Colman

ON ST. COLMAN, MARTYR, IN AUSTRIA,

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Colman, martyr, in Austria. (S.)

BY J. B., AND PERHAPS BY ERCHENFRID AS AUTHOR.

§ I. Who wrote the Acts of St. Colman; what was his native land and lineage.

The Acts of St. Colman It was a very frequent custom of the Western Church among Christians in the eleventh century, while St. Henry was governing the Roman empire and St. Stephen the kingdom of Hungary, that they should go to visit Palestine, that blessed land which the Redeemer of the human race trod with His feet and watered with His most sacred blood, led not so much by desire of exploring a far distant land as by singular piety towards the God-Man fixed there to the cross for the salvation of men, not rarely by the land route; of which thing we have as witness Rodulf Glaber, monk of Cluny, describing the events of his time, book 3, chapter 1: At that time, he says, almost all who desired to go from Italy and Gaul to the sepulchre of the Lord at Jerusalem began to omit the accustomed route, which was by the strait of the sea, and to have passage through the country of this region (Hungary). And he (St. Stephen) established the safest way for all. He received as brothers whomever he saw, and gave them immense gifts. Provoked by which thing, an innumerable multitude both of nobles and of the common people went off to Jerusalem. Of this number of those making pilgrimage to Jerusalem was St. Colomanus, Cholomannus, Colmanus or Colomannus (for his name is to be read expressed in various ways by various people), inscribed in the Roman Martyrology at this day, and he attained this from that pilgrimage, that, after the likeness of our Saviour, from the gibbet to which he was fixed with two robbers, as is narrated more fully below in the Acts of his Martyrdom, he opened for himself the way into heaven.

[2] is believed to have written The Acts of his Martyrdom were first published in public print by Peter Lambeck in the Commentaries on the Imperial Library of Vienna, book 2, chapter 8, page 611 and following, with a title of this kind prefixed to them: History of the Martyrdom and Miracles of St. Colomanus, a Scot by nation, who suffered in the year of Christ 1012 in the little town of Lower Austria Stockerau, formerly called Asturis, composed by Erchinfrid, third abbot of the monastery of Melk, who lived at the same time. The same were then published by Anselm Schramb, librarian of the Monastery of Melk, in the Annals or Chronicle of the same monastery, part 1, page 23 and following. The same likewise were inserted by Hieronymus Pez, professed of the Benedictine Order in the same monastery, in volume 1 of the Writers of Austrian Affairs, page 97 and following, published in the year 1722; who also in the year 1713 at Krems not only had them reprinted, but also illustrated them with five dissertations prefixed and Notes subjoined at the end of his Work. They are believed by most to have been written by Erchenfrid, third abbot of the monastery of Melk, which was transferred from canons to Benedictines in the year 1098, elected to the dignity of abbot in the year 1121, whom, about the year 1163, according to the old Chronicle of Melk in Hieronymus Pez, Sygehard succeeded: Pagi and others are therefore deceived, who, following Lambeck just cited, hand down that Erchenfrid lived at the same time as St. Colman. But the occasion of erring was furnished to Lambeck, as Hieronymus Pez judges, by these words of the Acts in the Prologue, namely badly understood: Wherefore we have thought it our duty to commend to posterity the things which we rejoice to have been done in our region and also in our times: for those Acts comprise two parts, of which the first treats of those things of the time while Colman was still surviving among the living, or in the three years next following his death; and the other narrates those miracles which happened in the lapse of subsequent times, to which Pez applies the words of the Acts just recited.

[3] I would easily grant indeed that Erchenfrid was not contemporary with the things which are narrated in the first part of the Acts, Erchenfrid, abbot of Melk: but not even in this way does every difficulty vanish: for not only at the beginning of his Lucubration does the writer of the Acts say that he is handing down to posterity the things which happened in his memory, but also in the other part of it, where he narrates the prodigies done at Melk, he reveals himself an eyewitness of these, beginning the second part of his Narration in this way: Of the many wonders which the clemency of God showed through His faithful Servant, we touch upon a few which have been known to us by seeing. And yet of the eleven miracles which he narrates, at least the first five Erchenfrid could not have seen; whatever is to be thought of the six later ones, at what time they happened is not so clear. The report of the first miracle, by which the human face of a nocturnal thief was turned into a dog's, moved Peter, king of Hungary (nay rather, as will be shown below, St. Stephen, Peter's predecessor), to ask Henry, Marquis of Austria, for the relics of St. Colman to be translated into Hungary: the second, by which Hungary, on account of the relics of the Saint having been carried off, was afflicted with drought of the air, famine and other evils, Peter himself experienced: the third, fourth and fifth happened when, in order that the relics of the Saint might be translated into Hungary, the tomb in which they were enclosed was broken open: but now, Peter into the kingdom of Hungary, as is read in the Chronicle of Melk in Hieronymus Pez,

Andrew succeeded in the year 1046. Erchenfrid, therefore, who died in the year 1163, could not have seen these miracles, unless you should say that he, elected abbot in at least the 75th year of his age, prolonged his life to 117 years; which is destitute of all appearance of truth: but neither is it certain from elsewhere that these Acts have Erchenfrid as their author.

[4] Hieronymus Pez admits this, saying that Erchenfrid is held to be the writer of these Acts by the tradition of our elders rather but this is not certain; than by certain arguments. Mention is indeed made of Erchenfrid in the Necrology of Melk, begun to be written in the twelfth century, in these words at the 16th day before the Kalends of May: Erchinfrid, abbot of our congregation, died. The third abbot of this place, of pious memory, who is said to have dictated the History of St. Cholomannus: But he warns that the last words were added by a hand of the fourteenth century, and adds that the copies of the Acts, of Melk, Vienna, Garsten, Kremsmünster and Windberg, written by hand five hundred years before (he published volume 1 of the Writers of Austrian Affairs in the year 1721), by no means bear the name of Erchenfrid: yet he contends from the texts of the Acts that they were at least composed by some alumnus of the monastery of Melk: but not even this appears altogether certain. For in the first part of the Acts indeed nothing occurs from which you may infer that a monk of Melk was their author. But in the second part these things occur in Pez at number 12: And so up to the end of his life he lived in the service of the brethren, whose daughter is still in our service: number 15: Who, dumb for five years, was in the service of the brethren: number 16: Which by the prayer of the brethren, etc.: number 18: The Lord abbot therefore praying with the brethren, etc. But since Benedictine monks succeeded the canons instituted at Melk by Leopold, Marquis of Austria, it is a question whether canons secular or regular were first instituted there: for if these were regulars, as some monuments at least suggest, as Anselm Schramb admits in part 1 of the Chronicle of Melk, where it treats of Leopold I, nothing occurs in the words of the Acts just reviewed from which it can be made out that the discourse there is about alumni of the Benedictine institute; and nothing will prevent those Acts, as much as they are, from having been written by a canon regular, an inhabitant of Melk, and a spectator, at least in part, of the things he narrates. Anselm Schramb indeed praises a very old manuscript codex of the Library of the Franciscan Fathers of Vienna, in which these words are found: The aforesaid duke Leopold ordained at Melk 12 secular priests. The same also is read in the Chronicle of Melk and of Kremsmünster by Bernard Noricus as author, at the year 1089: But of how great antiquity that praised manuscript codex of the Franciscan Fathers is, the Chronographer of Melk does not exactly explain: and the old Chronicle of Melk is interpolated in that place: Bernard Noricus finally did not write the Chronicle of Bavaria earlier than the fourteenth century.

[5] nay, there is reason why an anonymous contemporary What then, you will say, is to be thought about the author of these Acts? Since he reveals that he lived at that time at which Poppo, Archbishop of Trier, returned from Jerusalem, treated with his brother Henry, Marquis of Austria, about sending the relics of St. Colman into Hungary; and since this return of Poppo, as will be solidly shown below, is to be referred to about the year 1029, that writer could neither be Erchenfrid nor any of the Benedictines of Melk; since the former indeed departed from the living only as the following century was already declining, having discharged the office of abbot for 41 years; and it is established that the Benedictine institute was brought into Melk only 69 years after Poppo's return into Germany, a colony being sent thither from the monastery of Subiaco in Italy; nor would it be likely that the writer of these Acts, being already 69 years old and more, gave his name to the Benedictine company.

[6] may seem to have written them at least for the greater part: Further, since he says that he touches upon the things known to him by seeing, I suspect that both the first part, as much as it is, and the second, but only in part, so far as it comprises the miracles performed from the burial of St. Colman at Melk up to the translation of his body into Hungary, were written by one and the same author of the eleventh century: but that the rest, which are recorded at the end of part 2 from number 12 up to 14, were added by an author of the twelfth century, whether Erchenfrid or anyone else; who not only added some more recent miracles of his own to the older ones, but also interpolated the text of the more ancient writer. That the former of these two writers lived in the eleventh century the words just related suggest. That there was one and the same author of part 1 and of part 2 up to number 14 I gather from this, that at number 12 he says that the sacred bones of St. Colman were brought back from Hungary to the aforesaid place Medlicha. To the aforesaid place he says, in order to indicate that this had already been named by him before, which was done indeed in the first part, but not in the second. Finally, I suspect that the more ancient writer was interpolated by the more recent one for this reason, that he asserts that Peter, king of Hungary, Poppo, Archbishop of Trier, and Henry, marquis of Austria, came together at the same time to the Translation of the body of St. Colman into Hungary, an error, as will be given proven below, too grave to seem to have come from an author narrating things which he saw. Now let us hear the Acts.

[7] likewise uncertain It happened, they say, that a certain man named Cholomannus, originating from the Scottish nation, took up the journey of pilgrimage, seeking, for love of the heavenly, to visit the earthly Jerusalem with others who had the same mind, namely while St. Henry was emperor, who, after Otto III, snatched from the living in the year 1002, presided over the Roman empire up to the year 1024. Whether St. Colman was by nation an Irishman or a Scot, because he is said here to be originating from the Scottish nation, is a dispute, often stirred up elsewhere too between the writers of both nations: we can certainly agree with neither, being destitute of monuments of undoubted credit, although it is sufficiently ascertained that also in the eleventh century, in which he who handed down to posterity the Acts and at least some miracles of St. Colman seems to have been, the appellation of Scots clung to the Irish: thus Marianus Scotus at the year 1043 says of himself: Above whom I, Marianus Scotus, enclosed, etc. And yet Florence of Worcester, who brought his Chronicle only up to the thirty-seventh year of the twelfth century, hands down that he was an Irishman in these words at the year 1028: In the same year was born the Irishman probabilis Scotus: by whose zeal and labour an excellent Chronicle has been compiled out of various books; where for the word probabilis the word Marianus must be substituted, as the same Florence writes at the year 1052: Marianus the Chronographer left the world; or it should be read: Marianus, the probable Chronographer. See more about Marianus in Ussher, On the Beginnings of the British Churches, Chapter 16; where, besides these words of Hermann the Lame in Canisius at the year 812, A fleet of the Danes invading Ireland was conquered by the Scots, he also recites those of Adam of Bremen from Chapter 217 of the Ecclesiastical History: Ireland, the native land of the Scots. Theodoric of Saint-Trond also took Scotia for Ireland in the Life of St. Rumold, volume 1 of July, page 21: but from these and other words of writers of the eleventh century it is not certainly effected that Erchenfrid, or perhaps our anonymous, used the word Scotia in the same sense; granted that the authors of more recent monuments, such as are the Martyrology of the Charterhouse of Cologne, the Ecclesiastical Office and Gradual of Gembloux, the Breviary of Melk, the English Martyrology, praised by Ward in Article 8 of the historical Dissertation on the native land of St. Rumold, understood it so.

[8] the Saint's native land The same is to be thought of the Life of St. Colman transmitted to Ward by Stephen White from the manuscript codex of the monastery of the Benedictines of Kaisheim (commonly Keisersheim) in Swabia, whose words he recites thus: Now it happened that a certain man named Colmannus, originating from the Scottish nation, took up the journey of pilgrimage, and sought, for love of the heavenly, the earthly Jerusalem, with others who had the same mind; which, since they are likewise read in the Life published by Pez, are an indication that the things which follow there are the addition of someone more recent: For he was the son of the king of the Scots of Hibernia, or Scotia, which is called the island of Hibernia; which we suspect the more vehemently because in his Life transmitted from the same library by the same White to our Predecessors those last words are not found. That St. Colman reveals his native land, namely Ireland, even by his very name, is Ward's position, as being one in which many men of this name existed distinguished for nobility and holiness, and that there still exists today the most noble pedigree of the Colmans (among us, he says, Clann Cholmain, that is, the sons or progeny of Colman), a tribe of the old kings of Meath and not rarely of Ireland; which indeed I do not deny, but whence will Ward give it proven that St. Colman was of their stock and native land?

[9] and lineage, Nothing more certain is the royal lineage of St. Colman, which the Irish ascribe to him equally with the present-day Scots: both exhibit his genealogical pedigree; of which the one, sent by Adam Forman, Prior of the monastery of Dunfermline of the order of St. Benedict, situated in Scotland, to Sigismund, abbot of Melk, in the year 1524, together with Forman's letters, Fr. Anselm Schramb exhibits in the Chronicle of Melk, part 1, page 29 and following; and the other at page 32, which is Ward's. The Scottish Genealogy in the praised Schramb runs thus: Edgar with his mother and sisters sought the sea, wishing to return to his kinsfolk in Hungary. But a storm arising at sea, he landed by chance in Scotland, King Malcolm reigning there. When King Malcolm had seen them, he received them kindly. And he joined the Blessed Margaret to himself in marriage. Whence he erected a church in honour of the Holy Trinity within the estate of the nuptials. From whom the said Malcolm begot six sons and two daughters. Of whom the three elder sons were not kings. Edward namely died without children, and was buried together with his father, slain by guile at Anwick. The second son, Edmund by name, pious and devout, died at Mount Jug, and was honourably buried there in the monastery. Malcolm, therefore, king of the Scots, having died with two sons: there arose a very great war in the kingdom of Scotland between Donald, brother of the said King Malcolm, and his bastard son Duncan. And these two disturbed the kingdom of Scotland for six years by invading it, the lawful heir being driven thence, namely the third son, Ethelred by name, who, being exiled, sets out abroad: but where or with what end he rested is not established. Nevertheless some think that he, with his armour-bearer, was taken in pilgrim's garb and hanged innocently. And when he began to be in exile, it was about the year of the Lord 1012.

[10] whether from the Scottish Then follow the parents of St. Colman, Malcolm, king of Scotland, and Margaret, queen, the sons Edward, Edmund, Ethelred, dukes of Scotland, Edgar, Alexander, David, kings of Scotland, and finally two daughters, Matilda and Mary. Of these they would have Ethelred, who set out abroad, called Colman with his name changed. But the refutation of this fiction is easy. Of St. Margaret, wife of Malcolm III, king of Scotland, and, as they feign, mother of St. Colman,

the Acts have long since been illustrated in our Work by Papebroch, in volume 2 of June at the tenth day of this month: Canute, king of Denmark, as may be seen in the same place, having been proclaimed king of England after King Edmund, to whom the surname of Ironside clung, sent the sons of his predecessor, Edmund and Edward, to the king of the Swedes. St. Stephen, attending with a fatherly mind to them when they were then sent from Sweden into Hungary, gave his daughter as wife to Edmund, and to Edward Agatha, daughter of Bruno, brother of the emperor St. Henry: he received three children from Agatha, Edgar, St. Margaret, of whom there is discourse here, and Christina. And Canute and his sons Harold I and Harthacnut having died, Eadward or Edward the confessor, brother of Edmund Ironside, having now obtained the kingdom of England, sent in the year 1054 an envoy to the emperor Henry, who should bring back into England Edward, his brother's son (his brother Edmund had already died). At that time Henry the Black was emperor, who easily obtained from Peter, king of Hungary, the departure of Edward with his family into England; about which the Saxon Chronicle thus at the year 1057: In this year came Eadward the clito, son of King Eadmund, to this land, and immediately afterwards died, and his body was buried in St. Paul's minster at London.

[11] from King Malcolm Margaret, therefore, and that while still unmarried, saw neither England nor Scotland except forty-five years after the killing of St. Colman; and so she could not have been his mother. St. Edward, who had summoned Edward and his children into England, having been snatched from the living, and Harold II having been slain, England passed to William, duke of Normandy, in the year 1066; and Edgar Etheling, says St. Aelred, abbot of Rievaulx of the Cistercian Order in the territory of York, who died in the year 1166, seeing the affairs of the English disturbed on every side, having embarked on a ship with his mother and sisters, was trying to return to the native land (Hungary) in which he was born: but a storm arising at sea, he is compelled to land in Scotland. On this occasion it was brought about that Margaret was given in marriage to King Malcolm. Simeon of Durham, contemporary with Aelred, writes the same at the year 1068, and at the years 1068 and 1070; Theodoric in the Life of St. Margaret, whose confessor he was: And so, with the great festivity and apparatus of the nobility of the whole kingdom, after the Octaves of Easter the nuptials (of Malcolm and Margaret) were celebrated, in the year of Christ one thousand and sixty-seven; and the bride Margaret was crowned queen in solemn manner. I add also the words of the Saxon Chronicle, with Edmund Gibson as translator, at the year 1067: In this year the king went overseas and took with him hostages (among these Edgar, as Florence of Worcester writes) and treasures: and he returned in the second year. In the same summer Eadgar the clito (or Etheling) went out, and Maerleswegen, and many men with them, and set out for Scotland; and King Malcolm received them all, and took to wife the Clito's sister Margaret. It is therefore as certain that St. Colman was not born of Malcolm and Margaret as it is certain that St. Colman ceased to live about the beginning of the eleventh century. And as for their saying that Ethelred, son of Margaret, was called Colman by I know not what event, it is a new fiction: for Ethelred (on the testimony of Aelred), in the praised Papebroch, page 335, the second son of Malcolm and Margaret, was taken away by the fates even in early youth, and buried in Doumferlein, or Fermelinodunum, a town of Scotland in western Fife on the stream Marka. But these things suffice to overthrow the opinion of the Scots about the royal birth of St. Colman.

[12] or from Malachy, king of Ireland Ward, in the Dissertation on the Native Land of St. Rumold, §11, articles 9 and 10, contends that St. Colman was born of Malachy, king of Ireland, the second of this name, and of Maura or Mora, daughter of Brian, petty king of Munster in Ireland. Malachy in the year 978, from petty king of Meath, was saluted king of all Ireland: Malachy shone in that dignity for twenty-three years, until at the beginning of the eleventh century he was deprived of it by Brian, his father-in-law, petty king of Munster: but Brian having been slain in battle against the Danes, Malachy recovered his former dignity, and held it up to the year in which he died, 1022. Colman, warned by his father's fall (who, however, did not cease to rule Meath) how perishable earthly things are, transferred his mind and desires to heavenly things; and gave himself to piety for some years, until about the year 1012 he undertook the journey to Jerusalem. Thus, almost, Ward, from authenticated copies, he says, of very old codices, and approved by the judgment of great men. From these he promises that he will elsewhere exhibit some things about our St. Colman, the pilgrim, called in Irish Colman Allithir, published by no one up to now: if these things are as he says, I wonder why, when he treated of St. Colman's native land, he did not cite even one from these authentic copies, as being things that would have found greater credence than the Martyrology of the Charterhouse of Cologne, the Office of Gembloux, the Breviary of Melk, Brunner's Annals of the Boii, the Life of St. Colman drawn from the library of Kaisheim, and the English Martyrology.

[13] However it may be, since those monuments are still hidden from us, is said to have sprung, and the rest just cited do not have enough antiquity to deserve certain credence, I have judged that it would be rashness to give certain assent to the royal lineage of St. Colman. Certainly neither Colman nor Gothalm, who followed his master's son fleeing from his native land and died at Melk, revealed his lineage: for otherwise neither would Dithmar, bishop of Merseburg, who flourished at that time, have thought it enough to call him only a pilgrim, nor the contemporary anonymous to call him a certain man. Likewise the author who began the Chronicle of Melk made no mention of the royal lineage of Colman, although he wrote a whole century after the killing of St. Colman: Nothing Conrad, made abbot of Melk in the year 1177, in the Genealogical Letters written to Leopold VI, duke of Austria, which Schramb exhibits at page 92 and the two following. Bernard, indeed, steward, a monk of Melk, began the History of Blessed Gothalm thus: When the most blessed martyr of Christ Colman had arranged to leave his native land Scotland, and his earthly dominion or aforesaid kingdom, for the love and kingdom of Jesus Christ the Lord, etc. But he wrote these things in the year 1362. I revere indeed the tradition of the people of Melk by which a royal birth is attributed to St. Colman: but I fear, on account of what has already been said, that it is not old enough to obtain full credence among the learned, nor born from those sources which would remove every scruple about its truth.

[14] rests on no certain foundation, For indeed it becomes very likely that it first arose from nowhere else than from the report of Scots or Irish making pilgrimage through Austria, who, having heard the name of St. Colman buried at Melk, soon fashioned a royal birth for him, to which the people of Melk in good faith attached credence the more easily the more pleasing and acceptable it befell them to hear of the illustrious and royal birth of the Martyr resting with them, otherwise unknown to them: something almost of which kind Hieronymus Pez testifies, in Dissertation 3 on the Acts of St. Colman, page 29, happened to the anonymous of Melk, author of the Flowers of Chronicles, who excerpted this note from a certain old book brought there by George, a monk of Elchingen staying as a guest at Melk in the year 1529: Note that about the year of the Lord nine hundred and eighty (nay, about the year 1061) or a little more there was in England (it should have been written, Scotland) a certain most Christian king Malcomius (Malcolm) by name, surnamed Kaymor, having as wife a most noble woman named Margaret, daughter of the king of Hungary (nay, of Edward, son of Edmund, called Ironside, king of England), from whom he begot three sons, namely Colomannus, martyr, who suffered in Austria, Saint Gall, abbot, resting in Swabia … easily five hundred years older than Margaret. It is uncertain, therefore, whether St. Colman was begotten of royal blood or not; although Ward's opinion, far more likely than the opinion of the Scots, appears more consistent at least with the reckoning of the times.

[15] but the Saint himself with Colman of Lindisfarne Nor did Leslie depart less from the truth, writing thus in book 4 On the deeds of the Scots, page 160: Scotland at that time nourished the bishops Finnan and Colman, two lights of virtue and religion, who, having first followed the footsteps of Saint Benedict, attained by zeal and diligence that the illustrious forms of all the virtues shone forth in their lives and morals. Their temperance in food, their lowliness in dress, their prudence in the greatest affairs of the Commonwealth many ecclesiastics of that age followed, but few attained. Colman not long after, summoned to the church of Lindisfarne in England, rescued a very great multitude of the Saxons, and among the rest King Penda, who had succeeded his father Penda in the kingdom, from the servitude of heathenism and gentility into the liberty of the Gospel; none of which, neither the seventh century, in which St. Colman of Lindisfarne lived, nor the monkhood, nor the episcopate, squares with ours: but those things in part square which he next subjoins: Colman at length, having left Britain, travelled through very many regions of Germany, sowing the word of God and converting very many to the faith, Bohemia, Hungary and a great part of Greece. But returning through Austria, impiously slain by some enemies of Christ, having attained the glorious palm of martyrdom, he is honoured there with great veneration of the people.

[16] is found wrongly confused. But these things are separated by so great an interval of times that it is manifest that the two Colmans are wrongly confused into one and the same. Nor are the things measured to the rule of truth which Leslie narrates about the conversion of very many to the faith by Colman's preachings, about his travelling through Hungary and a great part of Greece, which perhaps he did not see, since here not only the Acts of Colman, to be given below, are silent, but also Johannes Stabius, historiographer of Maximilian, in the Sapphic poem on St. Colman which he praises. Wion too, in the Benedictine Fasti at the 13th day of October, and Bucelin in the Benedictine Menology, admitted Leslie's error with too little caution. Likewise another Colman, a priest, companion of St. Kilian, was famous for sanctity in Germany; but the seventh century, in which he lived, distinguishes him too more than enough from ours. Ward says that several men of this name conspicuous for sanctity are known to him: but, dismissing these, I return to our Colman.

§ II. How St. Colman spent his youth: whether he saw Jerusalem: in what place and at what time he suffered the punishment of death: what was its cause.

St. Colman, of whom it is not known what sort he was before, What sort St. Colman was in his youth our anonymous does not explain; nor did he have whence he might know. St. Colman would have said little about himself, nor much more Blessed Gothalm, who, when he was going to see the tomb of his master's son and had already nearly reached Melk, was found dead the next day, whose History, now lacking public cult, can be consulted in Pez, volume 1 of the Austrian Writers, page 110. Yet the innocence and sanctity of Colman's morals may be measured from the prodigies with which God willed him to be honoured. Ward, more:

Colman, if you listen to him, brought up in a Christian manner from his tender years by the gift of God, adorned the glory of his birth and his excellent disposition more augustly with integrity of morals and the gems of virtues. The unexpected casting down of his father (Malachy) from the summit of rule, seen by him as a youth, did not shake off the fear of God, but increased his courage to condemn the luxury of the world, and the whole pomp of secular vanities, which was to be deserted before it should desert him, and to court with greater cares a share in that kingdom whose glory does not fall away nor its possession. When therefore he had transferred his desires hither, and during his father's interregnum had occupied himself for some while with exercises of devotion, perhaps (at least, therefore, what he is about to say presently he did not draw from authentic monuments) declining, in the asylums of monasteries, the hostile sword of the rival of the kingdom, who feared him, inflamed with a divine ardour to see the footsteps of the Redeemer on earth, he hastened to Jerusalem, and having undertaken the journey through Germany, etc. But concerning Colman's journey to Jerusalem let us rather hear the anonymous.

[18] He came therefore, he says, into the Eastern region of Noricum, into Noricum, to which on the Eastern quarter Pannonia, and on the Northern Bohemia lies adjacent as a neighbour. Old Noricum embraced from North to South that tract of lands which is situated between the Danube and the Noric Alps: and from West to East whatever lies between the Inn, which empties itself into the Danube, and Mount Cetius (which extends from Neuburg as far as the river Drava, commonly called Kahlenberg), the boundary of Noricum and Upper Pannonia: where it was nearer the Noric Alps it was called Mediterranean, where nearer the Danube, Ripense, whose eastern inhabitants, or those nearer to Mount Cetius and Pannonia, had on the North the Quadi beyond the Danube as neighbours; and the western, or those nearer the Inn, the Bohemians. Further, that the discourse of our anonymous here is about Noricum Ripense the rest of the series of his narration sufficiently shows. Lambeck would have the text of the Anonymous, or, as he thought, of Erchenfrid, abbot of Melk, just transcribed, emended thus: He came therefore (Colomanus) into the Western region of the Quadi, to which on the southern quarter Noricum Ripense and Upper Pannonia, and on the Northern Bohemia lies adjacent as a neighbour.

[19] That the times were not very peaceful in Noricum when St. Colman came there, at which time the words of the Anonymous which he subjoins next to those cited above sufficiently indicate: The nations of these regions (Pannonia and Bohemia) were at that time troublesome to the peoples of the land of Noricum, because they had often been shamefully humbled, conquered and in many ways wretchedly afflicted by them. That the Hungarians (or Pannonians) infested Austria at the time when Henry, proscribed by the emperor St. Henry on account of rebellion, was absent, Schramb, the Chronographer of Melk, says where he treats of Henry: but what was to be understood of the proscribed Henry, Marquis of Franconia, son of Berthold (see Dithmar, volume 1 of the Writers of Brunswick Affairs, book 5, page 368), he took as said wrongly of Henry, marquis of Austria and son of Leopold, as the learned now generally think. But however Schramb and other more recent writers were mistaken in that matter, yet it is sufficiently ascertained from elsewhere that the Hungarians, driven out by Leopold I, marquis of Austria, went on exercising their hatred against the Austrians and showing it by frequent incursions into Leopold's dominion: for hence in the year 1075, as may be seen in Hartzheim, volume 2 of the Councils of Germany, page 700, in favour of the settlers, who placed their seats in the fields neighbouring Hungary, power was given to bishops, monks, priests and nobility of building castles, towns, citadels in those same places for the protection of the frontier: Hence Otto III, in the same Hartzheim, in a diploma given at Bamberg in the year 985, the second of his reign, says that Pilgrim, bishop of Passau, had complained to him that the appurtenance of his bishopric in the Eastern quarter, adjacent to the frontier of the barbarians, was infested by their very frequent devastation.

[20] between the Austrians Further, that this incursion of the Hungarians into Austria was recent is clear from these words of Otto next following: By which barbarians also, in the present time of our reign as well, he (Pilgrim) added with miserable lamentation that he had been injured with so irrecoverable a loss in the slaying and carrying off of his household, besides innumerable losses of plunderings and burnings, that the bishop's land, without inhabitant, grows into forest in solitude. It is likewise ascertained that St. Henry waged war against the Boleslaws, of whom one presided over Poland, the other over Bohemia; and that Henry, marquis of Austria, stood on the side of the holy emperor it is right to gather from more than one indication: the Saxon Annalist, at the year 1002, using Dithmar's words about Henry, writes thus: But Boleslaw (duke of Bohemia), by the only way of flight that lay open, taking refuge with the marquis Henry (of Austria), who was then nearest to him, was taken by him on account of the injuries inflicted on him (perhaps on account of his incursions into Austria). The same again at the year 1015 from Dithmar: And the marquis Henry with the Bavarians (for Austria was then called Eastern Bavaria), hearing that the soldiers of Boleslaw, duke of Poland, had made plunder near him, pursues and slew eight hundred resisting, and recovered the plunder. At the year 1017, finally, in almost the very words of Dithmar: The Mararenses meanwhile (or Moravians), having entered Bohemia (which at that time the emperor Henry was protecting against Boleslaw, duke of Poland, who had subjected Moravia to himself), storm a certain city, and were going out unharmed with great plunder. When the marquis Henry had heard this, he hastily pursues, and, more than a thousand of their men being slain, sent home all the captives freed.

[21] Hansiz also relates, in volume 1 of Germania Sacra, page 227, that the Hungarians about the year 983 had war with Austria, and among neighbouring nations enmities flourished, but a treaty with the Bohemians. Whence it sufficiently appears that occasions were not lacking to the above-mentioned nations through those times of exercising hatred and wearing one another down with mutual defeats; nor accordingly is it any wonder if, as the anonymous writes, both the Hungarians and the Bohemians were troublesome to the Austrians when St. Colman came to them, (I add) hated and suspect. Conrad of Wizenberg, abbot of Melk, in the brief Chronicle of the old marquises and dukes of Austria, in Hieronymus Pez, volume 1 of the Writers of Austrian Affairs, col. 291, writes that at the very same time at which St. Colman came into Austria the Austrians had continual war with the foreign nations bordering on them; But these incursions of the neighbouring nations into Austria may perhaps have been tumultuary, which, although they sometimes occur without the command of the princes, yet are no less apt to stir up hatred among neighbouring nations.

[22] That disturbance of affairs and times brought it about that the inhabitants of the region, coming, led by that suspicion or opinion that a hostile spy lay hidden under the habit of a pilgrim, put Colman in chains as he was arriving in Austria. Thence, says the anonymous, there arose against the man of God a false suspicion, as if he came sent by the aforesaid nations for the sake of spying and betraying the region. By this suspicion the minds of the furious common people grew so hot against the Servant of God that, having atrociously chastised him with rods, they handed him over to be guarded, to be presented to the judge on the following day. Thus the anonymous: but since he does not say whether he was held as a spy sent by the Hungarians or by the Bohemians, although it is sufficiently clear from his words that the holy Stranger was captured by the Austrians, he nevertheless leaves it doubtful so far whether he came from the West, or from Bavaria, or from the East, or Hungary or Pannonia; and, what follows from that, whether the Austrians laid hands on him on his way to Jerusalem or on his return from it. It is necessary that the first happened if the anonymous author of the Chronicle of Leoben, who lived in the fourteenth century, writes true things in Hieronymus Pez, col. 765: he has thus: Saint Colomanus, a Scot by nation, for the sake of devotion took up the journey; descending by the Danube he wished to come through Pannonia and Greece into the holy land. And this indeed is far more in conformity with our Anonymous, than whom we have no better witness in this matter: hear his words: Now it happened that a certain man named Cholomannus, originating from the Scottish nation, took up the journey of pilgrimage, seeking, for love of the heavenly, to visit the earthly Jerusalem with others who had the same mind. He came therefore into the Eastern region of Noricum, etc. And soon he records that he was captured and hanged. He says therefore that he took up the journey to Jerusalem, and indeed desired to see Jerusalem, but not likewise that he actually saw it: nay rather he indicates that he was unexpectedly, when he was making for it, frustrated of the hope and desire he had conceived by hanging.

[23] and, making for Jerusalem, Conrad the Steward agrees with the Anonymous in these words: Blessed Cholomannus being secretly lost, and making for Jerusalem: likewise five manuscript codices of the Library of Melk agree, partly of the fifteenth, partly of the sixteenth century, in which, on the testimony of Pez, these words are read: Blessed Cholomanus, about to go to Jerusalem, came on pilgrimage into these parts. More safely, therefore, by adhering to the more ancient rather than to the more recent monuments or writers, St. Colman is believed to have suffered on his way out, and accordingly, more probably, to have arrived in Austria from Bavaria down the Danube or by land journey. It becomes likewise less probable that St. Colman set out to Jerusalem again and again; of which repeated setting out into the Holy Land no trace exists, not only among the more ancient writers who have treated of St. Colman, but not even among those whom Baronius praises either in his Annals at the year 1212 or in the Annotations on the Roman Martyrology; so that Schramb wrote with too little caution at page 37 of the Chronicle of Melk that it is manifest from the agreement of all documents and authors that St. Colomannus made pilgrimage to Jerusalem again and again; nor is there room for the doubt which moves him, whether Blessed Gothalm, of whom above, went to seek St. Colman, who had secretly set out from his native land, on his first departure or on another.

[24] taken as a spy, in Austria beyond the Danube The place at which St. Colman suffered slaughter neither the anonymous expressed, nor Dithmar, bishop of Merseburg, than whom no one, so far as I know, is more ancient concerning him, inasmuch as he wrote at the same age at which St. Colman lived. The anonymous writes that he came into Noricum and was hanged there: yet beware of concluding from this that he was captured and hanged in Austria on this side of the Danube, although Noricum, namely Ripense, was situated on this side of the Danube and on the right bank of this river: for since he affirms that it happened in a region to which on the Eastern quarter Pannonia, and on the Northern Bohemia lies adjacent as a neighbour, and this situation agrees with Austria beyond the Danube, the anonymous, or Erchenfrid, must be considered to have spoken of this, and to have extended the borders of Noricum further than the authority of the old geographers permits, that is, beyond the Danube. Of the same Austria beyond the Danube Dithmar is to be understood, whose words concerning St. Colman, in a codex formerly ours, now of Tongerlo, much more correct than any edition of Dithmar that has hitherto appeared, and marked QMS 3, are these: On the border of the Bavarians and the Mararenses a certain pilgrim, Colomannus by name, is taken by the inhabitants as if he were a spy, and is compelled by dire chastisements to the confession of a fault which he had not deserved. When he excused himself sufficiently, and affirmed that he was a poor man of Christ wandering thus, the things ill fixed in their mind could not be torn away. For they hanged him, innocent, on a tree long dry. The rest of Dithmar's words about St. Colman will be given below: but these concerning

Austria beyond the Danube are to be understood, you will gather from this, that the said part of Austria has as neighbours on the North partly Bohemia, and so also partly Moravia, or the region of the Mararenses.

[25] near Stockerau, Nor ought it to detain anyone that Dithmar says the region in which St. Colman was captured and hanged was situated on the border of the Bavarians and the Mararenses: for Austria too, at least where it was a portion of Noricum Ripense, was formerly called by the name of Bavaria, namely Eastern, of which Dithmar speaks here, as Hieronymus Pez teaches in volume 1 of the Writers of Austrian Affairs, Dissertation 3, §21. What of the fact that Dithmar himself more than once designated the Austrians with the name of Bavarians, as is shown from these words in book 7, And Henry, Marquis of the Easterners, with the Bavarians, learning that the soldiers of Boleslaw had made plunder near him, at once pursues, and of these, resisting bravely, slew eight hundred, and released all the plunder, and from others cited by Calles in the Annals of Germany at the year 1012, number 76. Now indeed, since Austria beyond the Danube lies between Moravia and Austria on this side of the Danube, Dithmar rightly called it the border of Moravia and of (Eastern) Bavaria. But although Dithmar indicated only the region in which St. Colomanus met death, namely Austria beyond the Danube, yet it is sufficiently agreed among authors that it happened not far from Stockerau, a town of the same region on the left bank of the Danube, distant about four German leagues from Vienna; which the author of the Chronicle of Melk, who wrote in the year 1123, says in Hieronymus Pez, volume 1 of the Writers of Austrian Affairs, in these words: 1012. Blessed Cholomanus was martyred and hanged at Stoccharouwe: with whom there agree, in the praised Pez, the History of the foundation of the monastery of Melk, col. 297, the Chronicle of Salzburg, col. 340, that of Klosterneuburg, col. 437, the more recent one of Zwettl, col. 531, the Austrian one of an uncertain author, col. 546, that of the Dukes of Austria, col. 974.

[26] not at Tulln, from the cross The author of the chronicle of Leoben alone, in the same place, col. 765, affirms that it happened near Tulln, a town of Hither Austria situated on the right bank of the Danube, whose words, because they contain certain singular things about St. Colomanus, it pleases me to set down here. They run thus at the year 1016: Saint Colmanus, a Scot by nation, for the sake of devotion took up the journey; descending by the Danube he wished to come through Pannonia and Greece into the Holy Land to visit the sepulchre of the Lord and other holy places. And when he had come into Austria, near about Tulln, he was detained as a Bohemian spy []. Since he did not know the German idiom, they suspected him to be a Slav and a spy; because there was then war between them. And when they had inflicted many punishments on him, they hanged him on a certain tree between two thieves: shining there with many miracles he was buried in the cemetery near there. And not wishing to lie there, he was brought by untamed animals walking with dry feet over the Danube to Medlicum (where Hainricus, then Marquis of Austria, made a monastery of black monks), burying him honourably.* But just as credence is not to be given to this author, not older than the fourteenth century, asserting that St. Colman, if not hanged, was certainly buried at Melk in the year 1016, as will be clear from what is to be said below, likewise (what he alone, so far as I know, narrates) that untamed animals carried the body of St. Colman to Melk with dry feet over the Danube; that Henry instituted Benedictine monks at Melk, so neither is he to be believed when he asserts, against the mind of other writers generally, that St. Colman was slain and buried near Tulln on this side of the Danube, nor is one to depart for his sake from the common view of the writers, who place the Saint's arena near Stockerau, beyond the Danube.

[27] hanged in the year 1012, but on an uncertain day, The year in which Colman was slain is likewise admitted among most writers, namely of Christ 1012: nor ought it to move anyone that Dithmar treats of St. Colman at the year 1017 towards the end of book 7: for in that place Dithmar writes, not in their proper place, things which he had passed over at the years 1012 and 1014 or the following. And that Dithmar is to be abandoned in this matter is urged not only by the unanimous consent of writers, but also by what is to be said about the year of the sacred body translated from Stockerau to Melk a little later. But the month and day of Colman's slaying are in doubt: Dithmar expressed neither, nor Erchenfrid and the Chronicles cited a little before: the Martyrology of Benediktbeuern indeed, written in the twelfth century and mentioned by Hieronymus Pez in the Observations prefixed to the Life of St. Colman, says that he suffered on the 3rd day before the Ides, or the 13th day of October; but the very old Martyrology of Melk, on the testimony of the praised Pez, assigns this day, as Erchenfrid also does, not to his passion but to the translation made from Stockerau to Melk, in these words: On the 3rd day before the Ides of October. In the region of Noricum, in the city of Medilicca, the translation of St. Cholomannus the martyr, so that these two old Martyrologies are mutually opposed, unless someone should contend, but without any witness, that on the same day of the year St. Colman both suffered and his body was translated from Stockerau to Melk. Alold of Peklarn, chaplain of Adalbert, third marquis of the Babenberg stock from the year 1090, would remove the doubt, who, in the Chronicle of the illustrious Babenberg stock ruling in Austria, from which Ortilo, monk of Blessed Mary at Lilienfeld, copied out his Notes, writes that St. Colman suffered, on the testimony of Calles, book 5 of the Annals of Austria at the year 1012, on the 16th day before the Kalends of August; but was buried at Melk on the 3rd day before the Ides of October of the year 1014, if it were established that that work of Alold is genuine: but Calles, in the Preface to the Reader, uncovers some errors in that Work which can scarcely befall such a man as this Alold is said to have been, of which we shall mention one, common both to Alold and to Erchenfrid, below at number 38.

[28] on account of the killing and punishments unjustly inflicted on him, By what kind of death, with what punishments, the guiltless Stranger in Austria was afflicted, Erchenfrid narrates more fully and one by one, and Dithmar in general, in the words given above at number 24: Erchenfrid indeed says that first, as soon as he was captured, he was atrociously chastised with rods; that on the following day, presented to the judge, when he had endured with unconquered spirit scourges, stones, fiery eggs, a glowing pair of tongs, and finally a saw, by which his legs were indeed torn but not cut off, he was at length put on the cross, in the middle between two robbers.

[29] not on account of defending the faith, The cause of death, by these witnesses indeed, was no other than that he was held to be a spy: others think more probably, says Inchofer in the Ecclesiastical Annals of the kingdom of Hungary at the year 1012, that he caught among the Pannonians, that is, the Austrians, who were reckoned of Upper Pannonia, some still affected with paganism, violating the Christian rites: whom, when he had rebuked them, he irritated the more, so that at length they seized him as he pressed Christ upon them more constantly and fervently; and, having tormented him with various kinds of punishments, of which Johannes Stabius writes, when he relaxed nothing, they cruelly slaughtered and hanged him; If these things are as those of whom Inchofer speaks here think, it is certain and undoubted that St. Colman, slain for the cause of faith and religion, is to be called a martyr in the strict sense: but since neither Dithmar nor Erchenfrid nor any of the ancients said that he was slain by pagans for defending the Catholic faith, I would not dare on this ground to adorn him with the appellation of Martyr.

[30] yet he was held for a Martyr. Yet he is called Martyr by Dithmar, by Erchenfrid, by the authors of the Martyrology of Melk praised at number 27, and of other monuments praised by Hieronymus Pez in the observations prefixed to the Passion of St. Colomanus. Of the Martyrologists, Greven, Molanus, Galesinius, Wion, Bucelin and Dorgain likewise give him the title of Martyr; the author of our manuscript Florarium, nay even the present-day Roman Martyrology in these words: In Austria, of St. Colmannus, Martyr. He likewise enjoys the title of Martyr in two Bulls of Pope Innocent IV, of which one was given in the year 1244, the other in 1254; and both will be exhibited below. Finally, he is honoured as a martyr through Austria and the neighbouring provinces. For which causes we too have judged that he should be inserted in our Acts, keeping the title of martyr, not because he shed his blood for faith and religion, but following the custom of that age, in which men of blameless life were called martyrs who were slain guiltless for no just cause.

§ III. Miracles reveal the Saint's innocence: his relics, translated first to Melk, then into Hungary, are brought back to their former seat.

The Saint's body, God manifesting his glory, being presented with burial, The death of St. Colman, shameful in the judgment of men, God, in whose sight the death of the saints is precious, willed to be made illustrious by very many miracles soon put forth to testify to his innocence and the glory which he was enjoying in heaven, and to declare it to mortals with interest. But God, says Dithmar briefly, showed the wicked what they had done in him:… For his flesh, afterwards cut a little by a certain man, poured out blood, his nails and hair grew. The tree itself also (long dry before), growing green and producing flowers, showed to all that this was a martyr of Christ. Erchenfrid below relates more of these things and more explicitly, adding also that the twisted withy, or osier, from which Colman was hanging flowered; that a gouty man recovered by a piece of flesh cut from his calf: and that the calf of the Saint was so restored that not even a scar of the inflicted wound appeared: finally that blood flowed copiously from his side, pierced through by a hunter: and when the neighbours of the place where he was hanging from the gibbet had seen these things, hatred being turned into love and contempt into veneration, they took his sacred body down from the gibbet and, having carried it into a certain augia, as Erchenfrid speaks, buried it beside a church near the Danube, recently built there. Now Augia, as Lambeck notes, is a Latin-barbarous word from the German Au or Aw, by which is signified a pasture-field adjacent to a river or surrounded by a river. And there is understood here the little town of Lower Austria Stocherau, situated on the left bank of the Danube, formerly (as he himself at least judges) called Astura by the Romans. The same, as I think, that Lambeck says is signified by the word augia, Arenpeck and others intended to be understood, who say that Colman was first buried on a certain island beside the Danube. Moreover, with Lambeck agree the praised Chronicles of Melk, Klosterneuburg and Zwettl in Hieronymus Pez, of which the first has thus: 1013. In this year blessed Cholomannus was buried in the same place where namely he had been hanged, namely, as is read at the year next preceding, in Stocchærouwe.

[32] not long after to Melk It was not long before God revealed by a new and great miracle the glory of Colman, now buried at Stockerau. The Danube had flooded the neighbourhood of Stockerau with a great onrush of waves, and had in great part submerged the very church near which or in which his tomb had been built: but when the storm poured itself to the tomb of St. Colman, the waters stood immovable round about on every side like a wall, nor did they dare to touch it. Someone sailing along the Danube sees this, and, amazed by the unwonted spectacle, announces what he had seen to the multitude: the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages fly thither in crowds, their

to behold with their eyes the prodigy which they had heard of. The report of the thing is carried to Henry, Marquis of Austria, the first of this name, who, having sent clerics and the chief leaders of his soldiery thither, orders the glorious remains of St. Colman to be translated with due honour to Melk, where he had his seat at that time, and orders them to be laid there in the church sacred to the prince of the Apostles, in the Southern apse. That translation took place, according to Erchenfrid's words, on the Nones, or the 7th day of October, in the thousand and fifteenth year of the Lord's incarnation. Dithmar too dispatches the matter in these few words: When he (Henry) learned these things (the miracles related above from him himself), he buried his body in Mezelecun. Dithmar indeed makes no mention of this last miracle, done at Colman's tomb at Stockerau; but it becomes very likely to me that Dithmar, touching upon the deeds of St. Colman only in passing and hastening to other things, wished to sample only a few out of many.

[33] in the year, more probably, 1014 And although Erchenfrid writes that the body of St. Colman was first (for we shall relate below another Translation also, made from Hungary to the same place) translated to Melk in the year 1015, and it follows from his words that it was buried at Stockerau in the year 1014, yet neither thing is certain as regards the year in which it was done. According to Erchenfrid (by whom I think the anonymous was here interpolated), from the day of the hanging (of St. Colman, done in the year 1012) up to the day of the translation (7 October) a whole three years of time passed; whence it follows that he was hanged on the gibbet in the month of October. But again, according to the same author, from the day of the hanging up to the day on which he was taken down from the cross at Stockerau, a year and a half, or 18 months, are to be computed, which, if you number them from the month of October of the year 1012, must necessarily end in the year 1014. But on the contrary the Chronicle of Melk has thus at the year 1013: In this year blessed Cholomannus was buried in the same place, that is, in Stocchærouwe: and at the year 1014 thus: In this year Saint Cholomannus was buried in Medelicca by Megingaud, bishop of Heibstat. The Chronicle of Klosterneuburg has the same things as that of Melk, calling Megingaud of Heibstat Meingand of Eyhstet, and so does that of Zwettl; but this calls the bishop Megingaud of Haberstat: and the Southern Chronicle in Freher, volume 1, of Hebenstat. Whether to adhere to these or to Erchenfrid? The matter is uncertain: yet I should prefer to adhere to the Chronicles rather than to Erchenfrid in this matter, because that flooding of the Danube, which according to Erchenfrid happened after Colman was buried at Stockerau, could easily have been the same of which the Saxon Annalist writes thus at the year 1013: The King, going to the regions of the West, arranged his journey into Lombardy, and again returned to Merseburg, and departing thence on the 11th day before the Kalends of October, passed through the borders of the Bavarians and the Swabians. Soon an excessive flood of waters occurred, inflicting much damage, on the 18th day before the Kalends of January.

[34] is translated by Megingaud, But as regards the bishop who was present at the translation of St. Colomanus to Melk, it is certain and undoubted that no bishop of this name presided at that time over the church of Halberstadt, but Arnulf: but if you follow the catalogue of the bishops of Eichstätt in Gretser, page 1429 and following, neither could Megingaud, or Megengoz, bishop of Eichstätt, have been present at the said translation, at least if it happened on the 3rd day before the Ides, as Alold writes, or on the Nones of October, as Erchenfrid writes; as one who is said there to have departed from the living in the year 1014 on the 4th day before the Kalends of May. Yet that Catalogue of Eichstätt is not in this place, as Calles notes in volume 1 of the Annals of Austria, page 308, immune from all suspicion of error. But, says Calles, the things which are asserted there about Starchand and Reginold, bishops, who preceded Megingaud, do not seem undoubted: for Starchand is read to have been slain by the Hungarians on the 3rd day before the Ides of February in the year 965 on the field of the Lech: whereas in that year there was no war with the Hungarians at the Lech, but in the year 955 on the 4th day before the Ides of August. Then Reginold, who is written here to have died in the year 989, is perhaps not different from him who is noted in the Necrology of Fulda to have died in the year 991: which latter opinion, if it were true, Megingaud, to whom the Eichstätt catalogue attributes 24 years of episcopate, would have died not in the year 1014 but in 1016; and so could have been present at the Translation of St. Colmannus. Thus he, by conjecture.

[35] bishop of Eichstätt: But in this way indeed Megingaud would have prolonged his life only to the year 1004 or 1006, and not only would Gundekar II, elected bishop of Eichstätt in the year 1057, and the author of the aforesaid catalogue, have erred shamefully in the years of his predecessors Reginold and Megingaud; but also the following words of the pontifical book of Eichstätt in Gretser, page 433, would have to be convicted of falsity: In the year of the Lord 1015, in the time of Gundekar the first, bishop of Eichstätt, the division of the same see in its boundaries was made, which appears too hard to me. What then? Was Megingaud not present at the translation of St. Colman to Melk? By no means, although mention of Megingaud is made neither in Dithmar nor in Erchenfrid. For all things, by following the Chronicles cited at number 33, can be fitly combined; first indeed, if the flooding of the Danube, and the miracle done at the tomb of St. Colman at Stockerau, be bound, according to the Saxon Annalist, to the month of December of the year 1013: and then, if the translation of St. Colman be determined to have been made in the year 1014, not yet advanced to the month of April. The first the reckoning of time suggests: the other Erchenfrid's own narration, when he says: The report of this so illustrious and stupendous miracle (of the Danube standing still round the tomb of St. Colman) reached the ears of the Marquis Henry (quickly indeed, inasmuch as he was then living at Melk, not far from Stockerau), carried by rumours: who at once, having sent orders of clerics and certain chief men of his soldiery, commanded that they should honourably translate into his city the body glorified by miracles; which truly he would not have commanded at once if he had deferred it either to the 3rd day before the Ides or to the Nones of October of the year next following. If these things are right, the 13th day of October, on which the old Martyrology of Benediktbeuern, praised at number 27, says that Colman suffered, and on which he was always honoured, will most probably have been the day of death of our saint. Then Erchenfrid subjoins certain prodigies which happened while the Saint's body was being translated to Melk, and in this manner completes the first part of his lucubration.

[36] but in succeeding And he begins the second part thus: Of the many wonders which the clemency of God showed through His faithful Servant, we touch upon a few which have been known to us by seeing; which words seem to have furnished occasion to Lambeck, paying too little attention to Erchenfrid's age, to affirm that these Acts of St. Colman were written by a contemporary author: for since he says that he saw the miracles of St. Colman which he put into writing, and of them there are some which happened either in the very translation of Colman to Melk, or not long after, while Henry I of this name, marquis of Austria, snatched from the living in the year 1018, was still surviving among the living, who would not think that they came from an eyewitness? He would perhaps have written more rightly that these Acts were written by a contemporary author indeed, but one interpolated by another's hand; because on the one hand the author says universally that miracles seen by him are narrated; but on the other hand certain things are read inserted in this second Part of the lucubration which can by no means befall an author contemporary with the things he writes and an eyewitness.

[37] with new miracles, For when at number 12 the vengeance divinely inflicted on a thief who had snatched the things offered to St. Colman has been narrated, at the next number it soon goes on thus: This report therefore growing more and more frequent, Peter, king of the Hungarians, was fired, as to how he might be able to acquire this body and bring it over into his kingdom. While he was meditating these things, Poppo, archbishop of the Treveri, brother of the Marquis (Henry), returning from Jerusalem, came into his kingdom. When the king heard this, rejoicing with great joy he called him to himself, hoping that he would find the effect of his desire through him. Which was also so done … coming therefore (Poppo) to his brother (Henry, marquis of Austria), with great affliction of heart and with tears he disclosed what the violence of the king had compelled. And the Marquis, as he was always a good and prudent man, lest any stain should darken his excellent family, although unwilling, yet decided to do as the king had compelled his brother to swear. From which it manifestly follows that at the same time Henry presided over Austria, Peter reigned in Hungary, and Poppo, Archbishop of Trier, returned from Jerusalem through Hungary into Germany; how absurd this is, and foreign to an author committing to writing things which he saw, the things which we are now about to say will make plain.

[38] Dithmar writes that Henry, marquis of Austria, died in the year 1018, into Hungary, with whom the Saxon annalist agrees thus at the aforesaid year: A few days having passed, Heiricus, who had the March situated between the Hungarians and the Bavarians, a brave and strenuous man, died. Add also the Annals of Hildesheim from the year 714 up to 1138, in which, in volume 1 of the Writers of Brunswick Affairs, page 724, these words are read at the year 1018: Heinrich, marquis of Bavaria (namely the Eastern, by which name Austria was called), was overtaken by sudden death. That St. Stephen, Peter's next predecessor, exchanged life and at once the kingdom of Hungary for death in the year 1038, Stilting proves in volume 1 of September, page 552, from Wipo in the life of the emperor Conrad, Marianus Scotus, Hermann the Lame, the Saxon annalist; so that the age of Henry cannot be connected with the reign of Peter, saving the authority of contemporary or nearly contemporary writers. But neither would you rightly reconcile the return of Poppo, Archbishop of Trier, from the Holy Land into Germany through Hungary with the reign of Peter. For Eberwin, abbot of St. Martin at Trier, contemporary writer of the Life of St. Symeon, recluse there, writes these words about Symeon in volume 1 of June of our Work, page 92: Meanwhile the Lord Poppo, Archbishop of the holy church of Trier, its strenuous provider, devoutly hearing the Prophet saying of Christ, And His sepulchre shall be glorious, went to Jerusalem for the sake of prayer: and he had the servant of God (Symeon) as his companion going and returning hither. And on the following page he adds also the year in which Symeon, the companion of Poppo in going and returning, departed from the living: and so in the year of the Lord's incarnation one thousand and thirty-five he rendered his holy soul… to the creator; after he had lived some years as a recluse: whence it is clearly established that Poppo returned from Jerusalem to Trier some years before Peter occupied the throne of Hungary; and accordingly that the return into Germany is not rightly reconciled with the reign of Peter, as I was just saying.

[39] and thence again to its former seat Far be it, however, that I should wish the authority of the author who we believe interpolated the anonymous, whoever he finally was, to be so far diminished that credence should be denied to the translation of the body of St. Colman: the things which have been said here aim only at this, that

all the things which are narrated in the second part of the Life of St. Colman should not be believed to have an eyewitness as author, as the words related at number 36 seem to indicate. Erchenfrid suffices me to believe that it was in fact made at some time, although, as Calles notes in book 6 of the Annals of Austria at the year 1028, if you except Alold (see what has been said of him at number 27), nothing about it exists in the older Chronicles, whether Austrian or Hungarian. You will ask, therefore, in what year and to what place of Hungary (for Erchenfrid informed the reader of neither) the remains of St. Colman were carried? Inchofer indeed, in the ecclesiastical Annals of Hungary at the year 1012, writes that this was done in the time of King Peter, and that the body of St. Colman, after it had been preserved there for some years with signal cult, was brought back from Hungary into Austria; promising that he would say in due time with what design this was done, which he also nearly does at the year 1015. But neither where he treats of Peter nor elsewhere have I found it in him. Schramb in the Chronicle of Melk, page 37, assigns the year 1039 to this event; and, otherwise than Inchofer writes, he says that the relics of St. Colman were brought back to their former seat in the year next following: and Alold, on the testimony of Calles, ascribes these things to the years 1016 and 1017.

[40] Neither rightly: for since, from what has been said above, we have it that St. Symeon, Poppo's companion on the journey to Jerusalem, exchanged mortal life for immortal in the year 1035, and from elsewhere, from the Acts of Poppo, that Symeon spent nearly seven whole years in the Porta Nigra at Trier from his return into Germany, we determine that the return of Poppo and Symeon, and so also the translation of St. Colman into Hungary, most closely connected with the return of Poppo and Symeon, happened either in the year 1028 or in one of the two next to it, St. Stephen being king of Hungary, and Adalbert, brother of Henry and of Poppo, Archbishop of Trier, being marquis of Austria. But to what place in Hungary the relics of St. Colman were carried Erchenfrid is silent: we believe they were brought to Székesfehérvár (Stulweissenburg), formerly famous for the coronation and burial of the kings of Hungary, of St. Stephen himself too, because the head of St. Colman was preserved there; where, says Schramb, page 575, from the bringing back of the sacred relics into Austria it was left up to now. Further, Hungary seems not long to have enjoyed this sacred pledge: for After the bones were brought to the king, says Erchenfrid, his affairs fell back: for drought of the air, sterility of the land, famine and mortality so pressed his kingdom that they believed it would utterly perish. At length they sent to the aforesaid marquis, asking that envoys be sent who should worthily bring back the bones of the holy Man. Religious men, therefore, namely clerics and laymen, having been sent, brought back the sacred bones, and, giving pardon to the king and his people for their offences (the relics extorted), they brought them back to the praise and glory of the name of God to the aforesaid place Medlicha.

§ IV. The sacred cult of St. Colman, begun shortly after his killing, remarkably increased and propagated through Austria and the neighbouring provinces.

The sacred cult of St. Colman, begun at Melk, From the signal zeal of King Stephen in acquiring the remains of St. Colman, anyone may easily gather how great a fame of Sanctity Colman enjoyed from about the year 1028 onwards, not only through Austria but also among the nations neighbouring it, how great a veneration of peoples. What of the fact that from his very translation to Melk, when, from what has been said above, not yet three years had elapsed from his killing, he obtained the honours customarily paid to the Saints? This indeed is urged both by the frequent miracles by which God already then made him illustrious, and by the benefits obtained by his intercession, of which Erchenfrid below has gathered only a few out of many, and finally by the gifts of the faithful in testimony of their veneration towards the Saint. The body therefore being placed in the church (of Melk, sacred to St. Peter), says Erchenfrid, many came daily, and according to what means each had they brought to the Saint. Begun with these beginnings, the cult of St. Colman gradually increased, while not only the monastery of Melk but also all Austria commended itself to his patronage and protection.

[42] afterwards increased And that among the people of Melk indeed he was honoured of old with an Office and a proper Mass is clear from Schramb, page 104 and following, where the following things are copied out from the Missals and Breviaries to be cited just below:

SEQUENCE.

From two manuscript Missals of Melk of the 15th century, and printed ones of Passau of the 16th century.

[42] *Rejoicing let the faithful company in the heavens be glad, Let the whole world, willingly, becomingly, glad, sing Of Cholomannus's varied fight, and his joyful victory. Who, leaving Scotland, came by chance to fruitful Austria. He is believed a spy, the Soldier of Christ is beaten with dire scourges. They add a saw to his legs, with many torments, you see the enemies. Cholomannus strangled by a rope noose, the rope grows green. Harmful by no vice, the Witness of God enjoys the hanging. Being punished, he kept silent, innocent he fell, He opened not his mouth, like a lamb. Cleaving to constancy, he yields not to injury, The great Martyr enters the house of glory. Prince of peace, Jesus, free us from being eaten by the infernal tyrant, And to the Sabbath of Sabbaths of the heavens lead us by the prayer of Cholomannus.*

ANOTHER SEQUENCE OF THE SAME.

From a manuscript Missal of Melk.

[43] with a proper Office *The heavenly dance praises Thee, O Christ, the true exultation of those before, In harmony with which the Church Applauds with festive jubilation. For the annual day offers Votive joys to the pious, Through the solemnities of blessed Cholomannus. Whose praiseworthy merits Furnish remedies to the sick, Faithful ones to all who piously ask. O what was the Innocence of the holy Man, Which spurned the glad or harmful things of the world, Gentle and humble follower of Jesus, The illustrious Hero becomes a seeker of Jerusalem; But while he follows the footsteps of the Lord, By the gibbet he seeks the summits of heaven. He did no reproaches to his neighbour, Having suffered many kinds of punishment: Now he glories in heaven in the victorious laurel. That he may obtain heavenly gifts for his little servants, Let him pour forth prayers to the supreme King, To whom be praise, honour and glory.*

HYMN AT VESPERS.

From the manuscript Breviaries of Melk.

[44] from which the hymns *Sea, fountain, mouth, and God of lands, Thou head of all good things, From Thee good things flow, and to Thee they run. Far from the islands a good part of the sea Has returned to the fountain, and seeks Thee, Jesus, the fountain of the living waters. The fountain of the sea is God, the part is Cholomannus, Whom he thirsts for far from his native shores, Like the hart, making for his draught. Happy Nursling of the Island of the Scots, Make us worthy by sedulous prayer of the water Which whoever drinks knows thirst no more. Those cleansed by baptism wicked frauds Ever infect, ever plunge down, Through the pool of crime into the penalty of death. But by thy prayers we all pray To be snatched from the savage Charybdis of guilt, Touching with tears the haven of salvation. Praise to Thee, Trinity, and power: Thee the rivers, heaven and earth praise, From sea to sea let there be praise this day. Amen.*

HYMN AT LAUDS.

From the Breviaries of Melk and of Passau, of the year 1517, from the Venetian presses, in which it is assigned for Vespers.

[45] some sacred *Hail, happy Soldier of Christ, Cholomannus, who hast conquered The wandering vanity of the world, And the hostile savagery. Thou didst bear the Cross of Christ, When thou didst tame thyself, Rejecting the glad things of the world, Loving more the adverse ones. Thou didst suffer dire punishments, While thou hadst confessed the cause Of thy journey: for which, pleasing to God, But accused by the wicked, Thence sharply beaten, Torn with tongs, Burned with eggs, a witness, And sawn in the legs. These torments thou didst not dread at all, Thou didst cleave to Jesus Christ, Slain by a like death thou Wast, strangled on the wood. Now thou rejoicest with the laurelled; Therefore make our praises Pleasing to God there, Where thou aboundest in joys. Make us by thy intervention To be placed in the Assembly In which the hosts of the Saints Sing psalms to the King of ages. Grant, Father, what we long for, Grant, Son, what we hope for, Grant, Spirit of both, To us the kingdom of joys, Amen.*

[46] and Prayers are shown: The Collect, or Prayer, of St. Colman in the Mass of the same, from the above-said Missals of Passau and Melk: "May we be absolved from our sins, O Lord, by the pious prayers of Blessed Cholomannus, Thy Martyr, who, following the footsteps of Thine Only-begotten, hanged for another's guilt, patiently accepted death. Through our Lord, etc. Secret. May we be helped, O Lord, by the merits of Blessed Colommannus, Thy Martyr, who, cleaving to the ways of Thine Only-begotten, fell innocently by the punishment of the gibbet for another's excess also. Through our Lord, etc." Complenda, or Postcommunion: By these sacrifices, O Lord, may the holy prayer of Blessed Cholomannus, Thy Martyr, fit us; that we may be united to the members of Him whose example he followed and deserved to perish for his neighbour's offence. Through our Lord, etc.

[47] The rite with which he is now honoured there; sacred buildings He is celebrated, moreover, here and there through Austria, on the testimony of Hieronymus Pez in the Observations prefixed to the Life of the holy Martyr, on the 13th day of October, but in the monastery of Melk and at Stockerau with more solemn rite, namely with an Octave and cessation of works: besides, the whole neighbourhood is wont to run together to the church of Melk, to celebrate the same day in choir and in the market-place: and on the third day of Pentecost the inhabitants of almost twenty villages, with banners spread, their curates going before, have been accustomed to do the same together; and through the year separately. The holy Martyr is honoured besides in the Diocese of Vienna with double rite, and at Vienna in St. Stephen's the stone on which he suffered the saw is religiously preserved: whose inscription is this: This is the stone upon which was poured out the blood from the sawing of the shins of St. Colomannus the Martyr, which the illustrious Lord Rudolf IV, duke of Austria, placed here. The parish church in Rodendorf is dedicated to his name; as also the church in Eisgarn; in which they declare that a stone is preserved on which St. Colman, intending Jerusalem, rested. At Steyr likewise, situated in Upper Austria on the river of the same name, a parish church is seen erected to God under the invocation of St. Colman. A Chapel likewise is seen sacred to him about two miles from the monastery of Mondsee (otherwise Mansee) of the Benedictine Order in Upper Austria, where also he is said to have stopped for the sake of rest, to which the faithful run in numbers to seek help and protection for themselves, whether against storms of the air, or diseases of animals arising from whatever source, or toothache and other bodily troubles.

[48] erected to his name through Germany; At Salzburg, in the metropolitan church, Sigismund of Volckenstorff, Archbishop of Salzburg, the first of this name, elected in the year 1452, erected, endowed and consecrated a chapel in honour of St. Colman, and in it (see Hund, page 26) founded a Mass of the same Saint. The things related at this number are drawn almost from Schramb, who adds at page 34: Moreover, in the whole of Germany many temples, more altars inscribed to St. Colomannus attest his most powerful patronage with God; among which are to be numbered the chapel and altar of St. Colman in the monastery of St. Emmeram, about which in the History of the Bishops of Ratisbon and the abbots of St. Emmeram, by Christophorus Erythropolitanus Tubertinus, volume 1 of the Writers of Bavarian Affairs, page 556, I read these words: The abbot began to preside over our monastery in the year of the Lord 1217

named Udalric, the second of that name; he presided 4 years, 5 months, 20 days. He was buried at St. Cholomannus, almost in the left wing. And a little after: He too (Perchold, successor of Udalric II) was buried in the greater chapter-house, as they call it, beside the altar of St. Cholomannus the Martyr. Likewise these words in Hund, Metropolis of Salzburg, volume 2, page 371, in the Catalogue of the abbots of St. Emmeram: In the time of this one (Frederick of Weidenberg, who died in the year 1395) the dormitory was burned to ashes, the chapel of St. Colomannus beneath the dormitory being preserved, as it were in the midst of the fire. Likewise two sacred buildings are to be numbered, of which Rader, in Bavaria Sancta, volume 3, page 13, in these words: Colomannus has many buildings here and there through all Bavaria inscribed and dedicated to his name: in two of them today the instructors of our youth teach boyhood the elements of the Christian law; the one, that of Perlach, is three thousand paces distant from Munich; the other, that of Schwaben, two from Ebersberg, where on feast days our companions partly make discourse to the people in sermon, partly instruct tender age. But these things formerly.

[49] of the supreme Pontiffs, The Roman Pontiffs Paschal II, created Pontiff in the year 1099, Clement VI in the year 1342, and Pope Innocent IV in the year 1244 promoted the cult of St. Colman excellently, indulgences having been given to that end; in which year, by letters given to Rudiger, bishop of Passau, he ordered his feast day to be solemnly celebrated through all Austria and the adjacent provinces: these run thus in Hansiz, Germania Sacra, volume 1, page 381: Since, as we have learned from the intimation of our beloved son, the noble Man, the duke of Austria (Frederick II), our Lord works many miracles through the merits of Blessed Colomannus the Martyr, whose body is preserved in Austria under venerable custody, we command you by the authority of these presents that, if the aforesaid Martyr has been canonized by the Apostolic see, you cause his feast to be solemnly celebrated through all Austria and the adjacent provinces. Given at the Lateran on the 6th day before the Ides of May, in the first year of our Pontificate. The same Pontiff in the twelfth year of his Pontificate granted to the faithful duly visiting the church of Melk on the day sacred to St. Colman an indulgence, about which letters of this kind are extant in Schramb, page 142.

[50] of several bishops, Innocent, Bishop, servant of the servants of God. To our beloved sons Ortolph, abbot, and the convent of the monastery of Melk, of the Order of St. Benedict, of the diocese of Passau, greeting and Apostolic benediction. The places of all the Saints are to be venerated by the faithful of Christ with pious and prompt devotion, so that while we honour the friends of God, they may render us lovable to God, and that, claiming in some manner their patronage for us with Him, we may deserve to obtain by their intercessions what our merits do not obtain. Desiring therefore that the church of your monastery, which belongs without any intermediary to the Roman Church, should be frequented with fitting honours. To all truly penitent and confessed who shall come with devotion to your church itself on the feast of Blessed Colomannus the Martyr, with whose name it is distinguished, and on the day of its Dedication, trusting in the mercy of almighty God and the authority of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, we mercifully relax forty days of the penances enjoined on them every year. Given at Anagni on the 17th day before the Kalends of July, in the twelfth year of our Pontificate. A similar indulgence to those coming to the church of Melk for the sake of devotion on the day sacred to St. Colman was granted by one archbishop and eleven bishops at Orvieto in the year 1282 on the 14th day before the Kalends of January, on the testimony of Schramb, page 33, with this clause added: Provided that the consent of the diocesan be given: and Bernard, bishop of Passau, consented, a similar indulgence being added in his own name, in the year 1286 on the third day before the Nones of December. And two years after, he likewise granted an indulgence of forty days to those who, truly penitent and confessed, should hear Mass sung at the altar of St. Colman. See moreover other indulgences, of 40 days, granted, some in the year 1347, others in 1354, by several archbishops and bishops for promoting the cult of St. Colman, in the same Schramb, page 242 and the two following.

[51] and the singular and varied But neither did the cenobites of Melk suffer their zeal and labour to be wanting in promoting the cult of the holy Martyr. In the year 1170, under Abbot Sygehard, Erchenfrid's successor, there took place in the church of Melk, on the testimony of the Chronicle of the place, the Dedication of the altar of St. Cholomannus the Martyr on the 14th day before the Kalends of June. The same Chronicle at the year 1429, in which Abbot Leonard presided over the people of Melk, has thus: In this year on the Sunday "Oculi" our church of Melk, newly constructed, is dedicated and consecrated with 14 new altars, of which one was sacred to St. Colman. For thus about that matter, in Schramb, page 372 and following, Wolfgang of Steyr, an eyewitness of the event: The outer or hinder part of this monastery, which is commonly called the long house, or the body of the church, the former and ancient part of the church being utterly destroyed and removed from the place, was built and erected entire anew with its altars and basilicas: and the said part of the monastery was completed in the year of the Lord 1218, and was consecrated with its altars by the Reverend Father in Christ the Lord Andrew, bishop of Victricum, at that time coadjutor in pontificals of the church of Passau, in the year of the Lord 1429, on the 27th day of the month of February, which was then the third Sunday of Lent, on which the Church of God itself sings in the Office of the Mass: "Oculi mei." And consequently through the three days following after the same Sunday; to which a little after he subjoins these words about the altar of St. Colman: After whose consecration, namely on the last day of the month of February, which was then the second weekday, the very ancient altar of St. Colomannus situated in the Southern part of the said church was destroyed. And on the same day another, ampler or greater altar was rebuilt anew in the former place. On the following day, therefore, namely the 1st day of March, which was then the third weekday, the said bishop consecrated first the pavement and the body of the church, of which mention was made before, outside and inside, with Chrism and holy Oil and the other things pertaining to consecration of this kind, round about.

[52] zeal of the Prelates of Melk in promoting his cult; Then on the same day he consecrated the altar of St. Colomannus placed in the Southern part of that church. Abbot Leonard solemnly sang on that very day at the altar of St. Colomannus the Mass of the Dedication; which Dedication the people of Melk afterwards celebrated on the third Sunday after Easter. Moreover, since of these altars enumerated (the words are Schramb's, page 374) some have collapsed through antiquity, or have been changed for some cause, or united with others, we find for the present time that only two have remained, namely that of St. Colomannus and of Benedict, and accordingly we have wished to exhibit the memorials for these two altars. Of St. Colomannus. In the year of the Lord 1429 this altar was dedicated on the 27th day of February (understand this so, that on that day the church with its altars began to be consecrated) by the Reverend Father in Christ the Lord Andrew, Bishop of Victricum, coadjutor in Pontificals of the church of Passau, in honour of the most holy Trinity and of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of all the saints, but specially in honour of St. Colomannus, Martyr, patron of this altar, in which are contained the relics written below: Namely, the body of St. Colomannus, Martyr; likewise of the relics of St. Peter, etc.

[53] and of princes The same Schramb relates at page 570 that the tower of the church of Melk with six bells was burned by lightning in the year 1516; but that in the same year, by the care of Abbot Sigismund, the bells were restored, of which the third had this inscription: Saint Colomannus, help the tottering monastic order, and receive the service of thy faithful, that we may feel thee, with St. Leopold, as patron with God; which reveal the confidence of the cenobites of Melk in their holy Patron in adversities. In the year 1514 the same religious men had a sacred building erected at Vienna to St. Colomannus consecrated, about which Schramb excerpted these words from an old codex of Melk, marked No. 29, Letter H, at page 588: In the year from the Nativity of the Lord 1514, in the 2nd indiction, on the 14th day of the month of May, which was the 4th Sunday after Easter, in the 2nd year of the Pontificate of the Most Holy Father in Christ and our Lord, the Lord Leo X, by divine providence Pope, there reigning the most glorious and most invincible prince and our Lord, the Lord Maximilian, by the favouring divine clemency elected emperor of the Romans, ever august, then king of Hungary, Dalmatia, Croatia, most powerful archduke of Austria, at the instance of the Reverend Father in Christ the Lord Sigismund Taler, Abbot of the monastery of Melk of the Order of St. Benedict, of the diocese of Passau, the present chapel with its three altars was dedicated by the Most Reverend Father in Christ and Lord, the Lord George, bishop of Vienna, in honour of God almighty and of the glorious Virgin Mary, and of the saints Colomannus, Martyr, and Leopold, confessor, etc. Finally the aforesaid Most Reverend Father in Christ and Lord bishop granted to each of the faithful of Christ visiting the aforesaid chapel for the sake of devotion on the anniversary day of this consecration 40 days of true indulgence in the accustomed form of the church.

[54] towards the Saint The Mausoleum built for St. Colman by Rudolf I, archduke of Austria, in the year 1363, Caspar, abbot of Melk, renewed by gilding it in the year 1594, on the testimony of a marble tablet placed at the foot of the sepulchre, the verses inscribed on which Schramb exhibits at page 695. On the testimony of the same, page 817, Reiner, Abbot of Melk, ordered a silver statue to be cast for St. Colman in the year 1630, into which he inserted a part of the withy by which the Saint was hanged, given to him as a gift by the Lord John Funtfleutner, provost of Sankt Pölten. And of Valentine, abbot of Melk, he writes thus at page 863: In the aforesaid year 1647 Abbot Valentine erected an altar in honour of St. Colomannus, of Porphyry marble and with a copper picture worked with a most skilful brush, representing the funeral of the same holy Martyr, with this inscription: To thee, O divine Colomannus, royal prince of the Scots, most holy pilgrim Martyr, most glorious patron, Valentine, abbot of Melk, set up this altar of marble. Do thou render this place and the neighbouring fields of Austria always immune from every danger. In the year 1647. Gregory likewise, abbot of Melk, in the year 1686, ordered these verses to be inscribed on the bell of St. Colman: Thee, Colomannus, we of the sacred cloister honour as patron. Hence, as often as the bell sounds, it gives the prayers of thy clients.

[55] veneration And how much veneration princely men had towards St. Colman, the things which follow will teach. That Henry I, Marquis of Austria, having heard of the miracles of the Saint, soon had his body solemnly carried from Stockerau to Melk and honourably buried there; and that St. Stephen, king of Hungary, effected so much as to obtain the same from Adalbert, duke of Austria, and sent it back, and that only unwillingly, to the place whence he had received it, is known from what has been said above. Frederick, duke of Austria, wrote to Innocent II that it might be permitted him to translate the body of St. Colman to Vienna, where an episcopal see was to be established: this is gathered from the letters of Innocent, which are conceived thus in Schramb: Innocent, Bishop, servant of the servants of God. To our beloved sons the abbots of Holy Cross of Zwettl and of Rane, of the Cistercian Order, of the dioceses of Salzburg and Passau

greeting and Apostolic benediction. Our beloved son, the noble man the Duke of Austria, has humbly besought us that, since he desires the body of Blessed Colomannus the Martyr to be preserved under venerable custody, we would with fatherly solicitude see to translating it to some place where it should happen that a bishopric be created in his land. Having therefore fuller confidence in the Lord in your circumspection, we command your discretion by Apostolic writings that, having inquired more diligently into the truth about this, and whether it is expedient that it be done, you faithfully intimate to us by your letters what you shall have found, so that thereupon we may dispose what we shall see to be expedient. But if you cannot all be present at carrying these things out, let two of you nonetheless carry them out. Given at Lyon on the 8th day before the Ides of March, in the second year of our Pontificate. Frederick's prayers lacked the wished-for outcome; since the monastery of Melk went on possessing the body of St. Colman.

[56] veneration. Rudolf IV, Archduke of Austria, in the year 1360 adorned with gold, gems, pearls and relics the holy cross formerly given as a gift to the monastery of Melk by Adalbert, marquis of Austria, as he himself protests in Pez, volume 2 of the Writers of Austrian Affairs, col. 396, on account of special love of the most holy Martyr Colomannus. The same came to Melk in the year 1362, and, having visited the sepulchre of St. Colman, already collapsed with antiquity, ordered a magnificent Mausoleum to be built for preserving his remains, on the testimony of an inscription of this kind: Rudolf IV, by the grace of God archduke of Austria and of Carinthia, Lord of Carniola, Marquis of Pordenone, count of Habsburg, of Pfirt, of Kyburg and of the Adige, marquis of Burgundy, Landgrave of Alsace, made me in honour of St. Colomannus. Another monument of the veneration of the same Rudolf towards the holy Martyr was related above at number 46. The emperor Maximilian I, staying at Melk in the year 1517, had decided not only to renew the Mausoleum of St. Colman, but also to bring back the head of the same Saint from Székesfehérvár to Melk; but envious death prevented that design. Anna, wife of the emperor Matthias, having asked for and obtained a part of the jaw of St. Colman, withdrew glad from Melk in the year 1613. In the year 1693, when the emperor Leopold I had come to Melk together with the empress Eleonora Magdalena and his children Joseph and Elizabeth, that august company did not depart thence before it had testified its love and veneration towards him by a pious and religious kiss imprinted on the remains of St. Colman. The most illustrious Lord Wenceslaus Hegemüller wished to be buried at the altar of St. Colman, that is, as his epitaph has it, under the shade of his protector. To these illustrious men and women let it be permitted to add also certain private persons; among whom are Frederick of Hauseck and a certain Official of the monastery of Melk, of whose legacies made to the same monastery in honour of St. Colman Schramb treats at page 172; and Christopher Wagner, who offered a golden chalice, with this inscription added, which should testify his mind towards St. Colman: This chalice with paten Christopher Wagner, cellarer in the court of Melk at Vienna, offered to the monastery of Melk in memory of St. Colomannus in the year 1683, on the 21st of August, on the day of his death. And these are the principal things pertaining to the sacred cult of St. Colman which I have collected, found scattered here and there in Schramb in the more recent chronicle of Melk; to which he adds at page 470 and following that some of the relics of St. Colman were enclosed in the altar of the chapel of St. John and in the altar of St. Michael in the year 1456, when these were dedicated; and at page 961, that in the year 1693 they were enclosed also in the tower of the church of Melk for driving off storms.

LIFE

By Erchenfrid, as is believed, as author,

from Hieronymus Pez, volume 1 of the Writers of Austrian Affairs, col. 97 and following.

Colman, martyr, in Austria. (S.)

BHL Number: 1881, 1882

PERHAPS BY ERCHENFRID AS AUTHOR

PROLOGUE.

The author wishes to provide for the memory of St. Colman. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, hearing from the Lord that despisers of the world are to be rewarded here with a hundredfold profit, and in the future are to possess eternal life with Christ, acquired many troops of followers by the example of his conversion. For, considering what and of what kind are the things which God has promised to those who love Him, they spurned those things which they could have in the world, that they might deserve to be enriched with the possession of everlasting life. The conversion and conversation of certain of these faithful History commends to us, so that their memory may live through the ages among those who survive. Wherefore we, by a barren office, have judged it worthy to commend to posterity the things which we rejoice to have been done in our region and also in our times ^c.

CHAPTER I.

The Saint's coming into Austria, his punishment, and his Translation to Melk.

The Saint, a Scot by nation, captured in Austria as a spy, While the most glorious emperor Henry was reigning, who, after the death of Otto the Third, was set over the empire of the Romans ^d, many making pilgrimage for the name of Christ directed their journey through the kingdoms subject to his dominion: because so great was the piety of the aforesaid emperor that in him there was a great solace for pilgrims, a defence of peace, and a refuge for the wretched. Now it happened that a certain man named Cholomannus ^e, originating from the Scottish nation ^f, took up the journey of pilgrimage, seeking ^g, for love of the heavenly, to visit the earthly Jerusalem with others who had the same mind. He came therefore into the Eastern region of Noricum ^h, to which on the Eastern quarter Pannonia, and on the Northern Bohemia lies adjacent as a neighbour ⁱ. The nations of these regions were at that time very troublesome to the peoples of the land of Noricum, because they had often been shamefully humbled, conquered and in many ways wretchedly afflicted by them. Thence there arose against the Man of God a false suspicion, as if he came sent by the aforesaid nations for the sake of spying and betraying the region. By this suspicion the minds of the furious common people grew so hot against the Servant of God that, having atrociously chastised him with rods, they handed him over to be guarded, to be presented to the judge on the following day. But the unconquered Soldier of Christ, making light of the span of a slipping life, prepared the constancy of his mind for punishment by manfully strengthening it, desiring to obtain the crown promised to those who strive lawfully: because, as the Apostle says, "No one shall be crowned except he who has striven lawfully." ^k

[3] tortured and hanged from a cross, And when they had come before the judge, he showed in speech, countenance and bearing the modesty which he had in his mind. Being questioned, he truly set forth the cause of his journey: he could never ^l be compelled to confess anything other than what the case was. Then by the edict of the judge he was beaten with harsh and horrible blows, so that, if he were a spy ^m, he might at least confess, overcome by the pains of the punishments. But the most brave athlete Cholomannus, who desired to be dissolved and to be with Christ, the sharp scourges of the torturers, the stones and eggs strongly heated, the glowing pair of tongs also, with which a certain perverse hammer-man wretchedly tortured his body by plucking it, the saw ⁿ too, by which his legs were torn, constantly relying on the protection of Christ, brought to nothing ^o. And the executioners, seeing the unconquered constancy of the Man of God, at length wrenched out by hanging his soul, refined by torments like gold which is proved in the furnace, two robbers being hanged with him. The flesh of these being torn by the frequent biting of birds and beasts and consumed by putrefaction, the little body of the holy Man, with his nails, beard and hair growing, material corruption being far removed, flourished [p]. Moreover the withy [q] on which he hung flowered, the prophecy of the Psalmist being fulfilled, which says: "The just shall flourish like the palm tree [r]."

[4] And when the inhabitants of that same region were stupefied by the new and unheard-of miracle, after certain prodigies it happened that the son of a certain Rumald was weakened by the gouty disease. And the father being gravely anxious about this matter, and doubtful what he should do, one night it was revealed to him in sleep that his son would be restored to his former health if the place of the disease were smeared with the flesh, namely, of the strangled man. Therefore, waking, and made more cheerful than usual by such a vision, he commanded, a messenger being sent in haste, that the medicine which the aforesaid vision had revealed to him should be most carefully sought and brought. The messenger therefore having set out, after he came to the place where the venerable body was hanging, having thrust in a lance, took away a piece of flesh from the calf of the Hanging one, as he had been ordered: and at once in wonderful manner there followed a great abundance of blood as warm as if the soul were still kept [s] in the lodging of the body. Seeing this, the envoy was astounded and terrified; yet, carrying to his Lord what was to be brought, he narrated the matter fully as it had been done. And the boy, on whose account these things were done, having been smeared three times [t] with the medicine of the flesh brought, rose up unharmed, relying strongly on his own strength, who before scarcely used others' for rising. Restored to himself in such a manner, he returned untiring thanks to God and to Blessed Cholomannus, through whose merits health was restored to him.

[5] having obtained a tomb, These things having been so done, the same Rumald, making a journey, turned aside to the gibbet where the body of the holy Man was hanging [u]. And looking more diligently, both he and all who had come with him, and he most of all who had been sent for the sake of cutting the flesh (for he too was present in the same company), marvelled that not only no wound made, but not even the scar of a wound appeared on the body of the Hanging one. For by the bestowing of divine grace that diminution was so made whole that no trace at all of a scar could be found on him. But a certain hunter, whose heart had grown stiff with the cold of faithlessness, said: If it is true, what is asserted, that warm blood runs down from this corpse, I am now going to prove it. Having seized therefore a hunting-spear, he pierced through the side of the venerable Man, whence at once the blood [x], flowing forth, imbued with sacred relics both him and the beast on which he sat. And Rumald, and those who were present with him, trembling with fear at the thing seen, a no small multitude of clergy and people being gathered together, decided that the body of the Man of blessed memory should be taken down to be buried. And if anyone wishes to know how great a space of time he completed in hanging, let him count a whole year and a half.

[6] there coming There is near the Danube a certain beautiful and delightful augia [y], in which a basilica had been newly built; thither the aforesaid Servant of God was carried to be buried, with the dancing joy of both sexes. In the following year, therefore, the Danube, wandering beyond the curves of its banks with unbridled licence [z], swallowed up utterly very many buildings torn up by its strength, and drenched every place contiguous to it with the masses of a seething flood. And so great a flood filled the forecourt of the basilica beside which the venerable corpse of Blessed Cholomannus rested that half of the church, the waters prevailing, scarcely appeared. But the Clemency of almighty God, through the merits of His Servant, showed new miracles, unheard of also in our ages. For the tomb in which his body was enclosed was not touched at all by the flood of waters: for, the waves raging on every side, the place of the sepulchre enjoyed a sunny greenness, as if it had been surrounded by the defence of a strong wall.

[7] by a new miracle, And a certain fisherman, whom the fury of an empty belly and the want of things to possess compelled to wander along the Danube, driven by the violence of the waters, came to the same place. And seeing the prodigy of the unwonted miracle, having let go the rudder of the prow a little, he was vehemently astounded; but soon, coming back to himself, still astonished, he proclaimed the very thing to the citizens of his own and other villages. And they, having seized boats, hastened to see the great works of God, and, seeing, they marvelled, saying: "As we have heard, so have we seen." [aa] Then they glorified the omnipotence of God with these words: "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who alone doth wonderful things." [bb]

[8] by order of Henry, Marquis of Austria, Of this so illustrious and stupendous miracle

the report, carried by rumours, reached the ears of the marquis Henry [cc]: who at once [dd], having sent orders of clerics and certain chief men of his soldiery, commanded that they should honourably translate into his city the body glorified by miracles. And they came [ee] to the sepulchre; but before the sarcophagus was touched by the spade pressed in, so great a fragrance of a wonderful and unwonted odour met them that all who were present were wet with tears poured out for joy. The sarcophagus therefore being opened, they found the little body of the holy Man wholly unharmed by all corruption, as if it had been buried that same day. Let us consider therefore of how great merit this Saint is with the Lord, who rested in the tomb as long a time as he completed hanging on the gibbet, and yet his body did not know the detriments of corruption: for from the day of that hanging up to the day of the Translation a whole three years of time passed.

[9] translated with honour to Melk, The desirable treasure being therefore raised, and wrapped in linens and palls prepared for this, they took up the wished-for journey at first dawn, the misfortune of adversity fleeing far away. And the miracles seen and heard compelled no small multitude to follow and to come to meet them, returning praises and hymns to Him who lives and reigns for ever. And as the twilight of night was now coming on, they turned aside to a church situated not far from the road, desiring, the little body being laid down, to spend the night in it in divine praises [ff]. And when the languor of sleep pressed upon all, overcome by the vigils of the past night and the weariness of the journey; a certain stranger cleric, while the rest were sleeping, gently seizing the foot, namely, of the blessed Man, mutilated it, the big toe being cut off, whence an abundance of blood scarcely to be stanched, flowing forth, watered the pavement.

[10] is laid in a more honourable tomb. And when the day had risen, as, the body being raised, they were directing themselves on the journey, a certain sick man named Adalger [gg] met them, and, being brought to the bier, implored help for his infirmity. And when, the prayer completed, he had risen, he relied so fully on each of his limbs for its proper function that, standing firmly on his own steps and carrying a cross in his hands, he walked before the bier as far as the place of the sepulchre, dancing for joy and glorifying God. And the clerics who were carrying the sacred relics, seeing these things, with the rest of the multitude extolled with praises the great works of God and His Saint Cholomannus, through whose merits such signs were done. With this [hh] gladness they came at length to the city named Medlicha, in which the pledges of the precious treasure were to be laid up by order of the Marquis [ii]. Where, on the Nones of October, in the thousand and fifteenth year of the Lord's Incarnation [kk], by the counsel of the nobles, they placed him in the church dedicated to the honour of the prince of the Apostles, in the Southern apse: where the power of God and the wisdom of God continually works very many wonders through him, which lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit through infinite ages of ages. Amen [ll].

ANNOTATIONS.

p. Other apographs: fronduit (put forth leaves). From Pez, cited.

q. A dry withy, twisted in the manner of a rope, by which as by a rope the Saint was hanged. On the recurring 13th day of October it is said to become unbreakable. The tree from which he hung is said to be preserved with the Franciscan Fathers under the High altar at Stockerau.

r. Psalm 91, verse 13.

s. Another manuscript: servaretur. From Hieronymus Pez.

t. Other apographs: oblitus. From the same.

u. Not far from Stockerau, a town of Austria beyond the Danube. See the preliminary Commentary, number 25.

x. In another manuscript, marked H. 104, ubertim (abundantly) is added. From Hieronymus Pez.

y. A Latin-barbarous word from the German Au or Aw, by which is signified a pasture-field adjacent to a river or surrounded by a river. And there is understood here the little town of Lower (beyond-the-Danube) Austria Stockerau, situated on the left bank of the Danube. From Lambeck, volume 1 of the Analecta of Vienna, by the work and zeal of Adam Franz Kollar, col. 849.

z. The Saxon Annalist makes mention of a huge flood, which happened in the year 1013 in the month of December.

aa. Psalm 47, verse 9.

bb. Psalm 71, verse 18.

cc. See below, letters f and h subjoined to Chapter 2.

dd. At once: hence and from number 10 we gather that the flooding of the Danube was separated by a small space of time from the Translation of St. Colman to Melk; and that the Translation was more probably made in the year 1014.

ee. The manuscript of Lambeck and one single one of Melk add Missi (having been sent). From Hieronymus Pez.

ff. No mention here of the fable by which untamed animals are declared to have carried the body of St. Colman with dry feet over the Danube to Melk.

gg. Another manuscript: Adelgerus. From Hieronymus Pez.

hh. In the manuscript marked H 104 gloriosa is added. From the same.

ii. In the same manuscript (see letter hh) Heinricii is added. From Hieronymus Pez.

kk. Dithmar, who refers the Saint's death to the year 1017, was either informed later about the affairs of St. Colman, or narrated it out of its place; most writers agreeing on the year 1012.

ll. This Part I seems to have been written by a contemporary anonymous, as much as it is, as far as concerns the facts; not however so as not to seem to have undergone some interpolation in some adjuncts: thus out of the three years, not complete, which flowed from the killing of St. Colman up to his translation, the interpolator would have made a complete three years, less however five days: thus perhaps he added of his own that the first translation of the body of St. Colman happened on the 7th of October.

CHAPTER II.

Another Translation of the same, and certain Miracles.

The Saint's miracles growing more frequent, Of the many wonders which the clemency of God showed through His faithful Servant, we touch upon a few which have been known ^a to us by seeing; that the faithful may be animated and strengthened; but the unfaithful converted and bettered. The body therefore being placed in the church, many came daily, and according to what means each had, brought offerings to the Saint ^b, which a certain man named Huzo, incited by the goad of Satan, entered by night through a window to steal. And when he was standing over the sepulchre of the Man of God, and was snatching the things which were hanging, hung up ^c in praise of the Saint, as he had long since lost his human mind, so at last he lost his face, and received a dog's, and poured forth barking instead of words. When the sacristan, returning, had heard him barking in the church, he was terrified: and not daring to approach until he should call the citizens of the village, and being comforted by their gathering, he opened the door and entered. And while the rest did not know what it was, the man's master, named William (for he too was present), recognized by the clothes that it was his servant: and while they did not know what to do, this counsel pleased most, that he should hand him over at the sepulchre of the Man of God. When this had been done, the multitude of those standing around praying, he received back his former countenance and the function of the mouth; and so up to the end of his life he lived in the service of the brethren; whose daughter is still in our service.

[12] Peter, king of Hungary, obtains his body, but shortly after sends it back. This report therefore growing more and more frequent, Peter, king of the Hungarians ^d, was fired, as to how he might be able to acquire this body and bring it over into his kingdom. While he was meditating these things, Poppo ^e, archbishop of the Treveri, brother of the marquis ^f, returning from Jerusalem, came into his kingdom. When the king heard this, rejoicing with great joy, he called him to himself, hoping that he would find the effect of his desire through him. Which was also so done, for when, being called, he came, as befitted both, namely king and archbishop, he received him honourably, entertained him magnificently, treated him gloriously. At these things, as often happens among the good, the archprelate, desiring to repay the favour, promised with great and good will that he would do whatever he should desire of him. Hearing these things, the king, made

very cheerful, set forth in words to the excellent prelate what he had long been turning over in his mind. But the gladder the king was at the words of the pontiff, the sadder the pontiff became at the words of the king. For he hung anxious in mind as to what he should do. He did not dare to promise, fearing that he could not obtain it from his brother; but he feared to refuse: for he dreaded that, if he refused, he would be compelled by force, as was done. For after the king saw him hesitating, he threatened him, if he did not do it, with chains and prison. The bishop, overcome by these threats, when he promised, he bound him by Oath that what he had promised should without doubt be done. Coming therefore to his brother, with great affliction of heart and with tears he disclosed what the violence of the king had compelled. And the Marquis, as he was always a good and prudent man, lest any stain should darken his excellent family, although unwilling, yet decided to do as the king had compelled his brother to swear ^{g h}. But after the bones were brought to the king ⁱ, his affairs fell back: for drought of the air, sterility of the land, famine and mortality so pressed his kingdom that they believed it would utterly perish. At length they sent to the aforesaid marquis ^k, asking that envoys be sent who should worthily bring back the bones of the Man. Religious men, therefore, namely clerics and laymen, having been sent, received back the sacred bones, and, giving pardon to the king and his people for their offences, brought them back to the praise and glory of the name of God to the aforesaid place ^l.

[13] Certain miracles, partly about the time of the Hungarian Translation, Nor is it to be passed over what vengeance of God pursued those who broke open the sepulchre and carried out the bones. A cleric, struck with the disease of paralysis, was deprived of the function of his tongue. And the iron-smith who first broke and opened the sarcophagus was struck with this divine vengeance, that his jaw hung for a whole year over the bed in which he lay sick. Nor shall we be silent about this, that a certain painter named Ludwig, while he was sitting beside the sepulchre of Blessed Cholomannus for the sake of painting, lifting up the palls of the sepulchre, looked inside: and at once was deprived of all function of his limbs, until he confessed with public voice for what cause he had deserved this. And asking pardon he promised that, as long as he lived, he would serve St. Cholomannus as much as he could; and so, by the grace of God ^m escaping the danger, he received health.

[14] but partly One night, during the Morning Lauds, a certain man named Gnanno, who, dumb for five years, was in the service of the Brethren, when he was coming down from the hill to carry water for his ministry, it seemed to him as if someone, with a linen rope tied round his arm, was dragging him by force to the sepulchre of the Man of God. And when he was asked by those standing round what he was seeking ⁿ, he signed with his hands, asked for space to pray; and so, in the midst of praying, he received the faculty of speaking. The daughter also of count Wolfrad, dumb and bent, was brought in the same manner; but by the grace of God, through the merits of the Blessed Man, speaking and upright, she carried a cross from the sepulchre to the high altar of St. Peter. Another certain girl, daughter of a certain Hermann, still surviving, blind, dumb, bent, was brought there by her mother, who by the prayer of the Brethren, through the merits of the holy Martyr Cholomannus, received both sight and the use of speaking together with the soundness of her other limbs. A third girl came, creeping on hands and knees, she dragged her legs and feet on the ground, who rose during the solemnities of Masses, and, proceeding from the sepulchre to the high altar, returned thanks to God for her health.

[15] at an uncertain time A certain man was seized with so great an infirmity that, one of his eyes being thrust out of its place by a swelling in the manner of a bowl, with great hope of recovering health he demanded help from the Blessed Man. But when, long prayers having been spent and many tears poured out, he felt nothing of recovery, he withdrew weeping and wailing and saying, Alas, alas! O Blessed Martyr Cholomannus, whence have I deserved this, that I alone of all on whom thou hast had mercy have found no grace with thee? These and other words which grief dictates being multiplied on the very road along which he was going, the health which he was despairing of was suddenly granted him. Having received this grace, therefore, with knees bent on the ground, filled with as great gladness as before with sorrow, he returned magnifying and praising God.

[16] performed by the Saint. Another miracle also happened in a certain Rudolf. He, deprived of the function of all his limbs except the eyes and tongue, was brought in a vehicle to the door of the church, and carried by hands in a chair to the sepulchre of the Servant of God. The Lord abbot therefore praying with the Brethren ^o, he felt the clemency of God so swift that without delay he rose relying on his own strength: and paying thanksgivings to God, he who before used the strength of others mounted a horse and returned home cheerful. These few things out of many, which the clemency of God has worked and daily works to the praise and glory of His name and the honour of Blessed Cholomannus, we have set out for the strengthening of the faithful and the conversion of the unfaithful; that no one may presume to that of which he is unworthy, nor fear that which he may be able to obtain by the grace of God. Amen.

ANNOTATIONS.