ON BL. DOMINIC LORICATUS, CONFESSOR, OF THE CAMALDOLESE ORDER, AT SAN VICINO IN THE DIOCESE OF SAN SEVERINO IN PICENUM,
IN THE YEAR 1060.
Preliminary Commentary.
Dominic Loricatus, confessor, of the Camaldolese Order. (B.)
BY S. D.
§ I. The cult of the blessed man: his memory in the sacred calendars: a compendium of his deeds: when and where he was born: he is ordained simoniacally: he becomes a disciple of St. Peter Damian.
The town of St. Severinus, in Italian San Severino, Of Bl. Dominic in the monastery of San Vicino restored in the year 1198 in almost the same place in which Septempeda once stood, lies on the river Potenza or Potentia, six miles from Tolentino, sixteen from Macerata and about twelve from Camerino, between mountains rising on this side and that, owing the name which it now has to St. Severinus, once bishop of this very place. To the diocese of this town, adorned with an episcopal see by Sixtus V in the year 1586, there was soon transferred from that of Camerino Suavicinium, or, as they say today, Sanvicino, once a monastery of the Camaldolese Order most celebrated in every kind of discipline, together with an adjoining hermitage; and indeed, if we believe the Camaldolese Annals, which appeared at Venice in the year 1756 by the authors J. B. Mittarelli and D. A. Costadoni, to no small advantage of the literary world, it was built about the year 1048 by Peter Damian himself, by far the most deserving propagator of the Camaldolese Order, beside the rock of Suavicina, from which it is named together with the hermitage, as John of Lodi testifies in the Life of Peter Damian, chapter VII, about 10 miles from the city of San Severino and as many from Fabriano. He who desires a fuller account of this monastery and of the hermitage formerly joined to it by Damian may consult the aforesaid Camaldolese Annals, and the canon Turchi of Apiro, frequently cited in them; for it will suffice us to have indicated the place somewhat in our manner.
[2] venerated, and mentioned by the martyrologists here recited, In the church of the aforesaid monastery, then, which alone of it survives today, as the bishops of San Severino recognized more often in their visitations, of which below in § III, is kept the sacred body of Dominic Loricatus, who was set over the same monastery by Damian, as we shall see below; and he enjoys there a most ancient cult in the Camaldolese Order and among the neighbouring peoples, especially of three castles, Apiro, Ficano and Valle Castri, as may be seen in § III. The Benedictine calendars commonly mention this blessed man, and the present Roman Martyrology itself too, in these words: On the same day, namely the day before the Ides of October, the deposition of blessed Dominic Loricatus. Longer eulogies of him may be seen in the aforesaid calendars, and in Ferrarius in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy at this day.
[3] a synopsis of his deeds Further, the deeds of Dominic Loricatus must necessarily rapt all who read them into astonishment; nay, unless they had obtained as writer Peter Damian, not only contemporary with this saint but also in a manner his companion and spiritual master, they would almost exceed belief. Damian narrates them, on the occasion of the death of Rudolf, bishop of Gubbio, in letter XIX to Pope Alexander II, gathered in greater part from letters previously given to various persons about Dominic's deeds; where, before he begins to write his Life, he premises this: The man of God, then, Dominic, my father and lord, died a year ago, whose Life, if it is written, I fear may perhaps be judged incredible by some brethren. But far be it from me to write a lie. For I, who truly cultivate truth according to my strength, do not admit the fiction of falsehood. For that saying of the Apostle does not escape us, that when he had premised: "If Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain," he immediately subjoined: "Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have given testimony against God, that He hath raised up Christ, whom He hath not raised up, if the dead rise not again." In which words of the apostle's sentence, not to dwell longer, the reader readily understands that he who feigns that either God or a servant of God has done something wonderful not only does not merit the reward of the fabricated praise, but is also convicted of having borne false witness against him whom he had praised. Whence it is proved, by the sole authority of Damian, that the Acts of Loricatus, however astonishing, are yet most worthy of credence.
[4] from a tablet, But so that the curious reader may have, from the very beginning of this Commentary, a compendium of the whole Life as it was written by Damian, and may understand more clearly what will be said below, I present here, as follows, a copy of the tablet, printed at Faenza in the year 1676, which Andrew Vallemani, Camaldolese abbot of SS. Hippolytus and Lawrence at Faenza, ordered to be hung in the church of St. Dominic, transmitted by the same to our predecessors.
Dominic Loricatus, of the Camaldolese Order, ready for the scourges. Psalm 37.
Dominic, called Loricatus from the iron cuirass with which he was continually girt next to the flesh, served God as a soldier in the order of the clergy: then he put on the monk: he seized, as an intrepid warrior, the arduous institute of a most austere life. His whole life was preaching and edification; it was teaching and discipline, and a conflict of one man with a threefold enemy, his heart and body being strongly fortified. He was girt with two iron rings on the body itself; bound with two through the shoulders of the arms, and as many on the legs and thighs; another cuirass moreover being laid under his sides after the manner of a linen cloth.
[5] his unwearied zeal for prayer, His vigils, fasts and other austerities were so heavy and long-lasting that it is a wonder he could survive. Scarcely any day passed in which, chanting two psalters, both hands armed with rods, he did not strike his naked body incessantly. And this indeed in a more relaxed season. He often undertook a penance of a hundred years: namely, three hundred thousand strokes of the discipline, together with the chanting and meditation of the hundred and fifty psalms repeated twenty times: and this he completed within six days. But in the Lenten cycles, undertaking a penance of a thousand years, he completed it in the same time. He often continued two psalters standing, so that meanwhile he neither sat down nor ceased even for a moment from the blows, with incredible fervour of mind.
[6] With arms stretched out in the form of a cross, not laying them down even for a little, his harsh kind of life; he prayed very much. He was also accustomed, at every fifteen psalms of the whole psalter, to bend the knee a hundred times with that weight of the iron garment. And while he was carrying out these things, he had no time to sleep by night or by day: but while he bent the knee, it sometimes happened that he laid his head on the ground, and so sleep suddenly crept upon him, lying bare; with which alone he was content. The divine fire, continually burning in his breast, did not allow him to rest from the labour of spiritual exercise. Although bent old age pressed him down, and he wasted away with frequent languors, he was yet always unconquered, unwearied. He beat all parts of the body with scourges indifferently, even the head and the face itself. Therefore his countenance, so worn by the rods, and made livid with certain furrowing weals, appeared as if it had been bruised by a pestle. The holy old man, already worn by labours, wished to wear himself out to the end.
[7] and the solicitude of Peter Damian for the body of the dead man, And so on the sixth feria, through the whole day, he scarcely ceased either to persist in chanting psalms or to flagellate himself with the blows of thongs. But at night he began to be tortured with graver pains of the stomach and head. At length, after the office of the night synaxis had been run through, after the morning hymns, when Prime was already being sung for him by the brethren who were present, on the day before the Ides of October, in the year of the Lord 1061, he died, and departed a virgin to heaven. Lest his sacred body should be snatched by the neighbouring monks (of Valle Castri), they quickly buried it in the same little cell in which he had died, the earth having been dug. But on the ninth day, on the following holy Sunday, St. Peter Damian, the cardinal (under whose discipline he had served as a soldier), coming from Rome to that hermitage, by his order it was taken up thence, found sound and unimpaired, and on the same day reverently laid up in the chapter-house; afterwards above the altar, in the wall, in the very church at the foot of Mount Sanvicino.
[8] He was so sublime in holiness that St. Peter Damian himself called him and, teaching his esteem for his virtues, is presented, "my doctor, my master, my lord and my illuminator. Renowned soldier of Christ, truly this whole life became for thee the Parasceve of the cross; but in the other, festive and splendid, thou celebratest the eternal glory of the resurrection; here thou wast girt with an iron cuirass; but now thou art adorned with the snowy garments of angelic glory; and, ornamented with the titles of thy victories, thou triumphest with eternal praise." From St. Peter Damian, book 1, letter 19; book 6, letter 30; book 7, letter 19. Thus this tablet; but whether it rightly assigns the year 1061 as Dominic's year of death will be examined below: now it pleases me to begin the chronological series of his deeds from the blessed man's birth.
[9] His birth-year not 995, Mittarelli, volume I of the Camaldolese Annals, page 197 and following, with Jacobilli, volume II of the Saints of Umbria, page 336, asserts that Loricatus was brought into the light about the year 995, in these words: Jacobilli relates that Dominic, afterwards given the surname of Loricatus, was born about the year nine hundred and ninety-five; Octavius Turchi, canon of the very distinguished collegiate church of Apiro, a learned man and our very great friend, who in 1749 wrote the life of the same St. Dominic, writes that this was asserted by Jacobilli without authority. But since, on the one hand, Turchi himself places Dominic's nativity within that decade which flowed between the year 990 and 1000; and, on the other, Dominic is clearly said by Damian to have exceeded the sixtieth year of life; for he, after he had opposed to those who sit during the divine offices the example of Gezo, already aged about sixty years, subjoins: "There was also with us another of more advanced age, who was rightly called Dominic"; it is concluded that Dominic himself, who died in the year 1060, surpassed in that year the sixty years of Gezo, and reached about the sixty-fifth year of life; therefore it is proved by Damian's authority that he was brought into the light about this year 995. Thus he.
[10] but some year earlier than this; And indeed we shall maintain below with Mittarelli that Dominic died in the year 1060; but that, when he died, he had only sixty-five years, and was therefore born about the year 995, does not at all seem to be established from Damian; for, besides the fact that Damian, in the text adduced above by Mittarelli, is altogether silent as to how much Dominic surpassed the age of Gezo, nor anywhere expresses in what year he was born, in other places he seems to attribute more years to him; for in the Life of Dominic, no. 6, he writes thus: Now let the discourse return to Dominic, with whom it had begun. Indeed, since bent old age already presses him down, etc.; and at no. 11, in the letter to John the prior, after he had proposed a certain very young brother as an example, he at once subjoins: We have also another of more advanced age, namely a bent old man, and, to confess to you secretly, this is Dominic. If, then, Mittarelli, Annals
volume I, page 420, in order to prove that St. Romuald lived more than seventy years, rightly uses against Bolland, among other things, this argument, insoluble as it seems to him, that Romuald is called by Damian long-lived, of decrepit old age, we too may safely conclude that Dominic Loricatus, inasmuch as the same Damian calls him a bent old man, and one whom bent old age presses down, lived more than sixty-five years, nothing making against it, and accordingly, since he died in the year 1060, was born long before the year 995.
[11] nor did Dominic Loricatus [have Foligno,] The lineage of Loricatus, as also his native soil, are altogether hidden from us for want of monuments. Jacobilli indeed asserts, at the place cited above, that Dominic was born at Luceoli, led perhaps by this reason, that Dominic, having become a monk, first inhabited the hermitage of Luceoli, as Damian testifies; but, as everyone sees, Dominic could equally easily have drawn his birth from some neighbouring or even more remote place as from the city of Luceoli itself, and have sought the hermitage of Luceoli. Whence, since Damian nowhere mentions the native soil of this blessed man, and Jacobilli himself adduces no argument by which to confirm his assertion, we put little trust in this opinion of his, as a mere conjecture. Angelo della Noce plainly erred when, in the Notes to the Cassinese Chronicle of Leo of Ostia, book II, page 272, no. 5, writing that Loricatus was born at Foligno, his father being John and his mother Ampa, he manifestly confuses him, as the praised Mittarelli notices, volume I, page 198, with Dominic of Sora, who had his origin at Foligno.
[12] but Dominic of Sora, Although Mabillon also noticed this, volume IV of the Annals, page 376, yet he did not sufficiently distinguish Loricatus from the Soran: for, speaking there of blessed Amicus the hermit, he has this: Blessed Amicus the hermit, who was then living in the monastery of St. Peter of Avellana, which St. Dominic Loricatus had built, granted to the Cassinese. Ciarlanti, Historical Memoirs of Samnium, book III, page 254, and Lubin, Notitia Abbatiarum, page 36, assert the same; but, as Mittarelli rightly has it at the place cited above, we do not know that Loricatus ever went out of the borders of Umbria and Picenum, but know that he always stayed either at Luceoli or in the monastery of the Holy Cross of Fonte Avellana, or in those of Conjunctulum or Osimo, or in the hermitage of Suavicina; and so we know that the construction of the monastery of St. Peter of Avellana, situated in the territory of Trivento, does not pertain to him, near which lived Dominic of Sora, who, as Alberic, a monk of Monte Cassino, testifies in his Life written a little before his death, in Gattola, History of Monte Cassino, part 1, page 238, "being asked by Burellus the elder, built in Sangro a monastery which, from a huge hazel tree which once stood beside it, received the name of St. Peter of Avellana."
[13] had as native soil, The equivocal name of Avellana gave Mabillon and the rest a handle for error; but the title of the Avellana which Dominic Loricatus inhabited was of St. Andrew, or of the Holy Cross, but not of St. Peter. Moreover, Amicus the hermit in the year 1039 was already dwelling in the monastery of St. Peter of Avellana, where in that year he learned by divine revelation the death of Hugo, abbot of Farfa; which had been endowed and built by Burellus already in the year 1026. The foundation of this monastery, therefore, pertains to Dominic of Sora, who had died in the year 1031, not to Loricatus, who in those years had not yet gone out from the hermitage of Luceoli, in which, as Damian testifies, "he lived very many years," not going out from it except at the time when Peter Damian had undertaken the headship of Fonte Avellana, namely after the year 1043, as will be said below.
[14] simoniacally ordained, Further, Dominic, as Damian testifies, after some years spent in the secular clergy, having been ordained priest simoniacally, a goatskin of leather having been given to the bishop by his parents, put on the monk in order to wash away this stain, and embraced the eremitical life: and that all these things are also rightly tied by Mittarelli to the year 1025, if he rightly sets the year 995 as Loricatus's birth-year, is proved from this, that before the thirtieth year of age, the discipline of the Church of that time requiring it (see Thomassin, On the New and Old Discipline of the Church, part 1, book II, chapter LXX, no. 1), provided the simoniacal bishop observed this point, no one could lawfully be initiated into the priesthood; and Dominic, having been made priest in that manner, not long after (for, as is established from Damian, to be cited in the following number, he had not yet celebrated Mass), the crime soon being recognized, seems to have put on the monk. But whether this simoniacal compact was entered into with Dominic aware or unaware, let us now examine.
[15] and, aware of the crime committed, he put on the monk as a hermit Ferrarius in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, and the lessons of the monastic breviary, with which some others agree, affirm that the bishop was corrupted by his parents without Dominic's knowledge. Jacobilli relates that he was aware. But before we decide this dispute it will help to hear Damian himself, who has this: Dominic, then, when he was a cleric in the world, because the simoniacal heresy then flourished, which would that it were now altogether extinct, a goatskin of leather was given to the bishop by his parents that he might become a priest; because, as the Apostle says, to them that love God all things work together unto good, this one fault of the blessed man is proved to have been the material of many goods; for, terrified by this fear, he despised the world, put on the monk, and soon seized, as an intrepid warrior, the arduous institute of the eremitical life. But because he had been wrongly promoted, as long as he lived he did not presume to usurp the ministry of the most holy altar. This one fault of the blessed man, as Damian speaks of it, although Mittarelli writes, at the place cited above, that it can be explained not of his own fault but of another's, namely his parents', since Damian, who is otherwise wholly poured out in the praises of Dominic and proposes him to others as an example, does not wipe this stain from him, which would have been easy for him, we judge with Jacobilli that this simoniacal largess was carried out with Dominic both aware and consenting, especially since the simoniacal heresy then flourished.
[16] more probably in the monastery of Luceoli, But where Dominic first put on the monk I find nowhere; but since Damian, after he has narrated that Dominic, having become a monk, soon seized the arduous institute of the eremitical life, at once subjoins discourse about the hermitage of Luceoli and the discipline flourishing there, and expressly writes that Dominic lived in the same hermitage for very many years under the mastership of John of Montefeltro, Jacobilli not without foundation relates that Dominic first laid the foundations of the eremitical life in the very monastery of Luceoli. Turchi, however, as Mittarelli writes in volume I of the Annals, page 417, having surveyed those places, thinks that the monastery of St. Nicholas near Cantiano was the place of the holy man's dwelling, from which he soon betook himself into the neighbouring hermitage of Luceoli. The tradition of the townspeople also holds that on a small hill behind the above-said church of St. Nicholas eighteen monks anciently lived, shut up in as many cells, and that a monastery adjoined that church, and that the memory of that monastery exists in Damian; and indeed, having visited the hill, which the inhabitants call Colmetrano, the same Turchi found small level spaces about the hill itself, on which it has the appearance of truth that those cells rose; so that this opinion of Turchi seems not altogether improbable.
[17] and thence after many years, but not before the year 1043, However the matter stands, we have this certain from Damian, that Dominic, after many years spent in the hermitage of Luceoli under the discipline of John of Montefeltro, sought the solitude of Avellana, in order to subject himself there to the mastership of Damian himself; and that this transmigration of Dominic could not have been made before the year 1043, against Jacobilli, who puts it nine years earlier, Mittarelli maintains, Annals, volume II, page 88, in this manner: Before the present year, namely 1043, Dominic Loricatus, who first "lived very many years under the mastership of St. John of Montefeltro," and only "long after" left the hermitage of Luceoli with the permission of the same John, could not have cleaved to Damian in the solitude of Avellana; for he subjected himself to Damian's discipline in that year in which he submitted himself as "a monk to an abbot" and as "a client"; which cannot be understood except after Damian took up the reins of government of the monastery of Avellana … wherefore Jacobilli is not to be heard, who writes that this transmigration of Loricatus happened in the year 1034, in which, as we have proved more than sufficiently, Damian had scarcely or only recently bidden farewell to the world, and was receiving only the first rudiments of the monastic life in the monastery of Avellana; better Turchi, who refers the coming of Loricatus to Fonte Avellana to the year 1044. Thus Mittarelli.
[18] And in fact that Damian undertook the government of the solitude of Avellana in the year 1043, and not after the following, as from the prologue of the Life of St. Romuald which Damian wrote, the following arguments prove: at the time when Damian, being in the monastery of San Vincenzo, wrote the Life of St. Romuald, about three lustra, or fifteen years (which I do not know by what reason Rubeus contracted to thirteen), had run out from the death of this saint, as Damian himself testifies in the prologue of the same Life, which Bolland edited at the 7th day of February: whence, since the death of St. Romuald is commonly referred to the year 1027, it follows, if you add fifteen years, that the year in which Damian was writing the Life of St. Romuald was 1042 of his era: and now, since Damian, only after the reform introduced into the monastery of San Vincenzo, was recalled thence by his own abbot, and, he having died, only then assumed the headship of the hermitage of Avellana, as John of Lodi expressly testifies in the Life of Damian which Henschenius edited at the 23rd day of February, everyone sees that this could scarcely have happened before the year 1043.
[19] and is proved from his two letters to Gebhard, archbishop of Ravenna, And that he was prior, or, if you prefer, abbot, of the aforesaid hermitage before the death of Gebhard, archbishop of Ravenna, is proved by the two letters which Damian himself addressed to him, in the first of which he writes thus: Taking up a poor little place to rule, I, who was formerly poor only through myself, have now become poor through as many as I have taken up to rule. And the aforesaid Gebhard died in the year 1044, as is read in the inscription carved on the marble stone of his sepulchre in the monastery of Pomposa, which Andrew Agnellus presents in part 11 of the Pontiffs of Ravenna, page 97 and following, and Muratori reprints in volume II, part 1, page 207. Hence likewise follows what we said above, that Damian could not have entered on the government of the hermitage of Avellana after the year 1044; nay, if we believe Bolland, who writes in the Preliminary Commentary to the Life of St. Peter Damian cited above that the aforesaid Gebhard died on the 16th day of February of the same year 1044, I scarcely any longer doubt that Damian already in the preceding year, as Mittarelli also would have it, undertook the government of the aforesaid hermitage.
[20] This being now laid down, since Damian, while
Dominic came to him, betaking himself to Damian, in the year just named, was, as Mittarelli rightly proves against Jacobilli at the place cited above, in fact abbot of the place, this transmigration of Dominic could not be placed before the year 1043. But whether Mittarelli rightly ties this transmigration of Dominic, as also Damian's prelacy, to the year just named will become clear from what is to be said below; but first let us hear Damian himself, who writes thus in Opusculum L, chapter 14, to the Countess Blanca: Would that it were given you now to see the lord Dominic, who would teach and form by the more efficacious example of a most brilliant life what we are trying to do by the office of an unskilled tongue. He, then, for about three lustra of years now is clothed with an iron cuirass next to the flesh, and is girt with two iron rings on the body, and likewise bound with two through the shoulders of the arms.
[21] he subjected himself to his discipline. That this opusculum of Damian to Blanca must be referred to the year 1059 I demonstrate thus: Nicholas II, elected pontiff towards the end of the year 1058, either before, as Mabillon thinks, or after his consecration, performed at Rome in the month of January of the following year, which I think more probable with Mittarelli, sent Damian, whom he had recently distinguished with the bishopric of Velletri, to Milan, to root out the Nicolaitan and Simoniacal heresies raging there. While Damian stays at Milan, he contracts friendship with various men and women, among whom Blanca was eminent, who, having left the county and most ample revenues, had withdrawn into a monastery, both by the example of others and chiefly by the admonitions of Damian. The matter, then, being accomplished according to his wish, Damian leaves Milan (this necessarily happened before or about the beginning of the month of April of the same year 1059, for in this month he was present at Rome at the celebrated council of a hundred and 13 bishops), and somewhat later, perhaps from some hermitage into which he had then betaken himself on the road, sent the aforesaid opusculum, full of most salutary admonitions, to the same Blanca, recently joined to the heavenly Bridegroom, in which he proposes as an example Dominic, who for about three lustra of years now was clothed with an iron cuirass next to the flesh. Three lustra, or 15 years, being subtracted, therefore, from the year which was running, 1059, it follows that Dominic put on the cuirass in the year 1044; and so, since Dominic, when he put it on, had already for some time been serving as a soldier under Damian's discipline, I by no means doubt that he betook himself thither in the preceding year, namely as soon as he understood that Damian had undertaken the government of the hermitage of Avellana.
§ II. He finds an austere kind of penance: he becomes prior of the hermitage of Suavicina; when? The year of his death.
To the unusual cuirass which he first put on Dominic, already clothed with the cuirass, in order to expiate more and more the crime of simony contracted by giving the garment to the bishop, bound the limbs of his body moreover with various iron rings. Dominic, however, was not the only one in the hermitage of Avellana who was cuirassed, for very many others, as Damian testifies in the book on the institutes of his congregation, Opusculum XV, chapter XIV, wore iron cuirasses; but either they did this roused by Dominic's example, or, as Mittarelli has it more rightly in volume II of the Annals, page 94: No one seems to have worn them either heavier or for a longer time than Dominic himself did; whence he was deservedly surnamed antonomastically the Cuirassed …; hence, among the other hermits whom the brothers Sadeler engraved in copper, printed at Antwerp by Ernest Wander in the year 1591, under the image of St. Dominic the following verses are read:
*The cuirass which gave me my surname afflicted my youth And my old age, pressing me night and day; So I expiated the crime committed by no known fraud, So I merited heaven, so I myself enjoy God.*
[23] [he put on another over it, and, scourging his body dreadfully, and provoking many to imitate him,] To the aforesaid cuirass, which he wore until death, he joined another, which his disciples found laid under his sides after his death: and, continually pressed by this weight, Dominic did not cease, as long as he lived, to scourge his whole body, especially while chanting psalms, so that you could scarcely conceive how he survived so long. Mittarelli observes here, from Thiers, page 23, and Paciaudi in his Christian Antiquities on the cult of St. John the Baptist, that by the example of Dominic Loricatus, and at the exhortation of St. Romuald and Peter Damian, confraternities of pious men were established throughout Italy who, afflicting themselves with blows for the sake of penance and bloodying themselves with straps, rods and scourges suited to this, were commonly called disciplinati: nay, by the example of this holy old man, says Damian, the custom of taking the discipline so grew up in our parts that not only men, but also noble women eagerly seized on this kind of purgatory. For the widow of Tethbald also, of indeed lofty birth and of not the lowest dignity, once related to me that she had performed a penance of a hundred years according to the prescribed rule of this discipline.
[24] That Loricatus was both the inventor and the author of the penance of a hundred and of a thousand years he invents the penance of 100 and 1000 years, Damian himself testifies in his Life, when he has this: The penance of a hundred years, as we have learned from him as author, is completed thus, etc. But so that this kind of penance may become better known to the curious reader, and on what occasion it came into the hands of Loricatus, how eagerly he seized on it and fulfilled it, it pleases me to hear Mittarelli again, who writes thus in volume II of the Annals, page 136: A certain little paper by chance came into the hands of Dominic Loricatus, as we shall see below, in which it was noted that twelve psalms recited twenty-four times with arms extended and raised in the form of a cross compensated for one year's penance. This method Dominic, who was most avid of suffering, at once seized upon, singing the twelve psalms daily twenty-four or six times, as is in the text, without any lowering of the hands; sometimes, keeping the same extension of the arms, he added to the whole psalter a second, of the dead, and sometimes proposed to begin a third with hands still raised.
[25] which he eagerly seizes, Another redemption of sins was obtained by the recitation of psalms together with flagellation joined to it. The time of paying off ten psalms admitted, as we shall see from Damian, a thousand strokes of the scourge, and the recitation of thirty psalms three thousand, and with these last one year of penance was fulfilled. The whole psalter, accordingly, which was accompanied by fifteen thousand blows, was satisfaction for five years; and twenty psalters compensated for a hundred years, and during the time of their chanting three hundred thousand strokes of the scourge were inflicted. Dominic frequently undertook the penance of a hundred years; nay, sometimes he asked that that of a thousand years also be imposed on him. This was paid off by two hundred psalters and three million blows. Further, so long and heavy a punishment he completed in forty days, and the satisfaction of a hundred years in the course of six days and nights; and when he did not take on the torment of so many years, he ran through daily two, sometimes three, as in the time of the Lents, now eight and even nine psalters; once, to make an experiment, he paid off twelve psalters together with the adjoined flagellation within the space of one day and night.
[26] And this recitation of psalms was for Dominic a work of supererogation, and he fulfils it. for first he was present with the other brethren at the morning synaxis and at the canonical hours which were chanted in choir, and at the confession of faults, which was made together with scourges in the chapter. Besides the use of the scourges, which was unremitting in Dominic, and indeed, unlike others, with each hand armed either with rods or with thongs of straps, when he enjoyed good health, a hundred times through each psalter; he likewise prostrated his body to the ground a thousand times daily, retarded in nothing by the weight or austerity of the cuirass, and caring not a straw for the iron rings with which he was bound, with two of which he girded his arms, with two his loins, and in progress of time with two others his shins, and with two his thighs. Thus Mittarelli, the faithful interpreter of Damian: other kinds of discipline which Loricatus observed the reader will learn from the Acts and the annotations subjoined to them.
[27] Amid these austerities of life, however, Dominic did not remain perpetually shut up in the monastery of Avellana, prior by Damian, but, as Damian testifies, he sometimes went out into the world, as when he appealed to the judge of Osimo; sometimes he stayed in the monastery of Conjunctulum, and finally had a fixed domicile in the monastery of Mount Suavicinum; and indeed that Dominic held the priorate of this last place by Damian's order the same Damian seems to indicate, when, in Opusculum LIII, chapter IV, exhorting the monks of Suavicinum to patience, he wrote to Dominic and the other brethren who dwell in the hermitage of Mount Suavicinum; where, says Mittarelli, volume II, page 212, while he names Dominic singly, distinguished from the other brethren, he tacitly hints that he did this for no other reason than because he had the government of this place. But when Loricatus was set over the aforesaid hermitage by Damian I nowhere read. Turchi nevertheless judges that this was done, if not from the very foundation of the hermitage, at least as soon as possible, and that about the year 1056, John, to whom Damian wrote a letter, having been substituted in his place, he returned to the solitude of Avellana, in which he lived partly in the monastery, partly at Conjunctulum, and finally, his age growing heavier, went again to the hermitage of Suavicina, to close his last day there.
[28] if not before To prove in some way that Loricatus was prior of the hermitage of Suavicina before the year 1056 or 1057, Turchi adduces the deed of Dominic which Damian relates in his Life, no. 10, with a certain faint-hearted brother, whom he exhorted not to lose heart on account of the pain of the scourges: but although this deed necessarily occurred before the year 1056 was completed (for it happened, as Damian testifies, on a Sunday and the feast of St. Michael, which, within the time in which Dominic served under Damian, could have fallen on a Sunday only in the year 1045 or 1051 or finally 1056), it does not follow thence that Dominic exercised the headship of the monastery; for what prevents, as Mittarelli notes, a simple monk from adding spurs to another who is faint-hearted? I answer likewise to the other argument of Turchi about the judge of the sacred palace whom Dominic appealed to at Osimo for the protection of a certain possession of his hermitage; for, besides the fact that this latter deed can also be referred to the year 1059, in which he certainly acted as prior of the hermitage, as we shall presently prove, Dominic could also, as Mittarelli says at the place cited above, have appealed to the judge of Osimo without holding the prelacy of the hermitage of Suavicina, the other brethren committing this business to him, enticed by the hope that what was asked would be more easily granted on account of the veneration of his name.
[29] certainly in the year 1059 However it finally is, that Loricatus held the headship of the aforesaid hermitage in the year 1059, as I said, is proved from the aforecited opusculum which Damian entitled On Patience: To the lord Dominic and the other brethren who dwell in the hermitage of Mount Suavicinum, Peter, sinner, monk, the last service in the Lord: and that this opusculum belongs to the year 1059 I learn from this, that Damian in it, after he had exhorted Dominic and the other brethren to patience, narrates how much barking of conscience he experienced on account of a little silver vessel which, namely, lately, discharging his legation at Milan,
he had received there as a gift from the abbot of St. Simplician; and that this legation of Damian is to be tied to the year 1059 we have proved above.
[30] he was set over the hermitage of Suavicina, not of St. Mary of Sitria, That Dominic was really prior of the hermitage of Suavicina, not of St. Mary of Sitria, the praised Mittarelli maintains and proves, against Jacobilli, Mabillon, Macchiarelli, Grandi, and Constantine Cajetan, who carried the torch before the rest, in this manner: The aforesaid writers, he says, volume II, page 204, applauded themselves that their own opinion was supported by the authority of the opusculum "On Patience" related above, of which we have just spoken, and which, according to them, bears the following title: "To Dominic Loricatus, prior of St. Mary of Sitria"; but in the Roman codices such a title is not read, which Cajetan perhaps first attached to the letter on his own authority. Another occasion of error was given by Damian's salutation itself: "To the lord Dominic and the other brethren who dwell in their hermitage of the neighbouring mountain sua vicini montis, Peter, sinner, monk, the last service in the Lord"; for what other hermitage of a mountain neighbouring the hermitage of Avellana is there, except that of Sitria, distant only two miles from it? But we shall prove below that those words "sua vicini montis eremo" ought not to be read disjoined, but as a single expression: "Suavicini montis eremo."
[31] as is clear from the genuine title of the opusculum On Patience. And below, on page 212, describing the hermitage of Mount Suavicinum, he has this: But first let us hear John of Lodi, the writer of the Life of Damian: "In the diocese of Camerino, then," he says, chapter VII, "the curious searcher (namely Damian) found a certain place suitable for the dwellings of hermits beside the rock of Suavicina, and there, having gathered brethren, founded an oratory, and ordained a prior under whom they should serve God, he proceeded again to seek out another place." Turchi asserts, on the testimony of the most distinguished Peter Pollidori, that it is so read in two Vatican manuscript codices, and he also praises our Sarti on this matter; wherefore, by the error of copyists or of those who procured the editions, there is wrongly read "beside its neighbouring rock juxta suam vicinam rupem"; and Fortunius inverts the words still less rightly, reading "beside the neighbouring rock of its own juxta vicinam suam rupem," as if the hermitage of Suavicina were not far distant from the hermitage of Fonte Avellana, or the discourse there were about another hermitage very near to Avellana. So likewise the title of the letter is to be read, addressed "to Dominic and the other brethren who dwell in the hermitage of Mount Suavicinum," not "in their hermitage of the neighbouring mountain," as is had in the editions; and our abbot Andrew Vallemani, of whom we spoke above in § I, first detected the error of the title of this letter, as is clear from the annotation written in his own hand which we have seen in a copy of the Works of Damian existing in the Classense Library. Thus the oft-praised Mittarelli.
[32] But now a greater difficulty arises in assigning Loricatus's year of death, the saint's death, concerning which various persons have thought variously. We dismiss first of all Ferrarius, who in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy at this day, against all authority, says Mittarelli, fixes his death at the year 1050. But Baronius, volume XI, page 209, whom Jacobilli, Laderchi and others who transcribed the Life of Loricatus from Peter Damian followed, judged that Dominic flew to those above in the year 1061. Mabillon, sixth Benedictine century, part II, page 149, to whom Fleury subscribed, writes that he died in the year 1062: others have judged otherwise. So, then, that the reader may know on what foundation what we shall say rests, it pleases me first to bring into the midst certain circumstances of time which Damian supplies to us: and first indeed Dominic died, as Damian says at the end of his Life, on the day before the Ides of October, which day the following words of the same Damian prove was a Saturday: On the sixth feria, then, through the whole day, he scarcely ceased either to persist in chanting psalms or to flagellate himself with the blows of thongs. But at night, sleep being laid aside, he took a remedy; then he began to be in distress, and to complain gravely of pain of the stomach. So, after the office of the night synaxis had been run through, after the morning hymns, when Prime was already being sung for him by the brethren who were present, he rendered his holy spirit to God.
[33] who either in the year 1060 or 1066, Damian also testifies that the ninth day from the deposition of Loricatus was a Sunday, in these words: But we, on the very Sunday on which we entered the hermitage, having reverently taken up thence (namely from the little cell in which it had been buried) the holy body, buried it in the chapter-house, as was fitting. And since it was the ninth day from the deposition, we found the aforesaid body sound and unimpaired. To these three circumstances add a fourth, which we also have from Damian, namely that Loricatus departed from this life about one year, as we shall demonstrate below, before Rudolf, bishop of Gubbio. These things, then, being premised, since the day before the Ides of October, or the 14th of October, as Guido Grandi, disputing in his Appendix with Laderchi, rightly proves, could correspond to a Saturday, and the 22nd, or the 9th day after it, to a Sunday, only in the year 1060 or 1066, it follows that Loricatus, since he was still living in the year 1059, yielded to fate in one or other of these two years, and that all who have judged otherwise have blundered.
[34] Mabillon noticed this in his Annals, volume IV, page 632: Mabillon admitting this, but soon denying it, About the year, he says, in which Dominic died there is no light difficulty. Peter says that he died "a year before" he himself wrote the Life of Rudolf, bishop of Gubbio, who, as we shall see a little after, died in the year 1063. But Dominic, from the same Peter, departed from life on the day before the Ides of October, and indeed, as is understood from the same, on a Saturday, while the office of Prime was being recited. Which can only suit the year 1060 or 1066. So Mabillon candidly confesses with us; but by asserting that Rudolf, bishop of Gubbio, died in the year 1063 he contradicts himself; for if it is so, since Dominic, as Damian testifies, had died about one year before he himself wrote the Life of Rudolf to Alexander II, and since Damian, as Mabillon himself writes in the same volume, page 635, no. VII, wrote this letter about his conversation and death, and at the same time about Dominic's, as soon as he received the news of Rudolf's death, it follows that Dominic flew to those above, not in the year 1060 or 1066, which however Mabillon had rightly wished above, but in the year 1062.
[35] But before we determine which of the two aforesaid years was in fact Dominic's year of death, necessarily, occurred, it pleases me first to hear Grandi, who, in his Appendix, Dissertation IV, page 129, having refuted the opinions of Baronius and Laderchi, continues thus: Whence it plainly appears that the death of Loricatus must be referred either to the year 1060 or to the year 1066, so that these circumstances cohere with one another, namely that the 14th day of October agrees with a Saturday and the 22nd day with a Sunday. But in the year 1060 this could not happen, for another reason: for the death of blessed Rudolf, bishop of Gubbio, which (as Damian testifies) occurred in the year following the death of Dominic Loricatus, on the 26th day of June, would have fallen in the year 1061, at which time Nicholas II, supreme pontiff, had not yet departed from the living, whose death occurred on the 3rd day of July, and in the month of October Alexander II was consecrated Roman pontiff by the cardinals; and yet that Rudolf died in the time of Alexander II, already reigning for a long while, is clear from the said letter of Damian, in which he addresses the same pontiff thus: "Having lately gone out from you, then, when I came under the walls of the city of Florence, a sudden messenger at once met me, namely that the bishop of Gubbio was dead, etc."; it remains, therefore, that the death of Dominic Loricatus be said to have occurred in the year 1066, and so the death of St. Rudolf in the year 1067. So Grandi professes that he thinks, but whether rightly let us examine.
[36] having weighed Damian's context, Since Loricatus died about one year before Rudolf, bishop of Gubbio, the year of the latter's death being found, the one preceding it is Dominic's. Likewise, since the death of Rudolf, which occurred in the year following the death of Loricatus, must necessarily, as is clear from what has been said before, be tied either to the year 1061 or to 1067, it follows that Damian's letter was written either at the beginning of the pontificate of Alexander II, or when he had already sat for seven years (for he was consecrated in the month of October of the year 1061); but before Damian wrote this letter about the death of Rudolf and Loricatus, the pontiff had commanded him, as he himself testifies at the front of the letter, that he should never send him letters which contained anything light, worthy of oblivion and frivolous, which, namely, as soon as the reader has run through them skipping, the devouring flame consumes, but should always write something such as might deserve both to be received for the edification of readers and to be kept among authentic writings. Then, having praised this zeal of the pontiff, he begins the Life of Rudolf thus: Having lately gone out from you, then, when I came under the walls of the city of Florence, a sudden messenger at once met me, who turned midday into darkness for me, and filled the veins of all my bowels with the gall of a most bitter message: that the bishop of Gubbio was dead.
[37] it seems to be tied to the year 1060. That the aforesaid command of Alexander, made to Damian, pertains to the beginning of the same pontificate, namely while Damian was still at Rome on the occasion of the pontiff's election, is deduced from this, that, if it were referred to his more remote times, for example to the year 1066 or 1067, it would have been given in vain and without cause, since we know for certain that Damian, from the year 1061 to the year 1066, addressed to him not one but very many letters, all highly edifying to the reader, as Alexander had commanded. On the contrary, as Mittarelli rightly says, it savours more of simplicity and of nature that such a command should have been made to Damian by Alexander, most closely joined to him, on the first occasion of his departing, not, as Mabillon thought, as legate to the Florentines, which happened only in the year 1063, but when, leave having already been asked and obtained from the pontiff, he was going to revisit his hermitages. Directing his journey, then, through Florence, Damian, as soon as he learned there of Rudolf's death, began to satisfy the pontiff's command.
[38] Grandi indeed denies, at the place cited above, that Rudolf's death can be placed in the year 1061, Grandi's arguments once, led chiefly, as it seems, by two reasons; and first indeed because he believes that he died on the 26th day of June, and accordingly, if this had happened in the year 1061, it would have occurred at a time when Nicholas II, who died only on the 3rd day of July of the same year, was still living: but having consulted very many historiographers who treat of the bishops of Gubbio, I have found only one, whom Ughelli cites in volume 1 of Italia Sacra, page 635, treating of Rudolf, namely Arnold Wion, who, in book II of the Lignum Vitae, page 312, asserts the same as Grandi; but since he alleges no reason at all for his statement, nay moreover says that Rudolf flourished in the year 1070, which neither Grandi himself nor anyone else who has weighed this matter more maturely will easily grant,
writes, we deservedly distrust bare assertions of this kind.
[39] and again On the contrary, Damian himself insinuates that Rudolf departed from this life in the same month of October of the year following the death of Loricatus, when, in the aforesaid letter to Alexander, no. 15, narrating a miracle which had been done concerning a certain monk named Michael, he has this: Furthermore, on the festival of the blessed Apostles Simon and Jude, which we celebrated very lately, etc. Whence, since the aforesaid feast falls on the 28th day of October, it follows that this letter to Alexander was given by Damian either at the end of the month of October or at the beginning of November: and now, since Damian, having entered Florence, at once learned of Rudolf's death, and did not long hold back his pen from informing Alexander of this matter, it follows that Rudolf yielded to fate some days before, in the very month of October, by no means in the month of June, as Grandi would have it (for it is incredible that his death should have been hidden from Damian so long, namely until the month of November), and that a whole year after the death of Loricatus.
[40] refuted, Nor does the argument which Grandi brings forward in the second place press more, from the following words in which Damian addresses Alexander: Having lately gone out from you, then, when I came under the walls of the city of Florence, a sudden messenger at once met me, namely that the bishop of Gubbio was dead. I plainly do not know by what reasoning Grandi could infer from these aforesaid words of Damian that Rudolf died in the time of Alexander II, already reigning for a long while, nay for almost six years. This indeed, and this alone, so far as I can attain, flows thence as a consequence, that the death of Rudolf came to the knowledge of Damian, having already entered Florence, some days, not a year or years (for the word lately does not comprise so much time), after he had gone out from Alexander; and we have demonstrated above that this departure of Damian from Alexander can and must be referred to the beginning of Alexander's pontificate, his election being scarcely completed, namely when, having obtained leave to visit his hermitages, he directed his journey through Florence.
[41] our opinion is the more confirmed; Moreover, what confirms our opinion more, Damian, returning in the same year from the French legation which he discharged in the year 1062, gave letters to Hugo, archbishop of Besançon (Baronius calls him Walter, deceived perhaps, as Mabillon notes, by the initial letter V), against his clerics, whom, passing through there, he had observed sitting during the divine offices, and in the very awesome things of the Masses, as he speaks. So, in order to call them back to better fruit, he proposes among others the example of Dominic Loricatus in these words: There was also with us another of more advanced age, who was rightly called Dominic. He confessed to me that he had often made a thousand metanoias each day, while he was nevertheless continually clothed with the iron cuirass next to the flesh. When, then, Damian was writing this letter, Dominic had already departed from the living; otherwise he would not have used these words of the past, There was also with us another, but of the present, There is another with us, as a little above he had spoken in the same letter of Gezo, still then living: and now, since he wrote this letter not long after his return into Italy (for it is scarcely credible that Damian, so great a vindicator of divine honour, should have dissembled this vice of sitting for four years), it becomes manifest that Dominic flew to those above before the year 1066, and so, as is clear from what has been said above, in the year 1060.
[42] Nor do those words, as Mittarelli rightly writes, volume II, page 226 and following, and the third argument which could be objected prove that this letter, in which Damian treats of Dominic and of Rudolf, was written at a more advanced time of Alexander's pontificate, which Damian uses speaking of Loricatus: "Dominic," he says, "when he was a cleric in the world, because the simoniacal heresy then flourished, which would that it were now altogether extinct"; which words seem to indicate that the simoniacal pest, although not yet extinct, had yet remitted something of its former fury; which, says our Sarti, fits excellently the years 1066 or 1067, in which the five years had already elapsed of which the same Alexander speaks in the letter to Gervase, bishop of Reims, in which the Roman Church was "oppressed, now by crafty tergiversation, now by hostile invasion"; but by no means squares with the first beginnings of the pontificate of the same Alexander, bloodied by the dire schism of Cadalus.
[43] To which we answer that from these very words of Damian it is rather permitted to gather learnedly solved by Mittarelli, that the letter was written at the very beginnings of Alexander's pontificate, at which, both by the work of the past Roman pontiffs Clement II, Leo IX, Stephen IX, Nicholas II, and also by the works of Damian himself and of Cardinal Hildebrand, the pestiferous poison of simony had somewhat subsided. On the other side, too, when Damian wrote these things, Cadalus had not yet been elected antipope, or the news of his election had not yet arrived, which took place in Germany on the twenty-eighth day of October of the year 1061, on the festival of the holy Apostles Simon and Jude, "which," says the same Damian in the letter itself, "we celebrated very lately"; nor would he, attentive after his manner, have omitted to insert something about such a schism into that letter too, if it had been written by him in the years 1066 or 1067. Thus the oft-praised Mittarelli.
[44] two arguments which press Grandi It is now easy to understand from this opinion of ours how Rudolf, bishop of Gubbio, is found subscribed to the Roman council of the year 1059; are easily reconciled with this opinion of ours. and to weaken this argument, so as not to have to confess that the death of Rudolf, who lived under Damian only seven years, partly as a monk, partly as a bishop, happened before the year 1067, Grandi, turning himself on every side, was compelled to devise that the series of the bishops of Gubbio in Ughelli is corrupted, and that another than Rudolf by name subscribed the aforesaid council, or two Rudolfs.
[45] Likewise it is understood for what reason Damian, in the letter which he wrote about his illness to the monks Rudolf and Ariprand, if it ought to be understood of our Rudolf, which I rather think, is adorned only, says Mittarelli, with the title of prior. For it is narrated in it that Leo, an aged old hermit, "was exceedingly sad about the impending death of his prior," that is, of Damian. The use of this title indicates a time earlier than the year 1057, or at least a time of the same year in which, the priorate having been laid down, Damian had been advanced to the episcopate and cardinalate; it also indicates that in that year Rudolf had already put on the monastic habit, which he would not yet have put on if he had died in the year 1066 or 1067, seven years after assuming the monastic life. These things, then, and the arguments which we adduced above against Grandi, cause us to depart here from his chronology, which I am not ignorant is also attacked in general by Italian writers, especially Venetian, in books published on the matter.
§ III. The first translation of the body; the second: where are the relics venerated? His confusion with St. Dominic, father of the Preachers.
[The saint's body, from the little cell in which he had died, into the chapter-house,] Further, Damian, on the third day, as he himself says, after he had gone out from the walls of Rome, where he had perhaps then been staying, to seek his hermitages, meeting the news of Loricatus's death, betook himself without doubt with what speed he could to Suavicinum, and ordered the body of the blessed man, which the brethren, lest it be snatched from their hands by the neighbouring monks, had quickly buried in the same little cell in which he died, the earth having been dug, to be exhumed and, translated to the chapter-house, to be reverently committed there to burial, as was fitting. Mabillon, however, thinks that Loricatus died not in the hermitage of Suavicina but in that of Avellana, when he writes that Damian a little after took care that the body of Loricatus should be translated from the little cell in which he had died into the chapter-house of Fonte Avellana.
[47] But since he was prior of the hermitage of Suavicina, as we have seen, then under Boniface VIII into the new church of Suavicinum. and accordingly by reason of his office ought ordinarily to have resided in it, and moreover, what does more, since in the time of Boniface VIII, in the year 1302, the sacred body of Dominic was translated from the old chapter-house, as we shall presently see, into the new church of the monastery of Suavicinum, in which it still rests, I scarcely doubt that he closed his last day in the same hermitage. And that the body of Loricatus was translated in the aforesaid year, as I said, is gathered, as Mittarelli testifies, from the following inscription, related by Father John Baptist Cancellotti of the Society of Jesus, book IV, chapter XV, in the History of the city of San Severino, in Turchi, page 127:
ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE LORD ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND TWO, IN THE TIME OF THE LORD POPE BONIFACE THE EIGHTH, IN THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY, ON THE ELEVENTH DAY, THE BODY OF BLESSED DOMINIC WAS TRANSLATED.
Whence, as I said, scarcely any doubt is left but that the sacred remains of Loricatus were deposited by Damian in the chapter-house of the monastery of Suavicinum, whence they were translated into the church, for the reason that he had died in the same hermitage.
[48] where, perhaps by order of Alexander II, an altar was erected over it, But at what time (I shall use Mittarelli's words) an altar was erected over them by apostolic dispensation is not clear to us for want of monuments; it perhaps happened under Alexander II, Damian, the writer of his Life, suggesting it and adding spurs. This only we know, that the surrounding peoples, and especially the inhabitants of Castrum Frontalis, which is at the foot of Mount Suavicinum, constituted as their protector a man of such merits and a most copious bestower of benefits, so that those peoples, when they most greatly desired and desire to obtain something from God for their advantage, in a manner command St. Dominic Loricatus. His sacred relics are still kept for public veneration in the church of the hermitage itself, dedicated indeed formerly in honour of the most holy Trinity, but, frequented by the devout concourse of the peoples, and out of reverence for the holy body itself (this more probably happened not long after it was rebuilt under Boniface VIII) receiving a new name from it.
[49] But the sacred body of Dominic, which rests in the aforesaid church, certain particles translated into the church of St. Anne of Frontale, is not altogether entire; for many particles were torn off, especially in the time of the monks, and distributed through various places, so that the cult might be the more increased. A small portion of his relics, as Mittarelli testifies, is kept in the church of St. Anne, which is the parish church of Frontale, over the altar sacred to Dominic; and moreover in former times there was carried in solemn supplications a small missal which Peter Damian, as is commonly believed, had given as a gift to Dominic for the use of the hermitage of Suavicina. A copy of this missal, or, as it is otherwise called, sacramentary, faithfully transcribed by the canon Turchi of Apiro and illustrated with notes, can be seen in Mittarelli, volume 2, page 309.
[50] [some at Apiro and in the monastery of St. Apollinaris, but the greatest part at Suavicinum] Further, another portion of St. Dominic's relics, as the same Mittarelli testifies, is found in the very distinguished collegiate church of Apiro, in whose territory the monastery of Suavicinum lies. Dionysius Pieraugustini, bishop of San Severino, gave a third as a gift to the monastery of St.
Apollinaris in Classe at Ravenna. In other places pieces of that sacred body, diminished not a little, are venerated. But the greatest part of the body, which still rests, as we have said, in the church of Suavicinum, was placed in the year 1663, as Andrew Vallemani testifies writing to our elders, between the two doors of the church, in the side wall above the altar dedicated to St. Dominic, at the Epistle horn; where, as the Acts of the visitation held in the year 1663 by Francis Sperelli, bishop of San Severino, have it, there is a cupboard secured with an iron grating and key, with a newly constructed wooden ornament painted and gilded, in which is kept a little wooden casket painted with an image of the same saint lying on a bier.
[51] still rest. And that the body of Loricatus still rested in the same place in the year 1737 is proved by the Acts of the visitation of the same year, on the 7th day of September, of Dionysius Pieraugustini, likewise bishop of San Severino, mentioned above, who, wishing and intending, as he speaks, to make himself more certain about the body of the aforesaid St. Dominic Loricatus, translated into the same church as far back as the year 1303, in the time of the pontificate of Pope Boniface the Eighth of venerable memory, which he found laid up in the side wall between the two doors of the aforesaid church, at the Epistle horn, above the altar dedicated to the same St. Dominic, and on the outer face he found a window (through which, as Andrew Vallemani writes, the remains of Loricatus could be seen in his time) well secured with an iron grating firmly fixed to the wall, and with an outer ornament of gilded wood, in which place indeed he learned from very many trustworthy men, ecclesiastical as well as secular, that cult and veneration had been shown from time immemorial to the sacred body of the same St. Dominic Loricatus. The Acts of the visitation of Alexander Calvi, bishop of San Severino, of the year 1705, on the 18th day of the month of September, have almost the same things.
[52] [His body, which was believed by some to be that of St. Dominic, father of the Preachers,] Nor is it to be passed over here that the inhabitants neighbouring Suavicinum at one time confused (which, however, Turchi denies) Dominic Loricatus with Dominic, the founder of the Order of Preachers, as the Acts of the visitation of Francis Sperelli mentioned above sufficiently hint, which have this: The altar dedicated to blessed Dominic situated in the wall below the doors. Within the wall of the same altar there is a cupboard secured with an iron grating and key, with a newly constructed wooden ornament painted and gilded, in which is kept a wooden casket painted with an image of the same saint lying on a bier, with the habit of the religious order of St. Dominic (namely of the father of the Preachers; for Loricatus founded no religious order), within which, from ancient tradition, it is asserted that the bones of blessed Dominic are kept; and in the wall above the said cupboard there is an ancient image of the same blessed man with the inscription: "THE BODY OF BLESSED DOMINIC LIES HERE." Several Masses are celebrated on the feast of St. Dominic, the fourth of August (for then the founder of the Preachers is venerated), many faithful flowing together, and especially the vicar and people of Castrum Frontalis in procession … in the middle of the church, on the front of the chapel of the high altar, there are ancient and devout images of the most holy Crucifix … and below, at the sides, of St. Dominic and of the aforesaid blessed Dominic.
[53] But I have no doubt that the aforesaid bishop, the Camaldolese of the Grottoes of Massaccio having discovered this error of the people, soon ordered a distinct cult, which they now obtain, to be shown to each of these saints. Hence I do not know how, in the year 1694, the Camaldolese Fathers of the Grottoes of Massaccio, in order to obtain the faculty of translating the body of blessed Dominic Loricatus to their own church, among the other reasons of the suppliant petition which they offered to the Sacred Congregation of Rites, brought forward this also, that the people of Frontale had confused the memory of Dominic Loricatus with Dominic, the father of the Preachers. For although, before the year 1663, in which the church of St. Dominic Loricatus was visited by Sperelli, this confusion had place there, yet it is scarcely credible that this error, already detected by Sperelli and soon corrected, afterwards returned so quickly that the aforesaid Fathers could allege it again in the year 1694 as a true reason for their petition.
[54] It came about by the offering of this petition that the bishop of San Severino, who was Scipio Nigrelli, in his opinion, which the Sacred Congregation had requested, did indeed approve the said translation, they tried in vain to obtain. but proposed, as Mittarelli writes, that the sacred body should be carried, not into the church of the hermitage of the Grottoes of Massaccio, as being narrow, but should be placed at the hermitage of Monte Conero of Ancona, or of Monte Corona … After such a reply of the bishop in writing, and report given to the Sacred Congregation on the 15th day of October of the same year, the hermits of Monte Corona, brought to hope by the gracious opinion, applied every solicitude that the sacred relics should be carried; but, either the commendatory prior retracting his consent, or for some other cause, the business remained unaccomplished, and the bones of the holy confessor were not moved from the place, and lie today in their old church of the hermitage of Suavicinum.
LIFE OF BL. DOMINIC LORICATUS, CAMALDOLESE MONK
By St. Peter Damian, his contemporary and companion, Book I, Letter XIX to Pope Alexander II, from the fourth Trimester of Lawrence Surius.
Dominic Loricatus, confessor, of the Camaldolese Order. (B.)
BHL Number: 2239
BY ST. PETER DAMIAN.
CHAPTER I.
Simoniacally ordained, he becomes a monk and hermit: he passes to Damian's discipline, and performs austere penance.
Dominic, whose life is astonishing, Behold, most holy father, while a bearer of the letter in which we have described the Life of Rudolf, to come to you, is being sought and is not at hand, suddenly another matter occurs which, if it is written, may avail more abundantly for edification. And perhaps for this reason a messenger is withdrawn from me by heavenly disposition, so that meanwhile, while I am at leisure, my pen may transfer itself to something else. The man of God, then, Dominic, my father and lord, a died a year ago: whose Life, if it is written, I fear may perhaps be judged incredible by some brethren. But far be it from me to write a lie. For I, who truly cultivate truth according to my strength, do not admit the fiction of falsehood. For that saying of the Apostle does not escape us, who, when he had premised: If Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain, immediately subjoined: Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have given testimony against God, that He hath raised up Christ, whom He hath not raised up, if the dead rise not again: b in which words of the apostolic sentence, not to dwell longer, the reader readily understands that he who feigns that either God or a servant of God has done something wonderful not only does not merit the reward of the fabricated lie, but is also convicted of having borne false witness against him whom he had praised.
[2] Dominic, then, when he was a cleric in the world, he becomes a monk at Luceoli, how strict the discipline was there because the simoniacal heresy then flourished, which would that it were now altogether extinct, a goatskin of leather c was given to the bishop by his parents that he might become a priest; but because, as the Apostle says, to them that love God all things work together unto good, d this one fault of the blessed man is proved to have been afterwards the material of many goods. For, terrified by this fear, he despised the world, put on the monk, and soon seized, as an intrepid warrior, the arduous institute of the eremitical life. But because he had been wrongly promoted, e as long as he lived he did not presume to usurp the ministry of the most holy altar. He was a virgin until death; he did not abandon the eremitical life: where indeed he lived very many years under the mastership of the holy man John, who was called of Montefeltro. f In that hermitage, then, which was situated in the region which is called Luceoli, g eighteen little cells were seen assigned for the brethren to dwell in, where indeed they lived under this rule: that they never drank wine, never seasoned their food with fat, took one cooked dish on Sunday and also on the fifth feria, celebrated a fast on bread and water five days a week, and, giving themselves solely to prayers or applying themselves to the works of their hands, did not practise agriculture, did not possess estates or any substance except one pack-animal. With which ass, namely, or horse, there was one servant, who ran about unceasingly either to acquire or to grind grain, and alone sustained them in all necessities, namely John, who, afterwards made abbot of the place, ruled the community under honourable administration. And they kept silence through the whole week with strict censure, which on Sunday, after Vespers, breaking it with their meal, they had liberty to speak with one another until the office of Compline. Moreover, they stayed continually in their little cells with bare feet and legs. And he told me h that, when he dwelt with Anso, namely a religious man, whom I too saw, they daily, through all the canonical hours, i gave each other the discipline with strokes of rods. Which Anso once complained to him that he had nine daily rations of bread k in his belly at once. For they were wasted with such want of food that the dry bread was packed together in their bowels and could be digested only with difficulty.
[3] is shown by an example. There was also there a certain brother who had often tried to go out of his cell wandering about, whom John, prior of the hermitage, as was fitting, first severely rebuked, and then ordered to be beaten in his presence. And when, at the master's order, he had begun to dress himself, he spoke proudly; whom the master again ordered to be stripped, again to be beaten. But beginning still to clothe himself, he did not cease to let something proud flow out: so a third time, so a fourth, and, if I hold it rightly, as many as six times he was beaten, and not amended. For, stripped and re-dressed, he could not answer humble things. But when he had been scourged the seventh time, as he began to dress himself, he at once cried out with a clear voice, saying: Behold, the devil has gone; behold, the most wicked inhabitant of my heart has fled, and has left me free, the bonds with which I was bound being broken. Now I gladly obey my lord and master, and promise again that I am to be subject to his laws in all things. In this manner that brother returned to the keeping of humility, and, persevering continually in his little cell, lived irreproachably thereafter.
[4] Thence betaking himself to Damian, But long after, his master giving consent, the aforesaid holy man deigned to commit himself with altogether wonderful humility to me, wretched and unworthy that he should deign to receive me, and subjected himself as a monk to an abbot. l To whom indeed he gave, he did not receive. m And him whom I had received as a client in subjection I rejoice to have received in the school of Christ as a giver of true philosophy. n For his whole life was preaching and edification, teaching and discipline. But because we have already scattered some sayings or deeds of this holy man through various opuscula of our composition, it does not seem absurd if we place here the same things, which however are had in hand, in that very style in which they were written. Truly it is easier to build a house from hewn timber than to double the exercise of labour by hewing and building at once. For of the temple of Solomon also it is written: And the house, when it was in building, was built of stones hewed and made ready: so that neither hammer, nor
axe, nor any tool of iron was heard in the house when it was in building. o We too have, according to the roughness of our hand, polished stones, which it suffices for us simply to arrange, only in the structure, just as they were found.
[5] and, clothed with the cuirass, he chants psalms unweariedly, In the letter, then, sent to the lord Teuzo, [p] a recluse, I find that I wrote this: But why do I, in commemorating holy men, survey various places here and there, since I hold within my threshold and in my hands one to whose praises, worthily to be proclaimed, I do not rise, being unequal in strength? Certainly, our little cells being set on either side, he and I are divided only by the intervening space of the church; [q] and if I apply myself to enumerating his virtues, days slip away before the material for writing could seem able to fail. I speak of Dominic, namely my doctor and lord; [r] whose tongue indeed is rustic, but his life skilful enough and charming. Which life truly preaches by living works much more usefully for edification than the barren tongue of certain persons, which vainly weighs the careful words of tricked-out urbanity. For a long course of years now slipping by, girt with an iron cuirass next to the flesh, he wages an implacable fight with the wicked spirits, and, ever ready for battle, fortified not only in heart but also in body, he advances as a fervent warrior against the hostile battle-lines. And he holds indifferently this custom of continual life, that scarcely any day passes without his striking his naked body, both hands armed with rods, while chanting two psalters. And this indeed in a more relaxed season. For in the Lenten cycles, or when he has a penance to perform (for he frequently undertakes a penance of a hundred years), then each day, while he afflicts himself with the beatings of the rods, he pays off at least three psalters in meditation. And the penance of a hundred years, [s] as we have learned from him as author, is completed thus: since three thousand strokes of the rod regularly complete one year of penance among us, and the chanting of ten psalms, as has often been proved, admits a thousand strokes, while it is not doubted that the psalter consists of a hundred and fifty psalms, a penance of five years is found by those who reckon rightly in the discipline of one psalter. Further, whether five twenty times or twenty five times, they make a hundred. It follows, therefore, that he who chants twenty psalters with the discipline may trust that he has performed a penance of a hundred years. Although in this too Dominic surpasses every measure: for whereas some exercise one hand in performing the disciplines, he, like a true son of Benjamin, [t] fights unweariedly with both hands against the rebellious allurements of the flesh. And this penance of a hundred years, as he himself professed to me, he easily completes in six days according to his custom. I remember also that, at the beginning of a certain approaching Lent, he asked that a thousand years be imposed on him by us for penance, almost all of which he certainly fulfilled before the time of the fast was passed. [u] And a little after I continued thus.
[6] Now let the discourse return to Dominic, with whom it had begun. meanwhile, his body with genuflexions, scourges, Indeed, since bent old age already presses him down, and moreover he wastes away with frequent labours, it is a wonder whence so great a fervour glows in him that he renders himself always unconquered, always unwearied in spiritual exercises. For, as I learned from his own account, he often continues two psalters with the disciplines standing, so that he does not rest even for a moment from the blows [x] with incredible fervour of mind. When I once asked him whether he could sweat for a while at genuflexions with the weight of the iron garment, he gave me an answer under this obscurity: "When health," he said, "answers my wishes, I have sometimes been accustomed to genuflect a hundred times at every fifteen psalms of the whole psalter." Which indeed I did not then attend to diligently; but afterwards, revolving in mind what had been said, I was astonished and amazed that a thousand [y] should be done in one psalter by a bowed-down man. One day after Vespers, entering my little cell, "Master," he said (for he addresses me out of humility by this unworthy name), "today I have done what I do not remember having done hitherto. For between day and night I have completed the chanting of eight psalters." And his whole face then appeared, as if worn by the rods and made livid with certain furrowing weals, as if it had been pounded with a pestle, namely in the manner of barley-water. Psalmody comes to him so easily for this reason, that he does not so much revolve the words, as he himself asserts, with tongue sounding, as run through the sense with the liveliness of the mind.
[7] Once he was dwelling far from me, [z] and when he had come in to me and I had inquired by what laws of life he was then ruling himself, and chastising it wonderfully with abstinences. he answered that he was living carnally, and often on the fifth ferias, with the Sundays, relaxing himself from the accustomed rigour of abstinence. Asked whether he ate any cooked dish, eggs or cheese, he denied it. Again, whether fish or fruit: "Fish," he said, "and fruit, if there are any, I give to the sick, of whom I lament that no small multitude lie in our parts." And when I, a hard exacter, shut him into a narrow place, saying: "Whence, then, do you live more remissly on those days, if you eat none of those things which must be either cooked by fire or found on trees?" he answered: "Fennel," he said, "with bread I gladly eat." At once indeed I knew skilfully how carnally the man lived who had made fennel his delicacies. He plainly has a rich grace of tears, but an alternating one. For when, shut in, he restrains himself under strict silence, he weeps abundantly as soon as he wishes. But if he is frequented with conversation, he complains that he has lost his weeping. But I too often reproach him with the poverty of my dryness, saying: "Alas, my father," I say, "these tears of yours are unfruitful, which cannot by praying bring forth other tears. For I would wish, what indeed follows, that as you are a father to me, so no less your tears might also become the mothers of my tears."
[8] I recall also that I inserted in the Eremitical Rule: Most sparing of sleep, within 24 hours nine "I shall speak: but who knows whether credence will be given to a most faithful assertion? But it is to be little regarded if human rashness accuses of falsehood one whom the supreme truth excuses. There is among us one who sometimes, in one day continued with the night, runs through nine psalters in meditation, and meanwhile almost always strikes his naked body, both hands armed with rods. And it is to be noted that, while he busies himself to carry out these things, he has no time to sleep by night or by day; but sometimes, bending the knees, while he lays his head on the ground, sleep thus suddenly creeps upon him lying bare, and with that alone he is content. He once complained to me in brotherly familiarity that, though he often completed nine psalters chanting in this way, he could never reach the tenth."
[9] and a little after, bound with 4 iron rings, In the letter also which we directed to the Countess Blanca [aa] we seem to have put these things: "Would that it were given you now to see my lord Dominic, who would teach and form you by the more efficacious example of a most brilliant life in what we are trying to do by the office of an unskilled tongue. He, then, for about three lustra of years is clothed with an iron cuirass next to the flesh, and is girt with two iron rings on the body, and likewise bound with two through the shoulders of the arms."
[10] he pays off 12 and more psalters within the same time, But because we have already set out many things about him in other opuscula of ours, let us now bring forward what he related, coming to us scarcely six days ago. [bb] He said, then: "It came to my knowledge that you had written that I sang nine psalters in one day with bodily disciplines. When I heard this, I was struck with trembling and fear, and groaned with remorseful conscience: 'Woe is me,' I said; 'behold, this has been written of me without my knowing it, and yet I do not know whether this could be done by me. I will try again, and I shall know without doubt whether I could fulfil this.' On the fourth feria, then, I stripped myself of my garments, and, both hands armed with rods, passing the whole night awake, I did not cease to chant psalms and to beat myself, until on the following day, having run through twelve psalters according to custom, I completed a part of the thirteenth, as far as the psalm 'Beati quorum.'" Further, how childish and despicable he deems what often seems hard and harsh to us let us show by one example. A certain brother, when he shrank greatly from the strokes of the rods and judged it most grievous to bear them, at length, however, acquiesced in the exhortations of the lord Dominic, frequently pressing him, and did not cease to inflict the discipline on himself with his own hands through the chanting of the whole psalter and moreover fifty psalms. And that night was the one preceding the Lord's day and the festival of blessed Michael. And when, morning having come, that brother had come to the aforesaid old man, fearing lest he be reproved for indiscretion, when he had related in order what he had done, he answered with this word: "Do not, brother, be faint-hearted, or lose confidence on account of this present infirmity of yours: for God can bring you up from the lowest to higher things, and strengthen the infancy of this milky conversation of yours to the increments of youthful strength." And adding, he said: "We too at first began step by step, and gradually, though weak and fragile, were led out to that to which divine piety wished to bring us." And so it came about that he did not reprove him for immoderate fervour, as he feared, but, lest he should succumb to despair, cheered his mind as one who had done a very small thing. By the example of this holy old man, then, the custom of taking the discipline so grew up in our parts that not only men, but also noble women eagerly seized on this kind of purgatory. For the widow of Techbald [cc] also, of indeed lofty birth and of not the lowest dignity, once related to me that she had performed the prescribed penance of a hundred years of this discipline.
[11] and at once seizes on a new kind of penance. In the letter [dd] which I sent to John, prior of the hermitage which is established beside Mount Susa vicinum, [ee] when I was challenging him and his subjects by exhortation to the extension of the arms in prayers, I first spoke of a certain brother of ours most fervent in the love of Christ, named Adam, and then subjoined Dominic as an example, speaking thus: We have also a certain very young brother, who has confessed that from the beginning to the end of the psalter he holds his arms raised while he chants psalms, so that he often touches the panelled ceiling of his little cell with his hands; this discretion, however, being kept, that at every fifty psalms he lowers his extended arms for a moment and at once raises them again. We have also another of more advanced age, namely a bent old man, and, to confess to you secretly, this is Dominic. He, then, found a certain little writing, [ff] where it was said that if anyone sang the twelve psalms noted there twenty-four times, with hands raised in the form of a cross, he could regularly compensate a penance for one year. At once he seized in exercise on what was said, and sang those twelve psalms with arms extended , as was said, twenty-four times with no interval at all, but at one stretch daily. I wrote on this perhaps in other
opuscula, which are either lacking at present or do not easily come to memory. Therefore let the joint of our discourse be transferred from the repetition of those things which have been written to whatever new things.
ANNOTATIONS.
d. Romans 8, verse 28.
h. Namely Dominic.
p. Others write Theuso or Teuso: and this Theuso, as Mabillon notes, was a monk of St. Mary at Florence, who, dissenting from his abbot Albizo, had departed from the monastery, and afterwards had also thrown Peter, coming to him to reconcile him with the abbot, out of his cell together with the abbot. Wherefore Peter writes to him to call him back to better fruit by the sayings and examples of the saints. This opusculum of Damian is the 51st in order.
q. He alludes to the text of 1 Kings, chapter 30, verse 3, where David says to Jonathan: There is but one step between me and death.
r. See the Annotations at letter a above.
s. On those who had fallen into graver crimes the sacred canons enjoined a penance of many years, the penalties of which those pious men of their own accord demanded to be imposed on themselves, and afterwards redeemed by more frequent disciplines.
t. Son of sorrow; for Benjamin was called by his mother Rachel Benoni, that is, son of sorrow. See Genesis, chapter 35, verse 18.
u. He subjoins certain things in this opusculum to defend the use of such disciplines, which some were attacking. See book V, letter VIII.
x. I think percussionibus blows should be read with Mabillon.
y. Genuflexions seem to be understood, or, as Constantine Cajetan and Mabillon add, metanoias, which designate the same thing here.
z. Perhaps in the monastery of Conjunctulum, of which below, chapter II, letter m.
aa. This opusculum of Damian to Blanca is the 50th in order, on which see the Preliminary Commentary, nos. 20 and following; nor is there more about this Blanca than you will find said there.
bb. Dominic had perhaps come to Avellana to visit Damian on his return from his Milanese legation, leaving the hermitage of Suavicina for a short time, says Mittarelli.
cc. Understand widow: but who Thetbald was, and who his wife, we do not know at all. Rubeus, book V, page 293, calls the wife of a certain Cechaldus a woman great in dignity.
dd. This letter has perished, of which Damian inserts here only a fragment.
ee. Read properly Suavicinum. Consult what was said at nos. 30 and following.
ff. See the Preliminary Commentary, nos. 24 and following.
* [It] is superfluous.
Supply brachiis* arms.
CHAPTER II.
He prays in an unusual manner and unweariedly: and, having invented a new kind of scourge, rages dreadfully against his body: his life miraculous in itself: he appeals to the judge of Osimo: his wonderful humility: his death.
Praying very long with arms extended and raised Indeed, as it were a certain divine fire was continually burning in his breast, which never permitted him to rest from the labour of spiritual exercise. For once, when I asked on the most holy day of Easter, the other brethren resting at midday according to custom, whether he too had slept, he said: Certainly, father, I said in my heart: What need have I, with the nights still so long, to sleep in the day? So, with arms extended in the figure of the cross, I began the psalter: which having been run through as I thus stood, the signal of the hour of None at once sounded. In this manner, then, he joined the victory of the Cross with the glory of the resurrection. Once, when we were talking together, as is the custom, about our daily works, he said: I make known what happened to me this night too. For, having been released from sleep for a long time, I rose, and at once, with arms extended in the form of a cross, began the psalter: and when all the psalms, and the canticles which follow, and the hymns had been run through, and I was now at the point where I ought to conclude all with the psalm of the Catholic faith a alone and the litanies, it came into my mind to leave these meanwhile and to chant the psalter for the dead. Not lowering my arms, then, I passed to the psalter of the dead, which according to custom I divided by every fifty psalms with a threefold interposition of lessons. This being so fulfilled, I at once returned to what I had omitted, and fulfilled what was left of the first psalter. And when I was thinking of consequently undertaking a third psalter, the signal of the night synaxis suddenly sounded, a good deed, so to speak, which compelled me, my arms laid down, to celebrate the office with the brethren; and certainly I do not know at what time of year the nights were shorter.
[13] He scourges himself with thongs, and adds 4 rings. Further, some years before his death, as if finding a new kind of punishment, he turned the rods of twigs into thongs of straps, b and, having once tasted them, because they are harder, he established the custom of beating himself with these. This scourge, if ever he went out into the world, he carried in his bosom, so that wherever it happened that he lay, he should not be free from blows. And sometimes, when the occasion of the place did not afford that he could strip himself entirely, he did not cease to afflict himself at least on the legs and thighs, on the head and neck. Also to the four iron rings, because they had already become cheap to him through long custom, he added as many more, so that he was bound with two on the thighs and consequently two on the legs. Indeed, the cuirass, and the things which he used as hair-cloths, or any woollen garments, he washed after months or after a longer space, so that they might lose their rust and might not have a burning to inflict on his dry limbs: and furthermore, while all of us who dwell in the little cells labour at this, that our garments flow down to the lowest pavement to protect our feet from the cold, this too seemed intolerable to us in him, that, since in the hermitage he knew neither leggings nor shoes, his garments yet scarcely came down to the middle of his shins. And when he was stripped to receive the discipline in the chapter, which namely he never wished to omit, his limbs eaten away by fasting and worn by the mass of the bitter cuirass, he seemed to have contracted an Ethiopian blackness. And his garments, sallow and rotten, so to speak, seemed consumed by age. He often said this to me: In this way psalmody proceeds quickly for him who chants psalms, if he holds the words in his heart, if the mind truly comprehends what the tongue speaks. Otherwise, if the heart wanders, the course of the psalms is slowly brought to its end, the tongue now failing, now growing lukewarm. He said also that sleep entices sleep, and vigils bring forth vigils. For the human body is afterwards strengthened by increments in that in which it is first gradually nourished.
[14] But here perhaps someone may reprove me, who namely hastens to hear, not so much what order of living the holy man had, that life, not miracles, sanctifies men, but by what miracles he shone in this life. To whom let it suffice me to answer this briefly: that both Mary and John the Baptist are not read to have performed a miracle, although their life is narrated not by any writing whatever, but by the testimony of the Gospel. Although Mary, in the one birth which she brought forth, without doubt surpasses the virtues and signs of all the saints. I will add this also, that the wonderful life of holy men affords more abundant fruit to hearers than miracles displayed. For the one demands imitation, the others bring only admiration. Miracles teach how those were saints: but life insinuates how men can now also become saints. Therefore, you who seek a miracle, does it not seem wonderful to you that a man still surrounded with frail flesh should live angelically (so to speak), so that among very many thousands of men you can scarcely find one like him? And certainly there are very many today of inferior life through whom God almighty deigns to show forth power.
[15] is shown by one With Jesus as witness, I do not lie, that not yet three months have elapsed since there came to me, staying namely in the hermitage of Samugnum, c two young monks, of whom the one said that he sprang from the Spoletan principality, [d] the other from the dominion of Venice, namely from the city of Polenta. e But the Venetian, Michael f by name, as he declared to us in confession, at the very beginning of his conversion bound himself with an iron ring under this compact of his desire, earnestly asking the clemency of almighty God that, when he should find a place suited to his salvation, that ring should at once be broken. And furthermore, on the very day on which the new guest entered the hermitage, scarcely after the space of three hours, while he was reading the rule of blessed Benedict, as he is unlettered, somehow syllable by syllable, suddenly the spirit of compunction dissolved him in tears, and at the same moment that ring appeared broken. Which miracle, since we remember having already described it elsewhere, running quickly over it, let us set out more fully another, which follows and has not yet been put into letters.
[16] and by another example. For a little after, at my order, he went to the city of Ravenna to bring out his little bundles, which he had left there on coming off the ship. There, then, at the smiths' workshops, he devised new contrivances of iron bonds, and, himself his own judge and culprit, violently bound himself with many chains through various limbs. For two chains hung from the neck over the shoulders on either side, on one side to the groin, on the other to the thigh: and two rings he took on the thighs, two on the arms. Fortified on every side, then, with so manifold a binding, he returned to us: he showed secretly what had been done about himself: and at length, scarcely obtaining his wish, obtained that I should not change what he had done. But when here the torments weighed him down beyond his strength, and a stench was now breaking out from the worn flesh, there was added besides what disturbed more sharply the heart of the brother who spurned glory. For the fame of this mystery began to break out, and
to fly about, first through the mouths of the brethren, then of any newcomers whatever. He therefore asked the mercy of almighty God that He would show evidently, by a sign of His mercy, what pleased Him concerning this undertaking. And meanwhile, while he persisted frequently in prayers of this kind, being twice comforted in sleep, he heard that those irons were now to be loosed by God. And furthermore, on the festival of the blessed Apostles Simon and Jude, which we celebrated very lately, while he was present with the brethren at the night office, suddenly those two irons which, placed over the shoulders, hung down on both sides below and bound the belly with the loins, were altogether broken, and the one was divided into two parts, the other into three. And the other rings were not indeed broken into parts, but were so loosened, and some were made so flexible with softened smoothness, that they seemed in a manner not so much of iron as of lead, so that even if he wished, as they slipped down and fell off, he could not bind himself any further. Thus the brother who had been bound by the burning ardour of holy devotion was wonderfully released by the pious judgement of God. What great thing, then, if He had wished to show some sign through Dominic, a wonderful man indeed, when at the very beginning of his novitiate He deigned to display two miracles through this very young man, and it is more praiseworthy to have accomplished strong things than new? Whence David, when he had premised: God is wonderful in His saints, at once added: He will give power and strength to His people. g He does not say signs or prodigies, but He will give power and strength.
[17] He appeals to the judge of Osimo, When a certain Roman, Stephen by name, judge of the sacred palace, was administering the highest presidency [h] at Osimo, i a cause requiring it, Dominic came to him, and earnestly asked him concerning a certain possession of the hermitage which it held by right of the Apostolic See. Him the other, as one not festive with any arrangement of garments, despised and spurned, and granted him none of the things which he asked. And when it was said to him by those standing around: Do not receive him so harshly, for he is a holy man, he said as if vomiting it out: Let him be holy, as you will: but blessed Peter is certainly holier, whose cause I defend in this administration. Dominic, then, not having attained his undertaking, returns to his little cell. The other too, after a little, returned to Rome. Furthermore, a certain despicable boy, k who remained in the administration to execute any business whatever, reverently fulfilled all that Dominic had asked of the judge. And the judge, not long after he had returned to his own, perished, run through with hostile swords, and left his many riches, because he had no offspring, to stranger heirs. Dominic, moreover, was very cautious in words, so that that sentence aptly suited him in which James the Apostle says: If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man. [l] For if ever it was asked what hour of the day it was, he never said absolutely what hour it was, but always with this addition: It is near the third hour, near the sixth hour. Asked by me why he always spoke so, he said: In this I guard against a lie: for whether the hour is past, or perhaps still impending, it is yet near, which namely is not far removed from the moment in which we speak.
[18] and giving a specimen of a lowly mind, He had at one time a little cell beside the monastery which is called of Conjunctulum. m On the vigil, then, of the Lord's Nativity, when he had remained shut in through the whole preceding Lent, n and was vehemently afflicted by such great fasts and labours, going out at the invitation of the glory of the solemnity, he fell humbly before the abbot of the place, asked pardon, and tearfully accused his acts and thoughts. But he, as he was inexperienced, light in morals and unaccustomed to spiritual counsels, when it would have sufficed him to impose one psalm or some very small thing, ordered that for the things which he had confessed he should chant thirty psalters. At which sentence indeed he, struck as by an arrow, returned to his heart, and reckoned that this had come about by the disposition of divine judgement. So, having returned to his little cell, he never came forth until he had paid off with most urgent diligence the prescribed canon of the penance imposed.
[19] he falls ill and dies, He was wont at intervals, though most sparingly, to drink wine: but long before he died he resolved to abstain from it entirely. So, to come now to his death, the rest being omitted: he suffered heaviness of the stomach, and moreover was tortured with frequent pains of the head. And since the one often proceeds from the other, he proposed to take a draught of medicine to purge the stomach. On the sixth feria, then, through the whole day, he scarcely ceased either to persist in chanting psalms or to flagellate himself with the blows of thongs. But at night, sleep being laid aside, he took the medicine: then he began to be in distress, and to complain gravely of pain of the stomach. So, after the office of the night synaxis had been run through, after the morning hymns, when Prime was already being sung for him by the brethren who were present, he rendered his holy spirit to God. And they found another cuirass too, besides that with which he was clothed, laid under his sides after the manner of a linen cloth. Whence the brethren suspected that this had by no means happened to him contrary to custom, but that he had been accustomed to keep it under him in sleep also, on which namely he lay also in his infirmity. And a certain brother then dreamed of me that I had lost the light of my eyes. And when I had related this to Hildebrand, o venerable archdeacon of the Roman Church, in the Lateran palace, he said: By no means, as you fear, is this an indication to you of near death: but someone familiar to you will be extinguished, who is both dear to you as an eye, and seems your light and splendour in good works. O true, but bitterer than all gall, presage! On the third day after I had gone out from the walls of Rome, behold, a report met me which, while I was expecting nothing less, declared that I had been left blinded, namely that my lord and illuminator Dominic had lately gone out from this world. At once it was clearly evident to me that, while he sought the Author of light, I had been left in the gloom of darknesses. And the brethren, lest his body be snatched from their hands by the neighbouring monks, [p] quickly buried it in the same little cell in which he died, the earth having been dug. But we, on the very Sunday on which we entered the hermitage, having reverently taken up the holy body thence, buried it in the chapter-house, as was fitting. And since it was the ninth day from his deposition, we found the aforesaid body sound and unimpaired. [q]
[20] whom Damian extols. Let them go now who delight in the allurements of their flesh, let them drink up the marrows of pleasures, and as victims of slaughter be fattened for eternal burning. Let them lift themselves up on the horns of pride, let them toss the innocent, let them live softly as they wish, so that afterwards their ulcers may ever grow bitter inwardly. Now, like unbridled horses, let them run about through the meadows of their pleasures, and let the cuirass of extreme severity restrain them through their hands and arms. But our Dominic bore the marks of Jesus in his body, and painted the standard of the Cross not only on his forehead, but impressed it also on all his members on every side. Burnt up and dry from the moisture, like * the reed and the rush, he deserved to be watered with the rich showers of heavenly grace. Here he is girt with an iron cuirass, there he is adorned with the snowy garments of angelic glory. Here he is worn by the hardness of his bed, there he is cherished in the soft bosom of the patriarchs. This whole life was made for him the Parasceve of the Cross, but there, festive and splendid, he celebrates the eternal glory of the resurrection. Now he shines among the fiery stones of the heavenly Jerusalem: now, adorned with the titles of his victories, he triumphs with eternal praise, and rejoices together in that delightful society of the blessed citizens. And blessed Dominic died on the day before the Ides of October, our Lord Jesus Christ reigning, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ages of ages. Amen.
ANNOTATIONS.
l. James 3, verse 2.
p. These were perhaps the monks of Valle Castri, distant only two miles from the hermitage of Mount Suavicinum, or the monks of the valley of Fucina, of St. Urban of Asinante, or of St. Clement, all of whom lived not far from Suavicinum. Jacobilli asserts that the monks of Sitria visited the holy man when he was at the point of death.
q. Baillet, in his manner, would have it that this happened naturally, striving to elude the miracle by this reason, that his body was so dry that it scarcely contained anything corruptible; but unless I shall have been convinced that Loricatus was also altogether without intestines, I judge that Baillet is not to be believed.
Supply instar* like.