ON BL. COMITISSA, VIRGIN
AT VENICE
In the year, as is reported, MCCCVIII.
SYLLOGE
On the Cultus and deeds.
Comitissa, virgin, at Venice (B.)
BY C. S.
The most noble and most excellent man, lord Flaminio Corner, senator of the most serene Venetian republic, The cultus of the Blessed, unknown to the martyrologists, among the various monuments which out of a praiseworthy affection toward the native Saints of his own land he has collected, and which with singular benevolence toward our museum he has shared with us, transmitted in this year 1748 certain things concerning B. Comitissa, a noble Venetian lady, sprung from the patrician family of the Teleapetra, who, snatched away from human affairs at a very tender age, has obtained a cultus among her fellow citizens now for four centuries, and continues to enjoy the same to this day. We freely confess that this little Virgin would have been utterly unknown to us, had not the aforepraised Corner advised us concerning her: for to all the martyrologists whom at least I have seen she is quite unknown. Nevertheless, the things which are brought forward both by the aforesaid Corner and by certain writers of Venetian affairs, though few, do not permit us to doubt concerning her cultus lawfully begun and continued; and these things therefore moved me to give B. Comitissa, to whose veneration no fixed day has been assigned, a place among the Saints in our Work on this day.
[2] whose entire body is preserved at Venice, And so Flaminio Corner, after he had related very few things concerning the deeds of the Blessed and her happy death in the year of Christ 1308, at once proceeds thus concerning the cultus: Presently, according to the custom of those times, by the constant and unanimous acclamation of the peoples she was numbered in the glorious choir of the Blessed, and her body, placed in the altar of S. John in the very church of S. Vitus, has been preserved with the highest veneration in an uninterrupted cultus of more than four centuries; the religious character of which cultus, as fortified by the continuance of an immemorial time, the bishops of Venice have approved in divers visitations of the church. And in that altar her body, endowed with a wondrous incorruption, rested until the year MDCCII; when it was translated within the same church, as we shall see below. Whence the most noble lord has these things, he does not declare: yet what he reports concerning the sacred body of the Virgin preserved in the altar of the church of S. Vitus rightly agrees with the testimonies of certain Venetian writers, which we shall now review.
[3] Marino Sanuto, a Venetian patrician, a man who, on the testimony of Ludovico Muratori, it is proved from ancient writers discharged various public offices with distinction, and who flourished at the end of the XV century and the beginning of the XVI, in the Lives of the Venetian Doges in the same Muratori, tom. 22 of the Rerum Italicarum scriptores, reviewing the sacred bodies which rest at Venice, col. 438, writes thus in the Italian tongue, which I render into Latin: In S. Vitus, the blessed Comitissa (in Italian Contessa) virgin: she was of the family Tagliapietra. She is seen in one altar. Francesco Sansovino agrees in the City of Venice, which he composed in Italian in the declining XVI century, book 4: The church of S. Vitus was the work of the Magni family in the year DCCCCXVII, ennobled first by the body of the blessed Comitissa of the family Tagliapiera. Similarly also Fedele Onofrio in the Venetian Chronology, page 196 of the likewise Venetian edition of the year 1682, says in the same native idiom: S. Vitus, the parish called S. Vio, was founded in the year DCXLVII by the Magni family: in it rests the entire body of the blessed Comitissa Tajapeira, a noble Venetian lady. Which of the two erred in the year of the church's erection does not pertain to the present purpose.
[4] Finally, in the Thesaurus of the Antiquities and Histories of Italy, and from more recent historians. brought to light by the zeal and work of Johann Georg Graevius and Pieter Burman at Leiden in the year 1722, tom. 5, part 2, page 208, these things are read concerning the same church of S. Vitus: There is here the body of the blessed Comitis Tagliapetra, a noble Venetian lady; the relics of the saints Vitus and Modestus, &c. To these Corner adds Marco Barbaro, a most accurate, as he says, chronologer of the noble families of Venice; whom, since I have not been permitted to consult him, I here transfer his words from Corner's Notices, likewise from the Italian into Latin: Comitissa, daughter of Niccolò Daleapetra, died in the year MCCCVIII, whose body, as that of a holy soul, is honored in the church of S. Vitus in a certain altar, at which I saw a veil of most ancient weaving marked with the family shield of the Taliapetra family, whose dwellings stood where now is the open square (of S. Vitus): but they were bought up by the senate and leveled to the ground, so that a fairer view might lie open to the doge and the senate on the feast day of S. Vitus, in the year MCCCLIV; because, namely, the aforesaid church is solemnly visited on that day by the doge and the senate. Thus far in the praised notices, in which besides Fulgenzio Manfredi in the praises of S. Magnus, and other writers, are cited, of whom I had no opportunity of inspection.
[5] The things brought forward thus far prove that Comitissa Taliapetra was already from the XV century adorned with the title of Blessed, While the body was being translated in this century and that her body was held among the Venetians as a sacred treasure; the beginning of which veneration, since no one commemorates it, we deservedly refer with Corner to the very century XIV in which she died. Let us now pursue the rest from the manuscript notices of the same most noble man. In that altar, he says (of S. John in the church of S. Vitus, in which in the year 1308, in which she had died, it had been honorably deposited), her body, endowed with a wondrous incorruption, rested until the year MDCCII, when, with the approval of the patriarch of that time and soon after Cardinal, Giovanni Badoer, it was translated by the parish priest, Paolo Soldati, from the altar of S. John to the altar of S. Anthony the abbot, in the chapel at the right side of the high altar; where above the table in a marble urn it is preserved with due honor, a pious throng of the faithful running to implore the help of the Virgin herself.
[6] it is made illustrious by prodigies Now the most recent translation of the venerable body was ennobled by the greatest prodigies. For a certain maiden, by name Elisabetta, the niece of the parish priest mentioned above, while she was taking care to adorn the virginal body of the Blessed with a new silken vestment, found her arms so firmly attached to her breast that she could in no way fit the vestment to her in the form in which it was fitting: at which the parish priest, grieving from a sense of devotion, entreats the deceased Blessed with a brief but fervent prayer, that she would suffer herself to be covered with that garment. Which prayer being scarcely completed, in a sign of obedience the arms, before rigid, are loosened; whence an easy fitting of the new garment followed.
[7] it is made illustrious. After these things another more wondrous sign came to pass: for while the sacred body was being put back into its own wooden case, out of which a little before it had been drawn, it was suddenly found endowed with the tallness of a greater stature; from which admirable extension of the body it was necessary to construct a new and more ornate urn for the laying away of the sacred remains: and when this had been put together and the sacred corpse laid in it, by a new and more admirable portent it seemed to have brought itself back again to its former shortness. From which it plainly appeared that this had happened by divine disposition, lest the venerable body of the Virgin should any longer lie in the first urn, now less fitting from its excessive age. And the eyewitnesses of these portents, while I write this in the year MDCCXLVI, are still living among us.
[8] Its present condition today: an image with the title of Blessed To these he adds the things which pertain to the present veneration and situation of the sacred body. The present condition of this body is as follows. It lies entire, wanting in none of its limbs, and is surrounded with dried flesh in all its parts (except a portion of the face), extended and decently composed, with the arms disposed above the breast in the form of a cross; in which form it is seen through crystals fitted on the front side, and is piously venerated. He produces besides another argument of ecclesiastical cultus in these words: Her image also, painted by order of Giovanni Tiepolo, patriarch of Venice, and marked with the title of Blessed, is venerated in the church of S. Christopher, commonly called S. Maria dell' Orto, in the chapel of the Lord's Nativity, which formerly the secular canons of the Congregation of S. George in Alga served, but which now monks of the Cistercian Order serve.
[9] exposed to public veneration by the patriarch. Further, the praised patriarch, who by Ughelli in the reprinted Italia sacra, tom. 5, col. [ ], is called Giovanni Tiepolo, was made from Primicerius of S. Mark patriarch of Venice in the year 1619, and departed from the living in the year 1632, on the testimony of the cited Ughelli; at which time therefore that image of B. Comitissa must have been exposed to public veneration. Which assuredly is an argument of a lawful cultus, whether we believe the aforesaid icon to have been hung up a little before the famous decree of Urban VIII, published in the year 1625, or after it; since in the former case it ought by no means to have been exposed by the praised Patriarch to the veneration of the faithful with the title of Blessed, or certainly in the latter it would have been taken down by his order, if the lawful cultus of B. Comitissa had not been established: but it was not only not then taken down, but even today, after a whole century and more, is publicly honored in the same church of S. Christopher, as we have shown by the words of the praised Venetian senator.
[10] That the deeds of our blessed Comitissa have perished through the negligence of writers, the same Flaminio deservedly deplores, who nevertheless collected a few things, Sprung of the noble family Tagliapetra which I share with the reader in his own words. About the year of the Lord MCCXCV, Comitissa (in Italian Contessa) had her origin from the patrician stock Teleapetra: whose parents were Pietro Teleapetra, one of the chief men of the Venetian nobility, and Elena, the name of whose family is unknown. The year of the Virgin's birth Flaminio probably gathers from the year of her death, which Marco Barbaro, whose words we gave at num. 4, fixes at 1308 of Christ, and from the year
of the age of the same Blessed, which he himself writes to have been the thirteenth, whether he conjectures this from the tender stature of the body, or has learned it from elsewhere. But as regards the noble family of Comitissa, we learn from the Chronicle of Raffaino Caresini, chancellor of Venice, which, continuing the Chronicle of Andrea Dandolo, doge of Venice, he carried down to the year of Christ 1388, in Muratori's Rerum Italicarum, tom. 12 — we learn, I say, that in the year 1381 thirty Venetians and their posterity were endowed with patrician dignity and enrolled in the greater council, as they call it, among whom Niccolò Tajapetra is numbered.
[11] Similarly Marino Sanuto, already praised at num. 3, a little maiden was born; reviewing the noble families which were of the same council in the year 1522, wrote thus in Italian: Tagliapietri, enrolled in the year MCCCLXXXI. Hence we gather that the Tagliapetra family had not yet been adorned with that dignity while the Blessed lived among men. Further, concerning the name of the Tagliapetra who begot Comitissa, Flaminio does not agree with Marco Barbaro, whom he praised above; for the latter names him Niccolò, but the former Pietro. Which of the two is more correct I do not perceive, on account of the lack of documents. Nevertheless, if B. Comitissa really died in the year of Christ 1308, and in the 13th of her own age, as they will have it, she could not have had as her father that Niccolò whom Raffaino mentions, unless he was enrolled in that great council at the age of a hundred years or more. Let us now return to Flaminio's narrative.
[12] She, from infancy forestalled by the Lord with heavenly blessings, was accustomed to exercise herself in every kind of virtue, that she may have leisure for her accustomed prayers, and to adorn her virginal purity, by which she was pleasing to the Lord, with the zeal of unceasing prayer, especially in the assiduous frequenting of the divine mysteries, at which to be present constantly and devoutly every single day she counted among her delights. Whence also, being solicitous in their veneration, she daily departed from her father's palace, which had been built in the confines of S. Vitus, and betook herself to the church of S. Maurice, crossing the canal which is called by the Venetians the GREAT one, that she might be guided and helped by the pious priest who was her confessor in running with a sure foot upon the way of the Lord. But it happened by the disposition of the divine counsel that this so frequent approach of Comitissa to the church pleased her parents less, whether from the suggestion of the infernal enemy, or rather because a daily going out from her father's dwelling was thought less becoming to a noble Virgin; and thence her father on a certain day forbade with a stern command the servants who had been hired to row the household boat, that they should no longer carry his Daughter across the canal to the house of the said Maurice in the family boat: the Lord so disposing, that the constancy of the holy Girl's virtue in acts of religion might be strengthened by a notable miracle.
[13] [she uses her garment in place of a boat: after her death her body is laid in the altar of S. John and honored.] When therefore the devout Virgin, when morning had come, had asked the boatmen after her wonted manner to convey her to the aforesaid church, and they refused and denied her with full mouth, she herself, impelled by a motion of the inner spirit, fortifying herself with the sign of the Cross, spread upon the waters the garment which hung from her lap and which she used for household purposes, and, knowing no fear, stepped down upon it, and using it as a most firm plank she went forward to the farther side of the canal unhurt and wholly untouched, while a great concourse of men at once beheld and marveled at the unheard-of miracle of divine omnipotence in a tender Virgin. Therefore, being now ripe for heaven by the great exercise of virtues and of prayer, she left the world, which was not worthy of her, and, called by the Lord to the crown of heavenly glory, being consummated in a short time, she fell asleep most peacefully in the Lord in the year of the Lord's Incarnation MCCCVIII, and the XIII of her innocent life, and presently, according to the custom of those times, by the constant and unanimous acclamation of the peoples she was numbered in the glorious choir of the Blessed, and her body, placed in the altar of S. John in the very church of the divine Vitus, has been preserved with the highest veneration in an uninterrupted cultus of more than four centuries. Thus far the praised man Flaminio Corner, who, as I have advised, does not declare whence he learned these things; wherefore I would wish the reader to receive them, as related by me, upon his credit. What he subjoins concerning the cultus of the same Blessed we have already given above.