ON BL. MARK OF MODENA, CONFESSOR OF THE ORDER OF PREACHERS,
AT PESARO IN THE DUCHY OF URBINO.
In the year MCCCCXCIX.
A COLLECTION.
On his deeds in general and his cult.
Mark of Modena, confessor of the Order of Preachers, at Pesaro in the duchy of Urbino (Bl.)
BY J. P.
The memory of this Man, with the title of Blessed, not a few Dominican fathers celebrate in the Works The Beatus' deeds in general which they have published in print concerning matters pertaining to their Order, yet in such a way that they seem to have had a general knowledge of his virtues and miracles, but a slight one of his deeds in particular. Leander Alberti, nearest in age — inasmuch as he had already about two years before taken the habit of St. Dominic at Bologna when Mark died at Pesaro — records him in this brief eulogy, lib. 5 on the illustrious Men of the Order of Preachers: Mark of Modena, a man strong in much religion and devotion, full of notable works, already heavy with years, breathed out his spirit most holily at Pesaro about the year of Christ MCCCCXCVIII, on the XI of the Kalends of October. Then after some years a stone sepulchre was set up for him, where he is preeminent for very great miracles. Antoninus of Siena in the Chronicle of the Order, printed at Paris in the year 1585, has it thus: In the year MCCCCXCVIII brother Mark of Modena is written to have died, a most religious man endowed with notable piety, whose sanctity very many miracles following upon his death attest. And each of the authors cited writes in the margin the title of Blessed, which others likewise give him, to be cited in the following number.
[2] Giovanni Michele Pio in his Illustrious Men published in Italian, known to writers only in general; Juan López in the General History, Domenico Maria Marchese in the Diary, Jacques Lafon in the Dominican Year, to whom is added Lodovico Vedriani, a citizen and doctor of theology of Modena, in his Monuments on the Saints and Blessed of his own country, treat of the Beatus a little more at length, and tie his death to the year 1499. But these transcribed one another, and all had as guide Seraphinus Razzi, a Dominican author, in the Lives of the Saints and Blessed of the aforesaid Order, published in Italian in the year 1605, whom therefore I too shall here follow alone. And so that author, in part 1 of the aforesaid Work, pag. 252, first praising Bl. Mark likewise in general for his piety and spirit, says that, famous for sanctity and miracles, he passed to a better life in the year 1499 on the XXI day of September; that he was buried beneath the altar of the holy Rosary in the church of the Preacher fathers at Pesaro; and that in the same church there is to be seen a likeness of him perfectly rendered, holding in one hand a Crucifix and in the other a scourge of iron chains.
[3] Then he adds the following, which I turn from Italian into Latin: one and another miracle from Razzi In the year MDLXXII the lady Lucretia, at that time superior of the Rosary at Pesaro, related to me in the presence of brother Antoninus of Ravenna, then Prior there, that when her little brother of three or four years had died, her mother the lady Ludovica, wife of master Zacharias, a physician of Pesaro, ordered blessed Mark to be summoned, and earnestly begged him for her son's safety; and he, having made a prayer, said: It is well with thy little son, he enjoys heaven: care no further to receive him back alive; for thou wouldst lose him again with greater grief. But since not even so did the mother acquiesce, he prayed a second time, and, taking the child's hand, said: John Baptist, arise in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ: and presently, as the child rose, he restored him alive to his mother; and afterward, in the fourteenth year of his age, with the most grievous grief, as the Beatus had foretold, he was carried off by the plague. The same woman related to me that, at the translation of the Beatus' body which was instituted after the plague, a most sweet odor was perceived by all who stood by, and that the bells sounded of their own accord.
[4] With the author already recited agree the notices which Salvatore Salvatori once transmitted to our Bolland, and from Salvatore Salvatori: his relics written in Italian in his own hand, besides other documents pertaining to the Saints and Blessed of Pesaro — nay, they elucidate some things which Razzi narrates less distinctly, and which make us more certain about the Beatus' particular cult. Salvatori therefore signifies that Bl. Mark died at Pesaro, where he was Prior of the convent of the Order of St. Dominic, in the year 1499, and was first laid in the church of the said convent on the right side of the altar of St. John; but that thence, when the plague was extinguished, he was translated to the chapel of the holy Rosary, and laid up within the wall which separates the aforesaid chapel from the chapel then called of St. Andrew and afterward of St. Cecilia; and that at this translation there occurred the prodigy of the most sweet odor perceived and of the bells sounding of their own accord. He adds then that the sacred body, for the greater increase of the accidental glory of the Servant of God in the heavens, was taken out of the aforesaid wall and laid up at the right side of the altar of the holy Rosary, where every year (his are the very words, turned from Italian into Latin) from the Vespers of the first day through the whole second feria of Pentecost his sacred bones are exposed to the public veneration of the people.
[5] are every year exposed to public veneration. Henschen and Papebroch were at Pesaro in the year 1660, and in the same church of the Dominican fathers performed the Sacred rites on the XXIX day of November; which being finished — so Papebroch in the manuscript Diary of the Roman journey — we dealt with the Rev. Fr. Peter Martyr Unda-Dei, a noble of Pesaro, a most courteous old man, and under his guidance we saw in the chapel of the Rosary, beside the altar at which I had celebrated, the resting-place of Bl. Mark of Modena, once Prior in this convent of Pesaro, famous for miracles in life and in death, whose body, the little door of the monument being unbarred at the Gospel horn, is shown to the people with veneration on the Sunday after the Octave of Corpus Christi: and an image is hung above the stone on which his memory is described in epitome, on the wall which lies between the chapel and the choir, not without lights and other adornment: which body was brought hither from the altar which was the first on the right side at the entrance, and which, like the other altars, has now been removed for the restoration of the church, which is being reduced to a new form, etc.
[6] These things, which, as is plain, agree well enough with the account of Salvatore Salvatori in other respects, nevertheless dissent as to the day on which the sacred relics are said to be exposed: which of the two erred we cannot affirm with certainty; nay, perhaps each noted rightly for his own time — if, namely, the said exposition, which in Salvatori's lifetime took place on the second feria of Pentecost, was afterward fixed to the Sunday after the Octave of Corpus Christi. Further, the memory of the Beatus, described in epitome and carved in marble beneath his likeness, is according to the same Salvatori conceived in these words: BLESSED MARK OF MODENA, OF THE ORDER OF PREACHERS, WHOSE BONES BENEATH THE ALTAR OF THE HOLY ROSARY AWAIT THEIR CHANGE, VENERABLE FOR HOLINESS OF LIFE AND THE GRACE OF MIRACLES, RESTED WITH A HOLY END IN THIS CONVENT IN THE YEAR OF THE LORD MCCCCXCIX, ON THE XI OF THE KALENDS OF OCTOBER. These reckonings for the year of his death I have followed above in the margin, both because that is the opinion of nearly all, and chiefly because Leander Alberti, otherwise here of the greatest authority, when marking the year 1498, added doubtingly the particle about.