Maria De Cervello

ON BL. MARIA DE CERVELLO, COMMONLY CALLED DE SOCOS, VIRGIN OF THE ORDER OF ST. MARY THE VIRGIN OF MERCY FOR THE REDEMPTION OF CAPTIVES,

AT BARCELONA IN CATALONIA.

In the year MCCXC.

COMMENTARIUS PRÆVIUS.

Maria de Cervello, commonly called de Socos, virgin, of the Order of St. Mary the Virgin of Mercy for the Redemption of captives, at Barcelona in Catalonia. (B.)

BY J. P.

§ I. When and by whom the ancient Acts were collected; who used them and how among more recent writers; how they are to be exhibited by us.

[ ] Regarding the order commonly wont to be kept in the Work, the Acts of this Blessed one should have been given on the day XIX of September, The reason why we treat of the Blessed one today. From various on which she is written to have died, and at which her name has been inserted in the Roman Martyrology. And indeed

it had already been settled to keep this same order here too; but when we observed that her yearly festival, on account of the feast of SS. Januarius the bishop and his Companions, martyrs, occurring on the same day, had been transferred and fixed for the Religious of the Order of blessed Mary of Mercy for the Redemption of captives on the day XXV of September, we determined to defer the examination of the Acts also to this day, the more gladly because we had not all the documents fit for duly performing it. Of this kind Esteban de Corbera, an inhabitant of Barcelona, alleges several in the book which, written in Spanish about the life and deeds of Bl. Maria, he published from the press in the year 1629. In the first chapter he hints in general that he used relations and authentic writings which were kept in the archive of the Barcelona convent of the Order just praised, and which had earned authority for themselves from their antiquity and other titles. Then in the course of the work he cites some by name, and from time to time recites fragments of them. Thus in chapter 57 he produces a Latin text taken from a manuscript authentic relation, first begun to be written by brother John de la Es or de Laes — as I read elsewhere — a contemporary of the Blessed one, and approved at Lérida in the general chapter of the Order in the year 1291, namely the next after Maria's death.

[2] In chapter 64 he greatly praises for antiquity and authority a manuscript codex of the same archive documents pertaining to her deeds on the life, virtues and miracles of the lady Maria de Cervello, which is noted as expressly written in the year 1323, the thirty-third after the Blessed one's death, and whose author, suppressing his name, says that he had written the Lives of certain notable men of the Order of Canons Regular of St. Augustine, and had been induced to write the Acts of Bl. Maria by the love and prayers of the lord William de Cervello. In chapter 70 the same Corbera reports in Spanish two miracles divinely wrought soon after the Blessed one's death, and asserts that they were drawn from a manuscript relation on the life and death of Bl. Maria, gathered from the authentic and ancient charters and documents of the said archive by brother William Vives, Prior of the convent of Barcelona in the year 1401, and, after a comparison made with the aforesaid charters and documents, declared sure and faithful and approved by the unanimous voice of all in the general chapter of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy for the Redemption of captives, as I shall explain more fully below.

[3] after repeated attempts I pass over other places in which the praised Corbera appeals to ancient documents; those mentioned here suffice for the reader to understand for how just a cause our elders desired them to be communicated to them, and often asked for them by letters sent to Barcelona and to Rome, where that they were used for proving the Blessed one's immemorial cult will be established from what is to be said. And so to that end Papebroch wrote in the year 1673 to Rome to the Reverend Father Mathias de Cardona, procurator general of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy in the convent of St. Adrian, by whom there was transmitted on the XXVIII day of May of that same year a Latin manuscript compendium of the Life, extracted from the works of Francisco Zumel, Bernardo de Vargas, Alonso Remón, Juan Francisco Olignano, and Esteban de Corbera himself, of whom the first three are not much older than Corbera; the fourth, who is said to have composed the Life of St. Peter Nolasco, is unknown to me. "I replied," says Papebroch, "on the XXX of June MDCLXXIII, that ancient documents were required; and I asked for them again in MDCLXXV. Likewise in the year MDCLXXV, on the XXX of October, I asked Father Soutermans, through whom I had at other times received certain things from Barcelona, that he would solicit these very things there. Likewise through Father Canisius, dealing with the lord Bornevillius in Catalonia, on the XVIII of August MDCLXXVI."

[4] we obtained a faulty copy of one only He seems to have obtained nothing; until in the year 1682 Father Damian Stephan, professor of the Order of St. Mary of Mercy, master and commander of Puy, transmitted hither from Valencia some notices fit for illustrating the origin of his Order, in which he recorded both the relation of John de Laes, extant in the archive of Barcelona, and the Life of the Blessed one written by an anonymous canon, and of this indeed he affirmed that he had a copy taken from the original with public warrant. Papebroch, having got this opportunity, pressed again, and at last obtained the manuscript relation, "extracted," as the praised Damian Stephan writes in the accompanying letter, "from a most ancient book of the Religion, where formerly the Lives of the Fathers, according to the decrees of the general chapters, duly and rightly approved, were written, and after death miracles were added by their successors in the course of time in which they happened." As soon as I ran over this with a light eye, I could not doubt that it is the same which Corbera recites under the name of John de Laes, and from time to time under the name of William Vives, begun namely by the former and continued by the latter. But reading it more attentively, I found that most true which Damian Stephan warned Papebroch of beforehand in his letter, saying: "The style of what I now send flows mostly barbarous, either from the carelessness of former times or from the difficulty of reading parchments corrupted by age: from which you will be able to understand our fidelity, in that we have not even amended the best-known errors, which we commit to your pleasure." I praised the man's sincere mind; but I grieved that I did not see joined to this relation the Life written by the anonymous canon, from which I might — I do not say correct the barbarism of style reigning everywhere — but supply the gaps and defects occurring not rarely in the very narration of the deeds: certainly the anonymous canon's Work had some things which are wanting in John de Laes's relation, as I shall show in its place from Esteban de Corbera.

[5] At last, as the time pressed in which the Blessed one's deeds had to be prepared for the press, we obtained. while we were turning over the most excellent Work of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XIV on the beatification of the Servants of God and the canonization of the blessed, a great hope shone upon us of obtaining both lucubrations, and the former indeed copied by a more skilled hand. For in book 2, chapter 24, §19, number 63, the most Blessed author, having assigned the chief writers in whom mention is made of our Blessed one, specially alleges "the Life written in the year 1323 by a certain Canon Regular of St. Augustine, and another by Brother John de Laes of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy for the Redemption of captives, which after a serious examination deserved to be approved in two general chapters of the brethren of that same Order. Which documents were entered in the process drawn up upon Maria's immemorial cult, and the authentic copies of them are extant at Rome in the archive of the convent of St. Hadrian." The examination of the Acts being therefore broken off for a while, a letter was written to Rome in the year 1754 to Father Pietro Lazeri, priest of our Society and particular friend of the Museum; who not long after wrote back that the archive, library, chests, etc., of the said convent had, by order of the Reverend Father procurator general of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy, been searched, but nothing found; that those Lives are indeed indicated there in certain notebooks, but are alleged as existing in the convent of Barcelona. It is easy to think that they were sent back thither after the most blessed Father had written what was just recited. But the praised procurator general bade us be advised through the same father Lazeri that we should send letters to the Reverend Father Prior of Barcelona, most courteously promising that he too would send without delay, that whatever is there might be communicated with us. We obeyed the advice, but have hitherto received no answer.

[6] And so, since our Work does not suffer further delay, It was begun by a contemporary, nor is there any day left to which the discussion of the Acts can conveniently and fittingly be thrown, we are restricted to a faulty and mutilated copy of the relation, which the following persuades us was begun by John de Laes and continued by William Vives. Immediately before it there is set the Life of St. Peter Nolasco, drawn from the same codex of the archive of Barcelona, and at the end of this these words are read: "These things are written from a certain manuscript codex of brother John de Laes, who wrote the death of the holy Father, and the Life of the blessed Maria del Socos." Then, with no word interposed, there follows the Life of that same Blessed one, and to this, likewise without any interruption or section, is annexed the translation of her body, made in the year 1381, which latter certainly could not have been described by John de Laes: but the whole relation is thus closed: "This Life with the preceding was written by brother William Nues (Corbera everywhere writes Vives), Prior of Barcelona, in the year of the Lord one thousand four hundred and one, and they caused it to be read before all the voting members in the general chapter celebrated at Lérida … all these, seeing and attentively looking at the authentic writings found in the archive of Barcelona … found them to agree with those things which had been narrated of the Life and deeds," etc.

[7] then continued by another, Hence it is clear that our relation ought not to be attributed to William Nues or Vives, except so far as he transferred the Blessed one's deeds from John de Laes's codex into another, and added to them what either he himself or another had noted about the translation of the body, made twenty years before, and offered both to the general chapter to be approved. I said that the translation of the body could not have been described by John de Laes; for that he — to pass over Corbera's testimonies — had long been taken from the living in the year 1381, and was advanced in age in 1290, when the Blessed one died, is sufficiently persuaded to me by an instrument drawn up in the year 1260 about the deeds of St. Peter Nolasco by Peter de Bages, public notary of Barcelona, in whose copy — which in the year 1679, written out by public authority and fortified with the royal and episcopal seals, the praised Damian Stephan sent hither — after the master general and the other chief men of the Order who had had the instrument drawn up, this subscription is read: "I brother John de Laes have affixed my seal." Further, it appears to me most likely, what Corbera asserts in his chapter 57, namely that in the year 1291, the next after Bl. Maria's death, John de Laes's relation was offered and approved in the general chapter of Lérida: for in that chapter Peter Amerius, master general of the Order, ordered that all things be made manifest which could be known worthy of note about any persons of the Order; and the same seems thereafter to have been observed in the several general chapters, at least down to the 15th century.

[8] and in the general chapters of the Order The first will be plain from the authentic instruments to be recited below, which were drawn up in the same year and in the same chapter upon the miracles of our Blessed one; the second we gather both from the Acts of Bl. Peter Armengol, which were collected a little after his death from the relation of eyewitnesses and sworn men in the year 1304, and at the beginning of which a like mandate is said to be continued, "made in the preceding year one thousand two hundred and ninety-one in the general chapter at Lérida," as may be seen in us in volume 1 of September, page 333; and from the Acts of the general chapter celebrated at Barcelona in the year 1442, in which the Lives of St. Peter Nolasco and of Maria del Socos or de Subsidio are said to have been compared with the ancient codices "according to the form prescribed by the holy man brother Peter Amerius, once general, which * he ordered to be brought back to a holy custom, that from chapter to chapter all things should be renewed or

the greater * of our Saints," etc.

[9] Hence it becomes manifest for what cause William Vives transferred the Acts of our Blessed one from the codex of John de Laes into another in the year 1401, often approved. namely that according to the same constitution they might be read out and approved in the general chapter appointed about that same time at Lérida. The Acts of both chapters, such as they are and so far as they pertain hither, are subjoined to our often-mentioned manuscript relation, and Corbera saw them; but he expounded them wrongly in chapter 70: where, confounding the chapters and the persons, he says that the relation copied out by William Vives in the year 1401 was offered in the year 1442 in the general chapter of Lérida, Natal Gaver holding the supreme magistracy of the Order, and was examined, compared and approved by brother Antonio Taxal, definitor of the province of Catalonia, etc. For neither in the year 1442 was a general chapter held at Lérida but at Barcelona, nor could brother Antonio Taxal be present at it, who, being elected master general of the whole Order in the year 1406, was afterward sent by Alfonso V, king of Aragon, to Constance to the Œcumenical synod, and there, on Corbera's own testimony, chapter 41, page 110, died in the year 1417. From what has been drawn out thus far, and the authors and approvers being considered, the reader will easily judge how great the value of the manuscript relation is, and how much greater it would be if our copy were written less barbarously and defectively. And let these things said suffice about the manuscript documents; I pass on to the Works published in print, in which the Life and virtues of Bl. Maria have been treated.

[10] Among these I know none whose author did not survive into the seventeenth century, More recent biographers either had not the said and which accordingly cannot be reckoned to have been put together about three centuries after the Blessed one's death. The chief authors are Francisco Zumel after the Constitutions of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy, Felipe Guimerá in his History, Bernardo de Vargas in his Chronicle, and Alonso Remón in the general History of the same Order, and Melchior Rodríguez in Christian Agriculture and the exercises of the religious life, all religious of the said Order in Spain; but besides that, as I have already hinted, they were so far removed from the Blessed one's times, I much doubt whether they too saw the documents of Barcelona. For indeed Alonso Remón, who wrote last of all, and cites their Works here and there in his History, in volume 1, book 4, chapter 20, clearly and not without wonder declares that among so many writers as either wrote the Blessed one's Life or touched her deeds in recording them, he found no one from whom he might learn her family name; that all indeed assert that Maria de Socos or del Socorro, as he writes, was born of a most noble stock of Barcelona, but none from what family determinately.

[11] But neither could he himself have been ignorant of this, nor would the others most likely have neglected to indicate it, documents, if the documents of Barcelona had been seen by them, in which she is said neither doubtfully nor rarely to have been born of the most noble house of Cervello, as we shall prove in the following § from the fragments cited by Corbera, and at the same time we shall show how far Francisco Dathia, likewise a religious of the said Order, strayed, when in the Life of Bl. Maria published in French in the year 1656, either because of the silence of those already named, or on account of Remón's or another's like assertion, he pronounced in this manner in chapter 3: "The writers who a few years after (Maria's) death taught us the more famous deeds of her life, all asserting that her father and mother were persons of the first rank in the city of Barcelona, yet confess that they could not come to the knowledge of the surname of the family." But, what properly belongs here, from this too it is plain how little the Works here enumerated can help us to supply or correct the defects met with in our manuscript relation.

[12] One remains after Corbera, to be preferred here to the rest, Juan Interián de Ayala, or, those who had them, likewise a religious of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy, who in the year 1695, the third after the immemorial cult of our Blessed one had been approved at Rome, published in Spanish with the types of Salamanca a compendium of the Acts. But he, although in the letter to the reader prefixed to the Work he candidly confesses that the Blessed one "is more wonderful than known; because weak or scanty are the notices left about her deeds and prodigies by the ancient fathers of the Order, who, whether because, intent on the Offices of their institute, they endeavored to make the virtues of their own illustrious by imitation rather than by the heralding of praises; or because they piously believed that the fame of such merits would endure as long by traditions as by writings, were always sparing in transmitting treasures of this kind to posterity" — yet promises that nothing will be handed down by him which is not in substance drawn from the papers exhibited and approved in the information of Bl. Maria's cause. "In substance," he says, presently signifying not obscurely that in the description of particular matters and in reasonings he had used a freer pen. For these things, he says, are the accidents and necessary ornaments of that same substance, and it is not without charm that true things are helped by likely ones.

[13] seem to have enlarged them by many circumstances But did Corbera abstain from a like liberty, the biographer chief among the more recent for the documents he produces? For my part I shall not deny that he was furnished with documents for proving what he inserted at length in his Work about the antiquities of Catalonia, about the situation and bounds of that region, about its deeds and various vicissitudes, about the praises of the city of Barcelona, about the splendor of the house of Cervello, about the beginnings of the most celebrated Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy for the Redemption of captives, and about its illustrious men, and many other things of this kind which by no means pertain to our purpose; but when I consider the brevity of our manuscript relation, begun by John de Laes and continued by William Vives or another, and when I turn my mind to Ayala's sincere warning about the sparingness of the ancient Religious of the Order in recording the deeds of their Saints, I cannot persuade myself firmly enough that so abundant material for Corbera was supplied by the anonymous biographer of the Order of Canons Regular of St. Augustine, whereby he should discourse so at length about Bl. Maria's deeds in her lifetime without the help of conjectures, and without ornaments of likelihood either devised by himself or drawn from the store of more recent writers.

[14] hence we select and discuss from them only the better attested. My distrust was increased by himself, when I observed that in some places he appeals specially to ancient documents, names authors, sometimes recites their Latin words, while in others he everywhere narrates simply and is silent whence they were drawn. And indeed, if all that he narrates — even, if you like, only according to substance — could have been found in the ancient documents, why does he produce testimonies rather in one place than in another? Why does he several times have recourse to the authority of more recent writers, namely Bernardo de Vargas, Melchior Rodríguez, and more often Alonso Remón, who, the later of them, confesses no less candidly than Juan de Ayala, in book 4, volume 1, chapter 31, that whatever he saw about the Blessed one's Life was written with the brevity and sparingness usual to the ancient writers of the Order. This one reason would otherwise suffice that, although the biographers were less remote from the times of the Saints or Blessed than Corbera and Ayala, we should not turn their lucubrations from a foreign tongue into Latin. There is added that in our manuscript relation we have at least some marrow of the chief deeds. Nevertheless, since this is so imperfect, I shall run over in passing the Works of Corbera and others which I have, and shall set forth a little more explicitly than the rest those things which I shall find confirmed by testimonies; then, having gathered what shall occur fit for illustrating her posthumous glory, I shall give, besides the manuscript relation, also a Latin compendium of the Life, from the more recent writers praised in number 3, and, so far at least as I judge, taken for the greater part from Corbera; thus the reader will have the series of the Acts somehow ordered.

*. perhaps "qui"

*. perhaps "vetera monumenta"

§ II. The Blessed one's illustrious family; her parents; her birth; her virtues in childhood and youth; her flight from marriage; her vow of virginity.

[ ] The Blessed one's most noble family, whose name for some That Maria was born at Barcelona of a very illustrious house is the concordant opinion of all the writers who have recorded her native place and birth; but of what stock by name she was sprung lay hidden for some time even from the writers of the Order, as is plain from Remón and Dathia cited in nos. 10 and 11: for so, according to them, the added name "de Socos," that is, "of Help," had clung to her that she was known among the common people by no other, nor did she go by any other among writers, and thus her family name was utterly obliterated. But this must not be understood of all writers in general, much less of those who a little after the Blessed one's death committed her chief deeds to writing, as Dathia wrongly judged; but only of some who after the 15th century treated of her deeds. For it is not likely that the family name lay hidden from earlier writers; since the Acts, in which it was most clearly expressed, were read out in the general chapters before all who had a vote, and offered to be approved: which was observed at least down to the year 1442, as I showed in the preceding paragraph. And so the knowledge of the said family name only gradually began to perish, or rather to be wrapped in darkness, after the custom just mentioned had perhaps been broken off in the general chapters, and the ancient codices not only ceased to be worn by hands and eyes, but were so far hidden away in the recondite chests of the archive of Barcelona that they were not discovered even by the historiographers of the Order, such as Remón was.

[16] At length others, likely after reading the first volume produced by Remón in the year 1618, more recent writers, lay hidden, searched more diligently the hiding-places of the archives, and thence dug out manuscripts, from which they both learned themselves and taught others what he from the said books had not been able to make out. Among these the first may be reckoned the most reverend Father Master Brother Marcos Salmerón, general of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy, who in his Work entitled in Spanish "Recuerdos Historicos," etc., that is, Historical Recollections or Monuments, etc., published at Valencia in the year 1646, page 119, treating of Bernard de Corbaria, once the Blessed one's director in spiritual things, cites a manuscript codex of the year 1460, which, kept in an iron chest of the archive of Barcelona, has the title: "The Book of the chapters of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy," and in which are inserted the Life and miracles of a certain Religious of his Order called Maria Cervellon or de Socors. The autograph of these he says he saw and copied out in the year 1626, namely the eighth after Remón's first volume was printed, but the third before Corbera's book was published. But to Corbera chiefly must be attributed the restoration of that surname, if indeed there was for even some interval of time such an oblivion of it among men as Remón and Dathia allege; for Corbera produced not one but several testimonies, and those not wavering or doubtful but solid and authentic.

[17] In chapter 12 he reviews four documents in the Barcelona

archive: the relation mentioned above of John de Laes, a contemporary writer, and by undoubted approved in the year 1291 in the general chapter; a second, or rather the same, but copied into another codex and enlarged by the addition of the history of the translation in the year 1401 by William Vives, of whom treatment has been made above also; a manuscript codex of the year 1323, namely that which he indicates elsewhere was written by an anonymous Canon Regular of St. Augustine; and another manuscript likewise, which without a note of time he calls most ancient — that one doubtless which Marcos Salmerón testified in the preceding number was written in the year 1460 and seen and copied by himself in the year 1626. But in all of these, containing the Blessed one's Acts, on the testimony of the same Corbera, the following is read in almost the same words: "There was in the city of Barcelona a certain most noble house of the more noble families, called de Cervello. There was a second son of that house and family, who joined to himself a noble woman. And when they had no children *, they vowed their whole substance to the Redemption of captives, founded in the preceding years. But by the prayers of Peter Nolasco the woman conceived, and in the same year bore a beautiful daughter, whom, to the praise of the Mother of God, they called by the name of Mary," etc.

[18] testimonies He recites besides two authentic instruments, exhibited in the year 1291 at Lérida in the general chapter of the Order and confirmed by oath, in which the same surname of the Blessed one is clearly expressed. Both are Latin, and will be given entire in their place: here I pluck out only what pertains to the present matter. The first, in chapter 68, runs thus: "Be it plain to all, that we, brother Emmanuel Albuerquerque and brother Arnald Liniverius, of the Order of holy Mary of Mercy of captives … bear witness and testify that, when in the year one thousand two hundred and eighty-nine we both together were sailing from Spain into Africa … and on the day which was reckoned the twelfth of the Kalends of December a great storm had arisen on the sea, there appeared to us in the air above the ship a certain woman, clothed in the religious habit of our Order, whom by face and voice we well knew to be our sister Maria de Cervello, whom we, when we set out from Barcelona, had addressed; and then, as is plain to all, she was living," etc. In the other these words are read in chapter 70: "Be it plain to all, that I brother Dionysius Roneus, a Frenchman, of the Order of holy Mary of Mercy of captives, commander of Montpellier, give assurance … that, when I was in the city of Marseille in this same year (1291) at the Kalends of February by the sea, a certain noble man, Arnald de Liguer by name, testified to me, that when he was making a journey to blessed Mary of Montserrat, in the preceding year ninety he came to Barcelona on the thirteenth of the Kalends of October, and there was present at the burial of a certain religious woman of our Order, called Maria de Cervello, whom all called del Socos," etc. Corbera studiously notes in both places that these authentic testimonies are kept in the archive of Barcelona.

[19] is demonstrated. Finally, in chapter 57 he produces from an ancient manuscript codex the formula of profession made by the Blessed one, to be exhibited also in its place, whose beginning is this: "I, Maria de Cervellon." For my part I do not see what more can be required for the matter to be judged historically certain. Further, that the instruments alleged here, or at least the chief of them, were, as is established from the testimony of our most holy lord Pope Benedict XIV, entered at Rome in the process drawn up upon her immemorial cult, and that they were approved on this point, the proper lessons of her Office bid me believe, and the Roman Martyrology, enlarged, corrected and very lately published by the praised most holy lord Benedict, in which the same family name is expressly attributed to her. Corbera discourses at length in various places in praise of the Cervello stock, namely in chapters 12, 76 and the two following, to which we refer the curious reader: worth recording is what Ayala hands down in a few words about it in chapter 1 of his lucubration, saying that the house of Cervello is one of the nine most celebrated in fame in Catalonia, and that men so illustrious were produced from it that they deserved to receive as wives the daughters of the counts of Barcelona, and that thence flowed the kinship of blood of Charles II, king of the Spains, with our Blessed one, acknowledged by him in the year 1693 in letters given to the city of Valencia, in which he proclaims that Maria's canonization or beatification is to be festively celebrated, and among the reasons moving him to it alleges this: "Because this Servant of God sprang from the stock of the most serene counts of Barcelona, my ancestors."

[20] From the name of the family Corbera proceeds to the names of the parents, The name of each parent assigned by more recent writers; and, after adducing various instruments especially of the thirteenth century, from which are known the names of the knights of the illustrious Cervello stock then living, and after reasonings instituted at length upon them, he decides at last that the father's name was William de Cervellon; but only from conjectures, as he confesses; since no certain testimony of it is at hand; but of the mother he says he found neither the name nor the family anywhere. Corbera was followed by the author of the Latin Compendium of the Life; but Ayala — I do not know whether on foundations surpassing conjectures — calls the father the most noble knight Bernard William de Cervellon, second-born son of William de Cervellon, but adds that the mother too was called Maria, but that it is unknown from what family she sprang. The same three authors (Remón and Dathia here too being silent, likely because they had not found these things recorded in the writers they consulted) — the same three authors, I say, with one consent hand down that Maria was obtained for her parents, who were destitute of offspring, through the prayers of St. Peter Nolasco, and that she was born in the year 1230.

[21] Both must be certain enough from the testimonies of John de Laes, a contemporary biographer; the year and day of her birth, and the first indeed from the words recited in no. 17; the other from those to be cited below, in which the Blessed one is said to have made profession in the year 1265, in the 35th of her age. There is not the same agreement about the day of her birth: Ayala writes that she was brought into the light on the first day of the month of December; the author of the Latin Compendium: "On the Lord's day, on the feast of the immaculate Conception, the VIII of the month of December." Corbera marks neither day nor month: but at the beginning of chapter 1 he indicates in the margin the church in which she was washed in the sacred font, in the following words: "Let the church of holy Mary of the Sea sing hymns for such a Mary baptized." And these Latin words he testifies were copied by him from a sermon composed in praise of our most illustrious Virgin in the year 1323, which he had written in a most ancient hand.

[22] With many praises Ayala, and with more Corbera, adorn the Blessed one's virtues in childhood and youth; her virtues in childhood and youth; a specimen of her modesty. namely charity toward God, love and observance toward her parents, piety and munificence toward the poor, humility, chastity, modesty and others of this kind, of which the reader will at least generally be taught from the Latin compendium of the Life. I add one example of modesty from Corbera's chapter 48, because he notes in the margin that it is reported in her Life inserted in an ancient manuscript codex. The praised author sets down first that she was never wont to go out of the house except when she betook herself to churches, or visited hospitals, or applied herself to a like exercise of piety, and that always in a modest and humble dress, with eyes fixed on the ground, and with her mother as companion. It happened, he says, that as she was entering the church some noble knights saluted her, admiring in one so young so many ornaments of perfect virtue: yet in such a way that she herself, whose thoughts were all turned in heaven, did not notice it at all. Her mother, anxious lest they should ascribe this to pride or rusticity, said: "Attend, Daughter, and look upon those knights saluting thee with so great modesty and courtesy: do not fail in the due offices of politeness." Then, lifting her eyes, she said: "Let the gentlemen pardon me; for in the house of God our eyes must be intent upon God alone. I am indeed the humble Handmaid of all; but I am also the Spouse of Christ, whom above the rest I ought to please. I trust that men conspicuous for so great nobility as I see will take this in good part: where God is, there human observance ceases." Thus, but a little more fully, Corbera.

[23] Solicited twice to marriage, When she had come to an age fit for marriage, her father's kinsfolk had chosen for her "a marriage noble for its riches, nobility of blood, and great beauty of body, which she humbly rejected": the words are John de Laes's, who presently hints that her parents, looking up to their Daughter's prudence, did not much mix themselves in this business. These things Corbera and Ayala draw out more widely, and hand down that the Maiden, most loving of virginity, was twice most strongly urged to it by her kinsmen. First, according to Corbera, the said kinsmen approached the Virgin's parents, whom they tried to persuade to her marriage for the splendor of the house and other advantages that would arise thence: but when they had found them less inclined to their desire, they judged that the cause of the parents' unconcern was the reluctance and resistance of the Daughter, and that accordingly her mind must be assailed. Gerard or Conrad (in Spanish Guerao) Alamandus de Cervellon, the eldest brother of the Blessed one's father, undertook the task; but she received his lengthy speech with so modest, pious and grave an answer that, struck, he acknowledged God's will, and, leaving the Virgin, went off to dissuade the others from further attempts. She meanwhile, having overcome that first assault, fortified herself against those that would follow, both by most earnestly beseeching God that He would strengthen His Spouse in those straits with the help of His grace, and by moving her parents with prayer and tears to promise that they would not suffer anything to be done opposed to her progress in the divine service.

[24] she vows virginity to God So rest was then granted her: but after some time, the assault being renewed, she was pressed the more vehemently, in that she found her parents had gone over to the side of the kinsmen. Anxious therefore, she returned to tears, to prayers, to pious exercises, that she might obtain from the Lord God comfort and remedy. Meanwhile on the twelfth day of the month of February she betook herself to the church of blessed Mary of Mercy, where the memory of St. Eulalia, virgin and martyr and patroness of the place, was festively kept. Here she heard father Bernard de Corbaria, a religious of the said Order, her confessor, taking his theme from the first Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 7, "Concerning Virgins I have no commandment of the Lord," speaking with such ardor of spirit and such efficacy about the praises of virginity and the contempt of earthly things that she returned home more kindled with divine love, and going up into her chamber cut off her hair with her own hands, and, putting on humbler and coarser garments, vowed perpetual virginity to her Divine Spouse. These things being done, coming down from her chamber she met her parents, and told them of the vow made, and alleged the reasons impelling her to it and excusing the deed. At first the novelty of the thing struck them; but the speech of father Bernard de Corbaria, presently summoned, led them to assent, and prevailed that it was granted to the pious Virgin, to avoid further troubles from her kinsmen,

to wear a humble and poor garment, such as those women wore in Spain who were called Beatæ, and who, though living in the world, in manners and exercises came nearer to the religious life.

[25] You have here, reader, a brief compendium of those things with which Corbera filled seven quite long chapters in all; in the year 1248, of her age the 18th: some assertions of more recent namely 20 and 21, where he reports what was done the first time about the Blessed one's marriage, and 49 and the four following, where he sets forth the rest and concludes in these words in Spanish: "That vow of virginity made by Maria happened in the eighteenth year of her age, which was from the Nativity of Christ the one thousand two hundred and forty-eighth, according to the relation which is kept under the name of John de la Es in the archive of Barcelona of the convent of Mercy." But since through all seven chapters he cites no one except one, and that in this one place, John de la Es — whom I with others always write de Laes — he compels me to suspect that most of the circumstances of the narrative, especially the longer conversations between the Blessed one and her uncle and her parents, the speech of father de Corbaria excusing and commending before those same parents the vow of virginity made by Maria, and also the prayers and addresses of that same Blessed one directed to God and to the most holy Virgin Mary — he compels me to suspect, I say, that most of the circumstances must be attributed to his own meditations: nor can I but judge that the uncle's name was drawn from those same conjectures from which he confessed above that he took the father's name.

[26] But that anyone may perceive how well founded this suspicion of mine is, writers are compared with the ancient it will be helpful here to bring forward whatever pertaining to that matter is found in our copy of the ancient manuscript relation, which, as from the fragments cited here and there by Corbera scarcely appears doubtful to me, is not different from that which he himself attributes to John de Laes. In no. 1 these words are read: "But in the eighteenth year she vowed a vow of virginity"; then, a few words being interposed, the author goes on thus: "Her mother and father feared the Lord: her kinsfolk, her father's relatives, had chosen for her a marriage noble for its riches, nobility of blood, and great beauty of body, which she humbly rejected. But her father and mother considered the matter in silence *, recognizing in the Maiden a gray-haired and very ripe age": then in no. 4 these follow: "But it was done by divine ordinance that, while her parents were again thinking of her state, they (the Blessed one and her father and mother, as I gather from what follows) came to our convent on the day of holy Eulalia the virgin, and, brother Bernard de Corbaria preaching, 'Concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord,' the Virgin was so confirmed in her holy purpose that she said to her parents: 'Was not the preacher speaking to me? am I not wholly Christ's? Why do you wish to divide me?'"

[27] Hence we learn indeed that the Blessed one was twice solicited by her kinsmen to contract marriage; Acts but the reasons alleged by them, namely by the uncle, for moving the minds of the Blessed one and of her parents, and described at length by Corbera, we do not find, and we reckon them so many ornaments added to the history. We learn that the Blessed one, while her kinsmen were pressing the second time, was present with her parents on the XII day of February, on which falls the feast of St. Eulalia, virgin and martyr, at the sermon of father Bernard de Corbaria, and was by his speech confirmed in the purpose of keeping virginity. We learn that she vowed her virginity to God in the eighteenth year of her age, which was of Christ 1248, since she was born in the year 1230, as was said above. But thence we do not learn that the Blessed one made that vow on the very day on which she was present at the sermon, that she cut off her hair with her own hands, that she put on cheaper garments, unknown to her parents; that they, taking her deed ill, were led to assent by the lengthy speech of father de Corbaria summoned thither: and accordingly these things too are left doubtful at least to us. Doubtful, I say, not certainly fabulous or altogether improbable; for I know that Corbera had other documents at hand, and among them the Life put together by a Canon Regular of the Order of St. Augustine in the year 1323, whence perhaps he elicited some of them; I know that our copy of John de Laes's relation, as being much corrupted, can here be mutilated, nay in fact is so; and therefore I the more easily persuade myself of this, because the last period given in the preceding number seems broken off and incomplete, and from it, with no word interposed, there is a passing to deeds twelve years later; but for that very reason I the more grieve that I could not obtain the lucubration of the praised canon and a more correct copy of the ancient relation, by whose help I might perhaps establish what I pass over as doubtful and not sufficiently attested.

[28] are compared Ayala in chapter 9 and the two following, treating the same things which we have exhibited from Corbera in compendium, describes the manner in which Maria at that time put on the habit of the Order. For presently, according to him in chapter XI, when Father Bernard de Corbaria had rendered the parents' minds favorable to their Daughter's desires, it was arranged with the fathers of Mercy that they should grant her the habit of their Order; and on the appointed day the Virgin, accompanied by her mother and other women of the chief nobility, was led to the church of the Order and received by the venerable fathers who came to meet her, William de Bas, master general and next successor of St. Peter Nolasco, Bernard de Corbaria and the other chief men. Then the same Bernard de Corbaria delivered a sermon to the assembly upon the present matter, and, this being finished, adorned with the habit of the Order the Virgin filled with joy: and so, as the same Ayala writes, she was the first among the Beatæ of the said Order, or women Devoted to God, as the word sounds in Spanish. Of that solemn ceremony no trace occurs elsewhere, not even in Corbera, and therefore, until it be more solidly confirmed, I shall reckon it among the other conjectures — perhaps deduced from this, that to the last words given from John de Laes's relation in no. 26 the following are immediately subjoined: "In the thirtieth year of her age, of Christ 1260, she was bereaved of a parent, and until the thirty-fifth … religiously … they lived, the mother in a widow's habit, the Daughter in a NUN'S."

[29] and discussed. But let us grant the thing to be true even in all its circumstances; it will have to be said that it happened long after the month of February of the year 1248, in which she made her vow; since St. Peter Nolasco transferred the general mastership of the Order to the praised William de Bas only in the year 1249, as all commonly write, nay toward the end of the said year, as is established from an instrument which is said to be written word for word from the notes of the venerable father de Amerio, who was contemporary with St. Peter Nolasco and the fourth master general of the Order. For that instrument, drawn in the year 1626 from an iron chest of the archive of Barcelona, copied by a public notary, compared before witnesses, and published in print by the Reverend Father Marcos Salmerón among the Historical Monuments, runs thus on page 64: "In the year one thousand two hundred and forty-nine he (St. Peter Nolasco) abdicated the office of the mastership toward the end of the year."

*. read "non habentes filios"

*. read "taciti"

§ III. The death of her parents; her religious profession; her patronage of the shipwrecked; her blessed death; the burial of her body made illustrious by miracles.

[ ] Her father being dead, she withdraws with her mother to a humbler house; Our Blessed one lived with both parents amid continual exercises of piety and virtues until the year 1260, of her age the 30th, in which her father died, as we understood from the words of John de Laes brought forward in no. 26; the same years the author of the Latin compendium of the Life marks, but notes also the day and the month, as follows: "She was bereaved of her father on the Lord's day and on the feast of the Octave of the holy Innocents, namely the fourth day of the month of January in the year MCCLX." I have not at hand the Works of the authors — except Corbera and Remón — whom he used; and accordingly I do not know whether these things, and those which a little below he affirms no less determinately and distinctly about her mother's death, are proved by fit documents. Her father therefore being dead, she withdrew with her pious mother into a humble house near the convent of the Order of Mercy, as we saw from the praised John de Laes, and there, being more withdrawn from the tumult of the world, applied herself more freely and more zealously to works of charity and exercises of virtue, as Corbera sets forth at length after his manner in chapter 55, and sufficiently the author of the Latin compendium of the Life in no. 4.

[31] About the same times, on the testimony of Alonso Remón, book 4 of the Annals, chapter 20, then, joined to some pious women and after him Corbera and others, two matrons of Barcelona, widows of two knights of the chief nobility of Catalonia, called Eulalia Pins and Isabella Berti, had bidden farewell to the vanities of the world, and with four or five other women of the first rank, who had joined them desiring a more perfect life, intent on God alone and on the profit of their neighbors, whom they helped with their wealth, had formed a pious community in a house not far removed from that same convent. Over them presided as director of souls the father Bernard de Corbaria, praised several times, then Prior of the convent of Barcelona, and he had, for their ardent desire, brought it about that in the year 1260, in the general chapter celebrated at Tarragona, it was decreed to grant them the habit and insignia of the Order, and to prescribe them a fixed standard and rule of life. But that decree, difficulties intervening, was not carried into execution until the fifth year after.

[32] Meanwhile our Blessed one joined herself to that pious company and shone before them with such examples of virtues she takes the habit of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy that the rest submitted themselves to her of their own accord; until at length, every difficulty being removed, both she and her companions, being made partakers of their wish, received the habit and made profession. The preparations and ceremonies with which that thing is said to have been performed are reported in the Latin compendium of the Life, nos. 7 and 8, and agree with what is related by Remón and Corbera; whether with older documents also, I do not know. John de Laes's relation concludes the whole business in this short period: "But in the thirty-fifth year of her age, the forty-seventh of the foundation (of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy for the Redemption of captives), from the Lord's Nativity the one thousand two hundred and sixty-fifth, on the eighth day of the Kalends of June, she made profession, and, her mother dying after a short interval, she led a holy life with some honorable women." The same and no more from Laes's codex Corbera produces in Latin in chapter 57, but he himself reads: "on the eighth of the Kalends of July." The same year Remón, Bernardo de Vargas, and the author of the Latin compendium of the Life note, but these too differ from those in the month, marking the XXV day of the month of March, sacred to the annunciation of the blessed Virgin Mary.

[33] and makes profession, Corbera in the cited place hints that it matters little on what day it was done, since it is evidently established that it was truly done in that year: nevertheless he has recourse to conjectures, and first indeed says that the cause of the discrepancy could arise from a copyist's error; secondly,

that perhaps the profession was made in the month of March, but was either renewed in the month of July because of the lack of some necessary formula, or that in this latter month at last, all impediments being removed, the Blessed one and her companions began to live after the manner of nuns. The first conjecture is by far the most likely to me, especially because he himself differs from our manuscript. I judge that we must read "on the eighth of the Kalends of June," which was the XXV day of the month of May, falling in the said year on the second weekday of Pentecost, so that others wrote March for May, as Corbera July for June.

[34] the first nun of the Order and superior of her companions, The same Corbera and the other more recent writers commonly hand down that Maria, as one whom Father Bernard de Corbaria had — though she resisted — appointed Superior to her companions, who themselves demanded it, went before the others in this taking of the habit and making of profession; so that according to them, as she was the first among the women devoted to God of the Order of St. Mary of Mercy, for having taken in the year 1248 the habit of the Beatæ, as they call them, so she is also reckoned the first among the nuns of that same Order, for having made profession before all the rest: whose formula, recited by Corbera in chapter 57 from an ancient manuscript codex, I here at last subjoin: "I, Maria de Cervellon, promise to God and to blessed Mary of Mercy or of Compassion poverty, obedience and virginity, and to labor for the redeeming of captives; and whatever shall seem good to our general I will perform for them." The same formula the author of the Latin compendium of the Life exhibits in no. 8, but in slightly different words, perhaps because he translated it into Latin from a Spanish author.

[35] likely after her mother's death. Our more recent writers, namely Corbera, Ayala, and the author of the compendium just praised, place this making of Maria's profession after her mother's death: so the latter has it in no. 4: "In a good old age she (the said mother) fell asleep in the Lord on the Saturday, the XXVII day of the month of December in the year MCCLXIV." But to these, at least in appearance, John de Laes's relation is opposed, whose words are these: "But in the year one thousand two hundred and sixty-fifth, on the eighth day of the Kalends of June, she made profession, and, her mother dying after a short interval, she led a holy life with some honorable women." Which indeed, taken in a strict sense as they stand, require this order of time: first she made profession; then a little after she lost her mother; and then at last she led a holy life with some honorable women: and the same order is kept in the proper lessons of the Office. Nevertheless, since she made such a profession as the recited formula shows, that order seems to me less likely, and I should prefer to fit to the words this sense, which they admit without difficulty: in the year 1265 the Blessed one, her mother having died after a short interval, that is, a little before, both made profession and led a holy life with some honorable women who had professed the same institute with her.

[36] The remaining deeds of her Life described at length by more recent writers. Further, Corbera and Ayala commend and extol at length the Blessed one's prudent standard of governing her companions, the harshness of her life, her assiduity in prayer, and most of all the exercises of piety toward her neighbor, so frequent and excellent that thence the surname "de Socos," that is, "of Help," clung to her, and by any other she was scarcely known among the inhabitants. To these they add the favors conferred on her by God, the spirit of prophecy, infused knowledge, ecstasies; which and other things are set forth more briefly indeed, but sufficiently, in the Latin compendium of the Life, to be printed after John de Laes's relation. Sufficiently, I say, for since they were removed by so great an interval of time from the Virgin's age, and there are not at hand other older documents by which we might discern certain things from uncertain, and the things themselves from their more liberal circumstances, what will it profit to translate from Spanish into Latin many and lengthy relations, of which they themselves bid us suspect that the greater part proceeded from conjectures and meditations, as I indicated in no. 12 and following.

[37] Maria, living and dead, was always a special Patroness of those in peril at sea, Even while living she appeared prodigiously and therefore, on Remón's testimony, she is everywhere painted carrying a ship in her hand: and indeed her likeness is seen so engraved on the frontispiece of the Bullarium of the Order with this epigraph: "Saint Maria Cervello and Socos." But the miracles by which God declared and made illustrious this patronage of hers while she was among the living are briefly run through, some of them, in John de Laes's relation; and that many also are reported in the codex which a Canon Regular of the Order of St. Augustine wrote in the year 1323, Corbera is witness; but he exhibits only two in Spanish in chapter 64, and, meaning to give them weight, mingles here and there some Latin words drawn from the said codex, which I shall give in the Annotations to the often-mentioned compendium, where the same things are narrated. A third miracle the same Corbera reports in chapter 68, but, meaning to give credit to this too, he subjoins an instrument whose autograph he says is kept in the same archive, and which I too here transcribe: "Be it plain to all, that we, brother Emmanuel Albuerquerque and brother Arnald Liniverius, of the Order of holy Mary of Mercy of captives, according to the mandate which we received in the general chapter held at Lérida, in this year one thousand two hundred and ninety-one, from our master general brother Peter Amerius, concerning the manifestation of all things which can be known worthy of note about any persons of our Order, bear witness and testify that, when in the year one thousand and eighty-ninth we both together were sailing from Spain into Africa, sent by the Religion to redeem captives, and on the day which was reckoned the twelfth of the Kalends of December a great storm had arisen on the sea, so that, salvation being altogether despaired of, all the burdens of the ship had been cast into the sea, and at last, the sailors crying out, we had determined likewise to throw into the sea the very money of the captives which had been reserved, there appeared to us in the air above the ship a certain woman clothed in the religious habit of our Order, whom by face and voice we well knew to be our sister Maria de Cervello, whom we, when we set out from Barcelona, had addressed, and then, as is plain to all, she was living.

[38] "Who spoke to us thus: 'Brethren, be strengthened in the Lord, and came to the aid of those in peril at sea and in the power of His might; for salvation shall shortly be yours.' When she had said this, she commanded the winds and the sea, and there was made a great calm; but she herself vanished. And we, happily accomplishing our journey, redeemed the captives, and returning to Barcelona, when we had determined to publish this, she prayed and besought us by our Lord Jesus Christ that we should say nothing: and we, obeying her entreaties, kept silence, until the above-said mandate was promulgated by our master general; obeying whom we declare and swear by our Lord Jesus Christ and the four holy Gospels that the matter is so as it has been declared by us. In testimony whereof we have written this instrument and signed it with our names and marks, which was done in the said city of Lérida, on the Kalends of June of the year aforenoted. The mar† of brother Emmanuel Alburquerque, who confirm this. The mar† of brother Arnald Liniverius, who confirm this. The mar†, which I brother Peter de Luna, notary of the chapter, have set in testimony of the truth, who was present at this instrument, the third line being amended and 'two hundred' set over it for 'eight hundred' deleted."

[39] and succored them. To this instrument, as I hinted just now, Corbera prefixes the history contained in it, but much enlarged and, where the storm is described, more adorned with circumstances: among these he adds one likely enough, though, unless I am mistaken, from mere conjecture. He signifies therefore that the murmurings of the sailors, when the peril of shipwreck was imminent, arose not from the money alone recorded in the instrument, but from other stuff destined for the redeeming of captives, namely cloths and linens, and also some choice gifts to be offered to the African princes, which, the other merchandise having been cast into the sea, had thus far been kept. The same deed is recorded also in a few words in John de Laes's relation: receive the words: "Many times she walked upon the waves and freed the Redeemers from the perils of the sea, as it is permitted to see in brother Emmanuel de Alburquerque, a Castilian, and brother Arnald Litiverius, a Catalan, soldiers *, on the eighth of the Kalends of December of the year one thousand two hundred and ninety-first; and not only did she free them, but the barbarian king also treated them humanely." Yet this author erred, confusing the time at which the prodigy happened with the year in which testimony of it was given. For that happened on the twelfth of the Kalends of December, or the XX day of November of the year 1289, while Maria was still among the living; but this was given on the Kalends of June 1291, about the ninth month after her death, which and her last illness, if anyone desires to be narrated most fully, let him consult Corbera chapter 69, Ayala chapter 20, and Remón volume 1, book 4, chapter 22; to me it seems set forth sufficiently in the Latin compendium of the Life, no. 19.

[40] She died in the year 1290, The year, month and day of her death are so expressly marked in John de Laes's relation that there can be no doubt about them: thus it runs: "She died at Barcelona on the thirteenth of the Kalends of October of the year ninetieth," namely after the one thousand two hundredth. Nevertheless the more recent writers vary in marking the day, and Corbera indeed in the month, saying in chapter 73 that her death happened in the month of October in the year 1290; which is the more wonderful in him, in that he had the ancient instruments nearer at hand, from which he ought to have been taught out of his error. Certainly he used the relation just praised, and in the same chapter 73 cites a Latin instrument drawn up in the year 1291 in the general chapter of Lérida, and he recites the same entire in chapter 70, in which these words are read: "Arnald de Liguer testified to me, that … in the preceding year, ninety, he came to Barcelona on the thirteenth of the Kalends of October, and there was present at the office of the burial of a certain religious woman of our Order, called Maria de Cervello," etc. Whoever would have that error excused as kindly as may be, let him suppose that the thirteen days of the month of September which precede the Kalends of October were not observed by Corbera.

[41] on the 19 day of September, aged sixty. The author of the Latin compendium of the Life differs by one day from our ancient relation, noting the XVIII of September. Remón and Dathia, suppressing the year, month and day, assign the sixth weekday of the week: but in the year 1290 the XIX day fell not on the sixth weekday but on the third. These perhaps found the day of the burial so noted somewhere, and thought it was the day of death. And indeed, if Corbera writes rightly, it is most likely that Maria was laid in the tomb on the sixth weekday; for he says that her sacred body, before it was laid in the tomb, was exposed for three days in the church of St. Eulalia, to satisfy the pious desire of the multitude running together. Nor do the words cited in the preceding number from the instrument of the year 1291 stand in the way here; for Arnald de Liguer could have come to Barcelona

on the XIX day of September, and three days after have been present at the Blessed one's obsequies. Whatever be the case, only those, besides Corbera, seem to have labored in fixing the day of her death who lacked opportunity of consulting the documents of Barcelona or the writers who used those documents. The XIX day of September is marked in the Catalogue of the masters general which is prefixed to the Bullarium of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy, page 7; the same in the proper lessons of the Office, page 423 of the praised Bullarium; and on the same day Maria's name has been inserted in the Roman Martyrology very lately reprinted. Ayala in chapter 20, likewise noting the XIX of September, says "after she had lived fifty-nine years, nine months, eighteen days"; that reckoning altogether squares with the Blessed one's birthday, which he — I do not know whence he took it — sets as the first day of the month of December. That she was born in the year 1230, and accordingly numbered the sixtieth of her age in the year 1290, is made out from the testimony of John de Laes, who says that she made profession in the year 1265, in the 35th of her age: and thence I judge that Remón's reckonings must be corrected, in whom the Blessed one is read to have departed from the living not yet fifty years old.

[42] Ayala in chapter 21 says that the dead Virgin's body, in testimony of her most pure integrity, remained soft and pliable, [Her body, made illustrious with wondrous splendor, sweet odor and miracles, is buried.] with her face composed and serene like one sleeping; that it breathed out a heavenly fragrance surpassing all earthly perfumes; that it was made illustrious with a splendor that stirred both veneration and piety in the beholders: besides, that it was observed that through a certain kind of ointment or sweet-smelling liquid flowing from the sacred corpse various miracles were wrought. Of this ointment or liquid Corbera makes no mention, but the rest he confirms by the Latin testimony of the ancient codex of Barcelona, which in the same words I transfer hither from our ancient relation: "God worked many miracles through her: for when from her body a fragrant and most sweet odor went forth, and the whole body was suffused with light, almost the whole city came together to her as she was laid out in the convent." The same Corbera and Ayala after their manner copiously, and not without the ornament, I suppose, of conjectures, explain the concourse of men of every age and rank, stirred by those prodigies, to the church of St. Eulalia, and their affections of mind according to each one's state, namely of veneration, sorrow, trust in her patronage, etc.; until at last, three days having elapsed, the sacred body was laid up in the tomb in the chapel of St. Marina. But of the miracles which happened in the said three days, very many, they specially record two; but neither do I transcribe them here, as being reported, though more succinctly, also in our ancient relation, where what they too narrate about the burial is thus run through: "But she was buried in the chapel of holy Marina the virgin, in the tomb of the nuns of our Order."

*. read "militibus"

§ IV. Miracles after her death; translations of her body; the situation of the reliquary; her cult in other places of Catalonia.

[ ] Her cult continued from her death is confirmed by miracles; After the Blessed one's body was given to the tomb, the people's veneration toward her was in no way diminished; but the miracles, according to Corbera and Ayala, were always continued and increased: so indeed that there is almost no kind of human infirmity which they do not report to have been taken away at her invocation. The sick obtained health, the blind sight, the deaf hearing, the dumb speech, the lame walking, those infected with leprosy cleanness, the injured healing, captives liberty, the barren fruitfulness, the pregnant a happy birth, spouses peace and concord, the afflicted comfort, all in short, says Corbera, relief and help in their necessities and troubles; nay, even some dead, according to Ayala, life. Hence, as he affirms, new monuments of piety and thanksgiving were seen daily at her tomb, images of silver and of wax, crutches, and other votive gifts. Thus they in general, not indicating whether they learned these things from ancient writings, or only from tradition confirmed by the votive gifts adorning the Blessed one's tomb and still extant in their own age.

[44] some of these are recorded in the ancient documents; The latter becomes the more likely to me in that I observe that Corbera was more accurate in naming or citing authorities as often as this was granted him by manuscript codices. To show this it is not necessary to go away from his chapter 70, whence I excerpted the miracles just reported in general and without alleged testimony; for in the same place, declaring four others a little more explicitly, he at once appeals to the codex of William Vives, or, as I hinted above, to the continued relation of John de Laes about the Blessed one's deeds, in which they are truly recorded. Nor does he stop there, but, to win greater credit for the third miracle, he produces from the archive of Barcelona and recites entire a Latin instrument which, fortified with an oath, was duly approved at Lérida in the general chapter of the Order in the year 1291. And this I now at last the more gladly reprint here, because at the same time it makes indubitable, as at a single glance, whatever has hitherto been discussed about Maria's names, both her family name and her added one, about the year and month of her death, about the general opinion of her sanctity among the people of Barcelona, and also about their flocking together to her obsequies.

[45] "Be it plain to all, that I brother Dionysius Roneus, a Frenchman, of the Order of holy Mary of Mercy of captives, commander of Montpellier, give assurance, according to the mandate of our master general promulgated in this chapter of Lérida, celebrated in this year one thousand two hundred and ninety-one, on the day which was reckoned the fourth of the Nones of May, that when I was in the city of Marseille in this same year at the Kalends of February by the sea, a certain noble man, Arnald de Liguer by name, testified to me that, when he was making a journey to blessed Mary of Montserrat, in the preceding year, ninety, he came to Barcelona on the thirteenth of the Kalends of October, and there was present at the office of the burial of a certain religious woman of our Order, called Maria de Cervello, whom all called del Socos, because the whole city had come together thither, and they called her a Saint, and because, as was told him, she succored, while she lived, those in peril at sea: and when he himself was returning to France, and was in peril, the sea being stirred by a storm, he invoked that same Maria, and straightway he and all who were in the ship saw a woman clothed in a white habit walking upon the waters, and straightway the storm ceased, which he affirmed with an oath. And I the aforesaid brother Dionysius testify and swear by the four holy Gospels that this is true, as it has been declared by me: in faith whereof I have subscribed this instrument at Lérida on the third of the Nones of May in the year as above. The mar† of brother Dionysius Roneus, who confirm this. The mar†, which I brother Peter de Luna, notary of the chapter, have set in testimony of the truth, who was present at this instrument." Thus far Dionysius Roneus, who himself afterward experienced the Blessed one's help, as we shall read below in our ancient relation.

[46] Hence Corbera and Ayala pass to the history of the translation of the sacred body, as also the translation of the incorrupt body, performed ninety years after her death; and he indeed in chapter 71 notes that he here followed an ancient manuscript communicated to him from the archive of Barcelona by the Religious; but that this too is the same as the often-mentioned relation of John de Laes, then continued by another and written by William Vives in the year 1401, about the twentieth after the translation, I gather from a few words here again inserted by Corbera in Latin. For our copy has the history of the translation and plainly the same words which Corbera gives. But since this is very faulty and brief, and our authors add other things which are connected with the translation and worthy of note, I here set forth the series in a few words. The occasion of the translation was the constant and frequent concourse of the people to the tomb and their veneration, confirmed by benefits from God: for, stirred by these, Peter IV, king of Aragon, who himself too was piously affected toward the Blessed one, judged that her body should be more honorably placed. To this end, in the year 1380 according to Corbera and Ayala, he ordered a large case to be made, richly adorned and worthy of royal munificence.

[47] On the day appointed for the translation, which was according to them the XVII of the month of July, attempted in the year 1381 and prodigiously hindered, in the year according to our relation 1381, there were present the king and all the nobles of the court, and also the senators of the city. Peter de Planella, prelate of Barcelona, solemnly celebrated at the altars: then, a procession being formed after the manner of suppliants, they went to the place where the reliquary was, which being opened by the senators before all, the body was found entire to the huge joy and admiration of all. Setting the case on their shoulders, the more eminent religious, with the king, the bishop, the senators and the other nobles following, carried it to the lower choir, in the middle of which an altar had been raised. When the bishop and the worthier of the clergy who assisted him were attempting to transfer the sacred body from the old into the new case, the humble Maria — these words Corbera recites in Latin from our relation — "began to grow in a wondrous manner, so that the chest could not contain her": although, as the same adds in Spanish, that was much larger than the old. In this therefore, and without any difficulty, the body was laid back, being reduced to its former shape. The new case, although empty, with the authentic testimonies of the prodigy added, was placed in the chapel of St. Marina in the place where the old one had before stood, but this with the sacred body in the chapel of St. Catherine: "But on the morning of the next day the body was found within the sacristy, where it is religiously venerated by all the citizens of Barcelona. God worked many great things in so holy a translation, as is plain from all of them which are kept until now in the said sacristy." With the last words taken from our relation Corbera indeed agrees as to the finding of the body in the sacristy, but adds that it was set back in its former place, designating by this the chapel of St. Marina; nor yet does he contradict the relation; for, so far as I gather from Remón, the chapel of St. Marina was situated in the greater sacristy. Ayala, explaining more particularly the great things then exhibited by the Lord God according to the relation, says that health was restored to not a few sick, sight to some blind, and life to two dead; but after his manner without special testimony.

[48] For the rest, in memory of this prodigious translation, on Corbera's testimony, in memory of which the reliquary was adorned with gold and paintings: the old chest — which, made of cypress, furnished within with precious cloths, and, that the body may conveniently be seen, open in front but protected with iron gratings — was then gilded on the outside and adorned with paintings. In the upper part is seen the image of the Blessed one, marked with the dress and shield of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy of captives; on one side of the case the king, the bishop clothed in pontifical habit, and four religious of the Order; on the other the queen and three illustrious women; beside the Virgin's image one senator, adorned with the consular robe, with bent knees and hands

joined. From these figures, whose garments, on the same author's testimony, when he himself was writing — namely in the early 17th century — displayed an antiquity of more than two centuries, there is confirmed the assertion of Alonso Remón, of Ayala and of Dathia, who write that at the translation already reported there was present also the queen of Aragon, wife of Peter IV, yet not she whom Remón and Dathia name Maria. For she, Peter's first wife, daughter of the king of Navarre, is written to have died about the year 1347, after whom he married Eleanor, daughter of the king of Portugal, and, when she too had died, Eleanor, daughter of the king of Sicily, and finally, when she too had been taken from the living, Sibylla de Forcia in the year 1380, as may be seen more fully in Zurita, book 10 of the Annals of Aragon. To the same year Corbera also attaches King Peter's last marriage, but whether Sibylla was present at the translation he does not declare.

[49] another translation made at the end of the 16th century, The praised Corbera in chapter 72, at the very beginning, affirms that the Blessed one's body was in the chapel of St. Marina down to his own times: then, some things being interposed which do not belong here, he so describes the situation of the reliquary as to leave no doubt that in those same times of his another translation occurred; yet this — at which I wonder — he neglected to set forth. Ayala somewhat supplied the defect in chapter 26, saying that the sacred body remained there until one century before he himself wrote, that is, until the 16th century drawing to its close, since his book came out only in the year 1695. He indicates that occasion for the translation was given by the body of the venerable man Bernard de Corbaria, once the Blessed one's confessor, which toward the end of the said sixteenth century was found without corruption in the same church, and placed with Bl. Maria's body in the place and manner presently to be more fully designated from Corbera. With Ayala, as to the time of the finding of Bernard de Corbaria's body, Marcos Salmerón, master general of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy, perfectly agrees, in the Historical Monuments of his Order published in print in the year 1646: for he says that it was found fifty years before, and that about the same time the Catholic king Philip II came to the convent of Barcelona, who ceased to live as the sixteenth century was expiring; and in assigning the situation of both reliquaries the praised Salmerón also agrees with Corbera.

[50] the situation of the reliquary and the tokens Now that situation, according to Corbera — who, as a man of Barcelona and an eyewitness, is to be preferred to the rest — is such: that same case, namely the old one, in which Bl. Maria's body is contained, is set in an eminent place, supported by four wooden columns, at the Epistle horn of the altar in the greater chapel, and there at the Gospel horn another case made in the same manner, in which is kept the body of the venerable Bernard. Above Bl. Maria's chest hangs a picture in which she, painted with the insignia of sanctity and of the Order, is exhibited as treading the sea with her feet, and supporting with her right hand a ship in peril, but bearing in her left the Marian crown. Before the reliquary, which is covered and adorned with precious cloths, a silver lamp always burns, and for whole days a white taper, by the gift and care of certain pious men. The votive gifts which are hung above the case, on either side, and on the walls in that part of the presbytery, he says may be reckoned innumerable, since they constantly increase with new ones which are brought every hour. Yet reviewing those which were seen at the beginning of the month of April of the year 1629, when his book was sweating at the press, he names four rings of gold set with precious stones; two pairs of earrings and a sacred amulet (commonly Agnus Dei) marked with gold; of silver, besides the lamp, he counts more than a hundred and twenty-five; of wax, a hundred and ninety-four, the greatest part of which represent members of the human body in which a benefit was received; besides, thirty-three sepulchral shrouds, and other gifts of various kinds, which added to those already named rise to the number of four hundred and thirty-four, and each of which, as he says, is a token of a single miracle.

[51] He resumes the same matter in chapter 83, and says that from the said month of April to the end of October, of her cult, in which that part of the book was committed to the press, the gifts increased so far that scarcely a place remained for hanging them; that the golden ones were then twenty-five, the silver more than three hundred, the others almost innumerable, the waxen ones infinite. For the rest he concludes the said chapter 72 by commending the wonderful devotion of the people and the Blessed one's present patronage, and passes to chapter 73, to prove that she was always held as a saint. To this end he gathers what he had before said scattered and diffusely about the Blessed one's virtues, about the veneration in which she was among men on account of her miracles both living and dead, about the uninterrupted invocation of her help, about the public voice, the paintings, and the testimonies of writers old and new proving the general opinion of her sanctity; all which, since the reader can know them abundantly from what was said above, I do not repeat here.

[52] Thence he proceeds to the cult anciently exhibited to her also in other places; such as also exist in other places of Catalonia. and in the first place at Tarragona in the church of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy, where on a most ancient altar consecrated to her invocation is extant her image, marked with the habit and shield of the Order and also with the aureole of sanctity, with this epigraph likewise written in an ancient hand: "Saint Maria Socos." He appeals here to an instrument drawn up in the year 1629 on the XIX day of January by Pedro Pablo de Gavaldán, notary, before whom some witnesses, an oath being first taken, asserted the antiquity of the altar, the image, and the letters. At Gerona in the convent of the same Order he says there is a chapel, then having an age of three centuries, and in it at one side of the altar Maria's image with a crown and rays, whose painting is of the same antiquity as the rest. Likewise at Vich, otherwise Ausa Nova, in Spanish Vique, in the chapel of the convent of the said Order the middle of the altar is occupied by the effigy of St. Nicholas, to whom it is sacred, the right side by that of St. Raymond Nonnatus, the left by that of our Blessed one with an aureole. Finally at Perpignan in the church of the same Order she has her own chapel and altar, and in it her effigy adorned with light and rays; yet the author indicates that these are more recent than the rest, and that he does not doubt that like things are found in other kingdoms too, as in Catalonia, of which alone he treats, and to which the four cities mentioned belonged at that time, and belong until now, except Perpignan, which afterward passed to the dominion of the king of France. Further, he cites here as witness brother Michael Corts, who visited those places and labored untiringly to promote Maria's canonization.

§ V. The setting up of the process for canonization; the solemn inspection of the body; new miracles of various kinds.

[ ] The cause of canonization being begun, Whatever has hitherto been set forth about Bl. Maria's celebrated and immemorial cult contributed very much to promoting in the Roman curia the cause of beatification, which had then begun to be treated when the often-praised Corbera made his Work public. For there had been asked, in the name of the whole most excellent Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy, and obtained in the City, for drawing up the process by Apostolic authority, remissorial and compulsorial letters, whose last words the same Corbera produces in Latin in chapter 84 in this manner: "Given at Rome in the year from the Lord's Nativity one thousand six hundred and twenty-seven, in the tenth Indiction, on the thirtieth day of April, in the fourth year of the Pontificate of the most holy Father in Christ and our Lord Urban, by the favor of the divine clemency, the eighth Pope." Then, brought to Barcelona, those letters were offered with a most solemn rite in the year 1628 on the XI day of March to the most illustrious lord John Sentis, bishop of Barcelona, to D. Gaucerand de Senmenat, archdeacon major, to the lord Francis Terre, dean, and to Peter Pla, sacristan major, who were in them constituted remissorial and compulsorial judges, and who then began to discharge their office with such prudence and circumspection as befits so grave a business.

[54] in the year 1629 with a solemn rite To this also belonged the most solemn inspection of the body, which the praised Corbera describes at length in chapter 74, and which we pluck out from him — most likely an eyewitness — so far as suffices for the full understanding of it. In the year 1629 on the third day of April there came together to the church of the convent of Barcelona, previously adorned with splendid preparations, all the magistrates and the whole nobility; the most illustrious lords Michael Santos de San Pedro, bishop of Solsona and viceroy of Catalonia; John Sentis, bishop of Barcelona; five senators representing the city, clothed in the consular robe, attended by their apparitors and ministers; the college of legates or procurators general of the whole principality with their apparitors and retinue; D. Joseph de Cardona, count of Montagut; D. Francis Jofré, count of Peralada; D. Dalmau * de Queralt, count of Santa Coloma; D. John Gaucerand de Pinos, count of Vallfogona, and many other men and women of the chief nobility.

[55] of the sacred body, whose condition here The reliquary was moved from its place, and, being carried by D. Francis de Zagarriga, knight of St. James, D. Michael de Tornellas y Senmenat, knight of St. John, Louis de Boxados and his sons Philip and Didacus, who is likewise a knight of St. John, it was brought into the middle of the presbytery, and set upon two magnificently decorated tables. Brother Michael Caramunt drew the sacred body from the case, so disposed and entire with all its garments as if she were living even then, and set it upright and exposed it to the wondering multitude of men so long as was needful for each to behold it. Then, enclosed in the case, it was laid back in the same order and place. This is the sense of the longer Spanish relation given by Corbera, which nevertheless must be suitably understood as to the entireness of the body, and in accordance with what he sets down before in the same chapter: for he asserts that he saw the body several times, and once indeed with doctors of the medical art assisting and examining, and noting nothing in it that did not move to admiration and to new renderings of thanks and praises to God.

[56] Among these doctors he names Juan Francisco Rodell, is described, an inspection was made, dean of the university, a man most celebrated for erudition, according to whose opinion chiefly describing the chief parts of the body, he says that these are entire, clothed with flesh and skin, though somewhat flaccid and dry; that the eyes are indeed sunken from want of humors, but the tunics or membranes entire, yet dry; that the intestines keep their natural shape, though likewise dried up: besides that one rib has been violently torn from her, nay that one foot and a hand are lacking; he does not indicate whither those parts came, or when they were taken away: I suspect that one of them was separated from the body about the year 1613; for Remón in book 4 of the History, chapter 22, testifies that he saw in the said year a part of the Blessed one's relics, sent from the convent of Barcelona to a Religious of the convent of Madrid: and it was, as

he says, a part of a sinew, with a little flesh adhering, which was evidently distinguished from it, and so fresh that a watery and bloody humor penetrated the cotton wool and the paper. I return to Corbera.

[57] He immediately subjoins to the narration of the inspection of the sacred body a miracle and it was made famous on that very day by a miracle. which he affirms happened on the same day, and, being published abroad, made the festivity illustrious. The lady Maria Angela de Argençola, wife of D. Francis de Zagarriga, praised in no. 55, had lain in bed for several days, so paralyzed in her limbs that she could not move herself, and four persons were required to turn and lift her. Most piously devoted to our Blessed one, and kindled with the desire of beholding her body, she invoked her with ardent prayers and tears with most happy success; for in one moment of time she was loosed and free, so strengthened in mind and in strength that she rose from bed without anyone's help, and, to give thanks for so notable a benefit, hastened to the image of the Blessed one which she kept in her chamber, and before which she remained kneeling for a long space of time. Then she obtained full and perfect health, namely at the very time when the physicians most despaired that she could be recovered.

[58] Hence we proceed to chapter 75, where the praised author sets forth a twofold miracle wrought in the lady Clara de Argençola, In the same 17th century, by the Blessed one's patronage a noble matron wife of the most illustrious man Francis Raymond de Fiveller, and sister of the aforesaid Maria Angela. In the year one thousand six hundred and twenty-seven, on the XXVIII day of the month of June, being seized with a malignant fever which the Spaniards call "tavardillo," and being already furnished with all the Sacraments of the dying, invoking the Blessed one's patronage, she had recovered; but on the ninth day after, relapsing into the same malady, she lost sight, speech and hearing, and lay bereft of her senses for eight days. Thought was given rather to preparing her burial than to applying remedies, in which no confidence remained. Yet she returned to her senses, and, sighing deeply, said, and often repeated: "Holy Maria Socos!" So she recovered her speech, and — what the author does not add — most likely her hearing too, the blindness remaining, of which alone mention is made in what follows: but that she might be freed from this too by a new benefit of the Blessed one, on the next day, at the care of Maria Angela her sister, the keeper of the sacristy of the church of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy visited the sick woman, and after pouring forth some prayers applied to her eyes a piece of the Blessed one's garment which he had brought, and presently sight was restored to the right eye, but not to the left. Wherefore he was asked to continue the same for nine days.

[59] But the lady Clara herself warned him to spare his labor; because she was not to recover entire sight before she had laid her head upon Bl. Maria's reliquary. Persevering in this trust until the twenty-ninth day of August of the same year, was freed from various troubles of disease; her strength being restored, she came to the church of Bl. Mary of Mercy, and, having duly confessed her faults and been refreshed with the sacred Banquet, was present at the sacrifice of the Mass. Then, the gratings of the reliquary being opened, she inserted herself into it so that she touched the Blessed one's garments with her head, and in the same moment recovered sight in her left eye. Thus, but much more fully, Corbera, who testifies that when the latter miracle happened he was in the church together with several noble matrons and a numerous people. He asserts that he does not commemorate more miracles, lest he go on to infinity, since new ones are wrought daily, and those evident. Something like this about their multitude Ayala affirms in chapter 25, yet he declares in particular six besides those already reported, which I likewise abridge from Spanish into Latin.

[60] a noble man escaped the peril of death, The first is the benefit which the lord de Queralt, count of Santa Coloma, named above, ascribed to the Blessed one's patronage. He, about the year 1640, being viceroy and captain general of Catalonia, while besieging Salses, a very strong fortress (distant two miles from Perpignan in the county of Roussillon), saw an iron ball from a great engine of war directed at his tent, and, thinking himself lost, invoked the Blessed one's help, and in that very moment the ball fell at his feet without any injury or damage, which he sent to Maria's tomb as a perpetual memorial of the benefit received and of his grateful mind.

[61] a blind man received sight, dumb women speech; John Carritxera, plainly blind for thirteen years, determined to set up a novena in Maria's honor, which, visiting her tomb and invoking her patronage, he began that he might obtain a remedy for his evil, but completed that he might give thanks for the remedy obtained. The Blessed one indeed restored speech to several dumb persons, but above the rest in a wonderful manner to sister Dorothea de Pineda, a nun of the most excellent convent of Monte-Sion at Barcelona. She had lost the use of her tongue on the Saturday of the week of the Lord's Passion, nor, though remedies were applied, could she recover it until the feast of St. Mary Magdalene. She was persuaded to have recourse to Bl. Maria of Help; before whose image, brought into her chamber, as soon as she bent her knees, to the amazement of the assembly of Religious, she began to speak. The novelty of the thing the physician too, coming up, judged wonderful, but did not acknowledge a miracle, attributing to medical skill what was reckoned received from the Blessed one's patronage. Straightway, God permitting, sister Dorothea became dumb, and so continued for eight days, until Bl. Maria's relics were brought; which as soon as she venerated before the nuns, she recovered her speech, and that clearer than usual.

[62] a flow of blood was stopped in another; A violent and copious flow of blood, with repeated symptoms, had brought Arnald de Orlau into evident peril, and had set him almost beyond hope of life. His son Joseph de Orlau, mindful of the benefits of our glorious Virgin, went to the convent and with fervent prayer asked and obtained that the Blessed one's relics should be brought to his sick father and laid upon him: with a happy issue, for in the same instant in which he felt the touch of the sacred treasure, he found himself miraculously relieved, and the harmful flow ceased.

[63] the rage of the sea, threatening ruin to the city of Barcelona, The remaining two miracles, on the describing of which the same Ayala spends his chapter 26, confirm what was said before about the special power divinely granted to the Blessed one for repressing the sea's savagery and averting shipwrecks. By the first benefit, which was common to the whole city of Barcelona, she showed herself a notable Helper of her fatherland. In the year 1617 a horrible storm arose, continued for several days, and the sea boiled with such unwonted rage that, impatient of its bounds, it stretched its waves as far as the square which the author calls the Broad, and the inhabitants feared the drowning of the city, or, to use the same author's phrase, another deluge. Therefore the Venerable Sacrament, together with many relics and images of the Saints, was carried amid the fervent prayers of the anxious people to the mole — doubtless fortified and nearest the sea: but neither did the storm cease, nor was the people freed from fear.

[64] At length, God reserving that benefit for the illustrating of our Virgin, was repressed; a messenger was sent by the senators to the Reverend Father Prior of the convent of Bl. Mary of Mercy, who and all his religious, a procession being formed after the rite of suppliants, went forth with the sacred body to the said mole. But arriving at the shore, they wished to sprinkle the reliquary with sea water; but at their very approach the sea sent forth so horrible a wave that in its height it overtopped all who assisted at the supplication; yet nevertheless — which was a singular prodigy — it brought no harm besides terror, nay, it did not even wet their garments. They sprinkled therefore the reliquary with water; and immediately above it there appeared an unwonted splendor, with which the sun, hidden by clouds for some days before, played with its first rays. Glad at that omen, the crowd of suppliants went on to the mole; where the sacred body was deposited that night: but in the morning, the storm being calmed, all fear vanished.

[65] The other prodigy happened in the year 1647 on the feast day of St. John the Evangelist, a ship was snatched from imminent shipwreck. when on a sea angered by the harshness of winter there was stirred up a squall so furious that a ship which had entered the port of Barcelona — whether because its cables were broken or its anchors shattered — began to be beaten by both elements, as though conspiring to its ruin, to be snatched in different directions, and, as may be understood from Ayala's longer description, to sink. Those who watched from the shore, struck by the pitiable case, ran to the convent of Bl. Mary of Mercy, and prevailed by prayers that our Blessed one's body should be carried thither, the Prior accompanying with the whole college of Religious, and also an innumerable multitude, many of whom carried torches. Yet when, the sacred treasure being present, the storm did not cease, Father Michael Claramunt, prefect of the sacristy, dipped in the waters a piece of the Blessed one's garment which he carried in his hands, and straightway the waves withdrew, calm returned to the sea and safety to the ship: to the wonder of as many as were present, and, amid praises to God and to the Blessed one and thanksgivings, they conducted the reliquary back to the convent with a solemn rite. Further, that like things had often happened when perils threatened from the sea, the author says is established from testimonies duly given in the process for canonization.

*. perhaps "Dalmatius"

§ VI. Her immemorial cult approved by Apostolic decree; a proper Office for the whole Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy for the Redemption of Captives, extended to all the dominions of the Most August Empress Queen of Hungary, etc.; her name inscribed in the Roman Martyrology.

[ ] Her immemorial cult is approved by Apostolic decree; The process for the Blessed one's canonization was indeed begun to be set up at Barcelona by Apostolic authority in the year 1628, as we saw above; but, on Ayala's testimony, wars and other supervening accidents laid a delay on its progress, until the Reverend Father Joseph Linás, afterward archbishop of Tarragona, elected master general of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy in the year 1686, took care with new and burning zeal that the cause should be promoted, and brought to this, that at last the sentence of the vicar general of Barcelona for the immemorial cult — passed I know not when — was approved in the sacred Congregation of Rites, and confirmed by Pope Innocent XII by the following decree: "The doubt being proposed in the ordinary Congregation of sacred rites by the most eminent and most reverend Lord Cardinal Casanate as ponent: 'Whether the immemorial cult paid to the said blessed Maria de Socos be established, and whether the sentence passed upon it by the vicar general of Barcelona, judge delegated by the aforesaid sacred Congregation, is to be confirmed in the case and to the effect of which there is question,' the same sacred Congregation, having heard the most reverend archbishop of Myra, promoter of the faith, both in writing and by voice, at the instance of the Reverend Father Master Brother Martin Salvador Gilaberte, vicar and procurator general of the aforesaid Order of blessed Mary of Mercy, postulator of this cause, judged that the immemorial cult is established, and that the sentence of the aforesaid vicar general of Barcelona is to be confirmed, if it shall please our most holy Lord. On the IX day of February MDCXII. And report of the aforesaid being made by me the secretary to our most holy Lord Pope Innocent XII, His Holiness assented on the XIII day of the same month of February MDCXCII. A., bishop of Ostia, Cardinal Cybo. Place † of the seal. J. Valemanus, secretary of the sacred Congregation of Rites."

[67] An Office and Mass are granted throughout the whole This equivalent beatification of Maria was followed two years later by the grant of reciting the Office and celebrating the Mass of the common of Virgins under a semidouble rite on the day XIX of September by the Religious of the often-mentioned Order, whose decree in the Bullarium of the Order is subjoined immediately to the Decree just recited, page 421, and runs thus: "A suppliant petition being remitted to the Congregation of sacred rites by the Reverend Father Master Brother Bernard Cariñena y Ypenza, vicar and procurator general of the Order of blessed Mary the Virgin of Mercy for the Redemption of captives, and postulator of this cause, presented to our most holy Lord, in which he most humbly besought His Holiness that concerning the aforesaid blessed Maria (de Socos), whose immemorial cult on the IX day of February MDCXCII, with the approval of the most holy one following on the XIII day of the same month and year, was answered to be established, He would kindly deign to grant to his Religion the faculty of reciting the Office and celebrating the Mass of the common of Virgins under a semidouble rite on the day XIX of September, the birthday of that same Blessed one, every year; the same sacred Congregation, upon the report of the most eminent and most reverend Lord Cardinal Casanate as ponent, having first heard both in writing and by voice the most reverend archbishop of Myra, promoter of the faith, all things being well weighed and maturely considered, judged that the grace asked could be granted for the Religious of both sexes of the said Order of blessed Mary of Mercy only, if it shall seem good to our most holy Lord. On the 2 day of October MDCXCIV. And report of the aforesaid being then made to our most holy Lord by me the secretary, His Holiness kindly assented. On the IX day of the same month and year MDCXCIV. A. Cardinal Cybo. Place † of the seal. B. Inghirami, secretary of the sacred Congregation of Rites."

[68] Yet in the year next following the Office and Mass were transferred from the day appointed to the XXV of September, Order, now to be celebrated on the 25 of September, for the reasons expressed in another Decree, which from page 422 of the same Bullarium I here transcribe: "Whereas otherwise, under the date of the 2 of October MDCXCIV, at the most humble prayers of the Reverend Father Master Brother Bernard de Cariñena y Ipenza, procurator and vicar general of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy for the Redemption of captives, the Congregation of sacred rites kindly granted that the Religious of both sexes of the aforesaid Order might every year recite the Office of Bl. Maria de Socos on her birthday and celebrate the Mass under a semidouble rite; and whereas the same petitioner has set forth that the birthday of the aforesaid Blessed one falls on the feast of St. Januarius the martyr, which is recited by the universal Church under a double rite, and therefore, lest the feast of that same Blessed one, having to be transferred every year, should wander, has humbly besought the Congregation of sacred rites to decree a fixed day for the celebration of the feast of the said Blessed one, and, if it should better please, the XXV of September: the most eminent fathers set over the same sacred Congregation kindly judged that the XXV day of the month of September should be assigned to the Religion for the celebration of the feast of the said Blessed one henceforth, fixed and never to be changed. On the IX day of July MDCXCV. A. Cardinal Cybo. Place † of the seal. B. Inghirami, secretary of the sacred Congregation of Rites."

[69] In the same year there were offered and approved by the sacred Congregation of Rites the proper lessons of the second Nocturn and the Prayer, with the lessons which, together with the approving Decree subjoined, I transfer hither from page 432 of the Bullarium:

Lesson IV. Maria, born of the noble family de Cervello at Barcelona in Spain, and nurtured by her parents in the fear of God from her first years, vowed her virginity to Him when she was eighteen years old. Her manner of life was to go out in public more rarely, to be diligently at hand to sick members of her household, and thrice in the week to minister to the poor in the hospital. In her thirtieth year, her father being dead, she took the habit of the nuns of the third Order of St. Mary of Mercy, and, having distributed her patrimony for the redemption of captives, made profession in the same Order together with a vow of laboring for the redeeming of captives. But thou, O Lord.

[70] Lesson V. Her mother being taken from the living, she led a pious and holy life with some honorable women; of the second Nocturn being wont daily to wash in the hospital house the feet of the women redeemed by her Brethren and coming to Barcelona; five times in the week to be refreshed with the sacred Eucharist; and three times to fast, content with bread and water alone: afflicting her body besides with daily scourgings and an iron chain. Silence, which she cultivated with wonderful observance, she never broke with idle words; and, indulging sleep more sparingly, she sought to be freed from such a necessity, that she might enjoy without ceasing that alone in which the heavens rejoice and the angels are glad. What remained of the day's time from prayer and exercises of piety she spent in helping the poor; passing over no kind of office by which she might console the afflicted, free the oppressed, and lead the bound out of prison. But thou, O Lord.

[71] and Prayer proper to her. Lesson VI. She foretold coming storms of the sea, and often calmed them by her prayers: she was several times seen walking upon the waves, that she might keep unharmed the Brethren, Redeemers of captives, and others in peril at sea; whence the name of Maria of help, commonly de Socos, was given her. At length, after many marks of virtues, she passed at Barcelona to the Lord on the thirteenth of the Kalends of October in the year of salvation MCCXC. Her body, from which a most sweet odor flowed, was buried in the church of the Brethren of her Order, which ninety years later, the bishop of Barcelona, Peter king of Aragon, and the other chief men of the court and city standing by, being raised with solemn pomp, was found incorrupt, and was kept in a more seemly place, where it is religiously venerated. But thou, O Lord.

Prayer. "O God, who seest that we, set in so many perils, cannot subsist by reason of our frailty; propitiously grant that, by the intercession of blessed Maria thy handmaid, being led out from the waves of the present life, we may be able to come to the harbor of eternal salvation. Through our Lord."

"The above-written lessons with the Prayer proper to blessed Maria de Socos, virgin of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy for the Redemption of captives, corrected, revised and reported by the most eminent and most reverend lord Cardinal Casanate, the sacred Congregation of Rites approved, and, at the most humble prayers of Father Master Brother Bernard Cariñena y Ipenza, vicar and procurator general, commanded that they might be recited and printed by the Religious of both sexes of the said Order only on the XXV day of the month of September, the feast of the aforesaid Blessed one, every year. On this III day of September MDCXCV. A. Cardinal Cybo. Place ✠ of the seal. B. Inghirami, secretary of the sacred Congregation of Rites."

[72] The Blessed one's name inscribed in the Roman Martyrology, Thus far from the praised Bullarium, which was collected and brought to light at Barcelona in the year 1696 by the care and zeal of the most illustrious Joseph Linás himself, the excellent promoter, as we have said, of this cause. For the rest, the zeal of the often-mentioned Order did not stop here in increasing Bl. Maria's glory on earth. Petition was made at Rome that her name should be written in the Roman Martyrology, and this, with the supreme Pontiff's assent, was granted by the sacred Congregation of Rites, a Decree being published on the VIII day of November of the year 1729, as our most holy lord, today happily presiding over the whole Church, Benedict XIV, teaches us in book 4, part 2, chapter 18 of his excellent Work on the beatification of the Servants of God and the canonization of the Blessed. Hence in the newest edition of the said Martyrology, enlarged and corrected by the same most holy Lord, our Blessed one is announced at the day XIX of September with the following elogium: "At Barcelona in Spain, of blessed Maria de Cervellione, virgin, of the Order of holy Mary of Mercy, who on account of the ready help she gives to those who invoke her is commonly called Maria of Help."

[73] and the Office, with a double rite, extended to all Further, it is unascertained by us whether afterward the Blessed one's Office was permitted to be celebrated with a greater rite in her Order, or was extended through the Spains or other regions; but certainly both were done lately in the kingdoms of the most august and most pious Empress, our Queen Maria Theresa, as is abundantly clear from the following Decree: "Whereas Maria Theresa, most august elect Empress of the Romans, and also Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, has offered pious and earnest prayers to our most holy Lord Pope Benedict XIV through the most eminent and most reverend lord Cardinal Millini for the extension of the Office of blessed Maria de Socos, called de Cervellon, virgin of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy for the Redemption of captives, with the above-written Lessons, Antiphons and Prayer proper to her, under the rite of a lesser double, to the secular and regular clergy of all the kingdoms and provinces subject to the same Empress, His Holiness, at the instance of Father Master Brother Dominic Joseph de Abstigarribia, vicar and procurator general of the aforesaid Order of blessed Mary of Mercy for the Redemption of captives, kindly assented to what was asked on the XVI day of December MDCCLII. D. F. Cardinal Tamburini, Prefect. Place ✠ of the seal. M. Marefuscus, secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Rites."

[74] Of the Office here printed at Antwerp in the Plantin arch-printing house, the dominions of the empress queen of Hungary, etc. to which the recited decree is subjoined, and which is prescribed to be read on the day XXII of September or another day, the Prayer is the same which I gave from the Bullarium of the Order: the Lessons too of the second Nocturn differ so little that it would be superfluous to give them again. But the proper Antiphons at the Magnificat in the first and second Vespers, and also at the Benedictus, which the Bullarium lacks, run thus in our Office: "At 1 Vespers. At the Magnificat. With scourges and a chain Maria tamed her body, with silence and abstinence she guarded her mind, she pressed unceasingly upon prayers, teaching the spouses of Christ to keep the corruptible vessel in sanctification and honor. At Lauds, at the Benedictus. Virgins shall be brought in gladness and rejoicing to the Lord the King after Maria, that they may serve Him in holiness and justice and follow the Lamb Himself whithersoever He goeth. At second Vespers, at the Magnificat. The sea and the winds obey Maria, mighty in the power of angelic whiteness: many waters gave way to the ardor of her charity."

Acts

Begun by John de Laes, a contemporary author, and continued by another or others

From an ancient manuscript codex of the archive of the convent of Bl. Mary of Mercy at Barcelona.

BHL Number: 5426

A. By John de Laes, etc.

PART I.

The Blessed one's birth; her virtues before and after her religious profession.

The Blessed one's birth; of virginity There is in this city of Barcelona, near the church of holy Mary of the Sea ^a, a certain most noble house of one of the more noble families, called de Cervello, but the second of that house and family: a son joined to himself a noble woman ^b; and when they had no children , they vowed their whole substance to the Redemption of captives, founded in the preceding years. But by the prayers of father Nolasco ^c the woman conceived in the same year, and truly she bore a beautiful daughter, whom to the praise of the Mother of God they called by the name of Mary ^d: whom from infancy they established in the fear of the Lord. But in the eighteenth year a vow of virginity

she vowed ^e: but she never went to another's house without necessity, but stayed alone with her mother in silence: she did not go to the public festivities which other noble women celebrated . Her mother and father feared the Lord: her kinsfolk, her father's relatives, had chosen for her a marriage noble for its riches, nobility of blood, and great beauty of body, which she humbly rejected ^f. But her father and mother considered the matter in silence , recognizing in the Maiden a gray-haired and very ripe age. And thus she served all the sick in her father's house as if all were her fathers.

[2] to be kept So she grew in the fear of God that she scarcely ever looked upon anyone: she visited the hospital three times in the week and washed the hands of the poor. But her mother rejoiced; and then the noble Maiden said to her: "Now, mother, because I am not married, I am the Lord's, and so with thee I practice the works of mercy; but afterward I shall be a husband's ^g, and the hands of the poor shall not be washed ." These words of so great a Maiden drew all men's minds to her; and they wonderfully gladdened the fathers: but her kinsfolk *, whom she never saw, in sickness she was the first of all to visit, and served with such love, and ministered with such charity, that she kissed their hands, and uttered words so filled with spirit ^h that they most gladly bore their sicknesses, and, that they might be able to converse with Maria, thought the day of sickness happier than the day of health.

[3] her purpose; But when a man full of spirit, admirable for sanctity, brother Bernard de Corbaria, had passed from the Order of knights to the Order of clerics ⁱ, and heard her confessions and observed the holy Virgin's purpose, she advanced most greatly in the fear of God ^k: and it was done by divine ordinance that, while her kinsfolk ^l were again thinking of her state, they ^m came to our convent on the day of holy Eulalia the virgin, and, brother Bernard de Corbaria preaching, "Concerning Virgins I have no commandment of the Lord," the Virgin was so confirmed in her holy purpose that she said to her parents: "Was not the preacher speaking to me? Am I not wholly Christ's? Why do you wish to divide me ⁿ?"

[4] her religious profession; her pious In the thirtieth year of her age she was bereaved of a parent, and until the thirty-fifth, living religiously with her mother, choosing a humble house near our convent, they lived the remainder of the time of their life, the mother in a widow's habit and the Daughter in a nun's. But in the thirty-fifth year of her age, the forty-seventh of the foundation, from the Lord's Nativity the one thousand two hundred and sixty-fifth, on the eighth day of the Kalends of June, she made profession, and, her mother dying after a short interval, she led a holy life with some honorable women ^o. Her ample patrimony she distributed for the redemption of captives. Five times in the week she was refreshed with the Eucharistic Sacrament; three times in the week she fasted on bread and water; with daily disciplines she afflicted her body, and tamed her girded body with an iron chain; nor did she speak without necessity; she slept a very little, and when she wished to sleep, she complained of her body and said: "O unhappy body, inhuman prison [p], in which the soul is darkened with ignorance and grows insolent, who shall free me from thee, that I may enjoy that more delightful joy of His in which the heavens rejoice, the angels are glad?" With these and other words she cast herself upon the ground.

[5] exercises, Thrice in the day she prayed: once she entered into judgment with herself, and said to the Lord: "Enter not into judgment with thy handmaid; I bring judgment against myself and set forth my iniquities before thy mercy, that by thy mercies thou mayest blot out what an iniquitous Woman has insolently sinned"; many times she was inwardly consoled by the Lord: and the remaining time of the day she sought a living for the poor by working; so she consoled all that all wondered at the spirit of a Woman. So great was her charity toward her neighbor that she never passed over any kind of office but was at hand to all: she consoled the afflicted; she freed the oppressed; she led the bound out of prison; her grace nevertheless shone forth in calming storms.

ANNOTATA.

p. So the copy has it: without doubt one must read "carcer inhumane."

*. read "non habentes filios"

*. "vero" is superfluous

*. read "celebrabant"

*. read "taciti"

*. read "numquam"

*. read "non lavatæ"

*. that is, blood relatives

PART II.

Miracles before and after her death; the translation of her body

[ ] Miracles before and after It happened very often, since Barcelona had no harbor ^a, that storms arose and ships were in great peril; yet at her prayer the sea was straightway made calm: she forewarned those about to sail, in a short time, of storms about to come; especially those who plied trade she warned not to put their goods on the sea: many times she came to the convent and said that the Redeemers were being shaken by very strong waves: but what is to be wondered at, her sisters saw her, [saw] that she was absent, and, attentively looking whence she came, did not see her, but found her garments dripping and drops of water falling. Many times she walked upon the waves and freed the Redeemers from the perils of the sea, as it is permitted to see in brother Emmanuel de Alburquerque, a Castilian, and brother Arnald Litiverius ^b, a Catalan, soldiers , on the eighth of the Kalends of December of the year one thousand two hundred and ninety-first ^c; and not only did she free them, but the barbarian king also treated them humanely: she also freed very many Redeemers, and was at hand to secular persons on sea and on land. She was at hand to Arnald Liquerinus ^d in great peril, and long afterward, when the brothers Dionysius Romeus and Vincent de Batis, mighty in great sanctity, were in peril , she freed them from a storm of the sea as they were setting out for Algeria, and in an unheard-of manner snatched them from the pirates themselves ^e, as was testified in the general chapters of Lérida and Barcelona under the man famed for sanctity, Peter de Amerio, master general ^f.

[7] her death; So, when many years had run by, and she had left many monuments of her sanctity, she died at Barcelona on the thirteenth of the Kalends of October of the year ninetieth; and she was buried in the chapel of holy Marina the virgin in the tomb of the nuns of our Order. Thereafter God worked many miracles through her: for when from her body a fragrant and most sweet odor went forth, and the whole body was suffused with light, almost the whole city came together to her as she was laid out in the convent, and a certain woman recovered entire health with unhoped-for soundness. A certain little boy lay in bed held by a great infirmity, for he could neither walk nor move himself. His mother went to see the holy Virgin, and, as the mother was returning home, she found the boy playing in the street with the others ^g.

[8] the translation of her body divinely hindered. But while holy devotion toward Maria continued, when many years had run by, when God showed many mercies with Peter III, count of the people of Barcelona and king of the Aragonese, in the year one thousand three hundred and eighty-first, together with the bishop of Barcelona the lord Peter, and the councillors of that city, John Serra, James Burges, Raymond Despla, Raymond Savalt, Peter Sicjes ^h: the bishop celebrated the office: and of the noble persons of the whole principality, since Maria had sprung from so illustrious a family, none among them was absent from that festivity; and as they came to that tomb, the councillors opened it, and, the body being found entire, they rejoiced greatly and praised the Lord, who is wonderful in His Saints, and, the Religious bearing her on their shoulders, they placed her on an altar raised in the middle of the choir, where there was a chest wondrously adorned, built at royal expense; and, opening the ancient one, the bishop with his own hands placed the holy body in the royal one; but the humble Maria in a wondrous manner began to grow, so that the chest could not contain her. Then, setting her again in her ancient one, they placed the new chest in memory of the deed in the chapel of holy Marina, and for a holy remembrance of the matter committed so great a deed to writing, and the authentic originals are extant enclosed in the new chest, and forthwith with great commotion they placed her in the chapel of holy Catherine. But on the morning of the next day the body was found within the sacristy, where it is religiously venerated by all the citizens of Barcelona. God worked many great things in so holy a translation, as is plain from all of them which are kept until now in the said sacristy ⁱ.

[9] The Acts in the chapters This Life with the preceding was written by brother William Nues, Prior of Barcelona, in the year of the Lord one thousand four hundred and first ^k, and they caused it to be read before all the voting members in the general chapter celebrated at Lérida — the definitors of the chapter, namely brother Antonio Taxal for the province of Catalonia, master in arts and bachelor in theology ^l; for the province of France brother John Gilabert, licentiate in decrees, commander of Perpignan ^m; for the province of Valencia brother John Cirera, commander of Játiva ⁿ; for the provinces of the kingdoms of Aragon and Navarre Martin de Liso, vicar of Monfloret ^o; for the province of Castile and Portugal master brother Matthias de Guadalajara, Commander of Toledo; and brother Peter de Logroño: all these, seeing and attentively looking at the authentic writings found in the archive of Barcelona [p], and fortified * with the seals of the ancient knights, as was the custom in some writings, if they were signed with the mark of a secular notary

and not otherwise, found them to agree with those things which had been narrated of the life and deeds of such great men, and it pleased the multitude to commit this authentic writing to record.

[10] The Act of the general chapter under master brother Natal Gaver at Barcelona on the twenty-first day of April of the one thousand four hundred and forty-second. approved in the general chapters. "This holy congregation, to the greater glory of God and of the most blessed Mary, concerning the Life of the holy fathers, according to the form of the general chapter of Lérida under the holy and venerable man Peter Amerius, consulting the profit of the Religion and regarding the glory of the Saints, we all gathering in this holy congregation [q], brother Natal Gaver, master general, ordained by the counsel of the venerable fathers that those things should be read which they set down about St. Peter Nolasco, Maria of Help, St. Raymond Nonnatus [r], St. Peter Armengol [s], St. Ildefonsus of Seville [t], St. Bernard de Corbaria [u] and others who flourished in our Religion [x]; and on the said day the Life of St. Nolasco and of Maria del Socos or of Help was read, as it is here contained, and it pleased all, and they found these authentic writings [y] conformable, and because from age they could scarcely endure for future centuries, they caused them to be committed to this book, and they were read and approved by all; namely by brother Bernard Gralena, a Catalan; brother Lupus de Sacra, a Frenchman; Bartholomew Dalmacius, an Aragonese; Anthony Arrimontis [z], of Valencia. Before all these and others the master approved them thus: 'We brother Natal, master in arts and theology, by the grace of God and of the Apostolic See master of the Order of holy Mary of Mercy for the Redemption of captives, give assurance that these things which have been written by master brother de Queralt, secretary of the whole Religion by Apostolic authority, are before all the voting members of the said chapter conformable to the ancient codices, and are according to the form prescribed by the holy man brother Peter Amerius, once general, which he ordered to be brought back to a holy custom, that from chapter to chapter all things or the greater [aa] of our Saints should be renewed, in whose honor in the present chapter we renew also the ancient custom, but in another chapter next to come the Acts of other Fathers shall be read . This is conformable to a certain * public instrument which is kept by the venerable sons of St. Peter Nolasco in an iron chest, stipulated with nine seals: in faith whereof I have bidden and ordered this instrument to be drawn up, written by our hand and countersigned by the notary of the chapter, on the day and year as above. Brother Natal, master in arts and Theology, of the Order. By command of the most reverend lord master general, brother Martin de Queralt, secretary and notary of the chapter.'"

ANNOTATA.

p. Hence it becomes clear that William Vives did not compose the Acts of Bl. Maria, but only copied them from ancient manuscripts, as I said above at letter k.

q. The faulty period will be at least in part completed if these or like words be added: "we asked and."

r. Of St. Raymond Nonnatus, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy, we have treated at the day 31 of August.

s. The Acts of this Saint too have been illustrated at the day 1 of September.

t. Alonso Remón in volume 1 of the History, book 4, chapter 28, discourses at length about the life and death of Ildefonsus or Alphonsus of Seville, a religious of the same Order, but whether and on what day he is venerated he does not teach.

u. Of him the Commentarius prævius, no. 49, may be seen; but whether he has a day proper to his cult is unascertained by me.

x. I judge the sense to be: "That those things may be read which the ancient Religious formerly committed to writing about these Saints."

y. The reading is made obscure not only by the faulty writing, but also by the omission of the punctuation, which in several places had to be supplied. Here, I think, "his authenticis" must be read.

z. In our manuscript is read: "Antonius Arrimontis Valentinus," certainly faultily, unless some words have been omitted.

aa. Likely: "that all the ancient monuments should be renewed."

*. that is, "præmonebat"

*. read "militibus"

*. read "periclitantes," etc.

*. read "piratis"

*. read "munitas"

*. read "qui"

*. read "legentur"

*. read "cuidam"

A COMPENDIUM OF THE LIFE

By an anonymous author.

Extracted from various lucubrations of more recent Writers.

A. By an anonymous author.

The Blessed one's illustrious birth and pious youth; From the ancient and most noble stock of the Cervellos in the city of Barcelona, by the prayers of the most holy patriarch Peter Nolasco, founder of the Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy for the Redemption of captives — the Mother of God herself so commanding — she was brought forth into the world

Maria de Cervellon ^a, the only daughter of her parents, on the Lord's day and on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the VIII of the month of December, in the year of the world's redemption MCCXXX ^b. From her tender years, striving to please God and His most pure Virgin Mother Mary, she gave herself to prayers, vigils and abstinence. Grown older, she heaped up greater virtues for herself: humble of heart, a wonderful keeper of silence even with her own parents, abhorring trifles and the world's blandishments, dedicated to divine meditations; keeping the flower of virginity with whiteness of mind and body, nourishing her eyes and all her gestures with humility and modesty; most munificent toward the poor; three times in the week, with the leave of William her most pious and most loving father, accompanied by kinswomen and servants, she visited the sick in the hospitals, and, serving them even in humble things, ministered spiritual pastures mingled with sweeter words together with dainties seasoned with sugar which she brought from home.

[2] solicited to marriage, Since she was comely in body and mind, and most charming and lovable, and therefore desired as a bride by several nobles, her kinsmen, and especially Conrad Alemannus, that same William's own brother, attempting to bend the Virgin's will to marriage ^c, received from her — who ardently desired Christ as her bridegroom — a most prudent and holy answer: this same contest she endured also from her parents. But while the most chaste Virgin's heart was tormented with the greatest sorrow from the aforesaid, she betook herself with her mother to the church of the aforesaid Order of Mercy, in which the birthday of the divine Eulalia, virgin and martyr, patroness of that same church, was being celebrated, namely on the twelfth day of the month of February; where, hearing blessed Brother Bernard de Corbaria or Corbera ^d, her confessor, preaching about the praises of virginity, being more ardently inflamed in the love of Christ, she promised her virginity perpetually to her heavenly bridegroom Jesus, which she then also made known to her mother.

[3] she vows virginity, her parents not knowing, but afterward approving; Returning home and shut in her chamber, with most copious tears and abundant sighs kneeling before the image of the most holy Crucified, praying and contemplating, despising and spurning the world's delights, pleasures, ornaments and vanities, cutting off her most beautiful hair with a strong and manly mind, and stripped of splendid garments and clothed in humble ones, she so presented herself before her parents; who, vehemently astonished at this matter and greatly amazed, the aforesaid blessed brother de Corbera being summoned, and being led by his strong reasons and exhortations (since he had first heard the Maiden's holy and perfect resolve from herself), tenderly embracing their Daughter transformed for the better, and with weeping eyes sweetly kissing her, and adorning her with the highest praises ^e, and approving her counsel as most perfect, promised that they themselves too would follow her example, forsake the vanities of the world, and serve God with a humble heart.

[4] This virtuous and happy life she led together with her parents until the beginning of the thirtieth year of her age, Bereaved of both parents, in which, being bereaved of her father on the Lord's day and on the feast of the octave of the holy Innocents, namely on the fourth day of the month of January in the year MCCLX, that she might apply herself with greater freedom to the contemplative life, she induced her mother to sell all the precious things and goods conferred on her by God (a few being excepted ^f for their necessary sustenance), and she herself poured out the price in feeding the poor, not only of the street in which she dwelt, but of the whole city, and chiefly in the redemption of captives; and, the palace being forsaken, having withdrawn into a narrow and humble house near the aforesaid convent, she led with her mother a solitary and heavenly life in the aforesaid pious works and spiritual exercises. And so peacefully and virtuously she lived for five years under her mother's tutelage and care; who, after a long and painful infirmity, in which her Daughter's piety was exercised with great solicitude and wonderful patience, in a good old age fell asleep in the Lord on the Saturday, the XXVII day of the month of December in the year MCCLXIV.

[5] The Virgin therefore, seeing herself bereft of both parents, she joins herself to other pious women, persuaded herself to embrace a more perfect life, and joined herself in the society of two women, namely Eulalia Pins and Isabella Berti, both most noble widows ^g, who kept with them five others of the more principal fellow-citizens, following the spiritual life. In this house therefore, not far distant from the aforesaid convent, all spent days and nights in contemplations and spiritual exercises (at the exhortation and solicitude of Maria, their new companion, to whom they had of their own accord submitted themselves), and what they could gain by their industry and the labor of their hands they mercifully bestowed on the poor.

[6] The aforesaid Mercedarian Religion and its professors, on account of their most pious and heavenly institute of redeeming captives and with them, of the third Order of Bl. Mary of Mercy (to which they are bound by a fourth solemn vow), and their other works of piety, in which they were laudably exercised untiringly and with the highest spiritual gain, and also on account of their mortifications, austerities and penitent life, so shone forth that they poured into all hearts love and a vehement desire of imitating their virtues *. The office of Prior was discharged at this time also by the aforesaid Bl. Brother Bernard Corbera, confessor of the aforesaid devout women; by whom they, being wonderfully kindled to follow the charitable institute and to lead a religious life under the habit and rule of the same Order in their own house after the manner of a beaterio and in common — as they had already obtained in the year MCCLX from the same Prior with the express consent and leave of the master general in the full general chapter of Tarragona — earnestly entreated that he would not disdain to assent to their most fervent desire, and to fix his last nail in the wheel of this holy work.

[7] Kindly inclined to their prayers, he solemnly appointed for them the Wednesday, the XXV day of the month of March of the current year MCCLXV, he lays the foundations; on which the feast of the Annunciation of the most holy Mother of God the Virgin Mary is venerated by the universal Church, and then to found and institute an Order of Beatæ or Tertiaries; and he decreed to destine, choose and name Maria de Cervellon as their superior and commandress, as was earnestly demanded by them as the worthier and better deserving, and whom until then they had humbly obeyed in all things.

[8] she makes profession On the aforesaid day therefore, amid the solemnities of the Masses in the above-said church of the same Order, with a great concourse of people, after the Offertory and the sermon made by the blessed father de Corbera the Prior, Maria de Cervellon was clothed by the same father Prior with the religious and white monastic habit, with a veil of black color upon her head and the royal insignia of the Religion before her breast (as the Brethren wear them); and thereafter all the aforesaid with certain others: and all, according to the special constitutions already prescribed by the said father Prior and approved by the above-said general chapter, and read and delivered to them publicly and in a loud voice at this function, made profession in the hands of the said father who clothed them, of whom the first, namely sister Maria de Cervellon, made it in this form: "I, Maria de Cervellon, promise to God and to His most holy Mother Mary of Mercy or of Compassion poverty, obedience and virginity; and also to spend my labor for the redemption of captives, and I will likewise busy myself for them in all things which shall seem good to our general ^h."

[9] designated superior of the rest Sister Maria was of the age of thirty-four years and eighteen days over three months when she was, as has been said, clothed with the religious habit, and elected and named superior or commandress by the aforesaid blessed father de Corbera (although several times humbly refusing, and at last obeying the precept of obedience), and accepted and held as such at that same time by all the nuns aforesaid with a cheerful mind, and obedience was humbly rendered to her. Lastly, all the functions and the Mass being completed, they were led in procession by the Religious to the oratory of the primitive convent in the royal palace to render thanks to the Most High, and thereafter to their own house or beaterio.

[10] her prudent rule, To sustain profitably the burden of the prelacy, this our Commandress, most prudently considering that one must first do than command, that subjects may be encouraged by the superior's example, commanded more by working than by speaking. To all things, even in the meaner sort, she put her shoulders; her speech was so pious, gentle and sweet that her subjects were by this chain of love made more cheerful and prompt to obey *. From her example, with her as companion, they never omitted prayers, the Sacraments, fasts, vigils, mortifications, disciplines, and other penances and spiritual exercises.

[11] the austerity and sanctity of her life, But she herself three times in the week was content with bread and water; but on the other days she added only herbs or pulse. Wearing continually an iron chain upon her bare flesh, she secretly tamed her body with disciplines with the shedding of blood every night. Her sleep was for a short time, and she lay on the ground upon a mat with her clothes on, that she might more promptly apply herself to her accustomed prayers and spiritual exercises. Three times in the day, shut in her chamber, kneeling, she besought God for the salvation of her soul and the necessity of her neighbor. With her confessor she was daily refreshed by sacramental confession, and communicated to him distinctly all the favors and graces which were manifested to her in heavenly visions and locutions by her spouse Christ, and also the difficulties or doubts which offered themselves to her *. With the most sweet sacrament of the Eucharist she cherished her soul five times in the week.

[12] The bowels of her exceeding charity were so opened toward the poor, the sick and the oppressed and those set in straits her works of bodily charity that, in order that she might the more succor the needy and destitute, she gave her labor with her companions to the works of their hands ⁱ; but when she had nothing, imploring help by way of alms from the noble and the rich, she faithfully divided all among poor persons and modest families. Visiting those set in prison and the sick in the hospitals, and exhorting them to patience, she helped them in spiritual and bodily things. By these and other exercises to be mentioned below the fame of her mercy was so spread abroad that by the public voice of the people she was called Sister Maria of succor, by which new surname (that of Cervellon utterly ceasing) she was known to all.

[13] Knowledge she had obtained not acquired, but infused by her heavenly Spouse. and spiritual toward her neighbor. She wrote many things most wisely, but through the injury of the times few remain to us, which are reviewed by the aforesaid authors and chiefly by Esteban de Corbera ^k. She penetrated the hidden thoughts and hearts of men. The sorrowful and afflicted she consoled with heavenly sentences and sweet discourses. Those desiring to walk in the perfection of the spiritual life she instructed with great docility, and added spirit to the faint-hearted. Sinners too and those sunk in vices she called back to true penance by her examples and admonitions. Doctors and professors of sacred Scripture, coming to her with doubts, most easily carried back, not without wonder, a clear solution of all their difficulties according to the true and sound understanding ^l.

[14] In holy meditations so great was her ardor that very often she was made a partaker * of ecstasy and, lifted above her senses, of heavenly visions and secrets; The shipwrecked, and in these there were revealed to her also the shipwrecks and perils in which the fathers Redeemers were found; but, returning from the rapture, swiftly going to the convent of St. Eulalia of her Order, she asked the superior and the religious not to delay to pour out their prayers to God, that He would deign mercifully to snatch her brethren the Redeemers from the imminent danger: and straightway returning with the same swiftness to the monastery or Beaterio, she earnestly asked the same in prayer with her companions. Several times, when the sea was in tumult, and she was praying in the oratory of her monastery with the doors shut, she vanished from the nuns' eyes: then after some space of time she was seen to return joyfully with her garment wetted, namely at the hem, and dripping sea water from certain parts. As she prayed, when a certain ship together with its sailors, in sight of the city of Barcelona, was sinking in the surging sea, destitute of all help, being warned by her guardian angel, betaking herself to the shore and fortifying herself with the sign of the Cross, with a multitude of people standing by and beholding, treading upon the fiercest waves, she came to the ship, and, taking it with her right hand, brought it to a safe place ^m.

[15] Likewise on a certain night, after she had relieved a ship from a like shipwreck, she miraculously frees; when she had entered into the aforesaid church of holy Eulalia (though the doors were shut), that she might for the rest of the night render thanks to God, she was found at daybreak by the keeper of the sacristy kneeling before the high altar and in ecstasy ⁿ. Whence, the father Prior and the other religious being summoned, and being sharply reproved by that same superior (after she had come to herself) and at last asked why and how she had entered the church at night, and being bound to this under precept of holy obedience ^o, the humble and most obedient Virgin confessed and did not deny, saying to the superior alone (the other religious being led apart) how the Queen of heaven had led her in her company to bring help to a certain ship in peril; and then, accompanying her to that same church, and the doors being opened by angels, had left her in it read: had left her there that she might give thanks to the Most High. Lastly the submissive Handmaid of Christ besought that same superior with her whole heart that he should disclose this to no one * [p].

[16] she foretells things to come; With a prophetic spirit she foretold to many many things to come, which afterward came to pass, and especially concerning the incursions of pirates and the storms and tempests of the sea, that the sailors might avoid perils and losses, and the fathers Redeemers be rendered wary. Weighing the miseries and hardships of the faithful of Christ held in hard servitude by the infidels, and the peril of their souls, she was exceedingly tormented that it was not permitted her to pass over into the dominions of the barbarians, that she might exhort them to patience and endurance, and confirm them in constancy of faith. Nevertheless she omitted no care and solicitude in her own and her companions' prayers and in heaping up alms, that she might furnish them help, and snatch the fathers Redeemers from the storms of the sea and the hands of pirates.

[17] she appears in the air, she commands the winds and the sea: While she was still among men, namely on the XX day of the month of November in the year MCCLXXXIX, when two religious Redeemers, sent into Africa to discharge their office, were found in the deep of the sea, the cataracts of heaven being opened, tossed by a whirlwind of winds and roaring waves, and altogether despairing of safety, and all the burdens of the ship had been cast into the sea; behold, sister Maria — when, the sailors crying out, they had determined to cast into the waters the very money of the captives which had been reserved — showed herself manifest in the air and above the ship, and thus addressed them: "Brethren, be strengthened in the Lord and in the power of His might, for salvation is at hand for you." When she had said this, she commanded the winds and the sea, and there was made a great calm; but she herself vanished. Then she asked those same Redeemers and sailors, as soon as they had returned with the redeemed captives, and besought them by the bowels of God's mercy, that they should say nothing to anyone [q].

[18] she furnishes succor to all; hence the surname clung to her. Deservedly therefore this holy nun Maria obtained the surname of Succor, because she furnished succor to all: for she was the refuge of the poor, the health of the languishing, the help of the faint-hearted, the solace of the wretched, the consoler of those held in bonds, the helper of the modest needy, the mistress of the erring, the guide of penitents, the star of seafarers and the deliverer from devouring waves. Fearing exceedingly the various and very many deceitful arts, snares, temptations and cunning devices of the demon, which she had bravely overcome with God's help, and desiring to be freed from them and from the snares of the world, and therefore to be dissolved, that she might rejoice for ever with Christ, for whose love she languished, in the heavenly kingdoms; and about this she very often sweetly complained to that same most beloved Spouse of hers: it pleased the Most High at last to assent to the desires and prayers of His loving Handmaid.

[19] Having piously died, she is made illustrious by miracles. For in the following year MCCXC, and of her age the LX, He sent her an overpowering and continued fever, and foretold her death at hand, and its day and hour; in which intervening time He consoled her with His own presence and that of His most pure Mother and with sweet words. The holy Sacraments of the Church being most devoutly received, exhorting her companions, who wailed and wept without ceasing, to the observance of the Constitutions and to the perfection of the spiritual life, and commending herself to the prayers of the Religious and of her nuns, embracing Christ crucified, she bade the most holy Passion, written by blessed John, be read to her: and she, listening attentively and everywhere sighing from affection and love, while she held her eyes fixed on heaven, at those words, "And bowing His head He gave up the ghost," breathed forth her most chaste soul into the hands of her heavenly Spouse on the XVIII day of the month of September, leaving her body surrounded with a wondrous splendor and fragrant with a sweet odor, which for three days, on account of the devotion and concourse of the people, remained unburied in the church of the aforesaid convent of St. Eulalia, many miracles being wrought; but now it is honorably kept incorrupt with its garments in that same church; at whose intercession God has wrought innumerable prodigies, that the sanctity of this His Handmaid may be manifested and praised by all: even as the peoples of Hither Spain and of Aragon venerate and honor her with the utmost devotion and with lamps and tapers continually burning at her tomb.

ANNOTATA.

p. The Blessed one's answer was such according to the same canon: "I came not alone, but with the most holy Virgin as companion; we walked the sea and freed the brethren from shipwreck. Angels opened the doors of the church, that I might spend the whole night in the divine praises. And reveal not this to others, my father, I beseech thee." While I write these things, the grief returns which I indicated in the Commentarius prævius, no. 27, namely that I could not obtain a copy of the lucubration written by the said canon, and containing, as I judge, several things of this kind fit for illustrating and confirming the Life of Bl. Maria.

q. The authentic testimony of this miracle I exhibited in nos. 37 and following, taken from Corbera's chapter 68, where he too adds that the Blessed one asked those returned from the voyage to keep the matter in silence; but he alleges no witness.

*. read "infunderent"

*. read "redderentur"

*. "se"

*. "fuerit"

*. read "ea"

*. read "alicui"