ON BL. BENINCASA RAPACCIOLI, MARTYR OF THE ORDER OF THE SERVANTS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY,
IN ASIA
In the year 1415.
SYLLOGE.
Benincasa Rappacioli, martyr of the Order of the Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in Asia. (Bl.)
BY J. V.
§ I. The Blessed one's birthplace, his Life twice written, his family, his religious profession.
[ ] For a fatherland there fell to this blessed Martyr Collis Scipionis in Umbria, a province of Italy, Notices concerning the Blessed one's fatherland; commonly called Colle Scipoli or Coldiscepoli. That town or castle is situated in the diocese of Narni, and is distant from Narni five miles; from Terni indeed two, as both the manuscript Lives have it. Concerning it Leander Alberti's Description of the whole of Italy, published in Latin at Cologne in the year 1566, hands down this, on page 152: To one going along the … Flaminian Way as far as the place where on the left hand the waters of the lake Velinus, hurled down from a height, glide into the Nera, on this side of Terni (Interamna), when the bridge has been crossed which joins the banks of the Nera, a town is seen on a hillock, commonly called by the lettered Collis Scipionis, populous and abounding in wealth; which some think Scipio founded. And on page 156: First, therefore, to one advancing from the fall of the waters out of the lake Velinus into the Nera, through those places which they now call the Sabina, there is presented Collis Scipionis, of which we made mention above. That its founder was Scipio Africanus an ancient tradition will have, say the manuscript Lives, and Ludovicus Jacobilli altogether asserts it in the Life of the Blessed published in volume 1 of On the Saints of Umbria, page 725; but too liberally: for in Livy and Plutarch, whom he cites, I have found no mention at all of Collis Scipionis. I would not for that reason, however, deny that it was founded by one of the Scipios.
[2] The manuscript Lives already mentioned are composed in the Italian idiom, The Life written in Italian, the greater part of which and have for their author Father master Hyacinth Selimbeni, or Salimbeni, as it is written in the second, of Collescipoli, of the third Order of St. Francis. The first, composed in the year 1652, Father Matthew Gherardelli of our Society sent hither from Rome two years afterwards; the other, a little fuller, on the fourteenth of April, 1657, and he added: The Life of Bl. Benincasa Rapaccioli described by the most eminent man of this surname, namely Francis Angelus Rapacciolus, cardinal priest of the holy Roman Church, a kinsman of the Blessed one on the brother's side in the eighth degree according to Selimbeni. Of him Alphonsus Ciaconius may be seen in the Lives of the Pontiffs, volume 4, column 628. This second Life is nothing else than a copy of the first, nor does it contain more about the deeds of the Blessed one; but it explains his genealogy and family somewhat more fully. This, however, I wonder at, that it is nowhere expressed who the Blessed one's grandfather was. The greater part of the Life is taken up by the genealogy, before which Selimbeni sets the praises of his own fatherland, commending Collis Scipionis for its greatness, pleasantness, antiquity, and fidelity, which it always kept unimpaired toward the Apostolic See amid the rebellions of the neighboring peoples: and for that cause Gregory XI adorned the men of Collescipoli with various privileges, confirmed afterwards by new bulls from Martin V, Paul III, and other Pontiffs. Those privileges, weakened by Julius III, who had created Michael Angelus Spada of Terni vicar of the place, Pius IV restored and enlarged, granting to the university and people of Collis Scipionis the whole jurisdiction: so that even today, says Selimbeni, the city is governed as it were after the manner of a republic by magistrates elected by the people.
[3] is taken up by the genealogy Hence the praised author passes to the Blessed one's family, which he says was of old conspicuous in that place, and was called first Rapizzoni and afterwards Rapaccioli, which change of ending was made four hundred years ago and more, after the example of divers families of Umbria. He adds that it is found in the archives that two Rapizzonii successively made notable donations to the abbey of Farfa out of the goods which belonged to them at Collis Scipionis; and that from thence it appears that the Rapizzonii were lords of that region five hundred, nay six hundred, years ago. In the second Life, or the other copy, the head of the family is assigned, namely count Rapizzonus, born of Atto, son of Raynerius: which Raynerius is said to have flourished as count of various places about the year 900. That succession various writings still existing today teach, says Selimbeni; according to which the same Rapizzonius was prefect of Terni and of the whole province of Narni. Then his three sons are recounted, Dodo or Dodonus, Juvenalis, and Tebaldus, known from the donations described in the archive of the abbey of Farfa. The first was bishop of Narni, and that in the year 1028 according to Ughelli, in volume 1 of Italia Sacra*. Juvenalis begot Falco, Rapizzo, and Crescentius, of whom each had two sons: Falco, Lepo and Berardus; Rapizzo, Litaldus and Gualfredus; Crescentius, Guido and Tebaldus. Those six cousins gave in the year 1093
the ancient church of St. Stephen near Collis Scipionis to a certain priest Lupo: as even today may be read on the front of that same church, where the aforesaid donation stands engraved in Gothic letters on marble, on Selimbeni's testimony again.
[4] The family being divided into three branches, the first two, descending from Falco through Pepo and from Rapizzo through Gualfredus, changed the ancient name Rapizzoni into Rapaccioli; failing in some of them. the third, propagated from Crescentius through Tebaldus, rejected both those appellations: for their sons, because of intestine discords, separated themselves from the Rapaccioli and began to be called de Tebaldis, the family shield being changed along with the name: since indeed for the one or three turnips, which were always the arms of the Rapizzonian family, they substituted a horse cut off in the middle. And the biographer hands down that these things happened about the year 1210. One stock of the Rapaccioli always remained at Collis Scipionis; the other, however, dwelt at the Isle of St. Angelo, a castle of Umbria between Narni and Terni: after the overthrow of which, in the year 1245, it removed with many other families to Terni, and there was enrolled in the company of the most noble citizens. About the year 1340 both families, de Rapacciolis and de Tebaldis, joined themselves by a second bond of affinity, Stefanuccia Rapaccioli being given in marriage to James Tebaldi, who was the aunt of our Blessed one, as will presently be seen. After the preceding matters, which I have reported in a compendium, Selimbeni speaks in general of various illustrious men in both stocks, among whom without doubt were the forebears of our Blessed one; but he omits the names of all of them save his father's, whom he indicates in these words: But it is time to name Andrew, at once subjoining: Of Andrew were born about the year 1350 Anthony, doctor of philosophy and of medicine, and James, afterwards in the Religion of the Servants of the Bl. Mary called Benincasa. The sister of the same Andrew was Stefanuccia, married to James Tebaldi, etc.
[5] Jacobilli in the elogium of Cardinal Rapacciolus in the praised Ciaconius, column 629, has certain things otherwise concerning the sons and grandsons of the first Rapizzonius. The Blessed one born about the middle of the fourteenth century But I do not wish to interpose myself in genealogical questions, being content to have briefly narrated those things which were written at length by Selimbeni about the fatherland and lineage of the blessed Martyr. Now I proceed to his deeds, meaning to gather both from the older Life, which Jacobilli published in volume 1 of On the Saints of Umbria, and from other manuscripts, whatever pertains to the Blessed one. His birthplace and year Jacobilli distinctly expressed on page 726, citing in the margin a public attestation sent him at Siena in the year 1629 by Friar Francis Salvanus, Prior of the convent of the Servants: Bl. Benincasa was born in the said land of Collis Scipionis in the year 1349, in the time of Pope Clement VI. His father was called Andrew Rapaccioli, and he himself in the world was named James: he was brought up by his parents with much care and watchfulness. Presently he subjoins how in his tender age he embraced the religious institute. When Father Friar Bartholomew Luti of Siena, a religious burning with charity and learned, of the Order of the Servants of the glorious Virgin Mary, was preaching through the Lent of the year 1365 at Collis Scipionis, he, moved by his holy exhortations, resolved to forsake the world and to become a Servant of that great Mother of God. For this cause he set out for Siena with the aforesaid Friar Bartholomew, and there in the convent of St. Clement of the brothers Servants received the sacred habit of that Religion on the twenty-second of May, 1365, in the sixteenth year of his age.
[6] Selimbeni in both manuscript Lives brings forward the testimony of the Blessed one's admission from the ancient records of the convent of Siena, He enters the Order of the Servants in the year 1365. conceived in Italian in these words: 1365. At Siena, the Fathers of St. Mary of the Servants being gathered in chapter by the command and commission of the Reverend Father Prior Friar Bartholomew Luti, on the twelfth of May (in the first Life it is written Luci, and the twenty-second of May), it was asked whether they consented to the admission of brother James, son of Andrew Rapaccioli of Collis Scipionis: and the votes being taken, all the votes were favorable, and on the same day he was clothed in the religious garment, upon the excellent report of the father Prior, who had known and approved him while he was preaching at Collis Scipionis, and upon the honorableness of the youth and the devotion shown in the time of his probation. The Fathers present were fifty-four in number, and that James was thenceforth called brother Benincasa. After the year's novitiate the solemn profession followed on the eighth of June, wrongly placed by the biographers one day earlier, as is plain from the praised records: 1366. The Fathers of St. Clement of the Order of St. Mary of the Servants being gathered, brother Benincasa was proposed for profession by the Father Prior Friar Bartholomew Luti, and the votes being taken on that matter, all the votes, fifty-eight in number, were favorable, on the seventh day of June. On the following day he made his profession, and the late Thomas, son of the late Francis , of Siena, was called upon. There was present Master Anthony the physician of Collescipoli, his brother. Friar Francis Salvanus of Siena, procurator of the convent, with his own hand.* Anthony Rapaccioli, who was present at the profession, Jacobilli calls the Blessed one's uncle: but Selimbeni constantly calls him his brother, as the testimony just given has it.
Annotatain Italian castaldo*
in the earlier Life there is added notarii* (of the notary)
§ II. Why he is called "of Siena" by some: he preaches in Bohemia against the Wycliffites or Hussites, is prodigiously freed from prison, passes over into Tartary, and at length is beheaded with his companion: the public cult of the Blessed one.
[ ] Having stayed long at Siena Because of his long stay in the convent of Siena and the religious habit taken up there, the Blessed one was surnamed the Sienese, on Jacobilli's testimony. For the same cause John Peter Crescenzi in book 3 of the Roman Bulwark, published in Italian, page 118, where he recounts the Blessed of the Order of the Servants, wrote thus: Benincasa Rapaccioli of Siena, martyr in Tartary, 1415. Francis Angeloni says on page 274 that he was also called the Sienese, in the Lives of the Saints of Terni, which he published in the language of his country in the year 1646. These three cite as their author Father Friar Gregory Alasia, a Servite, in the Catalogue of the Blessed of his Order, which I have not found in our library. Of the same Selimbeni also makes mention, saying that it was printed at Florence in the year 1622 and that in it it is reported that the Blessed one flourished in the year 1400; whom Alasia calls the Sienese not from his fatherland but from the place where he received the religious habit. This it has seemed good to insert as a caution, lest anyone, clinging to Alasia's words, should think that our Blessed one was born at Siena, or should wrongly pull Benincasa, of Collescipoli by fatherland and of Siena by profession, apart into two men. Now let us come to those things which were done after his profession was made.
[8] Bl. Benincasa, says Selimbeni, made great progress in goodness and learning, whence in his own time he was esteemed a holy and notable master of theology; concerning which mastership he says below that it is clear from many contracts described in the archive of the convent of Siena. [and being trained in virtues and learning is sent with a companion into Bohemia to preach against the Wycliffites] Because of his sanctity and learning he was sent into Bohemia to preach against the heretics of that time, and there was given him as companion Father Peter Malvezzi, whom Jacobilli hands down to have been a noble of Bologna, and after the Angeloni cited honors with the title of blessed; but nowhere have I found any trace of his cult. For the rest, the heretics who at the end of the fourteenth century and most of all in the fifteenth were raging in Bohemia were the Wycliffites or Hussites, offshoots of the Waldenses, so called from a certain John Hus. See Spondanus in the Continuation of Baronius at the year 1393, number 7. The History of the Hussites John Cochlæus pursued in twelve books, from whose first book Odoricus Raynaldus excerpted the following at the year 1408, number 69: It came to pass that after his death (Wycliffe's, met in the year 1384) one of his disciples, by name Peter Payne, an Englishman, fled to Prague with his books, Wenceslaus reigning: moved perhaps by this occasion, that before him a certain Bohemian, noble by birth, of the house which they call Putridus piscis (Rotten Fish), being set at Oxford in the study of letters, brought back with him thence into his fatherland the books of Wycliffe … as a precious treasure; which at Prague by divers transcriptions he communicated to many men, and, according to his own name of Putridus, poured the deadly venom of the heretic into his fellow-citizens, etc.
[9] And he lent the writings which he had brought, says Æneas Sylvius in the Bohemian History, chapter 35, [or Hussites: there, having for some time discharged the apostolic office, he is cast into prison,] chiefly to those who were held by hatred of the Germans: among whom John stood out, born in an obscure place, who borrowed his surname from the village Hus, which signifies a goose. He, being of a most keen wit and eloquent tongue, and delighting much in dialectics and loving foreign opinions, very eagerly seized upon the doctrine of the Wycliffites … There followed John nearly all the clergy who were burdened with debt, notable for crimes and seditions, who thought to escape their penalties by a change of affairs. With these were joined also some famous for learning, who, since they had not been able to obtain dignity in the church, took it ill that benefices of greater revenues should be committed to those who, though they went before in nobility, yet seemed inferior in knowledge … They broke out into blasphemies … and departing from the Catholic Church, embraced the impious sect and madness of the Waldenses. Of the year in which our Blessed one set out into Bohemia and thence into Tartary, and how long a time he spent in those places, I have nothing ascertained from the biographers, who relate these things only in general. Hear Selimbeni: He went thither (into Bohemia) with the utmost delight and with a great eagerness to lose his life for the Catholic faith. There he preached, there he labored for some time with much fruit: until he was cast into prison and appointed to death with his companion, after a thousand insults and reproaches.
[10] But it pleased God to send an angel, who, the prisons being opened and the fetters and chains loosed, [whence, freed by an angel, he goes to the Tartars and instructs them, and at length consummates his martyrdom in the year 1415] commanded him to flee thence and to set out to preach the faith among the Tartars, where in his own time he should, together with his companion, obtain the grace of dying for Christ. That both, freed from prison by an angel, passed over into Asia, and were there killed after a long preaching and after miracles wrought, Angeloni and Jacobilli also write; but they do not record that the Tartar journey was undertaken at the angel's bidding and with a promise of martyrdom. And the promise of martyrdom indeed seems to have been added afterwards: for the manuscript notices concerning the Blessed one sent from Rome to Bolland in the year 1650 omit it, though they express the angel's command. Selimbeni goes on: He betook himself into Tartary, ran through it preaching and working many and great miracles, as letters and authentic records of those times indistinctly testify: and at length in the year 1415, on the fourth day of September, he and his companion, after various dreadful torments, were beheaded by those barbarians in a certain city which, in a letter written at that time in the German idiom by the Provincial of Bohemia, was called Cotumban (the first Life has Cotumbania).
[11] in a certain city not sufficiently known. Below he cites letters sent from Storber to the fathers of Siena in the year 1420, in which Father Gerard Tedesco, called in the first Life provincial of Bohemia, makes mention of the same Blessed one, narrating in a compendium his deliverance from prison by the help of an angel, his flight at God's bidding out of Bohemia into Tartary, and his martyrdom. The autograph of those letters, which I think are the same as the letter mentioned in the preceding number, written in German, he says is preserved in the archive of that convent, and also other authentic writings in which the martyrdom of the Blessed one is treated. I could wish that a copy of these had been sent hither, as also of that Compendium of the Blessed one's life and death which the same Selimbeni asserts that he read in the manuscript Histories of the same convent, composed a hundred years and more ago by Father Friar Lucentius; whence perhaps a little more light would shine for assigning the arena of the martyrdom: for I have not been able to find a place named Cotumban or Cotumbania among the geographers. Cotamba indeed is mentioned by Ptolemy in book 6 of the Geography, chapter 4; but that is a town of Persia, not of Tartary. Angeloni and Jacobilli bring forward from an ancient Legendary of the same convent the following: Blessed Benincasa Rapacciolus, martyr in Asia, without the name of the town added. The manuscript notices, of which in the preceding number, also cite ancient books of the convent of Siena, which likewise, keeping silence about the name of the city, place the martyrdom in Asia. These I have followed in prefixing the title, since it was not established for me in what city the Blessed one suffered.
[12] He enjoys the title of Blessed As for his public cult, Bl. Benincasa is indeed read as inscribed in no Martyrologies; nevertheless from time immemorial before the decrees of Urban VIII he was distinguished with the title of blessed, as will presently be plain. Bolland, being asked in the name of the praised Cardinal Rapacciolus that he would make mention of this blessed Martyr, had written back on the sixth of August, 1650, in this manner: What I was going to do of my own accord, namely to recount Bl. Benincasa Rapacciolus in my work on the Saints, I shall do the more diligently at the exhortation of the most eminent Cardinal. And indeed his authority has freed me from a great anxiety. For when before I read the books of the lord Ludovicus Jacobilli on the Saints of Foligno and others, published a little after the bull had been issued by Urban VIII about not calling absolutely Saints or Blessed those who were not such or were not publicly held so for a hundred years or declared such by the Church; I feared lest I should anywhere strike upon that bull, and I proceeded somewhat timidly. But when the same lord Jacobilli published his volume on the Saints of Umbria, after that same bull had been repeated and explained several times, and dedicated it to his Eminence; I do not see what more I ought to fear … But why in that account (transcribed from Jacobilli) has that been omitted which the same Jacobilli hands down about the chapel which his Eminence is building of marble to this Blessed kinsman of his?
[13] In letters given at Rome on the seventeenth of September of the same year there were enclosed, in the name of the aforesaid Cardinal, manuscript notices in Italian, and public cult, especially at Siena. whose beginning is this: It is not to be feared that one may strike upon the bull of Urban; because it is more than two hundred years since Bl. Benincasa was called, named, and publicly honored as blessed and as a martyr, and, besides other places, at Siena in the church of the Servants in the chapel of Our Lady of the Fire; beneath whose image are four Blessed, and among the others this one, with the inscription: Blessed Benincasa, martyr in Asia. The painting was there two hundred years ago, as it now stands. Of the same image and inscription Angeloni, cited at number 7, makes mention. The same token of cult Jacobilli also brings forward, adding the following: In the chapel of the Piccolomini in the said church of St. Clement at Siena there is seen, exposed to public veneration, an ancient image of this Blessed one with a martyr's palm in his hand, rays of splendor about his head, and the habit of a Servite friar: at his feet is read the epigraph already mentioned. There is also seen in the same church, for public devotion, another larger panel, but painted with a more recent brush, bearing his image, beneath which is had: Bl. Benincasa, martyr … In an ancient book (which Selimbeni also mentions) covered with boards, containing the Rule of the Servites and a note of many Blessed of this religion, which is preserved in the archive of the said convent of Siena, there is read at folio 20 or 21: Bl. Benincasa, [son] of Andrew Rapaccioli of Collis Scipionis, martyr in Tartary. The Legendary mentioned at number 11 has in Asia. Jacobilli subjoins: In the Tree, or Ship, of the Order of the Servants, published in the year 1600 by Father Friar Gregory Alasia of Sommariva, there is seen among the other Blessed his image with the title Bl. Benincasa.
§ III. Other tokens are brought forward of a veneration continued both publicly and privately, to which the silence of certain writers is no obstacle.
[ ] The veneration continued Another argument of a public veneration continued down to his own times Selimbeni adds, writing thus: The image of this Blessed one is seen even today, painted with a diadem on his head and a palm in his hand, on the altar of Bl. Francis Patrizzi in the church of the Servants at Siena, and below are read these words: Blessed Benincasa, martyr in Asia. The noble Sienese family of the Castorii, today extinct, took care to have it painted there two hundred years ago and more … In the process instituted at Siena for the canonization of Bl. Francis Patrizzi, mention is made of Bl. Benincasa on occasion of the visitation of the aforesaid altar, on which for more than two hundred years past his image has been honored with the effigy of Bl. Francis and of the Blessed Philip and Joachim, of whom the Order of the Servants celebrates an Office. The deeds of these three have already been illustrated in our Work: of Bl. Francis Patrizzi or of Siena in volume III of May, page 655, and volume VII, page 790; of St. Philip Benitius in volume IV of August, page 655; of Bl. Joachim in volume 2 of April, page 454. Selimbeni asserts moreover that an image representing his martyrdom is seen on the right side of the chapel in the church of the Virgin Mother of God called de colle, not far from Collis Scipionis: of which church, raised from its foundations and endowed by Peter Rapaccioli, the patron today, he says, is the aforesaid Cardinal Francis Angelus Rapacciolus, raised to the sacred purple by Urban VIII on the thirteenth of July, 1643, and three years afterwards consecrated bishop of the city of Terni under Innocent X.
[15] after the decree of Urban VIII. Further, that this image was ordered to be made by the praised most eminent Cardinal, and consequently after the decrees of Urban VIII, the manuscript notices cited attest, in which to Bolland's questions at number 12 it is thus answered: As for the chapel which Jacobilli asserts is being built for the Blessed one at Collis Scipionis by his Eminence, this was omitted in the copy sent; since about that matter nothing else is true save that the Cardinal, with one of his brothers, in the greater chapel of the church which their father had built outside the town of Collescipoli to the wonder-working image called Our Lady of the Hill, took care to have an altar erected with columns and a frontispiece of variegated marble, beneath which he laid the body of St. Guerrinus the martyr, drawn out of the sacred cemeteries of Rome and placed there on the eighth day of the Nativity of the Bl. Virgin Mary, which is the principal feast of that church. Afterwards, on the side walls of the said chapel, on the right hand he set, within a border of marble work, a panel of the beheading of Bl. Benincasa, and on the left another like it of Bl. Columba called of Rieti, but sprung from Collis Scipionis of the family of the Guadagnoli. It is added that these two Blessed alone are held as natives at Collis Scipionis. The Life of Bl. Columba of Rieti Papebroch published at the twentieth of May: and the Translation of St. Guerrinus M. is celebrated on the fifteenth of September.
[16] The men of Terni also number him among their Blessed: Angeloni on page 275 reckons our Martyr among the Blessed of Terni because of his forebears, endowed there with the right of citizenship. Hear Selimbeni: This city numbers among its other Saints Bl. Benincasa, because he sprang from a family which from the year 1245 (as we saw above) obtained by the work of the Apostolic legate the right of citizenship among the nobles of Terni: and in our own time there exists in the cathedral church, on a great panel, a public catalogue exhibiting all the Saints and Blessed who were bishops, or citizens … or well deserving of Terni. There is seen and read among the others blessed Benincasa; concerning whom nothing else will now be said, other more recent and ancient memorials of him being omitted. Let all these things be said with a profession of adhering to and standing by, with due observance and reverence, the decree of Urban VIII of glorious memory issued on the thirteenth of March, 1625, etc. In naming the aforesaid Father Benincasa blessed, as all the others named above have done, I mean to rely upon the recognitions and approvals of the Ordinaries … and upon everything on account of which it was lawful for others and for myself so to do; not intending to violate any decree, but to subject all things to the censure of the holy See, of which I live a son and a most obedient subject. Thus he.
[17] nor does the legitimacy of the cult seem to be doubted. But who would believe that the most eminent Rapacciolus, a prelate learned and famous for prudence, on Ciaconius's testimony, would have done the aforesaid things, or even permitted that at Terni in his own cathedral Benincasa should be publicly held as blessed, unless it had been established that there was a lawful possession of cult through the case excepted from Urban's decrees. See above, number 13. And so, because of the tokens of public veneration thus far reported, I could not doubt that a place was owed to this blessed Martyr in our Work among today's Heavenly Ones; especially since the most eminent Prosper de Lambertinis, now supreme Pontiff Benedict XIV, in the Index of things and words of his learned Work On the beatification of the Servants of God and the canonization of the Blessed, page XXIV, says: The denomination of Saint or Blessed cannot be taken away from those who from time immemorial have been so called; and on page XIX in the same place: Public cult is inferred from the retaining of images of the Servants of God in churches, even if they are painted without diadem and rays, and even if they are placed away from the altar and apart from the images of the Blessed or the Saints; both of which he proves by various examples in book 2, chapter 14, number 5, and chapter 24, number III.
[18] Very devoutly, as the aforementioned Selimbeni subjoins to the words given at number 10, [Those devoutly affected toward the Blessed one, among whom Cardinal Rapacciolus, who many times experienced his help.] was Cardinal James Tebaldus affected toward this Martyr, promoted to the sacred purple by Calixtus III in the forty-first year after the Blessed one's death, that is, in 1456: and he counted it his glory to number him among his kinsfolk, acknowledging that his family was derived from the Rapaccioli, as above, and because of his grandmother Stefanuccia, the Blessed one's aunt. This Cardinal's epitaph I do not transcribe from Selimbeni: it may be read in volume 2 of Ciaconius, column 995, or in volume 2 of Ughelli's Italia Sacra among the Bishops of Montefeltro,
in whom the year of his death, 1466, is rightly expressed. With singular piety Peter Rapaccioli followed the same Bl. Benincasa, to whom it was granted by God that he could raise up his family, which for some time had lain in poverty, by honorable trading. He was, according to Selimbeni, a kinsman of the Blessed one on the brother's side in the seventh degree. The Cardinal Francis Angelus Rapacciolus praised above, his son, professed, on the testimony of the same Selimbeni, that he was drawn with an altogether special devotion toward the aforesaid Blessed one, and had many times most evidently experienced his heavenly help and protection.
[19] Jacobilli on page 727 wrongly cites for our Blessed one Archangelus Gianius in the Annals of the Servants; [The silence of Gianius and of others is no obstacle: on this occasion there is subjoined] for he treats there of another Benincasa, not a martyr, whom Papebroch gave in volume VII of May, page 662. But why Bl. Benincasa M. was passed over by Gianius is not known, say the manuscript notices cited: doubtless because he had no records of him. To Gianius's silence Selimbeni answers that he omitted several Blessed in his Annals, and among others Bl. Paul Spanocchi himself, although his martyrdom is narrated by Pius II in his Orations and Commentaries. A like answer can be given if anyone objects that the memory of our Blessed one does not exist in Michael of Florence in the Chronicle of the Servants, and in Philip Ferrarius in both his Catalogues of Saints: add that an argument drawn from their silence and that of others cannot overturn the testimonies exhibited above concerning the public cult. As for Paul Spanocchi, I have searched through as many orations and Commentaries and other writings of Æneas Sylvius or Pius II as I found in our library, and have also consulted various martyrologists and historians; but nowhere has the name of Spanocchi met me. At last in the Sienese Annals, reprinted in the year 1669, I found on page 529 a fairly lengthy elogium of a certain Paul, of the Order of the Servants of the Bl. Virgin, who, a man of most approved integrity, was living in the year 1462 in a convent of his Order near the field of Penna, called from St. Marino, and died in the month of October; whether of that same year, and on what day, is hidden from me.
[20] the elogium of another, whom we shall also give, if his cult be proved, That elogium is noted as taken from book 5 of the Commentaries of Pius II. I subjoin the words from the Frankfurt edition of the year 1614, page 124: It was noised abroad about the same time that a certain venerable monk, a Sienese by nation, in the field of Penna of St. Marino had set up in his own chapel an image of the Bl. Virgin Mary, to which, as working miracles, the dwellers of the region ran in crowds: that Sigismund (Malatesta, lord of Rimini) took this ill and ordered the monk to remove the image; and when he did not obey, sent men to seize him by night and bring him to himself to pay the penalty. That they, having intercepted him and stopped his mouth, led him away, and when they had walked all night and thought that they had already reached Rimini, at the first dawn found themselves at the chapel in which the image was; and, roused with anger, hanged the captive on the high cross which had a little before been erected by him in the crossroads as a mark of the place: but that presently, when the assassins had gone away, the noose being broken, the monk fell, and being found by countrymen and warmed back to life, revived: which report the known cruelty and impiety of Sigismund rendered credible. Since Pius II sufficiently hints that his narration was drawn from rumor or popular report, we desire to be taught the truth of the fact from elsewhere; likewise in what year and on what day of October that venerable monk died, whether he is honored anywhere, and whether he was a Servite, such as the Sienese Annals make him: for the convent of San Marino in which he is said to have lived I do not find in Gianius, who enumerates 137 convents of his Order. If suitable documents concerning the public cult of that Paul be sent, his own place will be given him in our Work.