John of Lodi

ON ST. JOHN OF LODI, FROM PRIOR OF FONTE AVELLANA BISHOP OF GUBBIO,

IN UMBRIA

In the year MCVI.

PREVIOUS COMMENTARY.

John of Lodi, from Prior of Fonte Avellana bishop of Gubbio in Umbria (S.)

BY C. S.

§ I. The place of his bishopric and his cult: the manuscript Lives to be published: modern writers of the Life and Translation.

[ ] Gubbio (in the inhabitants' speech Gubbio), a city of Umbria at the foot of the Apennine hill, An account of Gubbio, where the Saint was bishop. or of another sprung from it, was founded not far from the ruins of ancient Inguvium or Ingenium, out of which, according to the more common opinion, it grew into a city splendid enough. After various vicissitudes of fortune it was added to the duchy of Urbino, and with it at last came to the Ecclesiastical dominion. Its episcopal see, whose beginnings they refer to the times of Constantine the Great, was for many centuries subject to the supreme Pontiff alone; until Pope Pius IV in the year 1563 subjected it to the archbishopric of Urbino, on the testimony of Ughelli, tome 1 of Italia sacra, col. 633 of the latest edition: and hence, he says, it came about that in his time it was reckoned by some a suffragan of the metropolis of Urbino. But that Bull of Pius IV, which the Pontiff himself had somewhat suspended, did not hinder the bishops of Gubbio from acknowledging and venerating in appeals and in all other matters the Roman Pontiff alone, so as to protect that ancient right of theirs, as may be seen in the praised Ughelli, who also reckons that bishopric among the churches immediately subject to the holy Roman See. This controversy at length Pope Benedict XIII settled by a Constitution given on the X Kalends of June of the year 1725, by which he defined that the church of Gubbio was subject and suffragan to the metropolis of Urbino; as Francis Orlendi shows in the Orbis sacer et profanus, part 2, book 3, chapter XI, where he recites the said Constitution. Now among the bishops who held the see of Gubbio before the aforesaid subjection, there comes today to be recorded St. John, of Lodi by country, by profession a hermit in the monastery of the Holy Cross of Fonte Avellana, from which he was raised to the bishopric.

[2] Ughelli in tome 1 of Italia sacra, col. 636, writes that the Life of this holy Prelate was written by John the Cardinal. And he means John the Cardinal priest of St. Anastasia, who, as we have from the contemporary anonymous biographer of the Saint, We do not have the Life written by John the Cardinal, as papal legate in Umbria presided over the clergy of Gubbio when our John was elected bishop. Ludovico Jacobilli in the Library of Umbria asserts that not only a Life but also a Process on his miracles was made by him. John of Gubbio, he says, was in the year MXCVI enrolled by Pope Urban II among the purpled Fathers of the Holy Roman Church with the title of St. Anastasia, and in the year MCV, being legate of Perugia and Umbria under Pope Paschal II, consecrated St. John of Lodi bishop of Gubbio, and after his death in the year MCIX he published a Process upon the life and miracles of the said St. John, and wrote a summary of the Life of that same holy Bishop. He adds that he drew these things from an ancient manuscript Lectionary in the convent of St. Francis of Gualdo, in the Life of the said St. John of Lodi, and from Defendente of Lodi, in the Life of the said Saint John. The same Jacobilli in the Lives of the Saints of Umbria, tome 2, at the VII day of September, writing the Saint's deeds, says thus in Italian: The said John the Cardinal legate, by the command of the same Pontiff Paschal, made a Process and wrote the Life of him. Similar things are read in Philip Ferrarius in both Catalogues, and in others, whom it would be superfluous to enumerate.

[3] Our Papebroch in tome 3 of May, in the Acts of St. Ubald, bishop of the same see, page 630, but two others: one composed by a fellow-monk of the Saint, speaks thus of that Life: But the Life composed by John the Cardinal, namely the same who took care that he should be made bishop, praised by Ughelli, seen by us in Jacobilli, we desire to obtain; although we have some summary of it, written by an anonymous monk of the Holy Cross of Fonte Avellana. This desire of Papebroch has not yet been satisfied, if indeed it could be satisfied. For no Life under that name exists in our Museum: but we have two others, and the one indeed a certain summary of the other, of which nevertheless we can ascribe neither to John the Cardinal. That of these which is the more lengthy and the more ancient, Father Ignatius Pini of our Society transmitted to us from Rome, having received it from the Rev. Father Dom Mauro Sarti. At the end of this copy the following notice is added: Here ends the fragment of a parchment codex of the best quality, which is the remainder of a most ancient Passionary, as they then called it, once of great bulk, which is thought to have been for the use of some church, and perhaps of the cathedral of Gubbio. There are in this fragment, which consists of a single quaternion, namely eight larger leaves, a great part of the Life or Passion of St. Clement the Pope, the Passion of St. Saturninus, the Passion of SS. Marianus and James, to which succeeds the above Life of St. John of Lodi. The leaves of that book down to that place had been numbered CCXCII, as is understood from the numbers added to each leaf: which addition of numbers indeed was made by a more recent hand and with more vivid ink, and indeed in Arabic figures, such as they were when

they first began to be used in Europe, quite shapeless and rude. Yet the writing of the codex is much more ancient, and seems to approach the very age of St. John of Lodi. This fragment is preserved in the archive of Armanni, which was brought into the public library of Gubbio not many years ago; and the opportunity of inspecting and copying it was given me by the most courteous man Guido Ubaldo Angelini, keeper of that library. Thus far the writer of our copy, about which a few things must be noted.

[4] Jacobilli in the Library of Umbria, after a signal elogium of Vincenzo Armanni, whom he calls a restorer of antiquity, whose antiquity and credit and after enumerating his works both published and unpublished, writes thus about the archive of Armanni: For the keeping of which (works) there is now being built (Armanni still living) an archive in the palace of the Commune of Gubbio under the name of the Archive of Armanni. From this archive therefore our copy was drawn. Of the antiquity of the codex, which I have not seen, I cannot judge; but the Arabic figures which are said to be written on the several leaves of the codex cannot damage its antiquity; for although their use was first brought into Europe about the middle of the thirteenth century, as our Papebroch shows in the Preliminary Treatise of tome III of May, page LV and following — although, I say, their use was then first brought in, yet if they approach that time by their rude shape, and nevertheless were added by a more recent hand and with more vivid ink, it is plain that they make rather for confirming than for weakening the age of the aforesaid mutilated codex.

[5] is shown Much less do the aforesaid things stand in the way of the author of the Life: for although he is anonymous, yet he makes manifest that he was contemporary with the Saint, nay that he dwelt together with him in the same monastery. Hear him in the Life to be published, at number 13, speaking of the Saint's rigid abstinence from foods: Since, he says, the custom here (in the monastery of the Holy Cross of Fonte Avellana) is for the Brethren at the beginning of each Lent to continue three days on bread and water only, he was accustomed to touch no human food except on the last day of the three. Which I learned, not from another telling me, but I myself detected it, being separated by a small interval in one cell with him: but since he wished to hide this too, as he was wont many of his virtues, he could not conceal it from me when I explored it. Again at number 14: I remember, he says, that he shut himself up in the heat almost in the Dog-days themselves. And at number 27 he openly indicates that he lived under the discipline of that same Saint in the aforesaid monastery; for, treating of his constancy in maintaining the rigor of the institute, he writes thus: For when on a certain day we were discoursing about the austerity of the eremitical rule, and were arguing that it should to some extent be tempered by condescension to weak and sick Brethren; … he, although languid, although weaker than nearly all of us, and though his assent to that might be believed the easier, said: Since I am weighed down with many sins, I will assuredly not suffer myself to be further burdened with this.

[6] and proved. From what has been said it is more than sufficiently plain that this biographer dwelt with St. John in the monastery of Fonte Avellana, and was his disciple. There are, however, two things which might in some fashion be opposed to this opinion. The first is that at number 21 he says: For there still survive those who remember that he, when he had gone out to visit the farm cells, returned to the hermitage without his monastic tunic: from which manner of speaking the biographer might in some fashion seem not to have dwelt with the Saint. But that fear will utterly vanish if we consider that he could so write either because he himself was then away from the monastery when the Saint so returned, or that he might invoke others then also surviving as witnesses of his words. The other has more difficulty: but that we shall more fitly discuss at number 8 and following.

[7] The time of the Life's writing That this Life was written not so long after the Saint's blessed death we draw from it itself. The author thus begins his Prologue: It is now long since you, sons of the holy church of Gubbio, ceased not to importune my littleness, that I should attempt to write something for you about the life of our Prelate now dying in the Lord, namely of St. John of Lodi: nor do you think that the tongue should be silent about him through whom you relate that divine miracles shine forth for you. And toward the end: Since I dare not resist your commands, and those of my lords, namely of the servants of God with whom I dwell, and lastly the orders of the lord John the Apostolic legate, a man in all things most religious, his successor in the episcopate, behold, as it were stammering, I begin to obey. Lastly, toward the close of the Life, he says of the Saint: Now he, as we trust, triumphs in the kingdom in the better part of himself. From these things, I say, we draw it that the praised Life was written not long after the Saint's death: for first, those words about the life of our Prelate now dying in the Lord seem to hint it. Secondly, that John the Apostolic legate is no other than he who in the year 1105 had presided over the clergy when the Saint was raised to the see of Gubbio, which he held not even a whole year. Thirdly and lastly, from the same words it is gathered that the Saint's cult had not yet been established when the Life was written; both because the biographer makes no mention of it, and because he speaks somewhat doubtfully of his glory when he says: Now he, as we trust, triumphs in the kingdom in the better part of himself. Yet that the cult had begun he seems to imply, when he calls him Saint, and reports from the narration of the people of Gubbio that he shines with miracles.

[8] But the words just recited beget a difficulty against the age and authority of the biographer which is not to be despised. [The bishopric of Gubbio of John the Cardinal, asserted by the author, does not stand against the aforesaid.] He says that John the Apostolic legate, by whose command he wrote the Life, was successor of our St. John in the episcopate: but Ughelli sets down Stephen as having succeeded the Saint, and St. Ubald as having succeeded Stephen, and lastly others him, John the Cardinal being passed over. Similarly Jacobilli in the Catalogue of the Writers of Umbria, treating of the same John, makes no mention at all of his episcopate. Hence the biographer's authority established above might be called into doubt: for it could not be that he should be deceived in this point, if he lived in that place and at that time, and by the mandate of that John worked out that Life, as we have said above. But the silence of Ughelli and Jacobilli is not of such moment to me that I should on that account hold suspect the biographer's authority, which he himself throughout the whole course of the Life keeps whole and sound by his sincere style: nay, I should rather believe that this John sat at Gubbio between the Saint of whom we are now treating and Stephen, although the praised writers were ignorant of it. Nor is it strange that they were ignorant of it, since Ughelli knew nothing except the name about Stephen, whom he sets between St. John of Lodi and St. Ubald, although he assigns him twenty-four years of episcopate. Whence it is plain that the praised Ughelli had no monuments of that time, and so it is no wonder if some bishop escaped his diligence.

[9] Further, if we would rightly weigh all the things which are reported about John the Cardinal, the bishopric of Gubbio we shall find nothing in them which compels us to depart from the biographer's authority. Certainly John's country, dignity, and the office which he discharged, favor not a little his being believed to have been raised to that bishopric: for he was of Gubbio, Cardinal of St. Anastasia, and at that time Apostolic legate of Perugia and Umbria, on Jacobilli's testimony in the praised Library: wherefore it can not with difficulty be believed that he was elected by the clergy of Gubbio as their prelate. Secondly, the same Jacobilli both in the place cited and in the Life of the Saint, and other writers of the Saints of Umbria, say that the praised John instituted a Process on the life and miracles of the holy Prelate. Let us hear Jacobilli: In the year MCIX he published a process upon the life and miracles of the said St. John: and since a like examination pertains to a bishop, a not incongruous conjecture arises about his bishopric of Gubbio: unless anyone will have it that there was then no bishop at Gubbio, which is against Ughelli, who writes that Stephen was substituted in the Saint's place in the year 1106.

[10] asserted by the author. Lastly, that space of twenty-two years, which in the earlier edition of Ughelli, or of twenty-four, which in the later, is assigned to Stephen's episcopate, is sufficient for John the Cardinal to have been able to sit between St. John of Lodi and Stephen, about whose deeds, besides what has already been said, I find nothing, just as Ughelli too found nothing about Stephen besides the name. But if anyone should be unwilling to grant John the Cardinal a place among the prelates of Gubbio, the biographer's authority will not on that account waver with me: for John could have been elected bishop by the people of Gubbio, but not confirmed by the Pontiff, and thence it came about that he was deservedly not reckoned among the bishops of that see. He could also, as Apostolic legate, have had the care of the vacant see, which was immediately subject to the Apostolic See, and thus, although less properly, have been called the Saint's successor in the episcopate. And let these things about the biographer's authority suffice. For the rest, the whole Life is sincerely written, but, being nearly everywhere adorned with allegories borrowed from sacred Scripture, it swells too much: yet it contains nothing at all which in any way either savors of fable, or shrinks from likelihood, or could render doubtful the writer's authority already established.

[11] The Cardinal does not seem to have written another Life. But whether this be the same as that which the often-praised Cardinal is said to have written I would not dare to assert for certain: yet there can be some suspicion of it: for since that anonymous writer asserts that he worked it out by the command of that same Cardinal, it could have come about that this very Life was by error ascribed to the Cardinal. Nevertheless this suspicion is altogether uncertain; for the Cardinal himself could have written another Life, or, what appears to me more likely, could have restrained with a simpler style the anonymous writer's offspring, too luxuriant in allegorical phrases: and this becomes the more likely because Jacobilli and others write that a Process of canonization was framed by the aforesaid Cardinal at the mandate of Paschal II. But since this very thing is altogether doubtful, as we shall see in § IV, it cannot but be equally doubtful to me whether any Life ever existed composed by the praised Cardinal: and in that opinion I am the more confirmed because it does not seem to be found in the archive of Armanni at Gubbio, who nevertheless is known to have gathered the monuments of his native place most solicitously. For if it had been found there, the Rev. Father Mauro Sarti would have procured it for us before any other, since Papebroch especially sought it, as has been shown above. However it be, this Life pleases me before any other, since its author was the Saint's fellow-monk and disciple, and so ought to have been better informed than the Cardinal at least about the things done by the Saint in the anchoretic Life. Add that the writers who praise the Cardinal's lucubration report few things or none which are not found in our anonymous writer's little work, as will appear from the Annotations to the Life, into which we shall transfer anything

of the sort if we shall have found any.

[12] The other life, likewise in manuscript, has an author likewise anonymous, Another Life also to be published. a monk of the Holy Cross of Fonte Avellana, as is noted at the head of the copy; and it is that very one which above at number 3 Papebroch called a summary of the Life written by John the Cardinal, although I do not know whether rightly. At what time he wrote cannot be gathered from his words: yet he nowhere implies that he was contemporary with the Saint; nay rather, that he was sufficiently far removed from his times is plain both from his manner of writing, and chiefly from the fact that he says that St. John immediately succeeded Bl. Peter Damian in the rule of the hermitage of the Holy Cross, which is not true, as we shall show from number 28. For the rest, he relates nearly the same things as the other anonymous writer, whom he could have had before his eyes, save a few. This Life I shall publish in the second place, both lest the studious reader should miss anything, and because it is composed in a simpler style than the first, and does not seem to be despised. Meanwhile it will be useful to have observed that neither can this with sufficient likelihood be ascribed to John the Cardinal, since by its author John the Cardinal is called a man in all things reverend and fearing God, which would have been said by that same man with little modesty.

[13] Thus far we have treated of the manuscripts: it remains that we say a few things about the printed. The printed Lives, The first whom I have found to have published the Saint's Life in print was Silvano Razzi, Camaldolese abbot, in the Lives of the Saints and Blessed of his Order and of some from the hermitage of the Holy Cross of Fonte Avellana, printed in Italian at Florence in the year 1600. He used the more recent Acts, which we have said must be published in the second place, and, as he himself forewarns, somewhat contracted them and turned them into the Italian idiom. In the same tongue Ludovico Jacobilli published it in tome 2 On the Saints of Umbria at the VII day of September, praising in the margin among other things an ancient manuscript Lectionary in the convent of St. Francis of Gualdo, fol. 75; an ancient manuscript Life at Gubbio; John the Cardinal to Pope Paschal on the Acts of this St. John; a Lectionary and Chronicle in the said Convent of Gualdo, etc. But that the more recent Acts chiefly lay before him also anyone will easily perceive who shall wish to compare both. Lastly the praised Jacobilli in the Library of Umbria reckons among the published Works of Vincenzo Armanni a Translation of the body of St. John of Lodi with a summary of his Life: often also a Life of the Saint written by Armanni is praised by him, which I have not been able to see.

[14] Of this Armanni the same Jacobilli wove a signal elogium in the praised library: and the Translation of the body published by Armanni Vincenzo Armanni of Gubbio, Doctor of both Laws, and most learned in history, Poetry, Rhetoric, Philosophy, and in the other sciences, has a knowledge of very many tongues. A restorer of antiquity, a president of letters, dear to all the lettered of his time … he still lives (after the middle of the seventeenth century) and whatever is lacking to him in the light of his eyes, he abounds in wit and understanding. He is another new Tiresias of Thebes, who knew as much of heavenly things as nature in this cruel privation of light took away from him of earthly. He watches as prince of the Academy of his native place, of which he is the ornament and the light. He has written many things, published many, etc. Then he enumerates a huge crowd of little works, partly published, partly unpublished. He is that same Armanni from whose archive we said our copy, to be published in the first place, was drawn. Further, that Translation, which he himself published in Italian at Perugia in the year 1648, in which it happened, I shall insert in this Commentary contracted into a summary. For since the author here and there is either more lengthy than is right, or sets forth too zealously those circumstances which it concerns readers nothing to know, I have judged that these must be cut away, and the rest delivered in summary, save where it shall seem worth while to render the writer's words in Latin. But when Jacobilli says above that a summary of the Life was published together with the Translation of the body by Armanni, he must be understood of the Saint's various virtues and deeds, which, being symbolically expressed at the time of the translation on various triumphal arches, as they call them, Armanni set forth. Lastly, to the Translation the same writer subjoins certain benefits obtained at that time, which I shall subjoin from the Italian in as many sentences as the Latin phrases will allow. For the rest, Armanni was already blind when he put together this little work, as he testifies both in the preface and in the epilogue.

§ II. The Saint's country and birth: the monastic life taken up under Bl. Peter Damian in the hermitage of Fonte Avellana.

[ ] Born in old Laus Pompeia Both manuscript Lives, and after them all the modern writers, call our holy Prelate Laudensis from his native place. And Laus Pompeia was a very ancient and noble city of Insubria on the river Lambro toward the Ticino, first founded by the Boii, says Orlendi in the Orbis sacer et profanus, part 2, tome 1, praising Pliny, book 3, chapter 17, who says: The Boii, having set out across the Alps, founded Laus Pompeia. And Panvinio in the praised Orlendi thinks that the surname Pompeia was added to the city because Cnæus Strabo Pompeius, father of Pompey the Great, led a Roman colony thither. It flourished with a very ancient bishopric, over which Ughelli writes that St. Julian presided at the beginning of the fourth century, and adds that he was the third of that see, although the names of the others have dropped out. This city was destroyed by the Milanese in the year 1119: then from its ruins Frederick Barbarossa raised a new city three miles from the old on the river Adda, which, having borrowed the ancient name, is called by the inhabitants Lodi. Now old Lauda or Laus Pompeia is now only a populous village, which for distinction from the new city is called in the vernacular tongue Lodi vecchio, that is, old Lauda. In this, not in that, was our Saint born, who forestalled the ruin of his native place by about 15 years by his blessed death, as will be plain from what is to be said.

[16] in the year 1026 or the next following, That the year 1026 or that immediately following was the year of his birth we learn from an old sepulchral inscription, which marks that he died in the 80th year of his age, and in the year of Christ 1106. The same year is noted as that of his death in the second Life, but neither in this nor in the first Life is his age delivered; yet in both he is said to have reached old age. About his parents the more ancient biographer is silent, but the other makes them noble. Blessed John, he says, the chosen priest of God most high, bishop of the city of Gubbio, was born in the city of Lodi in Lombardy of noble and truly Catholic parents. The same the modern writers assert whom we have enumerated above, relying, I suppose, on this biographer's testimony; unless perhaps John the Cardinal really composed some other Life of the Saint, seen by them. But I do not deny the illustrious birth of St. John: for although the more ancient anonymous writer is silent about this matter, yet he relates nothing which contradicts it: nay, the Saint's liberal education implies that he was at least not of the lowest fortune: then that writer, intent solely on describing his virtues, omitted other things also of greater moment, as we shall observe in the course of the work.

[17] Each biographer, after he has commended St. John for his study of the humaner letters, after his studies of letters and a pious adolescence he becomes a hermit his pious adolescence, his austere manner of living in the world, and his exceeding charity toward the wretched, subjoins that he embraced the monastic life in the hermitage of Fonte Avellana under Bl. Peter Damian, then the governor of that place, whom they called Prior. About this hermitage, which is distant fourteen thousand paces from the city of Gubbio, and which was also called the monastery of the Holy Cross, our Henschen has already written at sufficient length in the Life of that same Bl. Peter, tome III of February, page 406 and following, where he also makes mention of the institute and the Rule prescribed and explained by the aforesaid Blessed: wherefore, lest I do what is already done, I refer the studious reader thither. The time to which the beginnings of that religious life must be referred has some difficulty, from the words of the more ancient biographer compared with the old epitaph, of which we made mention above. For the praised biographer says among us at number 6: After he had passed the times of a youth, … he presently hastened to the hermitage, and took up the sacred garment of monastic profession. But at number 13 he writes that he dwelt in that same hermitage for nearly forty whole years, and at number 33 delivers that in his episcopate he did not pass a whole year from his consecration. But in the epitaph he is said to have died in the eightieth year of his age: from which number if you subtract the forty years of the eremitical life, and one of the episcopate, there will remain about thirty-nine, which he must have numbered when he came to Fonte Avellana, and so he had not only then passed the times of a youth, but had long since reached manhood.

[18] That I may reconcile this apparent discrepancy of the two documents, in the hermitage of Fonte Avellana I judge that the biographer in the former place spoke less properly, and by that phrase (after he had passed the times of a youth) meant to designate the age of manhood. To this opinion of mine the biographer himself is favorable, when in the same number, alleging nothing about the Saint's tender age, nothing about his adolescence, he says: That a man so lean and so bloodless could endure the harshness (of the eremitical life) most of the hermits began to distrust; since they remembered that many hitherto both vigorous and corpulent had tried it in vain. Assuredly, if John had then first passed out of youth, he would have called him an adolescent rather than a man, when he was zealous to show that his strength was, in the judgment of others, unequal to the eremitical institutions. Then what the same biographer delivers at number 5 about the austere life led at a certain church at Laus Pompeia, and about the service rendered to poor sick people, savors of a riper age, especially if he relieved their want, as is read in the second Life, out of his own means. Lastly, if we explain the biographer's words rigorously, the Saint must be said not to have much exceeded the 55th year of his life when he passed to heaven, which does not agree with the words of that same writer, who testifies that before he took up the episcopate he was heavy with age and declining into old age, and with a little body worn out in strength. We shall not therefore stray far from the truth if we say that St. John embraced the eremitical life at about thirty years of age, and therefore refer its beginning to the year of Christ 1055: and of the fifty years which remain of that life, about nine, while he adhered to Bl. Peter Damian, he could have spent at odd times outside the hermitage, and the last in the episcopate, as we shall see below. Nor ought it to seem strange that I think the years which the Saint could have spent outside the hermitage with Bl. Peter Damian must be separated from those forty: for in the passage objected the biographer is treating of the man's rigid abstinence observed in the hermitage, which in the various legations and other business accomplished with Bl. Peter he could not so keep.

[19] under Bl. Peter Damian; Bl. Peter Damian was then presiding over that hermitage, on the testimony of both biographers; but the more recent of these must be corrected, when a twofold

withdrawal of that Blessed into the aforesaid hermitage is confused, when he writes thus: Peter, when he was Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church and had been sent as legate by the lord Pope, and was going about through the county and bishopric of Gubbio …; when he had learned the admirable words and works about the perfection of the poor Brethren of Fonte Avellana, being drawn by their converse and angelic manner of life, he forsook the glory of the Cardinalate, and with the leave of the lord Pope shut himself up in the hermitage of Fonte Avellana… And the man of God John, having learned the fame of so great a man, being animated by his example, fled to him, etc. Thus far the anonymous writer, whose error that I may correct, a few things must be observed from the praised Acts of Bl. Peter. Bl. Peter Damian, hitherto conspicuous by no ecclesiastical dignity, when he was deliberating about embracing the monastic life, fell in with two hermits of Fonte Avellana; by whose converse, and by their religious modesty in refusing a gift offered, being vehemently kindled, he took up the eremitical life in that same monastery a little after. And this was Bl. Peter's first withdrawal to that hermitage, which, being created Prior before the year 1044, he most holily ruled and enriched, until the year 1058, in which he was compelled by Pope Stephen X, whom others call IX, to take up the bishopric of Ostia and the sacred purple, with the care also of administering the bishopric of Gubbio added. Then, after various matters strenuously and happily accomplished for the Church of God, he obtained from Alexander II, who was elected Pontiff in the year 1061, that he might be allowed to return to his hermitage, whose sacred solitude nevertheless he was not so permitted to enjoy but that he had several times to be at hand to the Pontiff and to discharge various legations; all which the reader will find treated at greater length in the Commentary previous to the praised Acts. And it is plain that both these withdrawals were wrongly confused by the more recent biographer.

[20] who prescribes to him salutary Among the letters of the aforesaid blessed Cardinal bishop of Ostia, which Constantine Caietanus published at Rome in the year 1606, there stands in book 6 epistle XI to our St. John, then lately enrolled among the hermits, in which the blessed master stirs up his Disciple to do penance for the faults he had committed, and at the same time prescribes salutary admonitions against oncoming temptations. It pleases me to transfer some parts hither: To his most beloved brother John, now not of Lodi (Laudensis) and therefore a praiseworthy (laudabilis) man, Peter, a sinner and a monk, the affection of paternal love. Thou hast lately despised, my son, Pharaoh, and hast at the same time abhorred the servitude of a proud king and of oppressing Egypt: it is necessary therefore now that, walking through the desert, thou shouldst undergo many kinds of temptations, shouldst endure the want of thirst and hunger, and so through toilsome perils and the straits of divers calamity shouldst reach the land of promise. It behooves thee therefore to hasten with the Hebrew people to mount Sinai, and there to receive the commandments of the divine law, that, fortified with these as with darts and a breastplate, thou mayest both repel the javelins of the rising enemies, and mayest not succumb to whatever chances of adversity press upon thee. Then he subjoins that the Law was given to the Israelites on the fiftieth day from their going out of Egypt, and that the number fifty is dedicated to penance; then he thus continues: That therefore thou mayest be worthy to receive the edicts of the divine law, correct thyself by penance, confess the wickedness of thy past guilt; and so, running within the number of penance, thou wilt come from the confession of sin to the mount of God.

[21] After these things, to the more enormous sins and those especially to be avoided, admonitions which he says are allegorically signified by the ten plagues of the Egyptians, he opposes the ten precepts of the Decalogue as so many antidotes, and at last concludes in this manner: These are, dearest son, the edicts of the divine law; from these proceed all the instruments of sacred Scripture; on all these the discipline of holy Religion rests. These certainly are bindings for flowing wounds, this is the wholesome medicine of languishing souls: with these we ought to cure at mount Sinai, that is, in the loftiness of a sacred purpose, all the plagues which we endured in Egypt, nay all the maladies of inward sicknesses which we conceived in the plain of secular life. In these therefore be thou always, meditate these diligently, and, so to speak, grind these pigments or kinds continually in the mortar of thy mind. From this cell of spices therefore go not out; but here inspect more curiously all the hiding-places of thy soul, search all the secrets of thy inward parts; apply medicaments to the wounds as thou shalt perceive suited to each, and, when once thou hast obtained soundness, take pains to guard it with watchful diligence. For a relapse is worse than a fever, and, as physicians declare, diet is no less to be observed than the cure: namely that thou shouldst beware of the foods which are contrary, and shouldst despise as a deadly poison whatever is noxious, whatever is proved adverse to the antidotes received.

[22] This is plainly that ten-stringed Psaltery which we are bidden to strike with the frequent stroke of the plectrum, that is, to make quiver by holy works as many strings as there are commandments. These therefore being well composed, ascend the mountain with Moses, seize the summit of a stricter life, that with him thou mayest deserve to hear at the same time: Go and say to them: Return into your tents: But stand thou here and I will speak to thee all the commandments and ceremonies and judgments . he writes. Thou too, giving a bill of divorce to the world, remain continually with the Lord, and stand ready in his sight. For he does not say: Sit here, or recline with me; but: Stand here with me; that thou mayest understand that spiritual leisure itself is set in the exercise of labor. Stand therefore on the mountain with the Lord, that thou mayest continually wage an unbroken war with the spirits of wickedness; that thou mayest not weakly break the alluring wantonness of carnal passions. So therefore fight against the barbarism of the vices pressing upon thee, that as victor with Josue thou mayest overcome the rebel kings, and that he may bid thee tread on their necks with victorious feet, so that, being rich with the spoils of the enemies and distinguished with the titles of victories, thou mayest as triumpher reach the land of promise, nay with the true Israelites mayest possess the land of the living for ever by hereditary gift. By these precepts the blessed master was instructing his Disciple, then lately an inhabitant of the hermitage, and stirring him with these admonitions: to which how entirely and holily he yielded, plainly appears from the course of his mortal life and from his eternal glory.

* add MECUM

* Deut. 5.

§ III. The priesthood taken up: his familiarity with Bl. Peter Damian: the Life of the latter written by him: his learning and the surname of Grammarian.

[ ] He becomes a priest and inseparable companion of Bl. Peter Damian How much Bl. Peter Damian made of this holy Disciple of his may be gathered from both biographers, who wondrously proclaim their most holy familiarity. When therefore that great man (Bl. Peter Damian) had learned, says the more ancient biographer, that he shone with so great brightness in the divine eyes, he judged it a wickedness not to lift him upward through the sacred grades; nor did he think that he ought long to be left unadorned outside, whom he knew to walk covered with the typical garments of Aaron. As quickly as possible therefore he was zealous to advance him to the priesthood, and to lead him with himself hither and thither, wherever he himself, like a lamp of the world, was wont to run. In which fellowship indeed it is not easy to say how much the one must be believed to have profited from the other: and deservedly I should call these two souls those two cows which, when they carry the ark of the divine Law from the land of the Philistines, go by a straight road to Bethsames, that is, to the house of the sun; though the calves low after them, that is, though those near in blood cry out, yet they know not how to turn aside from the road to Bethsames, in whose mind the beauty of the eternal Sun shines. For although hitherto each was already fervent in the love of almighty God, yet from that companionship, like two Seraphim, they must be thought to have flamed each from the other's ardor.*

[24] and companion. The various legations which Bl. Peter Damian discharged both before and after his return to the hermitage, obtained from Alexander II, may be seen in the often-praised Acts of that Blessed: but at which our Saint was present cannot be determined, especially since about the time in which he became a hermit we have nothing certain. If, however, it were established that the Life of Bl. Peter was written by him, he seems to have been present at the last legation to the people of Ravenna; since that writer asserts that he stood by that Blessed as he died at Faenza on the return: wherefore this must now be examined. Our Henschen in the Acts of Bl. Peter Damian judged that the Life which he there published must be ascribed to St. John of Lodi: but Guido Grandi, a Camaldolese monk, in the Camaldolese Dissertations printed at Lucca in the year 1707, in Dissertation 4 in the Appendix, number XI and the three following, contends against Laderchi that the writer of that Life was a certain John, of Ravenna by country. For each opinion there occur reasons not slight, which therefore we shall weigh here, and first indeed let us begin from Henschen's opinion.

[25] To the praised Life there is prefixed the following heading: To the lord Liprand the Prior and to the other elders of the hermitage of Fonte Avellana, John. The Life of Bl. Peter Damian And that this is St. John of Lodi is urged by what that writer says about his familiar intimacy with Bl. Peter in the Prologue, in these words: Since it is plain to all that no one who is privy to the illustrious deeds of men can cover them by a slothful silence without the stain of fault; how much more will it be evident that I shall be liable to no small offense, who clung as an inseparable companion to so great a father, though almost in his last times, if I should prefer to pass over his marvellous deeds in silence rather than to divulge them. Of the things therefore which I am about to relate, I remember that I received part from his own mouth, part from a certain one of my disciples, who clung more familiarly to his company before me: but certain things, namely those which had preceded his conversion, I heard by the relation of a certain kinsman of his, a grave and honorable man: the rest indeed I noted down by my own presence. And in the Life, chapter 6, number 30, commending the Blessed's zeal in administering the bishopric of Ostia, he says: Very often too we have known him, being wasted at night with sharp fevers, presently at sunrise to have entered the church, to have begun the solemnities of the Masses, and, drawing out his discourse with lifted voice in the ear of the whole people until nearly the sixth hour, to have afforded us no small miracle from himself; since we perceived him both stronger in strength and clearer in eloquence, whom we had suspected to be now nearly failing.

[26] Again in chapter XI, number 49, he writes thus: Perceiving that the hour of his departure was drawing near, more probably written by the Saint: his learning he at once bade us, standing about his bed, to perform the whole nocturnal or matins office… The whole synaxis therefore being performed, a little after he rendered his holy spirit, loosed from bodily bonds, to the Lord: namely at Faenza, where, when he was returning from Ravenna to Rome, he had fallen into sickness, as he has related before. These things assuredly agree excellently with St. John of Lodi, who clung as an inseparable companion to Bl. Peter in nearly the last times of his life, as has been shown above. Then our Saint was furnished with such knowledge of writing that he can deservedly be believed to have been chosen for that work by the elders of Fonte Avellana. For the often-praised biographers testify that he was well imbued with the humaner letters from adolescence, and that as a hermit he had already written books. Either (says the contemporary writer)

he wrote books with his own hand, or he corrected exactly those written by others, or, being at a distance, he wrote letters to be sent to divers places: whose exhortatory words flashed upon whomsoever, presently kindled their minds upward to God. Moreover among the Works of Bl. Peter Damian, of the Roman edition, tome 1, book 6, there stands epistle 10 to the abbots Gebizo and Theobald and to our St. John, from which it may be gathered how much Bl. Peter esteemed his learning. For when he had noticed that in a certain little work he had wrongly assigned the day on which St. John the Baptist was conceived, he warned the praised men of his error by the aforesaid letter, and at the same time asked that whatever they should judge must be corrected in his little works they should diligently amend.

[27] This letter is inscribed in this manner: To the holy abbots Gebizo and Theobald, and also to John of Lodi, nay rather praiseworthy brother in Christ, Peter a sinner, servitude. approved by that same Blessed. Then, his error being corrected, he thus continues: Now therefore, dearly beloved, I enjoin this office of obedience upon the zeal of your holy prudence, nay rather as a servant and disciple I humbly beseech, that you both reduce this letter to the truth by which it has been corrected among us, and, reading through solicitously the other little works also of my dictation, if anything be found absurd, hasten either utterly to cut it away or to arrange it with a more polished style. For it is not to be feared that, if the hand of a corrector be applied, the joint of the writer should lose the comeliness of its native grace: but this rather must be striven for, that while the urbanity of the running style is not spared, the rule of sober understanding may be inviolably preserved. Since therefore in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word stands; to you three, whom I know to be strong in spiritual prudence, I delegate this zeal of meditation in my stead, that if anything is still found in those little works which strays from the path of truth, it may through you return to the norm of rectitude, and that book may through the diligence of your examination grow strong to a full edition and to the authority of reading. Thus Bl. Peter Damian; which, as they commend the learning of St. John, so they show that he was by no means unfit to be believed to have written the Life of which we are treating in a style elegant for his century, especially since both the name and his familiar intimacy with Bl. Peter agree excellently.

[28] An answer is given to the arguments Nevertheless the arguments are not to be despised which the praised Camaldolese Guido Grandi produces on the contrary part, and which therefore, contracted into a summary, I set before the reader. First he adjudges that Life away from St. John of Lodi, because he is said by the biographer whom we shall print in the second place to have immediately succeeded Bl. Peter Damian, and so cannot be that John who in the Prologue testifies that he is a monk set under the obedience of Prior Liprand, and that he was compelled by his command and that of the other elders of Fonte Avellana to write that Life. I do not deny that in each writer alleged it stands as Grandi says: but nothing certain can be concluded thence. For first, the contemporary biographer renders that immediate succession doubtful, when he sets forth in the whole of number 19 the private life which the Saint led after the happy death of Bl. Peter Damian, and then only at number 20 says: In the time following indeed he is elected Prior by the common unanimity of the Brethren, etc. But since the biographer alleged by Grandi is not altogether accurate, as we showed at number 19, I cannot hold this assertion of his for certain.

[29] by which Guido Grandi Assuredly the same author was not sufficiently informed about the matters which he was writing, when he says these things about the death of Bl. Peter: But when almighty God had decreed to reward the venerable Peter for his labors, when he was absent from the hermitage and was staying for a time with the Brethren in the monastery of Faenza, God brought his life to a good end. Not sufficiently informed, I say: for he was not staying there with the Brethren for a time; but, having happily discharged a legation among the people of Ravenna, and setting out for Rome, when he had taken his first lodging at Faenza, being becomingly received at a certain venerable monastery of Bl. Mary the Mother of God, which is called outside the gate, he presently, being seized with fever, took to his bed; on the testimony of his biographer, who testifies that he stood by him as he died. Secondly, it cannot be doubted that even while Bl. Peter Damian was alive another Prior presided over Fonte Avellana, who should rule both this hermitage and the others subject to it, although all acknowledged and revered Bl. Peter as their father and supreme governor. The reason why I so judge is that Bl. Peter, being perpetually occupied with administering his bishopric of Ostia and with other labors for the Roman See, was forced to be absent from his hermitage, and so to substitute another who should preside in his place. Peter indeed afterwards returned to the hermitage, leave being obtained from Alexander II; but he was probably not freed from the burden of the bishopric, nor was he permitted to be free from Apostolic legations, as may be seen in the praised Henschen.

[30] Moreover it appears to me more likely that from his return he left the ordinary care of the hermitage committed to another. contends, For his biographer in chapter 8, number 40, treating of that withdrawal, writes thus: Further, when he had determined to return from those outward things, though holy and pleasing to God, to the sweet secret places of the hermitage, as much for the refreshment of his mind as for the washing away of any dust contracted, he wasted himself with excessive fasting in the dungeon of his cell. And after he has described his austere norm of living, he thus continues at number 41: Further, when he had at some time determined to go to the chapter of the Brethren, an exhortation being made, presently rising from his seat, he accused himself of his excesses: for which, receiving the judgment of discipline according to custom, he was beaten with twofold stripes on either side. And returning again to his own place, he ceased not to instruct them with his discourses, speaking now to these, now to those, now to all in common. By which words it seems to be hinted that he was not wont to go to the chapter of the Brethren; which nevertheless he would without doubt have done, unless another had presided over the congregation in his place. Why then can it not be said that this man, whoever he was, went on presiding over the hermitage of Fonte Avellana after the death of Bl. Peter, and that by his command that Life was written by our St. John, who was truly his subject? And that that Prior could have been some Liprand we shall show at number 32.

[31] The second argument, more clear, as he thinks, than the first, that the praised Life the praised Camaldolese writer draws from the Catalogue of the Priors of Avellana composed according to the monuments of that monastery, in which he says that Prior Liprand is marked at the year 1110, and thus he reasons: For John of Lodi, as we have noted, is read to have been put immediately in Peter Damian's place: and when he was promoted to the bishopric of Gubbio in the year MCV, Peter of Rimini succeeded in the Priorate, then in the year MCX Liprand was substituted for Peter, at whose nod the counsel was taken up by John, Damian's disciple, of writing the Life of the holy doctor and of dedicating it to Liprand himself the Prior. Since therefore St. John of Lodi had laid aside the garments of mortality four years before, it is established that John, the writer of the Life of Peter Damian, is far different from St. John of Lodi, bishop of Gubbio. But if we should even follow the reckoning of Jacobilli, who somewhere writes that Liprand immediately succeeded John of Lodi in the Priorate, it is plain that upon him, being already made bishop and surviving for a year and a few months, the task of compiling the Life of Peter Damian could not have been enjoined by him. Thus he; who, that he might obtain sure credit, ought to have set forth of what age that Catalogue is, and from what monuments it was composed: which, if they be no better than the second Life, from which our Saint is set down as having immediately succeeded Bl. Peter, will prove nothing certain.

[32] But let there indeed have been in the year 1110 some Liprand Prior of Fonte Avellana; what then? As if forsooth those two Liprands could not have presided over that hermitage, was first written after the year 1110 the one after Bl. Peter, the other in the year assigned; just as the author himself makes two Priors named Peter, the one surnamed Damian, the other of Rimini. Nor indeed is there wanting some Liprand who could have discharged the Priorate after Bl. Peter: for Bl. Peter himself in Little Work 34, the Disputation on various apparitions and miracles, chapter 1, of the Lyons edition, praises a certain hermit Liutprand in these words: He plainly who related this to me, the venerable father Liutprand, made known to me another thing also consequently. What therefore hinders our believing that this venerable father Liutprand either succeeded Bl. Peter, or persevered for some time in the Priorate which he had administered while the Blessed was absent, until another was substituted? Certainly this opinion is clearly favored by the biographer, St. John's disciple, who, as we have said, first describes the private life which the Saint led after Bl. Peter's death, and then only subjoins: In the time following indeed he is elected Prior by the common unanimity of the Brethren. Whence it is manifestly gathered that the Priorate was not conferred on John immediately after Bl. Peter's death, but that he lived as a subject for some notable time, in which he could write the praised Life and dedicate it to Liprand or Liutprand.

[33] by some other man, Further, from the Life itself of Bl. Peter it becomes little likely that it was first written after the year 1110; nay rather it is drawn out that it was put together not long after his death, and certainly is not later than the year 1080. For what cause shall we say there is that that writer, having narrated Peter's death and burial, concluding his little work with the customary clause of praising God, To him be glory, praise, power, honor and comeliness and dominion now and always and through every age, amen, added nothing at all about the things which happened after the burial, whereas nevertheless he does not easily seem able to have been ignorant of the famous apparition of the Blessed, made in the year 1080 to abbot Ugano or Urban? That apparition is reported by way of an Appendix in Henschen, and thus begins: In the year one thousand and eighty of the Lord's Incarnation, in the month of August, in the fourth Indiction (nay, the third), after the death of the aforesaid lord Peter Damian, there was a certain monk who was formerly the venerable abbot of St. Gregory established in the territory of Rimini, etc. And that this appendix was added by some other man to the Life already concluded with the customary phrase Henschen deservedly judged; and it is plain even from this, that the writer of the Life nowhere used the year of Christ and the Indiction, which is faultily expressed. Then that that Life was first written about the fortieth year from the Blessed's death is not likely enough from what the author has in the Prologue. I myself, he says, had judged it would be more advisable that I should meanwhile note them (the acts of Bl. Peter) down in whatever rude style, that afterwards, being worthily elucidated by more skilled writers, they might be able to reach the knowledge of those to come to their profit, rather than, by too much declining the mark of unskilfulness, to leave them wholly untouched: lest perchance after a little, being overspread with the darkness of oblivion, they should, to no small peril of mine, slip from the memory of all altogether. Not likely enough, I say, is it that that writer,

so solicitous for the memory of his most beloved master, waited forty years before he either wrote the Life or noted down his acts in a rude style.

[34] The last argument, lastly, the praised Grandi deduces in these words: I add that the difference between the two Johns is gathered from their different country and different time of death. namely by John of Ravenna, For writers deliver that John, the disciple of Peter Damian and the writer of his Life, was also his fellow-citizen, namely of Ravenna: but John bishop of Gubbio, of Lodi by country, was born in Insubria, not in Æmilia: the former indeed is noted in the Calendar of Avellana to have died on the XXVI day of May, MCXV: but the latter went to God on the II day of September, MCVI: the former at the hermitage of Avellana, the latter at the cathedral of Gubbio: the former a private monk, the latter from Prior a bishop: the former indeed distinguished with some praise of holiness, but never obtaining the title either of saint or of blessed; but the latter, famous for many miracles after his death, was inscribed by Paschal II in the catalogue of the Saints. The things which the author of the Dissertations here heaps together prove nothing, so long as he has not shown that that John was the writer of that Life; for I shall readily grant him that some John of Ravenna is recorded in the Calendar cited, of which nevertheless he does not declare of what age or credit it is.

[35] But who, pray, are those writers who say that the author of the praised Life is John of Ravenna? Are they ancient, or modern? was composed. Since he does not assign them, I cannot so easily believe him; especially since out of the many whom I have consulted I have found none who says it, but all call him either John the monk, or John the disciple of Bl. Peter merely, or expressly name him St. John of Lodi and bishop of Gubbio; among whom the latter are, besides Henschen and Laderchi, whom Grandi attacks, Mabillon in the Acts of the Saints, 6th century, part 2, page 245, Pagi in the Critica on Baronius, tome 4 at the year 1072, number 6, Baillet in the Lives of the Saints, tome 1, and Jacobilli On the Saints of Umbria at the XXII day of February. Moreover it is established from the Life of Bl. Peter that its author was his most dear friend and inseparable companion: which how rightly it agrees with St. John of Lodi we have shown above, both from his biographer and from the Little Works of Bl. Peter himself: but we find nothing similar about that John of Ravenna, nor could Grandi himself produce it. Wherefore I adhere to the opinion of Henschen and others as the truer, until surer things be brought forward on the contrary part than the author of the Dissertations has hitherto brought forward.

[36] It remains that we here say something about the Saint's surname. He was surnamed the Grammarian. Ferdinand Ughelli in Italia sacra, tome 1, among the bishops of Gubbio, calls St. John by the surname Grammarian. The same does Henschen in the often-praised Commentary previous to the Life of Bl. Peter Damian, where he judges that this surname fell to him on account of the elegance and gravity of his style, which is expressed in this Life nearly above the custom of that age. But Jacobilli at the VII day of September thinks otherwise. Further, it is not true, he says, that this Saint is the same as John the Grammarian, a very learned man, as some say: since these differ much from one another. Why Jacobilli denies this I do not perceive; unless perhaps because he had found that about the same time there flourished in Italy another John, likewise surnamed the Grammarian, whom Falco of Benevento in his Chronicle in Muratori's Writers of Italian Affairs, tome 5, page 96, writes was elected and consecrated abbot of St. Sophia of Benevento in the year 1120, that is, fourteen years after the Saint's death. That our Saint is different from him I readily admit: but whatever induced him so to think, it is by no means doubtful to me that Ughelli and Henschen deservedly and rightly ascribed that surname to our St. John. For Tebald or Theobald in the Life of St. Ubald, bishop of Gubbio, whom he had succeeded when he died in the year 1160, in chapter 1, in our Work, tome III of May, page 630, expressly teaches this very thing in these words: But John the Grammarian, of blessed memory, bishop of the aforesaid city (Gubbio), seeing the youth (St. Ubald) of religious conversation, was zealous to recall him to his own church. To this testimony nothing need be added: I only observe that what we have adduced above about the Saint's studies of letters, his knowledge, and his skill in writing, from his Life and from the Little Works of Bl. Peter Damian, answers excellently to this surname.

read nesciunt*

§ IV. The general Priorate of Fonte Avellana taken up: the bishopric of Gubbio: the chronology of his life, his death and burial.

[ ] He becomes Prior of Fonte Avellana, In precisely what year our Saint was elected general Prior of Fonte Avellana and of the other monasteries which depended on that hermitage we cannot determine, as is plain from what has been said in the preceding §. Yet I should believe that this was done not long after Bl. Peter's departure from the living, since the memory of Liprand's Priorate is so slender, as has been shown in the same place. That he was already Prior in the year 1084 the above-praised Guido Grandi proves, producing an instrument from the archive of Classe, box 94, number 67, which has it thus: In the name of the Lord: in the times of the lord Gregory the supreme Pontiff, in the year from the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ one thousand eighty-four, in the reign of Henry, son of the late emperor Henry, in the seventh Indiction, at Gubbio. I in God's name Thebald, son of the late Pagan of Nartianula, make a renunciation and transaction and settlement to the church of St. Cross of Fonte Avellana; and to thee John (of Lodi) the Prior, and to thy successors in perpetuity, that is, concerning that church of St. Apollinaris, set at Nartianula, etc. The same is gathered from both Lives of the Saint, in which a hard famine is said to have vexed Italy while he was discharging the Priorate; which namely seems to be that which Carlo Sigonio in On the Kingdom of Italy, book 9, binds to the year 1084, but Berthold the Priest in the Appendix to Hermann the Lame to the year 1085, perhaps because it raged in both years. What the Saint did in this public calamity the reader will find in the Life.

[38] and then bishop of Gubbio: Meanwhile, while he was wholly bent upon wisely ruling his monasteries, the bishop of the church of Gubbio, whom Ughelli, calling him Dominic, says succeeded Hugh in the year 1070, departed from the living, and in his place he was elected by the common vote of the clergy of Gubbio, John Cardinal of St. Anastasia, at that time Apostolic legate through Umbria, presiding over the election, and was consecrated at Rome by Pope Paschal II, as both Lives testify. Wherefore when Jacobilli in the Library of Umbria, in the words recited at number 2, and after him others, say that he was consecrated bishop by the praised Cardinal, they must either be said to have used the word consecrate for elect, or must be corrected: for Jacobilli himself in the Saints of Umbria says that he was consecrated by the aforesaid Pontiff. The time at which these things were done is easily drawn from the more ancient biographer, compared with the epitaph which is read as anciently inscribed on the holy Bishop's tomb: for since the former writes that he died before the year of his consecration was accomplished, and the latter marks the year 1106 as that of his death, it remains that we should say that our John ascended the see of Gubbio toward the end of the year 1105 or the beginning of the following.

[39] Jacobilli, however, affirms that he held the bishopric some months more than a year; for about one year. the same does the most illustrious Alexander Sperelli, bishop of Gubbio, in his panegyric Oration delivered in Italian at the Saint's translation; but these likewise must either be corrected, or must be said to take the beginning of the episcopate from the time of the election, not of the consecration: and in this way they will easily be reconciled with our biographer. But certainly Philip Ferrarius must not be heard in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, where, although he admits that John died in the year 1106, he yet attributes to him thirty-six years in the episcopate, to which he writes that he was raised in the year 1076: he must not, I say, be heard, since he praises no instrument, no witness, for his assertion: then, according to his own reckoning, he must have obtained the see of Gubbio already from the year 1070, or have presided over it only thirty years: but both, as we have said, are false.

[40] What further the holy Prelate did worthy of memory in the short time of his episcopate the biographers do not deliver, Certain acts in his episcopate, who, commending his pastoral care only in general, write that he dedicated basilicas, confirmed children, and excellently fulfilled the other parts of a good prelate. But the praised Philip Ferrarius descends to certain particulars in these words: He built the church of the Holy Cross with a monastery and a hospice: he translated St. Ubald from St. Secundus's to the church of SS. Marianus and James, and ordained him priest: he dedicated the church of St. Saviour of Monte Acuto, which is now of the hermits of Monte Corona. About St. Ubald, who was afterwards bishop of Gubbio, in his Acts written by Tebald, his successor in the bishopric, and published among us in tome III of May at the XVI day, in chapter 1, I read these words: But John the Grammarian, of blessed memory, bishop of the aforesaid city, seeing the youth of religious conversation, was zealous to recall him to his own church (of SS. Marianus and James); and rejoicing with paternal love in his gravity, often made him stay with him. But about a priesthood conferred by the holy Prelate I find no word there: nay, since he calls him a youth, and subjoins that he was in vain urged by a certain one of his friends to take a wife, and after these things also subjoins: But when the servant of God had passed the years of adolescence in an old man's manner, he is made Prior in the aforesaid church of SS. Marianus and James: this consecration appears to me at the least doubtful, although I am not ignorant that this was also the mind of the most illustrious Sperelli, as we shall see at number 55. About the monastery of the Holy Cross built and the church of St. Saviour dedicated I can produce nothing certain on either side, and therefore I leave these to his own credit.

[41] Further, from what has been said hitherto the following chronology of the Saint's life results. and the chronology of his life. In the year of Christ 1026 or the next following he is born at Laus Pompeia, an old city of Insubria, now destroyed: being trained in the humaner letters, and leading at first an austere life in the world, he applied himself to the exercises of charity toward his neighbor, then about the year 1055 he professed himself a monk in the hermitage of Fonte Avellana under Bl. Peter Damian; who, knowing the Man's virtue, took care that he should be initiated in the priesthood, and took him as an inseparable companion. After Bl. Peter's death, at which he had been present at Faenza in the year 1072, having returned to his hermitage, at the command of Liprand the Prior and of the other elders of the place he wrote the Life of that same Blessed, and eagerly resumed the wonted anchoretic institutions. After some time being elected general Prior of his Order, a want of grain having arisen in Italy, being almost forgetful of himself and of his own, he succored the afflicted people. Lastly in the year 1105, being elected bishop by the people of Gubbio and consecrated by Pope Paschal II, he most holily

ruled that church until the VII Ides of September of the year 1106, on which, being in the 80th year of his age, he passed to eternal felicity.

[42] His burial and epitaph. His sacred body, deposited in his own cathedral church, after 542 years was solemnly raised and exalted, as we shall say in §6: and the epitaph which Jacobilli asserts was at first prefixed to the old tomb, and now to the new casket, is of this sort:

TO GOD BEST AND GREATEST.

To Dom John of Lodi, Pontiff of the church of Gubbio, who for his true and unconquered piety, and for the most splendid endowments of his mind, in the Year of Christ MCVI is endowed with immortality. In the LXXX Year of his age.

The same, but distinguished here and there with other punctuation, Ughelli recites in Italia sacra, and Ferrarius in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy. About this tomb a fitter place for treating will recur below: meanwhile let us inquire into the Saint's ancient cult.

§ V. Whether the Saint was canonized by Pope Paschal II. An Office and Mass anciently recited in his honor, and approved by the Sacred Congregation of Rites: a church built: whether some relics were carried elsewhere? his memory in the Martyrologies.

[ ] He is said to have been canonized by Paschal II; The praised Ughelli among the Bishops of Gubbio writes thus about the Saint to our purpose: When he had ruled this church for a year with wonderful praise of piety, and had met his fate in MCVI on the VII Ides of September, and had been buried in the cathedral, since he shone with most illustrious miracles, he deserved to be enrolled in the album of the Saints by Pope Paschal II. The same Jacobilli asserts in words which I render from the Italian into Latin: His death was illustrated by many miracles from God; and the aforesaid Cardinal John the legate, by the command of the same Pontiff Paschal, made a process and wrote his Life, and the same Pontiff enrolled him in the catalogue of the holy confessors. Philip Ferrarius had gone before these in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, where he says: Him, famous for miracles, Paschal II, the Supreme Pontiff, by whose command John the Cardinal made, as they say, processes upon his life which he wrote, enrolled in the number of the Saints. But since Paschal II ceased to live at the beginning of the year 1118, it follows that, if they wrote truly, our holy Bishop would have been canonized not many years after his death. I do not know whether Jacobilli learned something similar also from the Life of the Saint by Vincenzo Armanni, whom he cites in the margin, as also John the Cardinal in his Life and Process of him, which are not to my hand, and about which latter we have already treated above in §1.

[44] But from wherever they drew it, I cannot assent to them: which more probably for the most eminent Cardinal Prospero Lambertini (who now as Benedict XIV happily presides over the Church of Christ) in his learned Work On the beatification of the Servants of God and the canonization of the Blessed, book 4, part 2, chapter 5, reckons him among those Saints in whose honor the recitation of a Mass and Office has been granted, although the cause of their canonization was never introduced, as he speaks at number 1. And after he has brought forward into the midst some examples of like concessions, at number 7 he thus continues: But if it be said that some of the examples adduced do not hold in the case of Blessed by equipollent beatification, but of those truly canonized; that indeed is admitted as regards those holy Pontiffs who even before the concession made to the Lateran basilica and to the other basilicas of the City, namely of proper Lessons, had a cult in the universal Church; but not so about the rest adduced. Of St. John of Lodi it is said that he was canonized by Paschal II.

[45] That is asserted by Ferrarius On the Saints of Italy at the VII day of September, is not true: by Alexander Sperelli bishop of Gubbio in his Synod of Gubbio, printed at Perugia in the year MDCLI, page CLXXXVI, and by Guido Grandi of Cremona, a man worthy of all praise, in his Camaldolese Dissertations, dissertation IV in the Appendix, number 14. But since Ferrarius is more ancient than all, Fortunatus Scacchi speaks thus about the authority of the Martyrology composed by him, On the Marks and Signs of sanctity, section XI, chapter IV: "Philip Ferrarius, having collected the names of any Servants of God whatever who in any way have some veneration in any church or monastery, whether they be venerated by the authority of the Apostolic See or without such authority, filled his Martyrology, adding also Notes in which he discloses whence he received them". Thus far the praised most eminent Cardinal, reciting Scacchi's words: whence it is plain that that canonization was unknown to the Sacred Congregation of Rites, and that the authority of Ferrarius and of the others who followed him does not suffice for our Saint to be believed canonized. Ferrarius indeed cites Monuments of the church of Gubbio and of Lodi; but since their antiquity is not established for me, I cannot pass a prudent judgment upon them. I observe, however, that in the Life which we shall publish in the second place, and which seems to have been written after the times of Paschal II, no mention is made of this canonization.

[46] Yet that the Saint's cult among the people of Gubbio is ancient we do not deny; yet he was anciently venerated even with an Office and Mass: nor shall we resist if anyone set its beginnings not long after his death; for since he is said in the Prologue of the first Life already then to have shone there with miracles, it is likely that he was honored with some cult among his own people. And hence perhaps it came about that later men believed that their holy Bishop had been canonized by Paschal II, whom they had found already invoked with sacred honors in his time. That the recitation of an Office also and the celebration of a Mass in his honor was already anciently in use in the church of Gubbio we learn from the most eminent Prospero Lambertini praised above, who at number 5 has these words: As regards St. John of Lodi, the recitation of an Office, together with the celebration of a Mass, which was performed from ancient time in the diocese of Gubbio, had already been approved by the Sacred Congregation, as is drawn from the Decrees of the Sacred Congregation published in the year MDCXXVIII and in the year MDCXXIX after the synod of Gubbio of Cardinal Ulderico Carpineo printed at Perugia in the year MDCXXXVIII, page XLVI.

[47] a church is said to have been formerly built for him: Jacobilli in the Saints of Umbria at the VII day of September writes that a church was founded for him in his native city of Laus Pompeia, and that signal relics of the Saint, namely a bone of the left arm, were carried thither some years after the seventeenth century had begun, praising Defendente of Lodi. His words, because they are obscure, I render from the Italian into Latin: In the city of Laus Pompeia his native place there was erected in his honor a church in that place in which now is the church of St. Defendens: and in the year MDCVIII the upper bone of the left arm, by which the hand was joined to the elbow, was taken from the sepulchre by Ferdinand Taberna, legate through Picenum, and with the leave of superiors sent to Laus Pompeia; and then in the year MDCXIII was deposited in the chief altar of the cathedral church of that same city. Thus he, which things must be briefly examined by us.

[48] the arm-bone does not seem to have been carried to Laus Pompeia. First, if that church was built in the Saint's native city, it was done in old Laus Pompeia; for that this, and not the new, was the Saint's birthplace we have already noted above at number 15: but since Jacobilli presently subjoins that those sacred relics were in the year 1613 deposited in the chief altar of the cathedral church of that same city, either he confuses the two Laus Pompeias, or he wrongly assigns the new one as the Saint's native city. But what he affirms about the relics translated thither I cannot hold for certain: for although at that time (on Ughelli's testimony, Italia sacra, tome 4) Louis Taberna was bishop of the church of Lodi, who took care that the cathedral church should be restored, and increased it with sacred furniture and revenue, and who therefore on that occasion could have procured some relics of St. John of Lodi for the repaired church; yet since the body of that same Saint, entire and conspicuous with incorrupt flesh, was solemnly elevated at Gubbio in the year 1648 and is said to be preserved even now, as we shall show in the following §, I can scarcely be brought to believe that that bone was cut out in the eighth year of that century and sent to Laus Pompeia.

[49] The Saint's memory known to few martyrologists Further, although from what has been said hitherto it appears that St. John's cult is sufficiently ancient, yet he is celebrated by few martyrologists. Among these Philip Ferrarius in the General Catalogue of the Saints who are not had in the Roman Martyrology announces him at this day thus: At Gubbio in Umbria, of St. John of Lodi, bishop of Gubbio. The same he does in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, where he weaves an elogium of him which we have already touched upon above. Gabriel Bucelin in the Nomenclator which he prefixed to the Benedictine Menologium mentions him twice, namely on the IV and VII of September; but in the Menologium itself only on the IV day, on which I nowhere find him venerated; wherefore he would more rightly have referred the elogium which he there recites to the VII day. The often-praised Jacobilli says that in a Benedictine Menologium, I know not which, at the III of May and IV of September there is read: At Gubbio, of St. John, bishop and confessor, born of Lodi in Lombardy, formerly Prior of the monastery of Fonte Avellana. He died famous for miracles in the year MCVI. Whether those Benedictines kept any particular festivity of him I do not know: but his birthday was the VII of September, as is established from what has been said.

[50] This day certainly Menard was ignorant of, and therefore commemorates our holy Bishop in the second Appendix which he added to the Benedictine Martyrology in this manner: is noted, St. John of Lodi, disciple of Bl. Peter Damian and bishop of Gubbio, was a man of great sanctity, whose Life is extant, in which it is read that he was received as a disciple by that same Bl. Peter under the discipline of the sacred Rule of St. Benedict. From Wion not only the day of his birth but the cult itself seems to have lain hidden, when in book 2 of the Lignum Vitæ he reckoned him among the bishops without the title of saint or blessed, in these words: Dom John of Lodi, monk of the same monastery (of Fonte Avellana) and also bishop of the same city (of Gubbio). But from whatever source that silence or discrepancy of the martyrologists arose, the Saint's lawful cult cannot be doubted, as is plain from what has been said. Add that, on Jacobilli's testimony, a solemn festivity of him is kept by the clergy and people (of Gubbio) under a double rite, by which words he seems to signify that in his time that day was celebrated with cessation from servile works, which whether it is still done is unknown to me.

§ VI. The incorruption and solemn elevation of the body.

[ ] Of the body after five centuries We have already said above that the sacred body of John was honorably deposited in the cathedral church with the epitaph which we set forth at number 42: now we must treat of its incorruption and translation. As regards the first, Philip Ferrarius in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy writes thus about it: On the VII Ides of September in the year of Salvation MCVI he departed from life, and was buried in the cathedral church, whose body, so entire and incorrupt,

as if it had been lately buried, is preserved. The same says Ughelli in Italia sacra, tome 1, among the Bishops of Gubbio: In the cathedral his incorrupt body is still preserved. Similarly the often-praised Jacobilli asserts, but in Italian words: His sacred body was honorably buried in the said cathedral of Gubbio, and is preserved to the present entire and incorrupt beneath the altar dedicated in his honor.

[52] To these I add one testimony of an eyewitness, namely of the most illustrious Alexander Sperelli, bishop of Gubbio, incorrupt and entire after five centuries who in the panegyric oration which he delivered to the people, when in the year 1648 he solemnly translated the aforesaid sacred body, spoke thus in Italian: That holy soul, which in this world was so full of charity, cannot but often cast pious glances from heaven, as it were kindly influences, upon this church, in which is so rich a deposit and so estimable a pledge as is his sacred body, which today we wish to translate with solemn pomp; and which by a perpetual miracle is now preserved unharmed for the space of five centuries and eight lustres and a half, denying to devouring time its wonted trophies, breaking the pride of exterminating death, and convicting the stubborn perfidy of the heretics. These very things will be confirmed from the translation which I now set about to describe.

[53] The translation is given from Vincenzo Armanni. Vincenzo Armanni of Gubbio, a learned man and the ornament of his native place, of whose signal elogium we treated at number 14, wrote in the Italian tongue the translation of which we are treating, being a contemporary indeed, but already blind, as we noted, in the light of his eyes, not of his mind. His narration therefore we shall follow, not rendering sentence for sentence, but setting forth in summary what he himself, in favor of his native place and of that most worthy prelate Alexander Sperelli, drew out at greater length, as is usual in such cases, and which therefore would beget weariness rather than profit for the learned reader if all were reported. The most illustrious Alexander Sperelli, bishop of Gubbio, who himself undertook this translation, is much praised for his learning, approved by his published Works, and especially for his signal charity toward the needy, in Ughelli's Italia sacra, and in Nicolò Coleti, who revised and enlarged it, where he is said to have presided over the church of Gubbio from the year 1644 to 1672. Now let us approach the matter itself. Five hundred and forty-two years had flowed by since the faithful Servant of Jesus Christ had departed to eternal rest, when Alexander Sperelli, bishop of Gubbio, a man most worthy of praise, determined solemnly to lay up the holy remains of his Predecessor in a more honorable place.

[54] Those who neglected to restore the Saint's chapel His sacred body, even then entire and incorrupt, was preserved in the cathedral church: but it had been deposited in a most ancient walnut chest, and clothed in so little seemly a dress that it could really not without blushing be exposed to the eyes of strangers, especially of princes and nobles, who sometimes turning aside to Gubbio were held by a pious desire of seeing such precious relics. There was added that, since the chapel in which it was laid up belonged to a family fallen into want, there was lacking to it not only an image of the Saint, but even whatever is required for the Sacrifice. For these reasons, and at the same time that he might acquire for himself a burial beneath the step of the altar, the most eminent Cardinal Carpegna , who at that time was administering the bishopric of Gubbio, since with signal diligence, piety, and vigilance he applied his mind to all things, judged that that family must be interdicted of its right, and interdicted it until it should have satisfied the decrees which he had published while visiting his diocese. When these were afterwards renewed by the most illustrious Monaldi , the most eminent Cardinal's successor, at present bishop of Perugia, they were never obeyed; whence it came about that in the aforesaid chapel no Sacrifice was offered for many years.

[55] [Alexander Sperelli the bishop deprives them of the right of patronage: and adorning it,] Hence the most illustrious Sperelli, when he visited his diocese for the first time, renewed the same decrees, a time being fixed for obeying under penalty of losing the right of patronage: and although he afterwards frequently permitted the execution to be deferred at the prayers of those whom it concerned, yet he could obtain nothing. At length, the terms of the law being observed, his vicar general deprived them of the right of patronage by a sentence passed, which was held lawful: and thus the chapel became vacant, which afterwards the same most illustrious bishop acquired for himself when going through his diocese a second time. And in this matter he especially rejoiced, because he considered that an occasion was offered to his pious desires of restoring both the magnificence and the offices in the aforesaid sacred place. And so by his command an ornament was wrought of walnut wood, which, being richly covered with gold and adorned with Solomonic columns, increased the beauty of the painting which he had had made by the skilful hand of the noble Sarmeo. In it is beheld St. John adorned in Pontifical vestments, who, with ministers standing by, is shown conferring the priesthood on St. Ubald, above whose head an angel holds a mitre in presage of the succession to that same bishopric. Below at the feet is seen the image of that same most illustrious Sperelli, in the manner of one supplicating the Saint; which for all time will be to our descendants a token and a perpetual memorial of his piety, religion, and beneficence.

[56] And when the most illustrious bishop perceived that the old chest was not altogether suited to the sacred body, he prepares a splendid casket and vestments he caused another of more recent workmanship to be made of the same walnut material, splendidly adorned with gold, which he wished to be lined within with cypress boards, and these to be clothed with red silken cloth; and to the chest itself he wished iron gratings with movable crystal to be fitted, that to persons of higher fortune that consecrated pledge might conveniently be shown. Likewise he took care that vestments should be made more splendid and more seemly than the former, which perhaps were the very ones with which it is probable that our Saint, out of love of preserving his humility even after death, had wished to be covered. After these things he determined to perform the translation of that heavenly treasure with the greatest magnificence he could, not being ignorant how greatly this honor shown on earth among men to those who rest in the bosom of his glory pleases God.

[57] Then the author narrates in a more lengthy discourse than is necessary for our purpose [he proclaims the translation first for the 7th, then for the 13th of September 1648.] that the most illustrious bishop pressed count Giovanni della Branca, who at that time held the supreme magistracy of Gubbio, that the city should contribute its labor and munificence to so pious a work: and that he, having first called together an assembly of the nobles, and then a general council of the people of Gubbio, with the unanimous consent of all assented to the bishop's requests, and decreed that the four quarters into which the city is divided should erect as many triumphal arches, two noble men being chosen in each quarter to preside over the work. He subjoins that the same bishop likewise commended pious munificence to the canons of his cathedral church and to the prefects of trade and of the crafts, stirred up the confraternities of the city and the religious Orders to celebrate that festivity, and bade all the clergy of his diocese be at Gubbio on the appointed day: and, lest anything should be lacking to so great a solemnity, invited the neighboring bishops and abbots to grace it with their presence. The day appointed for the translation was the VII of September, on which the Saint's feast is kept: but since the seven triumphal arches which had already been begun could not be finished by that day, and other hindrances occurred, that solemnity was deferred until the Sunday within the Octave, which was the XIII of the same month of September. Now let us resume Armanni's text:

[58] On the Saturday which preceded the day destined for the translation, [On the day before the translation the bishop adorns the sacred body and the chapel:] the bishop betook himself to the cathedral church, which the canons had taken care to adorn with a splendid and sumptuous array; and when he had ordered the casket of the venerable body to be opened, and had venerated it, he stripped it in their presence of its ancient vestments, that he might clothe it in new ones, more seemly and splendid, which he had munificently prepared. And so, manifestly disclosing the gladness of his heart by his devotion, he clothed the blessed body in a precious linen tunic, and put over it a chasuble woven of golden threads, and set upon the head a mitre of the same material: then he put on sandals and stockings of white silken cloth of Damascene work, likewise distinguished with gold, and added the other things which were needed. Then, when he saw a mean ring on the Saint's finger, drawing off his own, in which a gem of great price was set, he humbly gave it to his most glorious Predecessor; thus teaching all that whoever does not use riches with a mind grateful toward God, from whom he received them, is unworthy of possessing them. After this he covered the sacred face with a veil on which vessels and flowers were embroidered in gold with the needle, and covered the whole body with another silken veil of red color, likewise elegantly painted, and then, the picture and the chest being consecrated, returned to the episcopal palace.

[59] on the day itself, five foreign bishops and eight abbots accompanying After this the author again in a more lengthy style narrates many things which, to spare the reader, I partly set forth contracted into a summary, partly zealously pass over. On the day before the translation there came to Gubbio five bishops whom the most illustrious Sperelli had invited, namely Bernard Scala of Montefeltro, Antonio count Montecatini of Foligno, Onorato de Onorati of Urbania and of Sant' Angelo in Vado, Pacifico Trasi of Cagli, and Muzio Montano of Nocera. On the next day the prelate of Gubbio, with the aforesaid bishops and eight abbots besides, and also a great crown of noble men and the magistracy of the city, went to the cathedral church, on whose chief altar the Saint's body had been laid, and there, the most sacred sacrifice of the Mass being solemnly begun, after the Gospel was sung he himself, ascending the pulpit, delivered a panegyric oration to the people, in which, commending the exceeding virtues of St. John, he exhorted his flock to place their hope and confidence in the patronage of their most holy Bishop. This panegyric is extant, in the Italian tongue in which it was delivered, in Armanni, subjoined to the Translation which we are now describing. The Sacrifice being finished, they returned in the same order to the episcopal palace: but, the rest being omitted, let us report the translation itself.

[60] the sacred body most solemnly After midday, Vespers being solemnly sung, a beginning was made of the translation. The chest in which the sacred body was kept, six deacons, amid the pious murmurs and vows of a most numerous people, carried down from the high altar, the five foreign bishops laying their hands to it for veneration's sake, to the doors of the church: then as many abbots, all adorned with mitres, succeeded in the bishops' turn. And the order of the sacred procession was this: there went before the colleges of all the craftsmen, then the sacred confraternities, numerous and bearing lighted torches: there followed the religious Orders; then the rural and the urban clergy with the students of the seminary and the canons of St. Christina. After these trumpeters and a choir of musicians sang sacred hymns, and boys adorned in the habit of heavenly spirits went before the canons of the cathedral church, all of whom, as also the rest of the clergy, were clothed in chasubles and bore torches. Then the reliquary of the sacred body, covered with a precious veil in the manner we have said above, was borne beneath a canopy, which, the three remaining abbots, the five foreign bishops, and the noble men following, a band of soldiers surrounded on either side, and a great number of priests encircled with burning tapers. There succeeded the bishop of Gubbio, clad in his pontifical insignia, and at last the magistracy of that city closed the sacred procession, whom a numerous throng of nobles and an almost innumerable multitude of the people followed: and when they had come before the public palace, the sacred body was saluted with a huge discharge of artillery.

[61] And wherever that procession was led,

the fronts of the houses, adorned with tapestries and with various ornament, and the triumphal arches erected here and there, decorated the whole way: carried through the city all which the praised Armanni pursues in a lengthy discourse. Of the various inscriptions which he reports, I transfer one hither, which he delivers was prefixed to the arch erected in the quarter of St. Julian. There were seen on that arch statues of SS. John and Ubald, bishops of that same city, and in the midst of them the image of the city of Gubbio prostrate in the manner of one supplicating: above these was this epigraph:

To the divine John, of Lodi by country, a prelate worthy of his dignity, heavenly in sanctity, and divine now by no less integrity of body than formerly of mind.

The other the statue of the city set forth in these words:

The city of Gubbio, fortified by his watch, enriched by his remains, heaped with prodigies, suppliantly casts itself down.

The rest, lest I be too long, I pass over.

[62] When they had returned to the cathedral church, and he lays it in a new casket. the sacred body was carried into its own chapel, and, the hymn Te Deum being solemnly sung, was placed in the new casket, two epigraphs being added, tokens of the incorrupt body. On the right, namely, this was inscribed on the casket, drawn from psalm 15:

Thou wilt not give thy Holy One to see corruption.

But on the left this from the Gospel of St. John, chapter 21:

So I will have him to remain, till I come.

Then the same most illustrious Sperelli ordered a silver lamp to be hung up, which to this day, by his liberality, burns day and night, says Armanni.

* Ulderico Carpegna

* Orazio Monaldi

a la Salamonica*

cavaliere*

§ VII. The Decree of Alexander Sperelli, bishop of Gubbio, about the aforesaid elevation: certain benefits obtained at that time.

[ ] The bishop, teaching that the Saints must be honored, What we have hitherto reported about the solemn translation, or elevation, of the body is confirmed from the decree of the often-praised Alexander Sperelli, which, published on that occasion, Vincenzo Armanni subjoined to the Translation, whence we reprint it. We Alexander Sperelli, by the grace of God and of the Apostolic See bishop of Gubbio, etc. To all and singular who shall inspect, shall see, and likewise shall hear these our letters, present and to come, everlasting salvation in the Lord.

That the souls of the Saints, today reigning with Christ in the heavens, avail very much with God, and unceasingly intercede and pour forth perennial prayers for us who are still exiles from the fatherland and walking with feeble foot on this so perilous journey, must be firmly believed, especially if we not only venerate their bodies, which were living members of the Holy Spirit and are kept among us as most dear pledges of love, but also, so far as we can, honorably lay them up, as though we were setting a perpetual monument of our goodwill toward them.

[64] Since therefore in the last visitation of this our cathedral of Gubbio (God favoring) performed, we have found in a certain chapel built on the Epistle side near the pulpit the sacred body of the holy pontiff John of Lodi, formerly our predecessor in the same cathedral, after five hundred and forty-eight years, kept less fitly and decently, testifies that he adorned the chapel and the Saint's body, and that altar itself, nearly stripped of all, in need of what was necessary, by the office of our duty, and adhering to the decrees of our predecessors, we first commanded those whom it concerned to provide; and since after very many interpellations they by no means took care to fulfil it, at length we lawfully came against them to a sentence of privation of the right, if any they had, in the said chapel and altar, and from that day, by the inspiration of divine grace, we thought to adorn that altar and to elevate the sacred body more honorably, and accordingly, sparing no expense , we took care that both a picture and a gilded chest should be made.*

[65] and that he solemnly elevated it: And that our weakness might in this matter be wanting in no service to him whom we believe to be so great an Intercessor for ourselves and for the flock committed to us, we proclaimed and appointed also for the solemn translation the XIII day of September of the current year MDCXLVIII; there being invited to it, besides the clergy and people entrusted to our fidelity, the neighboring prelates and bishops, of whom, since they most gladly assembled for the pious action, the most illustrious and most reverend lords Onorato de Onorati bishop of Urbania and Sant' Angelo, Bernardino Scala bishop of Montefeltro, Friar Pacifico bishop of Cagli, count Antonio Montecatini bishop of Foligno, and Marius Montano de Cobellutiis bishop of Nocera, with their assistance and that of eight mitred abbots; in the morning we offered the Sacrifice to God with pontifical rite in honor of the holy predecessor John, of whose praises, so far as our ability allowed, we treated from the pulpit after the Gospel, and with the same assistance and with the concourse of an almost innumerable people, Vespers being solemnly sung, we accompanied the sacred body in procession and with solemn pomp through the chief and more distinguished parts of the city, and, having returned to the cathedral, the sun being now gone down, in the presence of the same most illustrious and most reverend bishops, of the chapter, of the abbots, of the magistracy and public officials, and of all the clergy of the city and diocese, and of a great multitude of the people, after devout prayers poured forth, we laid it in the altar built by us and in the chest made, to rest perpetually and to be venerated by the faithful of Christ.

[66] In faith of all and singular which, to the greater glory of God and for preserving and increasing devotion toward the holy prelate John in future times, an authentic instrument having been made to give assurance we have ordered these presents, confirmed by our hand, to be made, to be fortified with the greater seal which we use in such matters, and to be subscribed by our undersigned chancellor. Given from our cathedral of Gubbio, in the presence of the most illustrious lords counts Ruberto and Giovanni Antonio de Montecatini, and of the most illustrious and most excellent lords Alessandro Caffarino of Massa Carrara, Lieutenant, and Francesco Maria Ciarlino of Urbino, prætor of the city of Gubbio, witnesses called, employed, and asked, on the same XIII day of September, MDCXLVIII, Innocent by divine providence Pope X sitting, in the fourth year of his pontificate. Alexander bishop of Gubbio. Place of the ✠ Seal.

And I, Jacobus Massius of the Land of Montesanto of the diocese of Spoleto, public notary by Apostolic authority, and at present episcopal chancellor of Gubbio, being asked concerning the aforesaid, have subscribed and published, and have signed with my customary sign, being asked and required, to the praise of almighty God and of the most glorious St. John, etc.

Place of the ✠ Sign.

[67] Lastly, that I may set an end to this Commentary, I subjoin some miracles or benefits Benefits obtained at the time of the elevation. which are said to have been obtained on the occasion of this translation. The most illustrious Sperelli in his panegyric oration, which we said he delivered to the people on that day, among other things says to our purpose: As (St. John) left us signal examples of Christian virtues to be imitated, so he vehemently desires to obtain for us by his glorious merits a great heap of benefits: nay, he has already begun to obtain them, since some, full of joy, give assurance about signal benefits received during these days: whence we evidently understand that he deigns from heaven to accept and approve this our humble service. What these benefits were we learn from Armanni, whose words, rendered into Latin, I subjoin. And so, after he has reported the various discourses which the people exchanged about the solemnity of the translation, he thus continues: The people was heard with piety and wonder to narrate many things about the several benefits which the supreme Lord had conferred, by the patronage of his beloved John, upon various persons who had piously and faithfully implored the help of his clientage on this occasion: wherefore, that it may be plain how admirable is the goodness and mercy of God in his Saints, we shall report some here which the most illustrious bishop recognized as beyond doubt through the examination by his Vicar, which he most exactly instituted concerning them.

[68] Father Marcucci of Gubbio, abbot of the Regular Canons of St. Saviour, An abbot healed of the gout, that he might be present at the elevation: sixty-eight years of age, was violently afflicted night and day with a long-standing malady of the gout, when he learned that the bishop had invited all mitred abbots to be present at the solemnity of this translation: whence he grieved that on account of his infirm health he himself could not be present. Meanwhile one evening, lying down, with confidence and reverence he had recourse to the Saint. Waking in the morning he was astonished, finding that the sharpness of the pain, which before he had suffered sharply enough, had much abated: his prayers to St. John being therefore repeated, he grew better day by day, so that after five or six days, being wholly healed, he was able to be present with the other abbots, and in fact was present at the whole solemnity, not without the wonder of many who had known him a little before destitute of all power of walking.

[69] Thomas Barberio of Urbino, dwelling at Gubbio, lay afflicted with most violent pains of the chest, another's chest healed, another's walking restored. and being brought by them to the straits of death, with pious affection of heart began to implore the Saint's help, with such success that, all torment suddenly ceasing, he presently recovered to the utmost astonishment. Guido Baldo Cirinci of this city, when he had labored for more than five years with a bitter and incurable malady of the leg, by which he had utterly lost the power of walking, conceived a faith lively enough that God willed by the patronage of St. John to restore health to him, of which the physicians altogether despaired. To this end he determined to betake himself to the cathedral church by whatever means he could: whither, when after long efforts and incredible pains he had at length come, prostrate before the Saint's body, he suppliantly and piously besought the Saint's patronage; which indeed he experienced prodigiously, for he returned to his house unhurt and cheerful, and so remains even now, not without the wonder of all.

[70] Soundness granted to a nun brought to her last: In the monastery of the Convertite a certain nun, called sister Maria Vincenza Rogai, had for three years been so vexed by a horrible flux from her sores that only skin covered her bones. And so, when from the remedies which she had assiduously applied she had perceived no relief at all, being now anointed with the holy Oil, she was committed to the care of those who were wont to be at hand to persons in their last agony. But meanwhile, being informed of the impending translation of the body of St. John, from the inmost affection of her heart she commended herself to him, asking that he would obtain for her from God not entire health, but only so much strength that she might be able to reach from her bed to the table, or to the store-room of the refectory. And so on the very day of the solemnity she prayed the mother Prioress and then the nuns that they would carry her to the window, whence she might behold the sacred body: but since it was impossible to carry her elsewhere than to the oratory, they left her there, turned with all the affection of her heart to that same Saint: whom indeed she experienced as a patron powerful with God: for the translation was scarcely ended when she felt herself much better, then the flux of blood wholly ceased, on the same evening she walked with firm step, and afterwards marvellously obtained entire health.*

[71] another, contracted and dying, receives health and vigor: Sister Maria Innocenza Billi, a nun in the monastery of St. Benedict, from a loathsome infirmity, laboring with fevers, had been brought to her last, for she had already been fortified with extreme Unction, and had often been believed to have rendered her spirit to her Creator. To her thus languishing and dying it came into her mind to implore with great affection the help of St. John, as also she did: and at the same time her

parents, a vow being made to the Saint for her soundness, took care that a Sacrifice should be offered by a priest in the chapel where his sacred body rests. A thing happened wonderful beyond measure, for at that very moment in which the most sacred Sacrifice was being celebrated, the use of speech, of which she had been deprived, being recovered, she began to be better, and after two days rose from her bed as sound as if she had never felt any evil. And this healing was the more marvellous, both because before she took to her bed she had been utterly weakened in her limbs, and walked so bent that she could not even slightly raise herself, and also because the physicians themselves confessed that so sudden a cure must be ascribed not to their own remedy, but to a higher and stronger one.

[72] a malady of the foot suddenly removed: A certain lady of Naples, Caterina Paulelli by name, had hurt her left foot with a piece of wood on which she had leaned as she came down from her bed: in it she suffered the sharpest torments, which, growing dreadfully worse little by little, became so intolerable that she could by no means rest. And when, thus afflicted, she was in anguish and sleepless until the ninth hour of the night, the thought came upon her of invoking St. John of Lodi; and she invoked him with all the devotion she could; and without delay she found that presently all her pains had vanished, and that in the morning she was free from all her malady.

[73] The lady Camilla, daughter of the late count Vittorio Chiocci, a countess near to death recovers: wife of the lord Ludovico Biscaccianti, was confined to her bed by a most grievous infirmity, and was disabled in all the limbs of her whole body, of which she could move none; when, a new and most grievous flux of catarrh coming on, she suffered delirium for ten days and as many nights, by which her weakened strength could in no way be restored either by sleep or by rest; so that now no sign of life, no hope remained. Yet it seemed good to her husband to commend her to St. John of Lodi. And so, when two Masses were being celebrated in his chapel, at that same time, wonderful to say, she presently felt herself much better, and, still notably recovering day by day, gives hope that the Saint will testify by the gift of entire health that the labors were acceptable to him which the same lord Ludovico bestowed in erecting a triumphal arch.

[74] There are seen in the chapel of St. John votive offerings hung up in huge number, various votive offerings hung up for benefits obtained. and daily some new ones are hung up for the benefits which, both at the time of the translation and afterwards, the divine Goodness has bestowed and still bestows upon the faithful through the Saint's patronage: but let it suffice us to have reported those which were asserted by those on whom they were conferred, and, an oath being interposed and in the customary manner, at the request of the fiscal proctor of the episcopal court, were examined, and whose Processes have been reported in the Acts of this chancery.

nay, repererimus*

* nay, 542

perhaps parcentes*

In Italian la credenza in refettorio*

LIFE

By an anonymous author, the Saint's disciple

From an ancient mutilated parchment codex, formerly of the archive of Vincenzo Armanni, now of the public archive of Gubbio.

John of Lodi, from Prior of Fonte Avellana bishop of Gubbio in Umbria (S.)

BHL Number: 4409

By an Anonymous author.

THE AUTHOR'S PROLOGUE.

The author sets forth why he writes. It is now long ^c since you, sons of the holy church of Gubbio, ceased not to importune my littleness, that I should attempt to write something for you about the life of our Prelate now dying in the Lord, namely of St. John of Lodi ^d: nor do you think that the tongue should be silent about him through whom you relate that frequent divine miracles shine forth for you; that, since it is not given you to be watered by the doctrine of one surviving *, the grace which is known may profit for your edification; and that, while you are said to behold the sheep of another Jacob, you may, as at the sight of his rods, be able to beget spiritual sons for the Lord ^e. For the rest, that this burden which you enjoin upon me exceeds my strength I do not judge you yourselves to doubt; since indeed I am poor in knowledge, empty of sanctity; and moreover because, in proportion to the greatness of his merits, it has befallen me to know few things about him. But since I seem, by the Lord's bounty, to have a certain little drop of the typical silver, and ought not to fail to offer it for the fabric of his tabernacle, which is you, trusting in his mercy who once made dumb animals eloquent, since I dare not resist your commands, and those of my lords, namely of the servants of God with whom I dwell, and lastly the orders of the lord John the Apostolic legate, a man in all things most religious, his successor in the episcopate ^f, behold, as it were stammering, I begin to obey. But be it yours to obtain for me from heaven by your prayers that I may be able to bring forth something worthy about his life.

ANNOTATIONS.

read superstitis*

CHAPTER I.

The Saint's pious boyhood and adolescence: his austere life in the world and works of mercy.

Following virtue from boyhood, amid the studies of letters John of Lodi therefore from his very boyhood, as is said, lived praiseworthily, and, a young recruit of Christ, was already then contending, lest he should degenerate from the lineage of regenerating grace: for whereas that age is wont to flow unbridled through the slippery places of morals, he, as a charioteer taught by God, was compelling the horses of his carnal senses to walk by the narrow path of heavenly discipline, and before he had by chance knowledge of the hermitage he was already imitating the eremitical life; and while he was scarcely coming to manhood in bodily age, by his unstained life he displayed a certain spiritual hoariness, and there could deservedly agree with him what is said by Wisdom about the wise man: The understanding of a man is gray hairs, and a spotless life is old age. Indeed, when the boy, being of sharp wit as one may suppose, had passed through the gate of letters, and had come to the flowering thickets of the liberal arts, which by handling incautiously many thousands of men, alas, have not only been wounded but plunged irremediably even into hell; he, like a heavenly living creature, full of eyes within and round about ^a, so circumspectly separated the useful from the noxious that no hurt, the Lord guarding him, wounded his soul. For he laid up in the storehouse of his mind the senses of words, the forces of sentences, the genders and cases: but where wanton, unchaste, and soul-damaging things met him, like Ulysses the Scyllæan song ^b, being fastened to the cross of Christ, he passed by with deaf ear.

[3] Nor yet did he omit to gather the thyme, while he so greatly despised the poisonous aconite: and now that epithalamium of the spouse of Christ, which perhaps he had not yet read, he keeps his soul clean, and instils into others he belched forth in deed as he ruminated it: I sleep, saying, and my heart watches. For he slept to trifles, since he did not cease to watch over serious things. Whence, his fellow-students knowing his so wondrous and so unheard-of purpose, they several times made game of him about it, when they had come to those foul and buffoonish passages in which those books abound: for they said one to another: If thou canst draw such a word from John's mouth, know that thou shalt carry off such a prize from me. With certain roundabout devices therefore he was beset, as with nets, to bring it forth: but he, looking round like another Argus ^c, frustrated all their approaches, nor was he prone to slip into the dregs of uncleanness, whose feet of mind the Lord had already set upon a rock, and who, having purposed with Lot to strive toward the mountains, disdained with his wife to look back at Sodom ^d, making little of being mocked or despised by his fellows for this, but rejoicing, now a follower of the Apostles, to suffer reproach for Christ ^e; nay, he already knew how to grieve with them, and, that he might gain them for Christ, to stretch out the hand of holy exhortation.

[4] For whomsoever of them he had learned to be wallowing in the obscenities of the world, the love of chastity. now this one, now that, he met apart, and busied himself to separate them by holy goads from the mire of vices, and to unite them to the Lord; and he foreshowed that he would be a great ox of Christ's threshing-floor, who as so small a bullock had already begun to thresh it ^f. For what else does one threshing do than separate the grains from the chaff? And the spiritual grains are the souls to be laid up in the heavenly barns, which he indeed sets apart from the chaff who separates them from the unworthy wrappings of their iniquities. For hence it is said by the Lord through the Prophet: If thou wilt separate the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth. For the world is vile; because what is it but a certain house of a man on pilgrimage? But souls are precious to the Lord, because they, namely as living stones, are to be placed in the building of the heavenly Jerusalem. He therefore who by holy preaching separates precious souls from the vile world becomes the mouth of the Lord; because he performs that work which he himself through both Testaments cries out to be done. For the Apostles were already foreshowing that they would do this work through the world, when, following the Lord through the cornfields, hungry, they rubbed the ears in their hands: and what is assuredly the work of all who imitate Christ and Christ's Apostles unfeignedly, this that holy Man was already prefiguring that he would work both first in his priorate and afterwards in his episcopate.

[5] But whoever hearest him thus already panting after spiritual things, by no means judge him negligent about bodily offices of piety also. He serves the sick: he leads an austere life. For when he had learned that anyone was sick, he presently took care to visit him, and, if he needed care, to attend him and to hang upon his nod, and studies to show the solicitude of a pious mother and of a faithful client ^g. But whoever wishes to know in how great extremity of food and of covering he already then lived, and how, treading the worldly sea, he had already, like another Peter ^h, imitated Christ, will not with difficulty be able to conjecture it, if it does not weary him to know the heap alone of his bed. For a certain man showed to one of our number, beside a little basilica, both the place ⁱ and the bedding: Under this litter ^k, he said, that John of Lodi was wont to lie down, and to prop his neck on this pillow — namely showing the ground and a stone. He therefore who used a stone for a bolster and the bare ground for a couch, to how great meanness in clothing, to how great frugality in food must he be thought to have applied himself? Let it suffice both that I have narrated and that you, dearest ones, have learned these few things about his life before he took the sacred habit.

ANNOTATIONS.

The fable of the Poets about Ulysses is well known, whom, that he might escape the Sirens, sea monsters, they fable to have stopped the ears of his companions with wax, and to have bound himself to the mast of the ship, lest, being charmed by their song, they should cast themselves headlong into the sea.

CHAPTER II.

His private life in the Hermitage of Fonte Avellana.

[ ] Admitted into the hermitage of Fonte Avellana For after he had, with as great guardianship over the rest of his senses as we have said about his mouth, and having attained it by various exercises of piety, passed the times of a youth ^a, and had not slightly sharpened the sickle of his wit for pruning the vine of Christ in the Egypt of the world, the fervent Workman presently hastened to the hermitage ^b, and took up the sacred garment of monastic profession: whose harshness most of the hermits began to distrust that a man so lean and so bloodless could endure; since they remembered that many hitherto both vigorous and corpulent had tried it in vain. But in a short time he so far undertook every institution of eremitical difficulty that he could not bear to be second to any in all sacred observance: nay rather, since he had been wont to go before the other Brethren with the steps of the virtues, it seemed to him that he had fallen when others followed.

[7] For the custom in this hermitage is that the Brethren who remain in cells far from the oratory should regularly macerate themselves with sharper fasts; he is preeminent in the observance of the institute, in writing books, because namely, although they are continually occupied with divers disciplines of holy exercise, yet they are not so greatly burdened with the length of the synaxis ^c. But he, since he adhered as usual close to the basilica, and was as a pillar for the ecclesiastical burden, yet did not nourish his little body with more abundant food ^d. Nay, he scarcely ever bore to rest from the divers works of his hands, when it was permitted to breathe for some intervals from the ecclesiastical duties; but either he wrote books with his own hand, or corrected exactly those written by others, or, dictating, set forth letters to be sent to divers places ^e: whose exhortatory words flashed upon whomsoever, presently kindled their minds upward to God, nor could they fail to set on fire those whom they touched, since they proceeded burning from a kindled coal. When therefore he added this burden of so great labor to himself of his own accord, who would not notice how much heavier his fast became for him? But he made light of all these things as very small; because he panted from the marrow toward the end of the holy course, knowing that, as the Apostle testifies, he is not crowned except he strive lawfully: and as the Lord says: not, He who has begun well, but, He who shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved.

[8] Whence deservedly there is directed to him that blessing from the heavenly Father in fervor of spirit, which is given to Issachar by Jacob: Issachar shall be a strong ass lying down between the borders; he saw rest that it was good, and the land that it was excellent; he bowed his shoulder to carry, and became a servant under tribute ^f. For who is that strong ass but any Christian of this exile prepared for the burden of every good work? who namely can say with the Prophet: I am become as a beast before thee, and I am always with thee. And what is it to lie down in life between the borders, but at the end of this life to await eternal rest for temporal labor? Whence in the Apocalypse it is said: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord: from henceforth now, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors. For while one lives here, it is not reasonable that there should be ceasing in the Lord's vineyard: whence also there follows: He saw rest that it was good, and the land that it was excellent; he bowed his shoulder to carry.

[9] For who, having the eyes of faith, would not willingly now in this land of the dying undergo for a moment the burden of good work, and in the offices of charity: that in the Land of the living he may enjoy blessed rest for ever? Hence also there follows: He became a servant under tribute: for what is it to be a servant under tribute, but for a man with fervent spirit to busy himself that he may become all things to all? Who, says the Apostle, is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I am not on fire? I have become all things to all men. He who can say these things apostolically is able to expound what it is to be a servant under tribute. To these things I and those like me do not aspire, because we only smell the apples of the virtues, but by no means, as though our teeth were dulled, set them in ^g. But that heavenly Creature of whom we speak had already been wont to be such that he made little of being already a sacrifice, while he strove wholly to become a holocaust ^h.

[10] His humility and effectiveness in fraternal correction: Whence I judge that this too will profit those who shall hear it, if I relate what he was wont to do when at some time a quarrel had arisen between him and another Brother. For the holy and wise Man, ever hungering for spiritual gain, now secretly, now openly, sometimes meeting this one, sometimes that, as the holy Spirit poured it into him, was wont either to reprove them for their vices, or to rebuke them for their negligences: which sometimes indeed turned out prosperously, but sometimes, as is usual, turned out ill. For it happened several times that the one rebuked, being angry, not only rejected the medicine, but even leapt upon the Physician himself with biting words. But he, that he might cure the sick man, turned to another antidote: for he would prostrate himself wholly to the ground at the feet of the angry man ⁱ, and would often cry out that the other had been provoked by his own fault: nor did he suffer himself to rise from the earth until that man, his stomach now cooled, should lay upon him whatever penance he pleased. Whose mind, I ask, was ever so iron and so inflexible that, being overcome by so huge a humility, it would not grow softer than lead or wax? At length therefore the man rebuked fell to the earth after the man who rebuked, and justly uttered: My fault; which he had learned from another's humility: nor did the sick man now scorn to drink the medicine, biting though it was, which he saw the healthy Physician had tasted for him. So sometimes the ice which the north wind hardened is melted by the south wind: so what the sluggish [ ] could not do, the [ ] accomplished ^k.

[11] For since he panted from the marrow to drink the chalice of the Lord's passion, his zeal for suffering, and no one offered it to him though he demanded it, alternating himself through divers torments, he became his own cupbearer. Hence it is that when frosty winter bristled so harshly that it was little enough for us to wrap our bodies in a fourfold garment, he stood barefoot through all the synaxes in the choir ^l night and day, or, because he did not wish to disclose this, remained in shoes only, without stockings ^m; or, what is still more merciless, spread little stones in his shoes, and stood with his soles somewhat soothed and somewhat cooled on such material: besides, if a reasonable cause compelled him at that time to ride anywhere, he set his bare soles upon the iron stirrup ⁿ. But against Nabuzardan, namely the ignominious prince of the cooks ^o, he waged so implacable a war that sometimes, as will appear in what follows, he scarcely deigned to speak with him after two days. For he knew that the walls of Jerusalem had burned by his raging madness, and he feared for his own typical city what he saw had befallen so great a metropolis.

[12] his rigid For it is written that Nabuzardan, prince of the cooks, destroyed the walls of Jerusalem. For what is designated by the prince of the cooks but an incontinent belly, to whose bidding the cooks diligently obey? And Jerusalem is interpreted Vision of peace, by which either the whole Church at once or each Christian soul is understood: because namely it both sees its peaceful Redeemer by faith, and rejoices that it will see him in vision. And the walls of this city are the choirs of divers virtues, which namely the prince of the cooks destroys; because unless the inborn concupiscence of the belly be solicitously resisted, all the building of this city is laid low. For in five ways he hurls his torches into it, that either by all or by one he may be able to burn it up. When the first-formed man, alas, knew not how to beware of this, into what precipice he plunged himself and all his lineage, would that it had befallen us not to know: for when he tasted the forbidden apple, he condemned himself with all his posterity into this exile. Against this disease therefore the heavenly Teacher and physician Christ, showing the antidote, presently after his baptism consecrated fasting; as if a physician should say to a sick man: Contraries are cured by contraries. That the Fatherland therefore may be recovered, let fasting be loved; for we return thither by fasting whence we are exiled by food.

[13] Since therefore it is written: The eyes of a wise man are in his head; fasts, John directed all the gaze of his mind toward Christ his head; nor did he think it enough for himself if he tamed himself with fasts according to the measure of others. For since the custom here is for the Brethren at the beginning of each Lent to continue three days on bread and water only [p], he was accustomed to touch no human food except on the last day of the three. Which I learned, not from another telling me, but I myself detected it, being separated by a small interval in one cell with him [q]. But since he wished to hide this too, as he was wont many of his virtues, he could not conceal it from me when I explored it: whence it may not undeservedly be conjectured that the like was done by him through nearly all the forty years [r] which he passed in this hermitage; and moreover that he who was wont so to pass three days passed many two-day periods, and likewise many single days, without food.

[14] I remember that he shut himself up in the heat [s] almost in the Dog-days themselves, his ordered love of mortification. when from any unspeakable murderer a carina [t] could scarcely be canonically wrung, and that he did not come out thence until the whole course of forty days had passed in murderer's fashion [u]. But when on days of relaxation he sat with the Brethren at the table which he had approached, and precious dishes, or such as were pleasant to the palate, were sometimes set before him, some occasion being found, he sometimes left them untouched: but the other cheaper things he used so moderately

that, according to the Apostle's persuasion, he was not undeservedly thought a living victim. For he had not passed by with closed ear what is commanded by the Lord in the law about the turtle-dove to be immolated; that the head, namely, should not be wholly broken off from the neck, but only twisted back to the little wings. For in the sacrifice of the almighty Lord we ought to be witnesses, yet so that the head be twisted back to the little wings, that is, the mind to the virtues. Because namely our mind must indeed be cut off from carnal delight, but must not be cut off from carnal care: so that both the vices may perish and yet strength may suffice for performing the virtues; which to do is the art of so huge a wisdom that to many, in whose number I still am, it seems as it were impossible. But John, who was now nearly wholly, to speak according to that saying of the Wise Man, smooth and round, had already nearly turned this into nature, so that neither did the little ass of his body utterly fall down under the burden of the sacred exercise, nor yet did it presume to kick against its master.

ANNOTATIONS.

p Bl. Peter Damian in Little Work 15, On the Institutes of his Congregation, chapter 6, has these words to our purpose: Nor do we plainly pass over in silence that at the beginning of each Lent all the monks, and also the laymen, strictly keep a three days' fast: so that those who cannot altogether restrain themselves from taking food live content nevertheless with bread only and water. And what those Lents were he explains in the same place, namely those which precede either the Lord's Nativity or holy Easter.

q Here the author shows himself contemporary with and a fellow-monk of the Saint. Further, that the hermits of Fonte Avellana were wont to dwell two and two in the cells Bl. Peter Damian testifies more than once in the praised Little Work; I adduce one passage hither. In chapter 18 he says: If two Brethren dwell together in a cell, let one always preside, the other obey, namely according to the command of the common Prior. But if either of them be a novice, let them have leave to converse once or twice in the week after vespers: but after he has ceased to be a novice, they shall thenceforth cease from mutual conversation.

r Go to the Commentary, number 17 and following.

s Cauma, caumatis is heat or a more intense warmth, as may be seen in Du Cange in the Glossary.

t Carina and Carena is a fast or penance of forty days, once wont to be imposed on penitents, as the praised Du Cange proves by many examples. I here bring forward one passage from book 4, Epistle 17, or Little Work 40, of Bl. Peter Damian, where, writing about a certain penitent priest, he says: He came to his bishop (of Urbino) Teuzo by name, of holy memory, in my presence also, as a demander of penance. To whom, the dignity of his priestly office being presently taken away, when the summer heat was then blazing and the time of the harvests to be reaped was at hand, we enjoined, according to the rule of the carina, the enclosure of prison custody. And so the author of the Life by that phrase signifies that the Saint voluntarily underwent those troubles which murderers hardly endure in penalty for their crimes.

u That is, as if he were paying the penalty of homicide.

i.e. quanto*

add sicut*

* i.e. Adam

CHAPTER III.

He enjoys the gift of tears: being consecrated priest, he is taken by Bl. Peter Damian as a companion of his labors: he becomes Prior of Fonte Avellana: in a time of famine he succors the poor.

[ ] Endowed with the gift of tears For that soul had learned, like another Achsah, to minister to him who presided over it so discreetly that, asking of the heavenly Father a watering above and below, it obtained it. For thus, as sacred History reports, we read that Achsah the daughter of Caleb, sitting upon an ass, said to her father: Thou hast given me a south land, join also a watered land. Her father therefore gave her a watering above and a watering below ^a. For Achsah sits upon an ass, because the soul presides over the irrational motions of its flesh; which sighing asks of the father a watered land, because with great groaning the grace of tears is to be sought from our Creator. Her father therefore gave her a watering above and a watering below: for the soul receives the watering below when by weeping it dreads the punishments of hell: but it receives the watering above when it afflicts itself in tears from desire of the heavenly kingdom; and she who first weeps lest she be led to punishment afterwards begins to weep most bitterly because she is far from the kingdom. And the grace of both these waterings John had received from heaven to such a degree that scarcely a day flowed by for him in which he did not most abundantly flood himself with it.

[16] he daily weeps for his sins, though few and light; This assuredly it is necessary for those to hear, and, having heard, to busy themselves to imitate, who, when they come like me to the sacred habit foul with many iniquities, take no care to ask of God the laver of tears, and as soon as they clothe themselves with the covering of the mystical Tau ^b, presume themselves united to the companies of the Cherubim: as though a stained garment needed not water for washing, or the rust of a vessel a file. But that John thought otherwise about this he certainly left in no ambiguity to sensible men; who indeed, although he put on the sacred habit innocent, yet never ceased to baptize himself with floods of tears. For of how great purity he then was, the word of Peter Damian himself ^c is a witness; who, when he was about to consecrate him a monk, and had examined him about his sins, as is the custom, could according to the censure of the canons impose on him a penance of not even one day. This that so great man, who both by the purity of his life was a star and by the brightness of his wisdom was a lamp of the dark world — this, I say, he related to one of us not without contempt of himself; for he who perhaps thought it necessary for himself now only to grow in wings, was forced to fear lest he should still cling to the birdlime ^d.

[17] Let all the world through the four climates hear these things, which is proposed for imitation. let the West hear, let the East likewise not be ignorant,

let the Scythian nations learn this, let the Garamantes learn it; lest they lack the tunic which the blood of the Lamb has washed ^e, and let them be ashamed that they will be naked before that Judge, nor can they repair what they take no pains to keep ^f, either now to wipe away their stains through fountains of tears, or now the wise woman weaves the twofold garment and the pious coverings ^g, or in the fuller's stead gives the spotted things to grow white, whoever, by covering all these things, a household band, that so, adorned with these, it may go to meet its husband Christ when he comes.

[18] That so great man therefore, knowing that he shone with so great brightness in the divine eyes, [He is consecrated priest, and taken as a companion of labors by Bl. Peter Damian:] judged it a wickedness not to lift him upward through the sacred grades; nor did he think that he ought to be left unadorned whom he knew to walk covered with the typical garments of Aaron ^h. As quickly as possible therefore he was zealous to advance him to the priesthood, and to lead ⁱ him with himself hither and thither, wherever he himself, like a lamp of the world, was wont to run. In which fellowship indeed it is not easy to say how much the one must be believed to have profited from the other; and deservedly I should call these two souls those two cows which, when they carry the Ark of the divine law from the land of the Philistines, go by a straight road to Bethsames, that is, to the house of the sun ^k; though the calves low after them, that is, though those near in blood cry out, yet they know not * how to turn aside from the road to Bethsames, in whose mind the beauty of the eternal Sun shines. For although hitherto each was already fervent in the love of almighty God, yet from that companionship, like two Seraphim, they must be thought to have flamed each from the other's ardor.

[19] After the happy death of that man ^l, since he was already subject to the priestly office, after whose death he applies himself to contemplation and to works of charity. he busied himself now to be free almost daily for the sacred mysteries of the Masses, in such a way that he by no means omitted his former exercises: so he sat at the Lord's feet with Mary, yet so as not to forget frequent ministry with Martha ^m: so he was caught up into the lap of the fair Rachel that he did not shrink from the embrace of bleary-eyed Leah ⁿ; and so he tended from the active life into contemplation ^o to be warmed, that he returned from the contemplative into the active to warm others, that namely, being inebriated, he might inebriate others [p], being kindled, might set on fire. O how rare in the world are vessels of this dignity! For I do not believe that they are lacking to the churches of Christ set in this exile; but they desire to lie hidden, lest namely by carelessness they lose their covers, and so from clean become unclean. For it is written in the Law: A vessel which has no cover is reckoned among the unclean [q]. For what is the cover of a rational vessel but the guarding of all the senses of the inward and the outward man, which if anyone does not always apply to them, death enters through them to the soul by crimes. Whence it is said by the Prophet: Death is come up through our windows; it is entered into our houses. For the rest, this divine vessel of which we speak knew not how to lay aside its cover even for a moment, and therefore the Lord deigned to turn him into a bowl, when he determined through him to give his Church wisdom to drink.

[20] In the time following indeed he is elected Prior by the common unanimity of the Brethren [r], and, He is set as Prior over the Congregation: that he may preside over them, is unavoidably compelled. Which burden, although out of huge humility he wished to decline it, yet, since he dreaded the divine judgment concerning himself, he does not presume to despise; knowing namely that, since he was fit to bear it, if he obstinately spurned undergoing it, he would have to render an account to God [s] for all whom he could gain for Christ into the number of the Lord's citizens: but that if, as a faithful and prudent servant set over the Lord's household, he should be zealous to dispense to it the measure of wheat in due time, he would attain after his labor to that Gospel Well done [t]. Weighing therefore in the balance of his mind on this side the punishment, on that the crown, he consents to undertake over his Brethren rather a clientage than a rod, service rather than lordship, desiring more to be loved than to be feared, coveting in mind rather to profit than to preside: ruminating diligently, like a clean animal [u], namely this, that he will be greater in the kingdom of heaven who now rejoices to serve his Brethren more subject; imitating namely him who, though he was the Creator and Lord of all, yet deigned to descend even to this vale of misery; and not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a redemption for his servants.

[21] in which office, a famine having arisen in Italy, From this time therefore, since he could no longer lie hidden as hitherto, he was gradually compelled to make himself public, and what he already was by divine grace in secret came forth into the open. For, the straits of famine bristling at that time [x], and an innumerable throng of nations flowing together from every side to this place to ask relief, he began to give to everyone that asked, according to the Gospel, and to think nothing for himself or for his Brethren about the morrow: nor did the stream of his benevolence cease to flow until what might be given was almost failing. For the granaries of this place were all exhausted by his manifold largesses; so that he was compelled to go abroad into Apulia to buy wheat, that he might be able to escape the evil of famine. The abundance also of the seasoning itself came down to a daily pound. And although in the hermitage he was so bountiful, yet scarcely ever going out did he use to walk with an empty purse; and if it happened to fail, he began not to spare even his garments. For there still survive those who remember that he, when he had gone out to visit the farm cells, returned to the hermitage without his monastic tunic [y], and, forgetting to wrap the heavenly covering of the Tau [z] about his body, while he was anxious from the marrow to imprint it on his heart, caring nothing to displease fools whose eyes are set in the heel, while his own eyes, as of one truly wise, were fixed in his head [aa].

[22] he shone with signal charity toward the wretched. He attended perhaps to what Sindonius [bb], what Peter the Publican [cc], what that Paulinus of Nola [dd] had done, who namely, when all their goods had first been paid out to the poor, nay to Christ, afterwards sold themselves into slavery, that they might be able more amply to relieve the want of the needy. He meditated moreover that, as water extinguishes fire, so alms extinguish sins. And that saying: Turn not away thy face from any poor person; for so it shall come to pass that the face of God shall never be turned from thee. And again that: Alms delivers from all sin and from death, and suffers not the soul to go into darkness. When therefore to these arrows of words he added the coals of the aforesaid examples, he judged that he had done little while he had not yet reached the measure of those men by spending himself. Thus far let it suffice to have spoken about his works of piety, namely those which he did about bodies.

ANNOTATIONS.

p Read debriaret, which is used for inebriaret, and here, as often elsewhere, is taken metaphorically in a good sense, so as to signify to fill others with spiritual sweetness.

q Numbers 19, verse 15, in the Vulgate is: The vessel that hath no cover, nor binding over it, shall be unclean.

r In the second Life, to be printed below, at number XI the Saint is said to have succeeded Bl. Peter Damian immediately; on which matter see the Commentary, §§3 and 4.

s What you see enclosed in brackets had to be supplied, for in the codex of Gubbio after civium there presently follows: si autem, as is noted in the margin of our copy.

t Read, if you please, chapter 25 of Matthew.

u That is, frequently considering: and he alludes to chapter XI of Leviticus, where for the legal cleanness of an animal it is required that it chew the cud.

x This seems to be that famine of which Berthold, priest of Constance, a contemporary writer, in the Appendix to the Chronicle of Hermann the Lame, writes thus at the year 1085: So great a famine held nearly all Italy … that men ate not only all unclean things, but even human flesh. Carlo Sigonio in On the Kingdom of Italy, book 9, binds it to the year 1084, saying: In that year also the dearth in Italy was so grievous that — what seems a wickedness to say — for want of food many mothers, hunger urging them,

raged against their children. Perhaps that famine fell in both years.

y Colobium here is a tunic without sleeves, which was the outer garment of the hermits of Fonte Avellana, as Hippolyte Helyot, author of the History of the monastic and Religious Orders, published in French without a name, sets them forth, tome 5, page 285.

z What kind of garment he here designates I do not sufficiently perceive: yet I suspect it was that which obtained the name of scapular: for that they used a scapular we have from the often-praised Life of Bl. Peter Damian, where in chapter 3, number 15, it is said: When he (Bl. Peter Damian) was once about to set out with his master, he was bidden … to put on a softer scapular.

aa He alludes to the words of Ecclesiastes, chapter 2, verse 14: The eyes of a wise man are in his head: the fool walketh in darkness.

bb We must read Sidonius; he seems to designate St. Sidonius Apollinaris, bishop of Clermont in Gaul, distinguished for charity toward the wretched, whose Acts have been illustrated in tome 4 of August at the 23rd day, on which he is venerated.

cc Of this Saint there was treatment in our Work, tome 2 of January, at the 20th day: where he is said to have distributed his wealth, and the very garments with which he was clothed, to the poor, and at last to have sold himself, that he might impart the price of himself also to the needy.

dd The Acts of St. Paulinus, bishop of Nola, have been given among us in tome 4 of June, at the 22nd day: where in the Appendix see what is disputed about the Vandal servitude, which some believe this Saint underwent out of charity.

supply se esse*

i.e. ipsi*

read nesciunt*

read ne qua*

CHAPTER IV.

The Saint's remaining virtues: his constancy in preserving the rigor of the Rule.

[ ] Assiduously intent upon prayer and chastisements of the body. For I could wish to touch upon his spiritual matters summarily; if indeed it be granted me from heaven in some measure to aspire to it. For that heavenly Creature availed more, by the Lord's bounty, to raise himself to the things above than I, unworthy, suffice to disclose in words; and since I scarcely creep toward imitating him, I scarcely mutter toward narrating him. For, to pass over the nocturnal and daily synaxes ^a of the regular monasteries instituted by blessed Benedict ^b, to pass over all things added over and above the synaxes of the monasteries or hermitages, which he was so greatly zealous to pay daily to the Lord that he thought it a wickedness to pass over even a syllable of them; who could worthily explain how acceptable to God, or how profitable to souls, it could be that he scarcely bore to let any day flow by without running through in chanting for the living and the dead a whole Psalter or more ^c? that he was accustomed almost daily to apply himself to stolen prayers, and to water his bed with streams of tears; that, having washed his face in such a constant fountain, he was wont to apply himself to the sacred offices of the Masses, and again in the midst of them to slay himself with other floods of tears: that now by making prostrations ^d, sometimes by stretching out his arms ^e, he poured forth to the Lord the incense not only of praise and prayer with his mouth, but from all his members, as from a certain censer, the odor of his suffering: that frequently through the length of seventy or more psalms continuously he rejoiced to be beaten by himself with the harsh scourges of the whip, naked in body ^f, that he might be able to be an imitator of the Apostles and of the Lord Saviour himself. That, as he himself drank the bowl of the divine word, so he panted to give it to drink to the Lord's household at home and abroad.

[24] But lest the crafty enemy should be able to creep in from any quarter to the treasures of so great virtues, against pride and by his wonted efforts to bring loss upon him — which be far from it — he fortified all his Decapolis, or Heliopolis ^g as I should call it, with a rampart of humility, and had hedged it round, full of eyes on every side, like another Argus ^h. For the swelling of the arrogant is evident, which is divided into four kinds ⁱ; when namely one either judges that he has good of himself, or weighs it as given him indeed from heaven, but for his own merits, or glories that he has in himself what he has not. By which as by certain ladders the malignant enemy strives to creep in to the goods of any Christian, that he may be able to lay waste the desirable things of his virtues. But while his crafty malignity, lying in wait, pressed upon the holy Man to contrive these devices, he, being as it were the nose of the spouse set on the citadel of Lebanon ^k, had learned to smell them from afar, and, being manfully girt with divine arms, to frustrate them at a distance. For when the good things of his virtues were urged upon him by that one to attribute to himself, he was wont to say with the Apostle: Not that we are sufficient of ourselves, as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God. And likewise: It is God who works in us both to will and to accomplish, according to his good will. And that: What hast thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received? And with James: Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration.

[25] But if he whispered to him that he had received them for his own merits, with humility he knew how to object to him that Apostolic saying: Not by the works of justice which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us. And that: Who hath first given to him, and recompense shall be made him? For of him and by him and in him are all things: to him be glory for ever and ever, Amen. But if he pressed upon him with the mass of his virtues, so as to hold him back as it were sufficient already from their increase, he had been taught to sing with the Psalmist: But I am needy and poor. And again: I am a sojourner and a pilgrim. Lastly, when the shameless enemy strove to lift him up in heart, like that Pharisee, so that from the lofty citadel of his virtues he should prefer himself to his Brethren, he was not ignorant, like that Publican, to bring back before his eyes on this side the blemishes of his faults, which had ever crept upon him as a man, and on that side to set the lofty merits of the holy Fathers ^l, so that, while he feared that there was in himself what displeased him in others, he might attend to how he could grow to better things, so that what the enemy had prepared for exalting him became for him matter for humbling himself.

[26] Wouldst thou know, hearer, how he counted himself as nothing, nay how greatly he preferred others to himself in his own opinion? If at any time some occasion brought to us pilgrim monks, as is the custom, he arms himself. presently he, being sagacious, would attend in order to their manners and order, and if he recognized anything in them to be imitated, it was at once seized by him, as if it had been offered from heaven. For he did not then account himself Prior, while he perceived anyone better in any virtue whatever; but he became a disciple to those to whom he seemed a master to others: and that typical peacock wondered at the twin wings of others, while he himself strove to attain to six ^m. For whereas unhappy I, and those like me, both foul with vices and empty of virtues, scarcely deign to lift the eyes of our mind to the Apostles, scarcely to Christ himself, that by some of their footsteps we may be able in some measure to cover our foulness; this Man, so rich in innumerable virtues, knew no shame ever to stand in his way, but that he unceasingly begged the treasures of the virtues even from unruly persons. And when his heavy age was declining into extreme old age ⁿ, his virtue, shining at midday, knew no setting. For whoever demands to know how irrevocable a way of virtues he ran, and how, his hand being set upon the plough, he did not deign to look back *, let him meanwhile consider the few things which I subjoin, and by these he will be able to know the man's unfailing fervor.

[27] For when on a certain day we were discoursing about the austerity of the eremitical Rule, He refuses to have the rigor of the Rule mitigated, and were arguing that it should to some extent be tempered by condescension to weak and sick Brethren ^o: especially since Peter Damian himself had left it written in the same that this should be done after his death [p]: he, although languid, although weaker than nearly all of us, and though his assent to that might be believed the easier, said: Since I am weighed down with many sins, I will assuredly not suffer myself to be further burdened with this: but as the lord Peter did not bear this to be done in his own life, so neither will I consent that it be done in mine. From these few words certainly it may be perceived with how great an effort he spurned the broad way of the many, and how from the marrow he held the narrow path which is of the few: nor did he deign, with the carnal multitude of Israel, to look back at the fleshpots of Egypt which he had already despised; but with Josue son of Nun and Caleb alone he persisted with all his might in panting after the typical Land of promise.

[28] For the holy Man ruminated, a clean animal indeed, that it is of many to begin well, but of few — which cannot be recalled without a groan — to finish well. being resolved to persevere in it unto death. For he runs swiftly in vain in the stadium who fails before the end; since at the goal of the course is the crown of the runners; nor is a victim received in the divine sacrifice which lacks a tail [q]. For to this every church, to this every Christian soul ought to strive, that according to the Apostolic doctrine it may live a living victim; dead namely to the world, but alive to God; dead to crimes and offenses, alive to all the virtues. For I beseech you, says the Apostle, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living victim: and he who, by God's mercy, is anxious [r] to attain these two things has need to persevere unto the end. For since the tail is at the end of the body, that is spiritually understood a tailed victim which strives to pass from good things to better even to the end of this life. The same too we perceive hinted to us in this, that to those laboring in the vineyard the penny is given only at the end of the day. In the same figure of the matter Joseph alone among his brothers was clothed with an ankle-length tunic: for what is it to be clothed with an ankle-length tunic, but to be covered by faith working through love unto the end of life?

ANNOTATIONS.

p He wrote this in Little Work 15, where, after he had somewhat mitigated the rigor of the institute here and there, he speaks thus in chapter 18: These things therefore, all rigor of austerity being removed, we have appointed under so moderate a balance of discretion, that the Brother who is solicitous for his own salvation may not shrink from a saving institution; and yet, if he shall do these things, let him trust most fully in the compassion of almighty God. Nevertheless let this Rule hold after our death: for while we live, we do not suffer, God granting it, the accustomed institution to be lessened.

q Understand these things of a victim for sin, or otherwise due: for in Leviticus 22, verse 23, it is said: An ox and a sheep, with the ear and tail cut off, thou mayest offer voluntarily, but a vow cannot be paid with them.

r That is, who solicitously strives to perform them.

nay, dignatus*

CHAPTER V.

Being elected bishop of Gubbio and consecrated by Pope Paschal II, after a brief administration of the episcopate he dies holily.

[ ] He is elected bishop of Gubbio: While John therefore, after his manner, was pressing on with such exercises of virtues, and, like the Apostle, forgetting the things behind, was straining moment by moment ^a toward the things before, he is summoned to Gubbio by thee, holy church of Gubbio ^b, and also by John ^c, legate of the Apostolic See, a man in all things most reverend, that, counsel being taken with you, a deliberation might be had about setting a pastor over you. Whither he, as being most full of charity, and most ardent to become all things to all, although already heavy with age ^d, although feeble with languors, yet not slothfully hastens, and ceases not for a long while to treat with you upon whom so great a burden should be laid. But while so great a matter is discussed with delay, and no other fit way of accomplishing it is found, he at last, though unwilling and struggling, is compelled by you to undergo this burden, who had come to lay it upon another. For which matter, although by wisdom and sanctity he was fit, yet for bodily weakness and trouble he was altogether unsuitable.

[30] which burden, though an old man, being taken up, What therefore should a soul inflamed in the love of the Lord do, or what refuge should he seek, hedged about by so great a people? Certainly, since the sacred canons do not refuse to give successors even to those who are bishops, if they can allege a worthy cause; more reasonably he who had not yet undergone this burden was excusable from undergoing it on just grounds; on this side his little body worn out in strength crying out against it, on that the most violent trouble of languor reasoning against it. But he who from his very boyhood had been wont to give all that he was to Christ judged it a wickedness not to be overcome by the unanimity of that church; believing most firmly that that fire had assuredly come down from heaven which had welded so many minds together in his election: nor does he now plead impotence, to whom the will of the Almighty promises support. For he who can do nothing in himself, what can he not do in the Lord? He therefore who wishes to know whether he truly had the Lord as his partner ^e, let him attend to what he did in so little a time, and he will presently be silent from every scruple.

[31] For presently, as soon as, by the pity of the divine Clemency, at Gubbio he is consecrated prelate by the most holy Pope, namely Paschal the second ^f, he strives with such instancy to dedicate basilicas, to confirm children, and to perform absolutely all episcopal duties ^g, that, unless you saw his age, you might perhaps think he was in his youth. Nor content to do this only within the narrow bounds of his own bishopric, being invited through whatever bordering places according to the canonical rules, he does the same, Christ bestowing it. Moreover, having now obtained from heaven the time for the dagger of the divine word which he had so long sharpened, he whirls it around, and burns to reap living harvests from the world, that he may be able to stuff them into the heavenly granaries. To which so excellent a work, though many seem to be led by the Lord of the harvest, very few, alas, are found fit. For that anyone may worthily apply himself to this business, it is necessary to take a beginning from himself, the Lord saying: Cast out first the beam out of thy own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to take out the mote out of thy brother's eye: because namely, so long as anyone cleaves to the earth, it is impossible for him to cut another off from the earth.

[32] Hence the Lord through the Prophet says: Two-edged swords in their hands. he discharges it excellently: For what is that sword but, as the Apostle testifies, the divine word? And what is understood by hands but good work, which is performed by the hands? What therefore is it to have a sword in the hands, but to hold the word of God in works? And he fittingly performs this who strives to sever himself from all vices both of flesh and of spirit, and to lift the wings of twofold charity to the stars. For hence it is that to another prophet a flying sickle is shown, by which nothing but the divine word is likewise figured; because namely, after the manner of a sickle, those whom it cuts off from earthly vices it teaches to take wings, that it may lift them to heavenly things. This therefore, since John had borne it in his hands from his earliest time, being now secure of himself, wherever he turned, he exercised upon others: and while he unsheathes it through the five senses of the flesh and as many of the soul, he implies to the ignorant that no monster of the vices is to be spared. For hence it is that the same sickle is said to be ten cubits broad, that namely it may be shown that the divine spear must be carried through all ten senses, and that it does not suffice for prelates to cut off only the vices of the five senses in their subjects, unless they cut the throats of the base concupiscences within by the roots. Many evils are not perpetrated by many with the body, but, being perpetrated by consent and purpose alone before the divine eyes, they are declared in the heart. For what does it profit if the circuit of a house be adorned with colors and with mosaic ^h, but within be possessed by basilisks and dragons? Which indeed, since it did not lie hidden from the diligence of this holy Man, he deservedly busied himself to draw the sword of the divine word as much through the inward as also through the outward things.

[33] O how happy wouldst thou be, church of Gubbio, if the vigilance of such a Patron had long governed thee! but within the year of his consecration he dies holily: He certainly would busy himself to present thee to thy heavenly Bridegroom, beautiful in form above the sons of men, not only fair without spot but also without wrinkle ⁱ. But the divine Providence judged otherwise about this, which before the year of his consecration was accomplished deprived thee of so great a Pastor ^k. For since, as it is written, God scourges every son whom he receives, he was beaten with continual trouble of his body, that no blemish even of a light sin might stand in the way of one about to go out from the prison of the flesh, and it lay upon him about the Kalends of September more heavily than usual, so that on the VII Ides of the same ^l it widowed thee of him, and while thou art laboring in this exile of the world, he now, as we trust ^m, triumphs in the kingdom in the better part of himself. About whose life, dearest Fathers and lords, since you commanded me to write, behold, you have wrung it from me that I should render it: for although I have not done as I ought, yet I have busied myself to do what I could.

[34] It remains therefore that, since my littleness hears one supplicating ⁿ — whose virtues for my supplication is nothing but your salvation — namely that we who have now been called by divine mercy to the heavenly kingdoms, and decreed heavenly citizens and sons of God, unless — which be far from it — we degenerate from so great a grace, should strive to follow his leading in the way, if we desire to reign with him in the fatherland. For all this life, what is it but a certain way? By this assuredly Christ has already gone forward, namely the Bridegroom of the Church, the Apostolic number followed consequently, then so many thousands of the elect have accompanied him as what tongue could unfold? To these, dearly beloved, we ought to lift all the eyes of our heart, that by their so glorious footsteps we may strive to ascend to the fatherland, but to each one the more attentively, the more it is established that he is a more choice member of Christ; until by certain steps of advancement we may be able little by little to draw near to Christ himself, and to receive from him, as from an adamantine seal, the impression of his image.

[35] But if our gaze has not strength to fix its edge upon Christ himself the Sun of justice, the author sets forth for imitation. upon the rays of that same Sun, that is, the Apostles, or lastly upon the other stars, namely the companies of the Saints, will not our desire be too slothful to creep to a sure star, namely our John? Let us be ashamed, dearly beloved, let us be ashamed, I say, to be snoring still under the night of iniquity, to whom he has deigned to prolong so bright and so new a Star for an example.

Let those now spurn the world whom the heavenly fatherland regards, let the whole earth weary all worshippers of Christ as a prison, let the world stink to those to whom Olympus is promised. Whom should the dreadful dwelling of a prison-cave soothe? Who, slothful, would demand a perfume in a stinking sewer? Therefore now, a company enrolled for your heaven, let the owl, beholding the sun, now flee the night, let it shudder at the foul darkness into which it has slipped.

ANNOTATIONS.

read quodve*

add licet*

perhaps vestra*

A SECOND LIFE

By an author likewise anonymous and unknown

ON ST. JOHN OF LODI, FROM PRIOR OF FONTE AVELLANA BISHOP OF GUBBIO,

BHL Number: 4410

a

A. By an Anonymous author.

CHAPTER I.

His life led in the world: the monastic state and priesthood undertaken: his familiarity with Bl. Peter Damian, and his remarkable humility in reproving.

[ ] Born at Lodi Pompeia, after a pious adolescence Blessed John, priest chosen of God most high, bishop of the city of Gubbio ^b, was born in the city of Lodi ^c in Lombardy of noble ^d and truly Catholic parents, and by their care and diligence was baptized and well nourished and formed in good morals, and instructed in sacred letters and trained in the liberal disciplines. And John himself from his infancy began to fear God, and mercy grew with him; and having now a mind pious toward the poor, he also faithfully fulfilled the commandments of God. And God snatched him away and preserved him from those vices in which ill-formed young men are wont to be defiled and to be separated from God, and to be made sons of darkness. And John, prevented by the grace of God, in the very flower of his youth spurning the world and its vain delights, took care to walk with fervor through the strait commandments which lead to life; and, filled with the Spirit of God, not only did he himself avoid slippery things, but he also drew back and kept his companions, who mocked him, from the vanities and vices of the world, and formed and provoked them to the way of virtues and of God's commandments.

[2] And while John, the elect of God, still dwelt in the world, he was performing God's commandments and the holy Evangelical counsels: and an austere life in works of charity, for he visited all the sick whatsoever, ministering to them what was needful from his own resources ^e, and himself served them when the sick poor were in want of servants; and to other poor persons, widows and orphans he kindly gave help, and exhorted the troubled and afflicted with his honeyed address, and formed them to holy patience, setting before them the afflicted Jesus Christ for an example, charitably ^f entreating them to possess their souls in holy patience. And this blessed Man chastised his body and brought it into subjection, lest, if he himself did not do what he preached to others, he should be held reprobate before the eyes of God. He withdrew himself from delights and surfeiting and wine-drinking, and compelled his rebellious flesh wholly to serve the spirit. And thus this blessed Man, being enlightened and illumined by God, a light of good edification and instruction going forth from him to his neighbors, provoked them to flee sins and to serve God, and, seeing his good works, they glorified God the Father who is in heaven. The man of God John applied himself to abstinence and vigils, and beside a certain church-chapel ^g setting up for himself a very narrow hut for prayer and rest: there his bed was the solid earth for a support, and his pillow a hard and rigid stone.

[3] he becomes a monk in the hermitage of Fonte Avellana, And after such marks of virtues the man of God John, having now been made a true lamp for the peoples, that he might ascend to a greater state of perfection, sought the hermitage ^h. For at that time a venerable man and priest of God most high, dom Peter Damian ⁱ, adorned with virtues and learned in the sacred Scriptures, was flourishing in sanctity and knowledge in the vast hermitage of the Holy Cross of Fonte Avellana. And this Peter, since he was a Cardinal of the holy Roman Church and had been sent as legate by the lord Pope, and was going about through the county and bishopric of Gubbio ^k and of Nocera ^l and of Cagli ^m, and through the Romagna ⁿ and the March ^o; when he had perceived the wonderful sayings and works about the perfection of the poor Brethren of Fonte Avellana, being drawn by their conversation and angelic manner of life [p], he deserted the glory of the Cardinalate, and with the leave of the lord Pope [q] shut himself up in the hermitage of Fonte Avellana, serving God day and night. By whose example very many, being stirred, spurned the glory of the world, and gave themselves wholly to serving God.

[4] being admitted by Bl. Peter Damian, Now the man of God John, having learned the fame of so great a man, animated by his example, fled to him, and removed himself far off, fleeing from the world and departing from his own land and kindred, and came into the land which the Lord showed him, and offered himself humbly to the venerable father Peter, Prior of the hermitage and master of the devout Brethren, on bended knees instantly begging that he would receive him under the discipline of the sacred Rule of the most blessed father Benedict as a disciple and brother, to serve * Christ the King perpetually. But indeed the reverend priest of God Peter, seeing in him John's simple purity of mind, fervor of spirit, promptness of obedience and true contempt of the world, received him kindly. And when he examined him about his sins and secular faults through holy confession, that he might shake off his feet from all worldly dust, so that clean and pure he might walk the way of the Lord, he did not find grave faults such as could not be purged away by the penance of a single day; as Peter himself afterwards testified, conversing about him with his devout disciples.

[5] And the devout pastor Peter the Prior brought in the devout humble sheep John within the sheepfold of his monastery, and, made a priest, taken by the same into a share of his labors, and, clothing him with religious garments and the monastic habit, joined him to the devout Brethren and disciples, that with them he might learn the right order of living, and lay hold of the manners and way of conversing, in the choir and at the table and in the cloister. And the man of the Lord John, prevented by divine grace, was in a short time so formed in the sacred observances and manners of the Brethren, and so imbued and instructed in the divine offices, that he no longer needed to be formed by another's teaching, but rather was himself proved fit and sufficient for forming others. But the reverend father Peter, perceiving that his good son and disciple John was advancing by God's grace in all things, and growing wonderfully in sanctity and humility and divine service and in the sacred institutions, promoted him through the grades of the sacred Orders and offices to higher things, and caused him to be advanced and raised to the Sacrament of the sacred priesthood; that thenceforth he might have John as helper and companion of his labor, whom he had before had as a disciple under him; that he might keep watch in the care of the monastery and in governing the Brethren, and might exercise himself, namely, in the active and contemplative life. And the humble man John himself, as one truly obedient, fulfilled the father's will and precepts in all things; and thus, bound under the Rule of blessed father Benedict, the good disciple most devoutly followed his holy master, and strove to surpass all in humility and charity and services.

[6] And if at any time some of the monks, broken by natural infirmity, were at discord with one another, with wonderful humility he corrects the failings of others. he was zealous at once to recall them to concord by his devout and pious prayers, not resting nor withdrawing, but on bended knees before them in his humility and living charity he broke and drove out their anger, and restored them to peace and fraternal concord. But if ever, on account of his rebukes and reproofs for faults committed, any Brother was disturbed, at once John prostrated himself at his feet, humbly declaring his own fault, and most devoutly begged to be pardoned: and therefore none of the Brethren could remain so angry and sullen [r] that he was not at once turned to meekness by the kindness of God's servant John: and he did not rise from the ground before the Brother too had been reconciled.

[7] The man of God John therefore, fleeing earthly things, removed far from the vain allurements of the world, remained in solitude: With fastings and other chastisements of the body he waited for him who had made him safe from pusillanimity of spirit and had freed him from tempests and the tumult of men; and he, now spiritually crucified with Christ in soul, bore the cross of penance in his body, afflicting himself with fastings and vigils, taming the workhouse of his body, lest it should kick against the soul. And when in that hermitage a harsh winter grew rough, so that scarcely with double garments and skins could the intense cold be avoided, that man of God dom John, clothed with rough and scanty garments, would sometimes persist * with bare feet through all the nightly and daily synaxes in choir.

[8] Then, lest he should disturb the Brethren and lest the smoke of praise should darken his works, he strenuously subdues himself: he endured the cold in mere foot-coverings or sandals [s]; and, what is harder, in a remote place separating himself from the sight of the Brethren, he strewed small and sharp pebbles in his shoes, and shoeing himself and walking through the church or through the cloister and the buildings, he was tortured with the sharp point and prickings of pain, the bare soles

of his feet treading the pebbles, that so he might have compassion upon and be conformed to the crucified Lord in his pierced feet. But if ever an opportune cause of the monastery's business compelled the man of God John to go forth from the monastery to distant places, since he was weak and languishing, his weak body, worn out with fastings, could not adapt itself to the haste of the journey; and so, necessity compelling, he rode some contemptible beast: and that he might prick his body with some pain, nor pass any hour or time on it without a scourge, he put his bare soles into iron stirrups [t], so that, pricked by such a sting of cold and by the hardness of the iron, he might have compassion on the wounds of the Crucified.

[9] he devotes himself assiduously to prayer and the exercises of charity: Of his prayer and mental devotion and heavenly desire we know how to say but little, since we have not such gifts in ourselves: but it is certain to us that the man of God John said the divine offices and canonical Hours day and night devoutly, carefully and attentively, and wished to hear them, lest any word or syllable should pass by which he did not well say and hear. And with eyes and hands intent upon heaven, while it was permitted him to be free from the cares of the monastery, he did not relax his unconquered spirit from prayer, scattering streams of tears before the sight of the Lord for the living alike and the dead. And so the man of the Lord John, ascending like another Jacob by the ladder of the virtues, ascended to God through the zeal of charity, and descended to his neighbor through the compassion of piety. But sometimes, when it was permitted him to be quiet and free from ecclesiastical offices and the occupations of the Brethren, while he was not drawn away by the solace of prayer and mental contemplation, he had recourse to the active life, that with Martha he might perform and devoutly fulfil the ministry of God.

[10] he either writes or corrects pious books. For he wrote devout books, and corrected those written by others, and did not delay to do whatever other edifying things were for the praise of God and the profit of his neighbor: and thus the man of God was rendered by the fervent service of the active life stronger and more vigorous for the ascent of the contemplative life; and so the holy Man, strengthened in the grace of God and confirmed in the fear of God, could not be overturned by the winds and storms of vainglory and elation, and the many waters of temptations and tribulations could not extinguish his charity, firm in the Lord. Now the two shining pillars of the Brethren of the hermitage of Fonte Avellana, the reverend Prior Peter, and the cleric of God John, like two Seraphim inflamed with divine charity, praised God most high continually with heart and mouth, and kindled the minds and hearts and mouths of the Brethren to the fear of God and to fraternal charity. O how good and how pleasant it was that such brethren should dwell in one, in the midst of whom Christ Jesus was Lord and Master.

ANNOTATIONS.

p That the first withdrawal of Bl. Peter Damian into the aforesaid hermitage was confused by the author of this Life with his return to it, we have shown in the Commentary, number 19.

q He was Alexander II, as may be seen in the often-praised Acts of Bl. Peter, page 413.

r Accidiosus, from accidia for acedia, signifies slothful, sluggish, or indignant.

s See what has been said at chapter 2 of the first Life, letter m.

t About the strevia consult the annotations to chapter 2 of the first Life, letter n.

exhortabatur*

read luce, and presently: procedente*

read serviturum*

read persistebat*

CHAPTER II.

The priorate of Fonte Avellana: the bishopric of Gubbio: his death holily undergone.

[ ] Bl. Peter Damian being dead, he is made Prior of Fonte Avellana But when now almighty God had decreed to reward the venerable Peter for his labors: while he was absent from the hermitage and was staying for a time with the Brethren in the monastery of Faenza, God brought his life to a good end; and that man of God, happily passing from the world, flew away to heavenly things, and lives with Christ for ever ^a. At whose departure all the Brethren, although they greatly rejoiced together at his felicity, nevertheless bewailed that very many losses would come upon themselves from his absence. But the divine Providence did not fail them: for, inspired by the Lord, harmoniously and unanimously they chose the holy man dom John of Lodi ^b as their chief Prior; that, as he was like to the holy father Peter Damian in sanctity and wisdom, so he might succeed him in the Priorate ^c. But dom John, truly humble in his own eyes, proclaimed himself unworthy and unfit for so great an office, and altogether struggled against undertaking it: but the dispensation of God and the firm concord of the Brethren wholly prevailed that John should be Prior; and thus the holy congregation of monks greatly rejoiced to have a good successor to Peter.

[12] But dom John, relying on the divine mercy, carried on the office of the Priorate carefully and faithfully; which charge he discharges excellently, correcting kindly and piously the disciples and Brethren committed to him, and charitably forming them in spiritual things, so that he permitted none in the holy congregation to be negligent and idle, and a detractor and a grumbler, and to eat unworthily the alms granted by God. And because he knew that he would render an account to God for the souls committed to him, therefore he was solicitous to search out the consciences of each, lest any grave crime should lie hidden in them, by which one might be held bound to the devil. And therefore he admonished and compelled them to confess frequently and purely, lest any stain of sin should be given over to forgetfulness through the delay of confession, and lest the burden of sin should be increased by faults forgotten. And he formed the Brethren for celebrating the divine Mysteries, that they should first prepare themselves more devoutly by sacred vigils and prayers and streams of tears, and so should approach with fear and reverence to receiving the most high Sacrament of the precious Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Often by night and day he visited the workrooms of the Brethren, not suffering any Brother to spend time with another in idle and useless words; and he caused the appointed silence of the sacred Rule to be inviolably observed.

[13] and in a time of famine he succors the poor with wonderful liberality. But how great was the charity of the servant of God dom John in sustaining the poor, we set forth as an example one wonderful work out of his many holy works. For at a certain time when a mighty famine was consuming and tormenting very many peoples within Italy ^d, very many poor flocked to the man of God John; and the kindly Father caused nourishment to be bestowed daily upon each one, so long as there was anything within the monastery to give. And when the granaries * were now emptied, the man of God swiftly made his way into Apulia, and there buying corn and grain ^e, he had it carried back in great abundance, that he might daily bestow it upon the needy, so that they might escape the peril of famine. And if money failed, he sold off garments and cloths for buying produce, that so he might be able to help the poor, until merciful God should become propitious to his people, and by the clemency of his kindness should take away the bitterness of the famine, which by the equity of his strict judgment he had permitted to come.

[14] Kindled with zeal for the virtues But how eager this blessed Man was for perfection of life is plain, because when pilgrim Brother monks often came to him out of necessity, or by way of edifying example, he, receiving them in the bowels of charity, humbly asked from them the degrees of perfection and the measure of working well, and drew out with them sweet conversations about the profit of the soul and the exercise of spiritual fervor; and considering their life and manners, if he perceived in them anything good which he himself did not have in himself, at once he seized that good, as if * it had been offered to him from God, with the greatest affection, and retained it in mind, and busied himself to perform it continually. And he did not speak to them and preside over them as Prior; but as a humble disciple he made himself subject to them, when he recognized that they surpassed him in some perfection: and thus by the virtue of holy humility and charity he earned that their good should become his own. And when Bl. John, mature in age, was declining into old age, his virtue, shining as at midday, knew no setting ^f: nor on account of old age ^g did he give up his accustomed fasts and vigils.

[15] He refuses that the Rule be relaxed, For when the Brethren and disciples at some time conferred with him about the rigid observance of the eremitical Rule, and said that it should be tempered and mitigated for the weaker and infirm Brethren, and demanded these things the more instantly from Bl. John; especially since Peter Damian himself, the institutor ^h and promoter of that good observance, fearing lest Brethren less fervent in spirit should be broken by that institution — good, though strict — and should fall back to lukewarm things, had left it written in the same, that after his death it might be tempered and mitigated ⁱ, if the Brethren should altogether declare that this be done. And then the man of God John the Prior, although weaker and feebler than all the rest and worn out with old age, and needing to cease and moderate the discipline of the body and the relaxation of abstinence, and to be refreshed with a more ample manner of life; nevertheless, fervent in spirit, so answered, saying: Since I, wretched, am weighed down with many sins, and have hitherto provoked God's justice upon me by living negligently and remissly; that so grave a sin should be brought upon

me and laid upon me as a burden over and above my other sins, I will altogether not suffer: but as our reverend father Peter Damian willed it to be observed while he lived, nor permitted the rigor of the eremitical Rule to be relaxed and let go in his lifetime, lest from this he should provoke God against himself and bring confusion upon his own soul: so I too, the least, dare not attempt otherwise; nor will I in any way suffer that * in my lifetime that good observance and rigidity be relaxed and broken: and let this be firm for you, that I will never assent to its being done, so long as I live. And then the Brethren, seeing his unmovable purpose, dared not thereafter ask him further about this. And Bl. John, the true athlete of Christ, not as an old workman, but as a new worshipper of the Lamb, was continually found more fervent for serving God.

[16] For at that time the poor little city of Gubbio, which had been plainly raised up again and rebuilt higher ^k on the mountain with citadels out of the ruins and remains of the peoples reborn from the dead peoples of the ancient and overthrown church of Gubbio; the bishop of Gubbio being dead, he is summoned thither and there the divine worship and a bishop had been restored in a poor little bishopric with poor little clerics; its bishop ^l, his course completed, departed from the world: and so the people of Gubbio lacked a pastor, nor could one conveniently be found who was worthy of so great a priesthood. But by God's providence it came to pass that the legate of the lord Pope [m], the lord John, Cardinal ⁿ of the holy Roman Church, a man in all things reverend and fearing God, going about visiting that country, came * to Gubbio, and there, being reverently received by clergy and laity, remained in the same place for several days, and at the suggestion of the clergy and people of Gubbio treated about choosing and giving them a bishop; and having learned the fame of the man of God dom John, Prior of the Holy Cross of Fonte Avellana, he greatly exulted, and, relying on the counsel of good men, sent devout messengers to the hermitage, asking and commanding dom John the Prior to come quickly to him at Gubbio.

[17] And the man of God dom John, although he was worn out with old age ^o and abstinence and very weak, humbly undertakes the bishopric, and, ordained by Pope Paschal II, nevertheless as one truly obedient came with some of his own to Gubbio, and was reverently received by the lord legate and the clergy and people, and together with him conferred about choosing a bishop. And when from day to day the election of a bishop was drawn out, nor was anyone found in that place sufficient and worthy of so great a priesthood; by God's inspiration the hearts and eyes of all turned themselves to the servant of God John, and demanded that he be made bishop, and besought that this be done through the legate of the lord Pope. And the lord legate, inspired from heaven and moved by the entreaty of good men, instructed the clerics to choose John the Prior as bishop; who unanimously elected him. But when John struggled greatly, affirming that he was destitute [p] through old age and infirmity, and could not carry on the episcopal care; his prayers and excuses were by no means accepted: but so did God's predestined election prevail, and the unchangeable will of clergy and people obtain, that the legate of the lord Pope altogether compelled * him to accept it. And thus, bound to the episcopal burden, going to Rome, he was joyfully received and consecrated by the lord Pope Paschal the second.

[18] after fulfilling the parts of an excellent pastor And returning to Gubbio he was not lifted up in glory, nor did his heart swell at the loftiness of the prelacy: but he preserved the same gravity of manners and observance of religion which he had before held in the hermitage, and, renewed in fervor of spirit, as he had before excellently ruled monks, so he faithfully and carefully guarded and governed the peoples committed to him. He hastened to root out all vices in them and to implant virtues and good morals in them. And this Man, found without spot, did not go after gold, nor hope in money and treasures; but he bestowed all that he could upon the poor, orphans and sick beggars, and recalled sinners to penance and to the way of salvation. He dedicated churches and altars and ordained clerics in the holy Orders, and confirmed children, and did so not only in the bishopric of Gubbio, but in other regions round about, showing himself kindly and modest to all, and leading all to good. At that time marquises, counts and soldiers dwelling in citadels and little castles and hamlets and serving under the Roman commonwealth [q] required * tolls [r] and tributes to be given them by their inferiors, and taxes to be rendered them and other services to be done them: and the man of God John, a pious pastor and spiritual father, as far as he could helped, sustained and refreshed [s] his afflicted and oppressed sons, and by his humility and prayers softened the fierceness of the lords, and reined them back from vices.

[19] a short time after he dies, and shines with miracles. But the man full of God, Bl. John the bishop, worn out with long old age [t], and wasted with infirmities, and thinned by abstinence and vigils, when he had now for a year [u] devoutly fulfilled the office of the episcopate, hastening by a happy course to Christ, God brought his life to a good end. And he, having devoutly received the ecclesiastical Sacraments, bidding farewell to his clerics and laity, and commending his soul into the hands of the Lord, fell asleep in the Lord, and entered into everlasting joy about the seventh of the Ides of September, in the year of the Lord 1106, under the lord Pope Paschal the second, and with Henry IV reigning. Which venerable Father the lord John, as the Lord had made him famous in his life by sanctity and virtues, so also after his death he made him shine with signs and miracles throughout the whole region.

ANNOTATIONS.

m He was Paschal II.

p That you may have the sense entire, read thus: causans, se per senectutem & infirmitatem necessariis viribus destitutum esse.

q Perhaps he understands those who stood for the Roman Church against the emperor Henry III, otherwise IV.

r Pedagium is the same as toll or tribute.

s This word is so doubtfully written in our transcript that I have had to guess.

t Being in his 80th year, as his epitaph has.

u In the first Life he is said to have died before the year of his consecration was completed.

read horrea*

i.e. quasi*

ut*

read perveniret*

read coëgerit*

i.e. exigebant*