsels and nods to hand him over to another more wicked than himself, so that he who could not conquer openly might conquer at least secretly. But what? Deceit or valor, who would ask in an enemy virus the codex requiratur the codex Cf. Vergil, Aeneid II, 390: Deceit or valor, who would ask in an enemy? H.-E.? The Lord too made foolish his counsel, made it foolish and brought it to nothing. Cf. 2 Kings 15:31. For the man of God is freed, the snare of all his enemies is broken, nor in all these things is he troubled by even a small injury, now avoiding ambushes, now escaping betrayals through the mercy of God. Cf. Ps. 123:7. At length, wearied by such great labors, fleeing now these, now those, he thought to go out from the borders of his fatherland and the sweetness of his native soil. And he who had left natural intercourse did not think it a great thing to leave his native soil. Soon, bidding farewell to his brothers with all love dilectioni the codex and affection, he commended them to God, the supremely good shepherd, and, the blessing having been received and given not without great groaning of his own, he departed. Hence, fearing the Danaans, that is, those bearing gifts The simple man did not understand the verse of Vergil, Aeneid II, 49. H.-E., he came by night journeys as far as the sea and, about to suffer the uncertain labors of the deep, he boarded the vessel of certain men sailing to Italy. And so, by the clemency of God and with a favorable breath of the winds blowing, they reach Italy in a swift course, and, all having been put ashore on the desired coast, he himself as a pilgrim and
stranger made for Rome, directed his way to Rome.
14. How he turned aside to his sister the lady Theophanu.
At that time Otto the second was governing the monarchy of the Roman empire with no less wondrous prudence than power, and, as befitted the imperial majesty, the Roman prince himself was victor in all things. Not only in battles against enemies, but also through lawful paths he drove out the iniquities of slanderers; the tyrants of all regions having been subjected to his dominion, he ruled all powerfully, while he honored all religious men with humble and sincere devotion, so that he appeared greater than all the great, humbler with holy humility than all the humble. This prince, then, had taken to wife from Greece the sister of the blessed man Gregory, the lady Theophania, whom some call Theophanu Theophaim the codex, daughter of the king of Constantinople [What is related in the following chapters about Gregory meeting Theophanu at Rome is without doubt false. Even if the author saw a picture representing these things woven into the hanging, Gregory certainly did not approach the empress at Rome nor before the death of Otto II. So the distinguished H.-E.; and it is indeed most true that Otto II is wrongly named here by the author of the Vita; yet I see nothing to prevent Gregory being said to have met the empress at Rome. For after Gregory had taken to flight in the years 986–987 at the onrush of the Saracens (Vita I, chap. 9), then, returning to the abbey of Cerchiara, had stayed there for a year (ibid., chap. 10), and at length had spent some time at Buccino (ibid.), he certainly could in the years 989–990, at which time we know that Theophanu was in Italy and in the City itself, have come to her for some reason. Which conversation was perhaps depicted with the needle on the Cologne hanging. I confess indeed that the authority of the later Vita is too slight for us to affirm these things as certain; but the distinguished Holder-Egger himself asserts that so much credit can be given to it, in chap. 20, that he believes Gregory met Otto III at Rome; and yet in chap. 20, no differently than in chap. 14, the author names Otto II instead of Otto III. Cf. above, Commentarius praevius, no. 13.]. She, although she appeared glorious in the fasces according to the dignity of the world, yet inwardly in secret shone with no less holiness than her brother in the sight of the Most High, according to that saying of the psalmist: All the glory of the king's daughter is within, Ps. 44:14. and that of the apostle: Our glory is this, the testimony of our conscience. 2 Cor. 1:12. At that time, namely, the aforementioned emperor augustus, having left the empress at Rome, had gone off into Gaul, and, resisting the hard fury of the Teutons, was taking care to rule all omnia the codex parts of his empire in peace and tranquillity. Gregory, the servant of God, learning that his sister was living in the City, turned aside to her with joy. But before he went to her, taken by the mere novelty of the places, or rather by love of the saints, he was eager to visit secretly for some days the holy places and the shrines of the saints. In which matter by how beautiful a miracle God showed him to the empress augusta augusti the codex, his sister, I think it not right that I should pass over.
15. How he cured a man sick with fever.
For while as a pilgrim he was visiting the shrines of the saints round about in the city, one day he remained a long time and very devoutly in a certain oratory for the sake of prayer. At that very hour a certain man, poor in body and goods, seeking his living from door to door, though he was gripped by great fevers, by chance entered the same oratory in which the man of God was praying. And seeing a certain immense brightness of the air shining around him, as though touched and drawn tractus atque tractus the codex by the miracle, he came nearer; and the nearer he came, the more evidently he understood the power of God. Soon, not forgetful of himself, he cried out to the man of God, and by crying out with the complaint of his misery he drew the saint of God away from prayer and with a tearful voice urged him to have compassion on his want and sickness. When the saint of God looked at him, he wept, and was moved with the compassion of the apostle, who said: Who is weak among you, and I am not weak? 2 Cor. 11:29. Having made a prayer to the Lord, he imprinted the sign of the cross on him, restored him entirely sound and whole from all sickness and enjoined in every way that he tell no one. But in vain he forbade by enjoining, since the city was set on a hill, and could not be hid. Cf. Matth. 5:14. Thenceforth the fame of the man of God is spread not only in all the corners of the city, but is propagated through all Tuscany, Campania, Sicily and all the borders of Italy. The faithful flock together from the provinces situated round about, some commending themselves to his prayers, others bringing their sick. Many, through the mercy of God, he cured of various infirmities, and he granted to all to be sharers in his prayers. Stirred, then, by this fame, the lady Theophania, an empress devoted to God and religious in Christ with Christian worship, going forth from the throne of majesty, went to track the footsteps of her pilgrim brother. And not knowing that he was her brother, she sought to learn the holiness of the saint of God. When he was found, she approached him with immense reverence. And having at length obtained the opportunity of conversation, she asked his nation and his fatherland. She heard him indeed speaking in the Greek idiom of tongue. In the course of speaking, touched also not a little by a natural prompting, she took care to inquire about the lineage of the servant of God. At which word the man of God fell silent as if ashamed, and, moved also to weeping, he could not dissemble. Whence, the empress augusta pressing him, at length he confessed who he was, though unwillingly, and it became plain to the empress, not without tears, that he was her brother. Both rush into embraces, and with the gladness of each man, the outer as well as the inner, redoubled, they at length burst forth into divine praises and pay thanksgivings to God for the union of both. Why do I linger on many things? How great were the joys of the whole imperial court, with how great exultation the whole Roman city was gladdened, I cannot set out; I judge it sound rather to leave it to estimation than to comprehend it in writing.
16. How on his sister's counsel he built a church in honor of the holy Saviour.
The man of God, then, amid such great joys, not forgetful of his purpose su the codex, nor moved from it either, always turns aside to the pursuit of prayer and, setting aside every earthly delight, turns to God, for whom he left all things, and whom he followed above all things. Cf. Matth. 19:27. Spending whole nights in prayer, swift to every work of God, putting nothing before the work of God, he spurned all the joys of the world. Considering this, the empress then disclosed what long before remained stored deep in her mind Cf. Vergil, Aeneid I, 26: remains stored deep in the mind. H.-E., and advised her brother, and indeed gave counsel, that he should build an oratory in which he might dwell with those serving God. Gregory, therefore, acquiescing in the holy counsels of his sister, built an oratory in honor of the holy Saviour and gathered men of religious life into it. For them the empress, the lady Theophania, a religious matron devoted to God, established sufficient revenues for their daily uses, and, the place having been enlarged with imperial privileges, she made the man of God Gregory abbot by the common election and petition of the brothers living in the oratory [Cf. the passage from the Vita of Adalbert, by Bruno, cited above (Commentarius praevius, no. 2). I have found no mention made elsewhere of this monastery of St. Saviour.]. There Illuc the codex the servant of God, dwelling in all humility, did not forget the work he had been counselled to, always in the praise of God, always in prayer. There, with the Lord's help, he worked an immense benefit for souls both by zeal in holy exhortation and by the example of a most approved life, urgently instructing the people with divine admonitions, cherishing the poor out of his own poverty according to that saying of Tobias: If you have much, give abundantly; but if little, take care to bestow sic the codex even a little willingly. Tob. 4:9 He loved the humble also, chastised the proud, corrected the erring, visited the sick, taught the rich bountifulness toward the poor. Innumerable Romans, pricked to the heart by his rebuke, were converted from the wantonness of the world, and, following the holy father, began to serve under the habit of religion. The venerable father also nurtured many disciples in the same monastery. The boys of nobles too, instructed with heavenly doctrine, he taught to despise the luxury and riches of the passing world together with its honors. Near the same oratory also, while it was being built, God worked through his servant a certain miracle which we believe should certainly not be passed over.
17. How he gave light to a blind man.
For when the aforenoted oratory was being built, he had set up a little cell for himself beside the oratory, that, resting in it with his workmen, he might avoid the throng of the royal court. It happened one day that a certain boy, deprived of the light of his eyes, was going round the streets of the Romans begging, and by chance came to the cell of the blessed man, hoping that he would receive something from him. O how loving is the dispensation of divine mercy, which by a secret counsel of goodness, human understandings not knowing it, comes to the help of wretched mortals by nourishing them. For by its ordering, as someone says, things despaired of often help the burdened; the blind man asked alms of the man of God, not knowing that the lamp of his body was drawing near to him, ignorant of the medicine of his salvation close at hand; he gaped more after a gift than after salvation. Blessed Gregory, seeing him deprived of the light of his eyes, moved with his usual pity went to him, imprints the cross of Christ on the sockets of his eyes, and, his sight being at once restored, sends him away rejoicing that with an empty hand he had merited more, namely so great a salvation. Again and again, the miracle being spread propago the codex not only in the City but far and wide, men run together concurrit the codex from far and wide, the lamp of light is sought by all, is honored by all. Some of the faithful too, stirred by the fame of such great miracles, no less by the habit of his holy life, confer gifts and alms from their substance on him and on his monastery, and strive to make God propitious to themselves by his prayers and those of his brothers.
18. How John the Campanian became a monk.
At that time a certain nobleman named John, a Campanian, hearing of such great virtues of the servant of God and turning over in holy meditation in the secret of his breast how to lighten the little burdens of his sins, sent from his wealth to Gregory, the servant of God, ten sumpter horses that is, pack-horses; cf. Du Cange at the word sagma, sagmarius. laden with gold and silver, praying and asking that he would have mercy on him and beseech God for the salvation of his soul. This alms blessed Gregory the abbot humbly received, and at once divided it among the poor, according to that saying of the psalmist: He has dispersed, he has given to the poor. Ps. 111:9. He cared to have nothing in transitory things except either to sustain himself or to refresh his own; all the rest he spent for the uses of the poor; and, made an imitator of the great Gregory, he retained for himself nothing of the luxury of fleeting substance beyond the use of nature. This was his intention, this his teaching and preaching, to have no advantage but the fruit of eternal wages. Perceiving this, the aforementioned nobleman, by the inspiration of divine grace, left all the delights of the world and sought the monastery of the blessed man with all haste. Arriving there,
he at once fell at the feet of the holy man and begged, even with tears, that he would clothe him in the sacred habit and instruct him in the monastic disciplines. The holy man did not put off the holy wishes of the man; nay, rejoicing with the holy man, on the counsel of the brothers he clothed him in the sacred habit, and taught John to be a sharer of his typical name [that is, a sharer of divine grace; since, according to Jerome (De nominibus hebraicis, passim): John = in whom is grace, or the grace of the Lord.]. He instructed him also in the rule of the monastic life, and set before him above all the examples of charity and humility, and in a short time he who had been given as food to the peoples of the Ethiopians, and who had been the prey of cruel death, was made for many an example and cause of eternal salvation. Cf. Ps. 73:14.
19. How he restored light to a blind man thus written beforehand in the bottom margin; l. r. the rubricator..
Amid these works of piety, by which as physician and minister of divine salvation the man of God cured now these in the body, now those in the inner man, a certain boy deprived of light, hearing of the signal deeds of such great virtues, at once made his way to the oratory of the servant of God. Having found it, he asked for mercy, prayed that light be restored to him, and redoubled his prayers with groaning, and lamented the true loss of the light of which he was bereft, which pressed upon him, a night not of his own making. Moved by these tears, the man of God Gregory, turning to the Lord, asked for the salvation of the one asking, and swiftly obtained from God, the giver of all good things, the effect of his petition. For when the sign of the cross had been imprinted by the blessed man on the blind orbs of the eyes and the name of Jesus Christ invoked, all blindness being put to flight, the benefits of light are at once restored to him, and he who had come weeping and wailing returns rejoicing and singing. The Roman city too, struck by this day's act of power, extol there the mighty works of God and, surrounding the servant of God with devout devotion, bring to his presence any sick and weak, hoping for divine mercy in all things.
20. How the emperor Otto received him.
At that time, then, the aforesaid emperor of the Romans Otto the second, having left the borders of Gaul fratribus the codex, having crossed the Alps, was again making for the citadels of Rome. When now with swift flight the report of his return had struck the ears of the Romans, the man of God Gregory, heavily burdened by the great throng of the people, when this report was spread abroad, began to breathe again a little, thinking by some means, through the counsel of the wise prince, to lay down the burden under which he labored against his wish. For it was an immense labor to him — as one who had vowed noverat the codex to live solitarily, to withdraw himself from the world and its concupiscences — to be present at all these things against his will. Cf. 1 John 2:17. For as someone says: He who preserves a man against his will does the same as one who kills him Horace, Epistle to the Pisos, 467.. Whence also by a swift journey he went to meet the emperor. The emperor received him with great devotion. For he had known him by fame before he knew him in body, since he was already shining with virtues and signs in the whole world. The emperor, greatly gladdened at his coming and deeming him worthy of much honor, went forth to meet him, and, having kindly kissed him and given him his right hand, thenceforth always joined him to his side, as long as the holy man wished to be a companion of the royal court.
21. How he cured the monk Luzo.
The emperor, making no long stay in the city of Rome, returns to Gaul, as affairs demanded, and takes with him the blessed man together with his whole house, namely his wife the lady Theophania and his offspring. On this journey a certain monk named Luzo, having heard the fame of the servant of God, as a quite dangerous infirmity pressed him, came to meet him; for he was laboring so much from a swelling of the throat due to the disease which physicians call quinsy that, the passage of breath being now obstructed, he was held at the point of death, nor was there any hope of life in him. But on seeing the most blessed man, he asked for mercy by nods and tears more than by words, and moved the saint of God to have compassion on him. On him the holy man, having made a prayer, placed the sign of the cross and, quicker than said, rendered him sound and whole from all disease. The emperor saw this, all who were in his retinue saw it, and they glorified God, who is glorious in his saints. Cf. Ps. 66:36. The miracle is sown abroad everywhere. Yet the man of God did not seek the fruit of this seed, whose glory was the testimony of a faithful conscience. Cf. 2 Cor. 1:12.
22. How the emperor gave Gregory the counsel to build a monastery.
At that time the emperor, passing in rapid course through the borders of all the eastern peoples, came to the Lotharingians and at Aachen, where the seat of the empire is said to have been placed by Charles the Great, proclaims a court for the princes. While all the leading men of the kingdom, religious as well as secular, flocked together there, Gregory was always nearest to the royal side, yet setting little store by every kind of honor, bearing Christ everywhere in his conscience. The emperor, however, perceiving that he was excessively burdened by the worldly throng and was weary of business of this kind, agreed on this counsel, that he should choose a place in which to set a monastery, into which he might bring men of religious life, with whom he himself might live religiously without the tumult of the world. Gladdened by this counsel, the servant of God gave thanks to God and, having received the emperor's counsel, searched very zealously for a place fit for such buildings. Then, as divine providence ordained, Burtscheid is given him by the emperor [It is certain that the monastery of Burtscheid was founded both by Otto III and by a certain abbot Gregory (see above, Commentarius praevius, nos. 12, 13). That this abbot was our Gregory the Calabrian, and that consequently credit can readily be given here to the later Vita, is in the highest degree probable, especially since in chap. 13 of the former Vita it is hinted that Gregory the Calabrian came into a certain intimacy with Otto III.], since no place more fit for such wishes was found. It is not too much separated from the people nor too much mingled with them, but, holding a certain mean, it encloses in itself as it were the mystery of the virtues Cf. Horace, Epistles I, 18, verse 9.. Hence the work is carried far and wide, as far as was needed for the structure, by the laborious zeal of the craftsmen; the foundation is laid on firm and stable rock, as befits a church, and an oratory is built in honor of St. Apollinaris the martyr and St. Nicholas the confessor. Then the man of God Gregory, as he had ordained, gathered there monks of religious life, men fearing God, established the divine office in the monastery, and, having received revenues from the emperor, ordained a sufficient stipend for those serving God there. Besides, he endowed the house of God with the law of liberty, as is fitting, and the emperor himself prescribed that it should be subject to the dominion of none but the emperor [Cf. the diploma of King Conrad III, in the year 1138, on 8 April (Lacomblet, Urkundenbuch, vol. I, p. 216 f.): Let them know…, that we grant to the church of Burtscheid the privilege which it has obtained from all kings and emperors from the time of the pious Otto, founder of the same church, until now, namely that the abbot of that monastery be subject to no one at all except the royal person. Such a privilege of earlier kings does not survive. H.-E.]. This too he confirmed before the leading men of the empire by privileges fortified with solid truth, as they are still held in the same church. These things having been accomplished with dutiful diligence, the lord emperor Otto established the man of God Gregory as abbot in the same place, and enlarged that place with what honors he could, both for God's sake and for the sake of the holy man. In this monastery blessed Gregory lived holily and religiously until the end of the present life. He never harmed anyone, he benefited all, outdoing all in honor, and though he was the father of the monastery, honoring all as fathers, recalling in his mind him who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. Cf. Rom. 12:10. The man of God, then, shone with ineffable holiness, inestimable goodness, discretion toward his subjects, and he loved all men with incomparable charity. Cf. Matth. 20:28. With this beauty of life and uprightness of conduct he had already declined into a good old age, when one night, as he was resting on his bed, blessed Pachomius, his first abbot in the parts of Greece Cf. above, p. 468, note 1., appearing to him in a dream, or his angel, foretells his departure and made known to him that the end of his life was at hand. This revelation he indicated to the brothers in the morning, and, made certain of the end of his life, in his usual manner he instructs them in the rule of the heavenly life, taught them to have good faith, sure hope, perfect charity, and to emulate the path of justice, and with all humility to imitate the Lord Jesus Christ, who humbled himself, being made obedient to the Father unto death. Cf. Phil. 2:8. What he had done, he taught; chastity, humility and all charity, sincerity of mind and body, in which he completed the course of his life, the master set before his disciples. Cf. Acts 1:1. With this beauty of right he had always directed dixerat the codex the path of life; whence he knew how to teach and do nothing supplied H.-E.; omits the codex but right and holy things, and for that reason he always had the devil as his adversary, as will also be shown in what follows.
23. With what end St. Gregory departed.
For when placed at the point of death the man of God Gregory sees a demon standing by him, sees the enemy of the human race looming over him; whom he addresses with such words, saying: Why do you stand here Cf. Sulpicius Severus, Epistle III, 16., enemy of men, foe of souls? What do you seek, spirit of perdition, tinder of iniquity, wicked spirit? You will have no part with me, no part in me is left to you; nothing in me is given up to your power. Cf. John 13:8. The angels of God will receive me, the food; the bosom of Abraham will guard me. Cf. Luke 16:22. Depart from me, food of death Cf. the Vita of St. Agnes, chap. 3 (Acta Sanctorum, January vol. II, p. 351).; depart, bloody beast Cf. Sulpicius Severus, Epistle III, 16, for my soul has cleaved after God. Cf. Ps. 62:9. At this word that malignant spirit departed with such horror and roaring that all who were present, stupefied, thought the place full of demons. After this the man of God Gregory, having set the affairs of his monastery in good order, fortified with the sacraments of the Church, greeted the whole of his flock with fatherly kindness, and so, having given up his spirit, falling asleep in peace he rested. That most holy soul, then, departed to the Lord on the day before the nones of November But in the Austrian legendary his Vita is inserted under the day 16 April. H.-E.. He departed, to exult in the throng of the heavenly ones, over whom the angels exult, the archangels rejoice, the choir of the saints proclaims, the throng of virgins invites: Stay with us forever. Cf. John 14:16.
O blessed man, O most holy soul, at whose coming the whole choir of the heavenly ones exults, whose glory and honor the everlasting voice of the heavenly ones applauds sic.. O with how solemn, how festive a harmony of the saints you are joined consortiorum the codex to their companies, among whom, while still on earth, by your manner of life you shone in heaven with virtues. Cf. Phil. 3:20. Then the brothers of the monastery, although afflicted with immense grief for the loss of so great a father, having gathered
nevertheless a multitude of religious, of canons as well as of the citizens of the nearby city of Aachen, celebrated the funeral rites of the most blessed man with great reverence, and, commending his spirit to almighty God, most devoutly buried the lifeless body in the oratory which he himself had built. And the place of burial has furnished until now no small proof of his holiness, and one quite to be wondered at. For it surpassed all the forms of modern tombs, growing daily to so great a height that you would think it no longer the mausoleum of a dead man, but an altar of sacrifice. For it is clearer than light that no one ever came to his tomb so sad or so despairing that it was not established that he returned from there glad and cheerful. For as in his life he did wonders, so also in death the grace of divine power did not cease in him. Cf. Ecclus. 31:9. Of these, many signal miracles have been wiped out thus the codex for aboleverunt by antiquity; a few have come down to us, manifested within the course of our own time and attested by the assertion of many of the faithful.
24. How long after his death he healed a cripple thus written beforehand at the bottom of the page; omits the rubricator..
A certain man, so crippled in his feet and shins that he could not be supported by any use of his feet, but, crawling with almost his whole body, moving himself by the effort of little stools and the support of his hands, used at times to frequent the kitchens of the brothers of Burtscheid, and there daily awaited alms; he had nothing else on which to live. It happened once that the anniversary of the death of blessed Gregory was being solemnly celebrated by the brothers of the place; and that that poor man of whom we have spoken, by a divine prompting, since the time to have mercy on him had come, crawled with many tears and groans to the tomb of the holy man, and more attentively sought the mercy which he had never sought before. Cf. Ps. 101:14. He wept, he cried out, and the Lord, by the merits of his servant, heard him, so that truly that prophetic word was fulfilled in him which is written in the psalm: This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, etc. Ps. 33:7. So by the prayers and merits of the saint of God that poor man was freed and redeemed by the Lord. Leaping up and praising God, who had done great things in him, because he is mighty, and mercy, because he is merciful. Seeing this, the people wondered and glorified God. Cf. Luke 1:49.
25. How the abbot Wolfram Wolfrānius the codex was freed through his merit.
In the same place there afterwards was a certain abbot named Wolfram Wolfrānius the codex [Who is mentioned nowhere else. From the fact that Arnold is said in chap. 26 to have succeeded him, it is clear that he sat after the year 1151, in which the abbot Onulf presided over the monastery of Burtscheid (see charter no. 15 in Quix, Geschichte der ehemaligen Reichsabtei Burtscheid, p. 216 ff.), and before the year 1179 H.-E. How far the praised Quix erred in this series of abbots, see Commentarius praevius, no. 15, note 7.], a religious and modest man, but laboring grievously for a long time with the affliction of the stone; whence also he frequented the baths [It is known that Burtscheid is not undistinguished for its hot and medicinal springs.], if in some way he might soothe this affliction when that fury came on. It happened also on a certain anniversary of the death of the blessed man, while the brothers after Mass were together and solemnly making faci// the codex the commendation of his soul with the ringing of the bells, that the aforesaid abbot, as the aforenoted affliction pressed him, was sitting in the baths, and from the excessive pain by which he was tortured, on hearing the bells, as if he were already expiring, he cried out: Gregory, saint of God, if you can do anything with God, have mercy on me! Have mercy on me, most blessed man, and free me by your prayers from this affliction by which I am most tightly racked! God the merciful did not fail from on high the one crying out, because the servant of God did not fail, suffering with him who suffered; nay, in a moment the stone of that man, of wondrous size according to the nature of such things, wholly shattered and changed into the manner of sand, leapt out from the abbot himself in the baths, and the root and the whole generated matter of the stone came out piece by piece, so that thereafter he remained sound and whole from the infirmity for all the time of his life, and did not cease to proclaim and bless the mighty works of God in his beloved Gregory. Whence also afterwards, for all the time of his life, being not a little mimū the codex solicitous about the exaltation and translation of this holy man, he first began to inquire into the holiness of his life, and searched wherever he could. A written life of him was indeed held until now, even, as some say [supplied H.-E.; omits the codex], written [supplied H.-E.; omits the codex] in letters of gold and silver, in the same church, but afterwards burned by a mischance not well known. But these things which we have touched on from there Cf. above, Commentarius praevius, no. 6 and no. 10, note 2., both with him busily at work and with eum the codex the lord Arnold, successor after the death of the aforesaid father, more ardently bringing it to completion, we found on a fairly ancient hanging at Cologne in the church of St. Mary, where a choir of nuns serves God Ibid., no. 8, note 8., with evident captions. This hanging too the lady empress Theophanu, sister of blessed Gregory, ordered to be made in memory of her beloved brother after his death, and offered it to the Mother of God for the adornment of the church of God.
26. How the abbot Arnold translated him.
Nor is this to be hidden from the memory of those to come, that the lord Arnold, abbot of the often-mentioned monastery [We have a charter of his given in the year 1179 (Lacomblet, op. cit., vol. I, p. 330), where, since he says: when I first had taken up the care of pastoral government, … seeing the slenderness of our revenues, not sufficient enough for the uses of our brothers, … I labored … to increase them, it appears that he had already then presided over the abbey for some time. He occurs also in a charter of the year 1192 (Lacomblet, vol. I, p. 372, no. 535). H.-E.], being in his times a more ardent emulator of the paternal traditions, when he had done many things in adorning the buildings of the house of God and of his cloister, thinking to do something glorious concerning this holy man and his glorious members, and judging it unworthy indeed that, since he had already passed to the joys of the angels, he should, sleeping in the dust of the earth, have but a humble memory among men, having gathered many religious, and these being set in fasts and prayers, opened the tomb of the blessed man with all reverence; in which was found a vessel put together from leaden plates, and the members of the blessed man arranged in it. Upon it such an epitaph is written:
Continet iste taphos peregrini membra sepulti Nomine Gregorii, meritis studioque colendi. Regis Graecorum natus Gregorius abbas [It is clear that this epitaph was composed long after the death of Gregory, since he was already believed to have been the son of the emperor of Constantinople. H.-E. But at the same time it is also clear that some little time before this later Vita was written it had already come into the mind either of its author or of any others whatever to ascribe this royal birth to the holy founder.] Primus Porcetum coluit templumque locavit; Cuius in hac fossa requiescunt corporis ossa
[This tomb contains the members of a pilgrim buried, Gregory by name, to be honored for his merits and zeal. Gregory the abbot, son of the king of the Greeks, first tilled Burtscheid and founded the church; whose body's bones rest in this grave]
When in the year 1749 certain of our predecessors had gone to Burtscheid, they no longer found this very leaden plate, but a certain new one prepared in the year 1611; for we read in their notes (Collectanea Bollandiana in the Brussels codex, Royal Library no. 8932, fol. 193; from there the distinguished F.-X. Kraus published them, Jahrbücher des Vereins von Alterthumsfreunden im Rheinlande, vol. L, p. 266–7): We ourselves copied these things on the spot in the year 1741:
DEO OPT. MAX. S.
GREGORIO PRIMO HUIUS LOCI ABBATI
ANTIQUITAS POSUIT.
To God the best and greatest. To St. Gregory, first abbot of this place, antiquity set this up.There followed the five little verses transcribed by the author of the Vita, then also this sixth, either omitted by that author or added afterwards:
SPIRITUS ANTE DEUM LAUDES RESONANDO PER AEVUM
His spirit, before God, resounding praises through the agesthen finally: POSTERITAS RENOVAVIT ANNO 1611. Posterity renewed it in the year 1611.
The same inscription was "repaired" by some craftsman or other in the year 1806, who in verse 1 wrote CONTINET HIC TUMULUS, but in the last LAUDES RESONABIT IN AEVUM; he also added three lines above in this manner:
Resta Vrato a beLLi CLaDe teMpLo et paroChIae seDe reCens Dato et ereCto DenVo reparabat.
[He repaired it, the church having been restored from the disaster of war, and lately given as the seat of the parish, and erected anew.]
Finally, in the praised notes of our predecessors, in the place cited, we read this written in the margin: on the pastoral staff there is this inscription: PASTORIS VIRGA CURVATUR APTA UT ATTRAHAT. The shepherd's rod is curved, fitted to draw in.
Which inscription, on the testimony of the distinguished F.-X. Kraus, in the place cited, still survives and seems to have been made in the tenth or eleventh century. The same learned man compares it with the verses cited in Hugh of St. Victor (Speculum de mysteriis ecclesiae, chap. 6):
Draw in by the curve, rule by the middle, prick by the lowest part; the curve draws the gentle, the sharp part pricks the rebellious.
These having been found in this way, gathering the sacred members, he carried them with religious devotion, with a worthy assembly of people and clergy, from that oratory into the greater church, built in honor of St. John the Baptist, and beside the high altar supplied H.-E.; omits the codex of the Baptist himself he laid them in a sarcophagus of notable workmanship, hoping that for such service rendered he would receive an eternal reward from the Lord. For the father of the monastery himself did not dare to add more or greater things, because he had not yet been canonized by apostolic authority, although he had deservedly passed into the number of the saints and would lose nothing in the fellowship of the angels, concerning whom your testimonies, O God, have been made exceedingly credible. Cf. Ps. 92:5. Whence also in the same place the faithful frequently offer their vows to God, commending themselves to the prayers of the most holy man, hoping not ineffectually to obtain through him pardon of sins from God; by whose prayers we too humbly beg to be helped. Amen.
ADDITION.
Gregory, abbot of Burtscheid near Aachen. (S.)
[1] Not long after the translation of blessed Gregory the dispersion of the monks took place, and, by the favor of divine clemency, with the consent of the princes of that time, that place was given to nuns of the Cistercian order, since it was suited to their vows and offices. They, coming in the year of the Lord's incarnation one thousand two hundred and twenty from the Mount of the Saviour of Aachen., fifty or more in number [In the year 1222 the emperor Frederick II confirmed this change made by Archbishop Engelbert; Lacomblet, op. cit., vol. I, p. 53 (Regesta imperii, vol. V, no. 1377). H.-E.], of whom the abbess [Helswendis. As Quix, op. cit., p. 105, contends, about the year 1255 a second abbess of the same name succeeded Helswendis I; which is refuted in this place, written in the year 1261 or a little after. H.-E.] who at that time also had taken up the government of the abbey, and very many other sisters, remain until the present. They found, then, the place of burial so raised, as was declared above Vita II, chap. 23., that they no longer believed it to be the receptacle of a tomb, but an altar. They found also in it that leaden vessel, in
which the members of the blessed man had been arranged, of which mention was also made above Ibid., chap. 26.; they found it, I say, and saw it, and bear testimony to the truth. Blessed Gregory, then, having been translated, as has been said, as though hiding the lamp of his holiness for a long time, was made known by miracles on few days, so that the veneration of him almost slipped from the memory of men. But now, because the time to have mercy has come, the Lord, constrained by the prayers of the faithful who frequent the place, has deigned to open the door of his mercy through the merits of the most holy man. Cf. Ps. 101:14. No one so sad or so sick touches his tomb that he does not return home from there cheerful and helped Almost the words of chap. 23 are repeated in this place. H.-E.. In the year of the Lord, then, one thousand two hundred and sixty-one it happened that a certain blind man coming from distant parts, when he had already for a long time sought the remedies of physicians and the intercessions of the saints, and yet could not obtain the light of his eyes, one night heard in his sleep a voice saying to him: Rise and go; seek the place named Burtscheid, and you will find there in the monastery the tomb of blessed Gregory the abbot, by whose prayers you will be given light by the Lord. The blind man, awakened, gladdened by a vision of this kind, at once trusting in the God of heaven and in blessed Gregory, through the devotion and hope which he had conceived had received his sight sic.. The same blind man, then, taking with him his neighbors and acquaintances, who had seen him blind, came with great joy to the place which is called Burtscheid; where, led by a certain lay brother of that monastery to the tomb of the holy man of which he had heard in his sleep, giving thanks to God he assured all who were present that through the merits of blessed Gregory he had received health from the Lord.
[2] Likewise at the aforesaid monastery there are two religious sisters, of whom one was tortured with most grievous pain in the breast, so that she was almost destroyed by the voracity of worms, and she could be healed by no medicine; the other sister was so afflicted with the swelling of dropsy that for the space of one year and more she could not be moved from her pallet, nor could human medicine have any effect in her. The aforesaid sisters, then, coming to ab the codex the tomb of blessed Gregory, received health through his merits, with the Lord's co-operation. To this miracle we, the abbess and the whole convent of the same monastery, bear testimony.
[3] A certain matron also of the city of Aachen had with us an infant laboring with the pain of the stone and having a deadly abscess on his neck; which infant, already dying, his aforesaid mother carried to the tomb of blessed Gregory with the gift of an offering. There, through the healing of that boy by the intercession of blessed Gregory, the Lord mercifully showed his clemency.
[4] A certain poor little widow in the village of Burtscheid was nursing the infant of a certain man of the city of Aachen, which infant had come into such sickness that it could neither suck nor take any nourishment, but kept up evidans sic. incessantly day and night. That widow, on the counsel of certain nuns of that place, carried the aforesaid boy to the tomb of blessed Gregory, and the boy himself, seated on the tomb, changed his tears into laughter, and was cured of his ailments. All of us, spiritual as well as secular persons, who were in the village of Burtscheid, saw these things and testify to them. Besides these, if all the other miracles which happen there through the merits of blessed Gregory were to be narrated one by one, the hour would fail before the page. For the sick there are daily cured wondrously by the Lord of fevers, of pain of the head, of the teeth and of the eyes, of flux of blood and of diverse kinds of ailments, to whom be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
[5] Likewise it happened that a certain married lady from the Moselle, on account of the importunity of her husband, had fallen into a certain madness, so that, having left her province, she wandered through trackless places as one demented in body; at length, with certain pilgrims hastening to the dedication of blessed Mary at Aachen, she came to Burtscheid. There, when she saw the multitude of peoples gathered, she was seized with such madness that she believed the pilgrims gathered there had come together for the destruction of her body. Believing this, avoiding the pompous crowd, she of her own accord, in the sight of many, threw herself into the fishpond of the nuns to drown herself, so that, almost drowned, she could scarcely be drawn out by certain servants who served there. Placed on a bed and guarded with great diligence, at length, overcome by excessive weariness, she fell asleep. And when she had been awakened, having become as one out of her mind and ignorant que adds the codex of things, she was led to the tomb of blessed Gregory by a certain matron serving there, who still enjoys the soundness of her life. And there, while all who were present paid vows of prayers to ab adds the codex the Lord, the woman, through the merits of the most holy man, is restored to her former health. After this the aforesaid woman, made sound and whole, rendered the service of servitude to the same monastery for some time.