Epiphania

ON ST. EPIPHANIA, VIRGIN AND NUN, AT PAVIA IN INSUBRIA, PERHAPS ABOUT THE YEAR DCCXCV.

SYLLOGE.

The memory of the holy Virgin among the martyrologists, her eulogy, and the discussion of it.

Epiphania, virgin and nun, at Pavia in Insubria. (S.)

BY J. B.

St. Epiphania, a virgin consecrated to God, more illustrious by holiness of life and religious humility St. Epiphania, in the monastery of St. Mary of the Hunts at Pavia than by royal birth, as they would have it, we insert into our Work on this day on the faith of Ferrarius's two Catalogues of Saints, of Giacomo Gualla, book 5, chapter 23 of the Sanctuary or History of Pavia, of Stefano Breventano's History of the Affairs of Pavia, book 3, chapter 23, of Bucelinus's Benedictine Menology, page 692, and finally of Romualdo of St. Mary's Papia Sacra, part 2, page 150, by whose unanimous consent the holy Virgin is venerated at Pavia on this day. There is at Pavia an old monastery of Benedictine virgins, called St. Mary of the Hunts, built already from the time of the kings of the Lombards, who at one time established their royal seat at Pavia, in a place at that time suburban and celebrated for the royal Hunts, whence it drew its name. St. Epiphania is reported to have once inhabited it, and to have illustrated it with virtues and prodigies, and to have honoured and enriched it with the remains of her body up to our memory. The same monastery is reported to have been founded about the year 750 by Ratchis, or Rachisius, king of the Lombards and father of the holy Virgin, before, the royal dignity being despised and cast away,

he put on the monk's habit at Monte Cassino: but of these things more below. Meanwhile, if anyone desires to know more about this monastery, let him consult Romualdo cited above, part 1, page 31 and the 2 following, where he will find more about it.

[2] Further, as St. Epiphania has annual cult in this monastery according to the authors cited above, [a nun and virgin of former times, few of the more recent martyrologists record her today;] so her cult does not seem to have been propagated elsewhere; since not even in the Tables of the church of Pavia, as Ferrarius says in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy at the 6th day of October in the Annotations, is her name inscribed. No one therefore will wonder that St. Epiphania is recorded only by a few, and those more recent, martyrologists. Ménard mentions her in few words: At Pavia, he says, in the monastery of St. Mary, which is called at the Hunts, the festivity of St. Epiphania, virgin, daughter of St. Rachisius, king of the Lombards. Ferrarius and Bucelinus treat of her a little more fully: but I pass over their words, because they contain nothing which is not found in the more prolix eulogy of the Saint which Romualdo wove for her at the 6th day of October in his Hagiologium. Romualdo drew it both from various authors, and from an old manuscript of the monastery of St. Mary of the Hunts on the Life of St. Epiphania, and from the Process of her Miracles. We regret that neither that Life of St. Epiphania nor the Process of her miracles has come into our hands; nor did Romualdo write anything determinate and certain about the age of either: yet that the Life, if it has the same things which we shall touch on below from Romualdo, is not very ancient will appear from what is to be said below. Romualdo's eulogy of St. Epiphania, which, as one equal to all that I have seen, is transcribed here and bears a certain appearance of Acts, runs thus.

[3] but more prolixly to her, Epiphania, who * [is] also Retrudis, a virgin of Pavia, born of her father Flavius Rachisius, king of the Lombards, and her mother Thesia, having obtained the best disposition, shone even in her very tender years with no obscure radiance of future sanctity. Scarcely ten years old, hating the allurements of the world, she resolved in the secret of her heart that her virginity should be dedicated to Christ alone, whom, as the true spouse of her soul, she pursued with sincere love. Therefore, when Rachisius, at the exhortation of Pope Zacharias, had renounced the kingdom, which he had held six years and more, being about to dedicate himself to the supreme Deity, the same example which he, shorn as a monk, gave to princes, and his wife Thesia to royal matrons, Epiphania likewise with another sister Petrude gave as an illustrious example to virgins of embracing religious perfection.

[4] and sought from various writers But before she was shut in the sacred asceterium, that the wickedness of the world might appear more clearly to her, being falsely accused before her father, out of envy, by a young girl of the royal court of having violated her honour, Epiphania turned aside the fury of the angry man not without a miracle. For, the matter having been divinely made known to her in sleep, when she was commending her cause before the image of the Crucified, and Rachisius was secretly hearing what was being done in his Daughter's chamber, as she spoke with another, having learned her innocence from the mouth of the accuser, who there begged of her pardon for the calumny, rushing in to cut down the guilty woman, Epiphania warding off the deadly blow, and a little slip falling miraculously from the mouth of the Crucified, inscribed thus: "Forgive, and it shall be forgiven you", he let her go not only unharmed but also absolved from the crime.

[5] Her brother Aistulf, then, having been crowned king, and a monastery having been built outside the city, where the royal hunts were held, under the patronage of the Mother of God, Romualdo of St. Mary in the Papia Sacra which on that account is still now called St. Mary of the Hunts, and which he also endowed with royal munificence, there Epiphania, displaying an outstanding beauty of body, when she had now grown up to marriageable age, initiated with the monastic veil together with other girls of the gynaeceum, was made to obtain her vow; where, advancing wonderfully in the wrestling-ground of the virtues, having proclaimed for herself the tenor of a harsher life, she suffered none of her companions to excel her in vigils, fasts, prayers and regular observance; with how great love she burned for Christ her spouse, with how great modesty and obedience she was strong, with how great humility and self-denial she shone, was hidden from no one conversing with her.

[6] Most zealous for religious poverty, she rejoiced to have left the royal court to follow it, composed a eulogy, content on this account at all times with a single garment: most exact in silence, she spoke only at the nod of her superior. Outstanding in obedience, although again and again she was asked with full votes for the government of the monastery, she continually insisted on being under rather than over. Ordered once by the prioress to draw water from a dry cistern, when she had hastened quickly to the place, she found it overflowing with waters. She was so devoted to meditations on heavenly things that at night she scarcely granted two hours to sleep. With the hair shirt, with which she was continually clad, she applied frequent flagellations to torture her innocent body, [and] even three times in the week she sustained it only with bread and cold water: reckoning nothing at all difficult for the love of the Spouse; and it was wonderful that, sprung from royal blood, she showed nothing swollen or proud inwardly or outwardly, whether in deed or in word.

[7] But that God might likewise exhibit an example of her patience, which here being once accused before the superior of the monastery by a companion of unchastity, she bore the calumnies with the utmost gentleness and serenity of mind and countenance: which also she brought to nothing, fire being held in her lap for half an hour without burning, all the sisters wondering and the accuser confounded. Moved by an outstanding and filial love towards the Mother of God, she chose her as her patroness, in whose honour she is reported to have passed the sabbaths of twenty-six years without any food, by whose apparition she sometimes merited to be gladdened, and to be crowned by an angel with a triple crown, one of white roses, another of red, the third of flowers of various colours. And the fame of her sanctity spreading abroad, and very many sick flowing together to her, she is narrated to have restored with the salutary sign their former soundness to sixty-four near to death, six dropsical, four paralytics, eight women labouring with an issue of blood, another lacking the use of her limbs, and two blind girls: and also to have recalled to life three dead persons, among whom one four days dead.

[8] Wherefore by the brightness of her virtues she wonderfully increased the number of her companions: is exhibited. for very many virgins, sending notice to the world, vowed themselves to the same enclosure, being especially to enjoy the company of Epiphania. Therefore, when she had shone wonderfully in the monastery by merits and sanctity for forty-six years, and had reached the sixty-fourth of her age, called to the Spouse, she fell asleep in the Lord on the day before the Nones of October, carried to Him by the hands of angels, in about the seven hundred and ninety-sixth year of Salvation restored: whose body, when it had lain unburied for public veneration for eight days, a multitude of the sick flowing together to it, God made the glory of His Spouse attested by manifold signs, both in freeing the possessed and in healing the lame and in giving sight to the blind; and, buried in the same laura of St. Mary, she is venerated yearly by those nuns with an anniversary festivity, as the foundress of that sacred gynaeceum.

[9] Ratchis, first duke of Friuli, is reported to have been her father, Thus far the eulogy which Romualdo composed for St. Epiphania; whether it holds rightly everywhere must now be examined. We have as a writer of those times Paul the Deacon, a Lombard by race, and Anastasius the Librarian of the 8th century; whom we shall use here as leaders, as far as it shall be possible. Paul the Deacon, book 6, chapter 26 (see volume 1 of the Writers of Italian Affairs), relates Pemmo among the dukes of Friuli in these words: Thereafter indeed (after Corvulus was deprived of his eyes) Pemmo obtained the dukedom, who was an ingenious man and useful to his country. He was begotten of a father of Belluno (of Belluno in the March of Treviso), who had been from Belluno: but on account of a sedition which he had made there, coming afterwards into Friuli, he lived there peaceably. This Pemmo had a wife named Ratberga, from whom he received three sons, as Paul says a little below, Ratchis, Ratchait and Aistulf. Of these Ratchis succeeded his father, who had been stripped of the dukedom of Friuli because he had cast Callistus, patriarch of Aquileia, into prison; set in which office he acted vigorously against the Slavs, and together with his brother Aistulf gave outstanding service to Liutprand against the people of Spoleto. This is nearly what Paul says of Rachisius; who a little after breaks off his History of Lombard affairs at the death of Liutprand; lest, a Lombard himself, he should be compelled to hand down to posterity the ignominy of his nation and the destruction of the Lombard kingdom, Desiderius having been conquered by Charlemagne.

[10] then king of the Lombards, But though Paul here deserts us, we have also Anastasius, who will furnish a few more things about Rachisius. He relates in the Life of Pope Zacharias that, Liutprand having been snatched from the living, the kingdom of the same nation devolved on Hildeprand, Liutprand's nephew; but that, he having been repudiated, the Lombards set up Rachisius as king for themselves. To whom, a report (otherwise and better, an embassy) having been sent, the most blessed Pontiff himself (Zacharias) — at once, out of reverence for the prince of the Apostles and inclined by his prayers (the king of the Lombards Rachisius), peace having been made for the space of up to twenty years, the whole people of Italy rested. For just so many years, namely, Ratchis had promised he would keep peace with the Church; but he did not stand by his promises. For, as the same Anastasius narrates somewhat after: In those times, therefore, Ratchis, king of the Lombards, set out with vehement indignation to capture the city of Perugia, as he had the other towns of the Pentapolis (the Pentapolis comprised Rimini, Pesaro, Conca, Fano, Senigallia, Ancona, Osimo, Numana, Iesi, Fossombrone, Montefeltro, Urbino, the territory of Bagno, Cagli, Luceoli and Gubbio, with the fortresses and territories belonging to these towns, says Sigonio, book 3 On the Kingdom of Italy, from the Privilege of Louis the Pious), and, surrounding it, was besieging it strongly.

[11] and at length a monk at Monte Cassino, Hearing this, the most holy Pope at once, relying on divine hope, having taken some of his clergy with nobles, as many as was needful, came to the same city; and, many gifts having been bestowed on the same king, and entreating him earnestly, with the Lord's help he removed him from the siege of that city. Nor did the Pontiff effect only this, that Ratchis withdrew from the siege of Perugia, but the authority and reverence of the Pontiff also prevailed so much with him that, moved by his discourse, bidding farewell to the royal dignity, he of his own accord put on the monk's habit together with his family. For so Anastasius continues: And preaching to him salutary things, God being the author, he was able to incline his mind to a special pursuit. And after some days the same king Ratchis, leaving the royal dignity, fittingly * with his wife and sons (the anonymous Salernitan in Muratori, volume 2 of the Italian Affairs, part 2, page 172, reads daughter) joined himself to the thresholds of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, and, having received prayer from the aforesaid most holy Pope, and having been made a cleric, he was clothed with the monastic habit with his wife and sons. Ratchis left the kingdom to his brother Aistulf; who, while he held the kingdom, carried on perpetual enmities with the Romans and Pope Stephen, as Anastasius relates more fully in the Stephen. He having died, further, the Lombards set up for themselves as king Desiderius, duke of Tuscany: which Ratchis taking ill, having laid aside the monk's habit, sprang to arms;

but, through the action of Pope Stephen, he returned again to the monastic life. These things about Rachisius and his kindred Paul the Deacon and Anastasius the Librarian. Among his kinsmen, moreover, he had St. Anselm, who likewise was first duke of Friuli, and afterwards, having embraced the monastic life, perhaps from the example of Rachisius, was made abbot of Nonantola: he had a sister Giseltruda, wife of Aistulf, the brother of Rachisius; concerning whom see what was said at the 3rd day of March, at which he has a place in our Work.

[12] What the name of Rachisius's wife was, and likewise that of his daughter, whose example his wife Ktasia and daughter Ratrudis the brief Description of the last five kings of the Lombards in Italy by Erchempert, a monk of Monte Cassino, teaches. Erchempert wrote in the year 888 the History of the Lombards of Benevento; which you have in volume 9, part 1 of the Thesaurus of the Antiquities and Histories of Italy, to which the brief Description already cited is prefixed: and this, taken from Anastasius, or the Roman Pontifical, as is to be understood from the words of both, from time to time plainly the same, has thus of Rachisius: After him (Hildeprand, Liutprand's nephew) Ratchis reigned four years and nine months… But Ratchis set out with vehement indignation to capture the city of Perugia, as the other towns of the Pentapolis; and surrounding it he was besieging it strongly. Pope Zacharias met him, and, many gifts having been given, and with much prayer, removed him from the siege of that city. When not much after the same Ratchis, by divine instinct leaving the royal dignity, went devoutly with his wife and sons to the thresholds of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, and, having been made a cleric, was clothed with the monastic garb with his wife and sons. And he indeed with his sons set out to the monastery of blessed Benedict, where under the strictest discipline of life he ended his life. But his wife, named Ktasia, with Raptrude her offspring, likewise having changed their habit, built at their own expense a monastery of girls at Plumbariola, and enriched it with much wealth, and leading their life there under great discipline closed their last day.

[13] To Paul, Anastasius and Erchempert let Leo of Marsica also be added, they are read among the ancient writers to have imitated. so that you may have the statements of the somewhat older writers concerning Rachisius, his wife and offspring, set out as it were in one view. He wrote only in the 11th century; but in the Cassinese History, book 1, chapter 8, he first says that Rachisius reigned five years and six months, when he sought Rome with his wife and daughter (Tasia and Rattruda): then, having been made a monk, that he went away to Monte Cassino, and there obtained the end of his life: but that Tasia and Rattruda closed their last day in the monastery of Plumbariola built by themselves not far from the Casinus (river). Finally Leo adds that in his age there was a vineyard not far from Monte Cassino which Ratchis had cultivated, and that it was therefore called the vineyard of Ratcisus. The same things as Leo are written by Anastasius the elder in the Epitome of the Chronicles of Monte Cassino, volume 2 of the Italian Affairs, page 358; a writer, as they would have it, of the eighth century, between the year 752 and 757, and so by no means to be neglected, unless he were a fictitious author. These testimonies of the ancient writers having been set down first, let us now come to examine the narration of Romualdo of St. Mary transcribed at number 3 and the five following. Whence Romualdo gathered it I set forth at number 2, and advised that the Life of St. Epiphania, which he cites among other monuments, does not seem very ancient; namely if it relates some things about Rachisius (for Romualdo did not declare whence he borrowed each thing) which are read about him in the same Romualdo.

[14] Romualdo, whose eulogy of St. Epiphania is examined, Of this kind first of all is what he writes of Rachisius at number 3, namely that he renounced the kingdom when he had already held it six years and more: for Erchempert, cited at number 12, says that Rachisius reigned only 4 years, nine months; and Leo of Marsica 5 years, 6 months. Neither, therefore, attributes to Rachisius six years and more. But since the things to be said about St. Epiphania's conversion to the monastic life and the monastery of St. Mary of the Hunts founded by Rachisius depend on the years of Rachisius, let us bring his years back to more accurate calculations. Ansprand, when he was at the point of death, saw his son Liutprand elected king of the Lombards: The Lombards, says Paul the Deacon, book 6, chapter 35, perceiving his (Ansprand's) death, set Liutprand his son on the royal throne. Which Ansprand, hearing it while he was still living, greatly rejoiced. And Ansprand died on the Ides of June, Indiction X, as is had in his Epitaph at Pavia, which see in volume 1 of the Writers of Italian Affairs, page 902. Indiction X designates the year 712; in which Liutprand began to reign in the month of June: and he held the kingdom 31 years and seven months, on the testimony of Paul the Deacon, book 6, chapter 58. He therefore prolonged his reign up to the month of January or February of the year 744. Add to these the 7 months during which, from the death of his father Liutprand, Hildeprand was king to the Lombards, and you will reach about the month of September of the year 744, and the beginning of the reign of Rachisius.

[15] the years of Rachisius's reign, Counting from here the 4 years and 9 months which Erchempert and the Brescian chronologer in Muratori, volume 4 of the Antiquities of Italy, page 944, attribute to him, we shall be brought down to the year 749, advanced to about the month of July, in which Ratchis abdicated the kingdom and his brother Aistulf succeeded him. Which calculation plainly agrees with the Brescian chronologer just cited; as also with the author of the Life of St. Anselm, abbot of Nonantola, not much removed, as appears, from that age. The words of the former are: In the year of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ DCCXLIX, and in the year CLXXX after the entry of the Lombards into Italy, the most glorious man king Aistulf received the kingdom of the Lombard nation in the month of July, Indiction II. And those of the latter: In the year of the Lord's Incarnation, then, seven hundred and forty-nine, and the one hundred and eightieth of the entry of the Lombards into Italy, the most glorious man Aistulf (Ratchis, his brother, the Pentapolis having been conquered, at the persuasion of the lord of the Lombards strenuously ruling… in the first year of his reign by his precept granted to the venerable man Anselm, etc.

[16] Pagi in the Critica, although at the year 744, number 6, which Pagi also did, he asserts that Rachisius began to reign in the same year, and likewise at the year 750, number 1, that he bade farewell to the kingdom in the year 749; yet he differs from the calculation just set out, writing in the place just cited of Leo of Ostia: But he rightly wrote that he (Rachisius) reigned five years, six months. So he proceeds: Rachisius confirmed the laws of his predecessors Rothari and Liutprand in the year, as Ratchis himself says, of my reign the second, on the day of the Kalends of March, Indiction fourteen, that is, the year 746; wherefore he began the first year of his reign in the year 744 after the Kalends of March: for otherwise on the Kalends of March of the year 746 he would have numbered the third year of his reign. Now since Aistulf, in the proem of the laws which he himself added to the Edict of king Rothari, says in the seventh Indiction, which denotes the year 754, on the Kalends of March, that the fifth year of his reign had run, it must be that Aistulf began to reign in the year 749 after the Kalends of March, who otherwise in the year 754 on the Kalends of March would have numbered not the fifth but the sixth year.

[17] By which reckoning indeed it is again clear that Rachisius presided over the Lombards from the year 744 until the year 749; wrongly arranges. but if from the year 744, advanced beyond the Kalends of March, you number 5 whole years and 6 months, you will come up to the month of August at least of the year 749, in which Rachisius abdicated the kingdom; which goes against the Brescian chronologer cited at number 15, who writes that Aistulf obtained the kingdom of the Lombards in the month of July of the year 749. Moreover, from Pagi's calculation Hildebrand, son of Liutprand, was rejected by the Lombards immediately upon his father's death; whereas he is said to have reigned 7 months from his father's death in the brief Description of the kings of the Lombards, of which above; as also in the brief Chronicle of the kings of the Lombards from the year 568 to 883, which (see volume 4 of the Antiquities of Italy, page 944) has thus: Hilprand reigned VII months, namely from the death of his father. Pagi at the year 744, number 6, to show that Hildeprand did not succeed Liutprand, adduces these words of Sigebert: Hildeprand, whom he himself (Liutprand) had designated king, being rejected by the Lombards, Ratchis reigns after him for VII years. But could not the rejection of Hildeprand have been made some months after the death of Liutprand, which the monuments just cited, weightier than Sigebert, affirm? Do not perhaps these very words of Sigebert, Ratchis reigns after him, perhaps suggest this? From which it follows that six years and more are wrongly attributed by Romualdo to the government of Rachisius up to the abdication of the Lombard kingdom, from wherever at length he asserted it.

[18] But neither does Romualdo seem to have attained the truth when, Romualdo likewise Retrudis and Petrudis, as is likewise to be seen at number 3, he writes that St. Epiphania, a sacred Virgin at Pavia in the monastery of St. Mary of the Hunts, and dead and buried there, was called by another name Retrudis; and that she had another sister, named Petrudis, a virgin likewise consecrated to God. Petrudis indeed, in part 3 of the Papia Sacra, page 63, in the Annotation on Rachisius, he willingly concedes to the monastery of Plumbariola; but Retrudis, or, as he interprets, Epiphania, he strives to claim for the monastery of St. Mary of the Hunts at Pavia: I fear, however, and not without cause, that Petrudis is the same as his Retrudis. For it seems scarcely to be doubted that Romualdo's Retrudis is the Raptrudis of Erchempert, cited at number 12, and the Rattruda of Leo of Marsica, cited at number 13; whom both write closed her last day in the monastery of Plumbariola. And I fear it the more because I understand from Camillo Pellegrino, in the Variant Readings of the brief Description of the last five kings of the Lombards in Italy, that the same daughter of Rachisius who led the monastic life and died in the monastery of Plumbariola with her mother Ktasia or Ktaxia was called not only Raptrudis but also Rattruda and Reptrudis; nay also, in Basilio Zancarolo of Cydonia, volume 6 of the Thesaurus of the Histories of Italy, part 4, column 99, Ratonda; so that most probably she was also sometimes called Petrudis. Bucelinus, indeed, in the Benedictine Menology at the 2nd day of June, treating of Rattruda who died at Plumbariola, says that she is so named by some; whom, however, Romualdo cites in his favour, in so far as he distinguishes Rattrudis from Epiphania. He cites also monuments of the city of Pavia which he himself saw; but what and of what kind they are he has let us be ignorant. Wherefore I prefer thus far to adhere to Erchempert and Leo of Marsica, who affirm that Ratrudis died in the monastery of Plumbariola, rather than to Romualdo of St. Mary; on whose authority Romualdo does not deny that Rachisius lived at Monte Cassino; why then does he deny that Ratrudis died in the monastery of Plumbariola, which the same writers affirm?

[19] [he wrongly distinguishes the daughters of Rachisius, as he would have it, and Epiphania,] Romualdo seems therefore wrongly to have confused Epiphania with Retrudis, whom Erchempert and Leo of Marsica, cited at numbers 12 and 13, hand down lived in the monastery of Plumbariola under the Rule of St. Benedict and died there; whence it becomes most probable that she was also buried there. And if the Acts of St. Epiphania, kept at Pavia in the monastery of St. Mary, also confuse Epiphania with Retrudis, this will be a second argument that they are, as I said above, of no very ancient age. But hence arises another and graver difficulty: whether Rachisius had only one daughter, who lived and died in the monastery of Plumbariola, namely Ratrudis; or on the contrary two; the one Ratrudis, the other Epiphania, who led her life at Pavia and obtained burial in the monastery of St. Mary of the Hunts. Romualdo contends that Rachisius had two daughters; Angelo della Noce flatly denies it in the Annotations to chapter 8, book 1 of the Cassinese Chronicle written by Leo of Marsica; where, when he has said that it is false that Rachisius, together with his wife Thasia and his daughter Epiphania, was initiated into the monastic institute and buried in the monastery of St. Mary of the Hunts near Pavia founded by himself, he concludes thus at number 3: For that Ratchis, while he still reigned at Pavia, founded that monastery, I would not oppose. For the rest, no testimony of old writers being used, led astray, as I think, by the construction of the monastery alone (he is speaking of Giacomo Gualla and Stefano Breventano), to invent other things at will is insolent audacity.

[20] a nun of Pavia, Angelo relies on the words of Leo of Marsica given at number 13; by which Rachisius alone is said to have lived and died a monk at Monte Cassino; as Thasia his wife with her daughter Rattruda in the monastery of Plumbariola. But Romualdo of St. Mary concedes indeed that Rachisius lived at Monte Cassino for a time; but in such a way that he began and ended the monastic life at Pavia together with Epiphania, arranging the deeds of Rachisius in this order: 1. Rachisius, he says, departs from Pavia to Perugia to besiege it, where he is inflamed by Pope Zacharias to religious perfection. 2. Thence he returns to Pavia, and orders a monastery to be built, and resigns the kingdom to his brother Aistulf. 3. He then seeks Rome, and there is tonsured a cleric by Zacharias. 4. He returns again to Pavia, where, confirming the resignation of the kingdom to his brother, he makes himself a monk in his monastery together with his wife Thesia and his daughter Retrudis (Epiphania, namely, in his opinion), who likewise received the monastic habit. 5. Then, his Daughter being left a nun in the aforesaid monastery according to her vow, he himself, going out from his land and his kindred, seeks Monte Cassino: whom his wife in the monastic habit, and his daughter Petrudis (whether in the monastic or in lay dress we do not dispute), following, raises there for themselves the monastery of Plumbariola, where the daughter, dedicated to the Divine Deity with her mother, [and] he himself in the monastery of Monte Cassino, is free for God, until the election of Desiderius as king.

[21] You have, then, how Rachisius, according to Romualdo's opinion, went on to practise at Monte Cassino the monastic life begun at Pavia: that she was a daughter of Rachisius, hear now how he at length ended it at Pavia. 6. When, he says, by the cunning of the demon, assenting to the invitations of his own, the monastic habit being laid aside, he began to seek the kingdom again. 7. Which habit being then resumed at the exhortation of the Pontiff, thereafter in his own asceterium at Pavia (ashamed perhaps, as a deserter of the institute, to return again to those from whom he had departed), with his daughter Epiphania or Retrudis, who professed the monastic life there, being free for sanctity, he completed the course of his life with the best end. So Romualdo: but his fault here is not one. For first, in distinguishing Retrudis from Petrudis he acts, from what has been said before, most probably wrongly; and as he says that Rachisius went away from Pavia to Monte Cassino, and came thence again to Pavia; so, Retrudis not being distinguished from Petrudis, he could in like manner have invented that Retrudis or Petrudis followed her father both to Monte Cassino and to Pavia. Then, that Rachisius, having been tonsured a cleric at Rome, returned to Pavia is contrary not only to Leo of Marsica but also to Erchempert. For Leo, after he has said that Rachisius was enrolled among the clerics at Rome by Pope Zacharias, continues at once thus: And forthwith arriving at this monastery of blessed Benedict (of Monte Cassino), the same Apostolic Lord sending him, and giving himself to be instructed under regular mastery, after a religious enough and God-pleasing life, he obtained the end of his life there. The words of Erchempert you have at number 12, by which it is likewise sufficiently suggested that Rachisius, having set out from Rome, went away with his family to Monte Cassino, not to Pavia, for the sake of leading the monastic life. Thirdly and finally, he strikes against the same authors more manifestly when he writes that Rachisius made the end of his living at Pavia, of whom the one expressly affirms that he obtained the end of his life at Monte Cassino, the other that he ended his life there.

[22] he does not prove, I do not know, however, whether Romualdo errs likewise when he writes that Rachisius had two daughters: for although Leo of Marsica mentioned only one, I would not dare to conclude from this that Rachisius had not more. For Leo of Marsica, treating of the affairs of the monastery of Monte Cassino, could without any loss to his History be silent about Epiphania, even if he had not been ignorant that a daughter of Rachisius of this name led the monastic life at Pavia. Moreover Leo wrote somewhat sparingly about Rachisius, since he passed over in silence his attempts to recover the kingdom, and made no mention of the sons of Rachisius (if indeed he is to be said to have had sons: see number XI), whom nevertheless it seems to follow, from the words of Anastasius transcribed at number 12, that he had, and from Erchempert at number 12 that they were monks at Monte Cassino together with their father. Yet since Erchempert and the anonymous Salernitan, a writer of the 10th century, nay Anastasius himself, mentioned only one daughter of Rachisius who led the monastic life, and she, namely Rattruda, seems to be conceded to the monastery of Plumbariola, it is not established with sufficient certainty that St. Epiphania, venerated at Pavia, was another daughter of Rachisius. Perhaps Epiphania was not the daughter of Rachisius, but of his brother Ratchait, who may at some time have been held to be the same as Ratchis from the similarity of the names. And she may have given herself to the monastic life by the example of Rachisius himself and her other kinsfolk.

[23] [nor are the other things which he hands down of her sufficiently certain to us thus far.] However it be (for there is nothing available from which we might say anything certain on this subject), St. Epiphania is reported to have begun the monastic life at Pavia in the monastery of St. Mary of the Hunts, founded by her father Rachisius, about the year 749, in which her father, who is honoured with the title of Blessed by some Benedictines, abdicated his kingdom. They report that she lived in that monastery 46 years; and so she will have prolonged her life until about the year 795, although some, as Romualdo says, would have her die about the year 760. And since, moreover, she is handed down to have left this mortal life in the 64th year of her age, she must have been born into the world about the year 731, and have given her name to the religious life in about the 18th year of her age. With what virtues chiefly she shone, with what prodigies she was adorned, you will easily understand from Romualdo's eulogy given above. But I would not dare to establish anything certain about all these things either, because I do not know of what age or value the Acts of St. Epiphania and the monuments of Pavia are, cited indeed in general by Romualdo, but not sufficiently examined by us thus far.

quæ* [who]

devote* devoutly