ON SS. ARCANUS AND GILES OF BORGO SAN SEPOLCRO, HERMITS AND CONFESSORS,
IN THE TENTH CENTURY, AS IT SEEMS.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Arcanus the hermit, at Borgo San Sepolcro in Umbria. (S.)
Giles the hermit, at Borgo San Sepolcro in Umbria. (S.)
Written by J. V.
§ I. The origin of Borgo San Sepolcro through these Saints, its founders and protectors.
[ ] To these Saints owes its origin Burgus or Burgum S. Sepulchri, a small city of Italy according to Baudrand, in the region of Umbria, Borgo San Sepolcro near the river Tiber, on the very boundary of Tuscany, and episcopal under the archbishop of Florence. Which, says Ughelli in Italia sacra of the new edition, tome 3, column 195, although .. today it be numbered among the cities of Etruria, as one which obeys the rule of the grand Duke, yet in very truth it must be placed in Umbria (formerly Olumbria, or Umbria on this side of the Apennine) beneath the Apennine mountains, distant from the Tiber not more than a thousand paces (from Tifernum Tiberinum, or Città di Castello, eight, from Arezzo fifteen thousand paces, according to Ferrari on this day in his Notes). Among ancient writers no memory of that city is extant, because it is ennobled by no notable antiquity, although some contend (as Jacobilli in the Life) that this very place is Biturgia, placed by Ptolemy among the cities of inland Etruria. But others affirm that it is situated where formerly the villa of the younger Pliny, called Tusci, is related to have been. See Cluverius, Ancient Italy, book 2, page 590, and Flavio Biondo cited by Orlendi in the Sacred and Profane World, part 2, volume 1, page 653. There are however, says Leandro Alberti in the Description of all Italy, printed in Latin in the year 1566, page 132, some to whom this by no means approves itself, as though the site and condition of the places by no means agree with Pliny's description. With these we too agree, with Orlendi, part 2, volume 2, page 1327.
[2] Wrongly too is this city confounded with Biturgia: is not Biturgia; for Biturgia, as Baudrand testifies,
Cluverius places on the Tiber not far from Perugia to the north, where now perhaps is Cerqueto, a stronghold of the territory of Perugia, situated far enough from Borgo San Sepolcro. Nay, on the map of ancient Etruria before book 2, and on page 570, Cluverius places Biturgia on the river Ambra, which flows into the Arno, between Arezzo and Florence. But according to Ortelius Biturgia is now Citerna, a stronghold of Etruria, which Magini exhibits on map 43 on the river Cerfone between Arezzo and Borgo San Sepolcro, and so distinct from the latter. Nor does it matter that on the map of Italy of the Middle Ages, Greek-Lombard-Frankish, in Muratori, tome 10 of the Writers of Italy, Biturgia is placed beyond the Tiber for Borgo San Sepolcro, perhaps to procure antiquity for this city: for besides that other geographical maps constantly have Borgo San Sepolcro, not Biturgia, the anonymous Milanese himself, author of the chronographical Dissertation for the use of the cited map, writes the following at column CCVI: Biturgia, which, since various men judge variously in Baudrand with no reason adduced, we too with him judge to be Citerna between Arezzo and Borgo San Sepolcro, as in Magini's map 43. But since the Borgo is beyond the Tiber in Umbria, they judge ill who will have with Alberti, page 88, that Biturgia and the Borgo are the same place; for the former, according to Ptolemy, who alone mentions it in book 3, chapter 1, was in Tuscany. See Ferrari's geographical Lexicon. Since therefore Borgo San Sepolcro is neither the old Biturgia, nor rose from the ruins of Pliny's villa, another beginning of it must be tracked down.
[3] but that place, in which And we think that none more certain will be found than what Orlendi at the cited page 1327 narrates after Ughelli from Leo X, by whom the city of the Borgo was first adorned with the seat of a bishopric, in the bull Praeexcellenti issued on this matter in the year 1515, on the tenth day before the Kalends of October. Receive Leo's own words in Ughelli, column 196: Duly considering that the town of Borgo San Sepolcro of the diocese of Città di Castello, of the temporal dominion of the exalted republic of Florence, in whose place before its founding there was a huge wood called Nivea *, from the frequency of the snows, and that when two holy Pilgrims, namely Arcanus and Giles, were making their journey through it, then departing from the holy Sepulchre of the Lord, when they were resting a little at a most limpid spring which was then there, being admonished by a divine vision, as is said, they built a certain chapel there, and from that time some of the faithful of Christ began to build some houses beside that chapel and to make a borough of houses, and at length, the houses being multiplied and walls erected, the town called of the Holy Sepulchre is reported to be, among the other towns of that dominion, exceedingly celebrated and ancient, and filled, the Lord blessing it, with a great nobility of notable and lettered persons and inhabitants, and in it one notable and distinguished monastery of the Camaldolese order, dedicated under the invocation of St. John the Evangelist, in which the spring and the chapel built by the said holy Pilgrims still stand, and at whose spring those in fever, drawing waters for washing, are freed, the divine clemency working, by the intercession of those Saints &c. Whoever desires more about this city, let him consult Ughelli and Orlendi, page 1328.
[4] Ferrari in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, page 563, from the manuscript Annals of the Borgo, describes in a compendium the pilgrimage of our Saints, our Saints their coming into Italy, and the origin of the Borgo, in this manner: Arcanus from Arcadia, and Giles a Spaniard, in the year of salvation MCDXXX, John XI being Supreme Pontiff and Otto I emperor, having set out for Jerusalem for the sake of a vow, come thence to Rome to the thresholds of the Apostles: which being visited, laden with sacred relics, while they are going to Venice, it befell them to turn aside into a wooded place, in which now is the city of Borgo San Sepolcro. But there is an error or fault in the time: for, to say nothing of the Pontiff and the emperor, from the year 1327 Guido or Vido Tarlati of Pietramala had died, who had girt the city with fortifications. See Ughelli here and among the bishops of Arezzo, tome 1, column 424. More rightly says Jacobilli in the Italian Life, tome 1 on the Saints of Umbria, page 722: In the time of the emperor Otto I and of the supreme Pontiff John XI, in the year of the Lord CMXXXVI. Ferrari goes on: There, while they are refreshed for a while at the spring, Arcanus, being seized with sleep, seemed to hear a voice saying to him: This place is holy, here stay thy step, and raise an altar. Which heavenly admonition a prodigy follows: for the wallet, in which the relics were, being tied to a tree, loosed of itself and flying on high, did not come down until the vow had been made that they would build a church there. Whether that prodigious flight of the wallet containing the relics, which Jacobilli narrates in a still more wonderful manner, is to be held by a learned and prudent reader worthy of historical credit, we greatly doubt: for Leo X in the bull mentioned above keeps deep silence about it, nay, he does not even speak assertively of a divine vision or voice. But of what and how great authority the Annals of the Borgo and the ancient Codex cited by Ferrari and Jacobilli may be, we are thus far ignorant; nor could we find them either in Muratori or in the Thesaurus of the antiquities and histories of Italy: perhaps because they are not yet printed.
[5] A chapel therefore being built in that place, (Jacobilli adds, built a chapel. in honor of St. Leonard the confessor. See the sixth of November) the fame of their sanctity spreading abroad, so great a concourse to them began to be from the neighboring towns and villages that in a short time a new city was built around the church (which it pleased them to call Borgo San Sepolcro); over which B. Arcanus set some men to administer it. And these administrators Jacobilli on page 723 makes Camaldolese: Desiring, he says, St. Arcanus, that this borough should be ruled in spiritual things by a person full of zeal, called Father Dom Isaiah, an observant monk of the Camaldolese Order, and granted that church and dwelling to him and to his monks, who as parish priests and rectors governed the inhabitants of the Borgo with much charity and vigilance. But whom he here calls Camaldolese we do not sufficiently understand, unless he has confounded the times: for that Order was first instituted in the year 1012 by St. Romuald, according to Hippolyte Helyot in the History of the monastic Orders, tome 5, pages 245 and 246; but St. Arcanus, as Jacobilli himself testifies, died about the year of the Lord CMLX. He cites indeed the Camaldolese History, but in Augustine of Florence, book 1 of the Camaldolese Histories, chapter 68, page 140, we read only: The veneration and repute of the sacred hermitage increasing more day by day, the townsmen of Borgo San Sepolcro bestowed on the hermits a most ancient basilica dedicated to St. John the Evangelist: no mention being made of St. Arcanus, none of Father Dom Isaiah. Certainly the Saint was not then living, since he calls the church built by him and by St. Giles most ancient. Nay, on page 724 Jacobilli himself says: Not much time flowed by after the death of St. Arcanus, when the church of Borgo San Sepolcro was rebuilt by the Camaldolese monks and made a most celebrated abbey and dedicated to St. John the Evangelist; and the Borgo was increased in the number of its inhabitants, and the dwellers subjected themselves in spiritual and temporal government to the sacred Camaldolese hermitage and to the abbot of the said monastery of St. John the Evangelist: Pope Eugene III in the year MCXLVI confirmed this donation and subjection.
Annotata* Baudrand calls it Nisa
* perhaps id
§ II. The Saints' native place, their pilgrimage, the time of their death, their cult; Giles distinguished from those of the same name.
[ ] St. Arcanus sprung from Arcadia, but St. Giles was a Spaniard: That the fatherland of St. Arcanus was Arcadia, Ferrari and Jacobilli hand down. Further, we find several places called by the name of Arcadia: for there is Arcadia, a region of the Peloponnese (today commonly la Morea), the inland part of the Greek peninsula, nowhere touching the sea, most sung by the poets: There the asbestos stone is produced, which is kindled by water and extinguished by earth, says Ferrari in his geographical Lexicon. Then Arcadia, a city of the Peloponnese in the province of Messenia, and on its Western shore, between Haliartus and Methone. Arcadia likewise is a city of the island of Crete or Candia, episcopal on the Western shore toward Cisamus. Thus Baudrand. A fourth Orlendi assigns, part 1, page 120, in these words: The last province of the diocese of Egypt is Arcadia; not that inmost region of the Peloponnese … but another situated in Egypt, which was so called from the emperor Arcadius. Which of these four was ennobled by the birth of St. Arcanus, we prefer to confess that we do not know, rather than rashly to conjecture. That this Saint was noble, Jacobilli writes: Arcanus from Arcadia, a noble man; of his nobility Ferrari is silent. As to what concerns St. Giles, with each agreeing, Giles was a Spaniard: although some in Jacobilli, page 724, will have him a fellow-countryman of St. Arcanus: He (St. Giles) wished to depart thence and return into Spain his fatherland, and according to others into Arcadia, where they say that he too was born; but this is not verisimilar because of what follows: and, being clothed as a monk of the Order of St. Benedict, he lived there with much integrity and observance, and, being made abbot, died there holily. For we find no monastery of the Order of St. Benedict in Arcadia.
[7] they piously visit various sacred places. Of the Saints' pilgrimage we said something at number 4 from Ferrari; now let us hear Jacobilli, who narrates the same a little more fully: Two holy Pilgrims, named Arcanus from Arcadia, a noble man, and Giles a Spaniard, departed from their fatherland and for the sake of a vow went to visit the holy Sepulchre of our Lord, the city of Jerusalem, and the other sacred places of the Holy Land; and these being piously visited, they obtained some sacred relics from the holy Sepulchre of our Lord and from the sacred city of Jerusalem, and religiously carried them with them; and setting out with them to visit the churches of Rome, they directed their journey toward Ancona and Venice, to see the other sacred places of Italy. When they had come to a certain place of Umbria near the river Tiber and at the foot of the Apennine mountain not far from the plain where formerly was Biturgia (see numbers 1 and 2), a most ancient city and a colony of the Tuscans, there the holy Pilgrims found a spring near a wood; and, feeling themselves weary and thirsty, they halted there and refreshed themselves with that water. Arcanus, being seized with sleep, fell asleep and heard a voice saying to him: This place is holy, and here take thy stand and leave the sacred relics which thou hast brought from the holy Sepulchre and from the sacred places of Jerusalem, and build a dwelling for thyself and thy companion: because in this place there shall be built a borough, which afterwards, being increased, shall be a celebrated city. See number 3. And the cities of Italy mentioned above, Ancon or Ancona in Picenum on the shore of the Adriatic sea, and Venice, are better known than that anything should be noted of them.
[8] The Borgo being founded, which, because of the relics laid up there
from the sacred Sepulchre of our Lord, Where and when they died, was surnamed of the Holy Sepulchre, as Jacobilli testifies; when he (St. Arcanus) had for some years led a solitary life in fastings, vigils, prayers, and other pious exercises, being about to depart from life, when he had exhorted the citizens to the observance of the divine commandments and had foretold them some things, he fell asleep in the Lord on the Kalends of September; and was honorably buried in that church which he had built with Giles. But Giles, bereft of the companion whom he held in a father's place, returned into his fatherland (Spain): and, leading a monastic life and being made abbot, he too rested with a holy end. Thus Ferrari: almost the same, but somewhat more wordily, Jacobilli has, marking the death of St. Arcanus about the year of the Lord CMLX. But Castellan sets the Saint's death in the seventh century: but this cannot cohere with the chronological notes handed down at the beginning of the life by Ferrari and Jacobilli, namely John XI being Supreme Pontiff and Otto I emperor; which we have indeed not brought forward as certain, yet think preferable until something more certain be proved. Greater is the difficulty about St. Giles: him Jacobilli said at number 6 to have been a monk and then abbot of the Order of St. Benedict; but Mabillon and Wion nowhere made mention of this St. Giles. That he led a monastic life, was made abbot, and rested with a holy end, Ferrari asserts; but he does not express the Order, the monastery, and the time of his death: all which things accordingly are very obscure. We think that St. Giles verisimilarly died in the tenth century. Verisimilarly, I say, namely if the chronological notes stand.
[9] Further, that their cult is ancient and celebrated, their cult ancient; whence the Life was taken. we learn from each Catalogue of Ferrari: in the former indeed, after the Life, he notes the following: The men of the Borgo celebrate their feast-day on this day, ceasing from work, as of the founders * of their city and of their patrons. But in the general Catalogue he thus has it: At Borgo San Sepolcro in Umbria, of the Blessed Giles and Arcanus, hermits, noting on page 347: From the manuscript monuments and Chronicle of the city of the Borgo, from which, when we were passing that way, we excerpted the life: the men of the Borgo venerate these as patrons and as the authors of their city. Castellan announces St. Arcanus in the seventh century: At Borgo San Sepolcro in Italy, St. Arcanus, hermit: but he makes no mention of his companion Giles, perhaps because he thought him the same as Giles of Athens, who flourished toward the end of that same seventh century. Both Leo X in the Bull issued in the year 1515, of which above at number 3, calls Saints: two holy Pilgrims, namely Arcanus and Giles. And below: In which there still stand the spring and the chapel built by the said holy Pilgrims &c. Nay, he hints not obscurely that they were illustrious also for the glory of miracles in driving away fevers: At whose spring those in fever, drawing waters for washing, are freed, the divine clemency working, by the intercession of those Saints. From these things we judge that the immemorial cult of these Saints is sufficiently established, although other Martyrologies do not announce them. As to what concerns the Life, we have given it here and there from Ferrari, with some things intermingled from the Italian Life of Jacobilli. But would that it had been permitted to see the very sources, the Annals of the Borgo, I mean, and the proper Office, or other authentic monuments, if they have any.
[10] St. Giles is not to be confounded with those of the same name. Tamayo in tome 5 of the Spanish Martyrology, page 24, announces these Saints on the second of September, on what authority we do not know: for in his Notes at letter [D] he cites only Ferrari in the General Catalogue of the Saints on the first of September. And although St. Giles according to Ferrari and Jacobilli was a monk and abbot, yet let no one judge that he is the same as B. Giles, monk and abbot of San Martín de Castañeda in the diocese of Astorga, of whom there will be treatment below on this day. Since indeed that Blessed one died about the year 1203, having embraced the monastic life in his very youth: but Giles, who is venerated with Arcanus, is recorded to have become a monk only after the latter's death, when he was already a man of adult age. Moreover that Blessed one is not read to have made a pilgrimage, but to have lived in the desert with a companion whose name has perished: on the mountains next to the monastery, says Bucelin in the Benedictine Menology, page 610, he established a solitary life. Add the annotation of the cited Tamayo, page 36: Until now Spain has been ignorant of the name of this holy abbot (Giles), because in its histories and chronicles no memory of him is found. Page 37: But of St. Giles nothing among our writers. If Spain was ignorant of his name, if Tamayo found nothing of him among the Spaniards; therefore he must be different from Giles, monk and abbot of San Martín de Castañeda, of whom certainly Yepes, Henriquez, and Manrique, all Spaniards, made mention, and whom Tamayo could have seen, since they wrote before him. Or if Giles was one and the same, how did the aforesaid authors, as also the cited Bucelin and Chalemot, narrating the withdrawal into solitude of B. Giles of San Martín, hand down to memory nothing of his pilgrimage into the Holy Land, nothing of the building of Borgo San Sepolcro, nothing of St. Arcanus his companion? How in the Cistercian Annals at the year 1203, chapter 8, number 7, did Manrique write that the name of his companion had perished, which in Ferrari's twofold Catalogue stood forth as celebrated as that of Giles himself? These things duly weighed show clearly enough, unless I am mistaken, that those two Gileses can neither be confounded into one, nor the one be drawn apart into two. And the distinction of each of these Gileses from the other, of whom above from page 284, needs no proof.
Annotata* read fundatorum