Adalbero

ON BL. ADALBERO, BISHOP OF WÜRZBURG AND CONFESSOR, AT LAMBACH IN UPPER AUSTRIA, IN THE YEAR MXC.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Adalbero, bishop of Würzburg and confessor, at Lambach in Upper Austria. (B.)

BY C. S.

§ I. The ancient cult at Lambach of Adalbero, inscribed in a single Martyrology, is proved: a Life and a little book of miracles, and another metrical Life, to be reprinted.

Herbipolis, otherwise Wirceburgum, to the Germans Wurtzburg, Among the martyrologists alone a city of Germany in Franconia on the Main, has a distinguished episcopate, instituted by St. Boniface, archbishop of Mainz and martyr, with the approval of Pope St. Zacharias, whose bishop enjoys the principality of his dominion, and among the princes of Franconia the dukedom. Of the first bishop of this see, St. Burchard, we shall have to treat in this Work of ours at the 14th day of October, on which he is read inscribed in the Roman Martyrology. Another prelate of the same city, St. Bruno, we gave with the same Martyrology on the 17th day of May; but today there comes to be commemorated the next successor of this Bruno, Blessed Adalbero, sometimes also called Adelbero and Albero, who in the 11th century suffered many things from the schismatics on behalf of the Apostolic See, and, driven once and again from his see, spent in peace the last years of his life at the monastery of the Benedictine Order of Lambach, which he had founded in present-day Upper Austria, and, buried there, became illustrious with very many miracles, and obtained ancient cult.

[2] Truly did Sigismund Calles, a writer of our Society, known to Châtelain, his ancient cult is proved pronounce of him in volume 1 of the Annals of Austria, page 410, in his eulogy: His very life, spent amid holy labours for the Church; his death, met in exile for the cause of God, sufficiently show that he could neither have lived more holily nor died more happily. Nor were miracles lacking at his tomb, nor ancient annual cult; so that I greatly wonder that his name is read inscribed in no Martyrologies, not even in the German one commonly called Canisius's, except in the Universal one of Châtelain, in which at the 6th day of October it is briefly said in French: At Würzburg, St. Adalbero, bishop. And rightly indeed did Châtelain give him a place in the sacred Fasti, and rightly at this day; but he ought not to have announced him at Würzburg, or Herbipolis, where he was indeed bishop, but did not die, nor ever obtained burial, nor perhaps even cult; but at Lambach in Upper Austria, in the monastery of which place it will be established from what is to be said that he, if not (as is most probable) much earlier, at least towards the end of the 12th century and the beginning of the 13th, shone with miracles and was publicly honoured with annual veneration on the 6th day of October; let us, however, taste a few things beforehand.

[3] That the 6th day of October, at least when the 13th century had not much begun, was sacred to the annual memory of Blessed Adalbero, at Lambach on the 6th day of October, on which he died. the anonymous author of the little book of miracles, who we shall prove below wrote at that time, expressly hands down. For in chapter 22, in my numbering number 57, where the discourse is of speech restored to a mute boy at the tomb of Blessed Adalbero, these things are to be read: For the anniversary day of the blessed confessor Albero the bishop was at hand, which always falls on the octave day of the Angels, on which very many strive to visit the place of Lambach for the sake of prayer; with whom also the parents of the said boy, taking him with them, animated by divine hope and trusting in the merits of the blessed Prelate, took to the road, etc. The octave day of the Angels, that is, of the Dedication of St. Michael the archangel, which Dedication is observed on the 29th day of September, is the 6th day of October, on which day accordingly the annual festivity of Blessed Albero, or Adalbero, was certainly already being held in the 13th century with a great throng of the people, and which we shall see in its place was the day of his death.

[4] An old Rhythm on the same Blessed man There pertain likewise to his cult an old Hymn, Antiphon and Prayer brought out of the ancient manuscript codices of the Library of Lambach and published by the most reverend John, abbot of the same monastery, of whom more below. Meanwhile receive these:

A rhythmic prayer to blessed Adalbero the bishop.

O happy confessor of Christ, Adalbero, who were Here on earth pleasing to God, Now in the heavens exalted; Consoler of the afflicted, And deliverer of the sorrowful, Be to me a loving helper And protector from every disaster: So that your entreaty May profit all for solace, Who seek you with pure mind, In whatever care they remain.

[5] among the people of Lambach; I pray your loving-kindness And wondrous sanctity, That in my poverty, In frailty of soul, In necessity of body, In weakness of limbs,

Be willing to come to my aid, That you may not let me perish For any cause of injury Or of perverse persuasion: But by day and at the hour of night So entreat Christ for me, That here I may conquer every evil, May draw near to God Himself, Wholly clean from offences May I be contrite and devout, That I may not dread death, Nor blush as guilty, But after this exile May be able to contemplate The Son of God with the Blessed In the sight of the Deity. Amen.

Thus far the Rhythm, more prolix in the fourth strophe than in the others.

[6] But the Antiphon runs thus: This Man from his youth partly * merited to cure the sick: likewise an Antiphon and Prayer; the Lord gave him great brightness, to give sight to the blind and to put demons to flight.

℣. Pray for us, blessed Adalbero.

℞. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Prayer.

Be propitious, O Lord, to us Your servants through the glorious merits of blessed Adalbero, Your bishop and confessor (who rests in the present church), that by his loving intercession we may always be protected from all adversities. Through our Lord Jesus, etc. That he shone after death with very many miracles the Little Book about them, to be reprinted, will teach; but as to what the Antiphon indicates about the sick cured by him in his youth, I have found nothing anywhere. These things, and no more, have I read about the cult of Blessed Adalbero, which, however, will be very much confirmed from the little book of miracles.

[7] Wherefore, even though his name has been neglected by the martyrologists (if you except Châtelain), all which things claim a place for him in our Work. and I know nothing certain besides about his present-day cult, yet since it is abundantly established concerning his ancient and immemorial public veneration among the people of Lambach, and his appellation of Blessed already from the 13th century, I have judged that a place should be given him in our Work with the title of Blessed, which my Predecessors also promised in various places. But that no cult, at least as far as I know, has been paid him among the people of Würzburg, whose bishop he was, the reason seems to be that he, expelled from his see for the cause of the supreme Pontiff and the Church, to which the people of Würzburg were opposed together with the Henrician schismatics, spent the last years of his life in exile at the monastery of Lambach, then situated in Bavaria and outside his diocese, and, buried in it (not at Würzburg), became illustrious by signs, from which cult often takes its beginning.

[8] The Life of Blessed Adalbero was first published, as I said, by John, abbot of Lambach, the Life was first published by John, abbot of Lambach, brought out, as he testifies in his Preface, from very old manuscript codices of the Library of his monastery, together with the Lives of Blessed Altmann, bishop of Passau, and of St. Gebhard, archbishop of Salzburg, in the year 1619, printed at Augsburg by Sara Mang, widow, which little book I have in hand. After the Lives of Altmann and Gebhard he added the Little Book on the signs and miracles of blessed Adalbero the bishop; and after this also another metrical Life of the same Blessed, and the Hymn which I have already reviewed, with the Antiphon and Prayer. From this edition of John, Mabillon reprinted the former Life in the Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, Saeculum V, part 2, from page 663; reviewing Adalbero of Würzburg with the title of Saint in that Work, not because he believed with Johannes Trithemius that he was ever of his Order, but for other reasons, which he set forth there on page 661 in these words.

[9] Mabillon reprinted it, That a place among the blessed men who have illustrated our Order can rightly be conceded to Adalbero (he says), bishop of Würzburg, whoever has examined his deeds will confess; for although it is more probable that he never made monastic profession, yet on many other titles he ought to be reckoned among them. For an illustrious argument and at the same time monument of his very great inclination towards the Benedictine Order is the monastery of Lambach, which, founded and endowed by his own parents, he assigned to the Benedictine Order, betook himself into it, consecrated it by a long stay of many years, honoured it with his burial; and at length after death illustrated it with almost infinite miracles. Trithemius moreover, in the Hirsau Chronicle at the year MXLV, and again at the year MXC, reckons him among ours, writing that before obtaining the episcopate he was monk and abbot of Lambach. I shall meet Trithemius on these matters afterwards; now let us continue our discourse on the Life of the Blessed.

[10] Pez published it anew from the autograph. Hieronymus Pez inserted the same Life in volume 2 of the Writers of Austrian affairs, from page 5, following neither the edition of abbot John nor that of Mabillon, but the very manuscript codex of Lambach which had lighted the way for abbot John. Nor did he do this in vain: for that earlier editor did not always render the original phrasing of the author so accurately but that he thought it permissible for himself to change some few things in it. For so he himself speaks in his Preface prefixed to the whole Opuscule or collection of Lives: But let these (who are disgusted by the simple and unpolished style of the ancients in writing) understand that the book (this one) has been left in its native style, that is, humble, and (as was the industry of that age, studying piety rather than eloquence, and pursuing the matter rather than the allurements of words) for the most part less elegant and rough, a very few blemishes having been wiped away which seemed to produce too great a deformity to the body. Order moreover will sometimes be wanted. Thus far he: but Pez, using better counsel, judged that those original blemishes should be retained, and annotated at the lowest edge of each page the readings which abbot John varied. We shall therefore follow the edition of Pez, likewise observing the various readings of the first editor.

[11] The author of the Life and of the greater part of the miracles The often-cited abbot called his Lambach codex very old in the year, as has been said, 1619, and asserted that the Life itself had been written already four hundred years before; and that it is truly of the beginning of the 13th century, or of that century when not very many years had begun, Mabillon and Pez prove from the Little Book of miracles, which has the same author as the Life. For the author of the Little Book professes in the Preface that, passing over the older miracles, he will relate only a few of those which he himself had seen and heard, and (as he says) had handled with his own hands: the same, in chapter 1, in my numbering number 5, narrating a miracle obtained at the tomb of Blessed Adalbero, added the time of the thing done in this manner: These things were done in the same year in which the bones of blessed Virgilius (bishop of Salzburg) were revealed, on the vigil of St. John the Baptist; nor did we learn them by the report of the ancients; because we saw them with our own eyes. But that the body of St. Virgilius was found in the year 1181 Pez proves in the same place, as do Baronius in the Annals and Pagi in their Critica at the same year, at which time accordingly the author of the Little Book was living.

[12] Further, since the same again, in chapter 15, in my numbering number 49, narrates another miracle obtained in the year 1204, he wrote before the year 1225; he must be said to have written when the 13th century had already begun; and that he did so after the year 1225 is not to be believed, the continuator of the same little book standing in the way, since in abbot John and Pez, chapter 17, in my numbering number 51, he writes that a blind man was given sight there in the year 1225; whence it is permissible to gather that the first writer of the Life and Miracles in this latter year either was not surviving among the living, or had certainly ceased to write. So much of the time of the biographer; as to his name and condition, although the often-cited later editors acknowledge that these, handed down by no one thus far, are hidden, yet they rightly judge that he was a monk of Lambach, and Pez proves it from the very words of the writer, from which it becomes manifest. Receive them, then.

[13] First, about the end of the Prologue to the Life, number 2, the biographer speaks thus: and he was a monk of Lambach; But since generation passes away and generation comes, lest, in the rolling courses of the years, the slothful negligence which easily creeps upon men of this time should cause posterity that is to come afterwards to consign to oblivion the origin of the monastery of Lambach, its Founders, to whom we owe the highest and eternal reverence; and moreover the signs and miracles and powers of healings with which the mercy of the Lord, of which the earth is full, has illustrated the tomb of our blessed father, bishop Adalbero, we have thought it worthy to commend them to posterity. Then in the Little Book of miracles, chapter 7, in my numbering number 18, mentioning a little river called by a threefold name, In the third place, he says, as has been said before, it is called Lambach, whence our place has obtained its name. Since therefore this anonymous writer professes himself very much bound to Adalbero and his parents, as founders of the monastery of Lambach; since he honours the same blessed Bishop with the name of Our Father, and calls the monastery of Lambach itself Our Place, beyond all doubt he was a monk of Lambach.

[14] Now as regards the subject of the writing, it is sufficiently clear from what has been set down but not very accurate. that the biographer chiefly proposed to himself to commend to posterity the origin of his monastery of Lambach and the miracles with which its founder Adalbero shone in its church; and to relate the deeds of the Founder summarily, as far as seemed necessary to him for some knowledge of this Man: which also he did. But certainly the anonymous writer, by no means accurate in chronology, referred certain persons and deeds to times not their own, especially in assigning the cause for which the blessed Prelate was expelled from his see, as we shall show in its place. To this Life I shall subjoin the already cited Little Book of miracles from the same edition of Pez, adding likewise the things which he observed abbot John of Lambach varied here. Mabillon judged that he should abstain from reprinting this Little Book, because it contained nothing particular for illustrating the history of his Order.

[15] Further, that the writer of the Little Book and of the Life is the same we gather from the words of the Prologue given at number 13, He likewise first wrote the Little Book of miracles, in which the author of the Life promised that he would write the miracles with which God deigned to illustrate the tomb of Blessed Adalbero, of which nevertheless no word is to be found in the Life itself; so that accordingly, unless the Miracles are an Opuscule of the same writer, the biographer must be said by no means to have stood by his promises. Add also that, on the testimony of Pez, the Life and the Little Book are written in the same Lambach codex and by the same hand of the beginning of the 13th century up to the end of chapter 15 of the Little Book, so that from this too it is not permissible to suspect anything to the contrary. I said: Up to the end of chapter 15 of the Little Book; for between this and the following chapter Pez interposed, in other type, the notice which I subjoin: The miracles of Blessed Adalbero which are subjoined continuously in the same manuscript codex display another hand indeed, but a contemporary one; which the same can be noticed in the last chapter. But the headings of the chapters added in the margin not obscurely savour of the fifteenth century.

[16] whom one and another enlarged. For which reason it becomes most probable to me that the writer of the Life, the Little Book of miracles having already been carried to the end of chapter 15, left space on the parchment for writing in the other miracles which he hoped would happen (for he placed there no closing formula to this Opuscule, as is otherwise wont to be done), and that afterwards, after his death, another

certain monk of Lambach added the miracles which are contained in the seven following chapters. Indeed, what is narrated there in chapter 17, in my numbering number 51, is said to have been done in the year 1225; and the writer himself, in chapter 21, in my numbering number 55, professes himself a monk of Lambach, saying: On the first day of the week there came a copious multitude … to the venerable tomb of our blessed Father. For by what other title than that of Founder of his monastery would he have called Adalbero his Blessed Father? Finally, the third, who added the last, or 23rd, chapter in the same 13th century, whom shall we judge him to have been rather than a monk of Lambach? For the rest, this Little Book too, as also the Life, I have divided according to our custom into other chapters, in such a way that I have written in the margin their old division; and the old headings of the chapters themselves I have set before the Little Book.

[17] of the metrical Life, of uncertain time Concerning the other Life of the same blessed Prelate, namely the metrical one, which I mentioned above from abbot John, Mabillon had said in the Observations prefixed to the former Life: We shall give a metrical compendium of the Life, which comprises some things which are wanting in the Life; and yet he did not give this there. But Pez did not pass it over, prefacing thus: Who the writer of this Opuscule was, or in what age he lived, is not established from John, abbot of Lambach, who testifies that he brought it out, together with the Lives and Miracles of the prelates Adalbero of Würzburg, Altmann of Passau and Gebhard of Salzburg, from old manuscript codices of the library of Lambach; nor have we thus far found more about him. Therefore, on the faith and example of the said abbot, we have wished the said author to come forth anew, as also the old Rhythm, Antiphon and Collect concerning the same blessed Pontiff, all which the same abbot John exhibited at the end of his Opuscule.

[18] and has an author of [unknown profession: yet it is to be given.] This metrical Life, therefore, was not read in that 13th-century codex of Lambach by which Pez corrected the former Life and the Little Book of miracles; since, however, the often-cited abbot testifies that he found it also in an old codex, and since it sets forth the cause for which Blessed Adalbero went into exile from his see much more rightly than the biographer does, and teaches besides certain things passed over by him, I shall print this too, from the same abbot, after the Little Book of miracles; and I shall cite it in the Commentary under the name of the Poet. It is indeed written quite elegantly, but in all likelihood more recent than the Life (and perhaps not a little); whether its author too was a monk of Lambach, or of St. Stephen of Würzburg, or finally of Schwarzach, monasteries of the same Benedictine Order, of which the poet sings that the first was handed over to the Benedictines by Adalbero and the other restored; or finally a writer of another profession, I cannot gather from it.

Perhaps passim* here and there?

§ II. The illustrious parents and kindred of the Blessed: his pious boyhood: his education in the episcopate of Würzburg: his study in the academy of Paris: a prophecy: monkhood wrongly ascribed to him: his elevation to the episcopate of Würzburg.

The father of the Blessed, Arnold, count of Lambach, now in Austria, Both biographers, beginning from the illustrious parents of Adalbero, assign to him as father Arnold, count of the castle of Lambach, then in Bavaria, now in Upper Austria. Karl Stengel, in the Monasteriologia of Germany, gives the situation of the place thus: The ancient and very celebrated monastery of Lambach, in Lambach, a little town of Austria above the Enns (otherwise Anassus, commonly the river Ens), situated on the left of the river Traun (to the Germans die Traun), in a most pleasant place at the confluence of the rivers Schwaig and Ager, two miles from the town of Welsium (to the natives Wels) and as many from the most illustrious monastery of Cremiphanum (in the vernacular Kremsmünster), situated in the diocese of Passau, is founded in this manner, etc. How accurate this description of the situation is I would not indeed say, yet from geographical maps it seems not able to go much astray. Sigismund Calles, priest of our Society, in the topographical Index to the first part of the Annals of Austria, published at Vienna in the year 1750, likewise places the same place in Upper Austria (about which there is no doubt) a little above the confluence of the rivers Vöckla and Traun.

[20] The same Annalist, agreeing about the Blessed's father, writes besides that he was count of Wels, then situated in Bavaria; his mother Regila, from Franconia at the year 1090, saying: His parent, Arnold, count of Wels and Lambach in Upper Austria, a region then of Bavarian jurisdiction. What he here calls Welsa, Stengel above called Welsium; it is a town of Upper Austria situated on the river Traun, around which it is established that Adalbero had forests, from the charter of foundation of the monastery of Lambach inserted in the Life to be reprinted. In the Catalogue of the bishops of Würzburg with their portraits, published at Würzburg in the year 1712, our Adalbero is called count of Lambach and Scherdingen. The Blessed's mother is named in the same Life Regila, and she is said to have been a noble matron sprung from East Francia. The poet, agreeing with the biographer about both parents, adds that Regila, or, as he has it, Regilla, was of the house of Weinsberg, and mentions also Scherding, singing thus:

Of the counts of Lambach, born of whose lofty blood Was a happy offspring, the divine prelate Adalbero. His father was Arnold, his mother Regilla, who had been born Of the powerful Frankish house of Weinsberg, Who held, besides Lambach, Scherding, and many towns Of Franconia with great dominion, as is said.

In the Catalogue of the bishops of Würzburg just cited, at the portrait of Adalbero, the arms and the name Schweinsberg are seen placed, a place of which name Merian records in the Topography of Franconia; perhaps in our poet Schweinsberg is to be read for Weinsberg, or in the said Catalogue Weinsberg for Schweinsberg? Further, the biographer asserts that several sons were born of the marriage of the said count Arnold with Regila of Franconia, but names only two, namely Adalbero, of whom we treat, and Gotfrid; whether the latter was older or younger by birth than the former he was silent.

[22] margrave in Lower Austria: However it be, he commends this Gotfrid as a margrave in dignity, a strenuous and brave man, a man most apt for warlike affairs, fortunate in frequent successes of battles, to whose dominion, with the surrounding revenues, was subject Putina, a renowned and famous city, which, as it were the metropolis and mother of cities, was anciently established towards Pannonia on the southern side to ward off the hostile incursions and devastations of the Pannonians. The said Sigismund Calles conjectures thus about Gotfrid from these words of the biographer: Since an old writer reveals that there was in his dominion Butina (which the biographer called Putina), a city once renowned, on the furthest border of Second Austria, where it faces Styria, girt with castles and towns as with a crown, it is a conjecture that he held the dignity of margrave, which the same author attributes to Gotfrid, in that part of Upper Pannonia which divides Austria and Styria from Hungary. Further, he observes in the topographical Index in the same place that Butina, or Putina, is now a castle and town of Lower Austria, beyond Neustadt towards Hungary, and is today called Pitten.

[23] his sister Mechtild, married to count Ekkebert, pious and munificent. Of the Blessed's sisters (if he had more) the same biographer praises only one, her name suppressed, saying of count Arnold: He had also a daughter of great nobility and freeborn rank according to the dignity of the world, who married count Ekkebert, whose castle, called Niwenburc, is situated on the bank of the river Inn; namely between Scherding and Passau, which survives even today and is called Neuburg. The biographer continues: To her (Arnold's daughter), after the happy departure of her brothers, the city of Putina with all that pertained to it fell as her dowry portion. The name of this same illustrious matron, which is passed over in silence in the Life, is read in the said Annalist of Austria, in the Annotations at the year 1094, to have been Mechtild, and in the same place, page 420 and following, this pair of spouses is said to have been so very munificent towards places consecrated to God that they can also be reckoned the second parents and founders of the monastery of Formbach in Bavaria. On the testimony of the same Annalist, page 409, Ekkebert, for the same cause for which Blessed Adalbero, expelled from his episcopate, went into exile in Bavaria, that is, for defending the Church of God, lived as a fugitive in Hungary. Let us proceed to Adalbero.

[24] The blessed Boy, born in a year unknown to us, Blessed Regila, then (the words are the biographer's), prevented with the blessings of sweetness, conceived from blessings and bore a son called Adalbero, a fruit blessed by the Lord, in whom all her tribe and kindred were to be blessed. But in what year of our Christian era was he born? This indeed I have read handed down by no one. However, since it becomes certain from what is to be said that he was raised to the episcopate of Würzburg in the year 1045, and died in the year of Christ 1090 after an episcopate of forty-five years, his birth is to be fixed when the 11th century had begun some years, lest he be judged without certain argument to have been either promoted to the episcopate too young or to have died a very decrepit old man. And if one of these is to be believed, the greater suspicion will stand for the latter: for no one mentions his younger age while he was bishop; but of the last, in which he died, it is read in the metrical Life:

And at length weary, and slow with the years of age, By dying he flies out from this prison of unstable life, And takes eternal rest above the stars.

In Bernold, priest of Constance, too, in the Chronicle, Adalbero is said to have been, when he died, one of the older bishops.

[25] The writer of the Life proclaims in the Boy a wonderful love of virtue he is dedicated to God by his father in the church of Würzburg; and contempt of worldly things, from which he says it came about that his pious father brought him to Würzburg to the bishop, and, according to the received custom of those times, dedicated him to God, to be instructed in the school of the church, and to serve there perpetually among the clerics, a patrimony being added, in which he abounded in Franconia, under the pontiff who then presided over the see of Würzburg, with the testimony of clergy and people. The bishop in question here will have been Henry I or Meginhard I, of whom the former is read in the Catalogue of the prelates of the same see cited above to have held the see of Würzburg from the year 990 until 1018, the latter, substituted for him in the same year, until 1033: but we cannot assign either with certainty because of the uncertain year of Blessed Adalbero's birth, and the age at which he was brought to Würzburg by his father.

[26] On the testimony of the same biographer, after outstanding progress in letters, he is instructed at Paris: he has as companions St. Gebhard and Blessed Altmann, he was sent by the bishop of Würzburg (the already cited Meginhard, or perhaps his successor St. Bruno) to Paris, to perfect his mind in the weightier sciences in that celebrated academy. There he obtained as companions St. Gebhard and blessed Altmann, of whom the former afterwards obtained the archbishopric of Salzburg, the latter the episcopate of Passau. Our Predecessors have already illustrated the Lives of both; that of St. Gebhard in part 1 of volume VI of June, in the Appendix to the 16th day of the same month; and that of Altmann in volume 2 of August, on the 8th day. In both Lives, their companionship with Blessed Adalbero in boyhood

or adolescence familiarity, with a singular event, passed over in the Life of Adalbero, is recorded, which on that account I shall relate here on this occasion from the Life of St. Gebhard, which has as its author an anonymous disciple of the same Saint. He, then, set out the fact in the same place at numbers XI and 12 in the words which I subjoin.

[27] It is worth the trouble to insert here how the aforesaid and often-to-be-named father and lord Gebhard the archbishop had in purpose from his earliest age that, if the means should afterwards be available to him from the bounty of God, he would build some monastery, who, talking together, foretold that each would have an episcopate where the divine praises might be sung in hymns continually; which can be weighed from the following narrative. For while once, set in the flower of boyhood, he was being instructed in liberal studies with his colleagues Altmann, afterwards bishop of Passau, and Adilbero, afterwards bishop of Würzburg, it happened that with these most faithful companions whom we have mentioned he took to flight out of boyish fear. On the way, then, they turned aside to a certain spring, and there, bringing out from their sistarcioli* (that is, little boxes or wallets) some small quantity of bread, they refreshed their little bodies. And although with boyish feeling, yet rather, as afterwards appeared, by the inspiration of God, with a spirit presaging their virtue, among the other things which they talked of together, they foretold that they would be bishops, and vowed that they would found monasteries for the service of God; which afterwards they effectively fulfilled.

[28] and they vowed each to found a monastery. First, then, Altmann added that he wished to ascend to the prelacy of the church of Passau, which having been obtained, he would build a monastery, and there await the last trumpet for rising again. Then Adilbero: But I shall undertake the pontificate of the church of Würzburg, and shall institute a monastery of the servants of Christ, where I too shall be laid up, to await the common resurrection of all. And then Gebhard: I shall be the master of you both, because, God willing, I shall be raised as metropolitan to the church of Salzburg and in the monastery which I shall have ordered by Regular institution I shall await the last day of examination. These things we have thought fit to insert here, that we might show how pleasing to God was the simplicity and purity of heart of these men, whose words, uttered as it were in boyish jest, He brought so wonderfully to effect. After this the said biographer goes on to set forth how the outcome proved these predictions of theirs; which, since they are read also in the Life of Blessed Adalbero, I pass over here. The Life of Blessed Altmann may also be consulted, in the place cited above, chapter 1, number 7. These three Prelates thereafter persevered in the same friendship, and always stood unanimous and unconquered for the Church of God in the time of the Henrician schism, for which also they bore many adversities and exile.

[29] Having returned to Würzburg, neither then nor ever at other times Further, Blessed Adalbero, as the Life to be reprinted has it, having been abundantly refreshed at Paris with the sweet fruits of theory, returned to Würzburg full of wisdom. But in what year this return took place, with what sacred Order he was then initiated, or what office he then discharged in the church of Würzburg, neither the biographer nor the poet mentions here, both hastening to the episcopate conferred upon him. Johannes Trithemius, in the Hirsau Chronicle at the year 1045, believed that he, either before or after his stay at Paris, was a professed monk of the Benedictine Order in the monastery of Lambach, nay even abbot. At the cited year he has thus: To him (St. Bruno) in the episcopate of the church of Würzburg succeeded Adelbero, abbot of the monastery of Lambach of our Order in Bavaria. Again at the year 1075 he writes of the monastery of Schwarzach: Almost collapsed from excessive age, Adelbero, from a monk of our Order bishop of Würzburg, having built it anew … consecrated it. Finally at the year 1090, in which he rightly marked that our Blessed died: He was buried, he says, in the monastery of Lambach in Bavaria, of our Order, which his father had built new from the foundations and endowed, in which he himself also was a monk before his pontificate, and abbot.

[30] was a monk or abbot of Lambach I believe indeed that Trithemius came to this opinion because he had heard that Blessed Adalbero was dedicated to the divine service by his father Arnold when very young, or even a boy; and that the same man enlarged with many estates the church of Lambach, truly founded by his father, and, expelled from his see, spent the last years of his life at it while the Benedictines held it, and lies buried in it. But his father Arnold offered him to God not at Lambach in Bavaria, or Upper Austria, but at Würzburg in Franconia; nor did he hand him over to be instructed under the care of an abbot and monks of the Benedictine Order, who at that time were none at Würzburg, but under that of the bishop and clergy of Würzburg. Nor again had his father founded at Lambach a monastery of monks, but a college of clerics, or canons; into which Adalbero his son, long since a bishop, brought in Benedictines and substituted them for the clerics. Adalbero therefore could not, before receiving the episcopate, have professed as a Benedictine monk in the monastery of Lambach, or have ruled Benedictines as abbot.

[31] But neither that this was done afterwards we likewise know, both from the Life to be published, is proved against Trithemius. and from Adalbero's own letters of foundation of the monastery of Lambach, in which he is said to have set over the same monastery, then Benedictine, its first two abbots, namely Ekkebert, and after his abdication Becemann; and finally from the old Catalogue of the abbots of the same monastery which the often-cited Pez published in volume 2 of the Writers of Austrian affairs. For in this too there is no place for Adalbero, nor can there be. Finally, he withdrew indeed to the monastery of Lambach, and in it closed his last day and was buried; but it is by no means necessary on that account to say that he was a monk; for, expelled from his see, whither would he rather have betaken himself than to Lambach, his hereditary castle, and to the monastery which he had founded there, and in which accordingly, both by hereditary right and by the right of founder, reception while living and burial when dead were due to him? A single passage, however, favours his asserted monkhood in the metrical Life, where it is said of the same Blessed:

It greatly pleases him to spend the remaining time In ethereal services, in the holy buildings which he raised for the Brethren, Associated in the harmonious covenant of an innocent life.

These words, I say, would favour his monkhood, did not what has been said thus far persuade that they are to be taken of mere living together with the monks. I pass over more, because Mabillon also and Pez, both Benedictines, candidly acknowledge the error of Trithemius here.

[32] Having returned, then, to Würzburg, he went on serving God among the clerics of the cathedral church. St. Bruno having died, he succeeds to the episcopate There presided there at that time, and had presided already from the year 1033, bishop St. Bruno, a man renowned for learning and virtues, whose deeds, as I noted above, you have illustrated in our Work at the 17th day of May. He having ended his life in the year 1045, Adalbero was given as a worthy successor by the wishes of all. Our biographer says, rather ineptly, that this was done some … days or years having elapsed after his return from the academy of Paris; the poet marked the time more rightly in this manner:

The thousandth year is rolled on beyond nine lustres.

Lustres being taken here for five-year periods, this computation leads to the year 1045, to which the beginning of the episcopate of Blessed Adalbero is in truth to be tied, as is also established from elsewhere. That his holy predecessor Bruno died in the month of May of the same year was proved in the Acts cited above. The Saxon Annalist agrees, published by Johann Georg Eckhart in volume 1 of the Historical Corpus of the middle age, where at column 479 at the same year he has: Bruno, bishop of Würzburg, died on the VI day before the Kalends of June, in whose place Adalbero is ordained.

[33] In the same place, at column 573, at the year 1090, rightly marking the death of Blessed Adalbero, in the year 1045, on the 29th day of June. he also noted the day either of his election or of his ordination, saying: Adalbero, the XX bishop of the sacrosanct church of Würzburg after blessed Burchard, appointed, the lord Bruno having died, on the III day before the Kalends of July, lived after receiving the episcopate XLV years, III months, VII days, two bishops however having been substituted (meanwhile), Meinhard the Younger and Emehard. He died on the day before the Nones * of October on the estate of his father, buried in his monastery of Lambach, where he rests in peace. That all these assertions of the Annalist are most accurate will be established from what is to be said; and as regards the numbers here, compute from the day before the Nones of October, that is, from the 6th day of October of the year 1090, back to the III day before the Kalends of July, that is, to the 29th of June of the year 1045, and you will find the years, months and days assigned to his episcopate exactly. He was therefore elected, or ordained, bishop in the year 1045, on the 29th day of June, sacred to the holy princes of the Apostles Peter and Paul, the Church of God founded on whose blood he strenuously protected against the schismatics while he lived. These things are confirmed also from the charter of foundation of the monastery of St. Stephen to be recited below, in which the twelfth year of the episcopate of the same blessed Prelate is put together with the month of March of the year of Christ 1057.

Read construeret* he would build.

Read Nonas*.

§ III. He substitutes Benedictines for the clerics of Lambach, and endows them in the year MLVI, from whom the monastery of Melk more probably received its first inhabitants: he restores the church of Lambach and dedicates it in the year MLXXXIX.

A strenuous and munificent Bishop The biographer writes that Adalbero, in administering strenuously the episcopate he had undertaken, and the dukedom of Franconia, which is annexed to it, fulfilled all the parts of a Prelate and duke, and commends him first of all for mercy and justice generally, the poet agreeing, who subjoined these things about his pious munificence towards sacred buildings and persons dedicated to God:

For he built lofty temples with sublime columns, He laid foundations of monasteries pleasing to the Thunderer, Making them rich with gifts and with religion.

Of these only that of Lambach is recorded in the Life, namely because its writer, whom we have proved to have been a monk of Lambach, chiefly purposed to hand down to posterity the origin and foundation of his monastery. Of the others we shall treat below from the poet; now let us speak of that of Lambach.

[35] in the church of Lambach he substitutes Benedictines for the clerics: We related above in §2 that Blessed Adalbero, St. Gebhard and blessed Altmann, talking together in their boyhood or adolescence, each foretold for himself an episcopal see, and agreed that each would found a monastery, in which they would await the common resurrection of the flesh. Their youthfully spoken words found fulfilment when Gebhard, created archbishop of Salzburg, founded the monastery of Admont, Altmann of Passau that of Göttweig, and Adalbero of Würzburg that of Lambach. Lambach was, as was said above, a castle of the counts called of Lambach from it, of whom Arnold, a powerful and pious man, had founded there, in the church sacred to the blessed Mother of God, a college of twelve clerics, in which also he was buried with his wife Regila in the sepulchre of his family. This church Adalbero, son and heir of both, using the counsel of the bishop of Passau, in whose diocese that place was, and having obtained the consent of the supreme Pontiff, converted into a monastery of the Benedictine institute, its endowment being liberally increased from his possessions so as to suffice abundantly for the maintenance of monks, and the option being given to the said clerics whether they preferred to join themselves to the Benedictines there, or to withdraw with an honourable stipend for as long as they should live.

[36] These things are certain, and will be set forth more broadly in the Life to be published. the time of which thing the biographer, recording contradictory things, But concerning the year of this foundation doubt is possible, although our biographer of Lambach thrusts forward as genuine the letters of the blessed Founder which he brings forward. The first part of these fixes the foundation of the monastery of Lambach, both in Pez and in abbot John, to the year 1056, showing in both these chronological notes: Done at Regensburg in the year MLVI, Indiction VIIII, and in the XII of the episcopate of the lord Adalbero. And these notes indeed are most correct; but in the same part of the letters Adalbero says that the same monastery, the clerics having been removed from it, was so founded by him with the licence of the lord Apostolic, Pope Gregory (who is also Hildebrand), and with the consent and counsel of the diocesan bishop of Passau, namely Altmann. The biographer had set down the same things in his own words in the same place before, and in the second part of the same letters mention is again made of the aforesaid bishop Altmann, with whose consent namely and counsel the foundation had been said to have been made.

[37] But it is established that neither was Gregory, who before his Pontificate was called Hildebrand, makes it doubtful; that is, St. Gregory VII, created Pontiff before the year 1073, nor was Altmann made bishop of Passau before the year 1065; and that in the year 1056 no other named Gregory, but Victor II, sat in the Roman Chair of St. Peter, nor finally another Altmann, but Engelbert or Angelbert, the predecessor of the same Blessed Altmann, in that of Passau. On what ground, then, could Adalbero say in the year 1056 that monks had been substituted by him for the clerics, Altmann, bishop of Passau, having first been consulted, and the permission having been obtained from Gregory, otherwise called Hildebrand, the supreme Pontiff? It is not to be doubted that an error lies either in the names of the Roman Pontiff and the bishop of Passau, or in the year of Christ. But that we should believe the error to be in the year of Christ is wholly forbidden by the Indiction VIIII written there and the XII year of Adalbero's episcopate, which so agree with the said year 1056 that they cannot be fitted to any other in the whole time of the Pontificate of Gregory VII and the episcopate of Altmann. For no Indiction IX ran while the same Gregory sat; and the twelfth year of Adalbero's episcopate precedes by about ten years the episcopate of Altmann, and by seventeen the Pontificate of Gregory VII.

[38] I think the year of Christ with which the Indiction IX and the XII year of Adalbero's episcopate agree but we think this foundation is to be tied to the year 1056, is to be retained, and I scarcely doubt that either the biographer himself, or some other smatterer, while he copied the said letters of Adalbero, ignorantly added the names of Gregory and Altmann, when there was read in them only: Of the lord Apostolic, and of the diocesan bishop of Passau; supposing, namely from conjecture and the nearness of the times, that these were designated by those words; especially since, from what is presently to be said, Blessed Altmann consecrated the same church of Lambach together with Blessed Adalbero. The biographer could have gone the more readily into this opinion because he ascribes the foundation of the same monastery to Blessed Adalbero when already an exile from his see: which the poet also did, if he kept the order of events in narrating; perhaps both deceived because that church was dedicated in the time of the same exile. I prefer to keep the numbers assigned in the letters rather than to put off the foundation of the church to the year 1084 or the following with the poet, or even to place it some years before, yet while Adalbero was in exile, with the biographer, so unskilled a chronologer that from other things said by him in the same place the same foundation would even have to be referred to the 12th century, when, namely, the blessed Founder had long since died, as we shall see in its place.

[39] nor does it stand in the way that the church of Lambach The other thing which can be argued against my opinion is the long space of thirty-three years which must have elapsed between the foundation of the monastery of Lambach made in the year 1056 and the dedication of its church, which in the other part of the same instrument, or letters, is tied to the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1089, and the XLIV of the ordination of Adalbero. For so long a delay in dedicating the sacred place, at a time when the affairs of Germany were more peaceful, can rightly seem little probable. This reason would make me too doubtful, if I believed that the dedication here in question is of a new church erected by him from the foundations when he substituted monks for the clerics; but it is not so. For that the discourse there is of a church restored long after the monks were brought in I manifestly gather from the same letters, in which the blessed Prelate speaks thus: But when this monastery, restored … was dedicated in the year MLXXXVIIII.

[40] was consecrated in the year 1089. Namely, the church of Lambach, into which the blessed Prelate brought the Benedictine monks in the year 1056, had been consecrated long before, since in it up to that year the twelve clerics, established and endowed by the same Blessed's father Arnold, had performed the divine offices; for which reason it did not need a new dedication in order to pass into the use of the monks. But since this, which comes here under the name of the monastery, is said to have been restored and dedicated by Adalbero in the year MLXXXVIIII, what shall we rather judge than that the same, long after it had been handed over to the Benedictines, was so repaired, and perhaps also enlarged, by him that it had to be consecrated anew? Neither, therefore, can this reason stand in the way of my believing that the foundation of Lambach of which we treat was made, according to the letters produced by the biographer, in the year MLVI, Indiction VIIII, and in the XII of the episcopate of the lord Adalbero; and so also of my holding as interpolations the things said in the same letters about the permission of Gregory VII obtained for this end and the consent of Altmann, which can in no way be reconciled with these chronological notes.

[41] Doubtful is the mind of Mabillon on these things, following the biographer, Very doubtful to me here is the mind of Mabillon, who, since, as I have said, in reprinting the Life of Blessed Adalbero in the 2nd part of the VI Benedictine Saeculum from the edition of John, abbot of Lambach, he observed nothing on the biographer's assertions about Gregory and Altmann, seems tacitly to have approved the year of foundation 1056 marked in it; but in the Annals, being silent about the same foundation at the same year, at length at the year 1088, in which the dedication of the same church of Lambach is read in abbot John to have been made, he narrates things not consistent. For after he had said that Arnold, the father of Blessed Adalbero, established a monastery of twelve secular clerics in that castle of his of Lambach; Meanwhile, he adds in the same place at number 72, the Henrician schism raging, Adalbero his (Arnold's) son, who was strenuously ruling the church of Würzburg and abhorred the schismatics, driven from his see, betook himself to his father's estate, that is, Lambach, and converted the clerics of that place into monks, Gregory VII assenting, with the counsel of Altmann, bishop of Passau, with whom he dedicated the new church in this year (1088) on the XVII day before the Kalends of October, in the XLV year of his episcopate, and the third since he had repaired the place, as the same Adalbero testifies in his letters.

[42] In this place Mabillon, following the writer of the Life, in the Acts and in the Annals. tied the foundation of the monastery to the exile of Adalbero, but, contrary to what he had done in the Acts, passed over the year 1056 expressed in the letters, and the other chronological notes, not to be reconciled with the time of the same exile and the circumstances of the persons. But what does the same Benedictine Annalist mean when he says that the new church of Lambach was dedicated by him in this year (1088), and the third since he had renewed the place, as the same Adalbero testifies in his letters? If by the renewal of the place he wished the substitution of monks for secular clerics to be indicated, he tied this to the year 1085, and so about 29 years later than, I think, it happened: but if the restoration of the old church, such as I spoke of above, I shall not oppose this having been begun by him in the year 1085; but that neither the latter nor the former is to be fixed to this year the Life of Blessed Adalbero, cited by himself, will show, as will be evident to one reading it.

[43] In the year, therefore (as we think), 1056 Blessed Adalbero substituted for the clerics of Lambach Benedictine monks, The first abbot of Lambach Ekkebert, the second Becemann, summoned from elsewhere, and set over them as first abbot a certain Ekkebert, a religious and humble man, who, preferring to obey rather than to command, after a prelacy of uncertain duration, obtained by many prayers from the blessed Founder that one of his monks, named Becemann, should be substituted for him while he was living, as Adalbero himself teaches in the letters to be reprinted, and the old Catalogue of the abbots of Lambach, published by Hieronymus Pez in volume 2 of the Writers of Austrian affairs, from column 45. Have the words of the Catalogue: Ekkebert, the first abbot, was set over the place of Lambach by blessed Adalbero the bishop, who afterwards obtained by most humble prayers that he should be absolved from this yoke: and he was absolved, making little of being called Rabbi by men. Then follows: Becemann, one of his Brethren (that is, of Ekkebert's), is elected by the authority of bishop Albero *, and at the request of the votive concord of the Brethren, lasting until the end of his life. These things there, but without any chronological notes, and without the time of their government.

[44] In the same Catalogue it is read that, Becemann having died, Sigibold was substituted, the third Sigibold, who to the monastery of Melk, who (as is added) is reported to have ruled several abbeys, among which he held also Medelicca. Hence, says the said Pez, it becomes most probable that our first Benedictines of Melk sprang from those of Lambach; not from those of Subiaco, as our Anselm Schramb strives to prove, from I know not what traditions and a certain recent domestic manuscript, in the Chronicle of Melk, part 2, page 51. What Pez here calls a recent manuscript, Schramb called a very ancient manuscript codex; which of the two more rightly, I do not know. But Pez proves that his Lambach Catalogue was written for the greater part before the middle of the 13th century, because it is written in the same hand as the Life and miracles of Blessed Adalbero. This opinion of Pez about the first Benedictine inhabitants of the monastery of Melk is very probable to me also.

[45] founded by Leopold III, margrave of Austria, Medelicca, now generally Mellicium, commonly Mölck, an old castle of Lower Austria, or the college of secular canons which was in it, Leopold, the third of this name among the margraves of Austria, perhaps using the example of Blessed Adalbero, changed into a Benedictine monastery in the year 1089, and set over it as abbot a certain Sigibold, as may be seen proved in Calles, part 1 of the Annals of Austria, page 405 and following. Now if Leopold, as is probable, did this by the example of Adalbero, who was then still surviving among the living with his people of Lambach, why is he to be believed to have summoned the Benedictine inhabitants of his new monastery from Subiaco in Roman Campania rather than from Lambach in neighbouring Upper Austria? Certainly the writer of that older Lambach Catalogue asserts without doubt that Sigibold, the third abbot of Lambach, held also the abbey of Melk; and all agree that the first abbot of this place was called Sigibold. But if Leopold sought an abbot for his new monastery from the monastery of Lambach, why not also the inhabitants?

[46] he more probably brought the inhabitants from Lambach, One difficulty can be formed here from the time,

at which Sigibold presided over the people of Lambach, compared with that at which Sigibold, abbot of Melk, entered with his inhabitants upon possession of the monastery of Melk, which latter is read in the Calles cited above to have happened in the year 1089 on the feast of St. Benedict, that is, the 21st day of March. But since Blessed Adalbero, in the letters of the dedication of the church of Lambach, made on the 14th day of September of the year 1089, records only two abbots set over the people of Lambach by him, Ekkebert and Becemann, Becemann was most probably still presiding over them even then, and for that reason that Sigibold who in the month of March of the same year was sent to take possession of the monastery of Melk can be other than Sigibold, successor of Becemann in the abbey of Lambach.

[47] and was abbot over both monasteries. So it is, if Sigibold ruled the abbey of Lambach before that of Melk; but if, having been made abbot of Melk from a monk of Lambach, and afterwards, Becemann having died, set over the monastery of Lambach also, he ruled both, the objected difficulty will vanish. These things I have disputed somewhat more broadly than the present subject otherwise required, both because from this it becomes probable that Blessed Adalbero helped Leopold by his example, counsel and labour to found that celebrated abbey of Melk in his Austria, which even today flourishes in religion and wealth; and also because it pertains to the glory of the same blessed Prelate that the monastery of Lambach, while its Founder was living, in the space of about thirty-three years made such progress in virtues and in the number of its inhabitants that it was held worthy that Leopold, margrave of Austria, should summon religious inhabitants from it to Melk, and that it could grant them.

[48] The restored church of Lambach, with Blessed Altmann The things which happened between the foundation of the monastery of Lambach and the dedication of its restored church will be related more suitably below in the continued series of events, other things meanwhile being set down first on account of the similarity of subject. Blessed Adalbero, driven from his see by the adherents of Henry IV, king of Germany, so restored the church of Lambach that it needed a new consecration. He wrote, therefore, to his old friend Blessed Altmann, who had likewise suffered many things for the same cause of the Apostolic See, in whose diocese of Passau Lambach was, that he would render him this service. He consented, and, coming to Lambach at the time agreed, solemnly dedicated the same church together with Blessed Adalbero. Since the Life to be published exhibits the letters of both, full of true piety and holy friendship, and the solemnity of the dedication itself, I shall here set forth only the chronological notes added in Adalbero's instrument for fixing the time of the same dedication, which the edition of John, abbot of Lambach, puts one year earlier than that of Pez.

[49] In Pez Adalbero speaks thus: But when this very monastery, Adalbero dedicates, not in the year 1088, restored, was dedicated by the aforesaid bishop Altmann, and likewise by me, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation MLXXXVIIII, Indiction XII, Epact VI, Concurrent VI, on the XVIII day before the Kalends of October, in the year of the ordination of the lord Altmann the XXV, and of mine the XLV. The edition of the abbot also exhibits the same notes except the year of the Incarnation, for which it reads MLXXXVIII, to which Mabillon too, following its reading in the Annals, tied that dedication. But that with Pez the year MLXXXVIIII is to be read the written-in times of the episcopate of both dedicating prelates, the Indiction and the Epact, wholly persuade. For Altmann, as was proved among us at the 8th day of August, having begun his episcopate in the year 1065 before the 19th day of June, numbered only the twenty-fourth year of his episcopate in the month of September of the year 1088, but in the year 1089 the twenty-fifth. In like manner, the XLV year of Blessed Adalbero's episcopate, whose beginning I have proved is to be reckoned from the 29th day of June of the year 1045, cannot be put together with the XVIII day before the Kalends of October of the year 1088, but it was certainly running on the same day of the year 1089. Nor is the Roman Indiction less rightly set down, which was then running the twelfth in the year 1089, but in the year 1088 the eleventh. Moreover the Epact VI fits the year 1089 as well as it fits 1088 badly. For the Epact is to be numbered here not in our manner but in the manner of the ancients, who marked the Epacts of the year by the same number as was that of the days of the moon on the 22nd day of March. For which reason, since in the year 1089 the new moon fell on the 17th day of March, the 22nd day of the same month was the sixth of the moon, and so the Epact of the same year VI.

[50] There remain the Concurrents, which in the same year 1089 were not six, but in the year 1089. but seven; but these are equally faulty in the edition of abbot John, and must yield to the other epochs agreeing excellently. The church of Lambach was therefore dedicated in the year 1089, on the XVIII day before the Kalends of October, or one or two days later. I said: Or one or two days later; because in the same Life at number 33 this dedication is also read to have been made on the XVII day before the Kalends of October, on which day also in the little book of Miracles at number 37, but at number 51 on the XVI before the Kalends of October, the annual festivity of the same dedication is said to have recurred. However, in whichever of these places you prefer the day to be wrongly marked, the other chronological notes will stand entire and safe. If the XVIII before the Kalends of October is to be read, the dedication will have happened on the feast of the Exaltation of the holy Cross: if the XVII before the Kalends of October, in the Octave of the Nativity of St. Mary the Virgin, to whom the same church was dedicated; if finally the XVI before the Kalends of October, this in the year 1089 was a Sunday, suitable for dedications of churches, but in the year 1088 a Saturday. And that you may wonder the less that these things could be done solemnly by two bishops expelled from their sees by the Henricians, it is helpful to have observed that Welf, duke of Bavaria, and Leopold of Austria and Ottokar of Styria, margraves, in the dukedom of the first of whom Lambach was, and in the dominions of the other two the greatest part of the diocese of Passau stretched from the river Enns to the East, then adhered to the Papal party; for which reason Blessed Altmann too had been restored by them to that part.

* That is, of Adalbero.

§ IV. He hands over the monastery of St. Stephen at Würzburg to the Benedictines, and endows it: he restores the monastery of Schwarzach: he undertakes the embassy of Henry IV, king of Germany, to the Saxons: his other deeds in the episcopate.

He transfers the canons from the suburb I proceed to record other places dedicated to God which are owed to the munificence of Blessed Adalbero. Besides the monastery of Lambach already set down, our Poet, the biographer being silent, indicates two others, and first of all that of St. Stephen at Würzburg, thus:

At Würzburg there had been a rich church to holy Stephen Of the initiates, following the rights of the see; This, Benedict, he consecrated to your divine trophy, Taking in thirty monks, who night and day Should ever sing to God the encomia of sacred praises.

The foundation of this place the most illustrious man Johann Friedrich Schannat published, from the autograph, as he notes, in the year 1723 in the first Collection of the Vindemiae Litterariae, whence it is helpful to transcribe it. In the name of the holy and undivided Trinity. Adelbero, bishop of the sacrosanct church of Würzburg, to the universal Church: grace to you and peace be multiplied from God. Amen. Since by the gratuitous loving-kindness of God, not by our merits, but by His sole condescension, He has chosen us for the work of His ministry, and, although less fit, has set us as stewards over His household, it befits us to take care with all solicitude that we be not judged by Him for the money of the Lord buried; but that for having dispensed it discreetly and faithfully we may merit to hear the Lord's Well done after the end of labour.

[52] into the city of Würzburg, Accordingly, we wish it to be known to all the faithful of our church how we, desiring to follow the pious deeds of the fathers and pontiffs who preceded us, have decreed to honour God in His Saints, to restore and aid holy places, and to order the divine service in them. Therefore what we conceived in mind, the Lord co-operating, we have found the opportunity of accomplishing; for, perceiving the place and monastery situated in the neighbouring suburb of our city, and founded by our venerable predecessor Henry the prelate, to be most apt for divine religion and monastic profession, we considered with ourselves how we might exalt it and amplify the divine service therein, and on this began to beg the support of the divine Clemency and the counsel of our dearest brethren; whose provident and very prudent counsel having used, we transferred into the city itself the brethren of canonical profession who were then serving God in the aforesaid monastery, and judged it not incongruous to place canons with canons, as being men of the same profession and order.

[53] But that we might exalt with fitting honour the aforesaid place and monastery, dedicated in honour of the blessed Mother of God Mary, and he hands over their suburban church of St. Stephen and of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and of St. Stephen the protomartyr, and might render the church, hitherto celebrated, more celebrated by divine services, we instituted there XXX Brethren of monastic profession, enacting that henceforth the monastic way of life and monastic profession under the rule of an abbot should always remain there in the divine service. And for the supply of the same monastery, of the same Brethren and of those to come after, we assigned to it in full the possessions and estates, with their boundaries and parishes, revenues and outgoings, and other appurtenances, which either bishop Henry himself had first given, or the place itself had possessed as given by others.

[54] Moreover, counsel and assent having been communicated with our brethren the canons, to the monks, the foundation being increased, and with our faithful religious men, nine manses in the village of Hettingesfelt, which we possessed by hereditary right, with bondservants of both sexes, courtyards, buildings, lands cultivated and uncultivated, fields, vineyards, meadows, plains, woods, pastures, courses of waters, fisheries, ways and trackless places, outgoings and revenues, things acquired and to be acquired; and a garden situated before the aforesaid court of the monastery, from our part, with all the right which we and our church had, we gave and assigned for the memory of ourselves and of our predecessors and of our successors, with this regard namely, that we might be made partakers of the divine service which should afterwards be performed there. And that these things may remain firm for ever, we caused two charters to be made thereof, and to be signed and strengthened by the authority of our ban and also by the protection of our seal; and we decreed that one should be kept with the Brethren of the same monastery, the other in our church, for the knowledge of those to come; affixing moreover the names of those who heard and saw these things as they were done.

[55] Winther the chancellor. Bernolf the provost. Aselo the dean. as is established from his charter of foundation. Hazecho. Macelin, provosts. Volraht. Bercelin. Hiltiger, Ebbo, Sicolf. Landolf, priests. Hatto the archdeacon. Aselo. Cuno. Giso. Bezeman. Suigger. Sigefrit, deacons. Hatto Bilis. Bern. Diemo. Otolf. Retine, subdeacons. Eberhard, count, and advocate of our church. Burkard, count. Guntbretht. Hacho. Serrat. Boppo. Thiemo. Reffolt. Gumpho. Almar. Sentuvin. Otloch. Free ministerials: Albgast. Wado. Bucko. Nureith. Hergebraht. Rutgast. Liemar. Vocko. Sujugkard. Volraht. Billunc. Waltrich. Ebbo. Babo. Arnolt. Rutzach. Gotefrit, and many others. These things were done in the year of the Lord's Incarnation MLVII, Indiction XV, on the Nones of March, the lord Henry the fourth reigning, in the XII year of the ordination of bishop Adelbero. Thus far the charter in Schannat, whose chronological notes agree excellently except for the year

of the Indiction, which was then X, not XV. Wherefore I think one should read: Indiction X, on the V day before the Nones of March.

[56] This foundation is mentioned also by the Anonymous who carried the first part of the Chronicle of Würzburg, A notice of the same foundation is given also from others, published by Johann Georg Eckhart in volume 1 of East Francia from page 816, up to the year 1340, saying of Adalbero: He himself transferred the Regular canons from the church of St. Stephen in the suburb of the city of Würzburg to the new monastery situated near the church of Würzburg, and exalted the monastery of St. Stephen with XXX Brethren of monastic profession. Done in the year of the Lord MLVII, under the emperor Henry IV. That church of St. Stephen had been built and endowed by Henry, the first of his name among the bishops of Würzburg, and the third predecessor of Blessed Adalbero in the same see, of whom these things bearing on our purpose are to be read in the Chronicle of Würzburg just cited: In the year of the Lord MXII, in the time of Henry II, emperor, duke of Bavaria, the aforesaid prelate Henry erected and founded the collegiate churches in Hawgis, St. Stephen's, and Onelzpach.

[57] and from Trithemius, Johannes Trithemius also noted the twofold state of the same place in the Hirsau Annals at the years of Christ 999 and 1057. In the former place he has: At the same time also the prelate mentioned (Henry I) built in the southern suburb of the said city (of Würzburg) another church in honour of Mary the Mother of God, and of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and of the divine protomartyr Stephen, into which he likewise placed canons, whom he provided copiously with the necessaries of life. Then after about sixty years Adelbero, bishop of Würzburg, transferred the canons into the city to other canons, and placed monks in the church of St. Stephen; as we shall say below at the fifty-seventh year of the Christians above the thousandth. This is the abbey of the divine protomartyr Stephen, of the Order of St. Benedict, formerly in the suburb, but now established in the city.

[58] differing somewhat about the first erection of the place. In the latter place Trithemius writes that the monks were brought into the monastery of St. Stephen by Adalbero in the year of Christ 1057, the sixtieth, however, after it had been founded for canons by Henry the first. Concerning the time of the first foundation, therefore, the said chronologers of Würzburg and Hirsau disagree, since the latter places it at the year 999, the former at 1012. The man of Würzburg claims for himself greater authority in the affairs of Würzburg from his age and from the very subject which he treated; but it matters little to us here in what year Henry erected the often-mentioned church, since it is established from the same writers and from elsewhere that the same church, erected for canons by Henry the first, was transferred by Adalbero in the year 1057 to Benedictine monks.

[59] Another donation made to the same monastery. In the same Chronicle of Würzburg, to the words given at number 56 there is subjoined: The same Adelbero gave the parish in Hochem with its appurtenances to the monastery of St. Stephen the protomartyr, triumphal standard-bearer of Christ, built in the suburb of the city of Würzburg, in the year MLVII, the aforesaid Henry (IV) reigning. Whether, however, this donation is rightly ascribed to Adalbero I am compelled to doubt for a twofold cause. The one is that in the letters of foundation of the monastery of St. Stephen, signed in the same year, which I have just recited from Schannat, this place Hochem is not read; the other, that the same Schannat, in the 1st Collection of the Vindemiae Litterariae, from page 176, exhibits other letters of Emehard, who succeeded Blessed Adalbero in the episcopate, by which he gave the same parish of Hocheim to the said monastery of St. Stephen, no word being made of a previous donation by Adalbero; so that accordingly Emehard, not Adalbero, seems to have been the donor of the same parish.

[60] Our poet goes on to celebrate the pious munificence of the blessed Prelate again by another example, the old monastery of Schwarzach, the biographer again being silent, thus:

Another, failing in resources (by surname Schwarzig), Of the same Order, the sacred roofs of the supreme Thunderer, For which Charles the Great once laid the foundations: This he repairs for the praises of those above, and supplies it strength, When, after God took members from a mortal body, A thousand years, thrice five, and twice six lustres were flowing.

Schwarzig, more commonly Schwartzach, with Latin termination Schwarzachium and Scharzacum, of which we speak here, is a monastery of the Order of St. Benedict in Franconia, situated on the river Main and the river of the same name Schwartzach, in the county of Castell and the diocese of Würzburg. Concerning the first founders and inhabitants of this place there is no agreement among writers. The poet, as we have seen, attributes its beginnings to Charlemagne; Trithemius, in the Hirsau Chronicle at the year of Christ 1075, says that it was founded in the times of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious in the year of the Lord's Nativity 815, in which namely Charlemagne had already died; Bucelinus, in the first and second part of Germania Sacra, writes that it was done now in the year 816, now in 815, and from him Mabillon in the Annals placed its first foundation at the year 815, both attributing it to count Megingaud and his wife Imma.

[61] On the contrary Eckhart, in volume 1 of East Francia at the year 788, concerning whose first origin some things are noted, number 27, and in volume 2 at the year 816, number 114, and elsewhere, treating much of the same monastery, contends that it was from its beginnings a nunnery, and already certainly from the year 788 inhabited by sacred virgins; and that its founder was not Megingaud but his father Manto. Further, that Megingaud with his wife Imina founded in the year 816 the monastery of men of Megingaudeshausen, and that its inhabitants, monks, after the ruin of their monastery, were transferred into that of Schwarzach; and that hence gradually that tradition grew strong which, confusing Manto with Megingaud his son, relates that the monastery of men of Schwarzach was founded by Megingaud and Imma, or Imina, in the year 816. However these things may be, all acknowledge Blessed Adalbero as its restorer; to whom is added also the author of the more recent Catalogue of the bishops of Würzburg, already cited elsewhere, who in the eulogy of the same Prelate says among other things that the (monastery) of Schwarzach was saved from destruction and restored by the fatherly solicitude of the Bishop.

[62] As regards the year, the said poet's calculations of 1015 years and twelve lustres besides lead to the year of Christ 1074, he restores, endows and dedicates it in the year 1075, or 1075; agreeing with which Bruschius, in the Bishops of Würzburg, marked the latter, as did Trithemius too, tying this deed to the fifth year of St. William, abbot of Hirsau, which he partly put together with the year of Christ 1074. Conrad, abbot of Ursperg, had gone before them, saying at the cited year 1074: In this year also the monastery of Schwarzach was dedicated by Adelbero, bishop of Würzburg, in honour of the holy Mother of God Mary and of St. Felicity the martyr, under Ekkebert, venerable abbot of the same monastery. Further, the said Trithemius noted besides these things bearing on our purpose: Almost collapsed with age (the aforesaid monastery), Adelbero … bishop of Würzburg, having built it anew and magnificently endowed it, consecrated it, and placed in it monks of the best way of life from Gaul, from the monastery of Gorze, of the diocese of Metz, over whom he ordained as abbot Egbert, a most religious and most holy man. Had the monks at Schwarzach, then, so failed at that time that those who should inhabit it had to be summoned from Gorze? This indeed I have found nowhere.

[63] under abbot Egbert, Bucelinus, in part 2 of Germania Sacra, page 268, in the Catalogue of the abbots of the same monastery, dissenting from Trithemius, recorded Egbert with the following eulogy: Eggbert, a monk of St. Gorgonius (that is, of Gorze) in Gaul, called hither for the sake of reform, a holy man, and who is reported to have shone with miracles. Under him the monastery, destroyed or burned by what chance is uncertain, Adelbero, bishop of Würzburg, endowed and built anew. Louis, count of Castell, benefited it; and also Hermann, count, both buried there. Eggbert presided over his monastery twenty-seven years, and passed to those above on the VII day before the Kalends of September in the year MLXXV. According to these words Egbert did not preside at Schwarzach over monks summoned from the monastery of Gorze, but was himself summoned from that of Gorze to reform and rule the people of Schwarzach, nor did this happen after, but before, the monastery of Schwarzach was repaired by Adalbero; nor finally did Egbert live beyond the year 1075, to which others, as we have seen, fix that reparation.

[64] formerly a Benedictine monk of Gorze. Perhaps the same Egbert, whether this happened before or after the same reparation, and some other monks were summoned from Gorze to restore by authority and example the discipline that had lapsed among the people of Schwarzach; and hence Trithemius may have written as if the monks of Gorze had been substituted in the place of the old inhabitants of Schwarzach. I do not know whence Bucelinus learned that Egbert died on the VII day before the Kalends of September of the year 1075; but that he was living also at the same time, and set out to Rome to St. Gregory VII with Hermann, formerly bishop of Bamberg, then deposed and a monk of Schwarzach, Lambert of Hersfeld handed down at the same year in words which I subjoin here. Herimann, bishop of Bamberg, having learned that another bishop had been substituted in his place, since all hope of recovering his dignity thereafter had now been taken from him, nor did any further byway lie open for eluding the sentence of the Roman Pontiff, withdrew into the monastery whose name is Suarza, and there under abbot Eggebert took up the habit of holy conversation. And at once, taking with him the same his abbot, he set out to Rome, where, when he had humbly done penance before the Apostolic See for his disobedience, he was both freed from anathema and obtained anew licence for the priestly ministry, apart from the pontifical dignity.

[65] Assertions of others about the pious munificence of the Blessed, I do not discern what monastery besides is indicated in the Acts of the venerable counts Palatine, Erenfrid or Ezo and Mathilda, and of their daughter Blessed Richeza, queen of Poland, illustrated by our Papebroch in volume V of May, at the 21st day. The words of their nearly contemporary writer I transfer here from page 58. Another monastery was built at the expense of the same most glorious woman and queen (Blessed Richeza) by Adelbero, bishop of Würzburg, in the place where the sacred martyrdom of St. Kilian and his companions exists; inasmuch as his bishopric was increased with truly royal munificence from her numerous household of dependants, with all that pertains to the town of Saltzo (otherwise Soltz in the county of Henneberg). Of SS. Kilian and his two companions, apostles of Franconia, who suffered and are venerated at Würzburg, it has been treated in our Work at the 8th day of July; nor is their sacred martyrdom to be sought elsewhere than at Würzburg, whether this is to be taken for the place in which they suffered, or for the church built in that place.

[66] Then, if I rightly perceive the given words of the biographer, whatever monastery of Würzburg is at length indicated there, less ascertained to me. this is said to have been built by Adelbero at Richeza's expense for no other reason than that his episcopate of Würzburg was made richer from the wealth of Richeza and her family, and that Adalbero hence had the means of making that expense. But what monastery, then, is designated here? Nothing more probable has thus far occurred to me than either the monastery of St.

Stephen, then situated in the suburb of Würzburg, or the other in the city itself; of which the former was fitted and endowed for the uses of the Benedictines by Blessed Adalbero, and into the latter the canons who had performed the sacred offices in the aforesaid St. Stephen's were transferred by the same in the year 1057, as I set forth more fully above. In the more recent Catalogue of the bishops of Würzburg already cited elsewhere there is read besides: Under him (Adalbero) the margrave of Vöenburg founded the monastery of Banz; but what part the blessed Prelate had in it I have not ascertained.

[67] The few other things which I have found out besides of the deeds of the same blessed Bishop, In the year 1060 he consecrates St. Gebhard archbishop of Salzburg. apart from the fidelity which he showed and proved to the Apostolic See in arduous affairs (of which afterwards), I shall relate here. In the year 1060 he established and consecrated St. Gebhard, his old friend, in the archiepiscopal see of Salzburg, as may be seen in the Life of the same holy archbishop given among us in the Appendix to the 16th day of June, page 148, number 5. Five years after, he saw his other intimate, Blessed Altmann, raised to the episcopate of Passau, and so experienced that his and their presages about obtaining episcopal sees had by no means been vain. Read, if you please, what has been said about these things in this very Commentary, number 27 and following.

[68] In the year 1075 he was sent by Henry IV, king of Germany, together with the aforesaid St. Gebhard, Peace between king Henry and the Saxons as envoy Siegfried, archbishop of Mainz, Embrico, bishop of Augsburg, and Gozzelo, or Godfrey, duke of Lorraine, as envoy to the Saxons for the sake of settling the peace which these, after taking arms against the king and receiving from him a huge defeat, were begging as suppliants. These five men, others refusing to discharge so perilous an office, lest they should be charged either before the king with perfidy, if they had dealt too mercifully with the Saxons, or before the Saxons with a pernicious lie, if the king should not stand by his promises, these, I say, five men undertook that burden, because the Saxons had asked for these five by name for a conference with them, since they had found them to be of most constant faith and truth; and they believed without doubt that whatever these had promised would be ratified, as Lambert of Hersfeld testifies, a contemporary and accurate writer, at the same year, whence I have copied these things.

[69] What these envoys did in this cause in the camp of the Saxons can be read more fully in the same place: he reconciles; but, the king not standing by the compacts, with unhappy outcome. this is the sum: Most loving of peace, by their salutary counsels and admonitions they at length with difficulty obtained among the princes and the common people of the Saxons that, since pardon for what had been committed was to be obtained from king Henry on no other terms, they should lay down their arms and surrender themselves to him, having received from him a pledge that they would suffer nothing from this surrender which would hurt their safety, their honour, or their property. And the king indeed, most gladly embracing the agreement of peace, promised, and (as report spread among very many said) even gave an oath, that he would do nothing against them, if they had surrendered, beyond the will and judgement of those by whose labour and benefit this bloodless victory had befallen him: yet he did not stand by the compacts. For, the treaty being broken, abusing the pious labour of the envoys, he acted in hostile fashion, and handed over the princes of the Saxons to be guarded as exiles in various places, and so sowed the seeds of a new war, the other princes of the empire being indignant, and especially those already named, to whom above others it mattered that the pledge given by the king should be kept. Nor were there lacking those who, detesting so great a perfidy, allowed the chief men of the Saxons whose custody had been committed to them to escape.

[70] [In the year 1090 he dedicates the church of Sindelfingen: he consecrates Thiemo archbishop of Salzburg.] Our Hansiz, in volume 2 of Germania Sacra, page 185, relates from Crusius that Blessed Adalbero was in the year 1083 (when he was already an exile from his see) with St. Gebhard in Swabia, and there consecrated the church of Syndelphin with him. Finally, when in the year 1090, which was also his last among mortals, the said St. Gebhard had died, Berthold the schismatic, who had invaded the see of Salzburg, being driven out, he caused a Catholic, Thiemo, otherwise Theodomar, to be substituted for him, and consecrated him together with St. Altmann of Passau and Meginward of Freising, bishops: In Bavaria (says Bernold of Constance in the Chronicle at this year) the faithful of St. Peter had now so prevailed against the schismatics that they ordained a Catholic archbishop in the episcopate of Salzburg, whom at once the most religious bishop of Passau and legate of Pope Urban consecrated with the bishops of Würzburg and Freising. Adalbero survived this consecration by not a full half-year; for this, according to the chronographer of Salzburg in Hansiz, was done on the 7th day of April; but he departed from the living on the 6th day of October of the same year.

Add cum* with.

Perhaps prædicti* of the aforesaid?

§ V. The error of the biographer in alleging the cause of Blessed Adalbero's exile corrected: the faith and constancy of the same Blessed in defending the Apostolic See against the schismatics.

The biographer wrongly [gives the cause of the Blessed's exile.] Thus far we have carried the deeds of Blessed Adalbero up to the last half-year space of his life, passing over those things which he did meanwhile for the Church of God, and the exile which he bore bravely for it in the time of the Henrician schism, which must now be recorded. I have already noted above at number 14 that the anonymous monk of Lambach wrongly wrote in the Life that our blessed Prelate withdrew from his see of Würzburg to Lambach because he neither could nor would follow the party of Henry V, king of Germany, rebelling against his father Henry IV, and on that account struck with anathema by the supreme Pontiff. How inept these things are even the reckoning of the times alone clearly demonstrates. For it is established from the consensus of ancient and more recent writers that Henry, the fifth of this name, whom his father had caused to be crowned as his successor in the kingdom of Germany in the year 1099, did not begin to attempt the things which the biographer there narrates before the year 1104, at which time namely Blessed Adalbero had already died about fourteen years before, having died in the year 1090, as I shall prove in its place both from the testimonies of other ancient writers and from those of the biographer himself. So manifest a chronological error and confusion of events not a little diminish the accuracy of the writer.

[72] The other biographer, in the metrical Life, much more rightly traced the cause of the same exile to the foul schism of Henry IV, the Poet rightly alleged. going on thus after the things which we related from him about the restored monastery of Schwarzach:

But faithless fortune, raging at fair successes, Between the supreme Pontiff and the Ausonian monarch Kindled the impious seeds of pestilent war. Then the Father, who held the just reins at Würzburg, Constantly adhering in obedience to the Roman Father, Is driven by force from the shores justly possessed By Henry the Caesar, and a certain unjust invader, Meinhard by name, pressed upon the venerable sanctuaries: Twice eight lustres above a thousand and four years Were running when Adalbero yielded his own see.

It is not my mind to dwell more at length on recording those mournful times of the Church and the empire than is necessary for setting forth what part Adalbero had in them.

[73] Henry IV, king of Germany, having been admonished already at other times by St. Gregory VII, the Roman Pontiff, A grave dissension having arisen between St. Gregory VII and Henry IV, to abstain at length, as he had promised, from vexing the Church, from communion with the excommunicated, and from the various crimes with which he was defiling his royal majesty, at last in the year 1076 received from the same severer letters and commands through legates, in which it was announced that, unless he came to his senses, he would be removed from the communion of the faithful. Henry blazed up vehemently at these things, and, inflamed by the counsels of flattering schismatics and by foul calumnies against the holy Pontiff, did not blush in a conventicle held at Worms in the same year to declare him unworthy of his Pontificate, and, letters having been sent to him at Rome, to command him to abstain from the Pontificate in future, and to leave the Apostolic See, as vacant, to be filled by another. Gregory on the contrary, despising the threats, in a Roman synod held in the same year separated Henry from Ecclesiastical communion and declared him fallen from the kingdom of Germany. But Henry, continuing to rage, persecuted the Catholic bishops, and at length in the year 1080 caused Guibert, the deposed prelate of Ravenna, to be substituted by the schismatics for the living Gregory, as though into a vacant Apostolic See.

[74] a pseudo-synod having been gathered at Worms, Adalbero and Herimann protesting, Now let us set forth what part Adalbero had in these things. Lambert of Hersfeld, a contemporary and accurate writer, published by Pistorius, testifies at the cited year 1076 that our Adalbero was present at the same conventicle of Worms, and that he and Herimann, or Hermann, bishop of Metz, alone resisted so wicked a daring. Receive the words of Lambert: And when all the others (who, by order of king Henry, had assembled at Worms) subscribed without any hesitation to his condemnation (of Pope Gregory VII), Adelbero, bishop of Würzburg, and Herimann, bishop of Metz, resisted for some while, saying that it was very incongruous and contrary to the decrees of the canons that any bishop should be condemned in his absence, without a general council, without lawful and fit accusers and witnesses, the crimes which were objected not yet having been proved; much less the Roman Pontiff, against whom the accusation neither of any bishop nor of any archbishop is to be received.

[75] condemns the same Gregory, and orders him to yield the Pontificate. But William, bishop of Utrecht, who defended the king's cause more obstinately, pressed vehemently that they should either subscribe with the rest to the condemnation of the Pope, or at once renounce the king, to whom they had pledged fidelity under oath. He was at that time very dear and acceptable, and the king had delegated to him, after himself, the ordering of all things which were to be done privately or publicly; a man excellently learned in secular letters, but puffed up with excessive pride, he could scarcely bear himself. Therefore in the name of all the bishops and abbots who had assembled, letters full of insults are sent to Rome, by which it should be announced to the Roman Pontiff that he should abdicate the Pontificate which he had usurped against the Ecclesiastical laws; and that he should know that after that day whatever he did, ordered or decreed was held void.

[76] There are those who think they subscribed to the same conventicle; Thus far the man of Hersfeld, from whose words it can in some way be doubted whether the two said prelates, after they had struggled against it for a little while, subscribed to the impious decree, compelled by fear of the schismatics and the king. These words could raise this suspicion: Adelbero … and Herimann … resisted FOR SOME WHILE: likewise: William, bishop of Utrecht … pressed vehemently that they should either subscribe with the rest to the condemnation of the Pope, or at once renounce the king, to whom they had pledged fidelity under oath; and what are presently subjoined: Therefore in the name of all the bishops and abbots who had assembled, letters full of insults are sent to Rome, etc. There were not lacking some who believed that it was so done, among whom Dom Augustin Calmet, in volume 2 of the History of Lorraine, printed with second cares in the year 1748, column 278 and following, citing besides this passage of the man of Hersfeld Hugh of Flavigny in the Chronicle in Labbe, volume 1 of the Library of Manuscripts, page 224, and St. Gregory VII, book 3, Letter 12, volume 18 (he meant to say 10) of Labbe's Collection of the Councils, column 140. Nay also in some editions of this wicked pseudo-synod both prelates are read as subscribed.

[77] but this is proved neither from the man of Hersfeld, whom they cite, But this stain, however much it might have been contracted from human fear, I would not dare without more certain argument to brand upon these two illustrious Men, who also thereafter stood unconquered for the Papal party with the greatest inconvenience to themselves and loss of their possessions. The man of Hersfeld does not say that they subscribed, but that they resisted for some while; which can be most true without any subscription or consent of theirs, if both, after they had found that they were making no progress at all with the raging schismatics by the most weighty reasons, at length fell silent, or even withdrew from the conventicle. Nor does it matter that, on the testimony of the same chronologer, those insulting letters were sent to Rome in the name of all the bishops and abbots who had assembled. For what wonder if that turbulent bishop of Utrecht, by whose authority everything there was being done at the king's nod, wished their silence or withdrawal to be held as consent, and caused those wicked letters to be sent to the supreme Pontiff at Rome as though in the name of all the bishops who had assembled?

[78] The passage of Hugh of Flavigny, likewise cited by Calmet, nor from Hugh of Flavigny, in no way pertains to Adalbero, but to Herimann; yet since Calmet here made the cause of both common, it will be helpful to have weighed it, although somewhat long. Here it is: There presided at that time (the year 1080) over the city of the Mediomatrici an outstanding man, and among the chief champions of the Catholic faith, a great example of patience, religion and justice, the lord Herimann, … who, in the first flower of his youth, in the times of Anno, venerable archbishop of Cologne, guardian and governor of the kingdom, having gained familiarity with the palace, knew almost everything about that king (Henry IV), so much so that, on account of his insolence, he for the most part withdrew himself from the administration of the court, and chose rather to be content with his own modest station than to hope for greater things from the defilement of the society of factious men, especially when he saw that the aforesaid man of revered memory, Anno, grieved and groaned with frequent contrition that under such a prince the state of the kingdom was desolate, the right of empire bent, the horn of the Lord broken, in which prince there was the sole hope of Ecclesiastical overthrow and of the disturbance of Catholic peace, confusion and horror, vanity and contrition, and a presumption bringing everything to ruin, proud, slippery, vain, inconstant and unclean.

[79] But when he obtained the office of the episcopate, whose words are recited he repented enough of having received the investiture of the pontificate from the hand of that king, so much so that he would even gladly have cast off the burden of prelacy imposed on him, willingly laid it down, excused himself from it with all effort, if the authority of the Roman Pontiff had given assent, before whom he did not blush to confess his fault for his excesses, that is, for the same investiture incautiously usurped, which is against the canonical institutes, and he guarded himself sufficiently in future from communion with him and his supporters; on account of which also he suffered such great things that it could seem to have been said of him: "I will show him how great things he must suffer for My name." In the first encounter indeed he suffered what belonged to a man, that he might learn, in the second, which was continual and perpetual to him, to presume on God, not on himself. For he slipped as a man, he tottered as a man, because he presumed as a man. But the scandal of reproach has now been emptied out in him, because in the goodness of his life there has been cut off what had troubled him, and through him all good men; and, the obscurity thinning, the gold has shone out again, the best colour has prevailed, the stone of the sanctuary has shone again in the diadem of the eternal King.

[80] This man, then, made at his very first entrance an executor of the Apostolic doctrine, and are weighed, can be proved; when afterwards he had communicated with the wicked king, excommunicated for his crimes, from whose communion, as has been said, he had already for some time suspended himself, grieved, as we said before, that he had been deceived; and, his strength resumed, sought absolution from the lord Pope, etc. So Hugh of Flavigny; which I do not know on what ground Calmet could cite as proof of the pseudo-synod of Worms having been subscribed by Blessed Adalbero and Hermann, since in them there is no mention, not a word, either of the former or of the latter. Did perhaps the communication of Hermann with the excommunicated king asserted in them seem to Calmet to indicate that subscription? But that by this communication nothing else is indicated than the investiture of the episcopate of Metz, forbidden by the canons, admitted from the king, is made manifest both by the context itself and by what Hugh presently adds in the same place: He grieved, as we said before, that he had been deceived, which cannot be referred except to Hermann's penance for the admitted investiture, which he had set down before.

[81] nay, they manifestly tell in favour of Herimann Namely, Hugh at number 80 only briefly recalls to the reader's memory what he had said in the two preceding numbers, and on that account inserts these words: As has been said, As we said before. Now he had said that Herimann in his youth, before the episcopate, avoided the company of the king and the king's supporters, because he preferred to be content with his own modest station rather than to hope for greater things from the defilement of the society of factious men. Hence at number 80 he is said to have been at his very first entrance an executor of the Apostolic doctrine. He had said secondly that the same, in the first encounter, that is, in entering upon the episcopate, slipped humanly by admitting from the king an investiture against the prohibitions of the Canons; and accordingly at number 80 he charges him with having communicated with the king, from whose communion, as has been said, he had already for some time suspended himself, namely by avoiding the court. He had said thirdly that he repented remarkably of his deed, and accused himself before the Roman Pontiff of his excesses, that is, of the same investiture incautiously usurped, and merited pardon. Wherefore at number 80 he also added: He grieved (about the communication with the king), as we said before, that he had been deceived, and, his strength resumed, sought absolution from the lord Pope.

[82] with praise in this matter, nor does the Letter of St. Gregory stand in the way. Moreover, if Herimann, as Hugh testifies, subscribed in the conventicle of Worms, with the schismatic supporters of king Henry, to the condemnation of the supreme Pontiff, how could the same writer say of the same bishop, after the penance done for the investiture: And he guarded himself sufficiently in future from communion with him (Henry) and his supporters? How also these words: In the first encounter indeed (in admitting the investiture) he suffered what belonged to a man, that he might learn, in the second, which was continual and perpetual to him, to presume on God, not on himself? What do these words mean other than that Herimann, after the penance done for the forbidden investiture received, thenceforth, relying on God alone, always abstained from the communion of the schismatics; how did he abstain, if he subscribed to the often-mentioned decree of Worms for the condemnation of the Roman Pontiff? Indeed this passage of Hugh of Flavigny militates not against the innocence of Blessed Adalbero and Herimann in this matter, but for Herimann. Not to be longer, the letter of St. Gregory VII cited besides by Calmet pertains no more to Adalbero, in which too no word is read of the Conventicle of Worms. For the rest, an outstanding eulogy of Herimann can be read in the same Hugh in the said Chronicle, Labbe's edition, page 238.

[83] Both also are praised by the ancients among the chief defenders of the Church Further, the things which the same two bishops did constantly in the same cause up to death commend them not a little. Bernold of Constance, cited by Hansiz in volume 2 of Germania Sacra, page 180, numbers our Adalbero among the few bishops of Germany who, with the Catholic princes, protected the party of St. Gregory as soon as it was established that Henry had been cut off from the communion of the faithful in the Roman synod. Bernold's words there run thus: When this resounded in Germany, the king and almost all his own contradicted it, and held it as wholly nothing; and this only the king's accomplices and supporters. The others, who had a saner mind, not so; of whom, of the bishops, the patriarch of Aquileia (Sieghard, or Sigeard, who afterwards went over to the schismatics), the bishop of Salzburg (St. Gebhard), of Passau (Blessed Altmann), who himself too was driven from his see by the king, and also of Würzburg (Blessed Adalbero), and almost all the Saxon ones; and also the dukes, Rudolf (of Swabia), Berthold (of Carinthia), Welf (of Bavaria), and no small part of the other chief men of the kingdom, felt without doubt with the Apostolic lord, who refused to be present at the aforesaid conspiracy: whence also thereafter, called by the king, they avoided him, both on account of the anathema and also because they did not greatly trust him. Again at the year 1089 he says in the same place: In the German parts four bishops persevered in Catholic communion, namely of Würzburg, of Passau, of Worms, of Constance, and also the bishop of Metz, by whose strengthening the other Catholics resisted the schismatics from the beginning.

[84] No less did the often-mentioned biographer of St. Gebhard, in his Life given among us in the Appendix to the 16th day of June, commend him, nay also Herimann of Metz, from the ancients, for his faith proved among the few prelates of Germany; from which receive the following. Namely, very perilous times were then at hand, when, besides our athlete of Christ, the lord Gebhard, archbishop of Salzburg, Altmann of Passau, Adilbero of Würzburg, Hermann of Metz, Meginward of Freising, besides these five alone no Catholic bishop could be found in the whole German kingdom. Paul of Bernried, in the Life of St. Gregory VII, chapter 6, in our Work volume VI of May, page 125, reckoned Adalbero with the same Hermann among the truthful, approved and religious men whom he advised those doubting whether justice stood for Gregory or for Henry to consult. We shall give another passage from the same Life below, where we shall treat of Adalbero restored to his see, and another from the Bernold cited above, when there will be discussion of his death.

[85] For the rest, since from what has been said it does not please me to set forth those mournful times, and they constantly adhered to the Catholic party. I shall only show in a few words that the deeds of Blessed Adalbero are not discordant with the eulogies already recited. In the same year in which the pseudo-synod of Worms had been held, the two aforesaid prelates, again on the testimony of the man of Hersfeld, came together at Easter with Rudolf of the Swabians, Welf of the Bavarians, and Berthold of the Carinthians, dukes devoted to the Apostolic See, and conferred counsels about bringing the king back to his duty, and restoring peace to the Church and the empire. Adalbero was present also at their assemblies at Ulm and at Tribur, held in the same year, at which also legates of the Apostolic See were present, and in which many bishops, abbots and others were reconciled to the Church. Finally, not to be longer, in the year 1085, since he could not himself, he was present by his legate at, and subscribed to, the synod of Quedlinburg, in which both other things were usefully decreed and the sentence of excommunication was solemnly promulgated against Guibert the antipope, whom Henry through his schismatics had caused to be intruded into the Apostolic See while Gregory was living, and against the bishops adhering to the same antipope, as we learn from Bernold of Constance at the same year, whence I have copied the following.

[86] Adalbero subscribed through legates to the synod of Quedlinburg. King Hermann (substituted for Henry by the Catholics) celebrated Easter at Quintiniliburg, where also the legate of the lord Apostolic (Otto, bishop

of Ostia) solemnly celebrated in the very week of Easter a general synod with archbishops, bishops and abbots faithful to St. Peter. And there was present at this synod Gebhard, the most reverend archbishop of Juvavum, likewise the venerable Hartung (otherwise Hartwig), archbishop of Magdeburg, with his suffragans. Likewise the suffragans of the see of Mainz from Saxony: for those of Würzburg (Adalbero) and of Worms (Adalbert), of Augsburg also (Giwold) and of Constance (Gebhard) from Alemannia, who, hindered by canonical necessity, could not come themselves, represented themselves to the holy council by their legation, and sent word that they would assent in all things to the statutes of the same synod.

[87] in which the excommunication of the antipope, etc., was promulgated. Then, after other things decreed, as I said, there follows in the same place: But at the end of the synod the sentence of anathema was promulgated with burning candles against Guibert the heresiarch, invader of the Apostolic See, and against the apostates of St. Peter, Hugh of Albano, John of Porto, ex-bishops, Peter the ex-chancellor. Likewise Liemar of Bremen, Udo of Hildesheim, Otto of Constance, Burchard of Basel, Huzmann of Speyer, ex-bishops. Likewise against Wecilo, invader of Mainz, Siegfried of Augsburg, Norbert of Chur; against these, I say, and against all their accomplices the inevitable sentence of anathema was promulgated. Let it suffice to have touched on these few things about the faith and constancy of Blessed Adalbero in the cause of the Church of God, which will be solidly confirmed from the things which he suffered on that account.

§ VI. Meinhard is substituted for the Blessed while in exile; and, he being driven out, the Blessed is restored, and again expelled, and dies an exile and is buried at Lambach in the year MXC.

The Blessed left his city long before the year 1084, The same reward of his constancy which the other Catholic prelates of Germany of his time generally bore under Henry IV, Blessed Adalbero also received: expulsion from his see. But at what time was Adalbero expelled? That the biographer went foully astray in this in the Life to be reprinted I observed above. But the Poet, in the words already given at number 72, assigned the year 1084, saying:

Twice eight lustres above a thousand and four years Were running when Adalbero yielded his own see:

For sixteen lustres, taken for as many five-year periods, make eighty years, which, added to a thousand and four years, lead to the cited year 1084: but it is hard to grasp how Adalbero, king Henry raging against the Catholic prelates, remained safe in his see so long. Certainly already from the year 1078 St. Gebhard left his see of Salzburg, and perhaps even two years earlier Blessed Altmann his of Passau; concerning the first of whom consult the Life in our Work, part 1 of volume VI of June, in the Appendix to the 16th day of that month; concerning the other the Commentary in volume 2 of August, page 363.

[89] Moreover, long before the year 1084 Adalbero had opposed to him not only king Henry, and he was no longer in it in the year 1077, in which it was besieged; but also his own people of Würzburg, devoted to the Henrician party, whose city Rudolf, duke of Swabia, elected king against Henry by the Catholic princes, on that account besieged in vain in the year 1077. So we learn from the Saxon Annalist cited by Sigismund Calles in part 1 of the Annals of Austria at this year 1077, whose words, the Saxon's, are these there: In the month of August king Rudolf besieged the people of Würzburg, who were keeping faith with Henry and despising both himself (Rudolf) and Adalbero their bishop, etc. Conrad, abbot of Ursperg, agrees plainly in the Chronicle, saying in almost the same words at the same year: Thereafter, a copious army having been gathered from Saxony, Rudolf besieged the people of Würzburg, who were keeping faith with king Henry and despising both their bishop Adalbero and himself. Already, then, from the autumn of the year 1077 the holy Prelate had left his see of Würzburg, either driven out by force or threats by the Henricians, or of his own accord, so as not to expose himself to their fury.

[90] It is probable to me that Adalbero was not, as soon as he was compelled to go into exile from his see, yet he was not already then despoiled of his episcopate, also despoiled of his episcopate, or, so to speak, deposed by Henry; but that this was first done after Guibert, intruded by the work of the same king into the Roman See in the year 1083, had usurped the supreme Pontificate; and that our Poet traced the expulsion of the Blessed from no other time than that at which Meginhard II was substituted for him while he was living. For before the words recited he had set down these in the same place:

And a certain unjust invader, Meinhard by name, pressed upon the venerable sanctuaries.

Further, the Chronicle of Würzburg, published by Baluze from a codex of St. Gall and reprinted by Eckhart in volume 1 of East Francia among the historical Monuments, marks the intrusion of Meinhard into Adalbero's place at the year 1085, having at the cited year 1085 thus: Meginhard is appointed bishop of Würzburg.

[91] Another Chronicle of Würzburg also, published in the same place from a manuscript codex of the monastery of St. Stephen of Würzburg, nor was Meginhard intruded into his place before the year 1085; tied the beginning of Meginhard's episcopate indeed to the year 1095, by a manifest error either of the writer or of the editor; but that in place of this the year 1085 is to be read is clear from this, that in the same place, under Adalbero, it attributes three years of episcopate to Meginhard while Adalbero was living, whom the author of the same Chronicle rightly marked as having died in the year 1090. Likewise Meginhard (he says) was administrator of the church of Würzburg for III years while Adalbero was living. Add to these the monk of Erfurt in the Additions to the Chronicle of Lambert of Hersfeld, saying: MLXXXV A certain Meginhard, most learned, but not according to knowledge, is substituted for the church of Würzburg, Adelbero (otherwise Adelberone) being still bishop. I add finally also the more recent Catalogue of the bishops of Würzburg, in which there is read thus too: Meinhard II, count of Rottenburg, a man conspicuous for manifold learning, Adalbero having been driven out, was named bishop by Henry IV in the year MLXXXV, on the 25th day of May, Clement the antipope invading the Church against Gregory VII.

[92] but his first emigration was voluntary: Waltram, the schismatic bishop of Naumburg of the same time, in the book On the Unity of the Church, as Sigismund Calles testifies in volume 5 of the Annals of Germany, page 830, reproached our Blessed Adalbero that, lest he be compelled to communicate with the excommunicated king, he had given up his episcopate of his own accord and betaken himself into the fortress of Weinsperg. So that schismatic objected as a reproach an argument of outstanding fortitude. But if the blessed Prelate withdrew of his own accord for this reason, he certainly merited great praise; and from this fact it is gathered why the poet placed his departure from his see so late, namely because he was speaking there not of a voluntary exile, but of his proscription by Henry and of Meinhard intruded into his place. So that, therefore, all the aforesaid things may be reconciled, Blessed Adalbero must be said in the year 1076 or the following, whether compelled by the threats of the Henricians, or led by his own religion, lest he be compelled to communicate with the excommunicated king, to have gone into voluntary exile (as St. Gebhard, archbishop of Salzburg, also did); but afterwards to have been proscribed by Henry; and the poet to have spoken of this expulsion, not of the voluntary exile.

[93] his retreat to Lambach, perhaps also called the Mount of Wine. The place into which the voluntary Exile then betook himself Calles, from Waltram, calls the fortress of Weinsperg. But what is this fortress, or where situated? For the biographer, the poet, and others constantly affirm that he withdrew to Lambach in Bavaria, or in Upper Austria, which was his father's estate. Was it some castle of the same maternal family? For the poet sings that his mother Regila was born of the powerful Frankish house of Weinsberg; concerning which see what was said above at number 20 and the following. I for my part would incline hither, were there not a suspicion from elsewhere that Lambach is called by Waltram by another name, for I know not what reason, Weinsperga. The reason for suspecting is that the said Calles, treating in the same place of the Blessed's departure from the city of Würzburg, afterwards taken, recites these words from the same Waltram: He withdrew into the Mount of Wine beloved by him (so Weinsberg is called in Latin); and there died in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord MXC. But it is established that Adalbero died his day and was buried nowhere else than at Lambach, where he rests even today; so that either Waltram, near both in time and place, seems to have erred vehemently here, or to have designated Lambach altogether by Weinsberga and the Mount of Wine. So all things will be in order.

[94] The Henrician army having been cut down by Hermann of Luxemburg, While Adalbero was staying in his exile at Lambach, Rudolf, who had been elected king against Henry by the Catholic princes of Germany, died in the year 1080 of a wound received in the battle at the river Elster, in which he had vanquished the enemies, and in the following year Hermann of Luxemburg was substituted for him. He, in the year 1086 besieging the city of Würzburg, which was, as we have said, of the Henrician party, the hostile army of Henry, which had hastened to its aid, being cut down, took it, and restored it to its Bishop, already ten years an exile. Bernold of Constance, who was present at the same battle, sets it forth at length in the Appendix to the Chronicle of Hermann the Lame at this year, and relates thus the things which pertain more nearly to our subject: Our men, therefore, having gained the victory through the mercy of God, encamped that night on the field of battle, and on the morrow, having returned to the siege of the city (of Würzburg), took it without bloodshed.

[95] Then, the Bishop of Würzburg having been restored to his see with great praises of the citizens, and Würzburg having been taken, Blessed Adalbero, clerics and laymen, and a fitting garrison of soldiers having been placed in the city, they returned, each to his own, with great glory and joy. And this battle was fought on the day following the feast of St. Laurence. Conrad of Ursperg likewise in his Chronicle records the same things more briefly thus: In the year of the Lord MLXXXVI the emperor Henry lays waste Saxony. Würzburg is besieged by the Saxons and Alemanni. To free which * the emperor gathers a copious army both of foot and horse, and, battle being joined near Bleichfeld, withdraws without victory (he could have said, With great slaughter of his own). Soon, the city having been taken by the enemies, bishop Adelbero is brought in, and, a military garrison being left with him, each sets out for his own.

[96] This same victory and Adalbero's restoration to his see is likewise mentioned by a contemporary or nearly contemporary writer, and other Catholic prelates are restored to their sees. Paul of Bernried, in the Life of Pope St. Gregory VII, given by my Predecessors on the 25th day of May, in whose chapter 12, number 101, he related that it had been foretold by this holy Pontiff in these words: He (St. Gregory, being consulted whom he would wish to be substituted for himself in the Pontificate after his death) advised that the neighbouring Desiderius (abbot of Monte Cassino) be elected, who, although he would live a very short time, yet was to be called Victor not without a type of victory. For in his days, which were fitted to four months, the Lord gave a famous victory to the champions of the Apostolic See over its adversaries, through which also the bishop of Würzburg, named Adalbero, a man distinguished by birth, honourable in countenance and act, recovered his see, long held by invaders, having as returning with him his venerable fellow bishops, the aforesaid Gebhard of Constance and Heremann of Metz, who themselves too had lost their sees. Sigismund

Calles, in volume 5 of the Ecclesiastical Annals of Germany, page 830, adds, from Waltram as far as appears, that Adalbero was then brought back into his city by Hartwig, archbishop of Magdeburg. The biographer of Lambach is silent about this restoration of the Blessed, but our poet did not pass it over, as may be seen in its place.

[97] But Würzburg having been recovered by Henry, the Blessed is again expelled, But that this recovery of his see was by no means long-lasting for the blessed Prelate we learn from old Chronicles. The Baluze Chronicle of Würzburg, reprinted in Eckhart, volume 1 of East Francia, among the historical monuments, has thus at the cited year 1086: Würzburg was taken by the Saxons, and soon recovered by the emperor. Similarly the Saxon Annalist cited in Calles, after he had said that Würzburg came into the power of the confederates, presently subjoined: But a little after the same city is recovered by the emperor, and, Adalbero having been expelled, Meginhard with his own is restored. Conrad of Ursperg has exactly the same, likewise subjoining: But a little after the same city is recovered by the emperor, and, Adelbero with his own having been expelled, Meginhard is restored. It is therefore sufficiently certain that not much time intervened between this bringing back of the blessed Man into his city and his repeated expulsion from it; whether, however, the latter is to be referred rather to the year 1086 or to the following is not so established, since these words, soon and a little after, admit in a similar subject an interval of at least some months. Our poet set this unhappy event at least one year too early, namely:

In the year one thousand, fifth, and twice eight lustres;

that is, in the year 1085, in which namely Würzburg had not yet been taken by Hermann, nor Adalbero restored to it.

[98] preferring to lack his episcopate rather than consent with the excommunicated, To this later siege of Würzburg by the Henricians are without doubt to be referred the things which the often-cited Calles, in the Ecclesiastical Annals of Germany, described about the constancy of the blessed Prelate from the aforesaid Waltram, the schismatic bishop, who after his fashion charged him on that account with obstinacy, in this manner: Adalbero was besieged in the city of Würzburg by the emperor, and could not be brought to a condition of peace, either through the bishops or through the princes of the kingdom who were with the emperor, saying that he could indeed die, not be bent, so as ever of his own accord to wish to see or address king Henry (cut off from Catholic communion). Calles adds in the same place, and not undeservedly, that he thinks this display of a constant mind moved king Henry (for virtue pleases even the unwilling) so that, as Waltram added in the same place, he let Adalbero go free from the city. Adalbero, says Waltram, having received leave to go away from the city of Würzburg, since he could not be bent to a condition of peace, withdrew into the Mount of Wine beloved by him, and there died in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord MXC.

[99] and after the death of two invaders of his see The Bishop having been expelled from the city of Würzburg, Meinhard, or Meginhard, the invader of the same episcopate, was brought back into it, and held it until the year 1088, in which, having died, he had as successor a man of his faction, Emehard, in the following year, on the VIII day before the Kalends of August, if the author of the Baluze Chronicle of Würzburg in Eckhart marked it rightly. The man of Ursperg records both the death of the former and the succession of the latter in the same year: In the year of the Lord, he says, MLXXXVIII… Meginhard, bishop of Würzburg, died, to whom Emehard succeeded, Adelbero being still alive. The Poet, the anonymous man of Lambach again being silent in the Life, writes that Adalbero, after Meginhard's death, was again invited to resume his episcopate, but, having already experienced enough of faithless fortune, refused, and preferred a placid life in the monastery of Lambach, which he had founded, to the episcopal insignia. Let us hear the Poet. He sings thus:

[100] he persisted unconquered in the same opinion. Then again the venerable Adalbero is asked by the anxious voice of many To take up the widowed see. But he, shuddering at the mockeries of doubtful fortune, As one who had twice been despoiled of just honour, Gave the wishes of the petitioners, made void, to the swift winds. It greatly pleases him to spend the remaining time In ethereal services, in the holy buildings which he raised for the Brethren, Associated in the harmonious covenant of an innocent life.

With these Waltram agrees, schismatic bishop, as we have said, of Naumburg, from whom our Calles narrates in the Ecclesiastical Annals of Germany that Adalbero, having once been invited by king Henry by a friendly embassy to the custody of his flock, rejected the condition offered. But without any doubt that condition was added to the invitation, that he should go over from the party of the Apostolic See to the schismatic one, which he rightly hated worse than a dog and a snake, as anyone will gather from what has been set down. For which reason I think that he refused to return to his see not so much from desire of blessed leisure among the people of Lambach as led by religion. This itself is clear also from his own letter given in the year 1089 and inserted in the Life to be published, which begins thus: To Altmann… Adalbero, by the grace of God set over the church of Würzburg, although now unjustly cast out by the hand of the violent. But how could he himself write thus in the year 1089 if already from the year 1086, his religion safe, a free return to his see had lain open to him?

[101] The Prelate, constant in faith, went on, therefore, to stay among his people of Lambach, In the year 1090, on the 6th day of October among whom he both ended his life and was buried. The few things which we know were done by him meanwhile we have related above; and we have shown that among these was the dedication of the church of Lambach, after the narration of which solemnity the biographer, hastening to the Blessed's death, subjoins: Then in the second year the blessed prelate Adalbero passed to the Lord. The Poet expressed more clearly the year, month and day of his death in these two verses:

On the sixth of October, when the world redeemed by the divine Offspring Was rolling a thousand years and ten times nine.

According to the poet, then, he died in the year 1090, on the 6th day of October. Concerning the time of death some ancient chronologers of better mark agree, some more explicitly than others, among whom Conrad of Ursperg says in his Chronicle at the same year: Adelbero of Würzburg, long since driven from his see, dies in Bavaria, and is buried there in his monastery of Lambach. There had gone before him both others and a writer contemporary with the same Blessed, Bernold, priest of Constance, in the Appendix to Hermann the Lame, Urstisius's edition, at the same year, weaving for him a short but outstanding eulogy, which I transfer here.

[102] Adalbero, bishop of Würzburg of revered memory, he dies an exile at Lambach one of the older bishops, most strenuous in the cause of St. Peter (against) Guibert and his accomplices, after many dangers, persecutions and exiles, which he most willingly suffered for Christ, closed his last day in good confession on his estate which is called Laubac. I have already given above, at number 33, where I treated of the beginning of his episcopate, the passage of the Annalist in which the same year, month and day are assigned, and other chronological notes so accurate are added that nothing more certain could be desired. Not to do what has been done, consult what was said there. With all these the biographer will also agree excellently, saying in the words given at number 101 that he died in the second year after the church of Lambach was dedicated, if we read with Pez that this dedication was celebrated on the XVIII day before the Kalends of October of the year 1089; otherwise, if with abbot John, in the year 1088. For as on the 6th day of October of the year 1090 only the second year was running from the XVIII day before the Kalends of October, that is, from the 14th day of September of the year 1089, so on the same 6th day of October of the year 1090 the third year was running from the said 14th day of September of the year 1088. It will be helpful to have noted these things, that hence too the things may be solidly confirmed which I discussed above about the dedication of the church of Lambach being fixed to the year 1089.

[103] For the rest, the biographer also agrees about the day of death, in the forty-sixth year of his episcopate, asserting in the Little Book of Miracles, in my numbering number 57, that the anniversary day of the Blessed himself was accustomed to be observed among the people of Lambach on the octave day of the Angels, which is celebrated on the 6th day of October. Finally the more recent Catalogue of the bishops of Würzburg, already often cited by me, also agrees, which closes his eulogy with these words: Restored again (to his episcopate) and again cast out, he withdrew into the monastery of Leimbach, and there, after XLV years spent in the episcopate with varying fortune, died with the fame of sanctity in the year MXC, on the 6th day of October, brought into the tomb of his forebears in the said monastery. The anonymous monk of Erfurt, in the Additions to Lambert of Hersfeld, also attributes to him forty-five years spent in the episcopate, among which are to be numbered those which he spent in exile, and meanwhile had substitutes, Meginhard and Emehard. Receive his words: Adelbero, bishop of Würzburg, died. And he lived in the episcopate XLV years, III months. But most accurately of all the Saxon Annalist marked the time of his episcopate, whose words I recited at number 33, and with whom the Baluze Chronicle of Würzburg in Eckhart, in the History of East Francia, volume 1, page 815, plainly agrees.

[104] heavy with age and merits, In this there is likewise read at the same year 1090: The lord Adelbero, XX bishop of the sacrosanct church of Würzburg after blessed Burchard, appointed on the III day before the Kalends of July, lived in the episcopate XLV years, III months, VII days. He died on the II day before the Nones of October. Make the computation, if you please; you will find it most exact, as I have already said in the place just cited. From what has been said gather that Adalbero, who, as I have already observed elsewhere, is nowhere read to have come to the episcopate very young, which he held forty-five years and three months, was about eighty years old, and perhaps even a little more, when he died. Certainly that he died at a great age is indicated by Bernold of Constance and by our poet, by the first of whom he is called one of the older bishops, by the other he is asserted to have died weary and slow with the years of age. The praises of the great Man I have already reviewed from old writers through the course of this Commentary, among whom even Waltram, the schismatic bishop of Naumburg, who hated him most bitterly, even against his will celebrated his faith and unconquered constancy while he was trying to speak evil of him; and moreover, as Sigismund Calles testifies, confessed in another place that he was more illustrious than the other bishops of his (Catholic) party both in nobility and in knowledge, and at the same time in religion and in age, as one who had already passed the fortieth year of his ordination.

[105] and, buried there, he is illustrious for miracles. He was buried in his church of Lambach, in the monument of his family, which place he had chosen for himself, both that in the monastery founded by himself, as he had once promised as a youth, he might await the last resurrection of the flesh; and that he might fulfil the omen which he had taken from the gem that slipped from his episcopal ring while he was consecrating the same church, saying, turned to the people: This is my rest for ever and ever: here will I dwell, because I have chosen it; as is read in the Life to be reprinted, number 31. That miracles were not lacking at his tomb the poet is authority, closing the metrical Life thus:

Nor are rewards lacking here to his merits, for with miracles The monuments shine, attesting a faith not doubtful, And, consulted, return to the sick the health they desire.

What these miracles were, however, he does not explain; perhaps, however, he indicated here no others than those which we shall recite from the anonymous biographer of the same Blessed Adalbero; but he, passing over the older ones, reviewed only those which he had learned happened in his own time, towards the end of the 12th century and when the 13th had begun.

[106] Hieronymus Pez, in volume 2 of the Writers of Austrian affairs, Epitaphs on him found in a codex of Lambach after the metrical Life, and the Rhythm, Antiphon and Prayer, concerning which consult §1 of this Commentary, published three metrical epitaphs of Blessed Adalbero from a manuscript codex of Lambach, which, however, whether they were ever inscribed on his tomb or publicly hung up, he does not declare; which does not appear probable to me either. But, such as they are, receive them. The first runs thus:

Behold the elect father Adalbero, covered with dust, Lives in this tomb by the heap of his virtues. He is to be said to live, nor will he be held under death, To whom, while he lived, to live was Christ. O what a Pastor! O pontifical glory! O light of the Church, gem, ornament of his country! Rejoice, Würzburg, applaud so great a Prelate; It suffices us to celebrate his pious obsequies. On the ninth of October the awaited crown is given, While the great way carried him over before God.

In the penultimate verse there is a manifest chronological error: for no one of the ancient or even the more recent writers wrote that Blessed Adalbero died on the 9th day of October, but all on the day before, or the II day before, the Nones, that is, the 6th day of October. If it was inconvenient to the author of the epitaph to express the true day of his death in his verse, it would have been better to omit it than to mark a false one.

[107] The second, which follows in the same place, is even more faulty. likewise faulty. Here it is:

Here lies in the tomb the body of blessed Adalbero, Our Founder, and Prelate of Würzburg, Who shone with many signs, and died when a thousand years Had passed and tens had been completed.

At the last little verse the editor Pez observes this: The word DENIS tens is struck through in the manuscript, and above it here the number 19 is read. But even so the year of death is expressed faultily, which, that it might be fitted to some sort of verse, should rather have been indicated thus:

He died when a thousand had passed, and tens nine times.

For it is established from what has been said that the blessed Bishop died not in the year 1091 but in 1090. The third, finally, in the same place is of this kind:

Whoever you are, pilgrim, who make your way to these our buildings, And wishing perhaps to know this my tomb: I am the count of Lambach, whose name was once Adalbero, And I was the renowned prelate of Würzburg. Henry, Caesar of the Franks, drove me from the city *, When I had followed the supreme Pontiff. Hence I was compelled to go into the borders of my fatherland, And I founded this sacred monastery on the hill. Which, I pray, if you can, endow with a small gift; That God Himself may give you the starry pole.

Read quam*.

* That is, from Würzburg.

LIFE,

By an anonymous monk of Lambach of the beginning of the 13th century,

From the edition of Hieronymus Pez, volume 2 of the Writers of Austrian Affairs.

Adalbero, bishop of Würzburg and confessor, at Lambach in Upper Austria. (B.) BHL Number: 0030

By an anonymous author.

PROLOGUE.

Many deeds of the Elect of God Among his other rudiments the Apostle says: "Christ yesterday and today, and the same for ever and ever ^a." And John: "Who was, and who is, and who is to come." By these three members of distinction we understand three times, past, present and future, through which the world has partly been unrolled, is being unrolled, and will be unrolled. For in past time, after the glorification of the patriarchs and prophets, before the Law and under the Law, Christ called and justified the Apostles, crowned the martyrs empurpled with blood, beatified in eternal glory the confessors, hermits, anchorites, who crucified their flesh with its vices and concupiscences, took up the virgins by a happy consummation and rewarded them with the penny of life. But today, that is, in the present time, up to the last elect one, who is to be born at the end of the world, He does not cease daily to call whom He will, to justify whom He will, to beatify whom He will, to make illustrious with signs whom He will, that the ruins may be restored and the walls of Jerusalem be built, until the number of the elect to be placed in heavenly happiness be filled, which number is known to God alone, of which John says: "I saw a great multitude which no one could number ^b": and He Himself says: "I have left Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee before Baal ^c." A finite for an infinite ^d. So, so does the divine power play in human affairs. The world is set in wickedness. And in an unclean world no clean man can live, except him whom God has chosen out of the world and appointed that he should go and bring forth fruit: yet God is able now no less than then, sanctifies whom He will no less now than then, where He will and when He will.

[2] many have written, others profane and little useful things, Most of the Deeds, Lives and Passions of the Saints are found in the Pontifical Deeds, most in the Ecclesiastical Histories, most in authentic Chronicles. The things omitted there, the flowers ^e and lamps of the churches, who in their time shone in the Church like the sun and moon, like the splendour of the firmament, depicted in illustrious style, and handed down to posterity to be retained in memory and eternally. The Philosophers, that they might study human wisdom more safely and more freely, certain of them ^f left all their possessions; they transferred all their effort, all their desire, to learning, and afterwards to teaching, wisdom; they searched out the courses, ways and powers of the stars; they thoroughly learned by skilful investigation the spaces of the lands and the other things unknown to men.

So the gentile poets strove to parade ^g their fictions In grand-sounding measures, and with tragic bellowing;

and by the rite of a master ^h to shadow forth and enclose in beautiful figures of riddles their beautiful lies, of little profit to posterity. Others laboriously wrote down the deeds of kings and leaders, and sad wars, and the other vanities and allurements of the world, and accordingly merited nothing else than human praises, but at the last assigned their hopes to fables, their souls to tombs.

[3] We praise the ancients, but we use our own years. [ours hands down the foundation of the monastery of Lambach and the deeds and miracles of Blessed Adalbero.] Why do wretched Christians, weighed down by the foul and inert sleep of sloth and negligence, negligently strive to bury in eternal oblivion the salvation which God works in the midst of the earth beside them, nay in them, and the graces of healings which daily they both see and experience, which He Himself wills to shine forth to the whole world to the praise of His name? But since generation passes away and generation comes, lest, in the rolling courses of the years, the slothful negligence which easily creeps upon men of this time should cause posterity that is to come afterwards to consign to oblivion the origin of the monastery of Lambach, its founders, to whom we owe the highest and eternal reverence, and moreover the signs and miracles and powers of healings with which the mercy of the Lord, of which the earth is full, has illustrated the tomb of our blessed father, bishop Adelbero, we have thought it worthy to commend them to posterity ⁱ, lest we be punished with that terrible saying: "He who is ignorant shall be ignored ^k." And the Prophet: "Woe is me, because I held my peace ^l." For he is worthily turned into the memory of men who has passed to the joy of the angels.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER I.

The illustrious parents and blood-relations of Blessed Adalbero: his pious boyhood: his instruction first at Würzburg, then at Paris: his return to Würzburg: his elevation to the episcopate: his retreat to Lambach.

Adalbero, born of Arnold and Regila, had a brother Gotfrid, a warlike man, So then ^a, as the truthful assertion of the old men hands down, there was a certain count, Arnold ^b by name, who inhabited a very renowned castle in the place of Lambach ^c, as the situation itself teaches curious inspectors, beside the river whose name is the Traun ^d; where tolls and tributes were paid by those passing according to the ancient law, which also he had left to be rendered to his posterity dwelling there by the lawful right by which they had been transmitted to him, although now they have been discontinued through negligence. He is reported to have received several sons by Regila his noble wife, sprung from East Francia, of whom it is not now to be spoken one by one; yet a reason not to be despised compels us to pursue a few for the sake of the course of the narration. He had a son named Gotfrid, a margrave in dignity, a strenuous and brave man, a man most apt for warlike affairs, fortunate in frequent successes of battles, who, as befitted the grace of youth,

Rejoices in horses, dogs ^e, and the grass of the sunny plain,

[5] a sister married to count Ekkebert; To whose dominion, with the surrounding revenues, was subject Putina, a renowned and famous city, which, as it were the metropolis and mother of cities, was anciently established towards Pannonia on the southern side to ward off the hostile incursions and devastations of the Pannonians ^f. He had also a daughter ^g of great nobility and freeborn rank according to the dignity of the world, who married count Ekkebert, whose castle, called Niwenburc ^h, is situated on the bank of the river Inn. To her, after the happy departure of her brothers, the city of Putina with all that pertained to it fell as her dowry portion.

[6] he himself too, as a boy devoted to piety, Blessed Regila, then, prevented with the blessings of sweetness, conceived from blessings and bore a son called Adalbero ⁱ, a fruit blessed by the Lord, in whom all her tribe and kindred were to be blessed, as one who had descended from a holy stock. For from a good root every good thing is born. Soon in a wonderful manner the wise Son began to be the glory of his father, ascending step by step from virtue to virtue, despising the blandishments of the world, Christ being his ruler, Christ his leader, so passing through temporal goods as not to lose the eternal. While not yet having passed through the years of infancy, breathing with the fire of the Holy Spirit, he did not cease to pant for the kingdom of perpetual life, making little of all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, passing the defilements of the devil by an unpolluted path, execrating military oaths, consigning himself wholly to the judgement and will of the Lord.

[7] And his pious father, considering the pious and irrevocable constancy in his Son, and fearing to incur the offence of God if he should draw him back from his good purpose, [and, dedicated to God by his father, instructed first at Würzburg, then at Paris, he returns to Würzburg,] counsel having been communicated with his elders and wiser men, brought his Son, shining in the flower of his first age, all the way to Würzburg, and, according to what of the canons and decrees

the decrees teach, offered him to God and to the Saints resting there to serve as a soldier for ever; a patrimony being added, in which he abounded in Franconia, under the pontiff who then presided over the see of Würzburg ^k, with the testimony of clergy and people. Set to the rudiments of letters, he was in a short time so abundantly imbued with the spirit of wisdom and understanding that all wondered at his learning and his answers. But when he entered the years of adolescence, with the counsel, connivance and authority of his pontiff, some companions having been taken, he came to Paris; where then, as also now, the skill of all the arts flourished; and there, having been abundantly refreshed with the sweet fruits of theory, he returned to Würzburg full of wisdom.

[8] There was ^l as his companion and fellow of the journey Gebhard, a venerable man, having as companions SS. Gebhard of Salzburg a man beloved of God and men, who, elected and ordained archbishop of Salzburg ^m by the providence of God, founded among the mountains, whence also he gave it the name Admunt ⁿ, a monastery in honour of blessed Blasius, bishop and martyr, whom he chose for himself by special prerogative and adopted as patron by continual prayer; he also filled it with sufficient Brethren, to whom he administered necessaries so largely that by earthly riches they might obtain heavenly ones through the largesse of alms: where moreover, happily falling asleep in the dust of death, he awaits the last trumpet for rising again ^o. For regular discipline and the ancient decrees of the old fathers are so continually exercised and observed there that the Brethren, toiling in the praises of God, are an example of virtue and salvation to all placed anywhere on earth, so that it may deservedly be said of them: "Let them see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven [p]."

[9] He had [q] besides another companion, namely Altmann, and Altmann of Passau, afterwards bishops. a man endowed with every honesty of manners, most worthy of every praise, enriched with virtues and signs, who, raised by the nod of God to the pontifical chair of the church of Passau, led a life as glorious as it was religious, and his death was no less precious in the sight of the Lord [r]. He established a monastery on the mount of Gotewic in Austria under the honour of the Mother of God and perpetual Virgin Mary [s], whom he chose for himself above the other Saints as his only refuge and patroness, most full of clemency and mercy. There also, at his own request, passing to the Lord, he is buried [t], whose sepulchre is made illustrious by frequent signs [u].

[10] But some days or years having elapsed, the prelate [x] of Würzburg, departing from this life, passed to the Lord. created bishop of Würzburg, He ordaining, therefore, whose providence is not deceived in its disposition, the bishops of the neighbouring prelacies, the prelates of the whole of that prelacy, the princes and chief men, the patrons of the regions, the tribunes and nobles, the clergy and people of both sexes and every age, from the least to the greatest, with one mouth, with unanimous consent, with equal wish, cry out and shout that Adalbero would be most worthy of the episcopate. Why say more? He is canonically elected by all; elected, he is established by Ecclesiastical rights [y]; established, he is consecrated at the opportune time [z]; consecrated, he conducted himself very well and wisely in the episcopate, administered its care most becomingly in the things which are towards God and men, led an irreproachable life, and was the father of orphans, the consoler and refresher of the poor, the judge of widows, the defender of wards.

[11] merciful and just, he governed excellently. For he so loved justice and hated iniquity, both in spiritual and in secular judgements, that you would think the Psalmist had said of him: "Mercy and judgement I will sing to You [aa];" so that you may refer mercy to spiritual things, judgement to secular ones. For of the former it is said: "Be merciful, as your Father also is merciful [bb]": but of the latter: "Judge justly, O sons of men [cc]." Further, the bishop of Würzburg bears two insignia of dignities; namely of the prelacy and of the dukedom, as is said in these little verses:

The stole and the sword mark the Pontiff and likewise the duke: The see of Würzburg holds these two by its own right [dd].

So exalted by the right hand of God, he administered the episcopal charge strenuously and gloriously up to the times of the schism which then arose between the emperor Henry and his son [ee]. But of these things afterwards. Now we must say briefly how the institution of Lambach began.

[12] The author praises the times of the early Church, In [ff] the primitive Church, when, after the appearing of the kindness and humanity of our Saviour God, the golden and silver ages had shone forth, very many of the faithful, followers of good works, considering this transitory and perishable life, of which it is said: "Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity [gg]," panting with all their desires for the things that abide and are eternal, made Christ the heir of their patrimonies. For they built churches at their own expense, founded monasteries, conferred their goods, revenues and possessions on those serving Christ, for which they merited eternal memorials and glories, and moreover obtained heavenly treasures and riches. But now, since Astraea, last of those above, has left the earth, and the iron ages have grown too strong, by growing strong they have prevailed almost everywhere.

[13] he deplores his own. Avarice reigns; the avaricious reign and hold dominion; the rich are in want, and hunger for plunder, not justice, whose minds are, as it were,

A hook, avaricious, devouring, and a net more capacious than the world, Though they take all things, they gape insatiably.

They destroy the houses built in honour of God, and strive daily to demolish them; they invade, seize and diminish the possessions and tithes of those serving God, in hostile fashion, violently, incessantly, fearing neither God nor man. Hence it is that wherever we see churches destroyed, we behold infinite ruins; and, where formerly glorious monasteries had shone, we now behold churchlets of whatever sort, and plebeian conventicles in place of Religious communities serving God in sanctity and justice.

[14] The Blessed's father founds a monastery of clerics at Lambach. Count Arnold, therefore, of whom we made mention at the beginning of the narration, for whose sake also we have touched on these things beforehand, desiring and panting to obtain heavenly things for earthly, great for small, everlasting for perishable, bereaved of his wife, deprived of his sons and heirs (except Adalbero, bishop of Würzburg), his castle situated in the place of Lambach having been destroyed, built a monastery in honour of the blessed Mother of God Mary, so that where there had been a house of exaction, there might be made a house of prayer, and where formerly unlawful commerce had been, the mysteries of Christ might thenceforth be frequented. He gathered moreover (as we have learned from the relations of the elders) XII clerics, not living in the monastery by monastic law, but dwelling in separate huts round about in the vicinity of the cloister, necessaries being assigned to them as each had need. For at fixed and appointed times or hours they came to the monastery to perform the Divine offices; which being performed, they returned to their own, shut in their little cells [hh].

[15] In those days the instigator of wickedness and of all evils, The Roman empire being disturbed the head and beginning of every sin and of quarrels, the enemy of peace and concord, the sower and lover of discord, grieving and envying that the grace of peace and quiet had then smiled upon the Roman empire and the Christians, stirred up strifes and dissensions and hatreds between the emperor Henry, who presided over the Roman commonwealth, and Henry his son, to such an extent that he aimed in every way at his father's kingdom, and attacked him with all efforts, now secretly, now openly, and, forgetful of filial reverence, exasperated his mind daily. Then indeed by pestilent art he draws to himself his father's secretaries, chamberlains, counsellors, dukes, tetrarchs, palatines, and the princes of the whole kingdom: and some indeed he softens with blandishments, others he assails with threats and terrors, these with wicked suggestions, those with words composed for entreating and with gifts; to these he promises and offers an abundance of estates and benefices, to those the eminence of cities and castles, and, what the hearts of mortals thirst for more, an infinite money of treasures. For

Treasure plays the harp with sweet sound in the ear of the powerful; All music knows not so sweet a sound.

[16] For what? There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, the state of affairs, nor hidden that shall not be known. Then the plots come forth into the light; the kingdom is invaded, laid waste, despoiled: the elder father is sharply, inhumanly, cruelly worn down by his son with calumnies. You would see fulfilled there what the Truth had once foretold: "For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and children shall rise up against their parents [ii]." And that: "Every kingdom divided against itself shall be made desolate." So the emperor is deprived of his imperial majesty and dignity; so the son, not revering the grey hairs of long time, plucked his father bare with arms and all his troops. Why say more?

He cruelly drove out his father with arms brought against him [kk].

[17] But the Apostolic lord, who then held the Pontificate of the Roman summit, the other bishops fleeing elsewhere, having heard of the wicked schism and crime, which could stain and disturb not only the Roman empire but also the whole Christian world, counsel having been taken, excommunicated those resisting the emperor, consenting and favouring the son wickedly, and all his accomplices, as workers of iniquity, sentence having been pronounced upon them [ll]. Then all Ecclesiastical loftiness, the dignity of all grades, desiring to serve the Lord in sanctity and justice, judging it an impiety to be subjected to a royal, nay an iniquitous, clientage, either took to flight, or offered themselves of their own accord to various injuries, or, gathered in caves and small huts of the woods, lay hidden after the manner of beasts; as once blessed Blasius and St. Sylvester did [mm]. For they had the precept of the Lord: "When they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another [nn]."

[18] The savagery of persecution, therefore, raging [oo], bishop Adelbero, Adalbero betakes himself to the people of Lambach. since he neither could nor would go against the wicked power, shuddering also to communicate with the excommunicated; but fearing more to incur the offence of God and of the Pope if he should give his hands to parricides and homicides, counsel having been gathered with his own, chose "to be an abject in the house of the Lord rather than to dwell in the tabernacles of sinners [pp]." Having at length despised the dignity of the Pontificate, he returned into Bavaria to the land of his fathers; and finding his father's inheritance almost disinherited, and being suddenly instructed by the spirit of counsel, he transferred himself with all his patrimony to the monastery of blessed Mary, to the place most beloved by him, which cherished in a happy bosom the dear ashes of his kinsfolk, namely of his grandfather, father and mother, brothers, and other blood-relations, and where (as is seen today) he chose his rest for ever and ever.

ANNOTATIONS.

p. Matthew chap. 5, verse 16.

q. In both editions these words are here again prefixed by way of a title: Of Altmann, bishop of Passau (Pataviense or Pataviensi).

r. The deeds of this blessed prelate also were given by our predecessors at the 8th day of August.

s. Go to the Acts of Bl. Altmann at the place just indicated.

t. Return to the Annotations here, letter o.

u. In Pez's edition the following words are prefixed to what follows: Of the death of the bishop of Würzburg, and the substitution of Bishop Adalbero; but in the edition of Abbot John these: Of the death of Bruno, bishop of Würzburg, and the substitution of the divine Adalbero.

x. In Abbot John we read: Bruno the prelate, etc., who was in fact then bishop of Würzburg, and died in the year 1045, as may be seen in our Work at the 17th day of May, where that same Saint was treated.

y. In Abbot John: Ritibus.

z. That these things happened in the year 1045 I proved in the Preliminary Commentary, num. 32 and following.

aa. Psalm 100, verse 1.

bb. Luke chap. 6, verse 36.

cc. Psalm 57, verse 2: Judge rightly, ye sons of men.

dd. Namely, because the bishop of Würzburg is prince and duke of Franconia.

ee. He here indicates the war between Henry IV, king of Germany, and his son Henry V, whom he had named as his successor: but how shamefully the biographer has erred here, I have observed in § V of the Preliminary Commentary.

ff. In the edition of Abbot John, not in Pez's, a title is here again prefixed: Of the conversion of the monastery of Lambach into a college of secular clerics.

gg. Ecclesiastes chap. 1, verse 2.

hh. Again in the edition of Abbot John there follows here the title: Of the schism that arose between the emperor Henry and his son, likewise Henry. Pez has almost the same. See the Annotations at letter ee. For which reason I shall annotate nothing, or little, on what follows, as being wholly irrelevant to the matter.

ii. Matthew chap. 10, verse 21.

kk. Henry IV was at last forced in the year 1105 to hand over the imperial insignia of the empire to his son Henry V, and died in the following year. Trifles, therefore, and fables are what the biographer adds about the causes of the exile of Bl. Adalbero, who had already died in the year 1090. It is surprising that these things remained unnoticed by Mabillon when he presented this very Life of Bl. Adalbero in the Acts of the Saints of his Order. The true cause of that blessed bishop's exile I have set out in the Preliminary Commentary, §§ V and VI, which consult.

ll. See what was just said at the preceding letter.

mm. Fourfold Acts of St. Blaise, bishop, and of his companions, the martyrs of Sebaste, have been given in our Work at the 3rd day of February, which consult on these matters if you please. St. Silvester the Pope will be treated at the 31st day of December.

nn. Matthew chap. 10, verse 23: But when they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another.

oo. Abbot John prefixes this title: Of the return of Bishop Adalbero from Franconia into the region of Noricum, and of the change of the secular clerics into the Order of St. Benedict: but Pez only this: Of the passage of Bishop Adalbero from Franconia into the region of Noricum. The blessed prelate did in fact withdraw from Franconia to Lambach, which, as I said, is now of the dominion of Austria, but was then of Bavaria; he did not, however, withdraw there under Henry V in the twelfth century, by which time he had long since ceased to live, but under Henry IV about the year 1077, as I have shown in the Preliminary Commentary, § VI.

pp. Psalm 83, verse XI.

CHAPTER II.

The foundation and dedication of the monastery of Lambach by Bl. Adalbero, Benedictines being substituted in place of the clerics: the death and burial of the same Blessed.

The clerics of Lambach founded by his father Seeing, moreover, that his father's ancient institution in the place of Lambach ^a could not stand; that the Offices, both of night and of day, were celebrated negligently and not at their proper time; that the clerics placed there could not safely go out from their little dwellings because of the terrors of the night, since very often they were kept back and shut in by storms of rain and flashes of lightning, and in the wintry season by the depths of the snows, the savagery of abominable beasts, the dangers of robbers, and other kinds of losses which it would be long to recount; he maintained, moreover, that it would be more fitting for a cenobite to come forth to perform the divine offices from the privacy of the cloister, not from the countryside, without bodily dangers and human fears. On this matter he consulted Altmann, bishop of Passau ^b, his particular and intimate friend above all others, in whose diocese that place is situated and to whom its spiritual affairs also pertained; and he opened to that blessed man what he had conceived in his mind concerning the transformation of the clerics. He approved and commended it, saying that this intention had been divinely inspired in him, and that this good thought could proceed into act, provided it were strengthened on every side by the authority of the Apostolic See. Then envoys suitable and honourable for that business were chosen and sent to Rome; and they, after setting out the cause of their journey, solemnly brought back the goodwill, the consent and the authority of Pope Gregory ^c.

[20] He substitutes monks under Abbot Ekkebert, and afterwards Becemann. And when a suitable day had come, the blessed prelate Adelbero, making use of the solemn counsel of spiritual men, removed the clerics and instituted the monastic life ^d in the monastery of Lambach; and whoever of the order of clerics wished to pass over to this way of life were not prevented, and those unwilling were not compelled; their necessities, however, were provided for them as long as they lived. He set over the brethren dwelling there Abbot Ekkebert, a venerable man, pleasing to God by the uprightness of his conduct, who afterwards, when occasion offered, obtained by most humble entreaties that he himself should be removed ^e, and that one of his brethren, Becemann ^f, should be put in his place. He, having attained the dignity of abbot, living soberly, justly and piously, administered its charge as long as it pleased the Lord, and passed by a blessed end from his sojourn in this world to the Author of life. But lest anyone should suppose that we, lest anyone should suppose that we are devising a new fable, not following the rule of truth, we have thought it worthy to strengthen the theme of our little narrative with the authority of the present Privilege ^g.

[21] The instrument is recited "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. I, Adalbero, by the grace of God bishop of Würzburg, wish it to be known to all the faithful of Christ how my parents, for the salvation of their souls, instituted a congregation of clerics in the place called Lambach; and how I, having become their heir, by leave of the lord Apostolic, Pope Gregory (who is also Hildebrand ^h), substituted in its place in the same place a congregation of monks, with the consent and counsel of the diocesan bishop of Passau, namely Altmann ⁱ. And since the common life of monks needs more than a community of secular clerics, for their support I have added from our own treasury four forests, namely, of which two are situated beside the Traun ^k on the northern side, one below the market-town of Wels ^l, the other above. The forester ^m of the lower wood was Engizo. And on the other side of the same river Traun, towards the south, two forests: one at Buchenloch ⁿ, whose forester was Bero; the other at Etterwalt ^o, whose forester was Ello. In these forests, therefore, the abbot alone, without any contradiction, has at his pleasure the power of clearing, of building houses, of planting, of making mills, of hunting, and besides of whatever could be devised thence for the benefit of the brethren.

[22] I have added moreover as much of the estate as came to me from my paternal uncle Arbo at Zuisil [p], of this foundation, and the neighbouring market at Wels; also two markets in Franconia [q], one at Onoldesbach [r], the other at Geroldshoven [s], with all the profit pertaining to them, and the parish which is called Tutensteten [t]. All these I have committed to Ekkebert, the venerable abbot, by the same right by which I held them, and I have caused him to have charge of the monastery with full power. The witnesses of this matter are Count Eberhard, Marchward, Gerung, Ebo, Henry, Zeizolf, Arbo, Porn, Nending, Archo, Herrand, Penno, Wermut, Arbo, Erchenbert, Adalram, Altmann, Adelbert. Done at Regensburg in the year MLVI, in the VIIII indiction, and in the XII year of the episcopate of the lord Adalbero [u]. Then [x], after some time, compelled by the pious petitions of Abbot Ekkebert, I released him from this burden laid upon him; but he chose from among his own one brother, by name Becemann, for this burden of the abbacy [y]. Him also I brought there, going with him, and committed to him the same charge as had been committed to his predecessor.

[23] And when this same monastery, restored, confirmed thereafter twice by the same was dedicated by the aforesaid Bishop Altmann [z] and likewise by me in the year of the Lord's Incarnation MLXXXVIIII [aa], in the XII indiction, epact VI, concurrent VI, on the XVIII day before the Kalends of October, in the XXV year of the ordination of the lord Altmann, and in my XLV, I renewed a second and a third time these things which I had done before, delivering then at the altar of St. Mary and St. Kilian one stable-farm [bb] as endowment, together with all the things which had been delivered to it before by me or by my parents. These things we both bishops confirmed with the episcopal ban [cc] and with an anathema of this kind: that if anyone presume to destroy this donation, he be bound hand and foot and cast into the outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

[24] How the solemnity of the Dedication was celebrated will become clear in a few words in what follows. The letter by which Bl. Adalboro Bl. Altmann The blessed prelate Adalbero, in order to bring to effect what he had conceived in his pious mind, sent a letter to Bishop Altmann, his intimate friend, containing these things: "To Altmann, holy and venerable father, worthy prelate of the holy church of Passau, Adalbero, by the grace of God set over the church of Würzburg, although now unjustly cast out by the hand of violent men: may you taste the Fountain of life, and come to drink of it. Since, as the Prophet witnesses, we are in the hand of the Lord as clay in the hand of the potter [dd], and our Potter the clay into whatever

he makes it pass, form and image, yet defective (for we and ours are owed to death, and everything that is born tends to its end; and the world, now grey, shows its enfeeblement by declining to worse things, as [ee] it slips away failing day by day, and the ruin of collapse follows upon the slipping of failure), I greatly fear lest it swallow us up in its waves, unforeseeing and unprepared.

[25] to dedicate the church of Lambach But since, by God's dispensation, I have been left sole heir of my father's inheritance, as it were by postliminium, I have meditated by night with my heart, in very great fear, lest, on account of the various losses of goods which will hereafter come upon the whole world, and on account of the sloth of men to come after, the consecration of the monastery of Lambach be put off for a long time, and, being put off, be left undone (for I know, my father, that you are always ready for just supplications, and look favourably on pious vows); therefore, animated and strengthened by great confidence, I ask, I beg, that out of regard for the fear of God, through the diligence of your holiness, the monastery which the pious solicitude of my fathers founded may, being consecrated [ff], be turned into an oratory, where the divine aid may be invoked continually, and God be praised in His Saints.

[26] he invited; Although it would be lawful for this to be done by me, it is not expedient; the decrees also forbid putting the sickle into another's harvest, lest usurpation and indiscreet invasion of another's property, and the daring of rashness, should beget offence, hatred or schism in the fellowship of brotherly unity. For I think I shall be happy if so sacred a business is accomplished with me acting, me bringing it about, me marthante [gg]; you happier, if through your blessed work He whom the heavens cannot contain should choose for Himself a place of habitation with His Saints in this house. May He keep you as the apple of the eye, and protect you under the shadow of His wings. Amen."

[27] and the letter returned to this by Bl. Altmann, The pious bishop, having seen the letter, rejoiced, and sent to his beloved friend a letter full of love, containing this tenor: "To Adalbero, blessed and venerable father, prelate in all things worthy of the holy church of Würzburg, Altmann, by the grace of God pontiff of the see of Passau [hh], though unworthy: not to fail in tribulation, to stand in faith, to act manfully. Not to linger over the base and common round of things: having seen the letter of your holiness, I was roused as though from a heavy sleep, and so cheered that the grief which had long girded my heart has been greatly softened. By the threefold cord which philosophy, with the hands of the highest discretion and providence, has woven of three strands, namely faith, hope and charity, it has so bound us together, associated us, united us, wisely, strongly, wholesomely, that it may be broken by no impulse of error, even if it be assailed by any whirlwind of dangers and perils.

[28] in which he here assents to his prayers, This, I think, is the cord of which a certain Wise man said: A threefold cord is not easily broken [ii]. But when he says Not easily, he intimates that his cord too can in some way be broken. Our cord, however, will never be broken, provided the fervour of charity does not grow cold or lukewarm. What more? I am ready to go with you into prison and to death; and how shall I be able to deny you what is justly asked, I who, denying nothing, am and shall always be ready to honour your countenance? I indeed, as you ask, am coming to celebrate with you the solemnity of the dedication; but I fear lest, while we strive to serve the advantages of many, it be turned into the contrary, and this by common wings, which by a certain natural savagery of mind contrive to inflict the losses of plundering even upon the innocent, while they think to dance over our presence [kk]. For these and other furies of Charybdis which may arise, A broad field lies open to our cares.

[29] But it will be for Him to soften these, to serve whom is to reign. and most lovingly praised and consoled him. Your prayer [ll] is a command. Moreover [mm], you have acted prudently in that you have honoured my face, and have adjudged to me my diocesan law to be carried out. Yet if you had undertaken that divine office, you would have offended little against me; for I feel with you, I am and shall be with you, and all your deeds are forthwith white through me. But since according to the Lord's precept we are bidden to condescend to the afflicted, to those placed in tribulation, to become companions [nn] of their sufferings, to console those who are tossed about, I admonish, suggest, persuade you not to faint under the discipline of the Lord, nor to be wearied while you are rebuked by Him; for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and as a father is well pleased in his son [oo]. He is nigh also to them that are of a troubled heart, and He will save the humble of spirit [pp]. Rejoice, my Father, and be glad, for God will give an end to these things also, and when you least believe it, The welcome hour will come upon you, which shall not be hoped for. May God, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, console us in all our tribulation. Amen [qq]."

[30] Accordingly, after a few intervals of days had passed, in the eighth month [rr], on the appointed day Altmann and Adalbero the church of Lambach, namely at the time when the Jews celebrated, and today celebrate, the feast of tabernacles [ss], the time at which all the produce of the whole year is gathered into one, whence that time is also called Autumn (for the season has poured out plenty from a full horn; want flees this season, in which the whole year makes merry), Bishop Altmann came to Lambach, as he had been summoned; and the prelate Albero, all festive and joyful, went to meet him, receiving him with praises, hymns and canticles; as though he had received an angel of God, so did he rejoice at his coming, and the rest of the day was spent in mutual and charitable conversation. And when the dawn of the next day began to shine, all things pertaining to the feast day had been prepared. And now both bishops proceed, at their proper time clothed in pontificals, now as it were deified, with the Holy Spirit leading the way.

[31] Bishop Altmann consecrates the greater and principal altar in honour of the blessed Mother of God, in which he here, by a wonderful chance, chooses his burial-place for himself, and of St. Kilian the martyr and his companions; and this out of the affection of a twofold devotion: both because the pious father Albero [tt] ruled the bishopric of Würzburg, and because he was a son of the same place [uu]. But the altar which holds the second place after the principal, the blessed prelate Albero consecrates in honour of St. John the Evangelist and of the other Saints whose relics are laid up there; and when the reliquary-bearer [xx], carrying the sacred little bones, was about to place them in the place of the confession, the gem of the pontifical ring slipped out and fell into the casket of the confession. The deacon, as though roused by a new wonder, stretched out his hand to take out the gem. But the bishop, looking kindly upon him, and [yy] understanding some divine presage in this matter, said: Leave it, my son, leave it; and turning to the clergy and the people standing round, he pointed out the place with his finger, saying: "This is my rest for ever and ever: here will I dwell [zz], for I have chosen it."

[32] with great solemnity The whole church of the surrounding region, therefore, had come together for the feast day of the Dedication, for the spectacle of the sacred rite, and there was on this day, by divine largess, a fourfold rejoicing. The penitents, guilty of whatever crime, rejoiced in the absolution and remission of their sins; the poor were glad at their refreshment; every age in common, having happily drunk the word of salvation and of saving doctrine from the mouth of both pontiffs, was filled with spiritual joy; gladdened, it was consoled by the visitation of the angels ascending and descending on Jacob's ladder, and, as though it beheld the Lord leaning upon the top of the ladder, it served Him in holiness and justice [aaa]. Moreover, those who after the Sacrament of Baptism were due, by the law of Christians, to be confirmed, were presented to the blessed bishops for confirmation; and now, the sign of victory having been placed on their foreheads with the unction of chrism, they were anointed as it were into kings, just as before in Baptism they had been anointed with holy oil into priests; that there might be fulfilled what Peter says of the faithful: "You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people [bbb]."

[33] they dedicate it in the year 1089. For when this unction has been celebrated, the sum of the whole Christian religion is confirmed in us, and the stability of faith, before new and raw, is consolidated. There is yet another cause of the Confirmation of the faithful, not to be despised: namely, that they may be found in the number of the hundred and forty thousand who in the Apocalypse, sealed on their foreheads by the angel, are set apart from the harm of the four angels to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea [ccc]. You might have seen fulfilled there what the prophet says: "Keep, O Juda, thy festivals, and pay thy vows to the Lord [ddd]." The poet too seems to applaud us, sporting in merriment: "Hail, festal day, and ever return the better." And so, the solemnity having been solemnly solemnized, all departed, the grace of God abiding there until the consummation of the world. These things were done in the year of the Lord's Incarnation MLXXXVIIII [eee], in the XII indiction, on the XVII day before the Kalends of October [fff].

[34] Adalbero dies in the second, and Altmann in the third year after. Then in the second year the blessed prelate Adalbero [ggg] passed to the Lord, and was buried in the same place which he had dedicated, which he had pointed out with his finger [hhh], sharing in peace the sepulchres of his fathers and forebears. Likewise in the third year [iii] Bishop Altmann fell asleep in the Lord, and was entombed on the mount of Göttweig, in the monastery which he had founded [kkk].

ANNOTATIONS.

p. At this word too Calles has this: Zwisila, Zwiselburg. See Wiselburg, of which he had said before: Wiselburg, formerly Zwisela and Zwiselburg … a castle on the river Erlauf in Lower Austria.

q. In Francia, namely Eastern Francia, or Franconia, from which Regila, the mother of Bl. Adalbero, originated.

r. Onoldium, otherwise Onspachium or Anspachium, called by the Germans Onolzbach, Ohnspach and Anspach, is a town of Germany with a castle in Franconia, and the capital of the margraviate of Onolzbach of the same name.

s. Geroldshofen is listed by Merian in the Topography of Franconia among the small towns of the bishopric of Würzburg.

t. This place is unknown to me under that name.

u. That all these chronological notes cohere most exactly both among themselves and with my chronology, I have already pointed out in § III of the Preliminary Commentary, and have thence proved that the names of Pope Gregory and of Altmann, bishop of Passau, were intruded into this charter of Bl. Adalbero by some interpolator.

x. Here begins the second part of the instrument, added to the former many years afterwards by the same blessed Founder.

y. In the Catalogue of the abbots of Lambach, in the words recited at letter f, Becemann is said to have been put in as abbot not by Ekkebert alone, but also at the request of the unanimous wish of the brethren.

z. Altmann is rightly named here, who was then already counting the twenty-fifth year of his episcopate; but from the same error which I noted above at letter i, the biographer, or someone else, wrongly added the word aforesaid.

aa. Abbot John reads here: In the year of the Lord's Incarnation MLXXXVIII. But that it should be read MLXXXVIIII, with Pez, I have proved in the Preliminary Commentary, § III, where I have also treated of the other chronological notes added.

bb. That is, a yard or place furnished with stables for feeding cattle, or an inn.

cc. That is, edict.

dd. Jeremiah chap. 18, verse 6: Behold, as clay is in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.

ee. More correctly here in Abbot John: Quoniam.

ff. In the same place, faultily: Consecratam.

gg. In the same place: Procurante.

hh. Bl. Altmann himself too had been driven from his see by the Henricians for the cause of the Church of God; but in the year 1082, by the favour of Leopold and Ottokar, margraves of Austria and Styria, he was restored to that part of his bishopric which extended eastward from the river Enns, while the other part was meanwhile occupied first by Hermann and then by Tyemo, schismatic intruders.

ii. Ecclesiastes chap. 4, verse 12.

kk. The sense of this obscure figurative phrase, which Pez asserts is read in the same way both in the Lambach autograph and in the edition of Abbot John, is this: I fear lest, while we wish to serve the advantage of many, our common enemies, namely the schismatics, turn our service to our loss, even while they falsely pretend to rejoice at our presence.

ll. Prex is an obsolete word, from which precis, etc. Prex, therefore, is put here for preces.

mm. Abbot John: Propterea.

nn. The same: socii.

oo. Proverbs chap. 3, verse 12.

pp. Psalm 33, verse 19.

qq. In Pez the following title is prefixed to what follows: How the dedication of the monastery of Lambach was celebrated by two bishops. In Abbot John, celebrata; the rest agrees.

rr. Read: seventh, whether the biographer wished here to indicate the Hebrew month, or the old month of the Romans, or the month of September, as he should, as will become plain from what is to be said.

ss. Pez observes that in the manuscript codex of Lambach it reads faultily Scenopheiæ; and in the edition of Abbot John Scenop Regiæ. Scenopegia, further, is a Greek word, in Latin the Feast of Tabernacles, which was to be celebrated by the Jews for seven days, from the 15th day of the seventh month, which corresponds to the lunation of our month of September.

tt. Abbot John: Adalbero; Pez, however, notes that in the Lambach codex it reads Albero, which we shall see below was also done sometimes in the Little Book of Miracles, whether of set purpose or from carelessness.

uu. Concerning SS. Kilian and his two companions, the apostles of Franconia, slain and venerated at Würzburg, consult our Acts at the 8th day of July. For the rest, the biographer here alleges the reason why Adalbero wished the principal altar of the church of Lambach to be dedicated also to SS. Kilian and his companions; namely, because in the church of Würzburg, in which they are venerated, he had both been educated as a quite young man and was its bishop.

xx. That is, a little box containing the sacred relics which are, according to custom, to be inserted into the altar.

yy. In the edition of Abbot John the following words are lacking: And understanding some divine presage in this matter.

zz. That is, Here shall I be buried, as was also done.

aaa. Read Genesis chap. 28.

bbb. 1 Epistle of Peter, chap. 2, verse 9.

ccc. Apocalypse chap. 7, verses 2 and 3.

ddd. Nahum chap. 1, verse 15: Keep, O Juda, thy festivals, and pay thy vows.

eee. In Abbot John it reads: MLXXXVIII; but I have shown above with Pez that it should be read, with the autograph, MLXXXVIIII.

fff. Above, the same solemnity was read as performed on the XVIII day before the Kalends of October. See what was said in the Preliminary Commentary, num. 50.

ggg. Namely in the year 1090, on the 6th day of October.

hhh. Return to num. 31 of this chapter. In this way too was fulfilled what Bl. Adalbero had foretold in his youth would come to pass, that he would found a monastery in which he was to be entombed. Go to the Preliminary Commentary, num. 27 and the following.

iii. Bl. Altmann died in the year 1091, on the 8th day of August; and therefore not in the third year after this dedication, but in the second, lacking a month and a few days to its completion, whether that dedication took place on the XVIII or the XVII or even the XVI day before the Kalends of October of the year 1089.

kkk. Thus was the prophecy of Bl. Altmann also fulfilled, concerning which see the Preliminary Commentary, num. 27 and the following.

BOOK OF MIRACLES,

By the same monk of Lambach, but slightly enlarged at the end by others,

From the same edition of Hieronymus Pez, volume 2 of the Scriptores rerum Austriacarum.

Adalbero, bishop of Würzburg, confessor, at Lambach in Upper Austria. (Bl.) BHL Number: 0031

By an anonymous author.

THE OLD DIVISION OF THE CHAPTERS.

Preface.

CHAPTER I. Of a paralytic healed after a long sickness.

II. Of a boy lame in both feet.

III. Of the withered hand of a vinedresser.

IV. Of a woman to whose palm a distaff was fastened.

V. Of a woman cured, to whose hand a spindle had stuck.

VI. Of a soldier healed.

VII. Of a woman saved by thought alone.

VIII. Of a soldier's wife healed.

IX. Of a soldier's disease cured.

X. Of a sick father of a family healed.

XI. Of the wife of a certain forester healed.

XII. Of a certain poor man healed after a long languishing.

XIII. Of a mute man divinely healed.

XIV. Of a widow's daughter dying on a journey.

XV. Of a woman carrying a hook in her left hand, and delivered.

XVI. Of a blind woman given sight.

XVII. Of a certain blind man given sight.

XVIII. Of a contracted woman healed.

XIX. Of a lame and mute boy healed.

XX. Of a lame boy healed.

XXI. Of a man blind from birth, given sight.

XXII. Of a mute boy cured.

XXIII. Of a mute boy divinely healed.

PREFACE.

[The author professes that he will relate only a few of the miracles which he saw.] The ancient miracles wrought hitherto by the divine clemency about the tomb of our blessed father Adalbero ^a we have omitted on account of their great number: for many of them oblivion has swallowed up, and many negligence has abolished. We have thought also that consideration should be had for the slow and the sluggish, lest an accumulated abundance should breed disgust in them ^b. We endeavour only to note down summarily, rather than to pursue at length, a very few of those things which we have seen and heard, which our hands have handled, so that at least a small drop from the bucket may be offered to the devotion of posterity, if perchance on a fitting occasion God may be praised in His Saints. Let us therefore with pious affection cherish, love and venerate, faithfully, suppliantly, humbly, the sacred little body of our pious Father, the sacred tomb of his rest, his sacred ashes. Let us, featherless and feeble chicks, flee for refuge under the wings of the hen, that, protected and defended by her, we may by his intercession obtain grace and mercy; lest we be marked with that Gospel reproach: "How often would I have gathered together thy children, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldst not ^c?"

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER I.

A paralytic, a boy lame in both feet, a vinedresser whose arm had withered, two women divinely punished, and a nobleman almost consumed by a long-lasting disease, are restored to health.

CHAPTER I.

As the evening of the world was declining, when the Sun of justice

deigned to visit the place of Lambach with the more gracious rays of His mercy A paralytic and contracted man, while he is being carried to Salzburg, and the more abundant droppings of His grace, a certain paralytic from the parish which is called Gutowa, on the border of the Bohemians, having been placed upon a cart hired at a small price, obtained that he should be carried to the church of Salzburg ^a. Many illustrious men from the same region, rich, middling and poor, accompanied him thither, being about to seek the thresholds of the Saints for the sake of prayer, and eager to be made sharers in the salvation which they had heard was celebrated there. For the report had flown abroad that anyone wrapped in the contagion of sin was, by the dictate of divine justice, held off and kept back from the threshold of the oratory (as we read also of Mary of Egypt ^b), and that no one could enter unless well amended and carefully cleansed of vices.

[3] They came, therefore, to the place of Lambach: there he had fixed the goal of his journey; there was the harbour and asylum of all who desired to visit the holy places, laid down at Lambach at the sepulchre of Bl. Adalbero, so that, cleansed by the remedy of confession, purified by penance and satisfaction, they might seek the Holy of Holies more safely and freely. Accordingly his faithful companions, moved with mercy, placed the paralytic on a litter ^c, and climbing with strong effort to the top of the little hill upon which the monastery of the blessed Mother of God is established, they enter the oratory and set down that poor little man beside the sepulchre of the blessed prelate. For you would have seen (except for the human face) no longer a man, but an image: for he was like a stump of fig-tree, a useless log, with hands bent back, arms stiff, feet fastened to his buttocks. And so, the daily Office being ended, the brethren, withdrawing from the oratory, returned to their own quarters. Meanwhile the common folk who had come with the sick man, having gone round each of the altars, give themselves to prayer, confessing their sins, and appease God with prayers and tears.

[4] complete soundness of his limbs The paralytic, then, shaken by the long carriage and oppressed by the vehemence of his pain, fell asleep (what he saw in his sleep has slipped from his mind); and behold, suddenly raising himself he cries out with a mighty shout, and the crack of sinews and of the frame of his body loosening itself resounds through the whole church. The people, struck by the strangeness of the thing, hasten up quickly; they find standing firmly on his feet him whom a little before they had left stretched on the ground. Then the father of the monastery came up with the whole congregation; he asks what has happened, and learns the truth of the matter from the companions. And when they were slow to give credence, and wavered somewhat on this matter, he who had been healed, adjured by the name of the eternal God and of the Saviour Jesus Christ, swears by all the Sacraments and by all oaths, and confirms credibly and truthfully, his fellow-citizens and companions testifying to that very thing and agreeing to that very thing, that he had been at all times feeble, destitute of every function of his limbs, contracted not merely for many days but for years, had dwelt in the bilge ^d of his little bed alone, had laboured in groaning, had every night washed his bed with tears and watered his couch with tears.

[5] he suddenly obtained in the year 1181. Why do you afflict further, by questioning and inquiring, a wretched man afflicted by long miseries? For behold, God, the hearer of all, through the intercession of the merits of this blessed Pontiff, has heard my prayers, and has brought me up out of the pit of misery and out of the mire of dregs; He has rescued me from the tribulation that encompassed me, and has set me upon my feet, and has directed (as you yourselves see) my steps. Then they yield; then, taught by so many and so great attestations, they believe: thereupon Glory to God in the highest is raised, and His name is exalted with praises who saves those that hope in Him, who wills that no one perish, but that all come to the knowledge of His name. Thus, having put off the aged and wretched tunic, and having put on the garment of salvation and the robe of gladness, he returns to his own people on foot, as a new man, who before used another's cart to go, presenting in himself a great and delightful spectacle to all his fellow-citizens, acquaintances and kinsfolk. These things were done in the same year in which the bones of Blessed Virgil were revealed ^e, on the Vigil of St. John the Baptist: nor did we learn them by report of men of old, for we saw them with our eyes.

II.

[6] In the neighbourhood of the cloister, beside the hospice, on a little hill ^f, A boy, lame, with his feet contracted inward, beside which is another very lofty mountain, the little houses of the poor had at that time been placed, where an infant was born, who at his first birth had no eclipse ^g in the whole form of his limbs, but was considered so whole and sound that no trace of natural corruption was seen in him. Then, as time went on, he began gradually to sicken, and by sickening to waste away; and by wasting away both his feet were contracted and bent inward toward each other. At the foot of the little hill a rivulet flows past with a gentle murmur, whose name, because it is known to almost everyone, we have thought it fitting to skip ^h rather than to note. The infant's mother, therefore, after the example of Rachel bewailing her children, wept and mourned inconsolably, beating her breast, pouring out rivers of tears; because the boy's tender little age was to spend its days in pains and miseries.

[7] For when kinsfolk and acquaintances, neighbours and strangers, said to her, brought to the tomb of the same Blessed, he is suddenly cured. since she had close at hand the mountain in which men ought to pray, the mountain in which it hath pleased God to dwell, why did she not seek help there, where even foreign nations did not doubt that divine aid would be present to them through the mediation of the merits of the Saints: she went, laid her infant against the sepulchre of Blessed Adalbero, and, prayer being completed and the rite of devotion accomplished, she received back sound the infant whom she had carried there sick. We think it less necessary that this little story be propped up by the testimony of others: for he of whom we speak, having passed the bounds of infancy, is now of age: let him speak of himself and for himself. For we too saw him lame, and we see him now also leaping, walking and praising God.

III.

[8] A certain vinedresser from the March of the Pannonians ⁱ, of Slavic race by origin, having his right arm The same happens to a vinedresser, hanging from his shoulder like a useless log, since he had now been rendered useless to himself in every way, and the functions of his hands, by which this life is governed, utterly denied him their help, vowed a vow, and paid it, for his pressing need and for the hope of recovering health, to travel through the holy places and to supplicate the Lord for his errors. For he had so scorched his arm from the shoulder to the ends of the hands with frequent cauteries that little appeared in the arm except the spots of the brandings; and this for the reason that, all the pus emerging from the inmost vitals, the pain might yield. But it did not profit at all, rather it harmed more; for it added pain to pain. Nor is it any wonder if frail human medicine works little when the Giver of health is despised.

[9] He, therefore, arriving at the place of Lambach, secretly enters the oratory, whose right arm had withered. and approaching the sepulchre of the blessed bishop Adalbero, he lies prostrate on the ground; with his left hand he places the withered arm upon the tomb, pours out a prayer, is cured by the merits of the blessed prelate, and recovers its former function. For now about the third hour, that of the first meal, was at hand, and he, begging an alms, asked that he might be refreshed a little. For, mixing the idiom of his own tongue ^k with the German idiom disorderly and indiscriminately, he poured out, stammering, the most corrupt solecisms, and grinding his teeth in barbarous speech, he uttered ridiculous half-words, such as would provoke loud laughter in the hearers. These things we heard from him in tearful words, these things we handled with our hands: for the Lord of knowledge is witness that we invent nothing. O that we could draw out from many at least a small spark of truth!

IV.

[10] At that time of the Lenten observance in which the whole Church throughout the world, ardently following in the footsteps of Christ, Among many hastening to Lambach in Holy Week, afflicts the body with vigils and fasts, obeying the Lord's precept, using more sparingly words, food and drink, and the other things which the proper usage of this season holds prescribed, and which it is not opportune ^l to pursue more at length now; the feast day of our Redemption now approaching, many, not only from neighbouring but also from remote regions, flocked together to the place of Lambach, most for the sake of prayer, most that they might be able to be present at the divine worship on the most sacred days; others, that they might cure the inward wounds of their souls by the medicine of Confession and the poultice of penance, judging themselves well according to the desert of conscience, as the Apostle admonishes: "But if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged: but whilst we are judged, we are chastised by the Lord, that we be not condemned with this world ^m." Others went there in order to communicate in the life-giving Sacraments of Christ more safely there, where they could give themselves to safe keeping according to God. For this is why, according to the ancient institution of the Fathers, the Church observes that at the three sacramental feasts the Church should approach ⁿ the Sacrament of Christ, on account of the various chances which can befall mortals, on account of those who perish by sudden and unforeseen death, so that, fortified by these Sacraments, they may be found at last in the number of the just, having received the dew of refreshment, as it is said: "The just man, if he be prevented with death, shall be in rest ^o."

[11] on which occasion the writer has inserted many digressions here, We must strive, therefore, with all our strength, to return home [p] by frugality thither whence we fell by gluttony [q]. Let us weigh, let us attend to, how many evils, how many crimes the disobedience of the first-formed brought upon the world; what grace, what mercy the obedience of Christ unto death conferred. We must consider and greatly fear that, because of the ill-omened and rash bite of the apple, Leviathan has swallowed up infinite thousands of thousands into the belly of his wickedness, as is said through Job: "He will swallow up the river, and not wonder, and he trusteth that the Jordan may run into his mouth [r]," signifying by the river the Gentiles and the Jews, and figuring mystically by the Jordan the multitude of the baptized. But now disobedience is banished by obedience, death is destroyed by death, the bite of wickedness is driven out by the taste of gall and vinegar. But since, on account of the brevity of the little story that follows, we have strayed a little into what did not pertain to the matter, let us now turn back into the track.

[12] a woman bearing a distaff divinely fastened to her hand, On the fourth feria which precedes the Lord's Supper, which many reverently observe, persevering in fasts and prayers on account of the betrayal of Christ [s], as they do the sixth feria on account of His passion, and the Saturday on account of the veneration of His Mother, there came, among others who flocked to Lambach on account of the solemn days, a certain woman carrying in her left hand an instrument of women's work which we commonly call a distaff, at which women toil in daily labour, with the wool attached, for spinning. While on a night that should have been kept as a holiday, namely on the evening of Saturday, up to the dusk of the night in which Christians are commanded to rest from all work [t], she was labouring hard at spinning, now dozing, now awakening, her head now hanging from her neck ready to fall, the spindle slipped to the ground. Awakened by this, she seized with her left hand the distaff, which threatened to fall, lest it should fall altogether, and having seized it she held it so tightly that by no means could it be pulled out.

[13] after prayers poured out, she is delivered; The members of the household cry out, citizens and strangers run together; astounded, they marvel at the wonderful deed. But conjecturing that this was done by a woman's trickery, the strong, the stronger than the strong, the strongest than the stronger, come up in turn to pull the distaff from her, she crying out for the excess of her pain that they should not hurt her; that they should believe it had been done by God, because she had transgressed the law. There came

therefore to the tomb of blessed Adalbero, and, the multitude which had assembled on that day standing round and looking on, she fell prostrate weeping and wailing, and poured out a prayer mournfully enough; and during the morning hymns, to the admiration of all, her hand is divinely loosed, the distaff slips to the ground, and afterwards for some time it [u] is hung up beside the sepulchre in memory of the saving sign, and praise is sung by all to Him who is glorious and wonderful in His Saints. If necessity required, we would produce in testimony not two or three, but that whole church: for, if that is worth anything, what we have related we saw with our eyes.

[14] It seems consequent, and not contrary to the order of the little narrative, as also another, to whom a spindle, in punishment of a violated feast, nay rather fitting, if we add to the preceding miracle the deed of a transgressing woman, so as, namely, to join the spindle to the distaff, since the spindle has a certain kindred neighbourhood with the distaff. For the one is worth nothing without the other, just as a sword is useless without a hilt. A certain poor woman, while on a solemn night on which she ought to have kept holiday she was busying herself, persisting in jus [x] in spinning, when the thread on the spindle was now complete and she was trying to pull it off, the spindle was so firmly fastened to her hand that it could not be taken off by any effort of those pulling or by any movement. Kinsfolk, neighbours, acquaintances and friends, coming each from his own place to console her, and sitting round her, offer her a counsel divinely conceived, as the friends of Job are read to have done.

[15] But these, with a more godly intention, say: Why do you neglect had stuck to her hand. your salvation? Why do you despise yourself? He that is evil to himself, to whom is he good? Come then, and now at last, transgressor, return to your heart, cast your thought upon the Lord, hope in Him, and He will nourish you; go over to Lambach, to the place beloved of God, the place filled with grace and mercy, which those far removed seek for the sake of recovering health, and receive what they have sought *. For God will be propitious to you, as He has been propitious to many: you will have us as companions, faithful fellow-workers in all things, devoted furtherers of your salvation. She, animated by these hopes [y], acquiescing in faithful persuasions, makes for the aforesaid place, fell prostrate before the sepulchre of the blessed man with the fullest contrition, and when prayer had been poured out to the Lord, her companions calling upon God in truth, the hand long closed is loosed, the spindle, clinging and sticking to the hand, is taken away, and praise with thanksgiving is raised to heaven.

VI.

[16] A soldier, whose name [z], because he is very well known, we have preferred to pass over in silence rather than to burden, A nobleman, very gravely ill, admonished by a heavenly vision, depressed by the long wasting of sickness, fell into the bed of illness, labouring most sharply day and night with fevers and other ailments, watering his couch daily with tears and sighs. Now all his limbs, as though dead, had lost their functions; now his exhausted [aa] body had languished to the point of destruction; now he lay despaired of and neglected by all; scarcely did the breath of life stir in his wounded little breast, scarcely did his dimmed eyes drink in the light; now the physicians had carried off everything that they had been able to gnaw and wring out; when, behold, on the Sunday night which fell on the eighth day from the day of the most sacred Resurrection, the night having been almost wholly spent in lamentations and groans, as is the custom of the sick, the dawn of day now approaching, as he fell asleep through excessive weariness, there appeared to him a venerable person, bright with an angelic face, sweet and pleasing with starry eyes, with serene mouth and joyful countenance, clothed in a shining pontifical stole, and thus addresses him.

[17] Why, O man, he says, are you weighed down by the sleep of sloth? carried to the tomb of the Blessed, he is at once healed. Do you not understand that human aid will profit you little so long as you disdain to invoke divine help? If you desire God to be propitious to you, if you are eager to soften the wrath of the Thunderer, if you wish the chains of pressing tribulation to be burst asunder, and to be rescued from the present agony of languishing, direct your steps towards Lambach, every pretext [bb] being set aside; earnestly beg the suffrages of the Saints; and you will be healed. Having said this, the vision which had appeared, its oracle concluded, disappeared. As the dawn advanced its course, the sick man, roused from sleep, related the vision to his wife and sons; who, animated by the visitation of the merciful God, are dissolved in tears; and presently, having mounted a cart, he makes for the place divinely shown him. Then he is led by the hands of his servants to the tomb of the blessed Pontiff, and when the devotion of prayer and the rite of oblation, which the aforesaid vision had revealed and taught him, had been duly celebrated, the soldier rose up sound, and returns home on foot, who before could scarcely go, supported by another's help.

ANNOTATIONS.

c. That is: a litter.

p. That is: let us return to our fatherland.

q. Pez notes here that in the Lambach codex it reads faultily: Castrimariam. Gastrimargia, moreover, is a Greek word, in Latin voracity of the belly, or gluttony. Abbot John substitutes: Disobedience and gluttony.

r. Job chap. 40, verse 18, where these things are said of Behemoth. Consult the interpreters on the literal and mystical sense of this passage.

s. How these things are to be taken, gather from Pope Nicholas I in his responses to the consultations of the Bulgarians, in Labbe, volume 8 of the Councils, col. 518: Although on the fourth feria, beyond the other days except the sixth feria, one must labour more in mourning, because the Lord on that very day was in a certain manner buried in the heart of the earth, that is, of Judas the traitor, while he was plotting to deliver Him to death, yet, etc.

t. There was at one time in various regions a custom that on the day before Sunday one should abstain from servile works from the setting of the sun.

u. Namely: the distaff.

x. So in the Lambach codex, as Pez witnesses. Abbot John omitted these two little words in jus. What if it should be read injussa (unbidden); or in jus be put here for contrary to right?

y. Abbot John: By this hope.

z. As Pez witnesses, in the margin of the Lambach codex there is read, written by the same hand as the rest: Gebhard of Hornaren: for which reason Abbot John rendered this passage thus: A certain very well-known soldier, by name Gebhard of Hornaren. For the rest, it is commonly known that the word Miles in that age signified a Nobleman.

aa. In Abbot John: Effectum.

bb. In the same: Subjuncta occasione.

* rather, all the pus

* emerging

* or petitam?

CHAPTER II.

Persons struggling with grave diseases obtain health through the patronage of the Blessed.

VII.

What we are about to say seems a small thing, but nevertheless, because it has come to mind, By the little river Lambach we do not think it should be passed over. A little river creeps with slow murmur between two mountains, which is distinguished by three ^a names. Two of these, because they are very well known and seem less necessary to the present theme, we pass over in silence; the third, because it now pertains to the matter, we shall set down. In the third place, as was said before, it is called Lambach, whence our place ^b also has obtained its name, and from which the adjacent hamlets also have received their names. For that little river is drawn off in different directions to water the drooping ^c lands, cherishing with its course the pleasant meadows on either side; moreover it assists the various uses of men dwelling here and there round about; but at last, swallowed up by the earth from which it was generated, it sinks into a certain plain. It is something, for the dwellings of men to be established under streams of waters, and to reside beside the fullest currents. These things have been said under the constraint of topography, which is proved necessary in these and in very many other places, by which the ignorant are led into the way, as the blind are guided by staves.

[19] On the bank of the aforesaid stream cottages are set out, a certain woman brought by disease to the last extremity, in one of which a mother of a family ^d, falling sick, was brought almost to the last extremity. Now her poor body, foul with a long and inveterate wasting, lay like a useless stump, scarcely alive with the faintest breath, so that you would have thought it lifeless; a dark mist had covered her eyes; her tongue, cleaving to her throat, was wholly incapable of its function; the pulse of her veins was felt very faint, or not at all; all her limbs were stiff and cold; certain sure signs of death were evident in her, so far as human sagacity could conjecture. Her husband was away; he had gone into the forest to gather a bundle of wood: the household cries out; the outside crowd of neighbours, having heard the outcry, flocks together; they console the weeping and promise hope to the mourners. A messenger is sent in haste, the husband is called, he hastens up when summoned; seeing his wife's danger, he fills the house with mournful wailings, grieving not only at his wife's death, but because she seemed to be departing life insufficiently fortified with the Sacraments of Christ.

[20] vowing to go to the Blessed's sepulchre, she is suddenly restored to her senses; What more? Persuaded by the counsel of saner men, he runs groaning with tottering step to Lambach, and, half-dead, begs the priest to bring the Viaticum to the sick woman. The priest to whom this charge had been entrusted comes, and sits waiting, in case by some trial he might catch with his ears the breathings of the vital breath. Putting his ear closer, the functions of the head are mute: he admonishes her concerning Confession; there was neither voice nor sense. But when there had been silence for about half an hour, suddenly the eyes of the sick woman are opened, the quivering tongue is loosened to form words, the strength of the dead body is restored. They ask how she has returned to life. She answered, saying: I, when in my meditation

a fire was kindled, I meditated with my heart that, if by the mercy of the heavenly Beholder life were given back to me, I would go to Lambach and would pay my vows at the sepulchre of blessed Adalbero. Presently, in a wonderful manner (which may be incredible to tell), as soon as I cast my thought upon the Lord, the swift mercy of the merciful God was present, the propitiation of His wonted loving-kindness was present; presently I was restored to myself, and sense returned with life, I who had come near even to the gates of death.

[21] [and refreshed with the sacred Viaticum, on the next day she wholly recovered. The author's digressions on these things] Do you see how well that saying of David agrees with the things which have been said: "A contrite and humbled heart God doth not despise ^e?" And again: "The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him ^f." Then, the life-giving Sacrament having been received, on the next day, her strength being divinely restored, she rose up sound, and on the third day at length she sets out for Lambach, offering to God the sacrifice of praise, and paying her vows to the Most High, confessing to Him that He is the helper in tribulation, that He alone considers labour and sorrow. It makes no difference in the sight of the God of heaven whether He hears rather the voice of supplication and outcry in the temple than the affection of pious devotion, the compunction of the heart without noise of voice in bed. Well therefore does the pious Rewarder reward the devotion of holy and spotless thought, better the utterance of good exhortation, best of all the work that is pleasing to the Lord. And on the contrary, perverse thoughts separate from God, and proved virtue reproves the unwise.

[22] certain digressions. Which is proved clearer than the light in Nebuchadnezzar, who, swelling with pride up to the heart, meditated on his couch iniquity mixed with pride, set himself in every way that is not good, and hated not evil; he lifted up the horns of pride on high, he spoke iniquity on high. And because he thought as a beast, when he commanded himself to be adored as God, he lived as a beast, he was made a beast ^g, as a certain man, satirizing him, sports thus in verse: He who was greater than Jove had wept the sports of fortune; Then he was an ox, the man who was greater than Jove. Of whom and his accomplices it is said elsewhere: "God hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart: He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble ^h." Perverse speech is very often punished, as in Balaam, who, corrupted by money, afterwards taught what he had before forbidden ⁱ. Perverse action in many thousands, and yet specially in Absalom, who, cruelly thirsting for his father's death, defiled his wives, which a fitting vengeance presently avenged ^k. These are the three dead whom the Lord raises up ^l: the first in the house, which signifies the death of wicked thought, lying hidden in the chamber of the heart; the second at the gate, designating the death of speech and of action contracted by sin; the third stinking in the tomb, intimating death perpetuated by use and the delight of habit, weighed down under the stone of despair, so that the man cannot rise again, as it is said: An evil mind is death within; an evil act is death abroad; habit — The tomb, the girl, the boy, Lazarus, these denote. For the stone covers, presses down, hides. ^m

VIII.

[23] A miracle not unequal the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation wrought in a certain hamlet, Another woman, lying very gravely ill, having made a vow, is at once healed. near the church of blessed George , which is called Chustelwanc . The wife of a certain Gotfrid, consumed by the burning of a wonderful and pitiable long-lasting sickness, was brought to the last extremity. She mourned and languished; by night her bones were pierced with pains, and by day she was tormented without intermission. Her husband, twisting his head and hands in mournful lament, clung to the sick woman's bed; neighbours and acquaintances stood round her weeping and grieving: now even the funeral rites were being prepared, and the last offices of life were being ordered. When now the breath of life seemed to be wholly cut off, the thought fell upon her that, if by the gift of God's clemency she returned to life, she would set out for Lambach, would visit the tomb of blessed Adalbero with prayers, and would ask his suffrage. And behold, suddenly she opens her eyes, the mist having been put to flight; her tongue bursts forth into speech; she affirms that she has been rescued from death and pain by the merits of the blessed Pontiff, that she has been saved by his intercession. Presently, spurning her couch, she rises up, strives vigorously to walk, enters the monastery of the blessed Mother of God, and returns home sound, with thanksgiving.

IX.

[24] A certain man of the order of those serving in arms of the court of Schaumberg ⁿ, exhausted by a long wasting of infirmity, when for a long time, A certain nobleman, a knight, in order either to drive away his sickness, or to put it off, or for shame's sake to conceal it, he had laboured at walking beyond the day's measure of his strength, at length, deceived by his tottering step and destitute of the help of a staff, falling upon his pallet, he seemed to be drawing his last breath. For his bones, consumed by the long-continued burning of fevers, had wasted away; an immoderate lividness had spread over his whole body, the skin stretched upon the bones like a lute-string; his face, having wholly lost its human form, had puffed up ^o on every side; an enormous swelling had so covered the windows of his eyes that you would have seen now no eyes, but two brand-marks in his face. For they are shut, as though enclosed in a blind cave. Food now desired, now prepared, now offered, was loathed, repudiated and rejected by him [p].

[25] The crowd of his kinsfolk, lamenting him as though he were an only son, almost consumed by a long wasting, on the advice of his friends, came each from their little dwellings, that they might together visit and console him: for they saw that his pain was vehement. They exhort him continually to watch unto the Lord, to stand strongly in faith, to act manfully, to drive far off the craftiness of the enemy's snares by invocation of the Saints, to be converted to the Lord with his whole heart, with his whole desire, by a most pure confession and a penance pleasing to God, to be fortified with the Sacraments of Christ, instituted by God for the Christian Religion, nay for salvation, to cast off the works of darkness, to put on the arms of light, the remedy of satisfaction, so that it might well now be said of him: "Thou hast put on praise and beauty, and art clothed with light" (of heavenly grace) "as with a garment [q]." Lastly he is admonished of that which is the first and last care of every man, to think earnestly on the salvation of his soul, to purchase heavenly riches with perishable things, so that after his departure he may possess eternal rest and obtain perpetual light.

[26] that he should prepare himself for death, Well, says he, my friends, well and wisely do you proceed, soundly do you persuade, fittingly do you admonish [r]. For grave pain presses, the mass of straits compels, pressing tribulation teaches me to turn to my Maker and the Author of mercy. But woe to him who has put off his flight to this winter, who has neglected his prayers and supplications and the works of mercy made clear by the Gospel's authority until the hour when the eye grows dim, the tongue quivers, the hand withers, the foot lacks its step. This, I think, is the night, as I have learned from the doctors, in which no man can work; the providence of God alone gathers in, whether hell be far or near, where no one shall confess to Him. For what? All worldly joys, drawn out for a hundred years or more, are, in the reckoning of eternal things, as yesterday, which is past. Would only that my faith in Christ may now be strengthened, would that my last day may be closed in the confession of Christ! And yet, lest we despair altogether, The late confession of the thief gives us hope; Lest even at the last any of the faithful despair.

[27] carried to the sepulchre of the Blessed, he gradually recovered. For this same man of whom we speak was strong in eloquence and subtle knowledge, so much so that he would reprove, shrewdly and cautiously enough, even the ignorance of clerics wherever they had strayed in divine matters. Lest anyone disbelieve this, let him hear Wisdom herself, proceeding from the mouth of the Most High, protesting in the Gospel: "The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light [s]." And turning to those standing round, Go, he says, I pray you, go, put upon a wagon these bones pierced with continual torments, and bring me to Lambach, to the sepulchre of blessed Adalbero. For I trust in the Lord that by his intercession and pleading I shall deserve to be loosed from the most hard chain of the pressing strait. They obeyed; they placed the sick man on a cart and brought him to the aforesaid place, set him against the tomb of the blessed prelate, and, the law of prayers and oblations having been duly celebrated, returned to their own. From that time, the bonds of his pains gradually slipping away and being loosed, and the strength of his body recovered, he grew well, to the praise and glory of our Redeemer.

[28] The church of blessed Blaise is situated in a sunny place, [The steward of the estate of the church of St. Blaise, dying of a sudden ailment,] a certain river flowing past it, and a spacious and beautiful forest surrounding it, which, being full of beasts and wild animals, is most suitable for hunting; and the most abundant pastures for cattle are found there. Round about the church little hills rise up, raised by a natural swelling of the earth, hiding within them caves hollowed out by nature's law, like hiding-places prepared for the refuges of men, so that, if perchance you saw blessed Blaise escaping the rage of persecution, you would think he had once lain hidden there, and had offered the grace of blessing to the beasts flocking to him for protection and healing (as is read of him [t]). A tenant dwelt there, who diligently and wholesomely looked after the rights of the church, and governed with care the herds of oxen and flocks of sheep established there, and the other things serving the use of the brethren which were to be carefully preserved. He suddenly began to be deprived of bodily strength, and to be worn out by an excessive burning of fevers, to such a degree that, having fallen upon his bed, the breath of life fluttered only in his little breast. His voice had been cut off; the joints of his limbs had withered, so that you would have thought them severed; and now there was question only of his burial.

[29] Now the anniversary day of the deposition of the blessed Pontiff was approaching, and by spectres of demons, on which his memory was to be solemnly celebrated [u]. Now the day had departed, and the night, harmful to the sick, had come on, when the wretched man was now lying as though lifeless, and many friends were busy with vigils to watch his end; a little after the fourth watch of the night, the watchers having fallen asleep from excessive weariness, most hideous little birds, in the manner of bats, sparrows and swallows, had covered the walls of the chamber in which he lay, the beams, the boards, the tiles, clinging and sticking to the walls and tiles. Certain horrid phantasms also, most cruel in aspect, appeared in the cracks of the walls, baring their teeth and threatening to bite; the terrible sight of which tormented the wretched wavering soul, over which they panted with tongues thrust out, in the manner of dogs sweltering in the excessive heat of the sun. These, I think, are the beasts of which the Psalmist says: "Deliver not up to beasts the souls that confess to Thee: and forget not to the end the souls of Thy poor."

[30] These most abominable beasts at the death of every man, concerning which various things are recorded here, as has very often been proved, gather together in troops, in case they may find in the soul any sins contracted in the world, which, insufficiently cleansed, a man drags with him alone, whereby they may snatch it away to be tormented in hell: but the divine mercy forbids them to do as much harm as they wish. Lest anyone disbelieve this, the very same thing is plain more manifestly in the passing of blessed Martin, who, when he was about to depart to the Lord, saw a bloody beast standing by him, which, confuted, he repelled from himself [x]. Behold a saint, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and made higher than the heavens, is tempted by a bloody beast, and is thought to be entangled in its snares and nooses; what is to be thought of those who up to the end of life, as it were

beasts of burden, rot in their dung?

[31] And when the soul, wavering in this agony, laboured in struggling, grievously afflicted, after an apparition of the Blessed, behold, suddenly a person most worthy in aspect, who declared himself a pontiff by the fashion of his vestments, enters the dwelling of the sick man, clothed round about with immense light, at whose presence the night fled and light shone forth in the dwelling: the phantasms also of the blackest little birds, which had covered the whole floor with blind horror, crawling and flitting, sought the recesses of the corners, eager to hide themselves. The one who had entered, without any delay, approaches the bed of the sick man, strokes his sad head with a gentle hand, wipes his face drenched with showers of tears: for the violence of the sweat had so bathed the rest of his poor body too that it had moistened the linens laid over the body. At whose touch the life that had withdrawn returns; the spirit, scarcely clinging to the throat, revives; the man, almost dead, is again animated; the functions of the limbs are gradually restored, their vigour recovered. Finally he, by the command of a word and by the blessing of the saving sign, banished, drove off and put to flight the foul, horrid and sooty phalanxes; and so the vision which had appeared was taken away from his eyes.

[32] [he asked to be carried to the sepulchre of the Blessed, and thence returned home sound.] And when the night was again hastening to its end, and now Titan, emerging from Ocean, was illuminating the world with his beams, the watchers, waiting for and watching the sick man's end, being quickly roused, are borne to the bed of the sick man, and thinking him dead, and putting their ear closer, they were eager to catch some sound; then by knocking, by prodding, by asking again and again whether he lived or not. He struggles with every effort to open his eyes, and breaking his dead tongue into speech as best he could, he discloses in a few words the vision which he had seen, and sets forth how he had been restored; he begs that, the river being crossed, he may be brought to the monastery of the Mother of God, that he may deserve to be present at the solemnities of the Masses to be celebrated on that day. They, made more joyful than usual, fit up the gear of a wagon and carry the sick man to the monastery. There, received in the hands of two bearers, he is brought to the sepulchre of the blessed Pontiff; then, the solemnities of the Masses being completed, the right hand of God alone lifting him up, he is raised, and, all the people who had come there that day looking on and bearing witness, he returns home sound.

[33] The author's digressions on the frauds of demons Do not wonder or doubt that the satellites of Satan are transformed into various forms to deceive the souls of the faithful; since, as has been truly proved, they dare, with the Lord's permission, to assume to themselves outlandish and alien beauties, as is said of their head: "Satan himself transformeth himself into an angel of light [y]." For since they have a thousand arts of harming, in a thousand ways, in a thousand images, they conform themselves to the various qualities of men. They sharply attack those who serve God remissly, more sharply the more zealous, and most sharply they assail those who fight manfully against the aerial powers: which is most evidently proved in the Life of St. Anthony [z]. But let no one suppose that, on account of the assumed garments of momentary light, they lose the horror of their ancient and native blackness [aa]; rather let him know that they will be afterwards such as they were before; for there is no fellowship of light with darkness, no concord of Christ with Belial.

[34] and illusions. Nor does this deranging take place only spiritually, but also bodily; as is plain in those who by magical arts and most subtle juggleries hunt the eyes of the beholders by enticing them, so that you seem to yourself to see them bring forth some kind of creeping beast, cut whole things, sew up the things cut, feign diverse images, diverse appearances of things, feign manifold forms of beasts as though by a new creation, some fleeing, others quickly pursuing, both failing through continual labour; cottages moved from their place, and others transferred by inscrutable contrivance. Concerning the assumption, or rather usurpation, of the counterfeit [bb] glory of demons you have it in the Register, where to John the deacon, writing at night by the light of a lamp, that ancient enemy appeared, to frighten him sharply and to put out the light. Whom presently the pious father Gregory, to whose Life he had already put the finishing hand, refreshed with fatherly consolation, and declared to him whom he had seen [cc].

ANNOTATIONS.

g. Daniel chap. 4.

p. In Abbot John faultily: Adeo.

q. Psalm 103, verses 1 and 2.

r. Here (says Pez) two whole pages have been cut out in the manuscript, the loss of which we have made good from Abbot John.

s. Luke chap. 16, verse 8.

t. See the first Acts of this holy bishop and martyr of Sebaste, chap. 1, in our Work at the 3rd day of February.

u. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, therefore, or perhaps even earlier, the annual memory of Bl. Adalbero was already customarily celebrated solemnly at Lambach; which it will have helped to observe in favour of his immemorial cult.

x. The deeds of St. Martin, bishop of Tours, of whom there is question here, will come to be illustrated at the 11th day of November. But from the fact that in them it is read that a demon appeared to him as he lay ill, it by no means follows that this happens to all the dying, especially to sinners; or that what the feverish man here mentioned seemed to himself to see were truly phantasms of demons, since similar things very often happen to those delirious from the heat of fevers.

y. 2 Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. XI, verse 14.

z. The deeds of this holy abbot are illustrated by us at the 17th day of January.

aa. Interpret these things in a moral sense of the perversity of the demons, contracted through sin: for they have no colour at all, nor is perversity native to them.

bb. Abbot John: ementitæ.

cc. Read, if you please, the Life of the praised St. Gregory the Great, Pope, written by the same John the deacon, book 4, chap. 17, num. 100, in our Work, volume 2 of March, page 210.

* or Georgii?

* Abbot John: Khunstelwang

CHAPTER III.

Others delivered from various diseases and evils through the help of the same blessed Bishop.

XI.

Twenty stadia less than between Jerusalem and Emmaus ^a, The wife of the keeper of a wood, wretchedly seized by a sudden ailment, as the opinion of some reckons, there is distant from the place of Lambach a wood which borrowed its name from its breadth ^b, whose profits, if any there can be, and those of the surrounding revenues, serve by privileged right the altar of blessed Peter at Salzburg ^c. Over this, as is the right of that region, a keeper had been appointed, whom we commonly call Nemorarius or Foresticus, as it were keeper of the forest ^d; who was to be concerned with skilful and careful vigilance over the custody entrusted to him, lest that wood be rooted out either by public incursion of violent men or by stealthy havoc of the common people. His wife ^e, while one day she was toiling at spinning threads, as nature has dictated to this sex, in order, namely, to cover the nakedness both of the present and of the future time, which those first-formed ones, the first despisers of God's law, strove to stop up with aprons woven of fig-leaves; suddenly falling from the seat on which she sat, throwing the distaff far this way and the spindle that way, a vehement pain and an unbearable ^f shuddering rushed upon her, and so amid the torments which she suffered, her mouth and chin, leaving their natural position, are bent back to the left as far as the ear.

[36] on the day after she was brought to the tomb of the Blessed, Thereupon ^g the function of the tongue is taken from her, food and drink likewise are cut off, and nothing but the last day is expected. These things were done on a Tuesday, and that pain increased daily until the Friday on which the celebrated Exaltation of the holy Cross ^h falls in its yearly course. At the point of this day the man, broken by the burden ⁱ of sorrow, having put together the gear of a wagon and placed his wife upon it, brought her to Lambach, showing the woman's mournful case to all who met him; he seeks counsel, he asks for a medicine by which strength might be recovered. All unanimously advising him to give himself up earnestly to the divine clemency, to beg with inmost vows the help of heavenly medicine, to implore the patronage of the Saints, the aid of the Saints, that through their mediation the Lord might open to him the door of mercy; he acquiesced ^k, he believes, bathed in tears he approaches the tomb of blessed Adalbero, he brought the sick woman with him, and, vows having been duly performed, and the sacred altars also saluted with the affection of prayer, he presently returned to his own.

[37] she is wholly restored. On the following day dawning after the Exaltation of the holy Cross, the solemnity of the Dedication of the church of Lambach was immediately at hand; and behold, while the way is being opened for the procession, which on this day is by no means to be omitted except by the utmost necessity ^l, there comes the man, filled with no small rejoicing, who the day before had gone away swallowed up in the abyss of sadness, with the woman now healed, her face now restored and put back in the seat of its native arrangement ^m. For she who a little before, having lost her natural form, had struck horror into the beholders with her oblique and distorted face, and with her tongue as it were three-cleft had scarcely uttered, stammering, confused half-barkings, now ⁿ cries out with a clear voice that she has been rescued, that she has been saved by the merits of the blessed prelate ^o; she declares the grace of God to all; and the whole assembly which had come together that day for the sake of the feast day exalts God with praises.

XII.

[38] A certain poor little man, wasting away with a wonderful and pitiable sickness, A poor man, deprived of the use of hands and feet by a long-lasting sickness, was so consumed by the force of fevers that he seemed to be failing not only from a long-lasting but even [p] from a year-long disease, being one to whom, because of the barrenness of poverty, neither the skill of physicians nor the help of richer food came to his aid. He had no certain fatherland, no little house of his own at all to dwell in; but, as long as it was allowed him, wandering hither and thither, he earned the victuals of this passing life by skill in the weaver's art. But when his strength failed, when the functions of his hands had been lulled to sleep, the supports of temporal subsistence likewise ceased. And when he was dwelling in another's house, and, all being affected with weariness over him, he was now held hateful, and every man was now oppressed by the intolerableness of his stench, he is spurned and despised by acquaintances and strangers, and cast out as abominable.

[39] Then he is brought to Lambach by some who feared God, his sister caring for him, carried to the same tomb, and is taken into the hospice of the poor: there he is kept, there he is cherished, there he is treated humanely enough, until his memory is buried among his own people, until he is given over to oblivion, as one dead, out of the heart. He had a sister equally needy, getting her livelihood now by the labour of her hands, now by begging. She, coming [q] to visit and console her brother, who was wasting away in continual pains, her eyes brought down weeping, and her bowels also were moved over her brother. Thereupon, forgetting womanly lightness, and setting a manly spirit into her feminine frailty, nay placing it before it, she is wholly converted to God, and exhorts her brother to feel as she does. And because his feet had denied him their accustomed office, a litter having been asked of certain people and received, and the livid and half-dead bones [r] of her brother having been placed on it, and bearers having been summoned, she carries him and lays him out at the tomb of blessed Adalbero.

[40] At last, at the asylum which she esteemed the only one, he recovers the use of his limbs and gradually entire health. she poured out prayer to the Lord with him and for him, visiting each of the altars with groanings unutterable, and deserved to see swift salvation and power. For returning to her brother, by the mercy of the merciful God she found him already better, raising himself with the comfort of a staff, whom she had very lately left lying like a paralytic, differing little from Lazarus except for the breath of life. Still, however, like a new walker, he tottered in his step; still his weak limbs, exhausted by the long [s] burning of fevers, wavered like an infant eager to walk about, now standing, now slipping, now raising itself; but gradually improving from day to day he was restored to his former health by the merits of the blessed Pontiff. None of these things did we learn by report of the men of old; but what we have written we have seen with our eyes and handled with our hands: nor do we think it worth while that these things should be propped up by others' testimony, which divine power has evidently wrought with ourselves present.

XIII.

[41] About one mile from the monastery of Lambach, in a high place of a mountain, a church [t] of blessed Lawrence the martyr is situated; A certain man, made mute, and round about rise mountains, brought forth at the beginning of the world's creation by a native swelling out of the bosom of mother earth. Beside this church too a not large hamlet is laid out; then scattered cottages are strewn over the fields, very suitable for husbandmen to sow [u]. One of these, then, by the permission of Him who possessed us and made and created us, is made mute; and while for a long time, struck with shame, he conceals what had befallen him [x], while the inward torments increase daily, while his heart, beyond what is incredible to tell [y], is troubled with anxiety, while he waits that the destroyed organ of the voice might again be enriched with the gift of voice, he is cheated of his hope; for his hour had not yet come. He remains, therefore, mute, and as another Zachary, going in or coming out, he was making signs to the people, and whatever he ought to have declared by the office of the tongue he signified by a certain wheeling of signs which the mother of arts [z] had taught him.

[42] having poured out silent prayers there, Some, scarcely conjecturing from what they saw, understood a little; others paid little attention; others (as is everywhere clear [aa], the net of God draws in the bad with the good) mocked the wretch as he mumbled strangely, considering themselves too little, since we are all in the hand of God as clay in the hand of the potter [bb], and He made us, and not we ourselves. The wretch wept in his secret places, and with the affection of his mind, in inarticulate voice, begs the Lord to loose him from the bond of this reproach. Then, some of his friends urging him, he is converted to the Lord with the whole affection of mind and heart, casts his thought upon the Lord, and, having taken a few companions, sets out for the sepulchre of blessed Adalbero. Secretly entering the oratory, he casts himself humbly on the ground before the sepulchre; and because he was little able to pray, he faithfully offered to the Lord, with sighs of tears, the intention of prayer, the compunction of heart, the vow of inmost devotion. Nor is he cheated of his hope, although the effect did not immediately follow the prayer; for neither was Paul, as soon as he prayed, heard according to his will, but he was heard according to his profit [cc]; nor shall we, when the Lord's prayer has been said through, at once receive the kingdom of God for which we ask.

[43] [on the third day after he receives speech. The author's observation on these things] Yet at last on the third day He who by the merits of the Baptist opened the mouth of Zachary [dd], by the merits of the blessed prelate opened the mouth of the mute man, and he spoke rightly. And on the following Sunday he returns to Lambach, and before the brethren and the congregation which had assembled that day he confesses the grace sought and obtained, and by their testimony what has been set down above is strengthened. Do you see how magnificently the Lord has made His Saint wonderful, whom even in this deed He has made equal to His Baptist [ee]? Nor let what has been said seem to you unworthy or impossible; since even by the mouth of Truth it is intimated that all who are predestined to life will be not only equal to the angels, but also angels [ff], as there: "Their angels always see the face of my Father [gg]." And Zachary says: "The lips of the priest shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth: because he is the angel of the Lord of hosts."

[44] observation. John agrees as to equivalence, saying: "We know that, when the Lord shall appear, we shall be like to Him: because we shall see Him as He is." Hear further what the Saviour professes elsewhere: "I have said, you are gods, and all of you the sons of the Most High;" calling them Gods to whom the word of God was made. Whence Jerome says: "If likeness is promised to the Saints, truth is not denied." At the beginning of the description of the signs, if you recall it carefully, you will find a paralytic and a lame man cured by the merits of blessed Adelbero: has not this power conferred on him by God made him, and does it not make him, equal to the Apostles [hh]? For the Saints, whose consort he now is in heaven, with whom he now shines in the kingdom of their Father, do not envy his powers, nay rather rejoice with them; provided only that the ill-will of imprudent men does not detract from him.

XIV.

[45] A widow, emulating the blessed life in chastity, had an only daughter, with whom she sought the daily necessities, without which this life can by no means be carried on, A poor girl, very weak from long-lasting fevers, by the labour of her hands (as is the law of the sons of Adam), and obtained them with difficulty, more rarely than was expedient for her. The daughter, now grown up and entering on mature years, the mother left, that she might rather accustom herself to provide her necessities by herself without her mother's help, lest, while a poor woman clung to a poor woman, both should be endangered. After the manner of birds which drive their young from them, when brought up to full growth and ready enough to fly, with bites and blows of the wings, which are their darts and weapons, that they may learn to feed themselves not for ever by the providence of their parents but by their own industry and skill; who, while they are troublesome to their parents, fluttering [ii] about, crying, gaping with open beaks, begging food with outspread wings, are not heard; because, if they were always heard, both would be consumed by want of food. But the poor daughter, in process of time seized by the force of fevers, suddenly began to be deprived of bodily strength, and as long as she was able, wandering everywhere, she tried to beguile her sickness, in case by a change of air her pain might be mitigated.

[46] At length the fever, poured into her marrow, had consumed her exhausted body, while, a vision, as she thought, having gone before, she is carried to Lambach, so that, falling into bed, she was tormented for six months without hope of recovering health. Often the mother came to visit her sick daughter; but being unable to help her, she went back to her own. Meanwhile, while her body is pierced by continual pains, while her mind is vexed, there comes to her mind the grace of the signs wrought about the tomb of blessed Adelbero: and falling asleep, she is taught thoroughly in a vision to set out for Lambach, to ask mercy that she may receive, to seek that she may find; and if she persevere knocking, opening is promised. These things appeared to her not only once, but a second and a third time; but the want of poverty [kk] prevented her from attaining her wish. At length, the space of about a year having passed, the mother comes groaning, and the daughter inveighs against her in anger, why she allowed her to end her life in stench, why she was not by her help brought thither where, like very many others, she too might obtain mercy? Pricked by these words, wounded by these threats and terrors, she runs about everywhere panting, now praying, now supplicating; she procures a horse and cart by entreaty and a small payment; having placed her half-dead daughter upon it , she directs her course towards Lambach, to the tomb of the blessed man, for which her soul was burning, whose sight she panted for with all her desires; and when the river had been crossed which flows past at the edge of the mountain bearing on its summit the oratory of the blessed Mother of God, as soon as the boat reached harbour, the soul of the sick girl, loosed from the prison-house of the flesh, entered the harbour of salvation and rest.

[47] For, carried from the boat into the nearest tavern, she happily expired, brought to land there, she dies. and the mother spent on her funeral what she had brought for the viaticum and the offering of her daughter. Then, buried in the cemetery of blessed John the Baptist, the spirit is commended to the Lord and the matter of the flesh to the earth. Whence who would doubt that this power was * granted by the Lord to the blessed Bishop, that that poor girl, rescued from the knots of sickness and the bonds of death, obtained a speedy rest and a happy death [ll]. You might have seen already fulfilled what the Prophet says: "The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a contrite heart, and He will save the humble of spirit [mm]." We have something of the kind concerning blessed Martin [nn], who, when by imperial edict he was committed to public custody to be kept, to be exposed on the next day to the barbarians who were going to fight, the Lord by his merits removed the necessity of battle, lest the Saint's eyes should be violated even by the slaughter of others.

XV.

[48] Since we have in hand two pairs of miracles, A woman divinely punished in her hands, it is worth while that, just as they are distinct in time and effect, though wrought in one place and in one sex, so we too, in hammering them out *, should distinguish them exactly. For the miracle set down above [oo] was wrought on the Lord's Supper, but the following at the beginning of the fast [pp]. A woman, very slender in birth and in means, from the borders of Austria, from the city which is commonly called Wiena [qq], while after the manner of humble dependants she labours anxiously for daily gain, on the evening of the Saturday before the Purification of holy Mary, when she ought to have observed the Sabbath rest by keeping sabbath [rr], became a transgressor of the divine law, applying herself in jus [ss] beyond the usual to servile work. For, balancing the hook [tt] in her left hand and twirling the spindle with her right, in order to arrange the threads of the warp cleverly on the hook, both instruments stuck to both hands so firmly and indissolubly that they could not be removed by any force of those pulling, by any contrivance of those succeeding one another. For the nails of both palms, piercing through skin and flesh, drew little drops of blood from the marks of the wounds; a vehement lividness also had so seized both hands that she could do nothing but groan and sigh.

[49] [she is restored partly in the church of St. Odilia, partly in that of Bl. Adalbero.] She went forth, therefore, from the city of Wiena, about to seek the sacred

places and to travel through them, to implore the aid of the Saints, by whose helps she might escape the losses of the perils that threatened her. But to touch briefly on the last things done: in the church of the blessed virgin Otilia [uu] she lost the hook through her intercession; still gripping the spindle tightly in her bloody hand, she carried it to Lambach, to the tomb of blessed Adelbero; and when she applied the livid hand to the sepulchre, by the merits of the holy Pontiff she lost the harm with which she was burdened, happily obtaining the help of salvation which she sought. At that very hour the father of the monastery came up with all the brethren; they proved and saw the works which the clemency of God had mercifully wrought. It was then the year of the Lord's Incarnation M. CC. IIII, and the Lord's day of Easter held the last point of the element Q in the Catalogue of the computus [xx]. Hence you can observe where the beginning of the fast fell [yy], in which the things set down were done.

ANNOTATIONS.

m. The same: Locata.

p. The same: Omnino.

q. The same: Quæ cum veniret.

r. The same: Huic ossa.

s. Rather: Longo, as Abbot John has.

t. In the margin of the Lambach codex, as Pez witnesses, there is read, added in the same hand: Of the church which is called Pachmannen.

u. Abbot John: Perquam.

x. The same: He conceals this fatal happening.

y. The same: Beyond what is credible to tell.

z. The same adds here: Necessity.

aa. The same: It is clear that, etc.

bb. The same, more briefly: Because we are all in the hand of the potter.

cc. Read 2 Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. 12.

dd. Luke chap. 1.

ee. It is a hyperbolic comparison: that, as Zachary received back his lost speech at the birth or circumcision of St. John the Baptist, so this man recovered, through the merits of Bl. Adalbero, the faculty of speaking of which he had been deprived.

ff. Abbot John: That they will be angels is intimated.

gg. Matthew chap. 18, verse 10. Abbot John, perhaps because he noticed that the text alleged has nothing to do with this, added another, saying, And likewise: "They shall be equal to the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection." Consult Luke chap. 20, verse 36. The texts of sacred Scripture which follow presently are drawn, the first from Malachi (not Zachary) chap. 2, verse 7; for which reason Abbot John substituted Malachi for Zachary; the second from the 1 Epistle of John chap. 3, verse 2; the third from Psalm 81, verse 6.

hh. Our anonymous author would have done better to mention here some sort of likeness of power rather than equality, alluding to the cure of the paralytic related in chap. 1, and to the man lame from the womb healed by the holy Apostles Peter and John, of whom Luke writes in the Acts of the Apostles, chap. 3.

ii. Abbot John: Volitando, and presently below: Expansis for Expassis.

kk. The same: But narrow means at home.

ll. I would not deny that it was perhaps better for this poor girl to die than to be healed: but certainly our anonymous author would have done much more rightly to omit these things; for what miracle is there in this, that a woman worn out by a long-lasting disease, with the discomforts of the carriage added, should die?

mm. Psalm 33, verse 19.

nn. This Saint is venerated on the 11th day of November, on which day his deeds will come to be illustrated.

oo. Above, from num. 10.

pp. That is, the fourth feria of Quinquagesima, or of Ashes; which is the head, or beginning, of the Lenten fast.

qq. Otherwise Vienna, to the Germans Wien, formerly Vindobona, the capital of Austria and the seat of its archdukes and of the Austrian Emperors, most well known to the whole world.

rr. See the Annotations here to chap. 1, letter t.

ss. Abbot John: More urgently.

tt. It seems to indicate a distaff.

uu. I do not know whether the anonymous author wished to designate here another St. Otilia than the Abbess of Hohenburg in the territory of Strasbourg in Alsace, who is inscribed in the Roman Martyrology on the 13th day of December.

xx. He indicates that Easter Sunday fell in that year on the 25th day of April, at which day in the old Calendars, to mark the days of the Moon, the letter Q is marked with two points, that is, already the third time in that cycle of lunations. Further, in the assigned year 1204 Easter truly fell on the 25th day of April.

yy. Abbot John: Could fall. Since, from what has been said, Easter was celebrated in this year 1204 on the 25th day of April, the beginning of the fast, or the fourth feria of Ashes, fell on the 10th day of March.

* Abbot John: places upon it

* rather quod

* that is, esse

* Abbot John: referendo

CHAPTER IV.

Some others granted soundness at the tomb of the same Blessed.

XVI.

The signs ^a and miracles of the blessed Bishop spreading far and wide by divine grace, A blind woman, after honouring the Blessed's tomb, is given sight: and shedding light not only on the neighbouring but also on foreign regions, a certain woman from the city of Regensburg ^b, who had long borne closed eyes, set out with others who were of the same mind to visit the monastery of Lambach. Arriving there, going round the tomb of the blessed Bishop with faith and devotion, she poured out prayer to the Lord, offered the sacrifice of a contrite spirit, found quickly the mercy which she sought, deserved to receive back the lost light of her eyes, and returned home with joy, she who had come sad a little before; for not far from the monastery, as she was going, she was given sight. Then, some time having passed, she returned with vouchers of the truth, and on the Lord's day, bathed in a shower of tears, she disclosed to the congregation then assembled the grace she had received: Glory to God in the highest is raised; God is proclaimed wonderful in His Saints.

XVII.

[51] Then, some days having passed, namely in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord M CC XXV, another receives back the sight lost for many years; on the XVI day before the Kalends of October, when the Dedication of the church of Lambach falls every year ^c, there came a certain man of advanced age from the city situated beside the river Anisus ^d, from which the city itself also received the name Anasus, burning with thirst to visit the tomb of blessed Albero. For the fame of the blessed man's powers had sprinkled all this region; therefore all the peoples went there in crowds for the sake of recovering health. That man, then, of whom we speak, had remained blind for XX years and more, and now almost despaired of, at the exhortation of his companions who were leading him, he approached with the utmost devotion of intention the sepulchre, now made illustrious by many signs; he poured out prayers to the Lord that the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who opened the eyes of the man born blind ^e, would restore to him his lost light. The prayer being completed, the whole crowd which had assembled for the feast day looking on, he received his sight, and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God. These things were done at evening time before the dusk of night.

XVIII.

[52] On the same night, while the faithful were keeping watch at the sepulchre of the blessed Bishop, a certain woman, bedridden ^f and contracted in every part of her body (for both her hands clung and stuck to her breast a contracted woman, as though they had stiffened into bronze, and her legs too were fastened to her buttocks, so that she seemed now not a woman but an image), was present ^g. For in the fourth watch of the night, before the nightly synaxis ^h, her hands and legs are loosed with a huge crashing noise, so much so that the whole church was disturbed. The truth of this matter is testified not by two or three, but by the assertion of very many crowds, glorifying God, and saying : Glory to thee, O Lord.

XIX.

[53] A certain boy of five years, from the church of St. Benedict, lacking the use of his feet, remaining mute as another Zachary, a lame and mute boy, while he venerates and honours with his companions the sacred ashes of the blessed Pontiff, and his parents and friends pour out prayers to the Lord for the boy's recovery, is suddenly raised up, and goes round the circuit of the sepulchre once, twice and a third time. A shout is raised to the stars; praise is sung to Him who raises up them that are cast down, looses them that are fettered, who makes eloquent the tongues of infants: for when the power of walking was restored to the boy by the merits of blessed Albero, presently his mouth was opened, and he spoke rightly.

XX.

[54] Another miracle, like this one, is fittingly added, that the whole body of the faithful may know of how great glory that place is worthy, another boy likewise, lame in both feet, which the Lord makes illustrious with so many and so great signs and powers. No long time having passed, among the mixed crowds there came from the aforesaid parish * a boy of seven years, lame in both feet, to visit the tomb of the blessed prelate. He, having been laid against the sepulchre of the holy man by his parents, kinsfolk and acquaintances, and the prayer of the faithful being completed, rose up sound; and glory is sung to Him who wills all men to be saved.

XXI.

[55] Nor must it be passed over in silence that on the first day of the week there came a copious multitude of people, of both sexes and every age, to venerate the tomb of our blessed Father. and a boy born blind, healed at the Blessed's sepulchre. Among them there came a certain man blind from birth, from the parts of Austria, and during the nightly synaxis, not without the greatest trouble of anguish, the eyes of the blind man were opened to the praise and glory of Jesus Christ our Lord, who formerly, dwelling among men, opened the eyes of the man born blind, which from the beginning of the world has not been heard. For when the windows of the eyes were unbarred, blood bursting forth had abundantly watered his cheeks and jaws, in testimony of the truth.

XXII.

[56] Not to burden an empty page, but that we may magnify the name of Him who alone does great wonders, A boy of seven years, made mute, through the merits of His Saints, let us not pass over in silence a miracle like that which we read befell blessed Zachary, but transmit it to the knowledge of posterity with a memorial pen. A certain boy of seven years, from a village near the church of Lambach called Hofarn ⁱ, on the night next preceding the feast of St. Michael, in his sleep ^k, deprived of the function of his tongue, suddenly became mute, and remaining mute until the eighth day of the same feast, brought no small complaint of sadness to his friends, though some thought it was done out of boyish levity; but with the progress of time they grieved over the truth of such an event.

[57] while he is being led to the same tomb, he receives speech. For the anniversary day of the blessed

confessor Bishop Albero was at hand, which always falls on the octave day of the Angels ^l, on which very many are eager to visit the place of Lambach for the sake of prayer; with whom the parents of the said boy also, bringing him with them, animated by divine hope and trusting in the merits of the blessed prelate, took the road. But before the journey was finished, when they were now drawing near to the monastery, the boy suddenly burst forth into words, and calling his aunt by name, joyfully affirmed that the bond of his tongue had been loosed. Whence, filled with great joy, both the parents and the others accompanying them enter the walls of the church, and prostrate themselves to pray at the sepulchre of the pious pontiff Albero, and rendered thanks to God. Then the matter, as it had happened, is laid open to the brethren of the monastery and to all the people who had come up, and Christ is proclaimed glorious in His Saints.

XXIII.

[58] A certain beggar boy ^m, made mute by accident, To another mute, speech restored at the same tomb. came wandering ⁿ to the monastery of Lambach for the sake of food, and having been sustained there for some time by alms, went fasting to the tomb of the blessed prelate out of devotion on the vigil of the Apostles Philip and James; and because he could not with his tongue, he begged its help more earnestly with the inmost sighs of his heart. But being somewhat wearied by weakness and by the length of his devotion, he fell asleep, tired, on the marble of the tomb: and when he awoke he felt that he had received the function of his tongue, and what he had before asked by nods, the support of his needy life, he afterwards, the bonds of his tongue being loosed, asked of everyone, speaking perfectly, by the merits of the blessed prelate, whom he had seen appearing to him in his sleep and putting his fingers into his mouth ^o.

ANNOTATIONS.

e. John chap. 9.

i. Abbot John: Hofern.

n. That is, a vagabond.

* glorificantium

* dicentium

* read parochia

A SHORT METRICAL LIFE,

By an anonymous author of uncertain age.

From the edition of the most reverend John, Abbot of Lambach.

Adalbero, bishop of Würzburg, confessor, at Lambach in Upper Austria. (Bl.) BHL Number: 0032

By an anonymous author.

[1] Illustrious by birth and merits, he becomes bishop of Würzburg: There was an ancient stock, celebrated through many shores, Of the counts of Lambach ^a, of whose lofty blood was born A happy offspring, the divine prelate Adalberto. His father was Arnold, his mother Regilla, sprung From the powerful race of the Franks of Weinsberg, Who held, besides Lambach, Schärding ^b, and many towns Of Franconia under great dominion, with those named *. He then, remarkable for the heroic nature of his mind, Consecrated in his green age to the liberal arts, Gathered so great a harvest of the Pierides from the dust [c], And shone with so great an honour of every kind of virtue, That it was doubtful whether his virtue was more excellent than his art, Or his art stronger than his famous virtues. So while he is deservedly celebrated in various shores, The thousandth year is rolled beyond nine lustres; Würzburg, mournful, groaned at the loss of its shepherd ^d. The clergy and people therefore assemble in throngs: All have the same counsel, one mind in all, That the noble Adalbero should take the deserted see, That the pontifical mitre should gird his hair.

Accepts with magnanimous effort [e], and strength to prosper him He asks of those above, and receives it faithfully on his lips; Showing himself such that none was more excellent, Or more useful to the flock: thus holily discharging His office, he ruled the peoples in quiet peace: For he built lofty churches with sublime columns, He laid for monasteries foundations pleasing to the Thunderer, Making them opulent with gifts and religion. At Würzburg there had been a church, rich, of St. Stephen, Of initiates following the rights of the see ^f; This, divine Benedict, he consecrated to your trophy, Taking in thirty monks, who night and day Should sing continually to God the encomia of sacred praises. Another, of the same Order (by surname Schwarzach [g]), Sacred temples of the highest Thunderer, lack in means, Of which Charles the Great once laid the foundations: This he restores for the praises of those above, and supplies it with men, When, after God had taken limbs from a mortal body, A thousand years, three times five, and twice six lustres were flowing ^h.

[3] he is cast out of his see; But faithless lot, raging at fair successes, Between the highest Pontiff and the Ausonian monarch Kindled the impious seeds of a pestilent war [i]. Then the Father who held the just reins of Würzburg, Adhering constantly in obedience to the Roman Father, Is driven by force from the lands justly possessed By Caesar Henry, and a certain unjust invader, Meinhard by name, oppressed the venerable sanctuaries: Twice eight lustres above a thousand and four years Were running, when Adalbero yielded his own see ^k. He returned, therefore, to the ancestral strongholds of Bavaria ^l, Where his dear father had founded a sacred house For twice six canons: this the Son, full of the Deity, With highest reason consecrated into a Benedictine Monastery [m], desiring to lay there the frail limbs of his body And to await the last hour of the trumpet [n].

[4] restored to the same, and again cast out, Meanwhile King Henry and Hermann, the lord of the Saxon Shore ^o, burn with love of mad Mars; now the wicked insanity of war rages: Battle is joined: at length, after many heaps of slaughter, Hermann bore off the triumph over the swelling enemy [p]. When with happy omen, after so many battalions routed, Hermann was victor, the magnanimous, the martial hero, He overturned very many acts of the vanquished tyrant; And above all the prelate Adalbero, deprived of his Honours justly possessed, is again increased with them [q], And Meinhard is thrust down from the seat of the sacred chair. But after Caesar took up again the former government of affairs, And proceeds to be a cross to the innocent ministers of Christ [r], Adalbero revisits the sacred roofs Which he had built in his fatherland: here it is given him to indulge in sweet quiet, In the thousandth year, the fifth, and twice eight lustres [s]; Whose breast, Meinhard, do joys try more than yours? But an opportune death broke off this gladness, When time was running, scarcely three years having been completed.

[5] Then venerable Adalbero is again asked, with the anxious voice of many, To take the widowed see. [preferring quiet to honours, he dies at Lambach, and, buried, is renowned for miracles.] But he, shuddering at the mockeries of doubtful lot, As one who had twice been despoiled of just honour, Gave the wishes of the petitioners to the swift winds, vain [t]. It pleases him greatly to spend the remaining time in heavenly Services, joined in harmonious covenant of innocent life With the brethren for whom he built the holy house [u]. Thereafter he lived two years after Meinhard, not more, And accomplished the course which fortune gave; And at length, weary and slow with aged years, By dying he flies forth out of this prison of unstable life, And takes eternal rest above the stars, On the sixth of October, when the world, redeemed by the divine Offspring, Was rolling a thousand years and ten times nine [x]. Thence in the monastery at Lambach, beside the bones of his dear father, He is entombed in his ancestral urn. Nor are rewards lacking to his merits here, for with miracles His monuments shine forth, attested with no doubtful faith, And, consulted, restore to the sick the health they long for.

ANNOTATIONS.

p. Hermann, having been saluted king of Germany, as has been said, overthrew the army of Henry IV in the year 1081 near Höchstädt.

q. That these things took place in the year 1086 I have shown in the Preliminary Commentary, num. 94 and the two following, which consult.

r. Concerning the recovery of Würzburg by the Henricians and the expulsion of Adalbero, read again the same Commentary, num. 97 and following.

s. That is, the year 1085, but at least one year too early, as I observed in the Preliminary Commentary, num. 97.

t. Go to the same Commentary, num. 99 and 100.

u. Do not interpret this of Bl. Adalbero's being a monk among those of Lambach, but of fellowship of life, and perhaps of dwelling together, with the Benedictines of Lambach; for the monastic life him

had never professed, I have proved against John Trithemius in the Preliminary Commentary, num. 29 and following.

x. That Bl. Adalbero died in the assigned year 1090, and on the 6th day of October, I have proved in the same Commentary, num. 101 and following.

* or dictu?