Bernardino of Feltre

ON BL. BERNARDINO OF FELTRE, CONFESSOR OF THE ORDER OF MINORS OBSERVANT OF ST. FRANCIS,

AT PAVIA IN ITALY.

1494.

HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.

Bernardinus of Feltre, of the Order of Minors Observant of St. Francis, Conf., at Pavia in Italy. (B.)

BY C. S.

§ I. The memory of the Blessed in the Martyrologies: his deeds written by various authors, and how they are to be handed down: his birthplace and family.

[ ] Blessed Bernardinus, surnamed Tomitanus from his family, The Martyrologies of the Seraphic Religion announce him on this day and Feltrensis or Feltriensis from his birthplace Feltre or Feltria, which is a city of the march of Treviso, a religious priest of the Friars Minor of St. Francis, whom they call of the Observance, famous for holiness of life, for zeal for souls, for sermons delivered through nearly all Italy, for miracles, and for the integrity of his body even after death — him the Martyrologies of the Seraphic Religion deservedly announce on this day, on which he died near the city of Pavia or Ticinum, in a convent of his Order erected under the invocation of St. James. The Martyrology of the Three Orders of St. Francis, printed after the end of the Roman Martyrology reissued by the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XIV, has thus: At Pavia, Bl. Bernardinus of Feltria, confessor of the Order of Minors, who, shining with the word of preaching and with zeal for the salvation of souls, passed to heaven full of good works, illustrious with the gift of the spirit of prophecy and of miracles. There follows in the same place the Martyrology of the Friars Minor Conventual, in which under the same day one reads: At Pavia, Bl. Bernardinus Feltriensis, confessor of the Order of Minors of the Regular Observance, renowned for holiness and miracles.

[2] The Martyrology of the Minors Capuchin agrees, saying thus on the same day: The Martyrologies of the Orders of St. Francis, some also on the day following; At Pavia, Bl. Bernardinus of Feltria, confessor of the Order of Minors, who, shining with the word of preaching and with zeal for the salvation of souls, after very many labors endured for Christ, passed to heaven full of good works, illustrious with the gift of the spirit of prophecy and with the glory of miracles. Arturus a Monasterio has the same in his likewise Franciscan Martyrology, where afterwards in his Annotations he relates much more about him after his manner. Fortunatus Hueber in the Menologium of the same Order also records many things about him, but on the twenty-ninth day of September, and abstains from the title of Blessed. To these Franciscans are added two other martyrologists, Philip Ferrarius and Castellanus, who also both assigned him not to the twenty-eighth but to the twenty-ninth day of the aforesaid month.

[3] [but he died on the 28th, and is venerated with an Office and Mass. His Acts were written by] The former, in the General Catalogue of Saints, who

are not in the Roman Martyrology, announces him thus: At Pavia, Bl. Bernardinus Feltrensis, of the Order of Minors; but the latter thus: At Pavia, the venerable Bernardinus Feltriensis, of the Order of St. Francis. But that he died on the twenty-eighth day of September, and that the title of Blessed is owed him from an immemorial cult approved even by the Apostolic See before those men wrote, and finally that his Office and Mass are celebrated on this day of September, we shall show below. Both of the last two are also to be corrected in the Blessed's year of death, which they note to have been that of Christ 1464, whereas it was 1494. Thus far concerning the martyrologists; now let us proceed to his biographers. Luke Wadding, in volume 15 of the Annals of the Minors of St. Francis, of the Roman edition of the year 1736 — which I wish to be understood as indicated whenever I shall name Wadding, unless I give notice otherwise — under the year of Christ 1494, number 57, enumerates them in these words, which I subjoin.

[4] Francis his companion, Guislinius, Simonius, His Life was written at large, first of all by Bernardinus Guislinius, a doctor of Feltre, a little after the Man's death, having received the accounts of his whole life and deeds from Brother Francis of Feltre, a most faithful companion of Bernardinus for many years, which accounts he used to write down daily and according to the outcome of events. The second was Bartholomew Simonius of Marostica, a stronghold of the Vicentine territory, a learned man, in the year 1531, at the request of Brother Francis Paiarinus the Capuchin, his sister's son, who handed over to him everything that the aforesaid Brother Francis had noted down. The first wrote in Italian; and this Life, with nothing changed, Bartholomew Cimarella copied out. The second composed a Legend in Latin, in an unpolished style, without any divisions, which others divided into Lessons and points. It has not yet been published in print, so far as I know. Third, Marianus of Florence collected some things in his Work on the Illustrious Men of the Order of Minors, from which Mark of Lisbon drew together some matters. Francis Gonzaga in many places, and very many other writers, treat of him briefly or in passing. Peter Rodulphus has this compendious elogium of him, which I have judged should be transferred hither.

[5] Thus far Wadding, who presently subjoins the elogium mentioned, and two Friars Minor, Bernardinus and Innocentius, and others. and who in the same place, under the preceding number, had also prefixed another with the following notice: There is preserved also in that city (Pavia) an ancient manuscript book, whose title is "A Catalogue of the holy bodies and relics existing in the city of Pavia," in which is found this little compendium of the life and deeds of Bernardinus. Of the biographers of the same Blessed there is mention also by Benedict XIV of pious memory, the Roman Pontiff, in his learned Work On the Beatification of the Servants of God, etc., of the Roman edition of the year 1747, book 2, chapter 24, number 17, writing thus: Finally the Life of the same Blessed Bernardinus was written by Bernardinus Gurlinus in the year 1523; by Simonius Moraccinus in the year 1531; and most recently by Bernardinus and Innocentius, Minors Observant, who collected almost everything that had previously been set down by other historians concerning him. Moreover processes upon his virtues and miracles were also drawn up by Apostolic authority. This Bernardinus Gurlinus, and the other who are called Simonius Moraccinus, are without doubt the same men whom Wadding called Bernardinus Guislinius and Simonius of Marostica.

[6] Of Francis of Feltre, the inseparable companion of our Bl. Bernardinus, We do not have the three earlier writers, of the same Order with him, but a lay brother only, so far as I have been able to gather, frequent mention will be made through the course of this Commentary; and I have desired a copy of his Diary the more, the closer the intimacy by which he was joined to the blessed Man, and so the more surely he could have been informed about his deeds. The lack of this Diary I have borne the more grievously because no manuscript records concerning that distinguished Man are at our disposal, and because neither the lucubrations of Guislinius or Gurlinus, nor those of Simonius Moraccinus or of Marostica, have come to my hands; and finally because I had also striven in vain to obtain the fourth part of the Chronicles of the Order of Minors of St. Francis by Bartholomew Cimarella, which he added to the three earlier parts of Mark of Lisbon, and into which he is said to have transferred the Life of Bl. Bernardinus written by Guislinius from the notebooks of Francis of Feltre. Yet this poverty of mine was very greatly relieved by Luke Wadding, the annalist of the Friars Minor, who in the Annals of the same Order narrated at length and here and there under the years in which they occurred the deeds of that plainly admirable Man, using various documents both manuscript and printed, and by name the fourth part of Cimarella's Chronicles, whom he often praised in the margin, and by whom he testified in the Catalogue of the writers of his Order that he had been much assisted in his writing.

[7] Take his words. Bartholomew Cimarellus, but Wadding had them, and chiefly out of his Annals an Italian, theologian and definitor of the province of Picenum, a truly religious man and of great zeal for the honor of his institute; to whom I owe the greatest part of my studies. For as soon as he heard that I had undertaken the Work of the Annals of the Minors, he came to Rome to confer with me, and promised all the aid and help that he could afford; and indeed, having surveyed the chief archives of the Order through several regions of Italy, he either brought or sent me very many records. So he. And it can scarcely be doubted that among these were also, if not the Diary of Brother Francis, at least the Opuscula of Guislinius and Simonius, unless Wadding had already received them from elsewhere. And that he had Simonius' lucubration at hand he himself testifies under the year 1492, number 14, where, making mention of a certain religious matron Augustina … a kinswoman, he says, of the writer of the Latin Legend then composed, which we use for the writing of these things.

[8] I shall write a historical Commentary. He also cites the same Bartholomew Simonis, or Simonius, by name under the year 1494, number 33; and finally, not to be too long, for the deeds of Bl. Bernardinus through the course of the Annals he constantly praises in the margin, besides Cimarella, two manuscript Legends, which it is altogether most likely are those of the aforesaid writers. Out of these Annals, therefore, in which the several deeds of Bl. Bernardinus have been referred to their own years and here and there also to their own days, I have determined to write a historical Commentary, and to use Wadding's own words, so that his narrative may retain its own authority. Yet because he, by reason of the Work he undertook, is sometimes briefer than our method of writing requires, I shall insert in different type whatever shall seem to belong to the illustration of what is said, and shall add whatever besides I shall have learned from other writers. Some things also must here be said of the two others, whom the Pontiff Benedict XIV, praised above, observed to have collected the deeds of the same Blessed out of all the rest.

[9] The Opuscula of Bernardinus and Innocentius will also be useful to me Bernardinus, surnamed a Clastidio, or, as the Italians say, of Chiasteggio, from a town of the duchy of Milan in which he was born, of the Order of Minors Observant of St. Francis, wrote in Italian a Life of Bl. Bernardinus out of many authors, an index of whom he prefixed to it, and printed it at Pavia in the year 1651; a copy of which I have. This Opusculum he divided into three parts, of which the first contains the deeds of the Blessed; the second treats of the miracles which he wrought while living among mortals; the third of the miracles and benefits which God has deigned to grant after his death for the sake of His Servant. Some years afterward, namely in the year of Christ 1664, Innocentius of Pavia, lector of sacred Theology of the same Order, committed the same Opusculum to the press at Pavia a second time, and enlarged it with a short Treatise on his cult, which had been approved in the year 1654 by the Supreme Pontiff Innocent X. Besides this he corrected several things, and changed what had either crept by error into the first edition or had in the meantime been altered; and finally he added many miracles, partly omitted by Bernardinus, partly obtained after the publication of his little book.

[10] chiefly for the history of the cult and for the miracles and benefits. The Opusculum of each will be exceedingly useful to me, especially that of Innocentius, whose authority for the cult of the Blessed and for the miracles added ought to be the greater because he wrote at the time when the immemorial cult was approved in the Roman court, through a process drawn up at Pavia by Apostolic authority, and when other processes concerning his virtues and miracles were drawn up there by the same authority. There is added also that the miracles and benefits, for which he praises the aforesaid processes of Pavia and Feltre, or sometimes authentic instruments, happened from the year 1605 down to 1662, and that by far the greatest part of them was quite recent. Wherefore it would have been by no means safe for him to put forward as certain and examined things whose falsity both the delegated judges, from the inquiries held, and the people of Pavia everywhere, from the common and most recent report, and also from the certain testimony of the very persons on whom he had fabled these things to have been conferred, could have brought to light clearer than daylight.

[11] There exist also another Italian Life and a manuscript Latin elogium, Before these two, Gratianus Renzi of Bevagna, of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine, likewise composed an Italian Life out of the third and fourth part of the Chronicles of the Order of Minors, which he published at Venice in the year 1628, and dedicated both to various illustrious men and to those deputed to petition Pope Urban VIII for his beatification, by whom he had undertaken that work to that end. This Life, of which I also have a copy at hand, the aforesaid Innocentius a Clastidio often praised. That the Catalogue of the holy bodies and relics resting at Pavia, praised by Wadding at number 5, is of no great antiquity I gather from the aforesaid Innocentius, who in the table of the authors he used reckons a Catalogue of the Saints of Pavia by Calcagno; while in the Opusculum itself, page 252, he cites an elegant manuscript Codex of the Histories of the city of Pavia, compiled by order of the most eminent Cardinal Hippolytus Rossi, bishop of Pavia, by the very reverend lord Hieronymus Calcagno, provost of the collegiate church of the most holy Trinity of Pavia … written about the year 1583, at which time the aforesaid Rossi, or Rubeus, is in fact said to have sat in that same see, according to Ferdinand Ughelli, volume 1 of the Italia sacra, reissued, column 1107 and following.

[12] That collection, therefore, is no older than the sixteenth century already far spent; not very ancient. It is set out which of these for that it is the same Work, though indicated by a twofold title, is sufficiently clear both from the table of authors and also from this, that the very things which Innocentius reckons out of the Histories, Wadding has recited out of the Catalogue. I pass over more, and briefly set out what I am chiefly going to use here. The historical Commentary, as I said, I shall compose out of the Annals of the Minors of Luke Wadding, with the addition of whatever besides I shall have received from elsewhere, or shall otherwise have judged opportune. In it I shall treat of the elevations of his body, conspicuous for its remarkable integrity, of the ancient and continued cult approved by the Apostolic See, of the acts for his canonization, and finally of the Office and Mass granted by the same holy See.

[13] After the Commentary I shall give the elogium of the same Blessed which the same annalist wove together, and how they are to be employed. so that I may exhibit to the reader his virtues and rule of living, drawn together into a kind of compendium. I shall subjoin his miracles and benefits in the words in which Wadding, out of the manuscript Legends and Acts and the two processes,

compiled at Pavia and at Feltre, as he himself says, has recounted them very compendiously. Lastly I shall add an Appendix on the miracles and benefits which Bernardinus a Clastidio, and afterwards Innocentius of Pavia as well, joined to the aforesaid. But the elogia which exist in the manuscript Catalogue of the holy bodies and relics resting at Pavia, and in the Seraphic History of Peter Rodulphius of Tossignano, I shall use in the Commentary only so often as it shall seem opportune, when I shall also praise several other writers. I proceed, therefore, to illustrate the deeds of the Blessed.

[14] Feltria, called by more recent writers also Feltrum, and in the Italian vernacular Feltri and Feltre, The Blessed was born at Feltre in the year 1439 is a small but ancient episcopal city, the head of the Feltrine territory, in the March of Treviso, set upon the mountains of the Carni beside the river Ason, which a little below falls into the Piave, and distant about ten miles from the boundary of the Tridentine dominion toward the east. It has obeyed the most serene Venetian republic since the year 1404, in which it subjected itself to her of its own accord. That this was Bernardinus' native city, and that from it the surname Feltriensis or Feltrensis fell to him, Wadding affirms in volume 12 of the Annals of the Minors of St. Francis, under the year of Christ 1456, number 148, following other writers; and at the same time he indicates the year of his birth and his parents thus, praising in the margin Gratianus in the Life, Mark of Lisbon, Cimarella, and two manuscript Legends. He (Bernardinus Tomitanus, as he had said above) was born in the year 1439, his father being Donatus, his mother Corona Rombaldoni, in the city of Feltre, very well known in the March of Treviso. There have been those who asserted that he was born not so much in the city as in the Feltrine countryside, of obscure stock, in the little town of Tomo, and that from this he was called Tomitanus.

[15] of Donatus de Tomitanis and Corona Rombaldoni. More and weightier authors agree that he was so surnamed from his father's family, an illustrious one among the people of Feltre, and that his father was a noble in the college of notaries, twice sent as an envoy to the Doges of Venice: first for the retaining of the city's liberty; second for the expelling of the Hebrews, who by decree of the (Venetian) senate were planning to establish a seat there in the city. Who those men are who would have it that Bernardinus was born of obscure stock in the little town or village of Tomo, and from this, and not from his father's lineage, was called Tomitanus, Wadding has not taught, nor have I come upon writers who thought with them. But since the annalist praised above praises in the margin, among others, Gratianus in the Life, let us consult him. In chapter 1, under the title A digression for the vindication of his nobility, he has this in the Italian tongue: To this most truthful assertion (concerning Bernardinus' birth from the noble Tomitana family) there is opposed a certain voice of the common people (I know not whether it is to be called malicious or ignorant), whose property it is, by its foolish talk and understanding, to forge fables out of truths.

[16] Others will have it that he was basely born in the village of Tomo, A little after he subjoins: That voice asserts that Bl. Bernardinus was not begotten of the most noble Tomitana family, but was basely sprung and born in the hamlet of Tomo: and that because the Tomitana family anciently drew its origin and its name from Tomo, therefore, on account of his extraordinary gifts, he was adopted by them (the noble Tomitani) for the signal illustration of their family, and the Saint, who had lately come forth from that same village, was presented with the citizenship (of Feltre). The maintainers of the opposite party, then, did not deny the nobility of the Tomitana family, which, as Gratianus testifies, was flourishing there at the time when he wrote in the same state of nobility in which it was known to have flourished of old from a manuscript of the year 1152. But they denied that Bernardinus was sprung from that very family; and asserted that he was born not at Feltre but in the village of Tomo of parents of humble condition, and was called Tomitanus from that same birthplace; and that this appellation gave the noble Tomitani occasion to reckon so great a Man, as an illustrious ornament, among their family. Thus they would have two things falsely attached to Bl. Bernardinus, namely Feltre as his native place, and the Tomitana family.

[17] whom Gratianus refutes, Further, the writer praised above then proceeds to refute this opinion, denying that it can stand together with the embassy which he had said Bernardinus' father discharged for keeping the Jews away from the city of Feltre; since it cannot be asserted with any likelihood that a base and uncultivated man was sent as an envoy by noblemen to their prince. He complains also that a signal injury is done to the noble Tomitana family, in that it is said falsely to have ascribed that Man to itself for its own splendor, and that a much greater one is done to the Blessed himself, who, since while he lived he always made the greatest account of humility, could not have been pleased by that lying title. He adds besides many writers who have asserted that he was born of the noble family of the Tomitani; and finally he praises a genealogical table, from which he affirms that this so appears. Would that he had produced this last, even alone, authentically proved; for so he would have removed every doubt from his readers; but he only praised it, he did not produce it.

[18] and not undeservedly Lacking this, I cannot judge except from other writers and records which have come into my hands. That adoption of the Blessed into the Tomitana family, and that change of surname from his birthplace, must certainly have taken place either before or after his death. If the maintainers of the opposite opinion wish the former, it is beyond doubt unlikely that those nobles wished it to be believed that a Man had been born of their family whose humble and base birth in the neighboring village of Tomo (however holy he was held to be), and whose parents, brothers and sisters, and any others there were of his family, could not have been unknown to all the people of Feltre and their neighbors. Much less likely, indeed plainly incredible, is it that Bl. Bernardinus, in whose life true Christian and religious humility shone out everywhere, would have suffered the surname Tomitanus, which he had received from an ignoble birthplace, to pass over for him into a title of counterfeit nobility, and that he should be more honorably called Feltrensis from Feltre, where he had not been born.

[19] Nevertheless, so far as concerns the surname Feltriensis, It is proved from the testimonies of various men it is certain that he was so addressed while he lived. For various letters of the supreme Pontiffs Innocent VIII and Alexander VI given to him, which I shall recite through the course of the Commentary, always call him Feltriensis, Feltrensis, de Feltro, or de Monte Feltro; never Tomitanus or Tomensis. Wadding in the Annals, under the year of Christ 1484, number 50, praises the Register of his Order, in which under the year 1481, on the nineteenth day of July, Brother Bernardinus de Feltro is said to have received the power of an Apostolic preacher. With this agrees Baglionius a Monte Ubiano in the opinion given in favor of the Monts-de-piété in the year 1491, and a decree of the city of Pavia made on the twenty-eighth day of September of the year 1494, that is, on the same day and year on which the Blessed died there; both of which we shall report in their places.

[20] Nay, the Blessed himself below, at number 185, expressed his own name thus: and from his own signature, that he was of Feltre. I, Brother Bernardinus de Feltro, of the Order of Minors, a little and poor man. I pass over more, because it is beyond doubt that Bernardinus, while he dwelt among the living, was surnamed from Feltre. Wherefore, if the maintainers of the opposite opinion wish (as they appear to wish) that this surname was then given him when, on account of the fame of his name, he was taken into the noble Tomitana family, they relate a thing incredible from what has been said. Equal is the agreement of others who wrote after Bernardinus' death, of whom I shall give only some who lived nearer his times and made mention of both his surnames, namely Tomitanus from his family and Feltriensis from his native place. Bernardinus Guislinius or Gurlinus, a doctor of Feltre, who, as we said at number 4, was the Blessed's first biographer out of Brother Francis' Diary, says this in Italian, according to Innocentius of Pavia, page 251.

[21] There (at Feltre) among the honored families there was, and today still is, the family of the Tomitani, It is likewise proved that he was born from which that splendid star, nay rather that shining sun, Bl. Bernardinus of Feltre, sprang, who conferred upon both his native place and his family as much splendor as a divine spirit of this kind could. An old inscription, or epitaph, cut in marble, which I shall exhibit at §22, begins thus: The divine Bernardinus, by birth of Feltre, of the family de Tomitanis. John Bonifacius, on the testimony of the praised Innocentius, in his History of Treviso, printed at Padua in the year 1560, makes mention of him twice. And first indeed on occasion of another he says in Italian: Franciscus Victorinus of Feltre was a man distinguished in every kind of letters, and an extraordinary ornament of his native city, from which, besides Bl. Bernardinus, many other illustrious men have also come forth. In the second place he mentions the family also in these Italian words: In the year 1489 Bl. Bernardinus of Feltre, son of Donatus, of the honored family de Tomitanis, preached in the cathedral church of Treviso.

[22] of the Tomitana family; but it is not so certain to me, Bernardinus Scardeonius, canon of Padua, who, since he died in the year 1574 at the age of ninety-six, must have lived contemporary with the Blessed for about sixteen years, in his History of Padua, book 2, class 5, likewise expressed both surnames, writing that the Mont-de-piété was erected at Padua at the persuasion of Bl. Bernardinus Tomitanus Feltriensis, of the holy family of the Minorites. To these finally I add the testimony of Peter Rodulphius of Tossignano in his Seraphic History, which, printed in the year 1586, he dedicated to Pope Sixtus V, and in book 2 of which he has this: Bl. Bernardinus Tomitanus Feltrius (surnamed the Little One), a kinsman of Bernardinus Tomitanus, the academician of Padua, as he often told me when I was applying myself to the liberal disciplines at Padua, etc. From these things I hold as ascertained the Tomitana family and the Feltrine native place of Bl. Bernardinus. Yet it must be confessed that from these same testimonies the nobility of that Tomitana family from which he was born is not established.

[23] whether from that noble family of Feltre. For not one out of so many testimonies makes express mention of its nobility; and those Italian words Tra l'honorate fameglie and Dell'honorata famiglia, which I have rendered into Latin as Among the honored families and Of an honored family — those words, I say, prove indeed that what the adversaries said about the base birth of the Blessed is false: but they may designate families of an honest and respectable rank among the citizens, even if they were not noble. The election of his father Donatus, and of Bernardinus himself, into the college of notaries seems to hint at no more; nor yet will it stand in the way if, as Gratianus asserts in chapter 2, that was at that time reckoned among distinguished honors. Of greater weight are the two embassies discharged by the same Donatus on behalf of the people of Feltre before the most serene Doge of Venice; but these I am unable to confirm from elsewhere. To the objection of the writers' silence about the nobility it may perhaps be replied that there was only one family of the Tomitani at Feltre, and that a noble one, and therefore that this alone could be designated by those men, who, believing it abundantly known, thought it enough to have named it. But, whatever the case may be, I could wish that, for the removal of every doubt, Gratianus had exhibited to us the genealogical table which he praised.

[24] The Blessed was called Martin in baptism; he had five brothers, Thus far concerning the Blessed's family and his father Donatus Tomitanus; concerning his mother Corona, whom Wadding surnames Rombaldoni and Gratianus de Rambaldoni, I have found nothing besides that bears upon this matter, except that he and Bernardinus de Clastidio affirm that she was of equal nobility with her husband. In the manuscript Catalogue of the holy bodies and relics resting at Pavia, of which I treated at number 5, both parents are indicated only in this manner: Bernardinus of Feltre, son of Donatus and Corona. Bernardinus, moreover, was indeed their firstborn, but not their only offspring, for they had a fairly numerous one. Let us hear Wadding continuing under the aforecited year 1456, number 148. Donatus begot this son first, and named him Martin. Five others followed, and four daughters. The second by birth, Antony, emulating his brother, entered this same institute (of the Order of Minors Observant of St. Francis). Of the sisters, three consecrated their virginity to God in three distinct monasteries of Padua. Happy parents! Fruitful in offspring, generous in piety, they received ten children from God, and gave back five.

[25] Gratianus in the Life, chapter 1, enumerates them all thus in the Italian tongue: He was not the father of this one alone; but he was the firstborn of the ten children whom he begot; namely Martin, who in religion was called Bernardinus; and four sisters, who are here recounted. Antony, who gave his name to the same Order; John, who followed the soldier's life; Francis; Justina, Mary, Joanna, who all three professed the religious life in different monasteries of Padua; Cecilia, who remained in the world; Ludovicus and Bernardinus. Of these, that Antony was brought to the said Order by his brother, our Bernardinus, we shall see below; and it is altogether likely that the three virgins praised above were also moved by the example and the counsels of their blessed brother to prefer religious discipline and the monastic cloister to pleasures and worldly things.

§ II. The boyhood, youth and progress in letters of the Blessed: his entry into the Order of Minors, his profession, his priesthood, and his deeds down to the year 1469.

[ ] From boyhood wonderfully devoted to the study of letters The character of Blessed Bernardinus, then Martin, from his earliest age, and his studies and progress in letters, Wadding sets out under the year 1456, in which he was admitted into the Order of Minors (for that he was born in the year 1439 he himself agrees with all the rest), at number 149, praising in the margin Gratianus, Mark of Lisbon, Cimarella and two manuscript Legends, thus: They (his parents Donatus and Corona) took studious care that Martin should from his very infancy be imbued with pious morals and with letters; and he applied himself to the pursuit of these with such affection that his mother frequently snatched him away from his elementary books and sent him out, even against his will, to boyish games. Under the masters Damianus de Pola, public professor of eloquence, and James of Milan, a not contemptible pupil of Guarinus of Verona, a man most skilled in the Latin tongue, he had, before he completed his twelfth year, learned to speak Latin excellently and to sing perfectly in the measures of every kind of verse.

[27] Gratianus reports the same things in the Life, chapter 1, but adds he makes great progress in them, that Martin, when James of Milan succeeded Damianus de Pola in the chair of grammar, began again from the lowest class, so that by this means and under that teacher he might learn the Latin tongue more thoroughly. On the same testimony, he was eleven years old when he heard the praised James expounding Boethius' little Work on the Consolation of Philosophy; and he made such progress under him in the poetic art that by the same master's command he lectured to his fellow-students on its precepts and on the method of composing verses. Peter Rodulphius, older than Wadding and Gratianus, says more briefly on the same subject: He was from his very cradle outstanding in genius; and as he made great progress with his years in the study of good letters, he became illustrious, and advanced so far that, so far as that age allowed, he seemed to have no equals. I return to Wadding.

[28] He says, in the place just cited: In his fourteenth year, being enrolled in the honorable college of notaries and he gives a public specimen; he is enrolled in the college of notaries after a searching examination had first been passed, he a little afterwards, in the name and honor of Italy, applauded in verses in the public forum the peace established between Alphonsus of Aragon, king of Sicily, and the doges of Venice and of Milan (Francis Sforza). Gratianus, agreeing about the deeds but not about the order in which they took place, sets the poetic applause for the public peace before his entry into the order of notaries. He writes that that peace was ratified and the applause delivered by him in the year 1453, when he was fourteen years old; but that he was joined to the college of notaries when he numbered fourteen years and a half of his age. Which of these is truer I do not discern: but Gratianus has certainly assigned the epoch of the peace badly, since it is established that it was first entered into in the year 1454 between the Venetians and the aforepraised duke Sforza, and that Alphonsus, king of Aragon and Naples, did not consent to it before the beginning of the following year, as may be seen in Odoricus Raynaldus, volume 18 of the Ecclesiastical Annals, and in Ludovico Muratori in the Annals of Italy, volume 9, under the aforecited years. In one or the other year, therefore, the blessed Youth must be said to have given that specimen of his genius, when he was in the sixteenth year of his age.

[29] he devotes himself to logic, astronomy, the imperial law Concerning the college of notaries Gratianus observes in the same place that of old among the people of Feltre it was reckoned among the distinguished civic honors to be chosen into it, and that it was made much of on account of the knowledge that was required. He says besides that Ludovicus Lusa, then the Blessed's fellow-student and afterwards chancellor of the city, celebrated in a published poem the examination which he had strenuously sustained for the obtaining of that honor: but I leave both to Gratianus' credit. Take the rest of his studies in letters from Wadding. Under Zacharias Puteus (called in the vernacular Pozzo), a professor of Padua who had gone to Feltre in order to flee the plague (Gratianus has the suspicion of plague), he took up logic and astrology. Removed to Padua, and received by Daniel Pursilius, a nobleman, and made the companion of his sons, he pursued that kind of study, disputed in astronomical matters with the best masters of this science, and in riper years refuted the errors of many. In the precepts of philosophy he heard the most learned Thomas de Vio Cajetan and Michael de Carrara; then he began to give his labor to the imperial law.

[30] and to the pontifical law. Peter Rodulphius, besides what I have already reported at number 27, mentions among his studies in letters while in the world only the Canon law, in these words: First indeed he gave his labor to the pontifical law, and became a celebrated canonist. These things, and no more of the deeds of Bl. Bernardinus, then Martin, before he turned his mind to the monastic life, have I found, except a little about the care of his head, on which the annalist of the Minors, Wadding, just praised, subjoined in the same place: He went about for a time with long hair; but when he was wasting time in combing it, he cut his locks off to the skin, saying that a long-haired man is not studious, and that those who use their fingers rather than a comb put more time to profit. Of his stature, countenance and the rest of his bodily habit we shall treat more fitly below; but of his remarkable eloquence we shall have very frequent occasion to speak.

[31] At Padua he is brought to the Order of Minors by St. James of the March While the blessed Youth was applying himself so happily to the learning of the liberal arts, God, who by His eternal providence had destined him for the salvation of many, called him away from worldly studies to monastic ones. There flourished at that time in the Order of Minors of the Observance of St. Francis St. James of Picenum, or of the March, a plainly apostolic man, whom, renowned for holiness of life and for labors endured for the Church of God and for miracles, the supreme Pontiff Benedict XIII afterwards inscribed in the roll of the Saints, as will be told at greater length in our Work on the twenty-eighth day of November, on which he is announced in the Roman Martyrology and is venerated. Struck by his sacred sermons and at the same time by the untimely death of two doctors whom he had been accustomed to hear, and enlightened by divine grace, Martin resolved to bid farewell to perishable things and to pass over to the sacred Order of Minors, whom they call Observant; and what he had conceived in his mind he put into execution without delay, his parents neither knowing nor consenting. For the year in which he received the habit, Gratianus in the Life, chapter 4, and Wadding in the Annals assign the year of Christ 1456 and the fourteenth day of May.

[32] Bernardinus de Clastidio, in the Life both as published by him he is brought to the Order of Minors and as reissued by Innocentius of Pavia, agreeing in the rest, has omitted to note the time; but since he afterwards says, in chapter 24, that Bl. Bernardinus died in the twenty-eighth year of his life in religion and in the year of Christ 1494, he ought consequently to have fixed his entry into the Order of St. Francis in the year 1466, that is, ten years later than the two just named. But I believe that that number of twenty-eight years arose from a lapse of memory, or rather from the fault of the typesetters, and that for it should be written thirty-eight complete years — namely as many as elapsed from the month of May of the year 1456 down to the Blessed's day of death, which was the twenty-eighth of September of the year 1494. These things being premised, it will be useful to have heard Wadding under the aforecited year 1456, numbers 147 and 150. Preaching at Padua in this year, James (of the March) drew to religion the youth Bernardinus Tomitanus, of excellent character, and with his own hands bestowed the habit upon him. He then subjoins what we have already recounted from him concerning the Blessed's native place, parents and studies in letters, and at number 150 proceeds thus.

[33] In the seventeenth year of his age, hearing James of Picenum, whom we have named, discoursing excellently on contempt of the world, there he put on the habit in the year 1456; the prophecies of that Saint on the follies of worldlings, and on the four last things, and being vehemently struck by the sudden death of his two teachers, Zacharias Puteus and Romanellus, snatched away in the flower of their age, he determined to leave the world and to bind himself by the laws of the Minors. As to how he should do this, he took James for his instructor, who implanted the first seeds of a better life; and under his direction, on the fourteenth day of May of this year (1456), in the monastery of St. Francis, Antonius Frizimelica being warden of the house, he received the habit from the hands of James himself, and, having stripped off the old man, he laid aside even the very name of Martin. The name of Bernardinus of Siena was everywhere solemn, especially among the Friars: he therefore took up his name, whose life he set before himself to be emulated. James foresaw that he would follow his paths perfectly, prophesying then thus: "Today a new soldier has come to the camp of Christ, who will make our fellowship illustrious, will bring honor to God and salvation to souls, and will overthrow the deceits of the devil."

[34] The divine Bernardinus himself (namely of Siena) also prophesied concerning this his Follower, and the prophecies of St. Bernardino of Siena concerning him. saying some years before that there would come after him one who would bear his name and would instruct all Italy with great gain of souls. Bernardinus de Clastidio, in the Italian Life, chapter 1, writes that this prophecy was uttered in a public sermon forty years before our Blessed put on the religious habit, by St. Bernardino of Siena in the city of Perugia, in these words, which I have turned from Italian into Latin: After me there shall come another Bernardinus in this very habit of my Order; he shall come in a time of greater necessity: hearken to him, and do whatsoever he shall say to you; for he shall be sent from God, and

blessed is he who shall believe him. He says in the same place that he said the same thing also to the Florentines: Another Bernardinus, O Florence, shall come to thee after forty years and shall do great things: believe his words, and do what he shall teach; for he shall be the trumpet of heaven and the organ of the Holy Spirit. So indeed he there, but praising no author except Wadding in this place, who besides what I have reported from him has nothing. Neither have I read anything of the kind in the three Lives and the Analecta of St. Bernardino of Siena which our Henschen published on the twentieth day of May, on which that Saint is venerated. But from wherever Wadding and Bernardinus de Clastidio drew these things, Bl. Bernardinus of Feltre certainly showed himself such that they could deservedly have been foretold of him.

[35] His father tries in vain to call him back Bernardinus, clothed in the Franciscan habit in the convent of Padua, as we have just said, and soon sent to the solitary novitiate of St. Ursula outside the city (the words again are Wadding's, at number 151), Antonius of Caravaggio being his teacher, exulted with joy to run the way; when behold his father hastens up, and by what means he can strives to call back to the devious windings of the world one who had entered upon the straight road. But he, unmoved, persevering in his holy purpose, made such progress on the threshold of the religious life as to give sign of greater increases of advanced virtue. Mark of Lisbon, in part 3 of the Chronicles of the Order of St. Francis, book 7, chapter 21, making no mention of Antonius of Caravaggio, makes Sixtus of Milan, whom he also honors with the title of Saint, the first and only master of Bl. Bernardinus whom he names. But since Wadding expressly assigns Antonius de Caravagio here, and then writes that Bernardinus, after making his profession, while he lived at Mantua, happily enjoyed Sixtus of Milan as a friend and master of the spiritual life, it is most likely that Mark of Lisbon was here mistaken. Accordingly there will be occasion to speak again of that venerable man below.

[36] from the novitiate, in which Gratianus in chapter 5 recites a long address of the father to his Son, in order to call him back from what he had begun, and the Son's answer to the father, and at last the father's consent; but since I judge these to be the writer's sentiments and words rather than theirs, I pass them over in silence. Concerning the Blessed's deeds in the time of his novitiate the same Gratianus and Wadding have nothing further; but Bernardinus de Clastidio wrote the following in Italian on this subject in chapter 2. Bernardinus, having entered religion, applied himself to prayer, as the foundation and base of all the virtues, with such fervor of spirit that every night, rising before the Office of Matins and going out of his cell, he would proceed to the church to pour out long prayers before the most holy Sacrament. He exercised himself so greatly in vigils that, granting only three hours to rest, he consecrated the remainder to prayer, in which God communicated to him a copious light of heavenly wisdom. The convent of St. Ursula near Padua, appointed for the training of novices, was at that time exceedingly poor, of extreme want and of the most rigid discipline.

[37] he shines forth with many virtues The harshness of the austere life not only did not deter Bernardinus, but he, desiring to afflict his body still more that he might subject it to the spirit, added with his master's leave particular afflictions: frequent fasts on bread and water, voluntary scourgings of the body, laborious exercises, works so heavy that they not only tamed but almost crushed his weak little body. It was a wonder to see how well he accommodated himself to continual silence, to the rigor of nakedness, to obedience, and to contempt of himself: how he begged bread with a wallet and wine with jugs, not blushing at all to walk about the city of Padua with his bags hanging from his shoulder — that city in which a little before he had given his labor to letters and was known to all — and to approach the doors of those who had believed that he would shortly be adorned with the laurel of the doctorate; and so showing himself base before all, with a glorious victory over himself and the confusion of the devil. He was to the other novices a mirror of humility, modesty, bashfulness, dove-like simplicity, innocence of life and gravity of manners.

[38] He seemed insatiable in the offices of humility: in serving the cook, and shines before the rest. in cleaning the kitchen vessels, in splitting wood, in fetching water from the well, in washing the garments and the other cloths of the community, in sweeping the convent, in tending the garden, in digging the earth with a mattock and watering and manuring it, with such unremitting labor that he stained his hands with the hardest callus, and had them so stained down to the very last years of his life. These things the praised writer relates of the deeds of Bl. Bernardinus in the novitiate; which, although I suspect from probable conjecture that they were rather said by him than received from certain records, I have nevertheless thought should be reported here, because they teach what are the duties of novices in that Order, in which beyond all doubt Bl. Bernardinus must be believed to have excelled above his fellows. In the same place he subjoins the terrors cast upon the Blessed by the demon; but since he praises in the margin Mark of Lisbon, who writes that this befell him under his master Sixtus of Milan, it may be doubted whether it happened in the novitiate or after his profession in the convent of Mantua.

[39] However that may be, the praised Mark relates the matter thus in the Chronicle of the Order of St. Francis, part 3, Was he there deluded by the demon? book 7, chapter 21. Brother Sixtus was accustomed to rise daily from his bed before Matins for the sake of prayer, and Bernardinus imitated this, as he did the other examples of his master. But it happened that the demon, taking on the form of Sixtus, roused him and bade him follow him to the church. He obeys; but when he had reached the door of the choir, the demon suddenly vanished with a great uproar, as though the earth had trembled; and the Blessed, running to his master, laid before him what had happened to him, and was forbidden by him thereafter to go to the church before the Office of Matins, lest he be exposed to illusions of the demons of this kind. So he, nearly in these words; and if these things happened in the novitiate, I think that Antonius of Caravaggio must be substituted for Sixtus of Milan, for the reasons given above; yet I cannot solidly confirm the fact itself from elsewhere, and I grieve that more and more certain things concerning the deeds of the same Blessed in the first beginnings of his religious life have not come to me.

[40] Further, when the year of the novitiate was finished, the year of the Christian era 1457 being now current, Having made profession, he is sent to Mantua; thence, being ill, and the eighteenth of his own age, he was called by the votes of all (on Wadding's testimony under the year 1456, number 151) to the solemn vows, and was sent away to the little monastery of the Holy Spirit at Mantua. The city of Mantua is better known than that it need be described by me. Let it suffice to have said in a few words that Mantua is a very ancient city of Transpadane Gaul among the Cenomani, now in Lombardy in Italy, the head of the duchy of Mantua, to which it gave its name; an episcopal city and formerly the seat of its own dukes, but now under the dominion of the most august house of Austria, and called by the inhabitants also Mantoua. What is more to our purpose, Mantua is situated among the marshes which the river Mincio forms, and which, partly stagnant, often vehemently infect the air, especially in the summer heats, and breed diseases. For this reason Bernardinus could not stay long there, who, having made his profession in the Order in the month of May and been sent to Mantua, in the same year 1457 in which he had arrived, or at the beginning of the following one, had by reason of a contracted illness to remove elsewhere, as we have from the same Wadding and from Gratianus.

[41] The former says thus in a few words: Suffering there from the unhealthiness of the air, he was sent to Verona; where, being in his nineteenth year, at the entreaty of the confessor of the nuns, to Verona, and thence to Venice to hear theology. he put the Epistles of St. Jerome, and Basil's Treatise on virginity, into Italian. Gratianus has the same, who, silent about the confessor of the nuns, says that he did this by the command of his superiors, by whom, when he was sent from Mantua to Verona, he had been ordered, if he recovered, to translate little Works of this kind into Italian, lest he pass the time meanwhile in idleness. Bernardinus de Clastidio, although he cites Wadding in the margin, mentions, besides St. Basil's Treatise on Virginity, only two Epistles of St. Jerome, one to Demetrias, the other to Eustochium, as translated by him; which is more likely, if he undertook that work for the sake of the nuns. I have not ascertained how long he dwelt at Verona, whence Wadding, with the two often-praised writers, relates that he was sent by the fathers of his province to Venice to be trained in sacred theology, saying briefly thus: The house of St. Francis a Vineis at Venice being appointed in the provincial chapter, he heard sacred theology for two years under a Parisian master. Gratianus speaks a little more clearly here, saying that this master was a Religious of the same Order, but a Conventual, invited thither from Paris to lecture on sacred theology.

[42] Returning to Mantua, he profits greatly under Sixtus of Milan; Thence (Wadding continues), being removed to Mantua and remaining seven years in the convent of St. Francis, he took as his friend and master of the spiritual life the venerable man Brother Sixtus of Milan, very famous among the Mantuans for integrity of life and excellence of virtues. Of this venerable man, whom Mark of Lisbon called a Saint, and Gratianus and Bernardinus de Clastidio Blessed, you have an elogium in Arturus in the Martyrology and in Hueber in the Franciscan Menologium, on the twenty-second of November; by the first of whom, but not by the second, he is also honored with the title of Blessed. I have not yet read that his cult has been approved, and therefore I abstain from this title, into which inquiry may be made on the aforesaid day of November. But how much Bl. Bernardinus advanced in the virtues under that master, on whose mouth and nod he is said to have hung, the rest of the holiness of his life, his apostolic zeal and his miracles have clearly proved; nor does Francis Gonzaga seem to have said undeservedly, in the Origins of the Seraphic religion, part 2, Province of Genoa, Convent 47: He profited so greatly under the blessed father Sixtus of Milan, his instructor and master of morals, that in a short time he came forth a very great and most perfect man.

[43] there he is made a priest, teaches the younger, preaches, There too (on the same Wadding's testimony), being raised to the priesthood, he performed the sacred ministry with the utmost humility and reverence, reckoning himself unworthy to discharge so great an office. He does not state the year in which he received the presbyterate; but it was probably about 1463 of the Christian era, when the Blessed, born in the year 1439, was in the twenty-fifth year of his life. Concerning the exercises in which by the command of his superiors he was there occupied, he had premised this: Being ordered to imbue the young men (that is, the younger Friars) with the rudiments of Grammar, lest they should be weaned from the exercises of humility and piety by the dry study of letters, he often gave them leave and instructed them in spiritual disciplines. Being compelled by the head of the monastery to speak at the supper of All Saints' day, he spoke of the glory of paradise and the perfect gladness of the Saints with such eloquence, and delivered his discourse with such ardor of spirit, that the Friars, forgetting their food, hung upon his mouth. Being asked why he had said nothing in Latin except the theme, he answered: "Ostentation lacks fruit, and a discourse too often interrupted penetrates and moves the hearers less."

[44] He delivered there very many funeral orations, Latin ones for men of note, vernacular ones for ladies, and spoke with such charm and publicly delivers many funeral orations. that he drew all the citizens.

Gratianus writes that more than two hundred funeral orations of this kind were delivered by him before a very great concourse of people during that seven-year period in which he stayed at Mantua, and besides that many elegant sermons were spoken by him on the Lord's Supper, while the washing of feet is performed after the example of Christ our Lord. If these things are so, there must be set before them what Wadding related, under the year 1485, number 1, in the elogium of Sixtus of Milan, in these words: Him (Bl. Bernardinus of Feltre), who was of somewhat impeded speech, he (Sixtus of Milan) cured with the sign of the Cross, and admonished him to preach the word of God everywhere confidently and ardently; a thing which he indeed tied to no certain time, but which Bernardinus a Clastidio tied to the year 1469. That, I say, must be set before them, if seven years earlier he had already so often held forth at Mantua with so great eloquence; unless perhaps someone should prefer to say, without any witness, that that impediment of speech first came upon him after the aforesaid sermons had been delivered.

[45] Meanwhile, while he was doing these things at Mantua, he was afflicted with another bodily infirmity, He suffers from a hernia and from a fistula arising from it. very inconvenient for a preacher, concerning which Wadding has this: By the pious instructions of this man (Sixtus of Milan) he bore with a more even mind the grievous swelling of a hernia, contracted at Venice. He wished indeed to heal it with a heated golden thread, and while he binds this too incautiously, the intestines drawing back carried it inward, and the ailment, turned into a fistula, vexed the Servant of God for eight years. Bl. James of Picenum, by whom, as we have said, he was received into the Order, passing through that place, stirred him up to manly patience, saying: "Be of good courage, endure this sickness: thou must endure greater things for the glory of God and the salvation of souls." For the rest, since from what is to be said below the Blessed was at last freed from that fistula in the year 1471, consequently the beginning of that evil must be referred to about the year 1463, but the hernia a little earlier, while he was still at Venice giving himself to the learning of sacred theology.

§ III. The office of sacred preacher imposed upon him: the offices of superior discharged by him among his brethren, at Mantua, Feltre and Trent: the sermons he delivered, and his other deeds in the year 1469 and the five following.

[ ] It is set out with what gifts of mind In the year 1469 the chapter of the province of St. Antony, of which Bl. Bernardinus was a member, was held at Verona, and in it he was ordered by decree of the fathers to discharge thenceforth the office of preacher. But because he passed the remainder of his life until death in this apostolic labor with the greatest applause and no less fruit, it will be useful to premise here, out of Peter Rodulphius of Tossignano, the appearance and the gifts of the Man with which he came furnished to that office, repeating also the few things which I have already given from him above. He, in the Seraphic History, book 1, folio 85, writes thus to our purpose: Bl. Bernardinus Tomitanus Feltrius (surnamed the Little One), a kinsman of Bernardinus Tomitanus the academician of Padua, as he often told me when I was applying myself to the liberal disciplines at Padua, was from his very cradle outstanding in genius; and as he made great progress with his years in the study of good letters, he came forth illustrious, and advanced so far that, so far as that age allowed, he seemed to have no equals.

[47] and of body he was furnished, He was of short body, on account of the shortness of which he was also called Bernardinus Parvulinus; but

By as much as he was smaller on earth in his mortal body,

By so much is he greater in heaven in mind, in spirit, in genius.

He was also of a round face, somewhat lean, of a rather dark complexion, with a prominent, clear and lively eye; of singular eloquence: of which indeed certain Latin letters to the governors of the cities of Italy are witnesses, who with the greatest entreaties besought him to console them with his sacred sermons. In the sacred preachings which he frequently delivered to the people he used a common and yet learned tongue, sprinkled with certain rhetorical colors and with oratorical salt. His tongue was ready and free, his pronunciation clear, his voice varied and lofty, his lungs strong: his discourse was not dry but copious, so filled with examples, proverbs and maxims that he seemed a thunderbolt and a thunderclap of eloquence, as certain men have testified who heard him preaching more than once and had experience of him. First indeed he gave his labor to the pontifical law, and came forth a celebrated canonist; but in religion, being no ordinarily instructed in the liberal disciplines, he made himself admirable to all. Yet most of all he had Lactantius Firmianus, Augustine's City of God, Cicero and the divine Jerome as his familiars.

[48] when in the year 1469, in the chapter of his province, Concerning the slightness of his body, and the surname of the Small or the Little One received on that account, others also agree; nay, Gratianus even asserts that in his own time also, that is in the early seventeenth century, there were still preserved letters of prelates directed to him with this address: To Brother Bernardinus the little one, of Feltre; indeed that there even exists a brief of Innocent VIII himself, the supreme Pontiff, given to him for the building of a monastery of the Poor Clares at Feltre, and addressed: To our beloved son Bernardinus the little one of Feltre, professor of the Order of Minors; and this may in fact be read, reported into the Annals by Wadding from the autograph under the year of Christ 1492, number 22. Let these things suffice concerning his stature, images of whom, both living and afterwards dead, transmitted to us and engraved in copper, we shall also exhibit below. But as regards the gifts of his great soul, his other deeds will declare these more clearly. Let us return, then, to the point from which we digressed. In the chapter of his province held at Verona in the year 1469 (Bernardinus de Clastidio adds, in the month of May) he was raised to the office of sacred preacher, which, having out of humility for a little while vainly begged off from, he undertook out of obedience. Let us again hear Wadding, under the aforecited year, number 14.

[49] held at Verona, he was ordered to undertake the office of preacher, Bernardinus Tomitanus of Feltre, of the beginnings of whose life and virtue there has been treatment elsewhere, was in this year appointed preacher of the divine word in the chapter of his province of the divine Antony held at Verona. But he, thinking humbly of himself, declined this noble ministry, alleging that no help of books was at hand for him, and that he had received from God no talent for performing this office. Sixtus of Milan, who was then acting in place of the absent guardian, and who prevailed with him by the highest authority, and instructed Bernardinus at length that he should comply, gained his point. "Come, my Son," he said, "be of good courage; there is no cause for thee to fear anything, or to object anything against obedience. He who inspired the fathers to enjoin this office will supply books, talent, and everything necessary. Being now thirty years of age, dost thou still call thyself immature in years? Ezekiel at those same years began to prophesy, John the Baptist to preach, Christ the Lord to preach the Gospel. The feast of St. Bernardino is at hand, whose name thou bearest; begin thy sermons from him; he will obtain divine help for thee."

[50] At last he had to comply, and delivered a sermon with such applause, having taken the theme "He was a burning and a shining lamp," which he discharged excellently. that all said they had heard nothing more eloquent, nothing more excellent. But when he first mounted the pulpit, robbed of his eyes and his mind, he long stuck fast; nor did it occur to him what he should do or say. Turning to God and to St. Bernardino, he begged that they would scatter the arts of the demon, which he well knew, and would not permit that by this unlucky outcome all confidence in speaking should thereafter be taken from him. And at once light was restored to him, and so great a spirit that he preached beyond hope and beyond the powers of nature. Continuing his sermons afterwards on feast days in the monastery of Mantua, he had numerous assemblies and gave a specimen of the huge gain to come… On the night of the most holy Nativity he sang in the choir (for he was excellently skilled in music), and laying aside his surplice and mounting the pulpit toward the end of the Gospel, he unfolded in a beautiful sermon the immense love of the tender little Infant toward the human race; and returning to the choir, he humbly resumed his first ministry, though weary and sweating. Thus far he, praising in the margin Gratianus in the Life, Mark of Lisbon in the Chronicle, part 3, book 7, chapter 22, Cimarellus, part 4, book 6, chapter 3, and two manuscript Legends.

[51] Bernardinus de Clastidio, in the Italian Life, chapter 4, agreeing nearly in the rest, What is related of the impediment of his speech writes that on this occasion the impediment of his tongue was loosed, which I mentioned above at number 44 out of Wadding. Take Bernardinus' words, turned from Italian into Latin. When Bl. Bernardinus pleaded that his shoulders were not equal to that office, because he was of somewhat impeded speech and unfit for the pulpit, the blessed old man (so he calls Sixtus of Milan), enlightened by the Holy Spirit, bade him fall upon his knees and put forth his tongue. He obeyed; and the holy old man, taking hold of his tongue, signed it with the Cross, and prodigiously took away its impediment, as Wadding testifies under the year 1486, number 1. But Wadding indeed asserts the fact in the place cited, yet does not say that it was done at this time or on this occasion, as we have already observed at number 44. It must nevertheless be confessed that it would more likely be referred to no other time than to this, if the fact were sufficiently established, and if other things did not persuade the contrary.

[52] For first indeed Wadding, since he has made no mention of that healing of the tongue under the year 1469, as then taken away by Sixtus of Milan must be said to have found nothing about it at that time in the published and manuscript Opuscula which he praised in that place. Likewise Mark of Lisbon, part 3 of the Chronicles, book 7, chapter 21, and Gratianus in the Life, chapter 17, were ignorant of it; both of whom indeed write that Sixtus of Milan then signed the Blessed's tongue with the sign of the Cross, yet not in order to take away its impediment (for of this there is no mention in them), but in order to rouse to confidence in God one who out of humility or excessive distrust of himself was declining to take up the burden of preacher, and to drive him to accept the office imposed. Secondly, that impediment of speech is little likely from what those same writers have related about the Blessed's eloquence before the year 1469. For according to their own view Bernardinus, while he was still in the world giving himself to the study of letters, applauded the peace of Italy with his verses in the public forum; and living in religion at Mantua, he delivered very many funeral orations and some pious sermons as well, always with the greatest eloquence and the greatest concourse of people.

[53] appears fabulous. Was he then, or only afterwards before the year 1469, made of more impeded speech? The first you will not easily reconcile with the aforesaid; as to the second, on whose testimony, or on what occasion, shall we say it happened? Nay rather, I much doubt whether the often-mentioned impediment and its cure did not arise from a badly understood passage of Mark of Lisbon, or some like passage of another writer, in which, as we have just seen, Sixtus of Milan is read to have signed Bl. Bernardinus' tongue with the Cross for no other cause than to hearten the trembling man to confidence. But, you will say, what reason then deterred the Blessed from accepting the office of preacher? That very reason which Gratianus alleges: the sublimity of the office, and distrust of himself, and the less than reasonable fear arising from this, lest what ought to have profited should harm both himself and his hearers. To be pressed by fear of this kind is not

possible in delivering funeral orations and some domestic exhortations; since in the former only the praises of noble persons had to be treated, and in the latter he had to speak only to his own Friars, and almost within domestic walls. Let us pass on to other matters.

[54] At Mantua he acts as vicar of the Guardian; To the aforesaid office of preacher there was added in the same year 1469 another charge also, namely the vicariate of the Guardian in the aforementioned convent of St. Francis at Mantua, where he was living. So Wadding teaches again in the same place, saying: Toward the end of the year he was made vicar of that house and of the aforesaid Sixtus, and soon of Brother Antony of Padua, an intimate friend, who from his very initiation, at which he was present, loved Bernardinus. Perhaps this Antony of Padua was the guardian of that place, in whose absence Sixtus of Milan had acted; perhaps also another, who had succeeded him. The Blessed seems to have discharged that office until the beginning of the year 1471, in whose Lenten fast we shall presently see that he was preaching elsewhere, and that a little afterwards he was appointed guardian of the convent of Feltre in his native place; for concerning his deeds in the convent of Mantua I have found nothing more. At that time the vicar general of the Minors Observant Cismontane (I speak after the Roman fashion, for to us they are Ultramontane) was Mark of Bologna, born of the noble family Fantuccia, more noble in virtues, and renowned for many offices in his Order, for the preaching of the divine word, and for miracles even after death.

[55] thence, being sent to Peschiera, he delivers Lenten sermons His deeds you have in Wadding's Annals, reported here and there under their own years, and a brief compendium of them, with the miracles, in the same author under the year 1478. Of him there was treatment among us in the Praetermissi of the twenty-seventh of March, because even after letters had been written to Piacenza, where his body rests, his cult was not established. Further, this man appointed the blessed father Bernardinus, who had already given at Mantua illustrious specimens of his sacred eloquence and apostolic zeal, to preach at Peschiera in the year 1471. This is a little town of Italy in the Venetian dominion, small indeed but well fortified, called by the inhabitants Peschiera, and situated on Lake Benacus, commonly Lago di Garda, at the place where the Mincio flows out, and on the boundary of the duchy of Mantua, to which it belonged before it passed to the most serene Venetian republic, by which it was joined to the territory of Verona. This seems to have been Bernardinus' first sacred expedition outside Mantua — at least the first that I know of — and one which the often-praised annalist of the Minors mentions under the same year, number 12, out of the manuscript Legends, honorably indeed, but for our purpose too briefly, in words which I here subjoin from him.

[56] In this year, with most abundant fruit and huge gain of souls, Bernardinus of Feltre, by command of Mark the vicar general, delivered the Lenten sermons at Peschiera on Lake Garda (in the margin is added, better, Benacus) in Transpadane Lombardy, with great fruit: he presides over the convent of Feltre, a populous and elegant town. The prefect of the citadel, a nobleman of the house of Vitturi, held the young but eloquent Preacher in great esteem, and frequently invited him to preach in the fortress to the garrison soldiers. Having performed this labor, Wadding subjoins, a little afterwards, being elected guardian at Feltre, he so tempered the love of his kinsmen that he visited no one, nor had such familiars in the monastery that he allowed the time necessary for his office and for the monastic functions to slip away uselessly in their conversation. He undertook the care of the Friars committed to him so exactly that he carried on his own shoulders bread, wine, and provisions collected from door to door. Being vehemently harassed for eight years by a deadly ulcer of fistula (concerning the beginning of which consult number 45), he was at last freed by his father's care and by the skilled remedy of the distinguished surgeon Salomon de Vidore, and took on greater strength and spirit for sowing the word of God and calling the peoples to penance, which he performed throughout all Italy with incredible increase.

[57] Perhaps to the time of the same office belongs the springing forth of a fountain where he is said to have drawn forth a fountain. healthful to the sick, especially to those in fever, which Bernardinus de Clastidio reports, out of the processes of Feltre and Pavia, to have been drawn forth by Bernardinus for the convenience of the convent of Feltre. It is pleasing to subjoin his words turned from Italian into Latin. When the convent of the Holy Spirit at Feltre, which belongs to our Order, was suffering from a great scarcity of water, he made a most beautiful fountain gush forth there, which even today is called the Fountain of Bl. Bernardinus, beside which there is seen in a little chapel a statue of the Blessed with these Latin verses.

Whoever thou art that passest here, fear not to touch the water

Which the blessed right hand of Bernardinus gave.

It harms none; it is to the sick a medicine of health:

A pious people bears witness — only let thy faith be firm.

Then he subjoins again in Italian: By drinking this water very many sick are healed, especially those in fever. For the rest, that same convent is situated not within but near the walls of Feltre, and in it is preserved entire the habit of the aforesaid blessed father Bernardinus of Feltre, on the testimony of Francis Gonzaga, part 2 of the Origins of the Seraphic Religion, in the Province of St. Antony, convent 12.

[58] In the following year, which was that of Christ 1472, there occurred the Blessed's journey into the Abruzzo, Having set out for Aquila, he is present at the translation of St. Bernardino; in the going and returning of which he incurred more than one peril of life. The causes of his setting out were the general chapter of the Observants Cismontane, who to us are Ultramontane, summoned in the city of Aquila for the fifteenth day of May, and at the same time the translation to be made of the uncorrupted body of St. Bernardino of Siena from the church of St. Francis into a new one magnificently built to his name within the same city, which was there most solemnly performed on the feast of Pentecost, the seventeenth day of the same month of May: on which matter one may consult the Acts of this Saint published among us on the twentieth day of May, and Wadding's Annals under the same year. For these causes, therefore, the reverend father Ludovicus Gonzaga, vicar of the Minors Observant in the province of St. Antony, being about to set out for Aquila, took Bl. Bernardinus to himself as companion; and that journey the often-mentioned annalist, in the place cited, number 28, set out compendiously out of a manuscript Legend in this manner.

[59] At the above-mentioned translation there was present Bl. Bernardinus of Feltre, the companion of Ludovicus Gonzaga, a kinsman of the princes of Mantua, who was acting as vicar of the Observants of the province of St. Antony. imperiled at sea on the outward journey; on the return Having suffered many storms in the Adriatic sea, they asked to be set ashore on the coast of Picenum, Bernardinus saying jestingly that he was Jonah, and therefore should be put out by the sailors if they wished the waves to be stilled. In the city of Fermo (which is the archiepiscopal see of the March of Ancona in the Pontifical dominion, distant about three miles from the shore of the Adriatic sea) he visited his teacher and, as we have said, his begetter in Christ, James of Picenum, lying on his bed, … by whom, being kindly and amicably received, he heard many lessons of patience in diverse instances, and secrets of things to come.

[60] he lay grievously ill at Rome: his remaining deeds in this year 1472. Being seized with fever at Aquila, while he was convalescing, he followed his vicar to Rome, and fell back into sickness, and with such increase of the malady that the rumor of his death spread to Venice, and his fellows performed his obsequies. Having at last returned safe to that city, he delivered frequent sermons; but being taken by the vicar as secretary to visit the convents, he came little short of being seized by the Turks, who were bursting into the borders of Austria, while they were preaching to the peoples that they should resist the enemies of the Christian faith with courage. At Verona he wonderfully moved by his speech alone a novice, or young little friar of Piacenza, who wished to return altogether to the world, so that he persevered in religion — a thing which neither the instructor of the young men, nor the vicar himself, nor anyone else had been able to obtain by prayers, exhortations, blandishments or threats. Thus he; which I could wish I had found somewhere more fully set out; but perhaps the manuscript Legend from which he drew these things supplied Wadding himself with no more.

[61] He is set over the convent of Trent, and preaches Equally meager are the things which are mentioned in the same place, under the earlier year, number 9, concerning his deeds in the year 1473 and the following, out of the same and another manuscript Legend, and which I here transfer in the same words. Namely these: Bernardinus of Feltre in this year (1473) drew to the fellowship of religion his own brother Antony, who emulated Bernardinus' most religious life. Having been admitted into the fellowship by the fathers of the chapter held this year at Venice, he took him with him, being made in the same chapter guardian of the convent of Trent. In that city he delivered the sermons of Advent in the cathedral church, and the Lenten ones at Cittadella, so ordering Ludovicus Gonzaga, vicar of the Friars. In the following year he preached at Mantua through the course of the year and on the Sundays of Advent; but through Lent in the town of Arcignano, of the diocese of Vicenza. From these things, however briefly reported, it abundantly appears how laborious Bl. Bernardinus was, whom not even the offices which he discharged in his Order called away from sowing the divine word, both in the city where he lived and in others.

[62] in various places, As regards the knowledge of the places: Trent, the head of the dominion of the same name, is an episcopal city of Germany on the river Adige in the county of the Tyrol, famous for an ecumenical council. In the Catalogue of the provinces and vicariates of the Friars Minor Observant which Wadding exhibits under the year 1506, there is reckoned a convent of St. Bernardino (of Siena, I suppose) at Trent, and it is placed in the Province of St. Antony, of which I have already elsewhere noted that our Bernardinus was a member. In the praised catalogue and in the same province there is also named the convent of the Holy Cross of Cittadella, or Civitatula, which in the same Annals under the year 1460, number 47, is said to be a town of the diocese of Vicenza in the Paduan countryside; and others also agree, who affirm it to be an elegant town. Of Mantua we have already treated above; but of Arcignano this notice exists in the description of the territory of Vicenza, volume 16 of the Blaeu Geography. Toward the west … almost at the confines of the Veronese, is the very populous village of Arxlanum, commonly Arcignano, and, as epitaphs and inscriptions from Roman times down bear witness, a very ancient one; where there is an abundant trade in wool.

[63] Francis Gonzaga, on the Origins of the Seraphic religion, of which notice is given. in the Province of St. Antony, Convent 29, writes that the inhabitants of that place, about the year 1494, in fulfillment of a vow happily made for the driving away of a pestilence, built a convent there for the Minors of the Observance, of which the praised Catalogue also makes mention thus: St. Mary of Graces at Azignanum. It is credible that the memory of Bl. Bernardinus, formerly a preacher among them, had at least some weight in the making of that vow in favor of the Minors Observant. Further, since the principality of Trent adjoins the territory of Vicenza, and the duchy of Mantua the territory of Verona, near the confines of which Arcignano is situated in the Vicentine countryside, it is easily understood that Bl. Bernardinus could, though not without huge labor, preach among the inhabitants of those places at the aforesaid times.

§ IV. Set over the convent of Trent, he is related to have foretold the slaying of the holy boy Simon: he preached at Novellara, at Reggio Lepidum and at Padua, where he presided over his brethren and succored those infected with the plague.

[ ] Acting as guardian at Trent, amid the Lenten sermons From his sacred excursions to Trent, where he was discharging the office of Guardian

Bl. Bernardinus, returning, delivered sermons there to the people in the time of Lent, in which he is said to have frequently warned his hearers to beware of familiarity with the Jews, and to have foretold to those who spurned his warnings the dreadful crime which not long after was committed by those perfidious men upon the holy boy Simon. Wadding, out of his manuscript Legend and out of Marianus, as he notes in the margin, speaks of these things thus, under the year 1475, number 26. Bernardinus of Feltre delivered the Lenten sermons in this year to the people of Trent, whom he often forbade too familiar dealings with the Hebrews. Tobias, a Jewish physician, and Brunetta, a most crafty woman of the same nation, used to penetrate into houses and thrust themselves into the counsels of Christians. While Bernardinus frequently said that these were to be guarded against, he stirred up against himself the ill will of certain persons, who said that men otherwise good, apart from their faith, were unjustly slandered by him.

[65] "These good men of yours," the Preacher would answer, "how much evil they bring upon you, you do not know; he is related to have foretold the martyrdom of the holy boy Simon, but the Lord's Passover will not pass before these men furnish a fitting proof of their goodness." There came the Tuesday of Holy Week, the twelfth of the Kalends of April, when the Christians were already preparing themselves to celebrate the mysteries of the Lord's passion; and behold the chief men of the Hebrews entered into a plan for immolating a Christian infant and drinking his blood amid the mad rites of their unleavened bread. The care of preparing the victim was committed to the aforesaid Tobias, who stealthily carried off a beautiful little boy, two years and not quite five months old, Simon by name, as he sat before his father's doors. About midnight the rabid dogs, surrounding the most innocent creature, tortured him with wondrous torments for a whole hour, each in his turn cutting out with shears a little morsel of flesh from the living little body and collecting the sacred blood; then, having raised him up in the manner of a cross, they pierced him with hard needles and thick blows.

[66] whom the Jews there in the same year 1475 To the mother seeking her son everywhere, the boys kept crying out that he had been slain by the Hebrews; and Bernardinus called their voices heavenly, and said that the lamb was to be sought nowhere but among the goats *. This vexed many favorers of the Hebrews; but Bernardinus said intrepidly that the slayers of Christ had represented in a boy's body the figures of Christ's passion. This at last was discovered, and John Salam of Brescia, remarkably skilled in the science of law, was sent by Pope Sixtus; he exacted a heavy punishment from the child-slayers: presently sacred honors were worthily decreed to Simon's relics. There is in circulation the whole course of the affair, elegantly described by John Matthias Tiberinus. Thus far the praised annalist. But there exist in our Work, on the twenty-fourth day of March, on which he is venerated, the Acts of this holy little boy Simon, the first part of which has for its author the aforesaid John Matthias Tiberinus, who was one of the physicians deputed to inspect the little body of that Saint and the wounds inflicted upon him, and who inscribed that part to the senate and people of Brescia after the accused had been cast into prison but before the case was finished. The other part was written in Italian by an anonymous author, and rendered there into Latin.

[67] cruelly immolated in Holy Week. Both may be read there, and compared with Wadding's statements, which are not everywhere in conformity with them. Of this kind is what he affirms about John Salam of Brescia having been sent by Pope Sixtus (namely the fourth) to exact punishment from the accused; whereas in the praised Acts it is said that John dalla Sala of Brescia, doctor of laws, was then podestà of Trent, and that the examination of the matter and the punishment were committed to him not by Pope Sixtus but by John Hinderbach, bishop and prince of Trent. But as regards the subject before us, in neither part of the Acts have I found any mention of our Bl. Bernardinus. In the first part, at number 6, the boys are indeed said to have accused the Jews to the parents when they were searching through the city for their little son on the first evening after he had been carried off: But all the boys, says Tiberinus, from whose lips the Holy Spirit often speaks, asserted that he was to be sought among the Jews; for it would prove that the Jews had seized him and would hang him on a cross in reproach of the Christian faith. This, I say, indeed there; but of Bernardinus approving the boys' words, likewise not a word. Nevertheless Wadding's assertions cannot be overthrown by this argument, which is merely negative; since the author could here have been silent about Bernardinus, either because he knew that he himself wished it so, or for other causes which there is no leisure to divine.

[68] At Novellara he preaches against the Bacchanalia, In the year 1476, the time of his office in the convent of Trent being now completed, as I judge, he was sent by his superiors to Reggio Lepidum, which is an episcopal city of Italy between Parma and Modena, commonly called Reggio; and there he spent a great part of that year, unweariedly intent both upon public exhortations to the people and upon the private instruction of his brethren. Nor was the journey itself, and the delay thrown in his way upon the road, without fruit for souls: concerning which the following may be read in Wadding, out of three manuscript Legends which he praises, under the aforecited year, numbers 49 and 50. Being sent this year to preach at Reggio Lepidum, he was stopped by heavy snow at Novellara (to the Italians la Novellara is a little town with a small county lying between the duchy of Mantua and that of Modena), with George Gonzaga, the lord of the town. He preached ardently against the frenzies of the Bacchanalia and the masked figures, severely rebuked certain slothful executors of pious legacies, and fully succeeded, a remedy being applied to both evils.

[69] Quinquagesima drawing near, and the sky continually snowing, [as also at Reggio Lepidum, where he warned, not in vain, that the Jews were to be guarded against,] he had to depart, George's servants going before, who opened a path through the more difficult and uncertain roads. Having also inveighed vehemently at Reggio against the masqueraders, when certain men heard with annoyance that these spectacles were being taken from them, and alleged a learned preacher who had approved them, he flared up a little, grieving that men who ought to have condemned evils were becoming their patrons. "But," said he, "await the fruit of the maddening crowd: the days of their reveling shall not pass before you experience which doctrine ought to be reckoned the sounder and the more useful." After a few days a certain noble youth had his arm cut off amid the frenzies of the masqueraders, another being wretchedly killed. By this manifest prediction he began to be held in greater veneration, and his testimonies became more credible. Having keenly pursued the Hebrews, as in the preceding year at Trent, he bade the boys of the Christians be guarded about the time of the Lord's passion; nor by all this caution could it be brought about that a perfidious Jew did not carry off a little boy under his cloak to be impiously slaughtered: but being caught in the crime, he underwent worthy penalties.

[70] His sermons ended, he would not take holiday from good works; and he performed other things: he preaches at Padua. but according to the need and capacity of the Friars, he read to the younger the foundations of logic, to the more advanced the Commentaries of Mediavillanus (otherwise Richard of Middleton, in English de Middeltoune, concerning whom Wadding is to be consulted in the Writers of the Order of Minors) on the Sentences, and to the Friars of middling learning moral theology. A certain Epirote, but brought up at Venice, a most sagacious man, forty years old but ill reborn in baptism, he convicted of the error committed, and persuaded him to allow himself to be rebaptized by Brother Ludovicus Gonzaga. While he was detained at Reggio Lepidum by these occupations, being made all things to all men, toward the end of the year (on the same annalist's testimony), a chapter being held, he was appointed a dweller of the convent of Padua; where he bore wonderful fruit, delivering frequent sermons through all the churches both of the secular and of the regular Friars and of the nuns. In Advent, at the entreaty of Bishop James Zeno and the canons, he preached in the cathedral church. Of the praised James Zeno, a Venetian noble, you have a brief elogium in Ughelli, volume 5 of the Italia sacra reissued, column 456 and the following, where he is said to have been translated from the bishopric of Belluno to that of Padua in the year 1460, and to have held this until the year 1481, in which he died. He was therefore sitting at Padua in the year 1476, in which Bernardinus was living there.

[71] In the following year, which was 1477 of the Christian era, Through Lent of the year 1477 he preached at Portogruaro, he stayed a short time in the same city, being unweariedly occupied with the preaching of the divine word in other places of the Venetian dominion, and in the metropolis of the republic itself, always with richer fruit and greater esteem of his name. Let us hear Wadding again, briefly touching these matters under the same year, numbers 15 and 16, out of his manuscript Legends. Bernardinus of Feltre delivered this year at Portogruaro the Lenten sermons with a huge gain of souls, by which the bishop of Concordia, an assiduous hearer, was greatly affected, frequently urging upon others that St. Bernardinus (namely of Siena) spoke in that man. Portus Gruarius, called by the natives Porto Gruaro, is a town of Italy in Friuli, of the Venetian dominion, on the river Romatinus, commonly the Lemene, distant only two Italian miles to the north from the city of Concordia, which was almost destroyed by the Lombards, and whose bishops, on account of the unhealthiness of the air, reside at Portogruaro by indult of the supreme Pontiff Sixtus V.

[72] likewise at Treviso, Feltre, and Venice, Further, in the year 1477, in which Bernardinus preached there, the bishop of Concordia was Antonius Phelettus, a Venetian, as we have from Ughelli's Italia enlarged, volume 5, column 363 and the following, whence we also gather that he was well affected toward the Friars Minor Observant, since it is there said of him: He granted to the Friars of the divine Francis of the regular Observance the church and monastery of St. Agnes. Let us return to the annalist. At Treviso, Feltre and Venice he preached without any intermission for the remaining time of the year in the chief churches and monasteries, and also in the public squares and the widest market-places. Tarvisium, of which the discourse is here, called by the Italians Treviso and Trevisi, is a city of Italy on the river Sile, episcopal, and the head of the March of Treviso, under the dominion of the most serene Venetian republic, from whose chief city it is said in the Lexicons to be distant eighteen miles. Of Feltrum or Feltria, the Blessed's own native place, consult what was said above at number 14. In the city of Venice (Wadding subjoins in the same place) he often had as a hearer Donatus his father, exulting exceedingly in his Son's fame and in the profit of souls. Bernardinus always held him in the highest reverence, nor did he at any time ever depart from him without asking on his knees as a suppliant to be blessed.

[73] where Michael of Carcano won him many hearers, There was then preaching at Venice, in the campo of St. Paul, Michael of Carcano, a most celebrated preacher of the same institute, who at the end of his discourse would say to the people: "Bernardinus the little one, a great preacher, is among you: hear him, follow him: my time is near; I know whom I leave to you." At the heralding of so great a man the number of those flocking together increased daily the more, and his fame was spread far and wide. But Bernardinus, reckoning himself unworthy of such praise, poured it all back upon Michael, saying that he himself was as small in virtue as in bulk; but that the other was a veteran master, and sent by God as another Paul; and that therefore men should run to that trumpet of Christ and enjoy his powerful and thundering eloquence. But how greatly the other loved Bernardinus may be conjectured even from this, that he sent him of his own accord from Milan his Lenten sermons, which he was willing to impart to no one — a mark of worthy esteem and of growing virtue

as proof. The Venetian people then profited very greatly by the teaching of both men: for they did not soothe itching ears with the persuasive words of human wisdom or with the empty flowerets of the rhetoricians, but penetrated the inmost parts of the heart in the showing of the spirit and in the fervor of virtue, having set before themselves this method of discourse, that they should pursue vices with all the effort they could, and instill the opposite virtues with worthy commendations.

[74] an outstanding preacher; with whom, however, he does not seem On the feasts of the Saints, after they had narrated * their chief virtues in brief discourse, they passed vehemently to the reproof of the opposite evils, by this means engendering in their hearers a love of good things and a hatred of crimes. An elogium, or compendium of the deeds, of Michael of Carcano you have in the same Annals under the year 1485, number 7, in which certain further things are read about Bl. Bernardinus, to be reported here briefly on this occasion. Thus it is there said of the praised Michael: He was the author of the counsel to the Milanese, Bernardinus of Feltre cooperating, that they should build a most spacious and most commended hospital; and he took care that the one at Como, called the greater Hospital of St. Anne, should be built under Cardinal Branda Castilione, bishop of the city. It is somewhat ambiguous whether our Blessed is also said to have contributed his aid to the hospital of Como, as Primus Aloysius de Tattis expressly asserts in the Sanctuary or Martyrology of Como, saying on the fifteenth day of October in the elogium of the same Michael: He was, together with Bl. Bernardinus of Feltre, the chief author of the building of the hospitals at Milan and at Como.

[75] Let us examine both a little. Joseph Ripamonti, in book 6 of the History of the city of Milan, gives the epoch of this most celebrated hospital of Milan, to have procured the erection of the hospitals of Milan and Como, erected and founded by Duke Francis Sforza, in these words: The first stone was laid on the Ides of April in the year of Salvation one thousand four hundred and fifty-three; which month and year, however, like very many other things, the carelessness or license of writers could vary, even where a recent memory gave no place to the usual excuse. According to these things, then, that building of the hospital could perhaps have been begun some years earlier or later. But it certainly cannot be deferred to the year 1466, in the month of March of which Ludovico Muratori, volume 9 of the Annals of Italy, under the same year, relates that the aforepraised duke died; indeed, that that building was begun some years before his death is sufficiently gathered from Ripamonti. But at that time Bl. Bernardinus had not yet mixed himself in public affairs, who in the year 1453, being only about fourteen years old, was giving his labor to the study of letters in the world, and was first admitted in the year 1456 to the religious habit of St. Francis and to the novitiate, and in the year 1469 was appointed a preacher.

[76] Wherefore, if he did contribute some labor for that same hospital, as some assert. this must have been furnished by him for its increase, not for its first foundation. Let the judgment be otherwise concerning Michael of Carcano, who, since Ripamonti and others relate that he was confessor to Blanca Maria, the wife of that duke, could easily have been the author and promoter of the beginning of that work. Benedictus Jovius also ascribes the construction of the great hospital to his counsels, in the History of Como, book 2, where he says: The universal hospital, which is called the great Hospital, began to be built about the year of the Lord one thousand four hundred and eighty-two… The author of this memorable work was Michael de Carcano, of the Order of Minors of the regular observance, a man of huge spirit and of no common learning, who in his day was the most outstanding among the declaimers of the pulpit. Thus far he, recording nothing of our Bernardinus, who indeed flourished at the same time and labored much elsewhere for the erecting of public buildings for the solace of the wretched; but whether he also had some part in that work I would not dare to affirm. For the rest, that same Michael is read to be inscribed with the title of Blessed in Arturus a Monasterio in the Franciscan Martyrology, and in Primus Aloysius Tattus in that of Como, on the fifteenth day of October, on which day inquiry may be made into his cult and consequently his deeds may be treated.

[77] After this digression, which Bernardinus' friendship with the most praiseworthy man Michael of Carcano suggested, At Venice he procures the removal of a certain abuse, let us return to the year 1477. The Turks, who after the capture of Constantinople in the year 1453 were harassing the Christian coasts more and more daily, were in this year threatening the Venetian dominions also; and in the month of October of this year, bursting into Friuli as far as Udine, they destroyed the army of the Venetians with a murderous slaughter, as may be seen in the contemporary author of the Diary of Parma, among the writers of Italian Affairs published by Muratori, volume 22, column 268. Against so formidable an enemy there was need of huge money, which is the sinew of war; and for procuring this the Venetian senate had devised, among other means, one which Bl. Bernardinus began keenly to attack as unworthy of Christians, and procured to be abolished. So again Wadding teaches out of the manuscript Legends, in the place cited above, continuing thus: The Turks then making many incursions upon the Venetians, moneys were heaped up by all means for the support of the war; but that one seemed intolerable to Bernardinus by which, by the public voice of a herald, leave was granted, on payment of a coin, to play at dice and cards in an appointed quarter of the city.

[78] and, that he may obey his superiors, he departs secretly. So vehemently did he thunder against this collection of money from the impunity of sins, that the triumvirs (these are a certain magistracy, otherwise called syndics), having regard for no one, purged those places of this bilge of evils, although they belonged to the noble patrician family of the Contareni, and no longer permitted public places for games of this kind. Matters having been so strenuously carried through in the Venetian dominion, when thereafter he was ordered by his vicar Franciscus Contarenus (the annalist subjoins in the same place) to depart to Padua, so that, according to the wish of the bishop and citizens, he might preach in the following Lent in the cathedral church, the Venetians begged Doge Vendramin to detain him, and not to allow themselves to be deprived of so great a Master of the virtues. When the great chancellor had been sent to ask him to remain, he answered that he greatly wished to obey so great a prince; that this, however, was not in his own power, and that it was not lawful to gainsay a superior's command. And so in the dead of night, while the Venetians were preparing to elude the superior's mandate by a precept of Pope Sixtus (the fourth of this name), he withdrew; the veneration of the Venetians toward him being thereby in no way diminished, but rather increased.

[79] He is present at the chapter held at Pavia: In the year 1478 the general chapter of the Minors Observant Cismontane (speaking after the Roman fashion) was held at Pavia, in which Bl. Angelus de Clavasio was elected second vicar general. Wadding, under that year, number 8, writes that this election of his was made on the tenth day of April, the sixth feria after the feast of the Resurrection; but he has certainly erred in one or the other date, since Easter this year fell on the twenty-second of March. However that may be, that Bl. Bernardinus was present at this chapter, and that the magistracy and people of Pavia, on occasion of a sermon then delivered by him, urged the aforepraised vicar general that he should preach there during the following Lenten fast, the frequently praised annalist relates under the year just mentioned, number 12, citing in the margin his manuscript Legends and Marianus. Take his words. At that chapter of Pavia Bernardinus of Feltre was present, and delivered a most learned sermon; drawn by which, the magistrates and citizens asked the vicar general to order the people to be instructed by his sermons for the Lent of the following year.

[80] set over the convent of Padua, he preaches, He could not grant their request, Bernardinus having been already appointed to another place; he nevertheless sent a distinguished preacher, Antony of Vercelli. After the chapter was finished, the Blessed, having returned to Padua, where he presided as guardian over his Religious, had a wide field for his charity, the plague afflicting this city in that year, as it did many others of Italy — of which the anonymous author of the Diary of Parma praised above, and Ludovico Muratori in the Annals of Italy, both under the same year, make mention. But Wadding wrote this to the matter which we are treating. Bernardinus, returning to Padua, where he was discharging the office of guardian, preached ceaselessly and profitably through the cities and towns; nor did he cease from this office at Padua, however vehemently the plague raged there, and although the magistrate ordered him to intermit his sermons, lest, the multitude gathering together, the evil should be spread more widely.

[81] But he, objecting that the word of God was healthful rather than harmful, while the plague raged, with great fruit to his hearers: taught from the pulpit that the contagion was engendered, preserved and propagated not by an assembly for hearing the words of life, but by vain and unlawful conversations, by dishonorable meetings and by sins; and repeating these words from the sacred eloquence — "He sent His word and healed them: neither herb nor poultice, but the word of God healed them" — he urged them with great fervor to come, and, instructed by what they heard, to avert so great a scourge, the Deity being appeased by worthy fruits of penance. And so they used to hear him frequently preaching in such numbers that they seemed to be affected by no fear of the plague, and to be capable of being caught in no place. And it was observed that of these very few, but of those who feared to come and departed in flight from the city very many, perished.

[82] Having exhorted his fellows to the works of mercy and to all the helps of charity to be shown to the plague-stricken, he ministers the same to the infected with his brethren, receives strangers, he asserted that St. Bernardino of Siena, accustomed to these works of piety, had taught that those who for the love of Christ exposed themselves to so great a peril, serving the contagious, if they died in this Christian service of their brethren, were to be held as martyrs. Whence it came about that all the Friars devoted themselves of their own accord to this ministry, and the wretched sick had those who would heal their bodies and their souls, and they in turn received from the people worthy thanks and rewards for their service. Bernardinus being further ordered by the rulers of the city not to receive into his house guests arriving from unknown infected lands, he answered that it was their care that they should not be admitted within the gates of the city; but that it was his office to receive in a brotherly way those knocking at the doors of the monastery, and that it was not lawful for him to shut up the bowels of charity from his needy brother.

[83] That he might more conveniently succor these sickly guests and two failing Friars, collects alms, discharges the humblest offices. he himself collected alms through the city: and when he was admonished to commend this work to others, "Do not I too," said he, "eat as they do? Why shall I appropriate the labor to them, and, keeping holiday, share in what they have collected? So the best of masters taught me to do — Sixtus of Milan and Ludovicus Gonzaga; the one guardian of Mantua, confessor to a prince; the other a kinsman of princes and vicar of the province, who took up their wallets and begged from door to door." Besides these things he humbly washed the feet of the guests, the kitchen utensils and the soiled cloths, and performed all the humble offices of the monastery wherever he could. Further, where it is said above that those are to be held as martyrs who, serving the plague-infected, die of the same disease contracted from them, this must be interpreted in a suitable sense; for death is not inflicted upon them in hatred of the faith, or of a virtue pertaining to the faith, nor does the Church acknowledge them as martyrs in the strict sense. Consult, if you please, the supreme Pontiff Benedict XIV in his learned Work on the beatification of the Servants of God and the canonization of the Blessed, book 3, chapter 11.

* that is, he-goats

* they had narrated

§ V. He procures laws to be passed against crimes: he serves those infected with the plague, is seized by it and healed: his other deeds in various places in the year 1479 and the two following.

[ ] At Treviso he procures laws to be passed against blasphemers and the incestuous: Laborious also, and no less fruitful, was for Bl. Bernardinus the year of Christ 1479, in which after his manner he undertook to attack vices in various places, and ministered divine and human remedies, with great charity and contempt of his own life, to those suffering from the plague, with which he himself also was infected. Bernardinus of Feltre (says Wadding under this year, number 7, praising the manuscript Legends), being sent by his vicar Franciscus Contarenus to Treviso (concerning which consult what was said above at number 72) to deliver the Lenten sermons in the cathedral church, preached with such fruit that he drove out every foul vice, especially blasphemy and incest, with which that city labored most, the severest laws being passed at his exhortation by the magistrate against public sinners. Women who walked lasciviously with bare breasts and bosoms he induced by powerful and frequent discourse to draw a covering up to their chin.

[85] [he preaches at Feltre, Vicenza and Padua, where, serving the plague-infected, he is infected;] After Easter, having set out for the chapter of his province held at Civitatula or Cittadella (a notice of which I gave at number 62), and having been confirmed in the guardianship of Padua, he went away into his native place (namely Feltre), leading on foot by the halter the beast that carried the holy old man Sixtus of Milan, of whom we have spoken elsewhere. Thence he went to Belluno (which is an episcopal city of the March of Treviso under the dominion of the Venetian republic, the head of the Belluno countryside, on the river Anassus or Piave, and distant about fifteen Italian miles from Feltre), to Vicenza, and to Padua, everywhere preaching fruitfully and attending vigilantly to his ministry and to the flock committed to him. He would not fail the citizens infected with the plague. Running about through the hospitals, houses and hovels, he stirred up all either to die piously or to endure with equanimity the vengeance for evils sent by God. He ministered the sacraments, and ministered to the needy the helps he had begged, until, being stricken in the groin, he lay in bed for many days.

[86] being healed, he returns to his ministries; at Brescia he bravely rebukes vices; Being healed by the work of Clement a Chian, a fellow religious of Brescia, formerly a skilled apothecary in the world, he returned again to his former works of piety, and drove away a devotion to an image of the blessed Virgin, which certain persons had introduced in the hope of gain, and which shepherd-girls said had appeared, having first exposed the unworthy arts by which this cult was being increased. Being sent to Brescia (this is a city of Lombardy of the dominion of the Venetian republic, called by the natives Brescia, the head of the countryside of the same name, and distinguished by a bishopric under the archbishop of Milan) to preach through the days of Advent, he cast up with much fervor the baseness of certain vices and of a most wicked crime, and did not cease from rebuking, although certain men rashly threatened death, until he brought back copious fruits. Thus he; which I could wish I were able to expound more fully from elsewhere. He has likewise embraced many things in few words under the following year, that is 1480, number 11, whence I here transcribe them.

[87] Bernardinus of Feltre at the beginning of this year delivered many sermons at Bergamo with much profit (which was then of the duchy of Milan, but is now a city of the Venetian dominion, preaching at Bergamo he pursues the Jews; distinguished by a bishopric under the metropolis of Milan, otherwise Pergamum, but called by the natives Bergomo), and at Pavia the Lenten ones, at which all the schoolmasters wished their pupils to be present: for he said many things aptly for the instruction of the young, and impressed them efficaciously on tender minds. Against the Hebrews, who lay in wait for Christians, he blazed out to such a degree that the duke of Milan (at that time John Galeazzo) sent men to warn him that he should be willing to let go those obstinate in their blindness, lest some grave tumult should arise among the people. But he, answering that the word of the Lord is bound by no man's command, did not cease to preach against them, perceiving the evils which arose from the excessive familiarity of Christians with that infected dregs of mankind.

[88] Being asked there to speak with a certain noble woman, he shuns speaking with a noble woman; he refused; and to her who said that Christ the Lord and holy men had not disdained the conversations of women, he answered: "I am not Christ, nor a saint, but a wretched little sinner; nor do I dare to promise myself more than my base and wretched condition allows." Gratianus and Bernardinus a Clastidio, both in the Life, the latter in chapter 9, the former in chapter 11, add that that noble woman, after she had borne this repulse from the blessed Man, persuaded the guardian of that place to grant her by his authority the opportunity of the desired conversation; and that Bernardinus indeed, that he might refuse nothing to a superior, at last came forth to the door, but accompanied by other Religious, and with such modesty of countenance and venerable gravity that the woman, otherwise spirited and talkative, stood as though dumb, and, being asked by him what she wanted, could bring forth nothing but this one thing: Pray to God for me. For the rest, she seems to have undertaken this not for the sake of asking counsel, but out of mere curiosity or levity.

[89] Perhaps to this stay of Bl. Bernardinus in the city of Pavia also belongs perhaps then too occurred the rebuke of another shameless woman. what Bernardinus a Clastidio in chapter 5 writes, out of the processes of Pavia, to have happened while he was preaching at Pavia. When at Pavia (he says in the Italian tongue) a certain woman, Octavia by name, was present at his sermon not only with her head unveiled but also with her breast and bosom bare, and thus was an offense to the hearers and hindered the divine word, the Servant of Christ spread out his handkerchief on the pulpit and said: Go, veil the breast of her who so shamelessly hinders the word of God. The handkerchief obeyed, and thus unfolded and spread out flew away and covered Octavia's breast, the hearers being astonished and amazed. Thus he; which, since he assigned it to no year, it has seemed good to me to report here, although it could also have happened in other years in which the Blessed spent time at Pavia.

[90] In this same year he is said to have learned by divine means the death of his father Donatus at Pavia while he was preaching, He learns of his father's death by divine revelation at Pavia: and to have made it known to the whole assembly, according to Wadding, who after the words just reported continues thus. As he was preaching in the cathedral house (that is, church), the death of his father was revealed to him, which he, after he had stopped for a little while in the sermon, narrated to his hearers; and a few days later it became known by letters written from Feltre that he had departed at that very hour. Bernardinus a Clastidio agrees, in chapter 22, where besides Wadding he praises the processes of Pavia, and sets out the matter briefly in Italian thus: In the midst of preaching he stuck motionless and as though caught up into ecstasy for the space of a quarter of an hour; and then he told the people that he had just seen his father being carried out for burial; and so in fact it was; that is, as he had said beforehand, his father had died at that time. Gratianus of Bevagna had also gone before them in these things, who likewise interpreted the same revelation as concerning his father's death, and affirmed that it was ascertained from letters brought a little afterwards from Feltre that it had happened at exactly the same time.

[91] was it also his mother's, at Padua? But Peter Rodulphius, in the elogium of the same Blessed, recording nothing of this revelation, writes that the death of his mother was divinely revealed to him as he was preaching at Padua. Take his words. Among other things he shone forth with a prophetic spirit. For as he was preaching at Padua in the market-place on account of the excessive multitude, with his head bent a little upon his arm after the manner of one sleeping, he said that he had been present in spirit at the funeral rites of his mother at Montefeltro, where she had died at that same hour in which he was preaching at Padua. Here there are other circumstances added: the city of Padua for that of Pavia, and the posture of the Blessed's body, since in this passage he is said to have leaned his head upon his arm after the manner of one sleeping, but above to have stood motionless after the manner of one in ecstasy. And it could indeed be that the death of both parents was revealed to him in a different place and at a different time, as Bernardinus a Clastidio judged; but since he praises the processes of Pavia for the former revelation, the greater authority stands for this one, and it remains doubtful to me whether Rodulphius may not have changed the name of the father into that of the mother, and transformed the name of the city of Papia, which is Ticinum, into that of Padua. If nevertheless a twofold revelation must be distinguished, I do not know to what year the one concerning his mother ought to be referred.

[92] Being made definitor in the chapter, he undertakes the charge Further, the year 1481 having meanwhile begun, Bl. Bernardinus, in the chapter of the province of St. Antony (so Wadding proceeds, out of his manuscript Legends, under the same year, number 11) held in the house of the Desert near Venice, being chosen definitor, was sent away with Peter of Mantua, likewise definitor, to undertake the rule and care, Pope Sixtus so ordering, of the monastery of the Holy Cross of the Poor Clares at Venice. When some of the fathers disapproved of a peril of this kind and of the tedious governance of women, he said that it was indeed perilous, but meritorious; tedious, but salutary; and that the poor little sisters, perishing in their prison without a leader, deserved compassion; and that the salvation of our neighbors ought to be procured at some inconvenience of our own. Concerning the origin and progress of this monastery, founded on Luprio, which is one of the islands of the city of Venice, down to our own times, in which it also still exists, the most excellent lord Flaminius Cornelius, a Venetian senator, has written at greater length in his distinguished Work on the Churches of Venice illustrated, decade 12. I shall transfer hither only a few things which bear upon the illustration of the subject before us.

[93] of the monastery of the Holy Cross at Venice, which Sixtus IV There was in the aforesaid place, near the church and priory which had belonged to the Cluniacs, a certain house of virgins of the third Order of St. Francis, lately erected, whose members, either all or most, desired to accept the Rule of St. Clare. Consenting to them, the supreme Pontiff Sixtus IV had by Apostolic letters commanded the vicar of the Friars Minor of the regular observance, of the province of St. Antony, to undertake the care of that monastery, to hear the nuns' confessions himself or by his brethren, and to help them with the other spiritual aids. But when he begged off from that burden, the same Pontiff on the twenty-fifth day of November of the year 1477 gave him repeated letters, enjoining that, according to the tenor of the other Brief, he should without further delay take up the burden of this care, and indeed in virtue of holy * obedience and under penalty of excommunication latae sententiae, as the Brief has it in the praised illustrious writer, page 328, where the whole may be read as transcribed from the archive of St. Francis a Vinea. It is not likely that the aforesaid vicar dared to gainsay the Pontifical mandates any longer; but it may be doubted whether some delay was not thrown in the way of the execution from another quarter.

[94] For both Francis Gonzaga, in the Origins of the Seraphic Religion, part 2, in the province of St. Antony, had imposed upon the Minors Observant, monastery 5, and after him Wadding in the Annals, tied the passing over of that monastery to the Order of St. Clare, and into the care of the Minors Observant, to the year 1481; and from the words of the latter given at number 92 it appears that in the chapter of Venice of this year it was still disputed by some of the fathers whether that care of the nuns should be accepted. The reason for disapproving could have been that of their holy patriarch

Francis, who, as Wadding teaches under the year of Christ 1219, number 44 and the following, judged that his own members must be wholly kept away from the familiarity and the governance of nuns, often repeating: I fear lest, while God has taken wives from us, the devil may have procured sisters for us. But, the mandate of Pope Sixtus IV pressing, obedience had to be given, and blessed Bernardinus took up that burden readily, weighing the peril and the tedium which could be feared from it against the merit before God and the salvation and progress of the nuns.

[95] And so in that same year 1481 (if Gonzaga has noted this correctly) sister Ludovica, that the Rule of St. Clare might be observed in it. a religious of the Order of St. Clare, was sent from the monastery of St. Bernardino at Padua to that of the Holy Cross at Venice, and to her were afterwards added four others from the monastery of Murano of the same profession, who should there teach the rest the rules and institutes of the Poor Clares; which was also happily begun by them, Bl. Bernardinus and Peter of Mantua being their directors. Yet this care did not hold back the apostolic Man from his former office of preaching the word of God, nor did it prevent him from having preached in that same year in other cities also, the praised Peter of Mantua meanwhile, as it is reasonable to believe, rendering his services to those nuns. But what the Blessed did in this year both at Venice and elsewhere, the often-mentioned annalist of the Minors goes on to narrate thus out of his manuscript Legends, but in disturbed order.

[96] Having then set out for Treviso, and soon for his native place (namely Feltre), and then for Vicenza and Verona, He preaches in various places, especially at Verona and Venice, he delivered frequent sermons everywhere. The people of Verona had decreed to hold a noble tournament on the day of St. John the Baptist; which he vehemently condemned, especially on so great a solemnity. He spoke so efficaciously that, although everything had been prepared and all were awaiting these fine spectacles with great longing on that day, the magistrate ordered them to be transferred to another day. From excessive zeal and vehement striving to gain souls he suffered severe pains of the head and others, and was taken to Mantua, where after some months, recovering, he returned again to Verona to his former office of preaching. Pope Sixtus, being asked by the doge and the senators, ordered him to preach at Venice through the days of Lent. On Saturdays at the twenty-second hour (after the Italian fashion, that is, two hours before sunset) he preached on the blessed Virgin, his sermons being distributed among the several words of the Angelic salutation.

[97] In the last, having taken for his theme the words "Blessed art thou among women," and having joined to them these, where he brought many to his Order. "And blessed are all women who lay aside vanities," he condemned with the most abundant fruit the vain adornments of women. From Palm Sunday until the Octave of the resurrection he preached in the open market-place; for the church could not hold so great a multitude. On the fourth feria after Easter, when his sermon had been heard at St. Mark's, twenty-two young men asked to be admitted into the fellowship (that is, into the Order of Minors Observant), whom partly the Venetian guardian Bartholomew Loredanus and partly other guardians initiated. Having once efficaciously exhorted from the pulpit that wealthy men should set their affairs in order and make their wills in good time, many, and among them Andreas Bragadinus, obeyed and brought back the fruit of it; others, despising the salutary counsel, dying suddenly, left with their property endless lawsuits to their kinsmen.

[98] At Mantua he spoke at the funerals of two princesses, While he lingered at Mantua and preached on every feast day, being tortured by colic pain, he was unable to do so on the festival of the Ascension. Michael de Carcano of Milan, a distinguished preacher, nevertheless supplied his place, and broke out into praises of Bernardinus, who was most pleasing to the people. Having in a short time recovered his former health, he preached until the ninth Sunday after Pentecost with a huge gain of souls. At the funeral of the princess Barbara, wife of the late Ludovicus, marquis of Mantua, and daughter of the elector of Brandenburg, he preached in the very spacious court of the cathedral church before the doors of the princes, where by the example of a most noble and most beautiful woman, who had fallen like the flower of the field, he taught most efficaciously that the vanities of the world are to be despised. He delivered another funeral sermon at the death of sister Angelica, daughter of the aforesaid prince Ludovicus, a Poor Clare, who died in the monastery of St. Paula with a great reputation for sanctity, having taken as his theme: "As the morning star in the midst of a cloud, and as the full moon in her days, etc."

[99] and on the Blood of Christ, found there two years before, On the Vigil of the Ascension, before the iliac pain seized him, he preached most learnedly on the Blood of Christ, found on that day two years before in a hidden place of the church of St. Paul, and now guarded with the highest veneration in the cathedral of St. Peter; and he proved by many arguments that this was true Blood shed by Christ in His passion. Before I proceed, the order of events must be restored, which Wadding has here so disturbed that they cannot have happened so. For first the annalist set the sermons about the feast of St. John the Baptist, and those afterwards delivered at Verona, before the Lenten ones which he had preached in the same year at Venice. Secondly he says that the Blessed, on account of severe pains of the head and other infirmities, was sent from Verona to Mantua, and that when he had recovered after some months he returned to Verona to his former office of preaching, where according to what has been said he preached about the feast of St. John the Baptist; and nevertheless he makes him preaching at Mantua on the Vigil of the Lord's Ascension, which fell in that year on the thirty-first day of May, and continuing his sermons after a brief attack of colic until the ninth Sunday after Pentecost, that is until the twelfth day of August.

[100] The order disturbed by Wadding in the aforesaid matters I judge that all these things (unless they belong partly to the year 1480) must be arranged thus. Bl. Bernardinus, while he was laboring at the forming of the monastery of the Poor Clares at Venice, will have preached there in the time of Lent until the Octave of the Resurrection, that is, until the twenty-ninth of April, since Easter had then to be celebrated on the twenty-second of that month. After these things he will have betaken himself to Treviso, Feltre, Vicenza and Verona, and on account of the infirmity contracted there by the strain of speaking will not long after have been conducted to Mantua. Here, recovering in a short time as best he could, the Man, impatient of all leisure, will have begun to deliver sermons again, which, being compelled to intermit on the feast of the Lord's Ascension, that is on the thirty-first day of May, on account of colic pains, he will have continued a little after. Now there is celebrated in the Church a twofold feast of St. John the Baptist: the first, and that the more solemn, of his nativity on the twenty-fourth of June; the other of his beheading on the twenty-ninth of August. If the discourse in Wadding is of the latter, about three months could have flowed between the Blessed's arrival at the city of Mantua and his return to Verona.

[101] But if it is of the former feast, which by reason of its greater celebrity is more likely, is restored, and for the illustration of the same Bernardinus must be said to have returned to Verona, his health being now confirmed, after some weeks and not months from his coming to Mantua, so that he could preach there about the twenty-fourth of June, and attack the tournament prepared for the festal day of that holy Precursor. That he returned again from Verona to Mantua in the same year is manifest from what has been said and what is to be said; and first of all from the time of the death of Angelica Gonzaga, whose funeral oration Wadding says above was delivered by Bernardinus, and concerning whom Hippolytus Donesmondus in the Ecclesiastical History of Mantua, part 2, book 6, noted this in Italian words. Out of this frail life there passed holily to the eternal one the venerable virgin, sister Angelica Gonzaga, a nun in St. Paula's, and daughter of the deceased marquis (of Mantua) Ludovicus, notable for her virtues and venerated by all; and this happened on the nineteenth day of December of the year 1481.

[102] Her, however (I know not why), Arturus a Monasterio inserted under the third day of July in the Franciscan Martyrology and in the Sacred Gynaeceum with the title of Blessed; a few things are observed. on which day, but without the appellation of Blessed, Fortunatus Hueber in the likewise Franciscan Menologium also mentioned her, and my Elders among the Praetermissi, because her cult was not established; which neither have I hitherto found ascertained. The death of Barbara of Brandenburg, widow of the aforepraised marquis Ludovicus, Donesmondus in the same place also refers, so far as appears, to the same year, and affirms that at her funeral Bernardinus preached, concerning whom the same writer had been silent at Angelica's funeral. She was the daughter of John, who, although he was the firstborn son of Frederick, marquis and elector of Brandenburg, out of wonderful deference toward his father (on the testimony of Reinerus Reineccius in the Origins of the House of Brandenburg) had yielded his right to the electorate in favor of his brothers; and she was (as he adds from Aeneas Sylvius) among the matrons of that age distinguished for beauty and for character. Concerning the most sacred Blood of Christ our Lord found at Mantua in the year 1479, consult the praised Donesmondus, book 6, where he also agrees about the sermon delivered there in this year 1481, on the vigil of the Lord's Ascension, by Bernardinus at the request of Frederick, who had succeeded his father Ludovicus in the Marquisate of Mantua.

[103] These things having been observed for the illustration of the aforesaid, let us pursue the remaining matters belonging to this year. After the favorable constitution published by Pope Sixtus IV The supreme Pontiff Sixtus IV had published in the year 1476 a constitution by which he granted distinguished indulgences to all the faithful who should recite the Mass and Office of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary approved by him on her feast, or should be present at the canonical Hours. Bernardinus therefore, out of his veneration and love toward the Mother of God, being at Mantua in this year 1481, on the eighth day of December, on which that feast is celebrated, kindled his hearers to that pious cult with all the eloquence he could, and pleaded for the immaculate Conception of the undefiled Virgin. In the same year Vincentius Bandellus, of the Order of Preachers, whose supreme mastership he afterwards held, had held a disputation at Ferrara in the ducal palace before Duke Hercules of Este himself, and had published it in print, in which he attacked the immaculate conception of the most holy Mother of God, and asserted that it was wicked to believe it, or to affirm it as certain in public sermons, or even to hear the sermons of those who denied that the most blessed Virgin Mary was conceived in original sin. Nevertheless he submitted all these things to the judgment of the supreme Pontiff himself and of the Apostolic See.

[104] Bernardinus, having preached for the immaculate conception of the Bl. Virgin, The same Vincentius, but with his own name suppressed, had already published before, namely in the year 1475, another little book on the same subject from the presses of Milan. Consult, if you please, Benedict XIV in the distinguished Work on the feasts of our Lord Jesus Christ and of His Mother Mary, and on the Sacrifice of the Mass, translated from the Italian into Latin and published at Padua in the year 1745, part 2, in the Feast of the Conception, number 191, and James Echard, volume 2 of the Writers of the Order of Preachers. Further, certain men who thought with Bandellus undertook to arraign Bernardinus for this not only before the people but also before the vicar of the bishop of Mantua. But the pious cause prevailed, as it ought, which the blessed and learned Preacher defended by himself and by his brethren with such solid reasons that he stopped the mouths of his accusers and very greatly promoted the cult of the immaculate Conception of the Virgin.

So again Wadding teaches, whose words are those which I subjoin. On the day of the Virgin's Conception he had preached clearly on the preservation of the Mother of God from original sin. There were not lacking those who traduced him before Benedictus Mastinus, the bishop's vicar, and cried him down as a heretic, because against the plain and universal expressions of sacred Scripture and of the holy Fathers he wished someone besides Christ to be free from that guilt.

[105] he is accused and triumphs, a church being erected at Mantua Besides this there was one who from the pulpit recited very many opinions of this kind out of the book of Vincentius Bandellus, and fulminated the censures prefixed by him. But Bernardinus, having sent to the vicar Albertus of Tortona and Nicolaus of Padua, learned fellows of his Order, proved in a very crowded assembly that he had taught rightly and had not overstepped the rules lately prescribed by Sixtus IV; and he stirred up all the citizens to the cult of the immaculate Conception, so that at once, near the church of St. Peter, a church was built under the name of the Conception of the Virgin Mary, which from the subsequent offering of gifts is called St. Mary of the Vows; and prince Frederick took care that the feast of the Conception should be celebrated with more solemn worship, and decreed that whoever should condemn beyond what is just and fair the pious opinion concerning the Virgin's conception, commended a little before by the Apostolic See, should be outside the territory of Mantua. Thus he.

[106] under that name. Donesmondus, in the place cited above, also makes the aforepraised marquis Frederick the founder of that church; but he does not state the year in which it was founded, writing this only in Italian after the year 1497: Not long afterwards there was built by the same prince, in honor of the immaculate Conception of the most glorious Virgin, whose feast had then been instituted by Pope Sixtus, a small indeed but noble church near the church of St. Peter, which afterwards from the abundance of gifts obtained the name of St. Mary of the Vows. Although no mention of Bl. Bernardinus is made in these words, they nevertheless favor Wadding's assertions, who must be believed to have learned these things from his manuscript Legends or from other records. Benedict XIV further observes, in the Work and place assigned above, that Pope Sixtus IV afterwards, in the year 1483, published another constitution by which he condemned those who should dare to affirm that a man sins mortally who celebrates that feast, or that he is a heretic who maintains that the blessed Virgin was free from original sin, as may be seen in the Extravagantes Communes, title on the Relics and veneration of the Saints. In this way the doctrine of Bl. Bernardinus, most unjustly accused, was still more fully vindicated, and the festival of the immaculate Conception of the Mother of God received an increase.

[107] That the power of Apostolic preacher was conferred upon Bernardinus in this same year 1481, in the month of July, He is made an Apostolic preacher. Wadding proves under the year 1484, number 50, against others who referred that very thing to the year 1484 just cited. It will be useful to have recounted his words. Some write that he was made an Apostolic preacher then (namely in the year 1484); but from the Register of the Order it is manifestly had that this privilege was granted him in the year 1481, on the nineteenth day of July. And indeed in that Register different grades of Apostolic preachers are contained, with the days marked on which they were created by the vicars general, according to the Apostolic faculty granted to them. For according to each man's talent, merits and quality, more or fewer privileges, greater or lesser faculties, were conferred. And these things are set out in the Register in these terms: "Brother N. received from N., vicar general, Apostolic letters with the common graces;" or: "according to the institutes of the Order;" or "In the greater form;" or: "He had the supreme Apostolic." But concerning our Bernardinus it is thus had: "Brother Bernardinus de Feltro had from Brother Peter of Naples (then vicar general of the Minors Observant Cismontane, speaking after the Italian fashion) the Apostolic in the greater form on the nineteenth day of July, in the year 1481."

* holy, etc.

§ VI. Having set out for Rome, he delivers the Lenten sermons: he returns into his own province: he preaches in besieged Ferrara: he is made vicar of his province: he is exiled from the Venetian state: his other deeds down to the year 1484.

[ ] On his way to Rome he is afflicted with a rupture: In the year of Christ 1482 the unwearied Preacher again instructed various cities with his sacred sermons, and among these also the head of the Christian world, the city of Rome; everywhere with the highest esteem and applause, but with equally great labor, which, besides the frequency of his sermons and his ardor in speaking, the very hardships of his journeys and the infirmity of his body brought upon him. Of these things one may conjecture from what Wadding relates compendiously in this manner, out of his manuscript Legends which he praises in the margin, under the same year, number 53 and the following. Bernardinus of Feltre, being ordered to preach this year through Lent at the Aracoeli in the City (of Rome), while he was journeying thither by way of Ferrara, delivered some sermons in that city. But while in one of them he was inveighing vehemently against scandalous sinners and straining his voice, he incurred a rupture; and while he labored under this evil his companion Antonius a Ripario, a strong and brawny man, relieved him on the journey of very great toil, carrying him on his shoulders through streams and places covered with snow, and procuring everything necessary for the sufferer.

[109] he preaches there through Lent: He began to preach from Septuagesima Sunday, his audience always increasing: no day without Cardinals, none without the attendance of many prelates. He had as a constant hearer and beneficent friend John Francis Pavinus, a noble jurisconsult, whose distinguished Treatise it is against the Hebrews of Trent, the slayers of the blessed little boy Simon of whom there was mention above (go to number 64 and the following), and the Opusculum on the virtues and canonization of St. Bonaventure… The Cardinal of Eger, who at first sight thought him contemptible on account of his humble stature, after he had once heard him speaking, was thereafter present daily and held him in the highest honor. The praised Cardinal was Gabriel Rangonus, of the Order of Minors, bishop of Eger in Hungary, and priest Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church of the title of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, created by Pope Sixtus IV, concerning whom Ciaconius or Oldoinus may be consulted, volume 3 of the Lives of the supreme Pontiffs and Cardinals, column 65 and the following.

[110] he modestly refuses what is offered by the Pontiff. His sermons finished (so the annalist proceeds in the same place), having reverenced Pope Sixtus, to whom the fame of his singular learning had gone before, he was bidden to ask for something; but he, giving thanks, said that he needed nothing. When the power was offered him of absolving from any cases whatsoever, even those reserved to the bishops, he humbly answered that he did not wish to rival or to usurp the power of the bishops: that it was more in the interest of sinners that so great a faculty should be conferred on fewer men; for so they will take more care not to sin, who obtain the benefit of absolution with more difficulty. When the Pontiff still pressed him to wish for something: "I ask, holy Father," said he, "that thou grant to me and to my companions, praying for thee, an indulgence of our sins, and that it be lawful for us to gain the sacred profit of the Stations of the City wherever we journey." With a willing mind the Pontiff granted both. This he, concerning the extraordinary modesty of the blessed Man before the supreme Pontiff. Perhaps on the same occasion the praised Pontiff confirmed and enlarged the power of Apostolic preacher granted him by his vicar general a year before; and to this perhaps belongs what Peter Rodulphius says of him: He set out for Rome, and returned to Padua triumphant with the faculty from the supreme Pontiff of preaching everywhere.

[111] Returning from Rome he foretells punishments to the wanton: at Montauto Further, being about to return from Rome to his native place (Wadding subjoins), he delivered several sermons in the town of Campagnano; but when on a feast day two newly wedded brides were dancing shamelessly with others in the field in which he was preaching, and would not come to the sermon when they were called, he foretold that they would shortly feel punishment; and a little afterwards they departed from life. Campanianum, of which the discourse is here, is said in the same Annals, volume 5, under the year 1291, number 56, to be a town of the diocese of Nepi, commonly called Campagnano, and distant sixteen thousand paces from the city of Rome. Montauto, of which mention will presently be made, was formerly, on Wadding's testimony again, volume 15, under the year 1504, number 31, a castle obeying its own counts, with whom, from the year 1224 onward, the habit of St. Francis of Assisi in which he received the sacred stigmata was preserved, until at the beginning of the sixteenth century it was transferred to the Minors Observant near Florence, the castle having been destroyed by the Florentines because its count had favored the men of Arezzo fighting against them. He who wants more may go to the praised annalist, from whom it is enough for me to have observed these things for what follows in him after the words just given, and which I here transcribe.

[112] After it was permitted him, being honorably received at Montauto in Etruria, to behold the remains of his teacher (namely his holy father Francis), he venerates the habit of St. Francis; he prophesies, that is, the habit under which he received the five scars of Christ, he several times spoke to the people from the pulpit at Florence. When he was passing through the territory of Ferrara, it was cast up to him that the Venetians, whose subject he was, would be driven back to their marshes and would be poor fishermen. "But," said he, "hold this for certain, that these petty kings of yours, the Ferrarese and their confederates, who have conspired against the Venetian republic, will lose the chief feathers of their wings, and will not fly so high." That he spoke truly was afterwards found out, several strongholds of the enemy being brought into the power of the Venetians. At Bologna at St. Petronius', at Reggio in the public market-place, and at Novellara, and lastly at Mantua, he delivered many sermons. Here at last he stayed, until in the following year, by order of Pope Sixtus, he was sent by Francis Gonzaga, Cardinal legate a latere, to Ferrara, to deliver the Lenten sermons.

[113] This is by no means the place to narrate at length the war of which mention has just been made, or conjectures concerning the war that arose between the Venetians since our Bl. Bernardinus had no part in it beyond his usual apostolic labors, and the exile which, on account of his observance of the interdict laid upon the Venetian lands by the Roman Pontiff Sixtus IV, he bore along with his brethren. Concerning it one may see Odoricus Raynaldus in the continuation of the ecclesiastical Annals of Cardinal Baronius, volume 19, and Ludovico Muratori in the Annals of Italy, volume 9, under the years of Christ 1482 and the two following. I, that some light may shine upon what has been and is to be said, shall record only a few things and in passing. The Venetians, joined by treaty with Pope Sixtus IV, attacked in war in the year 1482 Hercules I of Este, duke of Ferrara, whom among other princes of Italy Ferdinand I, king of Naples, was aiding. Emboldened by their alliance and forces, and trusting in them too much, the Ferrarese will have boasted the things said above, and will have received that answer from Bl. Bernardinus, which, whether it proceeded from a prophetic spirit or from the prudent conjecture of the blessed Man, the outcome and the end of the war taught to have been true.

[114] For while Alphonsus, duke of Calabria and son of the aforesaid king Ferdinand, and the other princes of Italy. was harassing the Roman Campagna and threatening the city of Rome itself, and others elsewhere were turning their arms against the Pontifical dominions, the Venetians meanwhile took the city of Rovigo with its whole territory, commonly called il Polesino di Rovigo, and other places of the duchy of Ferrara

by armed force. After these things, the Neapolitan army of Duke Alphonsus having been cut down by Robert Malatesta, the leader of the Pontifical army, Sixtus, desirous of the tranquillity of Italy, entered into peace with King Ferdinand and the duke of Ferrara in the month of December of the same year, and asked the Venetians that they too should accede to it, and should abstain from harassing the duchy of Ferrara, whose chief city they were threatening. He also sent his legate Francis Gonzaga, Cardinal, to Ferrara, that he might protect that city and add courage to the inhabitants. In the following year, the Venetians refusing peace, the Pontiff, thinking that besides his own arms and those of almost all the princes of Italy the sacred power also must be employed, laid the Venetian dominion under an interdict. At last in the year 1484, on the seventh day of August, the peace of Italy was signed, and the city of Rovigo with its territory remained in the dominion of the Venetians.

[115] Now let us return to our Bl. Bernardinus, of whom the annalist of the Minors says this, under the year of the Christian era 1483, number 38, out of the manuscript Legends: In Ferrara, besieged by the enemy, he attacks vices; In this year, being called by Francis Gonzaga, Cardinal of Mantua, Apostolic legate and director of the Pontifical and confederate armies against the Venetians, to Ferrara, then besieged by the enemy, in order to preach, he began to fear and to blame his own lot, because, if he refused to set out, he would incur the indignation of the legate and of the Ferrarese; if he consented, he would be brought under suspicion among the Venetians, his lords. Yet his zeal to obey prevailed, and the counsel of Sixtus of Milan, a most holy man, formerly his teacher. Being brought into the city at great peril of his life, he delivered daily sermons in the cathedral church, openly and vehemently reproving the license of the citizens in sinning, the rapines of the soldiers, and the faithless dispensing of money by the tribunes. These things won him the ill will and anger of many, and it came little short of his faring badly and being visited with signal outrage.

[116] he promises the raising of the siege to the penitent. The duke's wife (Eleonora of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand I, king of Naples), worthily venerating the holy Man, prevented this and gave him courage to thunder out the word of the Lord freely. When with the fervor of his discourse he vehemently magnified the vices of the city and the evils to come, the whole people implored God's mercy with great outcries and tears. Then he, weeping with them: "O Ferrara! because it repents thee of thy sinning, it has pleased God to have mercy on thee. Thou shalt be freed from this siege, and shalt return to thy former happiness; but if thou quickly returnest to thy vomit, take heed lest God make up for the slowness of the punishment by its severity." That he was a truthful prophet appeared from the outcome: for Ferrara was not then taken; but I do not know whether by the last words of that passage he meant to foretell that the Ferrarese would shortly return to their vomit and would therefore be more grievously punished, or only to threaten them with heavier penalties if they should quickly relapse into their former sins. The latter appears to me the more likely, unless perhaps his discourse was of eternal punishments; or unless that city was more grievously afflicted with the plague, which Muratori, volume 9 of the Annals, teaches from the Annals of Piacenza to have raged in various places of Italy in the year 1484.

[117] Created vicar of his province, he strives to remove abuses; Presently a new burden with a new honor was laid upon Bernardinus, which the Man's holiness and prudence deserved no less than his humility shrank from it: namely the vicariate of his province, which, being ordered to accept, he discharged strenuously in that calamitous time amid the disturbances of the republic and the infirmities of his own body. For, on Wadding's testimony under this year 1483, number 39, being elected in his absence vicar of his province, and having set out for the chapter, he asked to be released. When the fathers refused this, he girded himself with strength to take away certain abuses which had crept into the fellowship (that is, among the members of his province); and having set out for Venice, he established in the monastery of the Vineyards those laws which he had judged suitable for driving out errors and for implanting virtues. A bitter illness, which nearly brought death, hindered greater progress in the restoring of discipline. Having escaped this peril, another evil, bitterer than the illness itself, soon afflicted him. The Venetians had persisted in their war against the duke of Ferrara, and could not be called back from it by the exhortations and threats of Pope Sixtus, so that at last, on the twenty-third day of May of the same year (Muratori has the twenty-fifth), he promulgated the sentence of excommunication and interdict against the Venetians and their dominions, unless they should come to their senses within fifteen days from the promulgation of the diploma, which may be read in full in Odoricus Raynaldus.

[118] Finally, when the Venetians would not yield even to these ecclesiastical censures of the supreme Pontiff, but, appealing to a future council, [on account of his observance of the Pontifical interdict, from the Venetian state] severely forbade the interdict to be observed, Bernardinus, who had fixed his seat in the convent of the Vineyards at Venice, was compelled to depart thence with his brethren. His health being a little recovered (the words are Wadding's), he had to withdraw from the Venetian territories subject to the Apostolic interdict, and to call away his fellows from thence, whom he peacefully distributed through the neighboring provinces, several being gathered into the monasteries of Mantua and Trent. The praised annalist does not explain whether the Blessed withdrew of his own accord, lest he should be compelled to go against the Pontifical mandates, or lest by observing the interdict there he should stir up the Venetian senate still more against himself and his brethren; or whether, on account of his reverence toward the Apostolic See and his constancy in observing that interdict, he was driven into exile — as Marinus Sanutus, a Venetian patrician and a writer of that time, writes in the Lives of the Doges of Venice, in Muratori, volume 22 of the Italian Affairs, column 1228, that the Minors Observant of the same Order, who likewise were then living at Venice in the convent of St. Job, were driven out for that reason.

[119] However that may be, it will be established from what is to be said that the blessed Man was in such great disfavor with the Venetians on this head that, when after the peace entered into by them with the Roman Pontiff and the removal of the censures, permission was given by decree of the senate to the members of his Order to return into the Venetian dominion, to him alone was return at first denied. It may also be doubted whether in all the other cities and places of that republic equally severe measures were taken against those who, as was right and fair, obeyed the Pontifical mandates: for we shall see below that in the time of that interdict there were in the Venetian dominion several monasteries of the Minors Observant which Bl. Bernardinus, being in exile with many of his brethren, ruled by letters, as his office required, when he could not be present. Further, to pursue the rest of this year with Wadding, the pious Exile, being again seized at Mantua with an acute fever and a hepatic flux, appointed as commissary of the province Bartholomew Loredanus, a learned man and exceedingly suited to rule, by whose help, having consoled all the Friars in so great a commotion of affairs, he ruled the province most holily; although the prince and senate of Venice, vehemently moved against him on account of the interdict observed and his fellows called away, inflicted every kind of trouble upon him.

[120] The year 1483 and the five months following having rolled by amid so many calamities, He is present at the chapter of La Verna, the chapter of the Minors Observant, whom they call Cismontane, was held on the fourth day of June on the holy Mount of La Verna in Tuscany and in the Florentine countryside, in which Bl. Angelus a Clavasio was elected vicar general for the third time. Bernardinus, having set out thither from Mantua that he might be present at it, and being ordered to deliver a sermon on the feast of Pentecost before the assembled fathers, won the highest applause and veneration from all, as the often-praised annalist of the Minors testifies at number 49, citing again the manuscript Legends and Cimarellus, book 6, chapter 13. Take his words. At the Cismontane chapter (of which he had treated in the same place at number 44 and following) held at La Verna, Bernardinus of Feltre was present, and delivered the first sermon in place of Cherubinus of Spoleto (a distinguished Apostolic preacher, renowned for virtues and even for miracles), who, that he might hear him speaking, took care that the sermon of the most solemn day of Pentecost entrusted to him should be transferred to Bernardinus; as though with a foreboding spirit he wished, being about soon to depart from this world (for he died, as we have said, in this year), to resign his place and his fame to him.

[121] in which he vainly asks to be released from the vicariate. Nor indeed did he disappoint Cherubinus' expectation; for he discoursed so learnedly and piously on the Holy Spirit that, while all admired his singular learning, very many, venerating his holiness, reverently touched his garment as he came down from the pulpit, and others, marking his footsteps, kissed with veneration the ground on which he had trodden. But Bernardinus, pursuing nothing less than honors, on the following day, kneeling before Angelus the vicar general, asked with many prayers and tears to be released from the vicariate of his province, especially since exile from the lands of the Venetians had been decreed for the causes reported above. The vicar general would not consent; but he ordered him to return to Mantua, and thence to rule the province committed to him — the monasteries of the Venetian dominion by letters, the rest by his presence. Here follow the things which we recounted above at number 107 under the year 1481, concerning the office and power of Apostolic preacher conferred upon him, following the same writer against certain men who thought that this was done in this year. That their disagreement may be settled, one may suspect that that privilege was enlarged for him in this year; but Wadding stands in the way of my believing this, who on this matter under the present year must be said to have found nothing of the kind in the Register of his Order. I return to the aforecited Annals.

[122] At Mantua, using Evangelical liberty, Bernardinus, having returned to Mantua (they say), preached almost every day with such power and with such profit to souls that he filled all with admiration, and not only the people of Mantua but also all who dwelt within a circuit of ten or twelve miles came running, at least on feast days. The marquis Frederick himself gladly heard the Man, until he thought that what Bernardinus uttered on Palm Sunday (see what is to be said presently) was directed against himself, when he keenly rebuked the faults of princes: namely that they use and abuse their rights at their pleasure; that they close their ears to orphans and widows, and the bowels of mercy to the poor; that they set at naught the rapines of soldiers and the violation of ecclesiastical right; that they openly permit the manifest usuries of the Jews, by which the wealth of Christians is drained away; that, admonished, entreated and reproved for these and other things of this kind, they do not come to their senses, nor think at all of the restitution of goods which by their fault, connivance or bad government are lost and taken away from their rightful possessors.

[123] he vehemently offended the minds of the courtiers and of the marquis; At last, that he might move them more fully to correction and strike a greater terror into them, according to the Evangelical counsel he shook the dust from his sandals (so they call the footwear of the Friars Minor) into the audience, and, as though angry and indignant, came down from the pulpit without imparting any blessing at all. His hearers were variously affected by this burning and daring eloquence: the common people rejoiced; the chief men were angry; the prince flared up, and at last, having assembled a council of his ministers, summoned the Preacher: the Friars trembled, the people grieved *, they feared for Bernardinus' peril, while he did not fear for his own. For undaunted he presented himself in the prince's sight, and overcame him, angry and trembling in his whole body, with those reasons which he could not refute. It is lawful, he said, for the liberty of Evangelical truth to admonish even princes of their duty; to reprove those persisting in error, to rebuke those who sin; that he had, however, addressed no one by name; but that he now besides begged him that, if he found himself guilty of any of these things, he should think it said to himself, and should apply a remedy to the evils,

and should show himself more accessible for receiving the complaints of the poor and the wretched.

[124] When he said that he was conscious of none of these things, and that he had never denied access to the wretched: and being for this reason summoned to the marquis, "But thy servants deny it," said Bernardinus, "and do not allow the causes of widows, nor the afflictions of orphans, nor the oppressions of the poor, to come in to thee. These men who surround thee, conspiring among themselves, secretly beset thee with a siege, lest thou be able to punish the evils * which they themselves do. This is the unhappiness of princes, that they hear the complaints of the wretched last, flatteries first, and the truth never. These things my love for thee says secretly in the chamber before thy counselors, which it did not dare to say openly in the pulpit; I spoke in general terms, no more to thee than to thine: but to princes, for the most part accustomed to the daily flatteries of their people, everything that does not applaud appears grievous." The ministers who were present being disturbed, and especially Benedictus Mastinus, a leading man, who saw themselves attacked by Bernardinus' words, the prince put an end to the altercation, saying that the Preacher had discharged his office, and that he vehemently desired that each should fulfill his own part; and holding out his hand as a sign of reconciliation, he told Bernardinus that nothing should draw him back from teaching the truth.

[125] At last, as he was about to depart, he added: "I know, most illustrious prince, having addressed him with like constancy, he wins him over: that a time will come in which these words of mine will recur to thy memory, and thou wilt say with groaning: O Bernardinus, these things were said to me by thee!" And that this oracle was not rashly uttered appeared a little after: for when in the following year Frederick was dying and grieved heavily for his government carelessly administered: "Alas," said he, "my brother Bernardinus, how truly and without flattery didst thou say those things to me!" Thus far there. And indeed this was a brave discourse and worthy of Bernardinus, and the more to be admired because he used it toward a prince who was a warlike man, accustomed to command and not to receive orders; and used it at a time when, being in exile with his brethren from the Venetian dominions, he most needed and enjoyed his favor: for, on the testimony of Hippolytus Donesmondus, book 6 of the Ecclesiastical History of Mantua, that same Frederick Gonzaga was maintaining more than three hundred of his companions, and maintained them for almost a whole year, until they were permitted to return into the lands of the Venetians. But that moderation of mind was also worthy of so great a prince, who is praised no less for religion and piety than for military art — worthy, I say, of him was that moderation by which he not only heard the holy Man speaking so freely, but even praised him.

[126] I believe indeed that Wadding learned all these things from his manuscript Legends or from Cimarellus, an error of time in the aforesaid is corrected, since he recounts the whole of the Blessed's discourse in a different type, in which he is elsewhere accustomed to exhibit the very words of documents: but certainly in assigning the times either he himself, or those whom he followed, erred. For he had premised that Bl. Bernardinus was present at the chapter held at La Verna on the fourth day of June, and then he subjoins that he, having returned to Mantua, delivered the aforepraised sermon in the same year on Palm Sunday, which then fell on the eleventh of April. This sermon, therefore, must be set before that chapter, or he must be said to have delivered it later than on Palm Sunday. The other error lies in this, that he says the praised marquis Frederick died in the year following that sermon and conversation, and therefore in the year 1485; whereas from Marinus Sanutus, a contemporary writer, and from others, it is established that he died in the month of July of the year 1484. Hence one might suspect that the often-mentioned sermon must be thrown back to Palm Sunday of the year 1483, and that those who went before Wadding began the year not from January but from Easter.

[127] and Donesmondus' account is weighed. Donesmondus, silent about these matters, narrates something else similar under the year 1485, under Francis, who had succeeded his father Frederick in the marquisate of Mantua, in nearly this way. Bl. Bernardinus, being asked to preach at Mantua in the time of Lent in the year 1485, discoursed on Palm Sunday of the duty of princes toward their subjects, and, thundering rather vehemently against the usurious Jews, also reproved those who permitted usuries of this kind. The chief men, provoked by these discourses, accused the Preacher before prince Francis; and he, having summoned him, modestly rebuked him before them, and admonished him thereafter to abstain from similar assertions which he could not sufficiently prove. But Bernardinus proved his doctrine by such solid reasons that the prince, convinced, gave him of his own accord the fullest liberty of speaking, that he might pursue the sermons he had begun. Everyone sees that the same matter as above is here reported with various different circumstances; but the things to be said below are opposed to Donesmondus, since from them we shall see that Bl. Bernardinus spent the whole of Lent of the year 1485 at Perugia. Let us therefore lay down that the sermon of which we are treating was delivered by Bernardinus at Mantua in the year 1484, before he set out for the chapter of La Verna, or on another day than Palm Sunday, and that the marquis Frederick died in the same year; and then Wadding's account will be able to be admitted.

[128] On his way to Mirandola he succors those perishing of hunger. To the same year likewise, though to an uncertain month of that year, may belong the Blessed's journey to Bologna and Mirandola, both of which are cities of Italy, undertaken for a cause unknown to me, but concerning which this may be read in the cited place of the Annals. Being about to set out from Bologna to Mirandola, he saw a lean and sallow boy eating wild herbs from hunger; and he held out to him the bread which his companion was carrying in his basket. But when the boy from weakness could not grind it with his teeth, and said that he had not eaten bread for seven months, and that in the nearest little hut his father and mother lay dying of starvation, Bernardinus, groaning at so many evils which the fury of the war of Venice and Ferrara had brought in, went to the dying and held out to them all the food which his companion had prepared for the journey, choosing rather to complete the whole journey fasting than, passing by those wretchedly perishing, to reserve bread for himself.

* the people

* the evils, or, beyond what

§ VII. Peace being restored to Italy, return into the dominion of the Venetians is permitted to the Minors Observant, except to Bernardinus; who lays down the vicariate; erects a Mont-de-piété at Mantua; preaches in many places, and is sought after by various cities, even with the authority of the supreme Pontiff interposed.

[ ] [Return into the Venetian dominion being permitted to the rest, he alone being forbidden,] There had dawned at last the end of the destructive war, and the peace of Italy, signed on the seventh day of August of the same year 1484 at Balneolum, commonly Bagnolo, which is a town of the kingdom of Naples in the Principato Ulteriore; and the Pontifical interdict had been removed, for the observance of which Bl. Bernardinus, with the religious subject to him, had hitherto been in exile from the dominion of the most serene Venetian republic. And so, since he was still discharging the office of vicar of his province, Bernardinus, a man unconcerned for himself but anxious for the flock committed to him and for the glory of God, went to Robert Severinus, commander of the Venetian army (so Wadding proceeds), to entreat for the Friars whom, as I have said, he had called away from that state on account of the Pontifical interdict. "If there is any fault here," he said, "it is mine: let them be restored to their own places; I will bear the penalty of exile for all." He (namely Robert San-Severino, as he is commonly called), having then returned to Venice, obtained by decree of the senate that all, with the single exception of Bernardinus, should return to their own seats. So indeed divine providence disposing, that by traversing the remaining regions of Italy more freely he might rout out vices.

[130] For when Angelus (a Clavasio), the vicar general, came to Mantua, he is released from the vicariate, and the Mont-de-piété he obtained release from the vicariate, which he could not exercise, and had at other times attempted to lay down; and at once he girded himself for the instructing of other peoples. And being about to render thanks to the people of Mantua for the most abundant benefit rendered to so many Friars, whom they had maintained with them in great numbers through the years of the raging war, and seeing the wealth of the Christians drained away by the intolerable usuries of the Hebrews, he determined to take away this excessive facility of lending at interest, and to relieve the misery of the common people by a new method of borrowing. And so, when in the great market-place of the city he had discoursed most learnedly on the erection, the honorableness, the usefulness and the ordering of Monts-de-piété, and on the iniquity of the Jews who snatch everything to themselves, and had shown the manner of procuring money out of the free contribution of many, whether given outright or lent for a time, he brought the whole matter to completion in the shortest space by the authority of the princes and their ministers.

[131] Nor could the efforts of the many who opposed him prevent he takes care to have erected at Mantua, many vainly resisting, a great sum of money from being at once collected and the Mont erected — from that body, namely, whom we have said above condemned the erection of Monts of this kind, as usurious, by voice and in writing. But here he refers his readers in the margin to the year 1474, number 12, in which and the following, on occasion of a like Mont-de-piété erected at Perugia by Barnabas of Terni, likewise a Religious of the Order of Minors, he had treated of those who at some time resisted by voice and pen pious devices of this kind, as usurious, and of others who approved and defended them; and among these various supreme Pontiffs are there recounted who did so by published Bulls. Nor did the patrons of the opposing opinion at once cease to attack the Mont of Mantua, until the Roman Pontiff Innocent VIII confirmed it in the year 1486 and imposed silence on the gainsayers, as we shall say in its place. And this is the first of the many Monts-de-piété which Bernardinus took care to have founded in various places through Italy for the public good and the solace of the poor.

[132] in the year 1484 and perhaps partly Concerning the Mont of Mantua erected by our Bl. Bernardinus, Donesmondus also, praised elsewhere already, agrees, but he fixes its epoch one year later, namely in the year 1485, on the last Sunday of Advent of which he says that Mont was inaugurated with a solemn procession proclaimed by the bishop, so that it should be open to the needy. There were present at the procession, on the same testimony, all the clergy and the religious Orders and the people of Mantua; and it proceeded amid the harmony of musical instruments from the church of the Friars Minor to the building appointed for the said work of charity, Bernardinus going before and carrying the banner of the Mont-de-piété. The marquis Francis Gonzaga had urged on the Work, who to this end had obtained that Bernardinus should preach at Mantua through the Advent of that year, and who had himself supplied the greater sum of the necessary money, and had written the diploma of institution with his own hand, as Bernardinus had dictated it. But as all these things could easily have been done in the year 1484, which the Blessed passed almost entirely at Mantua, so they cannot be referred to 1485, through the Advent of which he preached at Parma, and for the remaining time in other cities, and stayed at Mantua only for a little while.

[133] also in the following: in the same year he is said Perhaps nevertheless in the year 1485 he put the finishing hand to that Mont: for we shall see below that he then hastened at some time from Parma to Mantua in order to defend his Mont, endangered by its detractors; but this seems to have happened before the Advent of that year. That these things are so will become manifest from the series of events which Wadding recounts as done by him in the year 1485. But before I report these from him, the reckoning of time demands that there be premised what Francis Gonzaga wrote in the Origins of the Seraphic religion concerning the convent of St. Sebastian

near Marostica, a town of the countryside and diocese of Vicenza, erected in this year 1484 by the care and labor of the same Blessed. The praised Gonzaga, part 2, in the province of St. Antony, convent 27, says this: It happened in the year of the Lord 1480 that the blessed father Bernardinus de Feltro delivered a sacred sermon to the people of Marostica, and so inflamed their minds that they asked him for some Franciscan friars, who should both choose a place according to their wishes and there build a convent out of the public funds, to be disbursed by them with the utmost liberality.

[134] that a convent was erected at Marostica under his auspices, And at length, that blessed Father consenting to them and appointing four Minorites of the best repute to them, this sacred house, dedicated to the divine martyr Sebastian — with the consent, however, of Innocent VIII, Supreme Pontiff — which ten Friars for the most part inhabit, came to light in the year 1484 from the virgin Birth, at the expense of the people of Marostica, not far from the town of Marostica, and was reckoned among the remaining houses of this province (of St. Antony). There is preserved in the archives of this house the aforementioned consent of Innocent VIII, expressed under the form of an Apostolic Brief, at Rome, the twenty-fourth of the month of November, in the year of the Lord 1484. Thus he: but Wadding, who had read nothing of these things under the aforecited years 1480 and 1484 in the manuscript Legends of Bl. Bernardinus, or elsewhere, was silent about them in both places. But earlier, under the year 1425, number 23, he had set forth his doubt about the beginnings of the same convent being referred to that same year 1425, that is, before the birth of Bernardinus of Feltre. He speaks thus in that place: The Pontiff (Martin V) granted, at the prayers of the townsmen, that a dwelling of the Minors should be built at the town of Marostica, of the diocese of Padua, in the place where there was a chapel sacred to St. Antony the abbot: Pia fidelium vota. The fifth of the Ides of July. He reckons the said Brief in the Pontifical Register at number 129, and it is noted as given at Rome at the Holy Apostles on the fifth of the Ides of July in the eighth year, which notes exhibit the aforecited year of Christ 1425.

[135] Further, Wadding, in the place of the Annals cited before, then objects to himself Gonzaga's assertions, concerning whose beginnings which, in order to reconcile them with Martin's letters, he says: Perhaps Martin's first concession was void, and the work deferred to another time; or the man of Feltre completed a work humbly begun at this time, or brought it back into the true form of a monastery. These reasons are likely enough, especially the first; because the parish priest of Marostica, to whom the care and the revenues of that chapel of St. Antony are said in the praised letters of Martin to have belonged, and about whose consent nothing is read in them — he, I say, could easily have intervened to prevent that donation from being made, which the Pontiff had commanded to be made there only saving, however, the right of the said parish church, etc. Yet whatever may be the case concerning the beginnings and the fortune of that earlier convent, perhaps in the year 1483, in which we have seen above that our Bl. Bernardinus was set over his province as vicar, it began to be discussed either about restoring the old one or about founding a new one; and that work, the Minors Observant being banished in the same year from the dominion of the Venetians on account of the Pontifical interdict observed, was soon intermitted, and, after they had returned by indult of the senate after the middle of the year 1484, was resumed and gradually advanced.

[136] Certainly below, in §16, we shall relate from Wadding that the people of Marostica in the year 1492 built a new church of St. Sebastian for the Observants, Wadding was in doubt. whether these words are to be taken of a new convent or only of the enlargement of the same. Perhaps something more certain could be asserted if the letters of Innocent VIII were at hand. In the Brief of Martin V, which in Wadding is read as addressed To our beloved son the archpriest of the church of Vicenza, I wonder that Marostica is called of the diocese of Padua, since it is established that it is of that of Vicenza. But if it had been of that of Padua, why, I ask, was it directed not to the archpriest of that church but to the one of Vicenza? Nay, why not rather to the bishop of one or the other, neither of which sees was then vacant, since according to Ughelli, volume 5 of the Italia sacra reissued, Peter Marcellus, a Venetian noble, was sitting in that of Padua, and John Castillio in that of Vicenza? But however it may be concerning the bishop, I believe that an error was made in assigning the diocese, which error Wadding adopted, placing Marostica in the same diocese of Padua.

[137] Let us now proceed to record in chronological order the apostolic labors of the blessed Man, which we have brought down to the year 1485. The people of Perugia not permitting him to preach in their own church, These Wadding, following the manuscript Legends and Cimarella, recounts thus in the same place, number 8 and the following. Bernardinus of Feltre in this year (1485), being called to Perugia (which is an episcopal city of Italy in the dominion of the Church, called by the inhabitants Perugia, and the head of the Perugian countryside) to preach in the cathedral church, after having completed a long journey through the Apennines in winter time, found that the citizens had gone over to the opposite party, the chief men opposing that he, or any of the Observants, should preach in their own church; being irritated thereat, because the Friars could be bent by no prayers to resume the care of the sisters of the third Order, which we have said they had for just causes laid aside, and because the people of Perugia had for that reason summoned the Amadeites to blunt the sentence of the Observants. The Amadeites also were of the Order of St. Francis, but of a particular congregation which Bl. Amadeus, from whom they took their name, had instituted, and which afterwards, by order of the supreme Pontiffs, was united with the Franciscan Observants, as may be seen in the preliminary Commentary to the Acts of that blessed confessor among us on the tenth day of August, §4.

[138] he bears it patiently, and in the church of the Servites Further, Bernardinus, in no way disturbed by this, consoled his own consolers, saying that he was most ready to preach through any villages and little towns whatever, or to stay at home with his fellows, to beg bread from door to door, and to discharge all the duties of the house. Baldus Novellus and Peter de Ubaldis, then the chief masters of the university of Perugia, admiring his humility and patience above the rest, dealt with the leading men that they should treat more honorably a man almost divine, a most learned herald. The superior of the Servites, who prevailed by great authority, said to the gainsayers in the senate: "Beware lest you make void the work of God and drive away His servant. From this I conjecture that great fruit will arise from his sermons, because the devil so vehemently opposes." But when after eight days he made no progress, he offered him his own church. Bernardinus, having begun * his sermons from Sexagesima Sunday, drew the whole multitude of the citizens, and it was plainly seen that the master of the Servites had not been disappointed in his hope.

[139] preaches with the greatest fruit and a great concourse For he extinguished the inveterate enmities of the Odeschi and the Baglioni, noble families; those who shrank from the Sacrament of confession, and had been unconfessed for three years, he brought back to this holy propitiatory: he changed the unbecoming and immodest dress of the women, and caused those who had their shoulders and bosoms in view to be covered up to the neck, and that kind of garment to be established by decree of the senate; and the bishop commanded that no woman going about in the former fashion should be absolved. He commended and enlarged the Mont-de-piété, and performed other things of that kind, which drove those who had earlier opposed him to repentance for their error and to a worthy reverence for the Man. His course of sermons completed, and being asked by messenger and by letters from the Florentines to preach among them in the Lent next to come, he answered that he was not his own master, and that he would go where the command of his superiors should direct him.

[140] of the people of Perugia: he preaches likewise at Urbino and Fossombrone, An Augustinian Hermit, who had preached in the cathedral church, left that city on the last festal day of Easter; Bernardinus, being at once asked to teach the people in that church, was unable to do so, since a multitude of people burst into the church, otherwise very capacious, greater than it could hold. It was therefore necessary to speak in the open court, benches having been prepared toward evening on the preceding day, and places distributed for men and for women. Being about to return to Mantua, against the will of the people of Perugia, he went by way of Urbino, where he preached for ten days, inveighing vehemently against the astrologers, whose study is there frequent and continual. Being called by Guido Ubaldo, duke of Urbino, to Fossombrone (which is an episcopal city of the duchy of Urbino, commonly Fossombrone, distant nine or ten Italian miles from Urbino toward the east), although he slipped away in the dead of night by a back door, a huge crowd of men and women followed him; nor could it be driven back until they came to a little chapel at a distance from the city, where, the sacred rite being performed, he blessed them all.

[141] Having stayed five days at Fossombrone, he delivered as many sermons, being invited by the duke, and he refutes an astrologer. and was most honorably treated by the duke, who, before he had departed from Urbino, took care that there should be shown to him the excellently furnished library, a memorable work of duke Frederick of Montefeltro, and the royal palace, where he beheld with joy the portrait of Victorinus Ramboldus of Feltre, his fellow-countryman, formerly the teacher of Frederick. He always had as hearers the duke and bishop John of Urbino, and they were present at the learned disputation held with master Paul the German, an astrologer, who dared too rashly to foretell future events depending on free will, and to diminish the liberty of the human will. There seems to be an error here in the bishop's name, since in Ughelli, volume 2 of the Italia sacra enlarged, column 795, Lazarus de Recanellis is said to have sat at that time on the episcopal chair of Urbino, and at column 834 Hieronymus Sanctuccius on that of Fossombrone. Meanwhile the people of Perugia (Wadding thus subjoins), him whom they could not keep with them by prayers, compelled by a Pontifical command to return.

[142] For, having sent a leading man, they obtained from Innocent (the eighth of this name, Having returned to Perugia, attacking dishonorable games and other sins, who on the twenty-ninth day of August of the year 1484 had been substituted in the place of the deceased Sixtus IV) letters of command to Bernardinus. Obeying these he returned, and preached in the public market-place every day from the Sunday before the Ascension until the month of August. He condemned certain dishonorable games and public spectacles, to which no one afterwards dared to come. On a certain feast day two noble youths of the illustrious family of the Baglioni came to obtain leave to hold these games. Bernardinus answered in these discreet words: "Who am I, so tiny and wretched a little friar, from whom you seek leave? And indeed I ponder with myself besides who that man can be who is so great as to grant power to sin against God. Take care lest this zeal of yours for dancing pass within one year into a little tale." The younger of them, Balduinus, despising the Minister of God, said: "What have we to do with that little friar?" and led girls to the dances and games; yet with few looking on, out of reverence for the Man.

[143] When they had begun, the Lord thundered from heaven, and a lightning bolt threw down a great part of the bell tower. he foretells punishments to the obstinate: he goes on to Assisi, Guido Baglioni, the elder of the brothers, fearing an angry God, ordered the dances to be broken up and the games dismissed. Before the year was out the younger was wretchedly slain at Naples; and this dance, according to the prophecy of the Man of God, being called back to memory, passed into a wretched little tale. Having inveighed against other sins which were rife especially in that city, he threatened the punishment of a plague if they were not corrected. Those who clung to their vices God grievously seized with that scourge. Being thus made better by the evil, they held the Prophet in greater reverence. In his last sermon toward the end of July, to gain

that great indulgence of the Portiuncula at Assisi (distant eleven Italian miles from Perugia) he invited all, and himself went before thither, whither almost the whole city followed. He remained eighteen days at Assisi, no day without the fruit of his burning eloquence.

[144] He rebuked the senate because it had maintained a Hebrew at the public expense for lending moneys at heavy usury. Hence, an accounting having been made with him, it was found [where he procures the expulsion of a usurer; being ordered to go to Parma, in various places] that, having advanced a small sum of money, he had scraped together much and had devoured the substance of the Christians. And so, the costly usurer being cast out, the Mont-de-piété was established with new and firmer laws, the Friars Observant being brought into the council, and a confirmation of the decrees obtained from Innocent. John James Sclafenatus, Cardinal of the title of St. Stephen on the Caelian hill, a citizen and bishop of Parma (rather indeed bishop of Parma, but of Milan by birth, as may be seen in Ughelli praised above, column 186 and the following, where he is called Sclafinatus) acting with the Pontiff, he was ordered to preach at Parma through Advent; and while he was journeying thither he sowed everywhere through villages and towns the seed of the divine word. At Spello, being asked by Guido Baglioni, lord of the town and leader of the Baglioni faction, who prepared the pulpit with his own hands, he preached in the market-place, and sharply rebuked the inveterate hatreds, the daily slaughters, the perpetual ambushes of both factions, and the hardness of that inhospitable people, which three days before had received two sick pilgrims under no roof and refreshed them with no food.

[145] he preaches along the way, At Borgo San Sepolcro he delivered two sermons, at Forlì five, at Bologna in the church of St. Petronius eight, at Modena five. As regards the places just mentioned: Hispellum, called by the natives Spello, is a little town of Umbria in the dominion of the Church, distant six or seven Italian miles from Assisi toward Foligno to the east, and therefore Bl. Bernardinus had to go back just so far from the road which leads from Assisi to Parma, if he began that journey of his at Assisi. The other places lie on the same road. Burgum or Burgus sancti Sepulcri, commonly Borgo di S. Sepolcro, is a small city of Umbria not far from the Tiber near the boundary of Etruria, whose grand duke it obeys, and it is episcopal under the archbishop of Florence. Forum Livii, called by the inhabitants Forlì, is a city in the Romagna, likewise distinguished by a bishopric under the metropolis of Ravenna, from which it is distant about fourteen or fifteen miles. Bononia, in Italian Bologna, Mutina, in the same tongue Modena, and finally Parma, are cities better known than to need any description. For the rest, from the length of this journey and the discomforts of the roads gather, reader, the unbroken spirit of a truly apostolic Man, who spent in delivering sermons the intervals of time which he could deservedly have given to his weary little body. But let us pursue the narrative we have begun.

[146] at Mantua he defends the Mont-de-piété: at Parma he gathers great fruits; When he came to Parma at the beginning of October, and had delivered his first sermon, being warned by the people of Mantua that the Mont-de-piété erected by him, as we have said, was being violently shaken, and that those who had resisted its erection were striving with all their might to overthrow it, he hastened thither with all speed, against the expectation of his opponents, who had already spread it about that he would not dare to come to defend this usurious invention. By voice, by writings and by sermons he defended the Mont: and the magistrate strictly imposed silence upon his opponents; as at the same time the doge of the Genoese, Fregoso, did upon those attacking the Monts of Genoa and Savona, erected by Angelus a Clavasio, who wrote certain learned treatises and opinions on this matter. Having returned to Parma, he began to preach in the cathedral church before the last Sunday after Pentecost, without waiting for Advent, and without a great concourse of people. But when the Man's virtue and his energy in speaking began to be noised abroad, they ran so eagerly that they could not be held by the church: and they were so moved by his salutary teachings and fiery discourses that they came more frequently to the Sacraments, disbursed alms to the poor more liberally, restored what belonged to others more readily, and there were several who sold all their substance in order to make good the losses they had inflicted.

[147] The monasteries of St. Alexander, St. Quintinus and St. Catherine, he reforms the monasteries of virgins, the duke giving thanks. of nuns living too loosely, he reformed, and brought back the whole people to better ways: for which cause the duke of Milan, whom Parma then obeyed, honored him with an honorable diploma, calling him the friend of himself and of his dominion, and granting him free passage through the whole dominion. In the margin the praised historian noted that for the monastery of St. Alexander others read St. Alexius, as Bernardinus a Clastidio and Gratianus of Bevagna also have in their Italian Lives, the last of whom also wrote St. Quirinus for St. Quintinus, and made no mention of the monastery of St. Catherine. The duke of Milan at that time was John Galeazzo Maria, who had succeeded his father Galeazzo Maria Sforza, slain in the year 1476, when he was only eight years old, and the administration of whose duchy Ludovico Sforza, surnamed the Moor, his uncle, had usurped. John Galeazzo therefore numbered in this year 1485 about the seventeenth year of his age, when either he himself or, in his name, Ludovico Sforza gave the aforesaid diploma to Bl. Bernardinus, in which he seems also to have exhorted him not to depart from his dominion, so far as one may gather from other letters of the same prince, presently to be recited.

[148] To this year also belong the things which Wadding partly recounted under the following year on account of the connection of the events, Various cities seeking him for Lent, and which clearly prove how highly the cities of Italy esteemed Bernardinus' holiness and learning. And so under the year 1486, number 5 and the following, he writes this again, the manuscript Legends and Cimarella, part 4, book 6, chapter 18, being cited in the margin. The fame of Bernardinus of Feltre increasing daily, and so many good works which he did everywhere being spread through many cities, all most vehemently desired to see him, all to hear him. The people of Perugia, who had proved his wonderful learning and virtue in the past year (that is, 1485), desired their teacher in this year also. The people of Bologna and of Parma, desiring the same thing, obtained from the Pontiff Apostolic letters toward the end of the preceding year (that is, 1485) that he should preach among them in the time of Lent. The Pontiff, either to please each city, or because, having forgotten the earlier letters, he readily granted the later ones, granted him to the three aforesaid peoples.

[149] Those given in favor of the people of Parma have perished; he is ordered by Innocent VIII in the first letters to preach at Parma, the remaining two I subjoin; and both indeed from the autographs, as he affirms in the margin.

"To our beloved son, brother Bernardinus de Feltro, of the Order of Minors of the Observance."

"Beloved son, greeting, etc. Wishing to grant the desire of our beloved sons the Priors of the guilds and of the Commune of our city of Perugia, who hope very greatly in thy sound admonitions and preachings, we command thy devotion, expressly enjoining in virtue of holy obedience, and nevertheless under penalty of excommunication, that in the coming Lent thou shouldst go to that same city of Perugia and preach in it. This will yield thee no common merit with almighty God, and will be pleasing to us. Notwithstanding any other mandate whatsoever perhaps made to thee, and all other things to the contrary whatsoever. Given at Rome at St. Peter's under the ring of the Fisherman, the twenty-ninth day of October, 1485. In the second year of our pontificate;"

L. Grifus.

[150] in the second, to preach then at Bologna; The other letter, given one month later in favor of the people of Bologna, stands thus in the same place, from the autograph.

"To our beloved son Brother Bernardinus de Feltro, of the Order of Minors of the Observance."

"Beloved son, greeting, etc. Moved by the fame of thy learning and probity, our people of Bologna greatly desire to hear thy sound admonitions, which they hope will profit them for the salvation of souls. And we, granting their pious desire, exhort thy devotion in the Lord, and nevertheless, expressly enjoining thee in virtue of holy obedience, command that in the coming Lent thou go to Bologna to preach, and that there, announcing the word of God in the greater church and expounding the Evangelical doctrine according to the faculty granted thee from on high, thou strive to bring forth fruit of souls. This will yield thee merit with God, and will be pleasing to us. Notwithstanding any other mandate whatsoever perhaps made to thee, and all other things to the contrary whatsoever. Given at Rome at St. Peter's under the ring of the Fisherman, the twenty-eighth day of November, 1485. In the second year of our pontificate." Thus far the Pontifical letters, the latter of which Bernardinus wished to obey, but he was able to obey neither, on account of a third one, which, at the urging of the people of Parma, the duke of Milan obtained from the same Pontiff Innocent VIII; and by what means this was done I proceed to set out from the same Annals of Wadding.

[151] hearing which, the duke of Milan Under the year 1485, number 13, he says this. Bernardinus had received toward the end of the year a Pontifical Brief (namely the one signed, as we have seen, on the twenty-eighth day of November) by which he was ordered to preach at Bologna through the Lent of the following year; and when the people of Parma learned this, they wrote to the duke that he should see to it that he remained with them to preach at that time. He wrote that he would so act with the Pontiff; and he admonished them not to permit Bernardinus meanwhile to depart, and drew up these letters to Bernardinus himself.

"To our beloved venerable brother in Christ Bernardinus of Feltre, of the Order of Minors of the Observance.

Venerable in Christ, beloved of us. Your paternity does what holy men are wont to do; when they sow the word of God, they profit also by example and by work. We have lately observed this in our people of Parma, who, flocking to your preachings, acknowledge with the utmost zeal and gladly follow all things that pertain to the quiet of souls and to mutual charity. On this account we owe very much, first of all to God and to your paternity, by whose labor it comes about that we behold this people of ours conducting themselves well.

[152] strives to detain him at Parma, Wherefore, kindled with great desire that so great a work be not interrupted, what we have done by other letters we again urge upon your paternity: that you entertain no thought of departing, even if compelled by Apostolic admonitions; but that you remain altogether at Parma for the coming Lent, and by your preachings keep these most faithful citizens of ours in the right ways, and call back those who go astray to salutary discipline. For we have sent letters to Rome that we may obtain from the supreme Pontiff a revocation of his command, nor do we doubt that we shall obtain it, since we shall omit nothing that pertains to this pious and fruitful desire of ours, even if it were necessary to lay hands on your books that you might not depart from here. At Milan, the tenth day of January, 1486." Roused by the duke's command (Wadding continues), the podestà of the city ordained by public edict that he should not depart, and ordered that if he departed all the officers should detain him. But all these contrivances were in vain against a Man who held nothing more important than to obey the mandates of his superiors, and first of all of the Roman Pontiffs.

[153] For he, at the beginning of the following year (that is, of Christ 1486), seeing but he slips away from there, in order to obey the Pontiff. that the Apostolic command was not revoked, having obtained leave to go out to a neighboring little monastery of his Order, withdrew thence by night, and, wandering through pathless and mountainous places, especially at night, at last eluded their pious zeal, being resolved to obey the Pontifical mandate. From

the date of the duke's signed letter gather that those words at the beginning of the year are to be taken with some latitude, unless one should prefer to suspect that that first letter was written after Bernardinus had departed thence (the duke being even then ignorant of it). But to me it appears more likely that the mandates of the duke and of the podestà must be placed at least a few days before the letter was written, and the Blessed's departure a little after; since we shall say in the following § that he was already at Parma before Sexagesima Sunday, which in that year fell on the twenty-ninth day of January.

* that is, having begun

§ VIII. After the varying mandates of the Pontiff he preaches and performs many good works at Parma; at Modena, Gubbio and Assisi, being made illustrious by several miracles; he is called to Rome by the Pontiff, and is then sent to Perugia and Todi to settle civil discords.

[ ] He is ordered by the Pontiff to preach not at Bologna but at Parma; We have come to the year 1486, memorable for the great apostolic labors of Bl. Bernardinus, for a most abundant fruit of souls, and for various events. I follow Wadding as usual, who out of the often-praised manuscript Legends and Cimarella goes on to weave his Annals under the aforecited year from number 7, in the words which I subjoin. That he would obey the later letters and the more recent command of the Pontiff (given on the twenty-eighth day of November of the year just past), we said in the past year, and that, having piously eluded the people of Parma, he had gone over to those of Bologna — chiefly indeed because Julianus della Rovere, Cardinal of Ostia, commonly named from his first title of St. Peter in Chains, protector of the Order and bishop of Bologna (afterwards supreme Pontiff, called Julius II), had by repeated letters urged and commanded that very thing. Meaning to obey him also, he determined to stay and preach among the people of Bologna. But the people of Parma, aided by the power and authority of their duke of Milan, obtained that, the earlier Pontifical letters being revoked, he should be ordered to preach at Parma.

[155] This vexed the people of Bologna, whom he could appease neither by repeated entreaties the people of Bologna procure that this mandate nor by daily discourses, so that they complained exceedingly of their own bishop the Cardinal because he had yielded to the duke's prayers; and they sent a courier to Rome to carry letters of the council and the magistracy, of John Bentivoglio, the leading man in the city, and of his wife, both most dear to the Pontiff, of the chapter of canons and of others, and to bend Innocent's mind, that he should not, neglecting them, transfer so great a Man elsewhere. Bernardinus, being asked and compelled to await the Pontiff's answer, waited until Sexagesima Sunday (that is, until the twenty-ninth day of January); and seeing the time slipping away and the command to depart pressing, he withdrew secretly before dawn, and, staying five days at Reggio (which city, commonly called Reggio, lies between Modena and Parma for those going from Bologna to Parma), he delivered as many sermons.

[156] be revoked by the same Pontiff, but too late. Having set out for Parma, he was honorably received outside the city by the archpriest and by many noblemen. Having begun * his sermons on Ash Wednesday (which was the eighth of February), on the following Saturday he received an Apostolic Brief revoking the command about the journey to Parma, and letters of the people of Bologna asking that he would be pleased to return. The Man of God excused himself to the messenger, and warned him to report nothing about the cause of his coming, lest he offend the people of Parma. I have read this Brief as published by no one; but since on Wadding's testimony only the earlier command about the journey to Parma is said to have been revoked in it, it is sufficiently clear that Pope Innocent, in order somehow to satisfy the importunate prayers of the cities, only revoked the aforesaid command, substituting no new one, but leaving Bernardinus free to preach wherever he wished during that Lent. Certainly the most obedient Man would not have resisted a Pontifical order; but using the faculty granted him, he chose to pursue at Parma, where he then was, the sermons he had begun; and thus he prudently forestalled fresh disturbances of the people of Parma, which could deservedly have been feared, and, if any ill will was to arise from this on the part of the people of Bologna, he took it all upon himself.

[157] Preaching at Parma, he greatly promotes the cult Further, such was the concourse of the people (at Parma) to his sermons that they ran ahead by night, to have a place, and the church stood open at night to receive the multitude. Manifold fruit at once followed: more frequent confession of sins, entire restitution of goods, the enmities of the great extinguished, a confraternity of the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist instituted, the cult toward that divine mystery increased. He induced the people that once every month a solemn Mass should be sung of this heavenly Sacrament, and that lamps should burn perpetually before the sacred repository; and the devotion of the pious grew so that twenty-five hung there perpetually lighted. That this affection toward the cult of this divine Sacrament had gone before in Cherubinus of Spoleto, and that he had performed these very things, we have said above. On the fifth feria of Holy Week, on which this most sacred Mystery was instituted, he ordered a most numerous and most devout procession, and was present at the whole hours of the divine Office with the canons.

[158] of the Most Holy Sacrament, and happily attacks vices, Before he finished the Lenten sermons, he received a letter from the Florentines by which they announced that by public decree of the senate and magistracy he had been chosen preacher for the Lent of the following year for the church of St. Reparata. To them he courteously gave thanks; he said, however, that he was not his own master, and that he must go where his superior's command should appoint. Many sent various foods; others invited him to banquets: the latter he refused, the former he set aside for the poor and for those shut up in prisons. When by his persuasion a noble and costly repository of the most holy Sacrament was being made at the high altar, Albertus, a distinguished architect summoned from elsewhere for this work, among the marble statues to be added for ornament from Carrara stone (so called from Carrara, a little town of Italy in Tuscany, near which that noble marble is produced), represented in one of them the likeness of Bernardinus. When he learned of this, he would not rest until the face of the statue was defaced; that is, I suppose, so that it should no longer exhibit Bernardinus' face.

[159] On the sixth feria of the Passion and on the Easter of the resurrection he preached in the open court of the church, and by divine help he overcomes an evil contrived against him on that account. and delivered other sermons on contempt of the world, and on justice against Hebrew and Christian usurers; and on another day he vehemently pursued those living in concubinage. Within that week fifteen wealthy men married the women whom they had kept for many years as concubines. Certain men, taking ill so great a chastisement of morals and their being abandoned by their mistresses, devised a revenge by preparing the collapse of the pulpit. They secretly cut through the four feet or supports of the pulpit by night almost to the lowest surface, so that at any movement or weight of the Preacher springing up it would give way and dash the Man down from on high. As he was about to ascend, he perceived the trick from heaven, and said to his companion and to the bystanders: "The feet of my horse have been cut; nevertheless I shall spring up and shall run; but God will scourge the cutters." He preached intrepidly, with nothing of his usual fervor abated, and the pulpit stood motionless and solid.

[160] His sermons finished, he went on to Modena; whence, being about to send back a youth [Having set out for Modena and delivering sermons, on occasion of a possessed woman] who had carried the books of the Man of God on his horse, he saw him prostrate at his feet, offering of his own accord his own service and that of his horse, and saying: "Greater things than these, Man of God, do I owe thee: for by thy fiery discourses it has come about that two debtors of my father brought home of their own accord sums of money wholly unknown to me and by no means expressed in the will of my deceased father, by which I have risen from the most wretched to a moderate state of life." He said that he rejoiced at the restitution made, by which the moneylenders had taken thought for their conscience and had provided for his poverty, and he sent him home. In that city he delivered four sermons in the cathedral church; and as he came down from the pulpit a certain raging woman possessed by a demon met him, crying out: "O Bernardinus, what have I done against thee, that thou shouldst so disturb and torment me? But thou shalt not do it with impunity; I shall hurl thee headlong from the pulpit and dash thy head."

[161] At the wild cries of the raging and foaming woman the women who were present began to flee: he rebuked the lascivious and vain adornments of the women standing by he, having exhorted them to stand still, ordered that the possessed woman should be carried to the shrine or tomb of St. Geminianus. There, a huge multitude of men and women having been gathered, Bernardinus thundered with a great voice that the wretched possessed woman was to be pitied, but still more the women who stood by, counterfeiting their appearance with borrowed adornment. For she suffers in body, they in mind; the demon afflicts her flesh, he defiles their souls. And turning to the women, he said: "Do you pity this possessed woman, and not consider your own state? He who afflicts her and appears in her, in you brings forth his signs secretly, but plainly. Do you not prove his works in yourselves? Do you not see his footprints in your body? Whence that false paint? Whence the false locks * and the crimped hair? Whence the kohl and the white lead? Whence so many incitements to evils? Who taught you to bare your breasts, who your bosoms, who to expose your shoulders to unwary and depraved eyes?

[162] Is it not the evil spirit lurking beneath who persuades you to these things, and thereafter sends depraved thoughts into you and into those who look at you? Do you not believe these things, or do you doubt them, because he does not speak in you, so efficaciously that they at once cast them off. or does not torture your bodies? You have surer signs of an indwelling demon. Those who speak so wildly and are wretchedly vexed often feel their evil from another source — from sickness, from an injured faculty, from an overflowing humor, and from dreadful specters set before the mind; but these lies of your body and of your appearance are the most certain signs of the demon, and they serve him beyond doubt. Know that these things are the works of none but him who arms you with these snares for the ruin of others." While he was saying these things, the women standing by began to lower their heads for shame, to draw their shifts up to the throat, to strip off their vain adornments, to withdraw weeping and stricken with compunction, and to distribute earrings, rings and costly necklaces among the poor. At this the demon raged, shook, uttered demoniac cries, and assailed with curses Bernardinus, who had taken from him so many snares of souls and had plundered his arms. St. Geminianus, at whose sacred tomb these things are said to have been done, was bishop of Modena, and is venerated on the thirty-first day of January, where he has been treated of in our Work. But let us hear Wadding again.

[163] There too he preaches in the market-place; he drives demons from bodies; Thereafter, he says, it was necessary to preach in the open market-place, an innumerable multitude of men running together from the neighboring countrysides of Carpi, Mirandola, Reggio, Modena and Bologna. Whole towns poured themselves into view, those who ruled among the people and the priests going before; and very early in the morning, before the gates of the city were opened, they stood before the doors, that they might early take a place from which to hear him preaching. For three hours he discoursed with steady voice and firm lungs on ordinary days, for four on feast days. For the remaining part of the day he received those who came; to the troubled he offered salutary counsels, to the sorrowing consolation, to the tempted remedies, to all relief; no one withdrew from his sight in sadness. Further, the Lord confirmed his teaching and his life with many signs, especially by a notable power over demons. Orlandus, once a fierce and inexorable soldier, the plunderer of a certain town; a woman possessed because on the day of Easter, adulterated with borrowed hair, kohl and paint, she had come to the communion of the most holy table; another, because on the following day, after she had received the sacred Banquet, she had returned to the paints which she had then laid aside and to the display of a bare breast; a third, because she wore on her bodice little silver studs which a wicked priest

her uncle had melted down for her from the sacred paten of a chalice; a young man on account of a most wicked crime — these, all vexed, he freed from the evil spirit by prayer and the sign of the Cross.

[164] he escapes the peril of poison, and publicly burns the instruments of vanity. It was frequent in that city to clip coin round, to play at dice, to dress pompously. Against these things and against the pride of women and the crafty arts by which they are wont to ensnare men, he preached one day with huge fervor, and with such fruit that he seemed to have utterly rooted out these vices, and the women put their false adornments far away and not only cast off the hair of others but even cut off their own, unwilling to please any other than God. Having keenly inveighed against the Hebrews, he rebuked those Christians who were the favorers and friends of the Jews; and thereupon a certain Hebrew woman, meaning to take vengeance, sent to him, under the counterfeited name of a noble Christian lady, certain sweetmeats and poisoned fruits. The Friars, scenting the fraud, gave little pieces to a dog, which a little after swelled up and died. After his last two sermons he had pyres prepared, into which he threw a huge quantity of gaming instruments and of women's paint. These were, that is, the instruments of vanity and of pleasure and the enticements to sins, which men and women brought back to right ways by the Blessed's sermons and pious admonitions had handed over to him, and which, heaped into a pile as arms wrested from the demons, he publicly burned. Pyres of this kind kindled by him elsewhere too we shall see below; and Bernardinus a Clastidio, in the Life, chapter 5, writes that he was accustomed to do this almost everywhere, and to call those heaps Castles of the devil.

[165] Matters having been so well carried through at Modena, the Man, shunning all human glory, Departing thence, he restores hearing to a deaf woman, preaches at Ferrara, being about to set out thence for Ferrara, withdrew secretly, meaning to avoid the honor of the people following him, but in vain; for a huge crowd followed, and would not let him go as he departed unless he solemnly blessed them and prayed for their good. He then restored hearing to a woman deaf for eight years, and distributed to many the most holy name of Jesus, written by him on little papers, by whose implanted power remedies for many evils were at hand. Being asked by the people of Ferrara to preach on the day of St. George (who is announced in the Roman Martyrology on the twenty-third of April), he had few listeners, the people being distracted by a tournament and dances. On the next day he rebuked their contempt of the word of God and of its sacred heralds; and he said that that city had too quickly forgotten so many calamities as it had suffered a few years before. Consult what was said above at number 115 and the following. On St. Mark's day (that is, the twenty-fifth of April) he went away to Ravenna, where he stayed one night, and very early in the morning sailed toward Rimini; thence he went to Montefiore; hence to Urbino, stopping and preaching in no place.

[166] The cities just mentioned, Ravenna and Rimini in the Romagna, are commonly known; At Gubbio he procures the enlargement of the Mont-de-piété. of which the former is the head, and is situated about two miles from the Adriatic sea, on which the latter lies. Mons Florus, commonly Monte Fiore, in the most recent geographical map of the Ecclesiastical State, drawn by Christopher Maire of the Society of Jesus, is placed almost midway between the aforesaid city of Rimini and Urbino. But let these things suffice concerning places through which the Blessed only passed. At Gubbio (which is an episcopal city of the duchy of Urbino, called by the inhabitants Gubbio) he delivered a sermon before the lord Octavianus, the uncle of the duke of Urbino (for it had its own dukes down to the Pontificate of Pope Urban VIII, who purchased the duchy of Urbino for the Ecclesiastical dominion at a price), sharply rebuking usurers and unjust moneylenders, and then commending the institute of a Mont-de-piété. He reproved the friends and favorers of the Hebrews, who take care that those cast out from the fellowship of Christians by the commands of princes should be recalled for the sake of gifts or of sordid gain. On that very day a council had been summoned that the citizens might make an agreement with a certain wealthy Hebrew about the lending of moneys; for the funds of the recently erected Mont had not grown so far as to suffice for the need of all. But by Bernardinus' teaching their minds were so changed that the citizens rejected the Jew's terms, and by common offerings the Mont was sufficiently enlarged.

[167] Having set out from Gubbio for Perugia, he was received with the rejoicing of all; He brings the people of Perugia to penance while the plague rages: but as the pestilence increased there, which in the past year he had said would rage on account of their sins, very many withdrew to their country houses and rural estates; and, the city being deserted, it was necessary to give up the sermons. He resumed them nevertheless, and setting before them the words of Wisdom, "Thy word, O Lord, which healeth all things," he began to call the people together, to give them courage, to instill hope of driving away the plague, if only they would do penance and practice works of mercy. A solemn procession being proclaimed, all besought the clemency of God; and even great ladies, walking barefoot two by two, with loosed hair and in black and humble dress, appeased the anger of God. On the solemnity of Corpus Christi he ordered another one on such terms that nothing was seen that was not holy and peaceful, where at other times many brawls and homicides were perpetrated among a people always armed. Bound by so many benefits, the people of Perugia held the Author of them in the highest honor; and he counted himself blessed who could either speak to him or touch his garment. With such force were they borne to come to him, and pressed upon him with such a concourse, that only when hedged about by the senatorial guard could he go from the monastery to the church and return home from the pulpit.

[168] he restrains civil arms: On the feast of St. Antony of Padua (that is, the thirteenth day of June), after the sermon, while he sat at table to refresh his failing strength, behold a huge uproar and clashing of arms of the two most powerful factions, of the Peneschi and the Staffeschi, fighting in the market-place. Taking up a Cross, Bernardinus rushed into the midst of the ranks and, as one having authority, commanded them to be quiet. Although forty on both sides had been wounded and all had blazed out into mutual slaughter, nevertheless, obeying the Man of God, they withdrew into different places. A little afterwards there came the Baglioni and the Oddi, of whom we spoke above (number 139), to help their partisans (that is, the followers of their parties); but these too Bernardinus restrained, and led the heads of all the parties into the neighboring church of St. Laurence, where, by the intervention of the bishop and of the Pontifical governor, he tempered their harsh hatreds and established peace. Nevertheless that peace between the Baglioni and the Oddi was by no means lasting, as will appear from what is to be said.

[169] [he burns the enticements of women; at Assisi he is made illustrious by a star: being summoned to Rome by the Pontiff] With this fruit (Wadding continues), and with frequent burning of women's vanities and of the other instruments of sin, he preached all summer at Perugia in the public squares, except for four days on which he delivered sermons at Assisi on the indulgence of the Portiuncula, where once a most brilliant star appeared above the head of the Preacher. While the plainly apostolic Man was gathering so rich a harvest, he was summoned to Rome by letters from the supreme Pontiff Innocent VIII, concerning the cause of which I have thought a few things should be premised here, partly for the illustration and partly also for the correction of Wadding's statements. There had arisen in the preceding year a war between Ferdinand I, king of Naples, and the barons of that kingdom, who hated his cruelty; and since the praised Pontiff, himself also deservedly hostile to Ferdinand, was protecting their party, Aquila, a city of the kingdom of Naples in the Abruzzo Ulteriore, of which it is the head, likewise shaking off the royal yoke, subjected itself of its own accord to that same Pontiff; and thereupon the war blazed out more widely. There followed nevertheless in the following year, that is 1486, in the month of August, a peace, one of whose conditions was that the city of Aquila should be free to obey thereafter whichever it preferred, the Pontiff or the king.

[170] he is summoned to Rome, Ferdinand kept the compact badly; for, to pass over other things, In the month of September a great tumult arose in the city of Aquila, where at last the archdeacon, who stood for the Pope and for the liberty of Aquila, was killed, and the count of Montorio entered with his own people and the king's; and the ecclesiastics were either cut down or driven out; so says Stephanus Infessura, a contemporary author, in the Diary of the city of Rome, in Muratori, volume 3, part 2 of the Writers of Italian Affairs, column [ ]. With these things agrees the other anonymous writer of a Roman Diary of the same period, published in the same place at column [ ], except that he indicates that Aquila was occupied a little later by the duke or count of Montorio, since he says that the news of that event reached Rome on the twelfth day of October, to which day Muratori also in the Annals of Italy has thrown back the occupation of that city. Both writers can nevertheless be reconciled by saying that the tumult between the favorers of the Pontifical and the royal parties began at Aquila in the month of September, and that at length, on the twelfth day of October or thereabouts, it was subjected by armed force to King Ferdinand by the count of Montorio. These things being premised, let us hear Wadding.

[171] A treaty of peace having been struck about this time, he says, between Pope Innocent and Ferdinand, king of Naples, that he might settle the tumults of Aquila; the city of Aquila came into the power of the king. But since the citizens feared that they would pay the penalties of their defection before the king, and that tumults would arise daily between the zealots of the Pontifical and the royal party, and since they most urgently sought that Bernardinus should be sent to them, Innocent called him to himself with these letters.

"To our beloved son Bernardinus de Feltro, professor of the Order of Minors.

Beloved son, greeting and Apostolic benediction. We will, and by the tenor of these presents, expressly enjoining in virtue of holy obedience, command thee, that on receipt of these thou come into our presence. Given at Rome under the ring of the Fisherman at St. Peter's, the nineteenth of September, 1486. In the third year of our pontificate.

Hieronymus Balbanus."

The letters received, Bernardinus at once hastened to the City; but on the way he refreshed the people of Narni and of Tifernum with the food of the word of God. Narnia, commonly Narni, is a city of Umbria on the river Nera, which the Blessed could have visited on his journey from Assisi to Rome; but I do not know what people of Tifernum he here mentions: for neither Tifernum Metaurum in the duchy of Urbino, nor Tifernum Tiberinum on the boundary of that duchy and of Etruria, nor finally Tifernum of the Samnites in the kingdom of Naples, could he have visited on the same journey.

[172] But when the Pontiff's mandate had been heard in the City (so the annalist proceeds), but matters having meanwhile changed, he suggests many good things to him, it seemed best to wait for a while until the mind of Alphonsus, duke of Calabria, Ferdinand's firstborn (who was in command of the royal army), should be sounded out. Matters being settled, however, and minds pacified, the Pontiff, having spoken with Bernardinus many times, held him among his delights and wished to keep him with himself in the City. From the date of the letter, which the editor says he received from the original, and at the same time from what we have premised, gather whether at the time when it was written the city of Aquila had already come into the power of King Ferdinand. To me it appears more likely that Bl. Bernardinus was called by the Pontiff earlier, in order to settle the beginnings of the tumults of Aquila; but that, as these grew daily and the royal party there had prevailed too far, it seemed good to the same Pontiff not rashly to expose so great a Man to so present a peril of life, especially after he had received the news, which we have just reported, about the invaded city and the ecclesiastical men of his party cut down or driven out. What he did meanwhile at Rome let us see from the same Annals.

[173] Further, the Man of God, seizing this occasion, suggested many things and he obtains the confirmation of the Mont-de-piété of Mantua, that concerned the government of the Church and the fruit of souls; nor were these

despised by Innocent, but he judged them to have been uttered by an upright Man dear to the Deity, and carried them out in deed. But although the Pontiff showed himself kindly and accommodating and offered him whatever he might wish to ask, he nevertheless demanded nothing but a remission of his sins as often as he should pray for His Holiness, and the confirmation of the Mont-de-piété of Mantua, by which the great contradiction of its opponents should at last cease. Both were readily granted; although in the second matter M. Antonius de Grossis, bishop of Tivoli, an intimate of the Pontiff, opposed. But the reasons which he objected were learnedly refuted by Matthew Ubaldus of Perugia, auditor of the Roman Rota, by John Baptist Sanseverinus, principal professor of imperial law in the Roman Sapienza and consistorial advocate, and by another man of this profession celebrated among the people of Perugia, Ballionus de Monte Ubiano, who in the name of the college of Perugia published a learned opinion, or treatise, on the erection of Monts of this kind, at the request of Bl. James of Picenum.

[174] [a bull being published; by the same he is sent to settle the civil discords of Todi and Perugia] There is subjoined from the autograph the whole Bull, which begins: To the sacred See of Peter, etc., and is signed in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1486, the third of the Kalends of December, in the third year of our pontificate; but which I here pass over, because it is rather long, and was directed not to Bernardinus, of whom no mention is made in it by name, but to the city of Mantua, which had properly petitioned for it, likely at Bernardinus' persuasion and with his help; especially since it may be read in the praised Annals. He was not, however, so detained at Rome by the Pontiff as not also to instruct the citizens with his sacred sermons, until he was sent elsewhere. For, on the testimony of the same historian of the Minors, sermons having been delivered at the church of the Aracoeli of his Order, especially on the birthday of St. Francis, with an immense multitude of people running together, Bernardinus was ordered to return to Perugia to settle the fresh tumults of that people; yet so that he should turn aside to the people of Todi to render them a like benefit. Obeying promptly, he told the Pontiff that the people of Perugia were savage and prone to arms and slaughter and must be sternly restrained, and that a governor should be sent in who would restrain them by rigor and fear, as had been done under Paul II, in whose time they lived peaceably.

[175] to settle their civil discords; As he was about to depart, Angelus the vicar general commanded him, on account of the constitution of his wasted body, the discomfort of the roads and the rigor of winter, to ride, and enjoined his companions not to allow him to go on foot. * But he, unaccustomed to horses and by no means able to apply spurs to the flanks of a lagging horse (for the legs of the little Man were very short, scarcely reaching past the saddle), asked that he be permitted to walk in the religious and accustomed manner. When he had arrived at Perugia to the exultation of all the citizens, he began to preach on the third Sunday of Advent, and to exhort all to frequent the Sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist, to practice works of mercy, and to extinguish deadly enmities. Within a few days, according to Bernardinus' counsel, the Pontiff sent thither as governor, or legate, the bishop Castellanus, a Mantuan, a man most experienced in curial affairs and in government; and for the fuller repressing of the savage people he joined to him his own nephew, the archbishop of Cosenza, severe laws being besides passed against the disturbers of the peace and of the city.

[176] which, together with the Pontifical legates, That by the former of the two prelates praised there is not here designated the bishop of Civita Castellana, commonly Civita Castellana, I gather from Ughelli's Italia sacra reissued, volume 1, column 601, where Angelus Pechinolus, Perchinolus or Petrinolus, a citizen of that place, is said to have sat there at that time. But, unless I am mistaken, the bishop of Tifernum, or of Città di Castello, called by the Italians Citta de Castello, is indicated, which is a city of Umbria in the dominion of the Church situated near the Tiber, from which it is also called Tifernum Tiberinum. The reason for this suspicion is that in the same volume, column [ ], among the bishops of Tifernum, Bartholomew, or Bartolus Moranus, or, as is noted in the margin, Maraschus, a Mantuan, is read to have held that see from the year 1474 until 1487, in which he died at Rome; who also in his epitaph, which is reported in the same place, is called bishop Castellanus without any other word added. The other of the aforesaid, namely the archbishop of Cosenza, or Cusentinus, in Calabria Citeriore, was Nicolaus Cibo, who presided over that church from the year 1486 until 1489, in which he was translated to that of Arles. Ughelli, in volume 8 of the praised Work, column 256, in his elogium called Nicolaus the brother of Innocent VIII, who before his Pontificate was called John Baptist Cibo; the Sainte-Marthes, Scaevola and Louis, in the Gallia Christiana, whom Denis de Sainte-Marthe likewise followed in the same Work enlarged, called him his cousin; Petrus Saxius in the Pontifical of Arles his uncle; and finally the praised Wadding called Nicolaus the nephew of that Pontiff; which it is now no concern of ours to investigate.

[177] But it makes to our purpose what Ughelli has in the same place concerning the same Nicolaus, he happily carried out at Perugia. saying thus: In the year 1487 he was governor of Perugia; whence it is permitted to gather that he, if he was not given by Innocent as a colleague to the bishop of Tifernum in the pacifying of Perugia, as Wadding has it, at least succeeded him, when he died in that year 1487, in that charge and in the government of the city. But let us return whence we digressed — to the text, I mean, of the Annals. The Baglioni clan bore ill this bridle and these bonds laid upon them, to whose calming Bernardinus applied every effort; and on St. Sylvester's day (that is, the last day of the year 1486) he delivered a most learned sermon on the obedience due to the Pontifical laws, on the good of peace, on the harms of seditions, and on the penalties to be worthily inflicted upon the violators of the public peace. This disposition having been made beforehand, the Pontifical statutes were publicly read; then, the chief citizens being called to council and the leaders of the parties reconciled, the laws were accepted and the city pacified. The rest of what Bernardinus did at Todi and in other places we shall tell under the following year; to which some of the things I have now recounted also seem to belong.

* having begun

* curls

* that is, to go on foot

§ IX. At Todi he brings about peace among the citizens: at Perugia he greatly promotes the cult of the Bl. Virgin Mary, of St. Joseph, and of the most holy Sacrament: he works miracles: his other deeds in various places in the year 1487.

[ ] The people of Todi, at variance through civil hatreds Tudertum, otherwise Tuder, now called by the natives Todi, is an episcopal city of Umbria in the dominion of the Church, between Perugia and Narni, not far from the Tiber where it receives the Naia. Here too, as was then common enough in other cities of Italy, the inhabitants were at variance through civil hatreds; and to reconcile them Bl. Bernardinus set out at the beginning of the year 1487, having received in the year just past, as we related in the preceding §, a command from Pope Innocent VIII to do so. Wadding, praising as usual the manuscript Legends and Cimarella, book 6, chapter 22, writes the following on this subject. At the very beginning of this year (1487) Bernardinus of Feltre went away to Todi according to the Pontiff's wish, and by public sermons and pious exhortations brought back to peace the citizens, who were divided into two factions. Then, having reduced them into one body, he brought them into the Pontiff's allegiance, and so tamed them that they gladly allowed such laws to be passed as pleased Hieronymus of Urbino, bishop of Fossombrone. In Ughelli, volume 2 of the Italia sacra enlarged, column 834, Hieronymus Sanctuccius, of Urbino by birth, is read to have been at this time bishop of Fossombrone; but what has he to do with the people of Todi? The praised annalist, under the same year, number 23, asserts that he was governor of Todi; which perhaps must be taken only of an extraordinary power committed to him by the Pontiff for settling those disturbances.

[179] he reconciles to one another. However that may be, Bernardinus, in order to refresh the memory of the concord entered into among the people of Todi even in his absence, being about to depart thence before Septuagesima Sunday, unfolded on the pulpit, prepared in a very spacious court, a banner which he had had made in secret, on which Christ scourged, with arms outstretched, leaned forward over the city of Todi, while the citizens on their knees, hitherto divided into two parties, with eyes raised to Christ, said: "God is my portion." Christ in turn answered: "And I will be yours, if you will be mine." And at the end of the sermon, having uttered in fervor these words, "My peace I leave with you," having exhorted all to preserve the peace they had entered into, he asked that two similar banners be made; and he ordered one to be hung in the cathedral church, another at the church of St. Fortunatus, and a third in the city hall in testimony and exhortation of peace. As he came down from the pulpit all received him with tears, crying out with loud voices Peace, peace. Nevertheless they did not long persist in this pious fervor, the fire of discords being lulled rather than extinguished; so that it was necessary for the Blessed to return thither in the same year, when peace was at last established by firmer laws, as we shall tell in its place.

[180] At Foligno he falls into fever; he goes to Perugia, where of St. Joseph Having gone on from Todi to Foligno (or Fulginium, which is likewise a city of Umbria, commonly Foligno, on the river Topino), having preached twelve days in the cathedral church and denounced the games and madnesses of the Bacchanalia, he began to fall ill, and, carried on a little ass, arrived at Perugia at the beginning of Lent. Sick and weak, he began to preach in the cathedral church, and omitted to preach on no day, although he was afflicted with frequent symptoms of fever. On the day of St. Joseph, most solemn to the people of Perugia on account of the betrothal ring of the Bl. Virgin Mary which they possess, having instituted a magnificent procession and delivered a learned oration, he persuaded the magistracy to build a noble marble chapel for the guarding of the precious treasure, which they committed to an iron gilded casket, secured with four keys and adorned with precious jewels and in wondrous ways, the keys being divided among the superiors of the Dominican, Franciscan, Servite and Augustinian families.

[181] and of the betrothal ring of the Bl. Virgin Mary, This deed and the pious efforts of Bernardinus, John Baptist Laurus of Perugia — private chamberlain and secretary for the lighter letters to Urban VIII, and, while he lived, my own excellent friend — recounted thus in his learned little Commentary which he entitled on the betrothal ring of the Virgin Mother of God. "But that the cult of the ring, destined to endure among the people of Perugia, might be enlarged far and wide from day to day, the fathers judged that it should be transferred from the palace chapel to a worthier and more frequented place; and this not so much of their own accord as at the exhortation of Bl. Bernardinus of Montefeltro *, a Franciscan Minorite, who, excelling in exquisite knowledge of the higher arts and in holiness, was called a wonderful disciple of Jerome and Augustine, and, breathed upon by an inspired spirit, prophesied very many things; and among these were the wars (for by two comets seen at the beginning of the Pontificate of Sixtus IV they had abundantly given proof of what followed) which afterwards most disastrously devastated all Italy. This Preacher, most praised in that age, at Perugia while preaching adorned the dignity and excellence of the betrothal ring with the choicest sentences, and with vivid speech and generous encomia lifted it to heaven; at the same time he preached far more ardently that the observance, which had somewhat slipped backward (since humanity, prone to the worse, always indulges itself with gentle decrees), must be recalled."

[182] "To whose word the most wise magistracy at once gave ear. which the people of Perugia believe to be preserved among them, Wherefore it took care that a most richly adorned chapel should be built in the basilica of St. Laurence at the most magnificent expense, enclosed partly with a painted wall and carved panels, partly with iron pillars and gratings. At the top of this, upon a spear-shaped

bulwark, with a band drawn around it, these verses stand inscribed."

HERE THE QUEEN IS VENERATED, JOINED TO HER HUSBAND,

AND WITH READY EAR RECEIVES JUST PRAYERS.

1511.

IN THIS HOUSE LIES THE SACRED RING OF THE UNDEFILED MOTHER;

HE WHO GAVE IT IS THE GUARDIAN OF HIS OWN GIFT.

Then he continues (the words are Wadding's, concerning Laurus) with the excellent paintings of the chapel and the various adornment most worthy of so great a pledge; and he says that there lies there in a noble tomb the German Minorite, the author of so great a gift, who, having carried it off from the people of Chiusi, while he desires to transfer it into Germany, is compelled by divine arts to hand it over to the people of Perugia. After these things there follows the epitaph of that same Minorite, called Wintherius, which, because it does not belong here, I omit.

[183] For this place does not require that I examine the history of that ring, he greatly increased its religious veneration, which pertains to the Acts and cult of the most blessed Mother of God, to be illustrated after the end of our whole Work. Meanwhile it is certain that that ring, as the betrothal or espousal ring of that same most holy Virgin, is held in great esteem and veneration among the people of Perugia. I have recounted the words of Laurus from his Commentary published at Cologne in the year 1626, not from Wadding's Annals, because into these (of the Roman edition of the year 1735, which I use) several errors of the typesetters have crept; and, what is still more to be observed, the year of Christ 1511, placed in Laurus after the first two of the four verses given, has been omitted — from which it is clear that that adornment at least of the chapel is later than Bl. Bernardinus, who died happily in the year 1494. Yet nothing thereby is taken from the merits of the Blessed, at whose instance, while he lived, the adornment of that chapel and a greater veneration of the Mother of God and of her undefiled spouse Joseph there had their beginning. Thus far concerning the chapel; but concerning the society, or sodality, erected on the same occasion, the following may be read in the same Annals.

[184] Further, Bernardinus, beyond the work of the chapel that was built, and the sodality of St. Joseph, to which he himself gave his name, employed as guardians and sentinel soldiers of the most precious treasure the confrères of the sodality of St. Joseph; and the first founder of this confraternity was the bishop of the city (this was then Dionysius Vannuccius), the second Bernardinus himself, who also prescribed its statutes; then men of note, the clergy and the common people gave in their names abundantly, and there hung before the noble repository thirteen lamps, the greatest of all being placed in the middle, that they might signify the watch and faithful guardianship of the Virgin pledged with this ring and of the twelve Apostles. Caesar Crispoltus of Perugia, in the Perusia Augusta, book 1, part 2, chapter 13, describing the cathedral church of St. Laurence in which the aforesaid chapel stands, likewise asserts that the confraternity of St. Joseph was instituted in it by our Bl. Bernardinus in the year 1487, and that in his own time also, that is in the seventeenth century, it continues, but joined with the confraternity of the most holy Sacrament, and is on that account called that of the Most Holy Sacrament and of St. Joseph.

[185] and he instituted a solemn procession of the Most Holy Sacrament: Concerning the name given to that sodality by Bernardinus he agrees, and proves it from the book of that sodality, in which he affirms that he read this profession of his written in his own hand, but in Italian words: I, brother Bernardinus de Feltro, of the Order of Minors, a little and poor man, offer myself to be of the fraternity and society of the glorious patriarch St. Joseph, the virginal spouse of the immaculate Virgin Mary, the foster-father and guardian of our Lord Jesus Christ. He adds finally that it was ordained by the same Blessed that on the festal day of St. Joseph a solemn procession should be held every year, and that this was observed in his own time also with a great concourse and devotion of the people. The rest of the same Blessed's deeds at Perugia the annalist goes on to narrate in the same place in these words. Besides these things, he took care that on the fifth feria of Holy Week a solemn and devout procession should be held, that the institution of so great a Sacrament might be more worthily celebrated, which the bishop of the city himself carried about in a costly portable shrine.

[186] he works miracles both here, On the following day he exhorted them to penance and worthy satisfaction for sins, and on the Saturday and at the dawning of the Resurrection to rise with Christ and to savor the things that are above; and with health always weak, but with a firm and constant spirit, he completed his sermons with the most abundant * fruit of peace and piety. His teaching the Lord approved with many signs: for by the little papers on which he wrote the name Jesus, and by little pieces of bread carefully taken from his table, many recovered from many infirmities. The little brother of Brother Barnabas of Perugia was hastening toward death, and his father ran to Bernardinus that he might help. He gave a little paper marked with the name of Jesus, and bade him bless him and fortify him with the sign of the Cross. The pious father did so, and at once the sickly son rose up and supped at table with his parents. This prodigious cure of the boy, and perhaps some others which he mentioned only in general, seem to have happened at Perugia; but the one which next follows certainly took place elsewhere, namely at Acquasparta, which is a stronghold of Umbria, commonly called Acquasparta, and is marked in the most recent geographical map of the dominion of the Church by Fr. Christopher Maire almost midway on the road between Spoleto and Amelia.

[187] and at Acquasparta: another assertion of Wadding is weighed. At Acquasparta (on Wadding's testimony), by a single sermon only, and by healing a woman epileptic and wounded in the head, he stirred all to love and admiration of himself. Franciscus Surianus of Venice, of whom we have spoken elsewhere in passing, desiring to pass from the office of confessor, which he had exercised prudently and diligently for many years, to that of preacher, met Bernardinus and asked him to teach him the rudiments of the Evangelical function and to impress the sign of the Cross upon his tongue. When he had done so, the other felt a divine zeal for souls instilled into him, and preached learnedly and with fruit first in Etruria; then, being appointed guardian of Jerusalem, he went on to Alexandria, where in many places of Egypt he won many for Christ. So indeed he; but from the very place of those same Annals which he alleges in the margin for the mention made of Surianus, a doubt arises in me. For he praises the year 1455, number 87; but there is reported his testimony concerning a prodigy done at Beirut in Syria in that year, and in the time of that same Surianus, while he was staying in those parts. But in what way are the things just said true, if he was already from the year 1455, in which Bernardinus was in the sixteenth or seventeenth year of his age, in Syria? Did he perhaps afterwards return to Europe? Or had Wadding read these things of St. Bernardino of Siena, and incautiously transferred them to the man of Feltre? I confess that I do not discern this: but certainly if they are referred to the man of Siena, who died in the year 1444, every objected difficulty will cease.

[188] After these things about miracles, inserted perhaps partly at another time and place, the often-praised Minorite returns to his other deeds. His banishment is lifted: he burns magical books at Perugia. It was now the fourth year since, on account of the Pontifical interdict religiously observed, he had been in exile from the Venetian dominion, his own country, of which he had deserved exceedingly well — he alone being excepted in the decree of the senate by which, in the year 1484, peace having been made between the Pontiff and the Venetians, it had been granted to the other Friars Minor, exiles for the same cause, to return thither. At last in this year 1487, while he was still living at Perugia, he received letters from Antonius Foscarus, the Venetian guardian of the convent called a Vineis, saying that in the supreme council of the Ten the edict of exile formerly promulgated against him had been revoked, and that the senate was borne by a great desire that he should return to his country. What he answered to this I have not ascertained; but he does not seem ever to have returned to the city of Venice itself. As he was about to depart from Perugia (for Todi) he burned a huge heap of magical, necromantic and evil-arts books, to which very many of that people were addicted.

[189] Having returned to Todi, he found that party zeal had sprouted again, At Todi he restores and confirms peace: and that many of the factious had labored at Rome that the most worthy governor whom we mentioned before should be removed from that office; namely Hieronymus Sanctuccius, bishop of Fossombrone, concerning whom consult what was said at number 178. They grieved that they were restrained by the authority of so great a man, and desired that the reins should be loosed to their feuds and hatreds. Bernardinus resisted, and in many sermons set forth the advantage of peace, the harms of enmity, and the merit and praise of reverence toward the ministers of the Apostolic See. At last, sixteen articles of a solid peace having been prescribed, he carried around through the city the banner of peace, of which we have spoken, unfurled, the procession of all being ordered, and those who followed carrying olive branches, a token of the peace established. This day, solemn and salutary to the people of Todi, was carefully noted in the Annals of the city, and Bernardinus' likeness was carved in the senate house.

[190] Having gone on to preach further concerning the leading of a Christian life, he preaches at Spoleto and at Assisi, where he is understood by various nations; concerning the moderating of daughters' dowries, concerning the diminishing of luxury and the tempering of pomp, and concerning the good and religious education of children, he was called away by Pontifical letters to Spoleto. Here, while he was preaching daily with great gain of souls, urging frequent use of the Sacraments and teaching the manner of receiving the gifts of the Holy Spirit, whose most solemn feast of apparition was at hand, he set out for the general chapter of his Order, which we have said was held about that time (on the Kalends of June) in this year at Assisi. There he preached on the very day of Pentecost: Poles, Austrians, Bohemians and fellow religious of other foreign nations understood him excellently, as though he spoke in the tongue of each. There he received letters from the Florentines saying that they had now for the third time chosen him as their preacher, and had obtained a Pontifical decree that he should not be sent or set out elsewhere, but should preach in the following Lent.

[191] [At Spoleto he procures the expulsion of mountebanks; he burns the enticements to sins.] Staying here a little while, being about to carry out the Pontiff's mandate, he returned to Spoleto, and thence expelled the Ceretani, a most wicked and fraudulent kind of men, and purged of many superstitions and diabolical impostures the suburbs in which they dwelt in abundance. Ceretano to the Italians is a mountebank or itinerant seller of drugs, that is, of that kind of men who, in order to sell their trifles, are wont to impose upon the unwary common people by histrionic arts and tricks. Ambrosius Calepinus in his Lexicon says that these Caeretani were so called from Caeretum, a town of Umbria, perhaps because several mountebanks of this kind took their origin from it. Further, before Bernardinus went away from Spoleto, he built there too a pyre of the demon (so they called it), in which there burned the instruments of the demon, the counterfeit adornments of women and of beauty, dice, gaming boards and playing cards, love songs, and every pernicious book. As he departed almost the whole people followed him, and more than five hundred little children were brought before him that he might impart his blessing. Wishing to avoid the reputation for virtue and holiness conceived of him, he refused to bless; he said that this ought to be done by their parents, whose curses or blessings he made much of.

[192] He preaches at Trevi and Foligno; at Assisi he enlarges the Mont-de-piété; Having set out for Trevi (which is a town or village on the right side of the road that leads from Spoleto to Foligno), he preached for a week; and going on thence to Foligno, having exhorted to peace and concord those who were at deadly variance among themselves, he foretold the ruin of the city if they did not put an end to their factions. That he pronounced truly they proved by their own hurt: for, the citizens being split into opposing parties, a numerous band was gathered, and the country people plundered the city and killed very many of the nobles. I could wish that Wadding had added here in what year, and under what leader or on what occasion, that

plundering of the city by the country people occurred, concerning which I can assert nothing from elsewhere. Meanwhile, pursuing his journey, he came to Assisi, where he enlarged the Mont-de-piété, five hundred gold pieces being applied to it which had been bequeathed by will for pious uses to be distributed at his discretion, and by six sermons which he delivered in the market-place he stirred many to add further moneys.

[193] he labors to establish peace among the citizens, and to the obstinate Besides this he appointed conservators of the peace which he had brought in (for everywhere this plague of factions prevailed at that time). On the feast of St. Clare, that most splendid ornament of the city (that is, on the twelfth day of August), he delivered a most learned sermon, and honored with many honors her line and kinsmen, whom he found to exist in a nowhere interrupted line, as we have said elsewhere. By the line of St. Clare understand kinsfolk begotten of the same stock as she: for Clare died a most chaste virgin. But in the margin Wadding refers his reader to the year 1212, where at numbers 14 and 15, recounting the family of that same St. Clare, he denies that besides Cimarella he has found anyone who has carried down that Saint's kindred beyond Bl. Silvester, a follower of St. Francis, who was born of Boso, son of Monaldus, St. Clare's uncle. These things, therefore, rest on Cimarella's authority. Presently, concerning another sedition which the Blessed then strove in vain to check at Assisi, and the punishment therefore foretold by him to the obstinate, Wadding speaks rather obscurely in these words.

[194] he foretells punishments: he delivers several sermons at Camerino Having inveighed vehemently against two seditious parties which were contending over a certain territory, and at last giving it away to the Baglioni of Perugia, lest one party should be beaten by the other, after the manner of that impious woman, saying "Neither for me nor for thee, but let it be divided," he cried with a great voice: "Beware," he said, "lest you summon the satellites and ministers of God to punish you severely: you are hiding and cherishing a serpent in your bosom." He foretold truly, since the Baglioni clan afterwards rushed upon them and scourged them wretchedly. In this same year Norcia also, cultivated by our Blessed's sermons, bore copious fruits. This is a city of Umbria toward the confines of Picenum, called by the natives Norcia, formerly episcopal, but now for many centuries subject in spiritual matters to the bishop of Spoleto, from whose see it is noted as distant only twenty Roman miles in the geographical map of father Christopher Maire praised elsewhere. He was sent thither by his vicar general John of Sestri, and afterwards by order of Pope Innocent VIII stayed there for some time. From Assisi, however, he first turned aside to Camerino, a city of the March of Ancona, which at that time had its own dukes, and had them down to the Pontificate of Paul III; and thence to Visum, commonly Visso, a stronghold or village on the river Nera, situated between Camerino and Norcia.

[195] Being sent to Norcia by the vicar general (the annalist of the Minors continues) that he might cultivate that uncultivated people, and in the stronghold of Visso: cultivating the people of Norcia excellently, and being asked at Camerino by the petty ruler (or duke) of the city, he preached on the day of the assumption of the Bl. Virgin Mary. Being compelled to stay some days in the stronghold of Visso, he tamed and pacified the wild people, and freed it, as he had the city of Spoleto, from that plague of the Ceretani (concerning which see number 191). To the people of Norcia he preached every day in the public market-place, and by such skill and labor as he could he wonderfully reformed manners foreign to the usage of other peoples: he taught them another manner of governing the commonwealth; he opened up by many precepts the way in which children were to be brought up, and brought peace upon most disordered affairs. There were men who for seven years and more had abstained from mutual company and conversation on account of hatreds and enmities and homicides; and these Bernardinus brought back to the kisses of peace. With what eager ears the inhabitants received the blessed Man's admonitions may also be gathered from this, that, having sent either letters or messengers to Pope Innocent, they supplicated that he by his supreme authority would order Bernardinus to continue there, at least for some time, the sermons he had begun: which they also obtained, by letters which Wadding recites from the autograph, saying thus.

[196] As he was girding himself for the journey toward Parma, where the Pontiff had ordered him to preach through Advent, he is ordered by the Pontiff to remain among them for the whole of September he received this other mandate of his.

"To our beloved son, brother Bernardinus de Feltro, of the Order of Minors of the Observance.

Beloved son, greeting, etc. We have understood that thou hast for some time preached in our land of Norcia with great satisfaction and spiritual consolation of that people, which hopes much in thy sound admonitions, and which sees that, if thou shalt remain there longer, abundant fruit will come forth thence. Accordingly all supplicate that we would deign to grant their pious wish in this. We, inclining to supplications of this kind, as those who desire above all the salvation of souls and the quiet and unity of Christ's faithful, exhort thy devotion, nevertheless commanding thee in virtue of holy obedience by Apostolic authority, that for the whole month of September thou preach there and depart not from Norcia, that thou mayest be able to complete the good work which thou hast begun, and that from the salutary seed the fruits may come to maturity. Thereafter thou shalt strive to accomplish what has been commanded thee by our other letters. Given at Rome at St. Peter's under the ring of the Fisherman, the first day of September, 1487. In the third year of our pontificate." This year is counted from his coronation, made on the twelfth day of September of the year 1484, in the month of August of which, on the twenty-ninth, his election had taken place.

[197] to remain: hence, making for Parma, along the way He remained therefore at Norcia until the beginning of October, God through him bearing wondrous fruit in a barren and rough land. But then, being about to go to Parma, that by the Pontiff's mandate he might there speak to the people through the coming Advent, he came through rough mountains sown with snow to Foligno; thence he went away to Gubbio (an episcopal city, commonly Gubbio, in the duchy of Urbino), where, being rather harshly received by a certain man on account of the Hebrews expelled thence and the Mont-de-piété erected, he kept himself within the bounds of his monastery, and preached to his fellows, especially to the novices. Pursuing his journey hence, at Cagli (to the natives Cagli, which is a city of the same duchy, distinguished by a bishopric) he delivered one sermon; at Pesaro (in Italian Pesaro, in the same duchy on the Adriatic sea) five; at Rimini (in the vernacular Rimini, in the Romagna situated on the shore of the aforesaid sea) two; where, amid the very crowded fairs which were then being held in that city, he taught in the market-place that that is the true fair-dealing by which * at a small price the eternal and immense goods of paradise are procured.

[198] he scatters the seed of the divine word in various places. Received at Ravenna with the applause of all, he preached for three days in the cathedral church; thence he was carried by boat to Ferrara; thence he went on to the stronghold of Revere in the territory of Mantua, where, having preached nine days, he set up a burning of vanities and of the instruments of evil. Staying twenty days at Mantua, he delivered as many sermons, and by a huge pyre overthrew the evil arts of the demon. Departing hence, being asked by Rodulphus Gonzaga, he preached at Luzzara, at Viadana, and at Brescello, everywhere scattering the fruitful seeds of the virtues. Luzzara is marked in the Blaeu maps as a stronghold in the duchy of Mantua, not far from the Po, where it receives the river commonly called the Crostolo. By Leandro Alberti in his description of Italy it is called the village of Luzaria. Viadana, by some called Vitellianum, is a little town of the same duchy on the left bank of the Po, and opposite Bresellum, or Brixellum, in Italian Brissello, a town on the right bank of the said river and in the duchy of Reggio.

* otherwise, from the city of Feltre

* or, most joyful?

* by which

§ X. His deeds at Parma in the year 1487 and the following on behalf of the immaculate Conception of the Bl. Virgin Mary, for the reforming of the morals of clergy and people, and for the erecting of a Mont-de-piété: having also attempted to found a Mont-de-piété at Florence, he is driven out, and is honorably received by the people of Siena, and renders them many benefits.

[ ] [He leads the people of Parma to the cult of the immaculate Conception of the Bl. Virgin Mary] After a long and laborious journey and the instruction of peoples along the way, of which we treated in the preceding §, Bernardinus at last came to Parma about the Advent of the Lord, whose first Sunday in the year 1487 fell on the second day of December, where he had been ordered by Pope Innocent VIII to preach at that time. Great was the esteem in which he was held among the people of Parma on account of the Man's manifest holiness and the sermons delivered by him there both at other times and lately in the preceding year with the happiest success, as was said in §8. For which reason he was received with great joy by all good men, and from minds so well prepared he bore the most desired fruits, which Wadding recounted from his manuscript Legends and from Cimarella partly under this year 1487 and partly under the following, and which I subjoin in his words. He began to preach at Parma on the first Sunday of Advent, to the incredible gladness of the citizens, who by night came beforehand to the places from which they could hear him speaking. Having often preached against moneylenders and the usuries of the Hebrews, he at last obtained (namely in the following year) that a Mont-de-piété should be erected.

[200] Concerning the conception of the blessed Virgin he discoursed so piously and so learnedly he takes away vices and discords; the incitements to lasciviousness that in chapter they decreed that in their church the original purity of the most sacred Virgin should not be called into doubt; and by decree of the senate the day of this mystery was declared a feast. Dicers, gamesters and usurers he caused to be put outside the city; he extinguished factions; he took care that through the city there should be sung by boys, and in the streets and public places affixed, the words: God is my portion for ever; the emblems and signs of the parties, painted at the doors of the factious, he caused to be blotted out, and the most sacred name Jesus, with the aforesaid words written beneath, to be painted there. At last a huge castle made of the incitements to sins, and of love books — even well bound and costly with silver and gold, which the duke of Milan John Maria Galeazzo sent to his mistress — he handed over to Vulcan, to the great jubilation of the citizens. The duke of Milan at that time was in fact John Galeazzo Maria, under his guardian Ludovico Sforza, who had usurped the government of the duchy; but I certainly wonder that Bernardinus dared to burn publicly his love books sent to his mistress, not without some disgrace to the prince, in the city of Parma, which obeyed that same duke.

[201] Or should Galeazzo Maria, his father, perhaps be substituted for John Galeazzo Maria, he publicly burns; to the governor of Parma, who was killed by conspirators toward the end of the year 1476, and who is read in Muratori, volume 9 of the Annals of Italy under the year just cited, to have been given over to lust? Certainly there would have been less danger in casting upon a public pyre little books of that kind sent long ago by him, then dead, than ones lately destined for his mistress by a young reigning prince. But, however these things may stand, let us pursue the narrative. The city of Parma was ruled by John Peter of Bergamo, commissary of the duke of Milan, by whose fault the factions lately extinguished by Bernardinus almost revived, and who altogether prevented the cloisters of the nuns, who were leading too loose a life, from being reformed and closed. The Man of God sharply rebuked the man, and, threatening vengeance from heaven, said that within a year he would pay the penalty by a deadly death.

[202] He prophesied truly; for after a few months, the prince of Faenza having died, into that city

the commissary was sent away by the duke, and was cut to pieces by the people of the Val Camonica: and when the people of Parma heard this, remembering Bernardinus' prophecy, they attributed it to the just judgment of God. Thus far there; concerning which, for the sake of illustration, some things must be noted.

Concerning that deadly slaying of Galeottus Manfredi, lord of Faenza in the Romagna, foully butchered in his own wife's chamber on the thirty-first day of May in the year 1488, consult, if you please, Julius Caesar Tonduzzi, a priest of Faenza, in his History of that city, written in Italian, part 3, page 532. Meanwhile, as regards our matter, he writes that the people of Faenza, dismayed by that event, in order to preserve the princedom for Astorgius, the son of the deceased, called into the city the soldiers of their territory, especially from the Valley which takes its name from the river Lamone flowing through it, and which Wadding called the Val Camonica. Besides this he says that count Peter John Bergomini, governor of Forlì for the duke of Milan, also hastened thither with some band of soldiers, at the request of John Bentivoglio, the father-in-law of the slain prince, who had also flown thither with his people of Bologna.

[203] and he was a truthful prophet, He adds finally that the aforesaid count Bergomini was killed with many wounds, along with fifty of his men, by the people of Faenza, to whom he was suspect, or whom he had offended. All these things agree rightly with Wadding's assertions, except that he places the name John before Peter, and calls him not Bergominus, which appears to be his own or his family's surname, but Bergomensis, as though from his native city of Bergamo; and that Tondutius names him governor of Forlì, not of Parma. Yet, whatever the case may be, Bonaventura Angeli, almost a whole century older than Tondutius, in the History of the city of Parma published in print in the year 1591, book 4, likewise has it that John Peter Bergaminus presided as governor over the city of Parma in the year 1487. Perhaps therefore he passed from the government of one city to that of another, or held some authority in both at once. And let these things suffice for the aforesaid prophecy of Bl. Bernardinus, after which Wadding in the often-praised Annals of the Minors records another twofold one of the same kind.

[204] Two other prophecies of this kind. I shall subjoin, he says, two other proofs of divine vengeance foretold by him. A dealer in masks at Parma, when he saw his wares despised and even burned through Bernardinus' sermons, after uttering reproaches and insults against the Servant of God, resolved to carry the masks that remained to Mantua and to sell them at a higher price. When the Man of God learned this: "Let him go," he said, "where he will; the judgment of God will pursue him; he will not arrive at Mantua unharmed." He spoke truly: he had scarcely gone nine thousand paces from the city when he fell with his pack and his horse into a deep pit full of water, nor could any of his wares or his beast be brought out thence. A thief cut off the silver clasps from women's girdles in the very midst of the sermons: on the following day, after these things had been told to Bernardinus, he sharply rebuked from the pulpit the man whom he recognized as present by the spirit. "O wicked scoundrel," he said, "dost thou dare thus to commit sacrileges of this kind in the temple of God; and while others attend to the word of God, dost thou steal their goods? The punishment of the cross awaits thee as thy due; nor will it tarry." On the following night he was caught in theft, and by the force of tortures confessed many things which he had done, and with the women's clasps hung about his neck he was hanged from the window of the senate house. These things were done at Parma in this year; the rest will be told under the following year.

[205] There he instructs the clergy apart, But there, the Legends being praised in the margin, and Cimarella, book 6, chapter 27 and following, from number 6 he narrates the same things in this way. After he had reformed the morals of the people, he judged that the clergy also should be admonished concerning certain things; and this he did at the request of the Dominican prelate, suffragan of the Cardinal bishop (John James Sclafinatus, or Sclafenatus). And so at the beginning of this year (1488), on account of the reverence due to the more sacred order of men, he called together into the chief church of the city, besides the priests of the chapter, one hundred and forty; and, the doors being shut and the said prelate being present, after he had learnedly discoursed on the priestly dignity and office, he reverently set forth the things to be corrected, bringing forward chiefly those reasons: that they were chosen by God into the lot of the sacred ministry, appointed teachers of the people, and set in a lofty place, and owed all men a religious example.

[206] At last, for the removal of the intolerable usuries of the Hebrews, he erected a Mont-de-piété, he erects a Mont-de-piété, whose rules and statutes the duke of Milan, prince of the city, confirmed; although there were those who resisted its erection, reckoning the rate of interest unlawful. Their arguments were answered at Milan by Theophylus Stanga of Cremona, abbot general of the Congregation of St. Justina of Padua, formerly superior of the monastery of Parma and most devoted to Bernardinus. Within a few days a huge sum of money was collected; officers were appointed and presidents designated: the bishop's vicar, the abbot of the monastery of St. John, the Prior of the Canons Regular and the guardian of the Minors Observant. With these things Bonaventura Angeli agrees, book 4 of the History of Parma published in Italian, where he refers the erection of the said Mont partly to the year 1487 and partly to 1488, in which he writes that besides the four Religious already praised, whom he mentions only in general, nine others also were set over it — namely three doctors, three merchants and three other citizens — and that it was ordained that this number and quality of presidents should thereafter always be preserved.

[207] The clergy being thus reformed (Wadding here subjoins), the people instructed, he wonderfully reforms morals, vices cut away, the usury of the Hebrews routed, he steadied a city tottering with crimes and discords. The memory of so great a benefit flourishes perpetually among the people of Parma, and they wished it to be made manifest in their Annals. Thus under this year the History of Parma reports the Man's virtues, his learned sermons, and his various services to the commonwealth. "About this time there preached at Parma Bernardinus of Feltre, surnamed the Little One, of the Franciscan Observance, whose sermons were most efficacious on account of the sweetness of his manners, his knowledge of sacred Letters, his reproof and chastisement of vices, and his apt application of examples. There was added besides holiness of life, the poverty of his institute, spiritual conversation, kindness, purity and candor of manners, and the most exact observance of the whole Christian law; so that easily and with a wonderful economy of labor he drew the whole people over to his opinion. All venerated and feared him as a true Apostle of Christ and a holy evangelist of the Lord.

[208] At his nod (wonderful thing!) they despised the delights of the world, and he trains the people of Parma to lead a Christian life. lived a Christian life, observing the divine commandments and the one rule of Christian profession. And as is wont to happen, after one benefit or advantage others follow; so it happened here: for after the morals of the people had been chastened, without great difficulty he instituted a Mont-de-piété for relieving the necessities of the poor and for removing the insatiable gluttony of the Hebrews. This work John Peter Bergaminus, governor of the city, strongly favored, much money being contributed by the clergy, the magistracy, the doctors, the nobles, the merchants, the craftsmen, men and women, and the whole people." Thus far Bonaventura Angeli in the History of Parma, praised at number 203, from which Wadding excerpted these things and turned them from Italian into Latin. For the rest, if John Peter Bergaminus, governor of Parma, is the same as he who above at number 201 is called by the same annalist John Peter Bergomensis, and who is said to have resisted Bl. Bernardinus in the reforming of the convents of nuns, he at least, on Bonaventura's testimony, will have favored him in the erection of the Mont-de-piété.

[209] For the confirming of a great part of the aforesaid we have here Innocentius of Pavia in the History of the cult, chapter 2, [The same things are confirmed from the Preface to the statutes of the Mont-de-piété.] in which he writes that the Mont of Parma was confirmed in that same year 1488 by Innocent VIII, and its statutes approved, from the Preface of which he recites the following in Latin. Then, when there came to us the venerable man, full of admirable holiness, in that age (be the word without ill will) easily the first of Preachers of the Gospel, blessed Bernardinus of Feltre, called Peccininus, otherwise Picolinus (each word in Italian means the Little One), of the Order of blessed Francis of the Observance, to preach the Gospel again, whose sermons were so efficacious by the sweetness of his manners, his ecclesiastical knowledge, his reproof of vices, his chastisement, his setting forth of examples, his holiness, his mendicancy, his spirituality, his kindness, his candor and the purity of the whole Christian religion, that with no or with little trouble he drew the whole people of Parma exceedingly over to his opinion, and brought it about that (wonderful to say), all worldly enticements being laid aside, men of both sexes turned themselves to living well and blessedly, to observing the precepts of Almighty God, and to the true rule of the Christian profession.

[210] And as it happens, out of one good very many goods easily follow at once. For soon thereupon the Mont-de-piété of the aforesaid gracious city was erected and founded by the aforesaid council and the decurions of Parma, with a great disbursement of moneys according to each one's means by the whole clergy, the ducal magistrates, the decurions, the doctors, the nobles, the citizens, the merchants, the craftsmen, the women, the boys, the infants and the whole people of Parma, for the relief of the poor and for the extirpation of the insatiable gulf of the usuries of the Hebrews, the aforesaid Brother Bernardinus being the promoter and leader of so great a work, and the magnificent count John Peter Bergaminus its keenest supporter, with the glorious raising of the banner of piety. That in this Preface Bernardinus is called Blessed raises a doubt whether it is so ancient, or whether it was written while he was still living, as Innocentius maintains. From the phrasing also it is sufficiently clear either that this same Preface went before Bonaventura Angeli, whose words we have reported from Wadding, or that Bonaventura went before the author of the Preface.

[211] After so precious a harvest gathered at Parma, the untiring Laborer of the Lord to preach at Florence through Lent girded himself to spend his labor elsewhere. I said at number 158 of this Commentary that he, being invited in the year 1486 by the Florentines by a public decree of the senate and magistracy to preach at Florence in the following year 1487 in the time of Lent, excused himself because he was not his own master and depended solely on the command of his superiors. That in the said year 1487 he delivered the Lenten sermons at Perugia, and others in other places by the direction of the supreme Pontiff, I have shown in §8. The Florentines therefore, that they might not again be disappointed of their wishes, asked Innocent for him for the Lent of this year 1488, and obtained the desired command on this matter, which they made known to Bernardinus by letters while he was staying in the preceding year about the feast of Pentecost at the chapter of his Order at Assisi, as was likewise said at number 190. The Pontiff himself also sent his own letters to Bernardinus on this matter, which Wadding exhibits as transcribed from his very autograph, and which I here subjoin.

[212] he is ordered by Pope Innocent "To our beloved son Bernardinus de Feltro, of the Order of Minors of the Observance.

Beloved son, greeting, etc. Granting the pious desire of our beloved sons of the Florentine dominion, who hope much in thy doctrine and in the exemplariness of thy life and desire to hear thee in thy preachings, we command thee by the tenor of these presents, expressly enjoining in virtue of holy obedience, that in the Lent next to come thou go to Florence and preach in the church of the house of the Holy Cross of thy Order, and announce the word of God, gaining souls according to the faculty delivered to thee from above; notwithstanding anything to the contrary whatsoever. Given at Rome at St. Peter's under the ring of the Fisherman, the first day of March, 1488. In the fourth year of our pontificate." There is no doubt that these chronological notes belong to that same year of Christ, and not to another

can belong: since Innocent VIII was elected in the year 1484 on the twenty-ninth day of August, and crowned on the twelfth of September of the same year; and therefore, from whichever epoch you begin, the fourth year of his Pontificate was running on the first of March of the year 1488, nor could that same day in any other year of Christ have coincided with the fourth year of his Pontificate.

[213] But it is also certain from another source that either some error lies hidden in those notes, concerning whose letter or that that letter was first given after Bl. Bernardinus had already begun to preach at Florence. For, on Wadding's testimony, he began his sermons there on the sixth feria before Quinquagesima Sunday, which Sunday in the leap year 1488 fell on the seventeenth day of February; since Easter had then to be celebrated on the sixth day of April, as we have from the golden number 7 and the Dominical letters F and E. But the letter is said to be signed on the first day of March, which was the Saturday within the first Sunday of Lent. In what way then shall we say that Bernardinus set out from Parma for Florence at the prescription of that letter, as Wadding hints, premising this: These things having been usefully and happily carried through among the people of Parma, very early in the morning, before it grew light, lest they should accompany him in throngs as he departed, he withdrew, to preach at Florence in Lent, as had been commanded by the Pontiff through this diploma.

[214] Besides, if the aforesaid letter was first written after the Lent of that year had begun, some things are observed: along the way he preaches at Reggio, Modena why does the praised Pontiff speak of it as only about to begin, saying, we command that in the Lent next to come thou go to Florence? Every difficulty will cease if for the first of March there be read the first of January. If nevertheless that same letter was in fact signed on the first day of March, it may be said that Bernardinus set out not at the prescription of this one but of that which the Florentines had received in the preceding year from the same Pontiff, as I said at number 211; and that that later one was given by Innocent, later indeed, but given nevertheless, so that Bernardinus himself might be made more certain about the earlier one and might lay aside every doubt he might have; and that for the rest those words in the Lent next to come must be taken of the course of a Lent already begun. Now let us follow him as he departs for Florence with the same annalist. Having gone out of Parma very early in the morning before daylight, in order to avoid the applause and escort of men, and having entered upon a journey otherwise also inconvenient at the winter season, he preached at Reggio and at Modena as he passed through.

[215] At Bologna he had to stay seven days on account of the continual snows; [and at Bologna: at Florence, having begun to speak for the erecting of a Mont-de-piété,] nor yet did he take holiday from good works: for, while the people could not come to the sermons because of the inconvenience of the snow, he preached daily at the monasteries of virgins. This, forsooth, was the laborious Man's usual rest from a journey; after which, pressing on with the road he had begun, having crossed the Alps (that is, the Apennines), amid the utmost inclemency of the sky and the hardships of the road, through snows, rains and whirlwinds, with his little bundles of books hung upon his shoulders, he at last came on foot to Florence. Received with the greatest congratulation of all, he began his sermons on the sixth feria before Quinquagesima Sunday. On the day of the Chair of St. Peter (namely at Antioch, whose memory is kept on the twenty-second day of February), after he had discoursed on ecclesiastical immunity, on the priestly dignity, and on the heavy burden lately laid upon the clergy in the exaction of contributions and taxes, and had preached that the misery of the poor, whose substance the Hebrews had devoured, must be relieved, he said that the erection of a Mont-de-piété must be resumed, which the magistracy had decreed eighteen years before, with the conditions and rules written down, which he received from the notary who had then served in the matter.

[216] he had as adversaries the Jews, and those whom they had corrupted with money: Very many called the proposal an excellent one, and many openly in the very sermon assigned rich offerings for the beginning of the pious work. But others opposed such happy beginnings — some lest they should be barred from their accustomed usuries, others seduced by gifts or by wicked persuasions. There was then at Florence (Wadding subjoins) a wealthy and powerful Hebrew, who by four toll-houses set up in the city had swallowed up the means of the poor, and grieved that he was being robbed of so great an interest. He had accordingly entered into a secret compact with the senators and the chief men of the council that they should not approve the little Friar's devices, but should steadily reject a matter discussed and neglected on other occasions. There flew thither also, to overthrow this affair, the Jew of Pisa, the chief and director of all the moneylenders of that nation who were scattered through Tuscany; and, having secretly distributed more than twenty thousand gold florins, he corrupted the consuls.

[217] and hence a murmuring of the people and a rising against the Jews, Bernardinus, warned by his friends, and that he might exhort the consuls and Lorenzo de' Medici, the leader of all, to give their favor, went to each one and earnestly asked that they would promote a matter most pleasing to God and exceedingly profitable to the city. But although they promised that they would do so, and treated the Man of God with the greatest honor, the Hebrews prevailed by their arts and gifts. A grave murmuring soon followed among the people, and Bernardinus' free rebuke from the pulpit (who also implored the pure and, with God, efficacious prayers of children) brought it about that the boys in a numerous band rushed upon the houses of the Hebrews, especially of the chief one, and it came little short of their killing them all. Beyond doubt that sedition was far from the mind of Bl. Bernardinus, a most gentle man and a great lover of peace, who had implored the prayers of children before God, not their hands; but the plebeian youth, exasperated by the murmuring of their parents and by Bernardinus' sermon against his own intent and beyond measure, undertook that deed while he was wholly unaware of it.

[218] in which nevertheless the Blessed himself But although his virtue and his so often proven love of peace sufficiently guard him from sinister suspicions, yet, that every scruple on this matter may be removed from the readers, it will be useful here to have shown what he himself was accustomed to preach about the Jews and against them. Bernardinus a Clastidio in the Life, chapter 15, opportunely recites part of that sermon which he delivered publicly at Crema after the aforesaid Florentine event. The Italian words run thus in Latin. I, however, if the Hebrews must be spoken of, shall say what I say in all other cities: that no one — by as much as his own soul is dear to him — may harm the Hebrews, whether in their person, or in their property, or in any other matter whatsoever: for justice, Christian piety and love must be shown to the Jews also, since they too are of our human nature: "Because they must be cherished for their humanity alone. Chapter Judaei, on witnesses." So have I always said in all cities, and even now I say at Crema, and I ask to be heard; because it is fitting, because the supreme Pontiffs so command, because Christian charity so requires.

[219] But it is also true that the canonical laws expressly forbid had no part. that constant intercourse and familiarity be had with the Hebrews; that we use them as physicians; that we go to their banquets. And nevertheless Leo the Hebrew, on account of his son's wedding, held here at Crema a public banquet for eight days, and so many came together to his feasts, to his festivities, to his dances, to his sports; and even today anyone freely employs Hebrews as physicians for the curing of his infirmities. In what way can I keep silence and pass these things over in silence? How can I be a preacher of the truth, and dissemble these offenses against God and against the canonical laws? The usuries of the Hebrews are not only not moderate, but so immoderate that they cut the throats of the poor and strip them to the marrow: and shall I, who live on alms and eat the bread of the poor, be a dumb dog in this place of truth? Dogs bark for those by whom they are fed; shall I, fed by the poor, look on while their substance is snatched away, and be mute? Dogs bark for their masters; and shall I not bark for Christ? These are the things which the Blessed preached in each city concerning the Jews, and which teach that they are so to be shunned as nevertheless to admonish that they be treated justly and piously and in Christian fashion.

[220] Further, although Bernardinus had said nothing but what was just and fair, Nevertheless being expelled thence, he goes on to Siena; and had certainly had no part in that tumult of the boys, he was ordered to depart first from the city, and soon also from the whole Florentine dominion. For, to return to Wadding, he proceeds thus: On the following night the chancellor of the Eight, by decree of the senate, imposed silence upon Bernardinus, and ordered him to withdraw to his monastery outside the city, to await whether any other decree should issue. The holy Man obeyed at once, and, lest a tumult should arise among the people, withdrew before dawn. When the people learned this, who had come in a very crowded assembly to the church and the sermon, they complained grievously, wept, bewailed their unjust lot and their loss, and demanded back the pious and harmless Preacher. The magistracy, lest the people in hope of his return should prolong the controversies and tumults, having sent a secret messenger and closed the gates of the city, lest the people, if perchance they learned of it, should hinder him as he departed, commanded that he should depart from the whole dominion of the Florentines. He, delaying nothing, at once set out for Siena.

[221] In his last sermons he had inveighed gravely against certain public vices; and, those who threatened his life being eluded along the way, the Florentine Senate ordered four scoundrels, who were more deeply entangled in these vices, to be cut down through the city on the very day on which he withdrew, lest it should seem utterly to despise the doctrine of a Preacher who urged all salutary things. But they, tracing the cause of their punishment back to Bernardinus, when they heard that he was being exiled, pursued him to butcher him. The Man of God, being forewarned, piously eluded the arts of the assassins, and, being reverently received in the stronghold of St. Cassian (perhaps S. Casciano, which, like the two following places, the stronghold of S. Donato and Castellina, lies between Florence and Siena), withdrew thence attended by a noble escort as far as the stronghold of S. Donato, in which those most wicked men had slept on the preceding night. Lest they should rush upon him from ambush on the road, he took guards, who conducted him safe to Castellina and thence to Siena. As regards Siena, that city of Etruria is better known than to need any description; two things, however, it will be useful to have said here in a few words: namely that it is distant about thirty miles from Florence to the south, and that it was at that time a republic of its own right, which liberty it lost a little after the middle of the sixteenth century, and afterwards obeyed the grand dukes of Etruria, and obeys them to this day. These things being briefly premised, I resume Wadding's narrative.

[222] [and against the will of his adversaries, he is honorably received by the people of Siena,] There had already arrived (at Siena) letters of certain Florentines warning them not to receive a Preacher rejected by them, who had stirred up so many disturbances in the city: but when they found that Bernardinus was everywhere celebrated by fame, and perceived that a Hebrew had brought the letters, they neglected these evil arts and asked him to preach among them for the remaining days of Lent. He began on the Thursday after the feast of St. Joseph (that is, the twentieth day of March) in the church of St. Martin of the Canons Regular, the whole people running together, both on account of the Florentine rumor that had been spread abroad and on account of the Man's famous holiness. The other churches being emptied, the preachers began to complain that on account of the uncertain fame of a single little Friar, driven out from elsewhere, they were left without hearers: nor yet could they call them back; although Bernardinus by a public exhortation

urged that they should be willing to prefer such great men, distinguished preachers and masters of sacred theology, to himself, a despised little man and a herald of the lowest sort.

[223] and he preaches among them: his adversaries are punished. The people of Pisa (whose city, called Pisa, is likewise situated in Etruria, on the river Arno, on the shore of the Tyrrhenian sea, once a powerful republic, but already then subject to the Florentines) — the people of Pisa, I say, hearing what had been done at Florence about Bernardinus, by the common consent of all the orders sent to Siena a most weighty man, a canon of the cathedral church, to ask that he would preach among them for the remaining time of Lent. To whom he replied that, having been cast out by the Florentines, whom the people of Pisa obeyed, and having been most kindly received by the people of Siena, he could not set out for Pisa without the leave of the Florentines and the consent of the people of Siena. The people of Siena, perceiving this beforehand, took ill the efforts of the canon and of the Pisans, and employed such arts of retaining the Preacher that they preserved by diligence him whom they had received by chance. Moreover, divine vengeance laid hold of all who had conspired at Florence for his banishment: some being carried off by death, others seized by disease or punished by misfortune; and the punishment of the injury inflicted was so manifest that everyone called it the vengeance of God.

[224] He leads the people of Siena, who were ready for mutual slaughter, But the people of Siena received a huge benefit from his coming: for besides the chastened morals of those who went astray, he brought it about, a most powerful sermon having been delivered on Palm Sunday, that the chiefs and members of the most savage faction, which then ranged freely at Siena under the name of the Monte dei Nove, abstained from the foul slaughter which they were planning, dismissing the assassins and desperate men whom they had gathered from every side and had crowded into their houses. In the name of the citizens Andreas and Jacobus Piccolomini, the nephews of Pius II, gave him thanks, and said that he had been sent to Siena by a special benefit of God, by whose virtue and powerful eloquence God had averted these evils. These noblemen frequently turned aside to him, and consulted him about the correcting of the commonwealth; with whom he jested, saying that he was begotten of their family, making from his own tiny stature an allusion to the name Piccolomini, which in Italian means A LITTLE MAN: for piccolo to them means small, and homo means man.

[225] On the Monday after the feast of the Resurrection, in the very spacious square near the senate palace, in which Bernardino of Siena also had once preached, he discoursed so clearly on the good of union and concord that he extinguished many old enmities and established a most firm peace among the chief men of the city. to peace: while preaching, he is seen to breathe out flames; On the following Friday he preached in the cathedral church, and did not cease to teach the people every day until Trinity Sunday, the people coming always in greater numbers. On the day of Pentecost, having preached morning and evening, he showed his hearers the arm of St. John the Baptist, given by Pius II, their fellow-citizen, and broke out into praise of the holy Precursor with such fervor, and so instructed the people, that fiery flames coming forth from his mouth seemed to overshadow and to set on fire the people. The Acts of St. John the Baptist, illustrated among us, you have on the day on which his nativity is commemorated, the twenty-fourth of June, in volume IV of that month, where among the various relics of that Saint mention is also made, on page 778, of the arm preserved at Siena in the hospital of the Scala; which let it here suffice to have noted.

[226] The castle, which they called Satan's, built of playing cards, he burns the incitements to sins: and departs thence secretly. forbidden books, vain adornments and women's paints, he caused to burn on Trinity Sunday, fire being set beneath it. And when a blacksmith accustomed to gaming irreverently reproached these things, and boasted with an enormous oath that he would play the more often in contempt of the little Friar and Manikin, a little afterwards, having returned home, he perished wretchedly, an iron hammer falling upon his head which he had put away the day before in a high place: so that most truly there could be applied to him those threatening words of sacred Scripture: "Judgments are prepared for scorners, and striking hammers for the bodies of fools." Matters being tranquil and the city composed in peace, when Bernardinus was thinking of departure, the citizens resisted him with such prayers and arts as they could; and they dealt with the Pontiff that he should command a longer stay. He, suspecting nothing of this kind, departed at daybreak and in secret on the day after the feast of Corpus Christi, to preach in other cities.

§ XI. He is ordered to return to Siena; his deeds in this same year 1488, at Perugia, Brufa, Assisi, Todi, Corbara, Orvieto, Terni, Chieti, Aquila, etc.

[ ] Recalled to Siena by Pontifical letters, At almost the same time at which Bl. Bernardinus had secretly departed from Siena, the people of Siena received from Pope Innocent the letters they had desired for retaining him among them, and made them known by a messenger to him, who had not yet gone far thence; on which matter Wadding continues thus: When he had arrived at the stronghold of Buonconvento, which was twelve thousand paces distant from Siena, a noble citizen of Siena follows him, hands him the Pontifical diploma, and sets forth the prayers of the senate that he would return and would cherish the benefit of peace which he had conferred, lest what had lately been brought in should be disturbed by his absence. I here exhibit the Pontiff's letters. From the original, is added in the margin.

"To our beloved son, brother Bernardinus de Feltro, of the Order of Minors of the Observance.

Beloved son, greeting, etc. The Community of Siena, having experienced thy sound discourses and healthful preachings, greatly desires to retain thee longer with them, that thou mayest be able to bring the seeds of quiet and peace and of good actions which thou hast scattered there to a certain fruit and maturity of their own; and the people of Siena themselves have caused supplication to be made to us that we would deign to grant their pious desire.

[228] And we, who desire above all that provision be made for the tranquillity of that republic most dear to us, he soon returns, and there granting the pious wish of those same people of Siena, command thy devotion, expressly enjoining in virtue of holy obedience, that thou remain there at Siena, and preach there in the Lent next to come, and, according to the faculty granted thee by the Lord, strive to bring forth abundant fruit of souls; than which nothing more acceptable to the divine Majesty can be done, with whom this also will yield thee merit, and to us it will be most pleasing: notwithstanding any other mandate whatsoever, even one made or yet to be made to thee by our Brief, unless special and express mention be made of this very Brief which we direct to thee, and all other things making to the contrary. Given at Rome at St. Peter's under the ring of the Fisherman, the third day of the month of June, 1488. In the fourth year of our pontificate." Being resolved to obey the Pontifical mandate, he returned at once, after he had on that Saturday delivered in that town a pious sermon on the cult of the blessed Virgin.

[229] continues to preach: he is sent to Perugia Being received with the greatest gladness of the people of Siena, he began his sermons again from the second Sunday after Pentecost, and delivered most of them on feast days in the square of the great hospital, and on ordinary days, having instructed and confirmed with pious lessons the society or confraternity of St. Bernardino (of Siena), to which little boys came together, whom he patiently taught and catechized; and he assisted at the penances and scourgings or disciplines of the confrères. Thence at last, having slipped away toward the end of the month of July, he preached continually through the villages and strongholds, until he came to Perugia by the Pontiff's order. The cause of his being sent was the fresh tumults of the factions, concerning which Stephanus Infessura, a contemporary writer, in the Roman Diary, in Muratori, volume 3, part 2 of Italian Affairs, column [ ], published, has this under this year: Many cities and places subject to the Church denied obedience to the Pope; nay, they did some things against his will… The people of Perugia did likewise, who expelled several, namely those of the house of Braccio, all of the contrary party, and killed some; and when the Pope had sent thither as legate a latere the lord Cardinal of Siena, he was not admitted until he had promised that he would not send back the Perugians of the contrary faction; and they rendered little or no obedience to the Pope and to the Church.

[230] to check the civil discords; Wadding, out of his Legends, treats by name of the feuds of the Baglioni and the Oddi, in the settling of which we have seen in §7 and following that our Blessed labored happily enough in the years 1485 and 1486; but the enmities, scarcely lulled, had of course revived, and had blazed out far more vehemently. Thither therefore Bernardinus was appointed by the Pontiff; but without happy success, as we have from Wadding's words subjoined. Beholding there everything turned upside down, and the citizens returned to their old enmities and hostile factions, he grieved vehemently, and delivered two sermons in the market-place, by which he strove to restore the peace and unity which we have related that he had brought in a year and a half before. But since the Baglioni faction, having routed and put to flight their Oddi adversaries and brought the city back into their own power, was growing stronger and more insolent every day, the Man of God could not remedy the flood of evils and slaughters. Yet, having threatened a grave vengeance of God and the foul massacres of men that would follow, he strove to recall the Baglioni to a gentler and more peaceable mind; but he sang to the deaf. It was observed that a portent of the evils hanging over the city then went before. For when, according to custom, God-fearing men had at Bernardinus' order prepared a heap of things employed in evil-doing, and had set upon the frame, by way of sport or to make slaughters detestable, the images of two assassins with wooden swords tinted with the color of iron, when the fire was lit they were seen to whirl their swords as though they were joining hands in combat.

[231] Which some thought was done by the eddying of the smoke, others reckoned a portent, and all wondered at; which he vainly strove to do: he foretells punishments, it drew forth various judgments from the bystanders. "But so," said Bernardinus, "against thee, foolish and turbulent city, shall the assassins and partisans brandish their swords; and as these fall into this pyre, so shall the bloody disturbers of thy peace fall into the flame of hell." Whatever may be the case about that portent, the punishment which the Blessed is said to have foretold to the city seems to have been that intestine slaughter which the praised Infessura records under the year 1491 in this manner. On the sixth day of June a great slaughter took place at Perugia, perhaps greater than there has been for four hundred years back. For when that party which was in exile with its accomplices, and was called Degli Oddi, had had many promises from the Church and the supreme Pontiff about a reconciliation and a return to the said land, and nothing had ever been observed, on the aforesaid day the said exiles, with the help of the count of Urbino and, as it is reported, of the Pontiff (in a secret manner, however), entered Perugia at the fourth hour of the night, hoping also to have help from certain citizens who had an understanding with them.

[232] They at length took all the stronger places of the said city; concerning which some things are observed. and afterwards, the matter being heard, those who were within rose up and cast them out by force and arms. Of those who were in exile there died the lord Fabricius the protonotary and the lord Rodulphus the prelate, who were the leaders of this faction, and of the others more than fifty were killed and taken. And immediately more than a hundred of the number of the wounded were hanged, about whom there is no certainty… And the Pope made no other provision, save that he immediately sent the captain of the Church, the count of Pitigliano, to prevent greater things that might be done. These, forsooth, were the fruits and the penalties of the discords which Bernardinus had foretold to the people of Perugia; whose remaining deeds in this year 1488 in that same city of Perugia let us pursue from Wadding.

[233] Another portent likewise immediately followed

. He burns a magical book and other harmful things: A cloud with thunder and lightning overshadowed for three days the whole city and the sun, while the air all round was clear. All being astonished, Bernardinus, remembering that a weeping priest had brought him two days before a little book sprinkled with diabolical characters, figures and compacts, and written in his own blood, that he might burn it in secret, then secretly cast it into the flames in his chamber (that is, in his cell); but when it leapt out of the hearth, he pressed it with his foot, and, an exorcism having first been said, the fire consumed it when it was thrown in a third time, and the dense cloud was dispersed. Let this portent of the cloud also, and its cause, concerning which I have found nothing elsewhere, be reported on the credit of the praised annalist, or of those whom he followed — Cimarella or the manuscript Legends. There follows in the same place: In that huge pyre (of which I made mention at number 230), boards and gaming instruments having been abundantly burned, he cursed anyone who should bring dice, gaming boxes or counters from elsewhere.

[234] Further, a certain greedy man went away to Todi; and while he was joyfully bringing back little bundles of such things, two obstinate men are punished: he preaches at Brufa, at Assisi, he fell by chance and died, pierced through with a lance. A certain apothecary, in contempt of the Preacher and of the laws which the senate at his persuasion had piously passed against public gamesters, gave himself to play apart in his own shop until the fourth hour of the night. He did not do so with impunity: for, fire having caught the chamber which was above the vault of the arched shop, all his spices with the pestles and vessels, even the bronze ones, perished melted; and he, since nothing was left, withdrew from Perugia. Bernardinus at length, seeing that the people of Perugia had come to such a pitch of evils and sedition that no hope of making progress then remained, went away to Assisi, having first delivered a sermon at the town of Bruffa, or Brufa, a village or stronghold which lies a little off the road to the right for one going from Perugia to Assisi. At Assisi he preached on the day of the great Indulgence, which is there celebrated most solemnly each year on the fourth of the Nones of August: for on the day before that day Michael of Acqui, who had been appointed to this office, had been seized with a violent iliac pain. On the following Sunday too he delivered another sermon, to satisfy the devout people flocking together from every side.

[235] at Todi, at Corbara, and at Orvieto, Having slipped away thence to Todi, he delivered five sermons, by which he rooted out several abuses; at Corbara one (it is now a stronghold or village on the river Tiber, about six Roman miles distant from Orvieto, which is a city of the dominion of the Church in the province of the Patrimony, called by the natives Orvieto, to which the Blessed was then proceeding, long sought after by the people and the clergy). Having set out thence (namely from Corbara) for Orvieto, three days before the Assumption of the blessed Virgin Mary (which is celebrated on the fifteenth day of August) he began to preach in the court of the cathedral church. For two years the senate and the bishop had been soliciting his coming with repeated letters and messengers, and now counted themselves blessed to whom it was granted to have him present and to hear him often. He commended peace and concord exceedingly, and greatly praised the constitutions of Paul II, by which he had established the peace of this city. Being asked by the citizens, he wrote to Innocent of the great tranquillity of the happy city.

[236] where he frees a possessed woman, enlarges the Mont-de-piété He always had as hearers the magistracy, and the bishop of Orvieto, and also the bishop of Parma, formerly the head of the household of Sixtus IV, the governor of the city. The bishop of Orvieto at this time is read in Ferdinand Ughelli, volume 1 of the Italia sacra enlarged, column [ ], to have been Georgius Roboreus; and the bishop of Parma, in volume 2, column 186, John James Sclafinatus, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, formerly chamberlain to the Roman Pontiff Sixtus IV; which let it suffice to have briefly noted here. Concerning his deeds in that city the annalist continues thus in the same place: Here he freed from an unclean spirit a woman possessed by a demon, the daughter of a citizen of Corbara. Then he turned all his sermons against blasphemers, gamesters, usurers, and the vain and lascivious adornment of women. The Mont-de-piété, erected in the year 1465 under Pius II, he enlarged with moneys and made solid with new laws. Note in passing that there is an error here either in the year of the erection of the Mont-de-piété or in the Pontiff's name; since Pius II ceased to live in the month of August of the year 1464, and Paul II succeeded him in the Pontificate.

[237] and the sodality of the Most Holy Sacrament, and departs secretly. The sodality of the Body of Christ (so Wadding again) he enlarged; and it grew to such a number that, when it was carried to the sick, four hundred wax tapers were sometimes borne before it… Bernardinus handed over to the confrères a noble banner, marked with the sacred Host and the life-giving chalice, which they unfurled in processions and public assemblies. The city, bound by these benefits, omitted no sign of love or reverence toward Bernardinus. At the dawning of day, when he performed the sacred rite, they flocked together in troops to see him celebrating; and by night they prepared seats that they might hear him speaking. Many young men also, bent by his * teaching, took up the religious institute. On the day of the Virgin's Nativity (that is, the eighth of September), after he had, according to custom, set fire to the satanic castle (that is, as I have said elsewhere, after he had publicly burned a heap of things pertaining to lust, vain adornment, and the other enticements to sins), he withdrew secretly, meaning to avoid the honors of an escort.

[238] At Pantanelli (an obscure village, memorable for a miracle of St. Francis) he instructed with pious lessons, from a pulpit made of the branches of trees, more than three thousand men who had run together from the neighboring towns near the grove of his fellow Minorites. He preaches in the open air to those who ran together; The reader is here referred to volume 1, the year 1216, number 10, where it is said that St. Francis recalled to concord the illustrious family of the Baselenses in Umbria, which had been almost shamefully and most wretchedly wiped out by domestic quarrels and lasting discords; and it is added: But they, in memory of the benefit received, at once in this year built a monastery for his * fellowship in their own territory, called St. Angelo de Pantanellis. Thus there: let us pass on to other matters. Stephanus Infessura in the Roman Diary, already praised elsewhere, reckons Todi among the cities which in this same year 1488 stirred up seditions against Pope Innocent VIII, writing thus: The like was done in the cities of Todi and of the March of Ancona, in which they refused to obey his secretaries in making out briefs and taxes according to the determination made.

[239] To settle these disturbances I believe Bernardinus was sent thither, He recalls the people of Todi to peace and obedience, and their city by whom the inhabitants of that city had in the preceding year been happily brought back to peace and concord and to the obedience due to the supreme Pontiff, as I related in §9. But how prosperously this succeeded for him in this year too, receive from Wadding. Having returned to Todi to obey the command of the vicar general, and striving to restore the peace already disturbed, on the fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost in the public market-place, where he was accustomed to preach, having exhorted to union and firm concord, he induced the citizens that, with the three banners of peace going before which he himself had given to the city, they should all proceed as suppliants to the chief church, and should consecrate the keys of the city, the city itself, and themselves to the blessed Virgin, and take her as their patroness and protectress. Then, having received the keys from the Virgin's altar, he handed them over in her name to the governor, as acting in the blessed Virgin's stead, and earnestly commended to him that he should wish it peaceful and should preserve it so.

[240] Of this surrender and consignment the chancellor of the city, a Sienese by birth, drew up a public instrument. he consecrates to the Bl. Virgin Mary: I could wish that the praised instrument, if any exists, had come into my hands, both for a fuller knowledge of the fact and for the correcting of a certain error in the time which has crept in here. For since in the year 1488 Easter fell on the sixth day of April, and consequently the feast of Pentecost on the twenty-fifth of May, the fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, when Wadding relates that these things were done, must have coincided with the seventh day of September. But nevertheless the same annalist says that Bl. Bernardinus was still at Orvieto on the day of the Virgin's Nativity, or the eighth day of September, and that he set out thence for Todi. Either therefore for the fifteenth Sunday the sixteenth or some later day must be put, or Bernardinus must be said to have come from Orvieto to Todi before the feast of the nativity of the most blessed Mother of God.

[241] Francis Gonzaga, in the Origins of the Seraphic religion, acquires a convent for his own Order: part 2, in the Province of St. Francis, convent 16, writes that the people of Todi in this same year gave the monastery of St. Mary of Monte Santo to the Minors Observant, the Poor Clares, whose it had hitherto been, migrating to another place. The citizens of Todi (he says), meaning to provide for the safety and the affairs of the Poor Clare nuns and to look after the Franciscan Friars, conferred upon the aforesaid Friars, for their habitation and use, by the good pleasure and assent of Innocent VIII, Supreme Pontiff, in the year 1488 from the saving nativity of Christ, and in the fourth of his own Pontificate, the convent consecrated to the Bl. Mary of Monte Santo, built a little way from the walls of the city of Todi and made over to the service of the aforesaid Sisters, they having first been brought out and removed to a safer place. And from that time eighteen of them apply themselves there to the divine praises.

[242] he preaches at Terni. Here indeed there is no mention of Bl. Bernardinus; but Wadding in the Additions to his Annals deservedly judged that this donation was made for that Blessed's sake, saying: In this year, on account of the manifold benefits conferred by Bernardinus of Feltre upon the city of Todi, the citizens decreed to have Religious men of the fellowship of the Observants among them. And so, the Poor Clare sisters having been removed to a safer place, they conferred upon the Friars in this year the monastery of Montauto outside the city, as we have said elsewhere. From the same annalist we have that he, after things had been carried through so prosperously, set out from Todi for Terni, where in a very spacious court he delivered three sermons, the bishop and canons being his hearers. This is a city of the dominion of the Church, called by the natives Terni, on the river Nera on the border of Umbria where it adjoins the Sabine country, twenty-one Roman miles distant from Todi, and it enjoys a bishopric subject to the Roman Apostolic See alone.

[243] By letters he is ordered by the Pontiff to preach at Reggio and at Perugia Being about to depart hence, he received Pontifical letters, which indicate two sent previously, that in the following Lent he should preach at Reggio and at Perugia. By these later ones he settled the disputes of both peoples, who were contending over this matter. Then he subjoins the letters themselves from the original, as he notes in the margin.

"To our beloved son brother Bernardinus de Feltro, of the Order of Minors of the Observance.

Beloved son, greeting, etc. We have on another occasion commanded thee to preach at Reggio in this following year in the time of Lent. But by another Brief of ours we have enjoined thee to go to Perugia to preach at that very time: and since each people has placed great hope in thy sound admonitions for the salvation of souls, wishing to provide that both may be able to enjoy the fruit of thy good works, we again enjoin and command thee to give the community of Perugia the option whether they wish to hear thee in the time of Advent or in that of Lent; and that in whichever of these times they shall have chosen thee, thou go thither to preach; and that in the other thou preach at Reggio, so that, by bestowing thy labor on both, thou mayest be able to bring forth greater fruit of souls. Notwithstanding any other mandate whatsoever made to thee, and all other things to the contrary whatsoever. Given at Rome under the ring of the Fisherman, the sixth day of August, 1488. In the fourth year of our pontificate."

[244] through Advent and Lent The praised historian rightly observed that in this letter two others are indicated which preceded it.

Nevertheless he preached neither at Reggio nor at Perugia in the present year, in the time of Advent, nor in the following year in Lent or Advent, nor did he come to either city; as will appear from what is to be said. The reason for this must be sought from the other letter, reported above at number 227 and the following, and signed on the third day of the month of June of this year 1488, in which the same Pontiff had commanded him to preach at Siena in the Lent next to come, saying, notwithstanding any other mandate whatsoever, even one made or yet to be made to thee by another Brief of ours, unless special and express mention be made of this very Brief which we direct to thee. But now in the letter given last the Pontiff makes no mention of revoking that Brief, and it is likely that he made no mention of it in the other two either, if these were written after the third of June. It was not therefore lawful for Bernardinus to deliver sermons at Reggio or at Perugia through the following Lent, or to give the people of Perugia the aforesaid option, one part of which was forbidden him.

[245] Wherefore it seems that the Pontiff, when he wrote the later letters, to preach: for the sake of refreshing his spirit had forgotten his own mandate which he had given in the earlier ones in favor of the people of Siena; or, if he then remembered it, that he wrote the later ones only in order to put an end to the importunate prayers of the people of Reggio and Perugia, being meanwhile certain that Bernardinus would obey the earlier ones. Other letters again sent to him by the same Pontiff in the following year, on the eleventh day of February, and others on the twentieth of the same month, we shall see below; by the first of which he was ordered to preach at Perugia in Lent, but by the last at Rome at the same time. What the Blessed did meanwhile the annalist goes on to set out thus. Meaning at some time to refresh his spirit, he went away to the devout little monastery of Greccio *, which we have described elsewhere in its own parts; and there he found two young novices, natives of Novara, whom he, while he was preaching in the City, had turned from the service of two Cardinals to the divine service. Having exhorted them to persevere and to follow the footsteps of his founder (of which there are very many there), he went on to the devout place of Fonte Colombo, in which St. Francis received from Christ the formula of living.

[246] Of both places he had treated under the year 1217 from number 12, he visits holy places: whence I shall report a few things. The stronghold of Graecium, commonly Greccio, as he there calls it, or Greccia, as it is written in the most recent geographical map of the Ecclesiastical State, is distant seven Roman miles from Rieti, in Italian Rieti, which is a city of Umbria on the Velino near the confines of the kingdom of Naples, that is of the Abruzzo Ulteriore. About that stronghold and the city of Rieti St. Francis, on Wadding's testimony, permitted several little monasteries or hermitages to be built for himself, and dwelt in them for a little while; among which is memorable that of Monte Raynerio or of the Dove, which the annalist in the words given called Fonte Colombo. I add no more, because these things belong properly to St. Francis, the deeds of which most holy founder will come to be illustrated on the fourth day of October. To these places, then, consecrated by the dwelling of his holy father, Bl. Bernardinus withdrew for a little while both for veneration's sake and to refresh his spirit.

[247] Then, having preached three times at Rieti (says Wadding) in the cathedral church with the greatest jubilation and concourse of the people, he preaches at Rieti; he crosses into the Abruzzo he passed over from the Pontiff's territories to the kingdom of Naples, and preached in the city of Chieti on the feast of St. Jerome. Thence he set out for Aquila. The Aquila of which the discourse is here, commonly called l'Aquila, is an episcopal city of the Abruzzo Ulteriore on the river Aterno, twenty-eight Italian miles distant from Rieti to the east, if Baudrand has noted rightly in his Lexicon. The city of Chieti, or Teate, but called by the natives Chieti or Civita di Chieti, which Clement VII raised from episcopal to archiepiscopal dignity, is situated on the same river, but in the Abruzzo Citeriore, a few miles from the Adriatic sea. But since this city is more than twice as far by road as Aquila, likewise to the east, from the city of Rieti, it must seem strange why Bernardinus is said to have gone from the latter first to Chieti and then to Aquila.

[248] he preaches at Aquila with fruit, especially among the women, It might indeed be said that this could have happened for various causes; were it not that the same annalist below, at number 254 and following, describing the Blessed's return, brings him again from the city of Aquila to that of Chieti, and from this to that of Rieti, and that indeed in a shorter space of time than the distance of the two latter requires. Hence it seems that it must altogether be said that Wadding here slipped in memory, and that Bernardinus came first to Aquila and then to Chieti, and thence again to Aquila, and from Aquila returned to the people of Rieti. This observation being premised for what has been and is to be said, receive the annalist's words. Having set out thence for Aquila, he delivered a sermon on the day of St. Francis (the fourth of October); and on the following days he began to inveigh against gluttony, games, luxury and womanish vanity, especially against the long trains which they used to trail, formerly condemned at Ferrara, as we have related (volume 10 of the Annals, under the year 1434, number 10), by Albert of Sarteano (a religious of the same Order, renowned for learning and holiness of life).

[249] among whom the countess of Montorio, and Bonaventura of Antrodoco, The countess of Montorio went before the women with a noble example of compliance and virtue, cutting off her train, rejecting pomp, renouncing all womanly ornament, although she had grown up at court with the queen of Naples and had been born of a most noble line. Others followed, and in all a great reformation of manners appeared. Then Bonaventura of Antrodoco, a noble virgin, was converted to the Lord, concerning whose virtue and piety we shall speak opportunely under the year of her death. Thus here; but under the year 1498, to which he refers the reader in the margin, her conversion is ascribed to the sermons of Honufrius of Aquila, vicar of the Abruzzo province of the Order of Minors, and after it a certain vision of Bl. Bernardinus offered to her is narrated; which it will be useful to have reported compendiously. Bonaventura of Antrodoco, a town of the Vestini, brought up among girlish vanities, after she had heard the praised Honufrius speaking on contempt of the world and chastisement of the body, rejected worldly adornments and the marriage offered her, being resolved thenceforth to serve God alone. On which account, having suffered much from her own family, she was warned by a heavenly voice to set out for Aquila, and to hear and imitate Birgitta, a follower of the third Order of St. Francis, whom she would find in the cathedral church.

[250] who saw an angel standing by him as he preached. Obeying, she found her, as had been foretold, and, emulating the noble and grave matron, wore down her body with austere penance and adorned her soul with many virtues. Bernardinus of Feltre came to that city to preach, as we have said elsewhere; with her veil lifted, Bonaventura could not remove her eyes from the preacher. Being rebuked by her mistress because with uncovered face and fixed eyes she had long gazed upon a man, she answered that she had beheld, throughout all that time, not the Preacher but a most beautiful angel of God standing by and, with an open book, teaching him what he should say. A little afterwards, Birgitta having been carried to heaven, lest she should be tossed alone amid the perils of the world, she entered the monastery of Corpus Christi and professed the first Rule of St. Clare, and, persevering in constant vigils, fasts and prayers, while still of a rather youthful age, she completed many years. Thus he, praising Marianus and Cimarella, from which it is sufficiently clear that Bonaventura was first led to a holier life by Honufrius of Aquila, but was confirmed in her pious purpose by Bernardinus, and perhaps also kindled to greater things.

[251] Now let us return whence we digressed, to Bl. Bernardinus, staying at Aquila in the year 1488, and recount his deeds from the same Annals. On the day of the Conception of the blessed Virgin Mary [He enlarges the cult of the Conception of the Bl. Virgin Mary, and the Mont-de-piété,] he showed that she had been preserved from the common stain of men, and stirred many to a pious belief of this mystery, and enlarged the confraternity of the Conception erected there. He readily descended to the praises of Bl. James of Picenum, the builder of that magnificent church, his teacher and founder, from whom he received the religious habit; and thence to the renewal of the Mont-de-piété, once instituted by him (by Bl. James of Picenum, I suppose), but wholly neglected and buried in oblivion on account of the vicissitude of affairs, the storms of wars, and the unsettled state of the city, subject now to the king of Naples, now to the Roman Pontiff. He obtained that the senate should contribute a thousand gold pieces toward restoring the old Mont, and he collected three thousand from free offerings; and to the outdated laws of the pious work he added new ones and caused them to be confirmed by the senate.

[252] The Hebrews, taking it ill that their interest was being reduced, sent men to him to ask that he would not so vehemently rebuke those whom the king had fortified with his privileges, and this, the Jews vainly resisting, and that he would not reckon so unlawful their usuries, which they practiced everywhere among the nations and through all the best cities of Italy; and when they obtained nothing, they stirred up against the Servant of God the governor of the province, whom they had bound to themselves with many gifts. But he, many years after the disturbance he had stirred up against Bernardinus, paid the penalty by the divine judgment of having his head cut off in the city of Naples, and had two sons as companions of his punishment, who were also guilty of the crime of treason. They provoked besides against him the duke of Calabria (Alphonsus, son of Ferdinand I, king of Naples), from whom, after he had received letters that he should betake himself to Naples into the presence of the king his father, and was warned by the guardian of Naples that the king was moved because all the citizens had been stirred up against the Hebrews:

[253] He answered that he had pleaded the cause of God and of the poor, and defends it and other things which they had won over to themselves. and had condemned unjust usuries, and that he greatly wondered that a most wicked nation, most hostile to Christians, hateful to God and men, should be fortified by Catholic princes with so many favors and privileges; that he, however, would set out speedily and render an account of his office as soon as by the leave of his prelate he could depart from Aquila; nor was anything further then prescribed by the royal officers. In another sermon he magnified with the highest praises Bl. John of Capistrano, the implacable enemy of the Jews and of heretics, born near that city; and he narrated his excellent deeds compendiously. Then, having continued his sermons against various vices, games, love songs and necromantic books, he remained there until the beginning of the following year. Since Wadding states neither the name of the governor who, corrupted by the gifts of the Jews, he says opposed Bl. Bernardinus, nor the year, nor the cause of his punishment, I can affirm nothing more certain about these matters, and leave them to his own credit. St. John of Capistrano, confessor of the first Order of Minors of St. Francis, is venerated on the twenty-third day of October, on which his deeds will be illustrated.

* his

* his

* read Greccio

§ XII. His deeds in the year 1489 at Aquila and Chieti in the Abruzzo, and in other provinces; cities pacified; Monts-de-piété erected; the wonderful zeal of the peoples toward him: sermons delivered in very many places.

[ ] Having set out from Aquila for Chieti, Bl. Bernardinus passed the year of Christ 1489 in his usual sermons and labors, which Wadding recounted in the Annals out of the manuscript Legends and Cimarella, and which I here transcribe from him. Thus therefore he has under this year from number 6. We have said that Bernardinus of Feltre remained at Aquila in the preceding year until the end of the year. On the first

day of this year, after he had delivered a distinguished sermon in the open court of the church of St. Bernardino (of Siena) on peace and concord, and on the forgiving of injuries and the laying aside of hatreds, he departed about midnight, a great crowd of men nevertheless following, although he had studiously purposed to avoid this following. On the day after the Epiphany (that is, the seventh of January) he arrived at Chieti (commonly Chieti, of which we treated in the preceding §), and there he stayed five days, preaching as many times, and reproving the very great incontinence of the clergy there; taking occasion for this from the fact that he had seen many things done too licentiously at the first Mass of a new priest offering his first Sacrifice to God.

[255] he commands a possessed woman; he erects Monts-de-piété; Upon a girl he met who had a demon, and who was brought to him by her parents on a horse by force and with an uproar, he laid the name of Jesus, and commanded her that without contradiction or resistance she should allow herself to be led peacefully to Aquila and placed before the shrine of St. Bernardino. Obeying his commands, she was perfectly freed from the evil spirit at the holy man's tomb. In his last sermon, having inveighed against the usuries of the Hebrews, he asked that a Mont-de-piété be established on the model of that of Aquila; and on the same day he set out for * the city of Rieti, commonly called Rieti, whose situation I gave in the preceding §, where I also observed that Wadding seems to have erred here in the order in which Bernardinus is said to have visited Chieti and Aquila: on which matter consult number 247 and the following. The chancellor of Chieti, having followed him thither, reported that the erection of the Mont had been decreed in the senate and the money collected, and that nothing was lacking except the rules and standard alone, to be prescribed by him. These he handed over at once, and imparted a generous blessing to the authors of so great a work.

[256] he pacifies the people of Rieti; he erects a Mont. He sharply rebuked the people of Rieti on account of the civil discords which had utterly devastated the city, and obtained that by the common counsel of the magistracy and the people heralds of peace should be appointed. Here too he instituted a Mont-de-piété, which within two years was greatly enlarged; and he exhorted all to live well and piously, and commended to God's protection the city which so many centuries ago Leo IV wished to be commended to the emperors Lothair and Louis. But here there is alleged in the margin, from part 1 of the Decretum, the chapter Romana Ecclesia and the chapter Nobis Dominus, distinction 93; for which read: Distinction 63, chapter 16 Reatina ecclesia, and chapter 17 Nobis dominus; in the first of which Pope Leo IV asked of the emperors Lothair and Louis II that they would permit Colonus to be set over the church of Rieti as bishop; and in the second he says that this was obtained from them. But, these things being passed over, which make nothing to our subject, let us continue with Wadding.

[257] After fifteen days he went away to Piediluco (which is a stronghold of the Sabines, He preaches at Piediluco, at Terni, and in the stronghold of San Gemini; in Italian Pie di Luco, on the lake Velinus, commonly called il lago di Pie di Luco, situated between Rieti and Terni, whither the Blessed was then proceeding), where, being received with marks of singular devotion, he delivered a long sermon on the Christian life, on flight from sins, and on reverence for the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. Having stayed six days at Terni, he was honorably treated by the bishop, and delivered sermons in the market-place; and, the Mont-de-piété erected some years before having been enlarged, he pacified the chief men of the city, who were ready for arms on account of a noble youth who had been slain. As he departed many followed, begging that he would bless them and the fields and plains through which he passed. Through the town of San Geminiano (commonly called Santo Gemini, distant about eight Roman miles from Narni, seems to be indicated), where he stayed two days, he hastened to Narni, hearing that huge slaughters were feared on account of quarrels begun the day before.

[258] He preached in the bishop's spacious court, whither the whole people ran, [He reconciles the people of Narni who were ready for slaughter; he erects a Mont, preaches elsewhere.] the bishop listening from a window. He took for his theme those words Deep calleth unto deep, and uncovered the arts of Satan in disturbing peoples, from which he demonstrated most clearly that a chained series of evils and the ruin of cities follow. He held forth so efficaciously that, laying down their arms, those who before were rushing upon mutual slaughter ran into each other's embraces. Money having been collected here for the establishing of a pious Mont, and all weeping, he passed over to the people of Amelia (whose city Ameria, now called by the natives Amelia, is distant about six miles from Narni), and there preached for three days against moneylenders. At Montecchio (to the natives Montecchio, a stronghold or village in Umbria, about ten miles from Amelia toward Orvieto), having preached three times at Orvieto, and at Siena by way of the city of Pienza (in the vernacular Pienza, founded in Etruria and in the Sienese countryside), he determined to deliver there the Lenten sermons according to the Pontiff's command, reported by us under the preceding year. Consult what was said above at number 227 and following.

[259] But this purpose of the blessed Man other letters again, Having received letters from the Pontiff, he is ordered at Perugia, which the people of Perugia and then the Romans had extorted from Innocent VIII, put in doubt. For while he was awaiting the beginning of Lent at Siena, there arrived there, on the annalist's testimony, though late, two letters of the Pontiff, by which he was ordered to preach first at Perugia and then at Rome. I here transcribe them; to which I subjoin others written by the Pontiff on this matter to the vicar general.

"To our beloved son brother Bernardinus de Feltro, of the Order of Minors of the Observance.

Beloved son, greeting, etc. Understanding that thy labor and presence in our city of Perugia in preaching and admonishing has hitherto profited very much and will profit still; therefore we will, and command thee, expressly enjoining in virtue of holy obedience, that in this Lent next to come thou go to that city to preach, and that by healthful admonitions and by the announcing of the divine word and the Evangelical doctrine thou strive to gain souls, and to provide for the quiet and peace and union of that same city; notwithstanding any other mandate whatsoever made to thee, and all other things to the contrary whatsoever. Given at Rome at St. Peter's under the ring of the Fisherman, the eleventh day of February, 1489. In the fifth year of our pontificate."

[260] and presently, by others given by the same, in the city of Rome The other letter of the same Pontiff to Bernardinus, which he says was received, like the former, from the autograph, stands thus in the same place. "Inclining to the constant prayers of our beloved Conservators of the people of our gracious City, we exhort thee paternally in the Lord, nevertheless commanding by Apostolic authority in virtue of holy obedience, that, notwithstanding any other mandate whatsoever perhaps made to thee to the contrary by us or by the vicar of thy Order, thou come to Rome to preach the word of God in the Lent next to come in the church of the Aracoeli. And that thou mayest be able to do this more freely and conveniently, we write to that vicar also on this matter. Given at Rome at St. Peter's under the ring of the Fisherman, the twentieth day of February, 1489. In the fifth year of our pontificate." The third letter finally, to the vicar general of the Cismontanes (who to us are Ultramontanes), then John of Sestri, is as follows; but whence it was received is not added.

[261] to deliver the Lenten sermons; "To our beloved son the vicar general Cismontane of the Order of Minors, called of the Observance.

We have not been able to resist the prayers of our beloved sons, the Conservators of the people of our gracious City, constantly supplicating that there be given them as preacher for the coming Lent our beloved son, brother Bernardinus de Feltro. Wherefore we exhort thy devotion in the Lord that thou bring it about that he preach at Rome in the church of the Aracoeli according to the desire of our beloved Conservators and our own mandate. And thou shalt enjoin this upon that same brother Bernardinus. Notwithstanding any other ordinances and mandates whatsoever perhaps made to the contrary, and the understanding had between us. Given at Rome at St. Peter's under the ring of the Fisherman, the twentieth day of February, 1489. In the fifth year of our pontificate." Thus far the Pontifical letters; for of the vicar general's letter given on this matter to Bl. Bernardinus Wadding makes no mention, who then subjoins: Bernardinus, perplexed by so many commands, was utterly at a loss what to do or whither to go.

[262] being bound by these and other contrary commands, And there was indeed good reason why the most obedient Man should stand in doubt; and that this may be clear, and at the same time that it may appear how eagerly and with what zeal various cities sought after his sermons, it will not be beside the purpose to call the aforesaid matters briefly to memory. In the preceding year Pope Innocent, by a letter given at Rome on the third of June, had commanded him in virtue of holy obedience to preach at Siena through the Lent of the year 1489, and had added this clause: Notwithstanding any other mandate whatsoever, even one made or yet to be made to thee by another Brief of ours, unless special and express mention be made of this very Brief which we direct to thee. The same Pontiff in the aforecited year 1488 had ordered him to preach at Reggio Lepidum, and again by other letters that at the same time he should preach at Perugia. He then added a fourth, signed on the sixth day of August, in which he ordered him to give the people of Perugia the option whether they preferred to hear him preaching in the time of Advent or of Lent; and, according to their choice, to spend the one time on them and the other on the people of Reggio.

[263] Nevertheless, since in the aforesaid letters no mention was made of a revocation of the command to preach at Siena, Bernardinus, the year 1489 having begun, came to Siena. But then he received those two Pontifical letters just reported, by the first of which he was ordered to deliver sermons to the people at Perugia, and by the other at Rome, in that very Lent. [at length he determined to set out for Rome; but the people of Siena, to retain him,] Even after receiving these he could have remained at Siena, since not even in them had Innocent expressly revoked the aforesaid mandate. But there came besides the vicar general's mandate in favor of the Romans, made known to him either by word or by letters; by which he could be rendered the more doubtful, because the Pontiff in the letter given to that same vicar had enjoined it with this clause: Notwithstanding any other ordinances and mandates whatsoever perhaps made to the contrary, and the understanding had between us; by which last words the often-mentioned command could deservedly seem to be revoked, which hitherto had stood only through the understanding had between the praised Pontiff and Bernardinus, that is, through the knowledge of that Pontiff's will that he should, notwithstanding contrary mandates made or to be made, instruct the people of Siena with salutary admonitions through the coming Lent.

[264] So the Blessed himself must be said to have judged, and so he would have done, obtain new letters: at Siena he baptizes a Hebrew girl: had not the people of Siena stood in the way, having obtained new letters from the Pontiff, according to what may be read in Wadding in the place cited. He attempted to withdraw, meaning to obey the last mandates of the Pontiff and of the vicar. The people of Siena resisted, and said that they would by no means let him go, alleging that they who were first in right ought to be first in possession: and they quickly sent men to procure the revocation of the more recent commands. They obtained it indeed, through the intervention of the Cardinal of Siena, legate of Perugia (Francis Todeschini Piccolomini, afterwards Pope, called Pius III). Having begun his sermons from Sexagesima, he continued them through the whole of Lent in the cathedral church. On the first Sunday he learned that a young Hebrew girl of eight years, burning with desire for Baptism, had not been able to come to the sacred waters, the bishop's vicar refusing. Having called the young girl to him and admired her constancy and her tears, he had her dipped with a most solemn rite, the Jews gnashing their teeth, and delivered a notable sermon on these matters.

[265] He labored very much here, preaching twice on feast days according to the custom of the city; he reproves the patrons of the Hebrews and those who use their medical services but he added a third sermon also in the monastery of the Poor Clares. He gravely rebuked certain diseased Christians, too familiar friends and powerful patrons of the Hebrews, by whose agency a Hebrew physician had lately been hired at public expense to attend the citizens. He urged besides that no one should take medicine from him whom they manifestly and by admission knew to be a perpetual enemy of Jesus Christ. Dealings of this kind of Christians with Jews and Saracens had been forbidden in the same century, namely in the year 1451, by Pope Nicholas V in a constitution part of which Odoricus Raynaldus recites in his continuation of the ecclesiastical Annals of Cardinal Baronius, under the aforecited year, number 5, in which the Pontiff speaks thus: We ordain that henceforth for all future time Christians ought not, in sickness or weakness or at any other time whatsoever, to receive from them medicine, or potions, or cures of wounds or scars, or any kind of remedy. These things being briefly indicated, let us again hear the annalist continuing his discourse about Bernardinus.

[266] He reported that St. Bernardino, their fellow-citizen, had related he argues; God confirming his words. that a Hebrew physician dying at Avignon had said that he did not die so unwillingly, after he had by prescribing crafty drugs killed many thousands of Christians. There were indeed those who chose rather to refuse all medicine than to receive it from that man; and by divine aid they recovered. A noble matron, the wife of N. Borghesi, resisted her husband when he called this Hebrew to cure their son who was suffering from a continued fever; and she received him back wonderfully healed. Lucretia Salimbeni, tortured for three days in childbirth and at the point of death, having come to herself out of her symptoms and seeing the Hebrew standing before the bed, indignantly drove him away, and, having poured out prayers to the Virgin Mary, gave birth unaided and unharmed. Since nevertheless certain persons persisted in protecting the Hebrew, and others called him in for healing, Bernardinus said from the pulpit that what the magistracy would not do, the Virgin Mary, protectress of the city, and St. Bernardino, born in that city, would shortly remedy. A little afterwards the Hebrew perished by a sudden death.

[267] After Easter, having set out for Lucca, among other things On the day of Easter (which in this year was celebrated on the nineteenth of April) he preached three times: first after he had toward dawn refreshed a huge multitude with holy Communion; second after the midday meal; third after Vespers, showing the many precious relics of the people of Siena, the chief of which he commended with brief and learned elogia; and this sermon the people of Siena long afterwards called the Crown of their sacred treasure. After this service rendered to the people of Siena, he also cultivated with his sacred exhortations and counsels, in this same year, the people of Lucca, by whom he had often been sought after. Luca, to the natives Lucca, is an ancient colony and city of Tuscany founded on the river Serchio, whose situation Baudrand in his Lexicon sets out in these words: Distant ten miles from Pisa to the north, and thirteen from the Tyrrhenian sea to the east, forty-five toward Florence, and sixty from Siena, thirty toward Luni. That same city has now for many centuries been a republic of its own right, with the adjoining tract which from it is called the Lucchese, in Italian il Luchese.

[268] he urges the erection of a Mont-de-piété, And so, to continue with Wadding out of the manuscript Legends and Cimarella, Bernardinus, having been very often asked by letters and messengers from the people of Lucca to turn aside to them, at last in this year went away (from Siena), and on the Kalends of May began to preach on the right rule of living for Christians in goodness and simplicity, without pomp, luxury and vanity; and on the relief and protection of the poor, whose substance men estranged from the faith were devouring. Then, having threatened the divine judgment upon those who for the sake of gifts and payments had undertaken the protection of the Hebrews, he pursued the same subject in the senate house, being asked there to instruct the magistracy and the rulers of the city, adding those things which conduced to the perfect government of the commonwealth and to the equity of justice. Further, when very many documents were brought forward by the favorers of the Hebrews in their defense — namely a bull of Nicholas V, and the Opinions of Alexander of Imola, a noble jurist, and of most learned theologians and doctors of both laws — he set contrary assertions against them; and he proved by the testimony of officers of the Roman curia that Nicholas' diploma was faulty through subreption, and had gone forth without his knowledge.

[269] and obtains it; many struggling against it in vain, Certainly Nicholas V was so far from showing favor to the Jews that he even willed the privileges granted them by his predecessors to be void; and among the other things which he usefully enacted for restraining their license, he even decreed that they should by no means exact, receive or extort usuries from Christians, and that they should straightway and without difficulty restore what they had extorted to those from whom they had extorted it, as may be read in his constitution praised at number 265 out of Raynaldus. And in fact Bernardinus' pious diligence won the cause of the poor: for, the foundations having been exactly discussed (Wadding testifying), it was at length concluded that the Hebrews were to be dismissed, and a Mont erected for the relief of the poor. The patrons of the Hebrews did not, however, cease to oppose this work, and they called in as a helper that theologian, then staying at Florence, who once at Mantua left no stone unturned to prevent the erection of the Mont; concerning whom consult §7 of this Commentary. Yet in vain did they devise these and other arts, the Lord revealing to Francis of Pieve S. Stefano, a most religious man of whom we shall speak in his place, that this was His own work and not Bernardinus', and that He would overcome all difficulties. The revelation he sets out at greater length under the year 1491, where on occasion of the death of that same Francis he weaves a brief elogium of him, which I insert in this place, to which almost the whole of it belongs.

[270] On the eighth of the Ides of February, in the convent of St. Luchesius near Poggibonsi, Francis of the Pieve or village of S. Stefano exchanged this wretched life for a better, God moreover strengthening him in his purpose, having been in his youth tortured by many pains and infirmities, which he bore with the utmost patience. He had a solace for his sick health from heavenly visions frequently sent him; among which this is especially recorded, that, when Bernardinus of Feltre was planning the erection of a Mont-de-piété in the city of Lucca and was suffering grave difficulties through which he despaired of accomplishing the business, Francis in the little monastery of St. Cerbonius near Lucca saw Christ the Lord protecting the city; and the attacks of master Marianus, an Augustinian Hermit, and of others, the people going off into differing parties, and at last, all difficulties being overcome, the solemn procession of clergy and people, the place appointed for the building, the architecture of the whole house, the pledge-chambers, the various kinds of deposits, and all those things which were afterwards done, the matter being carried through entirely. The course of the vision, being three times ordered by Christ the Lord, he opened to Bernardinus, who was panting after these things, and put spirit into him to pursue and complete the work.

[271] Thus far he, praising Gonzaga in the Origins of the Seraphic Order and Cimarella, part 4, and reconciling his adversaries to him. book 6, chapter 27; but under the year 1489, from which we digressed, he goes on to set out thus Bl. Bernardinus' undertakings and the reward of his constancy. The outcome proved the truth, the very adversaries being wonderfully turned into supporters. Concerning the stipend to be conferred on the officials, out of a small coin to be repaid on account of the moneys disbursed, of which we have spoken above, another controversy was stirred up; but this too was laid to rest, and the work of the Mont was begun with great solemnity and a concourse of the whole city, a general procession being proclaimed, the bishop John Galeanutius and Dominic Gallignanus making the first and generous offerings. Besides this, a rich merchant, who on account of the gain and interest which he received from a partnership entered into with the Hebrews had opposed this institute with all the effort he could, at last * dedicated himself to its service, and bequeathed to the Mont forty thousand gold pieces of his property. But the bishop, meaning to cure the scruples of certain persons, offered this testimony to a thing well and rightly done.

[272] "Nicholas, by the grace of God bishop of Lucca. To all and singular dwelling in our city and diocese of Lucca, everlasting greeting in the Lord. [The same Mont is publicly approved and commended by the bishop of Lucca, in a diploma published,] For the confirmation and approbation of all things which have been enacted and ordained concerning the Mont-de-piété established in this city of Lucca, we, N., the aforesaid bishop, say, confirm and approve that the Mont-de-piété, divinely revealed to the human race, is most useful to every people and especially to that of Lucca; nor can anyone deservedly doubt or suspect that any appearance or scruple of usury falls upon it. For so it has been confirmed and declared by public documents by holy men approved by the Church, so by many universities of studies in Italy, so by most excellent men, professors of sacred theology of all orders, so finally by very many doctors of both laws; and, what is greater and more excellent than all the aforesaid, the supreme Pontiffs do not cease to praise and confirm the ordinance and form of the said Mont.

[273] But if any person incapable of this matter — by understanding, sex, age, or by persuasion or favor — should further think otherwise, let him turn to the Apostolic See, and for the salvation of his soul, laying aside all scrupulosity, let him believe what the Church approves. For the Mont-de-piété is most holy. And in that penny which is appointed as the salary of those serving the said Mont, no usury at all nor scruple falls, as has been confirmed and declared by many documents, and all of them public, by the venerable father, brother Bernardinus de Feltro, of the Order of Minors of the Observance, no less holily than learnedly. For by his work and exhortations it was established in this city; and if that penny, assigned to the officials of the Mont, were paid from public funds for the more expeditious reckoning of the Mont and for some advantage of the poor, that would be more free from disturbance, but certainly not more holy. And so we exhort all dwelling in this city and diocese to hold what has been written above, and, all scrupulosity being laid aside, to strive to assist the most holy Mont with a cheerful mind.

[274] For we so hold, and have judged that our opinion should be declared and published by these open letters, and in faith and testimony of this matter we have subscribed with our own hand and have ordered our accustomed seal to be affixed; and, trusting in the grace of almighty God and the merits of His blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, to all who are truly penitent and confessed, who shall stretch out helping hands to this most holy Mont-de-piété, we mercifully in the Lord relax and likewise grant forty days of the penances enjoined upon them. Given at Lucca in our episcopal palace at St. Martin's, 1489. In the seventh Indiction, and on the twenty-fifth day of July.

Nicholas, bishop of Lucca, with his own hand."

From Ughelli's Italia sacra reissued, volume 1, column 826, this bishop was Nicholas of the counts of San Donnino, of Lucca, whose elogium he there recites.

[275] concerning which Wherefore I do not know who that bishop John Galeanutius was, whom Wadding recounted in the first place among the munificent patrons of the said Mont. Perhaps the words are to be punctuated otherwise, so that the bishop and John Galeanutius are two different persons, in this way, namely: Offerings being made by the bishop, by John Galeanutius and by Dominic Gallignanus. Ughelli, just praised, concerning that same Nicholas, bishop of Lucca, and his services toward the aforesaid Mont

also makes mention of his munificence, but, saying nothing of the year, he speaks as though he had rendered it not for the erecting of the Mont but after it had already been erected. His words are these: And he most liberally aided the Mont-de-piété which they (the people of Lucca) had lately erected. From the aforesaid instrument also it may be seen that the same Mont was at least begun before the year 1489; for bishop Nicholas in it approves the things which have been enacted and ordained concerning the Mont-de-piété established in this city of Lucca.

[276] But that instrument is signed in the year 1489, on the twenty-fifth day of July, a few things are observed. at which time it is by no means likely that the building of the said Mont had already been constructed, if it was only begun in the same year by the work of Bl. Bernardinus, whom three months before this, that is on the nineteenth day of April, we say to have been still staying at Siena, and who could not without great difficulty have persuaded the people of Lucca to give their consent and aid to that pious work. Nevertheless, since on the testimony of that same bishop the aforesaid Mont was established in this city by Bernardinus' work and exhortations, and since we do not know from elsewhere that he preached at Lucca before this year, I prefer to believe Wadding, who expressly asserts these things out of his manuscript Legends and Cimarella, and to interpret the words which I have objected out of the aforementioned instrument not of a new building already then completed, but of the erection of the Mont decreed, and perhaps of a disbursement of money already begun in some other house as a loan to the poor. Further, Bernardinus remained in the city of Lucca until the twenty-sixth of July, on which day he departed thence, meaning to profit others also.

[277] Having received messengers and letters (says the annalist) from the people of Faenza and of Genoa Making for Genoa, with an injured foot, he is carried to Reggio Lepidum, that he would console them with his presence and instruct them with his teaching, he chose for various reasons to go away to Genoa. He preached in the village of Borghetto, twelve thousand paces from the city of Lucca, from which he withdrew on the day after the day of St. James the apostle; then at Caferoniana (perhaps there is indicated here Castelnuovo di Garfagnana on the river Serchio, the head of the little region of Garfagnana or Caferoniana, or Cufigliano or Gurfigliano, a small stronghold of Etruria situated in the same small province); presently at Modena. Staying there fifteen days, he sharply rebuked games, the lusts of the flesh, the vanities of the world, and excessive dowries, by which whole families were destroyed. Here he built a castle of Satan out of the fuels of sins and destroyed it in the flames. Envoys came from Reggio Lepidum that he should betake himself thither; and, when he consented but was limping with an injured foot, they conveyed him in a humble cart or wagon.

[278] There came then into that city Eleonora, daughter of Ferdinand, king of Naples, [where he delivers salutary admonitions to Eleonora, duchess of Ferrara, and to her daughters.] wife of Hercules, duke of Ferrara; and at once, accompanied by her two daughters, Elizabeth, wife of Francis Gonzaga, marquis of Mantua, and Beatrice, betrothed to Ludovico Sforza, surnamed the Moor, duke of Bari (or Barium in Apulia) and afterwards of Milan, she went on to the Man of God and asked to be taught salutary things. To the mother and to the girls he gave all the best lessons, suited to each one's state and condition. He admonished Eleonora to write to her brother the duke of Calabria that he should abstain from the oppression of the poor, from the protection of the Hebrews, and from unjust wars; but if otherwise, he should know that he would be driven from the kingdom according to the prophecy of James of Picenum: as indeed happened, when Charles, king of the French, routed the father, King Ferdinand, and the son Alphonsus, the aforesaid duke. Thus he; concerning which I shall observe a few things. The author spoke here less accurately when he called Elizabeth, daughter of Hercules of Este, duke of Ferrara, and of Eleonora of Aragon, already then the wife of Francis, or John Francis, marquis of Mantua, whose marriage Muratori, volume 9 of the Annals of Italy, teaches from the Ferrarese Diary written by contemporaries, did not take place before the month of February of the year 1490.

[279] She could nevertheless have been betrothed to him at that time, he delivers salutary admonitions. as Beatrice was to Ludovico Sforza, to whom she is said in the praised Diary to have set out from Ferrara for the purpose of entering into marriage on the twenty-ninth day of December of that same year 1490. Of the Neapolitan expedition of Charles VIII, king of France, the historians may be consulted. In the preparation for this war Ferdinand I, king of Naples, had met his death on the twenty-fifth day of January of the year 1494, hated by his own people for his cruelty. His successor labored under the same vice, his son Alphonsus, duke of Calabria, who, pressed by the weight of the aforesaid war, transferred the kingdom to his son, called Ferdinand II; and this Ferdinand, deserted by all, fled to the island of Aenaria, commonly Ischia, Charles VIII occupying almost the whole kingdom of Naples. What St. James of Picenum, otherwise called of the March, prophesied on this matter may be further discussed in his deeds under the twenty-eighth day of November.

[280] He preaches at Parma and in other places, and stays at Genoa. Concerning our Bl. Bernardinus Wadding then proceeds thus. In that city (of Reggio) he received the Pontiff's letters and mandate that in the coming Lent he should preach to the people of Lucca. Having slipped away to Parma, he delivered twenty sermons, and further enlarged and ennobled with many increases the Mont-de-piété (concerning whose erection by him go to §10). Being seized with a fever, he received Apostolic letters and letters of the vicar general, by which he was ordered to preach at Genoa through Advent. Being quickly freed from the disease, he committed himself to a long journey, and, having preached at Pontremoli (which is a town of Liguria, otherwise Apua, called by the natives Pontremoli, and since the middle of the seventeenth century obeying the grand duke of Etruria) on the day of SS. Simon and Jude (that is, the twenty-eighth of October), he delivered six sermons in the town of Spezia (or Spedia, likewise of Liguria in the dominion of the Genoese republic and on the shore of the Ligurian sea), and as many at Levanto (to the inhabitants Levanto, which is a village or stronghold on the shore of the same sea, some miles from Spezia toward Genoa), being carried thither by boat. At Genoa he began to preach in the cathedral church on the day of St. Cecilia, and did not cease on any day until the feast of the Epiphany. And although he preached to the citizens, he did not neglect those shut up in a religious prison, but, running about through all the monasteries, gave to all admonitions of salvation befitting their state and sex, and reformed with the utmost dexterity and huge labor certain houses of a looser life; concerning all which there will be occasion to speak in the following §.

* that is, to

* read, at last

§ XIII. He is sought after by many as preacher: he cultivates the people of Genoa; he reforms nuns: at Milan, having suffered a hernia, he continues his sermons: he preaches in various cities: he labors for the Monts-de-piété: his other deeds in the years 1490 and the following.

[ ] Many cities demanding him for the coming Lent, Equal or even greater than in the preceding years was the zeal of the peoples for hearing Bernardinus in their cities through the Lent of the year 1490; and so many prayers were carried to Pope Innocent for obtaining him that he, after some letters given by which he had assigned him now to one city, now to another, at last preferred to revoke those mandates and to leave it to his own discretion whither he wished to go, even without any leave asked of his superiors; which faculty, however, the Man, a great lover of obedience, would not use. So again we learn from Wadding, who, following the manuscript Legends and Cimarella, goes on to narrate his deeds thus under the year 1490 from number 13. We have said that Bernardinus of Feltre, staying at Genoa toward the end of the preceding year, did very many things there piously and prudently. But since his fame was spread everywhere and he was sought after by very many cities and peoples, and very many laid their prayers before the Pontiff that he should be sent to them, and since he could not resist so great importunity nor was willing to please everyone, he assigned this Preacher in the preceding year to three or four cities for the coming Lent, thinking either that the peoples would come to an agreement among themselves, or that the circumstances of time or of affairs, or the Preacher's own inclination, would settle the controversy.

[282] But considering that so various commands would beget grave scruples in a Man of tender conscience, the Pontiff, after some letters given to him, lest he should be pricked by goads of this kind or shaken by the importunate demands of various parties, he directed these letters to him (which he subjoins from the original) toward the end of the preceding year.

"To our beloved son brother Bernardinus de Feltro.

Since at the instance of very many we have written to thee to preach in different places, lest thou be held back by any ambiguity on this account, if perchance various parties should seek thee, by the tenor of these presents we permit thee and leave it to thy discretion to preach in this following year, without any other leave of thy superiors, in that place in which thou art confident that thou canst bring forth greater fruit of souls, to the end that richer fruits from thy good speech and work may come forth in the vineyard of Sabaoth: notwithstanding any Briefs whatsoever written to thee thereupon, and any other things making to the contrary. Given at Rome at St. Peter's under the ring of the Fisherman, the last day of November, 1489. In the sixth year of our pontificate."

[283] He added besides other letters at the beginning of this year, gives him the option: but he obeys his superior. being assailed by the prayers of many, in which, since he could not satisfy each, he committed the choice to Bernardinus himself, writing thus: "Since many seek thee for the coming Lent for this year, go whither the spirit leads thee and where thou believest thou canst bring forth greater fruit of souls, and without any other leave of thy prelates." But he would not decide anything without his superior's leave, or fix upon a place for preaching. And so, letters having been written to the vicar general, he received the answer that he should comply with the people of Genoa, who were earnestly demanding him and among whom he was even then staying. Meaning to obey his will, he remained at Genoa; and since the time for delivering the Lenten sermons was not yet at hand, he meanwhile, being asked, bestowed some labor also on another city, namely Savona. About thirty miles to the west from the city of Genoa lies Savona, likewise situated on the Ligurian sea, and subject to the same Genoese republic, and episcopal under the metropolis of Milan. But what he did there at that time, receive from the annalist.

[284] Being called nevertheless by the people of Savona, until the Lenten sermons were to be begun, [He makes an excursion to Savona; returning to Genoa he establishes pious customs,] he examined the weight and the rules of the Mont-de-piété erected there; and he found that everything was in good order, and that the substance of the pious work had risen to eighteen thousand gold florins. Staying with the Conventual Fathers, he delivered ten sermons, the Minister general, Francis Samson, hearing him and greatly commending the Man's learning, fervor and Christian eloquence. Having returned to Genoa, he began to preach on Septuagesima Sunday (which in this year 1490 had fallen on the seventh day of February), although very many, given beyond measure to the mad delights of the Bacchanalia, opposed him, saying that that time was appointed not for sermons but for games and spectacles. In a wonderful manner he reformed the manners of men, restrained much license of the nuns, banished games, burned dice, cards and other instruments of gaming, and forbade new ones to be made.

[285] he takes away abuses, and, a sermon having been delivered in the senate, He obtained by a common and public decree of the senate the removal of the abuse of the apothecaries who bought and sold sweetmeats and spiced wine on the most solemn feast day of the Lord's Nativity; he instituted a sodality of the Body of Christ, and accomplished other things of this kind salutary to souls and profitable to the commonwealth.

The people of Milan, hearing from nearby how many good things he had rendered to the people of Genoa, asked the vicar general that it might be permitted them to enjoy the teaching of so great a Man after Easter. He consented: but the people of Genoa detained Bernardinus when he wished to depart, and brought it about that the vicar's command was revoked. But he, on the Sunday in Albis, having left the pulpit of the cathedral church, and having continued the ministry of the word among his own fellows, preached, for the most part in the public square, with the same concourse and fruit as * he had earlier had in Lent. Being asked to preach separately in the senate house to the magistracy, the priors and the officers of the city, he persuaded them with wonderful fervor to cultivate justice, to lay aside hatreds, to extinguish factions, to soften rivalries, and to increase the worship and reverence of Christ.

[286] he procures salutary laws to be passed by him, "Have not," said he, "grave offenses against God brought back a republic once most flourishing, ruling far and wide beyond the borders of Europe through the bounds of Asia, and happily commanding the Aegean and Pontic seas, to the limits of a narrow dominion? Are not your strengths enfeebled by so many slaughters, and your affairs falling apart through perpetual dissensions? And as though everything were succeeding prosperously and the city were growing with great increase, lust, luxury, pride and envy of another's good fortune so reign among you that it is to be feared that after such great disasters a still heavier punishment hangs over you. Come to your senses, citizens; look to the city, consular men; put far away so many provocations of divine vengeance. I know very well that the seeds of so much inveterate corruption are cleansed away with difficulty: do you act by your authority; I with a hoarse and feeble voice, with a languishing spirit, with these my sweats, will help your continual efforts." He spoke with such fervor of spirit and tender affection that he moved the whole assembly, drew forth tears, and brought a remedy to many evils by laws most usefully passed by the senate. The Mont-de-piété, erected by Angelus a Clavasio out of moneys contributed by the councilors of St. George, he further established. Thus the praised historian.

[287] He labors for the reforming of the nuns at Genoa, Bernardinus a Clastidio, in the Italian Life of our Blessed, chapter 19, partly agrees with the aforesaid and partly writes far otherwise. According to his view, Bl. Bernardinus had received a mandate from the supreme Pontiff about bringing back to religious discipline the nuns of the city of Genoa, who at that time labored under great corruption of morals and excessive license, and were not kept within their domestic cloisters. Besides this, their reformation seemed the more difficult because it was to be feared that the order of the nobles would stand in the way, not a few of whose daughters or kinswomen were numbered among them. That he might remove this stone, the holy Preacher used the occasion which those same noblemen had offered him, when they begged that he would speak before them in the senate house. There, then, the praised biographer brings him in speaking from the pulpit on the same subject, if you regard the matter, as Wadding above, but in other phrases, concerning the once most flourishing but then much diminished state of the republic; and finally, in words which, like the rest, are Italian, holding forth to it thus.

[288] I grieve inwardly, but I cannot help, except by this feeble voice of mine, all of whose monasteries by this languishing life, by these my sweats, which I gladly pour out for thee, and which I desire to pour out far more copiously for the reforming of the nuns, so that, being changed into immaculate brides of Christ, they may with pure and pious prayers be able to help thee before God and to appease the wrath of the almighty God, which justly scourges thee. Further, he says that by this speech it came about that, all who were present weeping from a pious feeling of the mind and promising their aid, Bernardinus at last, made secure by them, undertook that difficult work. But many abbesses opposed his pious efforts, who before the ecclesiastical judges delegated to that cause boldly declared that they would not be confined within the cloisters of their monasteries, but wished to persist in that liberty which they had hitherto enjoyed. He on the contrary, delayed in nothing by these things, did not cease from constant admonitions and most efficacious reasonings, to be urged with the utmost patience and prudence, until he persuaded twelve monasteries of such virgins to the cloister; whose example all the rest also followed, and they accepted laws suited to their state, to the huge joy of all good citizens.

[289] Thus he, alleging no witness, no record for so great a matter. he is related to have brought back to the religious cloister and discipline. Yet Gratianus of Bevagna went before him, in chapter 18 of the Italian Life, whose words I likewise subjoin in Latin. A like fruit, he says, nay a much more wonderful one, was the reformation of all the monasteries of nuns at Genoa, who were living without any obedience to their monasteries, going out of them into public at their own pleasure only, and plainly without the religious cloister that was due. Some of these, moved by his sermons, accepted the monastic disciplines; but others arrogantly held out for that more licentious way of living; and the more vehemently, because the number of nobles among them was the greater, who by the favor they had with the magistrates could resist him. Nevertheless he labored and spoke so much that at last all the monasteries accepted the institutes of the true religious life, the whole city applauding because it saw those women, obstinate in their perverse opinions, brought to so perfect and holy an obedience.

[290] These things agree with the statements of Bernardinus a Clastidio, he is related to have brought them back. if you except the speech delivered to the Genoese nobles to this end, of which Gratianus makes no mention. Yet Wadding renders these things suspect to me, who, although he must be said to have seen Gratianus' Opusculum, which he several times praised, nevertheless wrote of that same reformation of the nuns by Bl. Bernardinus honorably indeed, but far more meagerly than they, saying only, in the words given above at number 280: Those shut up in a religious prison he did not neglect; but, running about through all the monasteries, he gave to all admonitions of salvation befitting their state and sex, and reformed CERTAIN ONES OF A LOOSER LIFE with the utmost dexterity and huge labor. Again at number 284 he says only: He restrained much license of the nuns. Hence I suspect that Gratianus amplified these things not a little, but that Wadding more prudently followed the surer documents written by the Blessed's own companion, or the manuscript Legends composed out of them, or Cimarella's Annals.

[291] Nevertheless, that at least some monasteries of nuns at Genoa were enclosed by Bernardinus on the authority of Innocent VIII, the same Wadding afterwards acknowledges under the year 1492, number 27, where he writes that, when this Pontiff — who through Bernardinus had enclosed the monasteries of nuns (at Genoa) — had died, those nuns attempted to return to their former liberty: Having gone out of Genoa secretly, and preaching along the way, on which matter consult what is to be said below. After this observation let us follow the blessed Man with the same Wadding as he departs from Genoa and instructs various other cities with his healthful admonitions. Here, under the aforecited year 1490, number 18, he says: There had come to Genoa, sent by the people of Padua, his own brother Antony, a man of the same institute (to which I said at number 61 that he was brought by that same blessed Brother of his in the year 1473), to lead him to Padua, by whom the people straying from the right way might be corrected and the opponents of the Mont-de-piété restrained. Having slipped away secretly from Genoa, he came to Serravalle (or Serravallis, a town of the duchy of Milan not far from the river Iria or Scrivia) on the day before the Visitation of the blessed Virgin Mary (that is, on the Kalends of July), and delivered a sermon on the following day. Having set out for Voghera (a town of the duchy of Milan) and preached there, he went away to Pavia; and staying there not at all, he passed on to Milan; he stopped, however, for some days at Binasco (commonly Binasco, which is a village or hamlet situated between Pavia and Milan), until he received the letters of the vicar general by which it should be settled where, at what time, and for how many days he was to preach: for he desired that all these things should be regulated by his superior's will.

[292] At Milan he is afflicted with a hernia; on the next day he goes on preaching, He arrived at Milan about the middle of July, and began to minister the food of sacred doctrine through the convents of the nuns; the chief men of the city being absent, and all the nobles, who were avoiding the heavy heats at their country villas. On the birthday of Bl. Mary Magdalen (the twenty-second day of July), having preached among his fellow soldiers, and being tortured by a grievous pain of hernia, he could not complete the sermon, nor return to his cell by his own steps. Having overcome the pain, on the next day he preached most eloquently on the enduring of pains and diseases for Christ, and brought relief to many in their grievous pains. Daily his audience grew greater, and the more often he preached, the more the concourse of the people, roused from the farthest corners, increased. Being well versed in the Works of St. Ambrose, whatever weighty thing he said he confirmed by his authority; which pleased exceedingly that people, most devoted to this their patron.

[293] as also at Lodi and at Piacenza, where he takes an inveterate hatred The people of Milan having been instructed, he went on to Lodi (commonly called Lodi); and, having preached twice in the market-place, he went away to Piacenza (to the natives Piacenza, and the head of the countryside of the same name, now a duchy), where, received as an angel dropped from heaven by the citizens who came out to meet him, he began his sermons from the Kalends of August and began to rebuke the usurers (for there were very many there who took forty coins in interest on every hundred) and to preach the Mont-de-piété; which he happily established, though certain men barked against it. Having inveighed gravely against factions and hatreds, the fuels of so many evils, when he taught that from these there manifestly come forth massacres of bodies, languor of the soul and decrease of fortune, and that from pardon given and the concord of citizens there arise strength of body, gladness of heart and increase of goods, a certain cobbler, who through the whole course of the sermon thought that his own life was manifestly being described, firmly laid aside the deadly hatred which he had borne for ten years, and at once received his reward: he felt the hand which through all that time had been contracted, and altogether useless from the shrinking of its sinews, restored to its former vigor; and, having returned home, he began to sew and to work.

[294] Having set out at once for Bernardinus, "I give thanks," he said, "to God and to thy preaching, which described me and my fortune. out of a certain man's heart, with a wonderful outcome; I was in health, and nothing was lacking to me: soon, blazing out in hatred against a certain man, I lost my hand; always anxious, I wasted away with spite; thence my substance decreasing daily: at last I became a beggar. But now, the cause of my misfortune being known through thee, I have cast off hatred with my whole heart; and behold I stand before thee glad and whole. The whole city knew me as one seized in the hand and unable for many years to hold even a needle. I sell nothing hidden or false: ask all the citizens; behold, now I can sew and work, by a wondrous benefit of God indeed." While those who were present stood astonished, the Man of God admonished the man not to think that he had received the grace of God in vain, but for his own instruction and that of others, that, laying aside hatreds, they should abstain from sins.

[295] Running about through the hospitals, he visited the sick, especially the lepers, he frequents hospitals, goes to Cremona, Torricella, Parma. cherished them with his services, and instructed them with pious admonitions; and this he sometimes urged, that they should beware of the temptations and filth of the flesh. Being asked by his companions why he so anxiously urged this upon men who were languishing and prostrate in body, he answered that leprosy engenders a troublesome itch of the flesh. To each at the last he distributed little gifts, whether pious little offerings, or sweetmeats, or other kinds of food, which he prepared for the days of visitation of this kind, and which his companions carried arranged in their little baskets. As September was slipping away, having set out for Cremona (another city of the duchy of Milan on the river Po), he preached for some days with great fruit in the greatest market-place of the city. Thence, sailing

to Torricella (for Torricella is a village on the same river, but situated on the other bank and in the duchy of Parma), he stayed and preached for one day. On the next day he arrived at Parma, all congratulating him on his coming, and he enlarged with new increases the Mont-de-piété, which the citizens had proved most useful and approved more and more each day.

[296] Through Ostiglia and Legnago (of which the first is a little town of the duchy of Mantua on the river Po, At Padua, having at first few hearers, then numerous ones, commonly called Ostiglia, the other a town of the Veronese countryside on the border of that of Padua on the river Adige, and otherwise Leonicum, in the vernacular called Legnano) he at last visited the people of Padua, and delivered his first sermon on the twentieth Sunday after Pentecost and through the whole following week among his fellows of the house of St. Ursula, where he gave his name to this institute. Few heard him speaking, none visited him as he stayed at home: and when his companions took this ill, he bade them be of good cheer; the people would be present in due time, the absent bishop would return, and he meanwhile would preach to simple men and to the enclosed sisters; and let them know for certain that these cold beginnings were proofs of future fruit, which the devil was striving to hinder. Further, the Man of God having been called after the second or third week to preach in the cathedral church, and Peter Barozzi the bishop, a dear friend of Bernardinus, having returned, all flocked in troops, except certain delicate persons who lay hidden at home on account of the intense cold.

[297] But these he rebuked, threatening certain of them he pleads for the erecting of a Mont-de-piété. that they would not see the spring and mild season of the following Easter. And so it came to pass; for several of the chief men died in that interval of time. On the day of the Conception of the blessed Virgin, the bishop hearing, he began to commend the work of the pious Mont, and did not cease to exhort every day until at last he obtained it; the Jews of Padua and of Venice raging in vain, who left no stone unturned to prevent this project from being approved by the senate. The work was established in the following year (of Christ 1491), to which we defer the rest of what he did here. But there, at number 44 and the following, he thus discharges his pledge out of his manuscript Legends and Cimarella. We gladly return to Bernardinus of Feltre, whom we left at Padua in the past year, meaning to pursue his wonderful travels and journeyings. There he preached assiduously and fruitfully until Septuagesima (which in the same year fell on the thirtieth day of January), at which time it was necessary for him to set out for Bologna.

[298] Having set out for Bologna against the will of the people of Padua, The people of Padua did everything to retain him among them. They asked the Pontiff, the vicar general, and the Cardinal protector that it might be permitted him to deliver the Lenten sermons among them; at last, turning to the people of Bologna themselves, to whom he had been appointed by the Pontiff as preacher for that time, and begging the same thing of them, they could not obtain it. Having therefore been carried by boat to Ferrara, he went thence to Francolino; and hence, in a rigorous season and by a troublesome journey, he came to Bologna. Before I proceed to the rest, I briefly observe that a topographical error has most likely been committed, unless the Blessed, after he had arrived at Ferrara, went back some miles to the north; since in all the maps which I have consulted I find Francolino, a village or stronghold, so marked not far from the Po that those going from it to Bologna by the direct road must pass through Ferrara. Further, lodged at Bologna in the bishop's house, he was reverently treated by order of Julian (della Rovere), Cardinal of Ostia and bishop of Bologna (who afterwards was supreme Pontiff, called Julius II), the whole people running together to hear him preaching.

[299] he inveighs against public vices, The primicerius of the city, John Bentivoglio, often came, and always listened standing on his feet: sometimes, stricken with compunction of heart, he pondered how many evils he had brought upon very many, how tyrannically he and his forebears had oppressed a noble people; how wretchedly his father and grandfather had perished, and that therefore he must deservedly fear the divine vengeance. These things he often explained sorrowfully to his wife Ginevra, an admirer of Bernardinus' virtue and learning; and she moreover let pass no sermon at which she was not most attentively present. That John Bentivolus, or Bentivoglio, the second of that name, was of such authority and power among the people of Bologna that he ruled the rest almost as their lord; until in the year 1506 he was compelled by force of arms by Pope Julius II to depart from that city; which it suffices to have noted for the present subject, since the history of the Bentivogli, which may be read in the writers of Bolognese affairs, in no way belongs to the Acts of our Blessed.

[300] [the usury of the Hebrews, etc., and commends the cult of the Most Holy Sacrament.] But this above all displeased Bernardinus in Bentivoglio, that he had undertaken the patronage of the Hebrews and used their services familiarly. Having inveighed against these, as he was accustomed to do everywhere, he asked that a limit be set to usuries, that intercourse with them be avoided, that the frauds and injuries inflicted upon Christians be punished; but in vain, the power of certain men prevailing whom they had taken to themselves as patrons out of the mammon of iniquity. Having argued powerfully against prostitution, blasphemy, the capital vices, and the ingratitude of children toward their parents, he corrected depraved morals in a wonderful manner, and brought in much reverence toward the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, whose public cult Cherubinus of Spoleto had long since established with fixed laws and appointed ministers. Toward the end of Lent he handed over to Vulcan innumerable and various instruments and incitements to sin, and among these most beautiful but lascivious images and pictures which offended chaste eyes. In his last sermon, delivered at the church of St. Petronius, he extolled justice with such praises as he could, and sharply rebuked its corrupters, saying that there was no other prop of the commonwealth.

[301] While he was staying here at Bologna, he must be said to have received letters of Pope Innocent VIII, Being ordered by the Pontiff by letters by which he was commanded to preach to the people of Piacenza after Easter, and which Wadding first recounted under the year 1492, although they manifestly belong to 1491. He exhibits them thus, as received from the autograph, under the aforecited year, number 11:

To our beloved son Bernardinus of Feltre, etc.

From the report of our beloved son Ardicinus, priest Cardinal of the title of SS. John and Paul, of Aleria, we have understood that thou, preaching the word of God in the city of Piacenza in the year just past, hast profited much for the salvation of the souls of that people, and that therefore that same people also greatly desires that, when the festivities of the coming Sunday of the Resurrection are past, thou shouldst betake thyself thither again to preach.

[302] We therefore, solicitous for the salvation of souls by our pastoral office, to betake himself to Piacenza wishing to grant these wishes of that people, commit to thee, and, strictly enjoining in virtue of holy obedience, command thee, that after the said festivities thou go to Piacenza to preach the word of God, at least until the Advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that thou cherish that people in the Evangelical doctrine and direct it into the way of the commandments of God: in which thou wilt do a thing acceptable to almighty God and very pleasing to us. Given at Rome at St. Peter's under the ring of the Fisherman, the twenty-fifth day of February in the year 1491. In the seventh year of our pontificate. The same chronological notes, which agree exceedingly well, the earlier Lyons edition of Wadding of the year 1648 also has, and the rest also stands rightly, so that it cannot be doubted that this letter belongs to this year. Nay, Wadding himself acknowledges that Bernardinus set out for Piacenza in this year, subjoining the following to the words given at number 300.

[303] Being ordered to set out for Piacenza, he preached at Modena on the way at a public procession of the whole people and clergy, preaching in some places along the way, he uncovers sacrilegious praying for rain; and he persuaded them that, if they wanted a shower, they should repent. When he finished the sermon, all invoked God's mercy with tears, and on that night water came down most abundantly from heaven; the people attributing this benefit to Bernardinus' merits. Thence, turning aside some miles to the right to the north, he came, being asked, to Carpum, called by the natives also Carpi, which city is now in the dominion of the duke of Modena, but then obeyed its own prince of the family Pio. To the people of Carpi (the words are Wadding's), at the request of prince Albert Pio, he preached once, and to those of Reggio (that is, to the inhabitants of Reggio Lepidum) twice. At Parma he drew out his stay for nine days, and uncovered the frauds of certain impostors who, displaying false Bulls, were selling the remission of all crimes for money.

[304] And so he turned the moneys to pious uses, and made the scoundrels go to the bad. impostors: at Piacenza he enlarges the Mont. Being asked by count James Sanvitale, he went away to the town of Fontanella (unknown to me by this name), where, having preached twice, he routed thence also the remnants of the aforesaid pretenders. Having entered the hospital of St. Lazarus near Piacenza, he visited each of the sick and stirred them by pious exhortations to endurance of their disease. Received into that city with the jubilation of all, he further established the Mont-de-piété which we said above he had erected, and enlarged it with many gifts, which at his persuasion the several orders of craftsmen, merchants, doctors, nobles and ecclesiastics brought on appointed days.

* at which

§ XIV. Monts-de-piété instituted by him at Padua, at Piove di Sacco and at Ravenna: that of Mantua restored and enlarged: inveterate hatreds extinguished at Faenza: sermons delivered by him in various places, and his deeds in the year 1491 and the beginning of the following.

[ ] Having returned from Piacenza There still remain many things to be narrated of Bl. Bernardinus' deeds under the year 1491. We have said above that it had been commanded him by Pontifical letters that after the Easter of this year he should betake himself to Piacenza, and that there, at least until the Advent of our Lord, he should refresh with his sermons the citizens who were eager for the divine word. He, who held nothing more important than to obey, was present at Piacenza at the appointed time, but, as we shall presently say, withdrew thence sooner than he had been ordered by the aforementioned letter; which is a most certain sign that that earlier mandate was altered as to the length of the stay by the same Pontiff who had given it, so many peoples asking, and urging with that same supreme pastor of the Church, that that divine Preacher should be granted to them also, as I have said was often done at other times: for concerning his prompt obedience no suspicion can fall upon any prudent man in a Man who, as I have shown above, was unwilling to use even the liberty granted him of preaching where he wished.

[306] he preaches at Padua before a very great concourse of the inhabitants And so Bernardinus in this year 1491, after Pentecost, having slipped away from Piacenza by the river Po, to use Wadding's words, to Revere, delivered on the feast of the solemnity of Corpus Christi a most learned sermon on the wonderful device of divine love, by which He, being about to ascend into heaven, left Himself to men to be enjoyed personally. Now Reverium, to the inhabitants Rever, is a stronghold of the duchy of Mantua opposite Ostilia, commonly Ostiglia, and on the opposite bank of the Po, down whose stream the Blessed was sailing. But the sacred solemnity of Corpus Christi was celebrated in that year on the second day of June; whence one may determine the time of Bernardinus' departure from the city of Piacenza. Thence, having presently continued his journey, he hastened to Padua, where he at once began and pursued his sermons, always with a greater reputation for sanctity and a greater concourse of hearers, many of whom flocked thither even from the neighboring places, and by name from the city of Vicenza, lodgings being hired by some for as long as he should be preaching there.

[307] and of the neighbors, by whom he is honored as a Saint, Further, how all these things came to pass, it will be useful, from the often-mentioned annalist of the Minors, the manuscript Legends

and Cimarella being praised, to have recited here after the usual manner. On the second Sunday after Pentecost he preached in the consular house, and on the following days in the cathedral church. On the day of St. Antony, most solemn to the people of Padua, he preached in a very spacious square to many thousands of men who had assembled for the cult of the most holy patron of the city. Having pursued this ministry through the whole summer season, hearers flowed together from every side, and many from the city of Vicenza had hired houses there for as long as it should please Bernardinus to preach there. This indeed was wonderful, that the more he was heard, the more and more he pleased, and the divine Spirit seemed daily to speak through his mouth with a fuller gift.

[308] His reputation for holiness grew there to such a point that, pieces even being cut from his garment: he takes care that a Mont-de-piété when he was returning to the church of St. Francis, a great crowd pressing upon him, a large part of his garment was cut away, and he himself slipped away secretly to the little monastery of St. Ursula, that that house might at last be freed from so great a crowd. There at last he erected the Mont-de-piété, previously approved and accepted by the Venetian senate, Peter Barozzi the bishop favoring it most earnestly, a great sum of money having been gathered from offerings. Thus there; but Innocentius of Pavia in the History of the cult, page 246, recites out of the Defense of the Monts-de-piété by Bernardinus a Busto some Latin verses which he asserts were hung at the gate of the said Mont on the very day of its erection, and which it will not be beside the purpose to have transcribed here.

What thanks can the city of Padua render to thee, O Christ,

What to the Father, what to the Holy Spirit?

Which by the counsel of Bernardinus of Feltre now has among her

A Mont of divine piety.

A Mont which, as she thought it ought never to be made,

So made she acknowledges to be by thy gift, O Christ.

A Mont which touches heaven with its highest summit,

And grants an ascent to the stars of the empyrean pole.

[309] He adds also some other verses drawn, as he says, from the end of a lengthy to be erected; Elegy, in which the great usefulness of that same pious Mont, by which the usuries of the Hebrews were driven out, was celebrated. They are of this kind.

But thou, who art to us the head and cause of these good things,

Live long, O Doctor beloved of our God.

Live long, and build many Monts of piety,

Bernardinus, honor of pious religion.

These at the last shall prepare happy kingdoms for thee,

And shall make thee climb to the highest stars of the pole!

He subjoins finally that this same Mont was confirmed by the supreme Pontiff Alexander VI by a Bull which begins Pastoris aeterni, and is noted as given on the fifth of February of the year 1493, but in the third year of his own Pontificate: but certainly some error lies hidden in the numbers, since Alexander VI, who had been substituted for Innocent VIII on the eleventh day of August in the year 1492, could have been only in the first year of his Pontificate on the fifth of February of the year of Christ 1493.

[310] Daily experience proved the usefulness of the work; and hence, a great help indeed to the poor. as Wadding continues, the people of Padua keep a perpetual memory of this benefit conferred upon them; and that not undeservedly do they celebrate it through their Histories. Angelus Portinarius and Bernardinus Scardeonius, historians of that people, pursue this matter at length. The first wrote in Italian; Scardeonius in Latin, from whom I transcribe the history. In it one will be able to see the origin of the Mont, its quality, its public advantage, and its admirable increase. He then recounts Scardeonius' words, which, since there at the beginning they differ, though slightly and only in a few words, from the published Work of Scardeonius which we have in our Museum, I have preferred to reprint from the latter. The praised Work exists, entitled On the Antiquity of the city of Padua and on the illustrious citizens of Padua, in the Treasury of the antiquities and Histories of Italy published by John George Graevius and Peter Burmann, volume 6, part 3, and there are prefixed to it elogia of Scardeonius himself, and inscriptions made to his memory.

[311] The erection of this Mont, Of these, that greater credit may be given to what is to be said, I only observe that Bernardinus Scardeonius, a priest renowned for integrity of life and for learning, a Paduan by birth and a canon of that city, died there in the year of Christ 1574, in the ninety-sixth year of his age; so that he must be said to have been brought into the world about the year 1478, and to have numbered about thirteen years of his life when that Mont was erected by Bernardinus, whom therefore he could have known and heard preaching. He then, in the aforepraised edition, book 2, class 5, after he had recounted the various monasteries and pious houses of the city of Padua, wrote the following concerning the Mont-de-piété, as a work more excellent than the rest. The things which have hitherto been said, although they are certainly very praiseworthy, yet the Mont-de-piété seems to be more praiseworthy, which in the year 1491, at the persuasion of Bl. Bernardinus Tomitanus of Feltre *, of the sacred family of the Minorites, an outstanding preacher and a man approved by all for the celebrity of his name, the excellence of his learning and the holiness of his life, they erected by the favor and help of Peter Barozzi, bishop of Padua, a man of no less holiness and piety.

[312] its increase, its usefulness, And this Mont has to this day been so abundantly enlarged under the auspices of the people of Padua that it exceeds the sum of thirty-eight thousand gold coins, besides the great quantity of moneys which are daily deposited there either voluntarily by the citizens or in trust by private persons. Moneys of this kind are lent to the needy upon any pledge whatsoever. But for the interest which the Jews used to exact annually at twenty for every hundred, the Mont-de-piété exacts only five, and that for paying the wage of the officers and workmen and for the other expenses which are yearly incurred in that business; lest at any time from that expense the sum of the capital which is found in the principal should gradually fall short from the wage. But this wage is not exacted except for pledges above thirty shillings; for below thirty a loan is given free to those who ask.

[313] its profit to the poor, and its manner of administration But that residue which remains over and above the principal beyond the expense of the workmen is entirely disbursed upon the poor and upon pious causes. Partly indeed for placing in marriage virgins of the city, drawn by lot each year among the guilds of craftsmen; partly to orphans and to the monasteries of the mendicants, inasmuch as from that interest gain (if it must be so called) nothing at all accrues to the principal. But the principal grows daily from pious offerings, which every year, a collection being made by the nobles, the citizens, and by all the guilds, both spiritual and secular, are publicly made at Easter. Which increase indeed almost every year rises to the sum of four hundred gold pieces. But the sum of expenses for guards, notaries, assessors, censors, masters and other officers of that business amounts to three thousand five hundred gold pieces.

[314] is set out from Bernardinus Scardeonius. On account of this pious deed there were banished and utterly cast out from Padua twenty-two lending banks of the Jews, which brought them yearly from unlawful usuries more than twenty thousand gold pieces. There was besides imposed a heavy fine if any of them should lend to anyone at usury any longer: which decree has happily stood to this present day, and (as I hope) will stand hereafter. But the universal treasury is kept under the greatest guard in a most safe place beside the praetorium. And seven houses are scattered in the middle of the city, where moneys are everywhere disbursed and pledges kept, each of which single nobles inhabit yearly with their families: yet in this it is diligently provided that no one be taken up to that office unless he has first offered suitable sureties, for the rendering by them of every kind of reparation in the event of any mishap. Thus far Bernardinus Scardeonius in the praised edition. But now let us return to Wadding, narrating the rest of the Blessed's deeds. He proceeds thus at number 49.

[315] Portinarius asserts that there was also instituted by him there a confraternity of the flagellants, [Hence, having with difficulty departed after other matters, he procures a like Mont at Piove di Sacco.] who walked in white garments, named from the name of Jesus; but since he assigns the year 1423, either it must be confessed that an error has crept into the numbers, or this is rather the offspring of Bernardino of Siena; for Tomitanus had not yet come into the world about that year. Rightly indeed: but Bernardinus a Clastidio in the Life, chapter 19, fixes the erection of that sodality in the year 1493; which being granted, every objection from the Blessed's age ceases. I go on with Wadding: Whether it was the work of this man or of the other, the people of Padua, venerating the man of Feltre as a truly apostolic man, followed him in troops wherever he went; but when he was about to depart, with greater effort and in greater numbers. This method was devised of holding back the importunate and most troublesome crowd: that when he had gone out through the gate of Ponte Corvo, the pile-bridge should be raised; and thus the devotion of so numerous a following was eluded. Staying and preaching fifteen days at Piove di Sacco (commonly Pieve di Sacco, a town of the Paduan countryside), he had countless hearers from the neighboring villages and towns, by whose alms contributed another Mont was also erected there.

[316] Thither came, sent by the Venetian senators, the guardian of the house of St. Job, [Being invited to Venice, he modestly refuses: being ordered to Padua, he goes on,] to ask that in the following Lent he would preach among them, and that he would be willing to set out thither at once, to salute those most illustrious men from whose sight he had been absent for so many years — namely from the year of Christ 1483, in which, on account of the Pontifical interdict observed, he had been banished with his brethren from the Venetian state, as was said in §6. He said that it was not permitted him, nor did he dare, to go to that most noble city without the leave of his superiors; especially where it might be feared that * a return would not be permitted. A little afterwards he received a Pontifical diploma from the bishop of Treviso (Nicolaus Franco), legate of the Apostolic See, obtained by the people of Padua, that he should render them that benefit. There came also the command of the vicar general, and also of Julian the Cardinal (della Rovere, protector of the Order of Minors), that he should satisfy the wishes of the people of Padua. It was not lawful to resist so many commands; he determined nevertheless to pursue the journey he had proposed to himself into the Romagna, and there to sow the word of God, as he had promised to very many of the people of Ravenna.

[317] In that city which in the Italian vernacular is called Chiozza (or Chioggia, He preaches at Chioggia and erects a Mont-de-piété at Ravenna, but in Latin Fossa Clodia or Clugia, and is a small episcopal city under the patriarchate of Venice, on a small island of the Adriatic sea fifteen miles distant to the south from Venice — in that city, I say) he preached for four days in the public market-place to a crowded audience; but to a still more crowded one at Ravenna, where he preached for the most part with wonderful fruit in the open field. He began to commend a Mont-de-piété and to condemn the usuries of the Hebrews; and at last, although the Jews raged and scattered many calumnies, and had obtained a Venetian decree of the senate in their own favor, as though Bernardinus were stirring up and disturbing the whole city, he instituted the Mont, the archbishop, who gave the first generous offering, and the governor and the consuls consenting. The name of Ravenna is better known and more celebrated in history than that a description of it need be given here; and so I shall note only a few things which serve to illustrate the subject before us, out of book 7 of the History of the people of Ravenna by Hieronymus Rubeus.

[318] the Jews resisting in vain, The people of Ravenna at that time obeyed the Venetian republic, to which they had committed themselves of their own accord from the year 1441, hating the heavy yoke of Hostasius da Polenta, who lorded it over them. But among the other conditions which they then agreed upon with the Venetians, Rubeus recounts this one: That Jews should be sent to Ravenna, who by giving money at interest should in some way relieve the want of the needy. Hence gather why the Jews of Ravenna had recourse to the Venetian senate, and by their lies and calumnies were able to obtain from it the aforesaid decree of the senate; namely because they, at the demand of the people of Ravenna, had formerly been sent thither by the Venetians in order to practice moneylending for the sake of the poor, as was then thought — against which Bl. Bernardinus most keenly pleaded. But at last, as was fitting, the equity of the cause prevailed, and, the Venetian senate itself approving and commanding, the Jews were forbidden to lend at interest at Ravenna. There exists a record of this matter, with a notable elogium of Bernardinus, in the praised Rubeus, book 7, from which Wadding transferred it into his Annals, but with the times less accurately distinguished; and therefore I prefer to subjoin it here from Rubeus' own History.

[319] who, while Bernardinus was delivering sermons to the people there, Under the year 1488 he says this: At this time (and it was in the year 1488 from the Virgin's Childbearing) the Franciscan friars, whom they call Observants, were received at Ravenna, and a seat was given them at St. Mama's outside the city near the gate of the same name. Wadding rightly indeed observed, in volume 11 under the year 1444, number 66, that Rubeus here forgot himself, who had written that this donation was made in the year of Christ 1444, in which it in fact occurred; nevertheless, since from what has been said above we have it that Bl. Bernardinus preached there in the year 1488 also, to this year too may partly belong what the same Rubeus presently subjoins, and which Wadding recounted together, as though everything had happened in the year 1491 and the following. And so the historian of the people of Ravenna continues thus. For at that time Bernardinus of Feltre *, a Franciscan, journeying and teaching through all Italy, both laying open the mysteries of divine wisdom with the highest eloquence and leading men to know truly the impurity of their souls and to detest it from the heart and to embrace the worship and veneration of God, preached this very often at Ravenna.

[320] at length by a decree of the Venetian senate And since on account of the concourse of the people the churches were insufficient, he preached in the market-place with the greatest felicity of a voice which reached the ears of all unbroken *; and from the sermon he returned home through hidden streets, avoiding the men who had always been accustomed to snatch away something from his garments as from those of a holy man. At his impulse and by his sermons the Jewish moneylenders are, not long after, cast out of the city of Ravenna, and meanwhile certain sums of money and lands were gathered together by the disbursements of pious men, and especially of Phyliasius Rovarella the archbishop, who paid out much money, out of whose proceeds money should be handed over when the goods of the needy had been pledged. They call it a Mont-de-piété, which we see still to exist, not without advantage to the poor citizens, though with difficulty. Hence he proceeds to the year 1492: In the following year Innocent VIII, Supreme Pontiff, who had been the successor of the deceased Sixtus IV, departed from this life. Then, after many other things not pertaining here, returning to the beginnings of that same year 1492, he has this again about Bernardinus.

[321] At the beginning of the next year the people of Ravenna, stirred up by the sermons of the lord Bernardinus of Feltre, they were forbidden to lend at interest, and their synagogue was thrown down. as has been said above, since from the Mont-de-piété now raised up great advantage flowed to the needy, all sought from the Venetian fathers, through John Baptist Spretus the jurisconsult and Ghelfus Tizonus the physician, that the Jews should be cast out of Ravenna, or at least that it should not be lawful for them to lend money at interest any longer. The Venetians, having also heard the Jews who had hastened thither, decreed that they should not lend at interest, and that their synagogue, which was in a frequented place and near the greatest church, should be destroyed: which Augustinus Barbadicus the doge commanded to be carried out by letters written to Marcus Bragadinus on the sixth of the Kalends of April. Thus Hieronymus Rubeus; which things, although they belong partly to the year, as I said, 1488, and partly to 1492, I have nevertheless judged should be recorded here under 1491, in which they chiefly occurred, together with Wadding, who then goes on to relate compendiously thus the rest of the blessed Man's pious deeds among the people of Ravenna in this very year.

[322] He rendered other benefits to the people of Ravenna. He brought in a greater reverence toward the venerable Eucharist; He restores morals there, and publicly burns the fuels of sins. a more tender compassion toward the poor; a more frequent resort to the churches; a fuller piety in all things. He obtained by the huge power of his speaking that harlots should be driven from private houses and hidden lodgings into the public brothel; that young men should be forbidden trimmed and flowing hair, ruinous and lavish games, and lascivious and impious books. For it was his familiar manner that, when he spoke against vices, he seemed not to speak but to thunder; not to preach but to hurl lightning. God indeed gave to his voice a voice of power; nor did His word return to Him empty. As he was about to depart, he heaped up a huge pile of gaming boards, cards, dice, women's toilette articles and other fuels of sin, and, to the great dancing joy of the people, set flames beneath and burned them. From Ravenna he set out for Faenza, another episcopal city of the Romagna, called by the natives Faenza, of which we have already made mention elsewhere, to which he likewise rendered notable service, as may be learned from the words of the Annalist of the Minors, which I again transcribe.

[323] These same fruits of piety and of restored financial affairs the people of Faenza received from Bernardinus' coming and teaching; [At Faenza he procures the expulsion of an impious Jew; he reconciles those at variance,] and he brought it about that they expelled the impious Hebrew physician Lazarus, who lorded it over the whole city by authority, money and learning. It was found that that one Hebrew had laid up in his house more wealth from the blood of the poor than all the merchants of the whole city had stored. He forbade the poor, whom he treated free of charge for the sake of winning greater goodwill, to invoke the names of Christ the Lord and of Mary His Mother; and if they implored the help of anyone but God alone, he refused to treat them. The city being divided into armed factions, he spoke daily against enmities, and by a hidden divine power softened the hardest hearts. Very many who had been deadly enemies for many years he induced to be reconciled, laying aside hatreds and forgiving injuries; so that, as an example to others, they rose up in the middle of the sermon and were joined in a mutual embrace and kiss.

[324] And hence such zeal for settling discords seized the leading men and, inveterate hatreds being removed, that they sought out those who were engaged in quarrels and factions; and if they could not persuade them, they drove at least one party to come to father Bernardinus, and thence forced the other; whereby, each being composed separately by the Preacher's words also, they were bound from deepest enmity into true friendship. But there was an old man who for many years could not be induced to be willing to spare the slayer of his only son, a well-brought-up youth most obedient to him; although many of the chief citizens had entreated him. At last a certain Papinianus, doctor of both laws, having approached him, obtained only this, that he should come with him to the Preacher; who, although he resisted once and again, at last on the following day, by his reasons and prayers as he offered himself to him in place of his dead son, freely and with tears publicly spared him, the exchange of sonship also being accepted.

[325] into mutual embraces and true friendship The citizens who stood by, and who had known the man as most tenacious of hatred, wept with him as he wept, and rejoiced at the wonderful change. From a fierce enemy he became thereafter a man of peace, and whomever he saw or heard to be at variance he busied himself to reconcile, or led to Bernardinus with Papinianus, the author of his own peace. Among others, two heads of the factions of the Val Lamone (at number 202 it is called Camonica), whose dissensions, quarrels and slaughters over many years were manifest to all. One of them, sterner than the other and of a rigid nature, said rudely and harshly that he would never spare, and answered Bernardinus as he urged peace: "I cannot: for a hundred years we have carried on harsh hatreds; my enemies have shed much of my blood; they have killed my kinsmen; thou strivest that I should spare; I will not do it: thou spendest thy time uselessly." But when Bernardinus enumerated the many harms of enmity and discord and the advantages of friendship and peace, and when that herald of peace said: "I, though I lost my only son, and him most obedient, by treachery, nevertheless for the sake of this most pious Man and for the love of God spared his slayer and laid aside all anger; and dost thou refuse to do it on account of slain kinsmen?" — at last, the Holy Spirit cooperating, he felt himself moved within and his heart softened.

[326] he brings them back: the obstinate are chastised: And so he committed himself to the holy Man's judgment; then not only did he himself forgive the offenses, but he also induced all his kinsmen and the men of his party to do the same. When at once the men of both factions rushed into mutual embraces, those who stood by wondered and said: "The Lord has sent His Angel to us, who has restored peace to the city and concord to the whole region." But lest these things should be thought to have been accomplished without the finger of God, it pleased Him to approve His Servant's teaching by miracles. For, having threatened losses, poverty, death and the divine anger to those who opposed the erection of the Mont, or favored the Jew, or had dealings with him, he nevertheless felt the harsh contradiction of a certain soldier in the erection of the Mont; but that man felt the divine vengeance, being cruelly killed a little afterwards. A merchant, otherwise wealthy, who was receiving moneys from the Jew at interest and usury, was in a short time reduced to the utmost destitution. A farmer drew a great quantity of grain from the same man for sowing, meaning to pay interest at harvest time; but while he reaps fine ears, he found the grain scanty and small. So indeed Wadding; but I, although these things may deservedly be ascribed to divine vengeance, cannot hold them for miracles.

[327] preparing to depart hence, he is piously detained. The time had come (the words are the same annalist's) for departing to Milan according to the command of the vicar general; and when the citizens learned this, they asked with the highest entreaties that he would stay longer among them. When they could not obtain this, that old man whom we have said had taken Bernardinus as his father, using a pious device, came up boldly, saying: "Thou didst hand thyself over to me as a son, that I might lay aside the vengeance for my slain son: as such I received thee, and thou didst receive me as father before the whole people: therefore by a father's authority I command thee to remain here at least for eight days, and not to cease from doing good to a people most devoted to thee." Bernardinus, seeing the good old man's sincere heart and pious confidence, smiled and said that he would obey his father. He delivered thirty-four sermons here, and brought forth very much fruit of virtue and peace among a grave and turbulent people.

[328] At last, being girded for the journey to Milan, he had to turn aside from the road to Mantua, He restores the Mont of Mantua in order to re-establish the Mont-de-piété erected by him four years before, which was tottering through the carelessness and ignorance of certain persons. Further, many offerings having been received, especially from a matron of the Fantini family, the marquis (of Mantua, John Francis II Gonzaga) and the senate consenting, he brought the Mont back to its former state and enlarged it twofold. Hippolytus Donesmondus

in book 6 of the Ecclesiastical History of Mantua, under this year 1491, writes that Bl. Bernardinus then hastened to Mantua in order that, being present, he might repress the calumniators who had begun to attack the said Mont with new engines; and that he accomplished this so efficaciously, both by sermons and by disputations held, that, in order thereafter to impose silence upon its opponents, the bishop of Mantua drew up a public instrument, subscribed by the Marquis, the senators, the doctors, the nobles, the merchants, the craftsmen, and many of the common people.

[329] On the same occasion he affirms that a beginning was made of the building of the Mont, which was still standing in his own time. and enlarges it: his companion falling ill there, he goes on to Cremona. These things indeed, or some of them, may belong to this year; yet since he fixes them at the beginning of that year, at which time we have seen above that Bernardinus was living not at Mantua but at Padua; and since he adds other things which Wadding relates were done by the Blessed there at the beginning of the following year, I scarcely doubt that the Mantuan historian, not everywhere accurate enough in assigning years, has confounded the deeds of two years. Let us return to Wadding. About the time of the Blessed's departure from the city of Mantua, Francis, the inseparable companion of his journeys, a very good man, to whom the chief part of this narrative is owed, fell into a fever; whom, although he let him go reluctantly, he nevertheless would not put off any longer the journey enjoined by his superior. And so he left him earnestly commended to his own brother Antony and to others, and, having set out for Cremona, refreshed with two sermons the people who desired to hear him.

[330] On the twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost he began to preach at Milan, [At Milan he promotes the cult of the Bl. Virgin Mary and of the Most Holy Name of Jesus:] having first reverently saluted the archbishop, whom by humble and religious deference he reconciled to his Friars, having otherwise been angry on account of the lawsuit brought about the canonical portion. On the day of the Virgin's Conception he said many things excellently and solidly about this mystery, and quieted the disturbances that had arisen from the inquisitor of the faith having brought back to his prisons a certain promoter of the pious doctrine who was, however, imprudent. He also induced the duke to render to the Virgin every possible and lawful honor in defending her immaculate conception, and to visit with a heavy fine those who blasphemed the name of so great a Virgin, and of the heavenly ones, and of the most high God. Then, a sermon having been delivered on the excellence and power of the name of Jesus, and a banner shown which set forth that name in a most beautiful painting, when certain religious men busied themselves to hinder the devotion of the people, they increased it the more: for the people, indignant, painted the most sacred name both privately and publicly.

[331] He nevertheless suffered some calumnies, being undeservedly traduced before Ludovico Sforza the duke being twice unjustly accused before the prince, (who was usurping the duchy of Milan from John Galeazzo Maria, his brother's son, leaving him the empty name of duke) as though he had disturbed the peoples, had stirred them to unheard-of things under a mask of piety, and had instilled a doctrine that needed a speedy remedy. Ludovico, moved by this whispering, wrote from Vigevano (which is a city of the duchy of Milan in the Lomellina district, called by the natives Vigevano) that he should betake himself thither at once. The unjust suggestion of the malignant and the prince's importunate command vexed the nobles and the people. And so, letters and messengers having been sent, they obtained that he should not be hindered from his sermons until the Epiphany.

[332] he wins his own cause, and refutes the judicial astrologers. When he was inveighing severely against the judicial astrologers, a certain man of this profession, exceedingly dear and familiar to duke Ludovico, charged him with injury. He gave satisfaction, producing out of Augustine, Gregory, Ambrose and other doctors plain and manifest opinions condemnatory of this art. When at this the astrologer confessed that they had been saints, but ignorant of this lofty science, Bernardinus could not contain himself from growing angry and showing that those men had penetrated this science more deeply and more surely than those who, prating insipidly, rashly foretell many things concerning the outcomes of future events. Besides, he showed the art to be deceptive out of the very chief men who taught it — Albumasar, Ptolemy and Alfarabius. Further, our Blessed was able to refute the astrologers the more learnedly because he himself, before he put on the Franciscan habit, had studied astronomy, as was said in §2.

[333] Having preached freely before Ludovico Sforza, Amid these things, the year of Christ 1492 having now begun, the feast of the Lord's Epiphany was drawing near, after which he had to go to Ludovico Sforza, surnamed the Moor, who, having arrogated to himself the supreme power in the duchy of Milan, had summoned him to Vigevano for that time to answer before him to the charges. And so, the feast of the Epiphany being past (so Wadding proceeds under this year 1492, number 10), he went away to Vigevano to comply with Ludovico Maria Sforza, duke of the Milanese (in the manner, as I have said), before whom we have related that he was unworthily traduced. With such modesty and prudence did he answer the charges laid against him that the prince reckoned him a learned and holy man, and, his courtiers being present, asked whether he would be willing to preach at the church of St. Francis. Bernardinus consented, and, in the presence of Ludovico and of his consort Beatrice of Este, together with all their ministers, he set forth eloquently and discreetly what were the prince's duties; he persuaded him that the stipends of his officers and the debts due to his creditors should be paid (for he had received great complaints about these); and finally he taught that the highest reverence must be shown toward the most blessed Virgin Mary.

[334] he won his favor and the fruit of his sermon; There were those who spoke unbecomingly of her; there were also those who blasphemed the holy name. He said that this duty lay upon him the more because the dukes of Milan had been such lovers of Mary that some had even attached this name to their own, from whom Ludovico took his example, having taken the additional name of Maria. He recorded that they had been so well disposed toward her undefiled Conception that they had bound themselves by vow to celebrate this mystery most solemnly in the church of St. Francis at Milan, and to distribute there most generous sums of money to the poor; and that they observed this faithfully. For two hours he spoke so gracefully, so wisely, that he seemed to the prince to have finished too soon; and as he came down from the pulpit he gave him thanks, ordered all his debts to be paid within two days to the last farthing, and prescribed severe laws against blasphemers.

[335] From Vigevano he went away to Piacenza, where he condemned certain dances, At Piacenza he attacks the Bacchanalia, and enlarges the Mont-de-piété. vain spectacles and the mad games of the impending Bacchanalia. The Mont-de-piété instituted by him, having been enlarged in many ways, he further confirmed, and he implanted in the citizens such reverence and affection for himself that, Cardinal Ardicinus de Porta acting as intermediary, they obtained these Pontifical letters. Here the praised annalist subjoins the letters of Pope Innocent VIII given to Bl. Bernardinus, that after the Easter of that year, on the twenty-fifth day of February of which he was writing, he should again instruct the people of Piacenza with his sermons; which, because they are signed in the year of Christ 1491 and in the seventh year of Innocent's Pontificate, I have shown in §13 to belong by no means here, where I recounted them out of Wadding himself.

* having pursued

* that

* of Feltre

* rather, that

* Feltrinus

* read, reached

§ XV. The Blessed's deeds in the same year 1492 at Mantua, Vicenza, Padua, in the town of Campo San Pietro, and in other places, and at Feltre, where he takes care that a monastery of Poor Clares be erected, and shines with miracles.

[ ] [At Mantua he defends the Mont-de-piété, and promotes the cult of the Most Holy Name.] I go on to narrate the deeds of the unwearied and supreme orator, Bl. Bernardinus, in the same year 1492, from Wadding, who followed, as he professes, the manuscript Legends and Cimarella's Chronicle. Having set out, he says, from Piacenza for Mantua, and having taken back his companion Francis of Feltre, who was better — whom we said (at number 329) was left there weighed down by disease — he began to defend the institute of the Mont-de-piété, still attacked by certain persons, by reasons, by the practice of many cities, by the written opinions of learned men, and, what was greatest, by the authority of the supreme Pontiffs. On the day of St. Blaise (to whom the third of February is sacred), having preached * most devoutly on the name of Jesus, the whole city began to be filled with this name, and Antonius Gonzaga built a beautiful chapel in honor of this most holy name, an image of St. Bernardino (of Siena) being placed there setting forth this name in letters of gold upon an open heart; where he instituted the festival of the sacred name to be celebrated perpetually every year. To confess the truth, I do not know what Antonius Gonzaga he here mentions. The marquis of Mantua at that time was John Francis II Gonzaga, and the bishop of Mantua Ludovicus Gonzaga: did Wadding perhaps name one of these Antonius by error? For the rest, of this chapel I have read nothing in Donesmondus.

[337] From Mantua Bernardinus betook himself to Vicenza, which is a city of Lombardy, At Vicenza he preaches with the highest praise; in the vernacular called Vicenza, and the head of the Vicentine countryside under the dominion of the most serene Venetian republic. Here he preached, on the same annalist's testimony, in the cathedral church, to the greatest admiration of the bishop (who was then Baptista Zeno, nephew by his sister of Pope Paul II, and Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church) and of learned men, who extolled with many encomia the Man's lively genius, his readiness of invention, his chaste and genuine words, his rare manner of exposition, his universal knowledge of things, his eloquence in speaking, and his penetrating discourse. And indeed Barnabas of Vicenza, master of sacred theology, composed an oration worthy of so great a man in his praise. In that city it was being spread abroad that the pious Monts of Padua, of Mantua, and any others instituted by Bernardinus, were usurious on account of the payment of one or another obol imposed for the maintenance of the officers.

[338] he reforms the Mont-de-piété, There was another established at Vicenza in a different manner. Money was indeed given freely; but those who received it were admonished not to be ungrateful, but to give something of their own accord, since otherwise they would furnish a reason for their not receiving money on loan any more. And so, whether out of shame or out of fear lest they should be loaded with reproaches, they gave a fee four times greater than Bernardinus had prescribed. Whence, two most learned sermons having been delivered by Bernardinus on this matter, the bishop and the senate withdrew from their opinion, and, the earlier form being abandoned, they erected the Mont anew according to Bernardinus' standard. The narrative must be interrupted for a while here, so that we may examine what Franciscus Barbaranus de Mironis wrote against these things. He, in the Ecclesiastical History of Vicenza, published in Italian, book 2, chapter 77, accuses Cimarella and Wadding of a twofold error concerning the institution of the Mont of Vicenza; namely because they related that that Mont in the year 1492 belonged to the Hebrews, who, in order to lend to the poor altogether without charge, received an agreed fee from the public treasury of the city; but that the same men, in the manner which I have reported from Wadding, extorted besides more from the needy than was exacted in the Monts instituted by Bl. Bernardinus.

[339] concerning whose first institution The first assertion he shows to be false from this, that, as he says, it is established that the Jews, from the year 1486, in which they were expelled by public edict from the city and the whole territory of Vicenza, down to the year 1652, in which he was writing, never returned thither. But concerning the institution of that same Mont, and the correction applied by Bernardinus, he says this: That in it lending was done altogether without charge, without any exaction whatsoever, whether under the title of honorableness, or of alms, or of anything else at all; but that the expenses for the officers and for the other things necessary to the Mont were met from the public revenues, which were for this end increased with the people's consent, because it was thought wicked that even the least thing should on any grounds be so received from the needy. But after the people of Vicenza had been otherwise instructed by Bernardinus, then,

he says, that that public burden was taken away, and that, the former rules being preserved, that single rule of Bernardino concerning a slender coin for the officers and the other necessary expenses was introduced, and that from this the title of Reformer of the Mount of Vicenza clung to that same Blessed man. He adds finally that many other rules were added to the earlier ones in the year 1494; of which matter we too shall speak below.

[340] there is some disagreement among the writers, So, roughly, the aforesaid Barbaranus, whose first objection cannot attack Wadding in this place, in which he makes no word about Jewish managers of the Mount of Vicenza. For Cimarella, whose Work I have sought in vain, I cannot vouch. As concerns the other part, I shall not find it hard to believe one who asserts that the salaries of the officers of that Mount were paid out of the public treasury of the city; but it will not therefore be established for me that those same men were so scrupulous that they exacted nothing, whether under the title of alms or of gratitude, silently, from those redeeming their pledges — whether because the portion of the revenues set apart did not suffice for all who asked a loan, or for some other and even less equitable cause. It is not established for me, I say, that the exaction of a small coin, approved in other places, was not introduced by Bernardino's counsel in order to remove this or a like harassment of the needy; and that, once this was done, every ground of extortion should wholly cease.

[341] For indeed, unless that Mount labored under some such or similar fault, which Bernardino corrected in it, the whole thing falls back as a burden upon the poor; since without any new advantage they were now bound to pay which is set out: he gathers great fruits what was formerly furnished out of the public revenue. And when he had said much also concerning Christian morals, concerning vices and virtues, concerning the vanities of the age, at that season in which men are wont to run mad, a little before Lent, so great was the reformation of morals that they brought luxurious garments, false hair, paints for the complexion, gaming implements, and other things of that kind, to be burned with a greater fervor than others show during the days of Lent or in the season of the Passion.

[342] Augustina, a devout matron, the wife of Giovanni Michele Paiarini, from the Vicentines, who give much money to the Mount to keep him, sister of two Minorites and of three Poor Clares, and kinswoman of the writer of the Latin Legend then composed, which we use in writing these things (consult above, num. 4 and 7), when she was forbidden by her husband to lay aside her borrowed tresses, felt a flame gradually feeding upon her head until she cast them off. One of the chief men of the city had prepared dances, plays, and games for his kinsfolk and friends, for whom with great display he had set out benches; but on hearing Bernardino he broke up and abandoned it all. Tarrying there until Sexagesima Sunday, he brought in an admirable reformation of manners, a frequenting of the churches, a desire of hearing the word of God, and this most of all at that Carnival season in which everywhere mad spectacles are prepared. That the Vicentines might keep him longer with them, they promised that for each single day he remained they would give a hundred gold pieces to the Mount of Piety. That he might not deprive the poor of this help, he stayed on beyond Septuagesima, at which he had thought to depart, until the day following Sexagesima Sunday, and he added to the Mount more than three thousand crowns.

[343] As he set out for Padua the pious presidents of the Mount came to meet him, he cultivates the Paduans happily; the obstinate and led him honorably into the city, though he spurned all honors. Beginning his sermons on Ash Wednesday in the cathedral church, he delivered some in the senatorial palace, and all of them from the second Sunday of Lent until Easter in the court of the prætorium. Speaking vehemently of the Last Judgment, he terrified all; discoursing on blasphemies, detractions, thefts, the difficulty of making restitution, and other graver vices, he brought in a horror and hatred of evils. When he had exhorted them to frequent confession and the Eucharist *, the ministers of the churches did not suffice for administering the Sacraments. Here two proofs of a doctrine heavenly approved were displayed. Bernardino cursed a girl who was dancing beneath the Lenten porch and obstinately enticing others to the dances. She despised the imprecation; but a little after Easter she perished by a thunderbolt.

[344] A young bailiff had married a bride painted with borrowed colors, are punished by God; many are led to the religious state, and given to capering and to games. About the middle of Lent the Man of God warned them to abstain, and the bride to lay aside her adulterate ornaments. Both scorned his words; but both paid the penalty. He, driven into a frenzy, threw everything into confusion and disorder, and with a sword struck his bride and cut off her skull, that is, the crown of her head. Then, fearing the bride's kinsmen, he fled to Venice. Thus the bridegroom wandered a vagabond and a fugitive, and the bride, accustomed to another's hair, could no longer keep even her own. How great a change of manners arose then at Padua on account of his preaching was abundantly proved by the number of Religious increased beyond measure (the young men running to the safe hiding-places of the religious orders), and by the most copious heap of empty and wanton things committed to the flames.

[345] For fifteen days more after Easter he preached there; and being asked by the bishop of Regium (that is, he refuses to go to Reggio; he is accused before the Venetian senate in vain, of Regium Lepidi, commonly Reggio) and by the men of his own institute to betake himself thither to preach at the provincial chapter, he refused to go, saying that he fled far from crowds of Friars, and that he could seek nothing in that chapter, nor did he wish to in any other; since he had firmly resolved with himself to pass a quiet and free pilgrim's life without the bonds of offices. Lest in this reply of the Blessed man you should ill suspect him of refusing obedience to his own superiors, it must be noted that the chapter there treated of was not that of the province of St. Anthony, of which he was a son, but of the province of Bologna, in which was the convent of Regium Lepidi. And so it was only for honor's sake and out of a desire to hear him that the aforesaid Fathers had invited Bernardino to their chapter, and that honor he modestly declined by that answer. Wadding continues: Being accused at Venice by the Paduan Jews, always adversaries of the Mount that had been erected, of having by that founding of Mounts harmed the city and the poor more than he had helped them, he came near to being ill spoken of before the senate, or to suffering some loss of name and reputation. But Leonardo Loredano, a leading senator, and soon (namely in the year 1501) prince of the republic, stoutly defended his cause, and treated the Jews contemptuously, asserting that Bernardino's virtue and prudence were everywhere well known.

[346] [he sees to it that a Mount be erected also at Campo San Pietro; he is sought by various places.] Departing from Padua by night, he preached several times at Campo San Pietro, a neighboring city (rather a town, called Campo San Pietro, in the Paduan territory and about eleven or twelve miles distant from Padua toward the north), and there, having driven out a Jewish usurer who had devoured the substance of the citizens, he established a Mount, with the help beyond the rest of Antonio Bernardo, a Venetian noble, formerly governor of Vicenza, who, having then first come to know Bernardino, began to hold him among his delights. The founding of this same Mount, with the consent of the Venetian senate, he places below at number 381 under the year 1493: and that these may be reconciled, it must be said that the Mount was decreed in this year 1492, and in the following year established and erected. From the neighboring castles and towns all flocked together to hear so great a Man, and the magistrates of Bassano, Cittadella, Castelnuovo, Novale and Asolo each sent their spokesmen, that he might preach among them even for a single day. Being about to go straight into his native place (Feltre), from which he had been absent many years, he asked that they would hold him excused; and he went off toward Castello Franco (called by the natives also Castel Franco, a town in the territory and diocese of Treviso), accompanied by a great throng of nobles, although he had very often asked that they would allow him to depart alone.

[347] he is received with honor at Castelfranco, and by its rector Francesco Gritti, rector of that city, together with other leading men, went out four miles to meet him, and, though he greatly disdained those honors, they led him into the city amid the utmost joy of the people. While he was preaching in the public square, there was brought to the Podestà (so the rectors of Italian cities are for the most part called), who was listening to Bernardino, a letter of the doge of Venice (Agostino Barbarigo) warning him that it had been reported in the senate that the Preacher of Feltre was throwing everything into confusion with disturbances and tumults, and that the whole people at his persuasion was conspiring against the property and the lives of the Jews: an opportune remedy must therefore be applied. Having read the letter, he prudently noted that it had been issued some days before Bernardino came to that city, and that at that time he had still been remaining at Padua. He wrote back accordingly that a fraud of the Jews underlay this, and that Bernardino had discharged his evangelical office peaceably and prudently.

[348] From this that aged and pious man took occasion in the senate to speak sharply against the Jews, he is defended against his calumniators; being invited, he turns aside to Asolo, and to commend Bernardino magnificently for the holiness of his life, for the fruit of his doctrine, and for the morals of men everywhere reformed. He for his part, having here condemned the usuries of the Jews and suggested the remedy of the Mount, after he had discoursed most learnedly for three hours, took a morsel of bread and girded himself for the journey, meaning to reach Feltre that day. Yet he was hindered by the crowd which gathered from that place, and by that which came out of Asolo, of men and women, of Religious and seculars, begging that by that short turning of the road he would come aside to them. Moved by the piety of the people, he suffered himself to be led (to Asolo, which is a little town of the same Treviso territory, set upon a hill between Castelfranco and Feltre), and toward Vespers he preached in the public square, and at once departed. Toward night he reached Quero; for he was unwilling to stay at Fener because of the most sumptuous supper and the noble lodging prepared by the men of Asolo. These two places, Quero and Fener, are met with on the same road in the Treviso territory.

[349] Entering Feltre very early on the following day, he is received most honorably by his fellow citizens, thence to Feltre; where, received with the highest honor, who, to show their joy, adorned the whole square with cloths and hangings. He, beginning his sermons on the following Saturday, had as many hearers as the most spacious open space could hold, the farmers running in from the country and all neglecting their work. With the men the women also ran; but lest the houses should be left without keepers, they took turns by alternation. The city lodgings were filled, the inns did not suffice to receive the strangers; many passed the night in the churches and porticoes. There came indiscriminately men of Bassano, of Treviso, of Friuli, of Carnia, more than sixty thousand paces distant, and in such numbers that it was necessary for the rectors of Carnia (Carnia is a tract of Italy, commonly la Carnia, in the province of Friuli, on which the Feltre territory borders), lest the towns should be left deserted and exposed to enemies (for there was then a war raging between the Germans and the Venetians), to command that not more than three hundred should go away at once.

[350] Nay, the Germans themselves, though ignorant of the Italian and Latin tongues, to the greatest multitude of citizens and of strangers flocked in in great number; but these were received only by day, and at night were put outside the city by the voice of the crier. The wives and children rested in the square, on the terraces and the porticoes, guards having been given by the prætor Domenico Contarini, lest they should suffer nocturnal assaults. These things certainly make plain the great esteem in which Bernardino was held among his fellow citizens and the neighboring inhabitants round about, and their marvelous eagerness to hear him; and although I too believe that these were very great, yet I should not dare to affirm that they have not been amplified, especially the things which concern the Germans, among whom and the Venetians I have found that no war was raging at this time; nay, I gather the opposite from Muratori's Annals of Italy. There disturbed (Wadding adds) the joy of the hearers letters sent by the vicar

general, in which he ordered him to set out for Verona, where the chapter of the province of St. Anthony was being held, and to preach on the feast of Bernardino (of Siena).

[351] The council therefore being convoked, Daniele Castaldi, he delivers sermons in the public square father of Cornelio the distinguished jurist and orator, was appointed as envoy to the Veronese; he was then ordered to go by a long journey to Turin to the vicar general, that it might please him to revoke the command. He obtained what he wished from the prætor Antonio Moresini and from the Veronese senate, yet on this condition, that when the sermons at Feltre were finished he should go to Verona and stay there a little while. At Turin he obtained the same thing from the vicar general, and besides the faculty (which was probably the chief cause of that journey) of building a monastery of Poor Clares among the people of Feltre under the governance of his own Friars. With how great eagerness the men of Feltre listened to the Servant of God is abundantly proved even from this, that on the feast of St. Bernardino, when, because of the rain and the strong wind which was rolling up the cloths with which the square was covered, he wished, three and four times taking pity on the people, to bring his sermon to a close, the whole congregation as often cried out that he should go on speaking, and most patiently heard him speaking for two hours in the very height of the storm of rain-clouds and wind.

[352] even in rainy weather, from which At last he is entreated with new prayers by the inhabitants of Belluno, Conegliano, Serravalle, Bassano, Cadore, and the Val Sugana, to preach among them; but being forestalled by another precept of the vicar general, that he should proceed to Genoa, it was not permitted him to satisfy the pious wishes of the petitioners. Of the places named, Belluno, in the vernacular Cividal di Belluno, is an episcopal city in the March of Treviso. Towns of the same March are Conegliano, Bassano and Serravalle; by Cadore he indicates either the tract of Cadore, otherwise Cadubrium, or its chief place Plebs, commonly la Pieve di Cadore, which borders the territory of Belluno on the north; and finally the Val Sugana lies in the Alps of Trent on the confines of the county of Tyrol and the Vicentine territory, between Feltre to the east and Trent to the west, called by the natives Val Sugana. Let it suffice to have added this much for knowledge of the places: but as concerns the letters of the vicar general, he was not ordered by them to depart from Feltre for Genoa at once, and accordingly he went on to spend the time that remained usefully upon his own townsmen, so long as his health allowed; on which matter one may read the following in the often-cited Annals.

[353] he contracts a hoarseness; he wonderfully reforms morals there, Having contracted a troublesome hoarseness from that long sermon in the rain, he refrained from preaching for some days. Thence it was spread abroad that he had fallen ill; and at once from many towns and villages, but especially from the city of Vicenza, men were sent to visit the sick man in the name of the magistracy and the council. With so great a fervor of the Preacher, and with the piety of the men of Feltre, the grace of God cooperated; for depraved manners were fully corrected, and the over-familiar conversations of young men with girls, out of which everywhere clandestine marriages and faithless betrothals proceeded, ceased; love-tokens, and the dances customarily held on feast days between lovers, were altogether forbidden; gaming implements, dice, and false hair were burned; the Ceretani (that is, sacrilegious impostors) who absolved men from any guilt whatever by false privileges were expelled from the whole region. Besides this, the trade and the usuries of the Jews were interdicted; the rules for establishing a Mount of Piety were prescribed; profane and merely pagan pictures were destroyed. The master of humane learning was charged not to expound to his pupils the Epigrams of Martial, the Amatoria of Ovid, Catullus, Petronius, or authors like these.

[354] of the monastery of Poor Clares, Another benefit likewise he then bestowed upon the virgins of his native place, and upon others of the weaker sex who, having sent word of dismissal to worldly things, wished to cleave to Christ their spouse within religious cloisters. Already a few years before he had thought of erecting a monastery of Poor Clares at Feltre to this end, and that he might be able to do it he had obtained Apostolic letters from Innocent VIII, the supreme Pontiff, three years since, given at Rome on the twenty-fifth of April in the year 1489. These, in the address of which the word Parvulo is read contrary to Innocent's custom, I shall here set out word for word from Wadding, who professes that they were transcribed by him from the original.

To our beloved son Bernardino the Little One of Feltre, etc.

You have lately caused it to be set forth to us that, if in the city of Feltre there were erected one monastery of nuns of the Order of St. Clare under regular observance, according to its first institutes, under the care of the professed of the Order of Minors of the Observance, thereupon the devotion of the people of Feltre would increase, and divine worship would be augmented there, and provision would be made for the spiritual consolation of the girls of Feltre who desire to offer a chaste service to the Lord of virtues with integrity of mind and body. Wherefore you have taken care humbly to entreat us for a fitting license thereupon.

[355] We, inclining to petitions of this kind, by the tenor of these presents and by Apostolic authority grant and likewise bestow upon you the faculty of building one monastery of nuns of the said Order for the building of which, three years since in the said city, and in a place convenient and seemly for it, without prejudice to another's right, with a church, bell tower, bell, cemetery, dormitory, refectory, cloister, gardens, kitchen-gardens, and other necessary offices, with the acres necessary in it, to be applied to the perpetual uses of the aforesaid nuns according to their rites and customs and the praiseworthy institutes of the said Order of St. Clare; and of bringing in from other monasteries of the same Order committed to the said care some nuns, such as you shall find willing, to the said monastery, when a suitable enclosure has been completed, for the direction and instruction of others thereafter wishing to enter it in the matter of rite, morals and regular observance; and of setting one of them over it as abbess for the year; and of subjecting and submitting that monastery to the care and direction of the said Friars, and of compelling those same Friars to receive a monastery of this kind under their care.

[356] And likewise we grant to the said monastery, and to its abbess, convent, he had obtained a faculty from Pope Innocent, nuns and persons, that they may use, enjoy and take profit of all the privileges, graces, favors, and indults, spiritual and temporal, granted and to be granted in general to other monasteries of nuns of the said Order and Observance: notwithstanding any Apostolic indulgences, constitutions and ordinations, and any statutes and customs of the said monasteries and Orders confirmed by oath or otherwise, and all other things whatsoever making to the contrary. Given at Rome at Saint Peter's under the Fisherman's ring, on the twenty-fifth day of April, 1489, in the fifth year of our pontificate. Though the faculty was received by this Pontifical Brief, yet he is not read to have done anything toward completing the work before this year 1492, probably because he put it off until he could himself press it forward, being present at Feltre.

[357] Thinking therefore that this opportunity must be used, and declaring from the pulpit his desire of building a monastery of Poor Clares, he persuades the people of Feltre to its erection, he at once gathered many offerings and had several helpers. A solemn procession having been appointed to the place destined for the sacred building, Andrea Trevisano, bishop-elect of Feltre, laid the first stone, and the church was marked with the name of Saint Mary of the Angels, and its dedication is celebrated on the second day of August. But the faculty of building the monastery under the invocation of St. Bernardino (of Siena) was granted by Nicolò Franco, bishop of Treviso, Apostolic legate with the power of a legate Cardinal de latere throughout the whole dominion of the Venetians, and Pope Innocent had sent the same beforehand in his letters. These are Wadding's words, recalling together in a compendious way various things which we shall set out in their own order; for not all of them happened at that time when the Blessed man was then staying at Feltre, nor did the annalist mean that they happened then.

[358] who willingly supply the expenses, From what has been said above, Bernardino came to Feltre about the middle of the month of May, or certainly not much before, whence, as will be told, he departed on the twenty-fourth day of June. He began therefore in the month of May to open in his sermons his mind concerning the founding of a monastery of Poor Clares, and the faculty which he had received three years since from Pope Innocent, and both in these and in private conversations to commend so pious and so useful a work to the munificence of the men of Feltre, with the eloquence in which he was strong. And amid so ready a zeal of all toward him, he must be believed to have needed no long time to obtain from them not only their assent but also all things necessary for beginning and completing the work. These things being thus settled, the men of Feltre asked license to erect the monastery from the aforesaid Nicolò Franco, Apostolic legate among the Venetians, and he assented to their wishes by letters given in the same year on the nineteenth day of June to the archdeacon of Feltre, which I subjoin from Wadding's transcript.

[359] and license having been obtained from Nicolò Franco, Nicolò Franco, bishop of Treviso, Apostolic legate with the power of a legate Cardinal de latere throughout the whole dominion of the Venetians, to the archdeacon of the church of Feltre, beloved of us in Christ, greeting in the Lord.

By reason of the office of legation long since laid upon us by the Apostolic See, we follow with the affection of a pious father the pious and wholesome desires of Christ's faithful, from which an increase of divine worship is hoped for and salvation of souls may come, especially when thought is taken of erecting sacred places and monasteries, and of gathering a fellowship of virgins to the praise of our Creator; and we cherish them with full favors, and that they may attain their wished-for effect we willingly bestow help and more attentively our labor.

[360] the Apostolic legate throughout the Venetian dominion, A petition lately presented to us on the part of Andrea Trevisano, beloved of us in Christ, a Venetian patrician, contained that the citizens, or community, of Feltre, meditating beforehand upon the day of their death, and desiring to purchase for themselves out of the increase of temporal and perishing goods immortal and precious treasures in heaven, intend to build and erect, out of the goods bestowed on them by God and acquired by themselves, outside the walls of the city of Feltre a monastery with a church under the title of St. Bernardino (of Siena), and with its bell tower, cemetery, cloister, sacristy and other necessary and fitting offices, in which some nuns of the Order of St. Clare, or of St. Francis, may live under regular Observance and under perpetual enclosure, and may render perpetual service to the Most High, and may be able unceasingly to celebrate the canonical Hours by night and by day; and that, after a monastery of this kind with its church and the other aforesaid offices has been erected and built and enclosed, they may summon some nuns of honorable and praiseworthy life, of the same Order, from any monastery of the said Order, and enclose them in it, that they may there lead their life perpetually under regular observance of this kind, and by the fragrance and sweetness of their good life may draw other virgins to the service of God, and instruct and train those they have drawn, and cast such seeds as that by them, like young olive-shoots, these and others may be able in time to flourish.

[361] by new letters, But because the aforesaid citizens or community doubt that they can by any means do these things, a fitting license thereupon not having been obtained, and therefore humble supplication was made to us on their part, that we would deign to grant to those citizens and community license to erect and build and endow a monastery of this kind, and, after it has been erected and built and endowed as aforesaid, to summon nuns of the said Order to it and to enclose them in it, and otherwise to provide fittingly in the premises: We therefore, who with unwearied zeal desire that the care of souls should flourish and be increased especially in our own times, commit it to your discretion, in which in these and other matters we have a special confidence in the Lord,

being fortified with a special power for these and the other premises by letters of the Apostolic See, and with that which we exercise in this part, we commit and command by these writings, that, those being called who are to be called, and those whose concern it is, you diligently inform yourself about the place in which the monastery is to be built *, by the counsel of Friar Bernardino of Feltre, of the Order of St. Francis of the Observance, an outstanding preacher.

[362] And if by information of this kind you shall find that the place to be assigned to the building is fitting and seemly, which are here recited, and suitable to the weak and slippery womanly sex, and that the other premises are supported by truth, you shall by the authority of our legation, granted to us by our most holy Lord, the Lord Pope Innocent VIII, grant and indulge license and faculty alike of erecting and building a monastery of this kind in that very place, to be chosen and named by you, with a church under the aforesaid title of Saint Bernardino, a bell tower, cemetery, cloister, sacristy and other necessary and fitting offices; and likewise of drawing out from other monasteries of the Order and Observance of St. Clare, or of St. Francis, nuns of good conversation and repute, and in whom other virgins to come may behold as in a mirror the emulation of goodness and virtues, and of summoning, transferring and enclosing them in that monastery, after it has been erected and built and endowed — yet with the license of their own superiors or abbesses — under the perpetual enclosure and observance of the aforesaid Order and Observance, as many as can conveniently reside in it and lead their life there; with the faculty also that those nuns who shall have been summoned, transferred and enclosed as aforesaid may admit and receive the professions, to be made by them, of other virgins and women wishing to serve in the same monastery the good pleasure of Him who is beautiful in form beyond the sons of men, so that these may be trained and instructed by those already veterans, and that these, so trained and instructed, may impart to others after them the training and instruction handed down to them.

[363] Decreeing and declaring by the same authority of our legation they erect the monastery he desired, that the same monastery, and the nuns residing in it from time to time, shall in the future and in perpetual times to come enjoy the same privileges, exemptions, immunities, graces, favors, preeminences and prerogatives which the other monasteries and nuns of the aforesaid Order and Observance enjoy, or may enjoy by right or by custom: notwithstanding any Apostolic constitutions and ordinations, and any statutes and customs of the aforesaid Order, and all other things whatsoever to the contrary. Given at Venice in the monastery of Saints John and Paul, on the nineteenth day of the month of June, 1492, in the eighth year of the pontificate of our aforesaid most holy Lord. This diploma having been received, without doubt the hand was soon set to the work, and perhaps even at once that solemn procession was made and the first stone laid, so that the building might in some fashion be begun while its author Bl. Bernardino was present, who on the twenty-fourth day of the same month of June was to depart from Feltre.

[364] concerning whose foundation and state Andrea Trevisano, who in the diploma given above is read to have besought the erection of this monastery in the name of the men of Feltre from the aforesaid Nicolò Franco, Apostolic legate, and by whom Wadding writes that the first stone of the building was laid, seems to be the same as the man whom Ferdinando Ughelli, in tome 5 of the enlarged Italia sacra, col. 376, listed among the bishops of Feltre in these few words: Andrea Trevisano, a Venetian noble, doctor of both laws, was chosen to this church in the year 1488. He died in 1504. But by Wadding in the year 1492 he is called only bishop-elect of Feltre, and by Nicolò Franco a Venetian patrician, without any other title. Hence I am forced to suspect either that Ughelli made Andrea Trevisano's episcopate premature, or that his consecration was long delayed, for causes unknown to me, but on account of which the aforesaid Franco also, who in the whole diploma makes no mention of a bishop of Feltre, deliberately abstained from the title of bishop-elect in Andrea's case.

[365] certain things are besides here noted. Francesco Gonzaga mentions it under the name of St. Mary of the Angels in the Origins of the Seraphic religion, part 2, in the Province of St. Anthony, monastery 12, where he says this: The blessed father Bernardino of Feltre, meaning to provide for those virgins who at Forum-oppidum (commonly Feltre), having left the world, desired more happily to be free for the Most High, humbly asked of Innocent VIII, supreme Pontiff, in the year of the Lord 1489, that he might erect for them, a little way from the walls of the aforesaid town, a monastery sacred to Saint Mary of the Angels. And when at length that supreme Pastor assented to his wishes, an Apostolic Brief having been issued in the fifth year of his pontificate, which begins with these words, "Beloved son, greeting and Apostolic benediction, you have caused it to be set forth to us, etc.," the aforesaid father Bernardino of Feltre saw to it that this holy monastery, which some thirty Poor Clare sisters commonly inhabit, should be erected out of the various alms of Christ's faithful, and that some nuns, who should thoroughly imbue the arriving novices with religious manners, should be transferred to it from the convent of Corpus Christi, or of St. Paula, at Mantua, in the year from the Virgin's childbearing 1492. This sacred place is honored by a certain bone of the divine Luke the Evangelist, by another bone also of one of the holy Innocents, by certain hairs and the staff of the blessed father Bernardino of Feltre, and by a certain most beautiful and marvelous Crucifix, found unexpectedly one morning near the doors of the church, which is held in the greatest veneration among all.

[366] Bernardino, illustrious also by miracles, departs from Feltre. Thus far Francesco Gonzaga, who, since he had not seen the diploma of Nicolò Franco, seems to have thought that the monastery of Feltre was begun a year or two earlier, and that in the year 1492 it began to be inhabited by nuns summoned from the monastery of Mantua, which from what has been said is little credible. For from what has just been alleged, neither are the beginnings of that monastery to be placed before the year 1492, nor could a building begun near the end of June be so easily completed that in the same year it should be already habitable by a colony of virgins. I add no more about this monastery, but I conclude Bl. Bernardino's stay at Feltre in Wadding's words. Bernardino delivered forty sermons in his native place, with wonderful fruit and admirable signs. A man long laboring under a quartan fever he healed by his blessing alone; and many afflicted with various diseases recovered after merely tasting the bread or the food that had been left over by him. Being ordered to set out for Genoa, he departed on the feast of St. John the Baptist, having prayed all good things for the city. All the orders of the citizens accompanied him with tears as far as the town of St. Victor, or rather the village, nearest to Feltre.

* rather, having preached

* having exhorted

* to be built

§ XVI. Sermons delivered in many places during the rest of the year 1492; his deeds at Genoa and Vicenza: Mounts of Piety erected in the year 1493 in the town of Campo San Pietro and at Pavia; morals there wonderfully reformed, and miracles wrought.

[ ] He preaches at Quero, at Cavaso, at Asolo. In the preceding § we saw that Bl. Bernardino, setting out on the twenty-fourth day of June from his native city of Feltre for Genoa, was honorably escorted by a great company of citizens to the village of St. Victor: now let us follow him with the annalist of the Minors as he goes on with the journey he had begun, and everywhere through the cities, towns and villages that met him preaches amid the highest eagerness of all to hear him, and with the highest profit. Having entered the territory of Treviso, commonly il Trivigiano, and gone on to the little town or village of Quero, in a sermon of two hours he exhorted the inhabitants to live well and blessedly, and to dismiss the dances on feast days; otherwise they might know for certain that they would stir up the divine anger against themselves. After the midday meal he preached in the village of Cavaso; on the following day in the square of Asolo (that is, of the little town of Asolo, called by the natives also Asolo), having been asked the day before by twelve citizens who came out to meet him. Being asked by the men of Bassano to comfort them again by his presence and his teaching, and to establish the Mount which they had erected at his urging, he resolved to go.

[368] But the men of Asolo followed as far as the fourth milestone, [he protects the Mount of Piety at Bassano; he foretells punishments to the wanton;] and the roads besides were filled, as country people ran together from every side, leaving their houses and their work, that they might receive his blessing. He remained five days at Bassano, the Jews making a tumult, who had obtained letters of the Venetian doge in their own favor. Nonetheless Bernardino continued his sermons, explained the necessity and the advantage of the Mount, and prescribed rules; warning them to ask confirmation from the prince as soon as possible, lest it might sometime be overthrown by the Jews. Having exhorted them to give up their dances, he threatened the scourge of hail to those unwilling; and when after his departure the people took up their dances again on the day of St. Peter, on that same day the crops were beaten down by stormy rain-clouds. Bassano, of which we here speak, in the vernacular also called Bassano, is a town of the Venetian dominion in the March of Treviso on the right of the bank of the river Brenta or Meduacus, which there separates the territory of Bassano from that of Vicenza.

[369] Four or five miles from Bassano to the west, across the Brenta, lies Marostica, he vehemently rebukes the men of Marostica for their quarrelsome hatreds. a town of the territory of Vicenza, of which we said more in §7, num. 133 and following. The inhabitants of this town, the men of Marostica (as Wadding has it in the same place), drew the Man to themselves by letters of the provincial vicar and by sending Friar Ruffino, who was building the new church of St. Sebastian for the Observants. There, when he had spoken of the visitation of the blessed Virgin, and, discoursing on charity, had run out against the civil hatreds, of which there were many there, he greatly terrified them; since, breaking off his address, he departed without peroration and without blessing. For by this art against the unbridled and those obstinate in evil, shaking even the dust of his feet against them, he overcame their fierceness. The people of Vicenza, burning with eagerness to see him, he so inflamed by four sermons that they procured by every means from the vicar general that he should be sent back to them for the sermons of Advent.

[370] Inhumanly treated at Caldiero, he bears it patiently. Although he departed thence sick, he was unwilling to accept the beast of burden offered him; but he went on foot as far as Montebello (a little town of the Vicentine territory), where, when he wished to refresh himself, he could not, being seized by too great a weakness. The public innkeeper, pitying the Man of God, gave him a horse as far as Villanova; then he went on foot to Caldiero, a village of the territory of Vicenza. In the Blaeu Geography both Villanova and Caldiero are placed as villages in the Veronese territory; and Caldiero indeed a few miles from the city of Verona, at which the Blessed man will be said to have arrived the next day. But at Caldiero, being inhumanly repulsed by all, he could obtain lodging from no one, nor from a certain rich man even a stable for horses, that he might lie under a roof that night. To his companion, who was angry (namely Francesco, his biographer, whom Wadding professes to have used above all in writing his deeds), and who reproached the townsmen with the utmost cruelty, he said: "Moderate your passion, brother: God wishes to exercise our patience, and to teach us by experiment how deceitful and false the world is, how inconstant in its affairs. Yesterday the whole people of Vicenza would have poured out upon us whatever it has; it would have shed even its blood for us, if there were need: today, unrecognized,

despised, we lie sick under the open sky; and there is none who takes pity." At last, having received straw from some threshers, they rested that night under the porch * of a lowly cottage.

[371] Having preached at Verona and Orzinuovi, he goes to Crema, On the following day, weary and weak, he reached Verona (a well-known city of the Venetian dominion on the river Adige in Lombardy). On Saturday in the cathedral church, on Sunday in the public square, he preached to an unbounded multitude of men. The Mount of Piety having been brought back to a better form in accordance with the Pontifical diploma, he went to Asola (a town of the Brescian territory on the bank of the river Clusius, called by the Italians il Chiese, in the Venetian dominion not far from the border of the duchy of Mantua), thence to Orzinuovo (commonly Orci nuovi, another town of the same territory and dominion near the river Oglio and about the confines of the territory of Cremona), where, because of the civil discords that had arisen, on the day of St. Mary Magdalene he discoursed long and learnedly on the good of peace and the harms of dissensions. Arriving thence at Crema (which was formerly a city of the duchy of Milan, but by then obeyed the Venetian Republic, to which with its territory it is subject even today) on the twenty-third of July, he was honorably entertained by the leading men who visited him in the little convent of St. Bernardino outside the city.

[372] where, being repulsed, he is soon recalled: he proceeds to Lodi, But being forewarned by the vicar and by the secret chancellor not to preach because of an edict of the prince and senate of Venice, namely that he should not harm the Jews — although the people had assembled for the sermon very early in the morning, and the signal having twice been given with the bell he was awaited in a most numerous gathering as about to preach — Bernardino withdrew secretly. When the people learned that this had been done by the prætor's order, the great sedition that arose could be quieted in no other way than by Bernardino's being recalled from his journey and preaching for some days. About nine miles from Crema toward Pavia lies the new Laus Pompeia, commonly Lodi, a city of the duchy of Milan on the river Adda, and the head of the territory named from it, the Lodigiano, in the vernacular il Lodigiano. Wadding, calling it Lauda, thus continues concerning the Blessed man's coming to it: More than two thousand men and women went before him as he was about to go to Lodi, traveling all night, that on the following Sunday they might hear him preach. The men of Crema took the seats beforehand very early in the morning, to the great astonishment of the men of Lodi, who had prepared a place of session in the square for Bernardino's arrival.

[373] Two Friars of Lucca (from the city of Lucca, head of the republic of the same name) arrived there, He is invited by the men of Lucca: the Genoese nuns who wish to live more laxly sent by the magistracy, to obtain that the Man of God would preach among them for one month. To whom he replied that it lay not in his own power but in the vicar general's, and that accordingly the matter must be dealt with through him. Setting out to him at Genoa, they obtained that the pious wishes of the citizens should be satisfied. Continuing his journey, he preached at Pavia to the Poor Clares only; and at Voghera (which is a town of the duchy of Milan in the territory of Pavia, otherwise called Viguerium) he delivered a sermon on the feast of St. Mary of the Snows, that is, the fifth of August. On the ninth day of the same month, on the Vigil of St. Lawrence, he reached Genoa opportunely: for Pope Innocent, who through Bernardino had enclosed the monasteries of nuns, having died a little before, and another being substituted, the women impatient of the reform, through their supporters, had already begun to attempt to return to their former liberty; but by Bernardino's presence and prudence they could not establish the designs they had planned.

[374] Concerning the Genoese nuns reformed and happily brought back to the religious observance of monastic enclosure by Bl. Bernardino's labor in the year 1489 and the following, I treated above in §13. he keeps them in their duty by his authority. The death of Pope Innocent VIII, by whose authority he had done it, fell on the twenty-fifth day of July, or on the night which came between that and the twenty-sixth in this year 1492. On the eleventh day of August of the same year Rodrigo Borgia was substituted for him, called in the Pontificate Alexander VI. He had not therefore yet been substituted for Innocent when Bernardino came to Genoa on the ninth day of August of the year 1492; but it is credible that the nuns, who, being quickly wearied of the stricter discipline which they had two years since wholesomely admitted, were aspiring to a harmful liberty, began soon to labor for its recovery as soon as they learned of Innocent's death, since, the Apostolic See being vacant, a greater opportunity for this matter seemed to be at hand. But he who had before brought them to good fruit called them back, as has just been said, from their unsound designs by his prudence and authority.

[375] In the same year Ferdinand and Isabella, sovereigns of Castile and Aragon, He labors that the Jews driven out of Spain be not admitted at Genoa; cast out of the Spains all Jews who were unwilling to be initiated into the Christian rites; concerning whose number Juan de Mariana in the Appendix, or book 26 of the Affairs of Spain, ch. 1, pronounces thus: It is not easy to reduce to a certain number the multitude of Jews who departed from Spain. Most writers affirm that a hundred and seventy thousand families went away; a certain one says that it reached eight hundred thousand souls. A huge number, and one that will hardly gain belief; but from which nevertheless occasion arose for many to accuse this decree, since they thought it foreign to Ferdinand's prudence to remove a populous people who had known all the ways of money. But he had premised in the same place that some part of these landed in Italy. To Bernardino, who had a clear view of the perfidy of the Hebrew people, and who continually attacked the usuries which it practiced in all lands, such newcomers could not but be displeasing; and his stay at Genoa was for this reason opportune, in that, as Wadding adds, he brought it about by his preachings that many thousands of Jews expelled from the Spains by Ferdinand the Catholic king were not received there.

[376] and on account of familiarity with them he foretells divine scourges: Yet when the Genoese were unwilling to avoid their familiarity and trade, he foretold the scourge of plague and of war, which in the following year miserably harassed the noble city. That Genoa was afflicted with a dreadful plague in the year 1493 is expressly related also by Bartolomeo Senarega, a contemporary Genoese writer, in his Work on Genoese affairs, published among the Writers of Italy by Muratori, tom. 14. The gravity of the evil, which he says, having been disclosed after a most bitter winter as spring drew near, lasted until the fifteenth day of August, he set forth there briefly thus: Of those who remained (in the city; for very many had betaken themselves elsewhere) more died: for when a register was made of those who remained in the city, afterward scarcely two out of every ten counted were found to have survived. As concerns the war, by the same testimony of Senarega, certain rumors and fears of war kept the Genoese anxious in that year; but the war by which not Genoa alone but all Italy was long afflicted properly began in the year 1494, when Charles VIII, king of France, entered Italy with a numerous army to claim the kingdom of Naples for himself.

[377] [he converts one girl from among them, who, instructed also by St. Catherine Fieschi,] Furthermore Bernardino, who in the Jews hated only their perfidy and their crimes, while he still lingered at Genoa, converted to the faith one Catalan girl from among these perfidious exiles, betrothed a little before, and instructed her in the Christian rudiments; so says the annalist of the Minors in the same place. Giacinto Parpera mentions more concerning her in the Italian Life of St. Catherine Fieschi Adorno of Genoa, part 1, ch. 63, of whose rather lengthy narrative receive this brief account. This Hebrew girl was of the leading families of her people, and promised to an equal bridegroom; but when she had once been present at Bl. Bernardino's sermons, she was so enlightened that she resolved to give her name to Christ. And so she made known her desire to certain Genoese matrons, and by these she was brought to Bernardino. He indeed, having greatly praised and confirmed her, committed her to Catherine Fieschi Adorno, whose holiness he had very well known, to be trained for sacred Baptism. She did willingly what he asked, and the catechumen, being now duly instructed, after a sermon publicly delivered by Bernardino to that purpose, was cleansed at the sacred font and enrolled among Christians.

[378] became a nun. Being ordered to go to Lucca, And she profited so much from the instruction of both that afterward, having bid farewell to worldly things and embraced the religious habit and life in the Genoese monastery of St. Mary of Graces, she met her last day happily, as it is right to believe, in the same. So, roughly, Parpera, from whom mention of this matter was made by us in the Acts of the same St. Catherine, tom. V of September, p. 128, num. 26, but there by error the year of Christ 1494 was assigned instead of 1492, which both Parpera and Wadding marked. The latter of these after this thus again continues concerning Bl. Bernardino's deeds: Being about to go to Lucca by the precept of his primicerius (that is, of his superior, or vicar general), and having preached three times at Massa di Carrara, where the Parian marbles are quarried, at last he refreshed the men of Lucca with thirty preachings, and stirred them up to all pious works. Having gathered the priests of the city with the canons and the bishop in the sacristy of the church, the door being shut lest he be heard by seculars, and having with a vehement effort exhorted them, in a sermon suited to their state, to pass their life religiously and holily, he reformed in them the morals of the whole people. On the vigil of St. Francis he was seized with an iliac pain and was ill all night; but being relieved by fomentations, he did not abstain from preaching on the following day of his founder.

[379] The next day, having begun his journey, at last he crossed the roughest ridges of the Alps, he preaches in various places with great fruit: and at Parma delivered fifteen sermons in the cathedral church, and others through the various monasteries of the city, and increased the fund of the Mount of Piety. At Legnago (which is a town of the Veronese territory on the river Adige) he preached once; at Arzignano (situated in the Vicentine territory) ten times, with an incredible concourse of people coming from every side, and with the great fruit of a most firm compact of reconciliation among the discordant citizens; and at Montecchio (this too is a town of the same territory) twice, expounding the fruits of holy matrimony on account of two persons who were then preparing themselves for a solemn wedding, to the highest applause of all. Thus, intoxicating all the places through which he passed with his sweet eloquence and the dew of graces, he carried back a huge gain.

[380] At Vicenza, besides a manifest reformation of morals, At Vicenza he provides for the poor, and brings many to a devout life. he saw to the founding of two colleges, one of the holy name of Jesus, the other of St. Joseph, for helping and supporting the bashful poor, to the great good and certain relief of noblemen who have come to that state that, though in want of all things, they are ashamed to beg. This pious institute continues even now, pious men being appointed who at their own and the colleges' expense refresh the needy nobles through the houses, and the poor beggars through the streets. To other societies and congregations of pious men he added many instructions, and, commending the third institute of St. Francis, he drew very many, even from among the chief men, to join themselves to this body. Beginning his sermons on the day of St. Andrew, he continued there until the beginning of the following year.

[381] We begin therefore the year of Christ 1493, under which Wadding, from his manuscript Legends and from Cimarella, recorded many things about Bl. Bernardino, Having preached at Padua, he erects a Mount in the town of Campo San Pietro:

and in the first place at num. 17 he begins thus. At the beginning of this year, about the middle of January, Bernardino of Feltre set out from the city of Vicenza, where we have said that he preached through Advent and the solemnities of Christ's Nativity, for Padua, being earnestly asked by bishop Barozzi. For some days he preached in the cathedral church. Slipping away thence, at the bidding of the vicar general, he delivered two sermons at the town of Campo San Pietro (situated in the territory of Padua) in an open meadow near the chapel of St. Anthony, and there, with the approval of the Venetian senate, he erected a Mount of Piety. That the Blessed man had labored for its erection in the past year, and that it had then been decreed by the inhabitants of Campo San Pietro, we said above at num. 346; but since this was by no means permitted without the consent of the Venetian senate, to which this town was subject, that faculty was obtained in the meantime, and the Mount was in this year established for the public relief of the needy.

[382] Having returned to Padua, he preached for eight days, inveighing against the profane luxuries and excessive extravagances he returns to Padua; he goes off to Mantua; at Crema he founds a Mount. by which in celebrating weddings they profaned the Sacrament of matrimony; and against timid and corrupt judges who either from fear or by bribes bent justice according to their own will. The treasury of the pious Mount having then been increased, he went on by boat, fitted out by the Paduans, through the Po to Mantua. Having preached here three times, he set out for Crema, where, being asked by the citizens and by two preachers who were quarreling among themselves about the delivering of the Lenten sermons to undertake this burden, he said that it was not permitted to disappoint the men of Pavia, for whom he was destined, of their hope. Having sent spokesmen, the men of Crema obtained that it should be permitted to keep the Man, who was exceedingly necessary to themselves and to the settling of their city, until Sexagesima. A Mount having been erected here, he went off to Pavia.

[383] [At Pavia he is ordered to preach in the cathedral church, whose fabric he promotes:] At Pavia he then began to preach in the church of St. Francis of the Conventual fathers, the canons grieving and complaining that he had not discharged that office in the cathedral. Being ordered by the vicar general to hold his sermons at St. Francis, he did not dare to transfer himself elsewhere; until Ludovico, duke of Milan (by usurped power, not by right or title, as I have noted elsewhere), charged the prætor that, having summoned in his name the guardian of the Conventuals and the other of the house of St. James of the Observants, with whom Bernardino was residing, he should signify that it was his will that he should preach in the chief church of the city, over which his brother Ascanio, Cardinal Sforza, presided. There came also a Pontifical Brief enjoining the same thing, obtained by Ascanio. From the first week onward, therefore, he preached in the cathedral, whose unfinished fabric he greatly advanced by his exhortations, commending to all the beauty of the house of God. The aforesaid Cardinal, bishop of Pavia, had begun to found the magnificent mass of this sacred building, the first stone having been laid, in the year 1488, as Ughelli testifies, tom. 1 of the enlarged Italia sacra, col. [ ]; and so it is no wonder that it was not yet finished in the year 1493.

[384] he adds fourteen nobles to his Order: he sees to it that a Mount of Piety Further, in the same stay at Pavia he delivered among the Augustinian Hermits a most learned sermon on St. Monica, the whole people hearing and admiring the Man's remarkable learning and his wonderful facility in explaining even the most hidden mysteries of the faith. The morals of men having been wonderfully reformed, he joined fourteen studious young nobles to his fellowship at the convent of St. James. Having ardently exhorted all to the erection of a Mount of Piety, at length he obtained it; although certain persons spoke against it, objecting that appearance of interest and usury. That he might satisfy the doubts of all and remove the scruples thrust forward, he showed from Panormitanus how much, and for what causes, something might be admitted beyond the principal sum of money lent; and he asked the college of jurists to say their opinion in that matter. Gathered into one, and the matter having been discussed, they pronounced that the Mount was to be judged not only lawful but also very useful and meritorious for the relief of the poor.

[385] be erected once the difficulties have been discussed, Hence from pious rivalry all vied in offering to the pious work what they could, and in a short time the treasury grew so much that on the fourth Sunday after Easter, thanksgiving having been given in a sermon and a most solemn procession appointed, he erected the Mount and blessed the house decreed for this pious work. So he; and lest these things seem less credible on account of the short space of time, it will be useful to have observed, from the Italian Life of the same Blessed man reprinted and enlarged by Innocenzo of Pavia, that the building then destined for the uses of the Mount was not at that time newly built, but that the house of a certain man of Pavia was employed, either granted freely or bought out of the money collected. To prove this he cites a certain Register of instruments, fol. 4, out of which he brings forward the testimony of Giovanni Domenico Ferrari, an advocate, in which among other things concerning our Blessed man one reads: Two years ago now he made the holy Mount of Piety in the house of Master Agostino Guargualia. For the rest, how much the men of Pavia valued this treasury of the poor is clear also from an ancient manuscript Catalogue of the holy bodies and relics resting in the same city or near it, out of which, to our purpose, one may read the following in the often-cited Annals of the Minors under the year 1494, num. 56.

[386] At length (Bernardino) betook himself to Pavia, where, because of the too great throng of people who came to his preaching, to the great solace and advantage of the poor: it was necessary for him to preach in the square of the King of the Sun outside the cathedral church. He led the men of Pavia by his preaching to many pious works, and to this above all, that a Mount of Piety was erected in the city to relieve the necessity of the poor, who by reason of the usuries of the Jews — of which he was always the fiercest assailant — were reduced to this, that, their wretched little bundles being consumed by the excessive extortion of usuries, they were forced to seek their food from door to door. This Mount of Piety, increased by much money, the men of Pavia make richer every day; so that, the usuries of the Jews being given up, the necessity of almost all is abundantly relieved *. For so distinguished and necessary a work, than which this city could have had none more useful, who will not celebrate this holy Man of God perpetually with the highest praises? Who will not believe that he was born to relieve the want of the wretched? Who, finally, would not say that he was sent down from heaven for the common help of all? We shall say more in their proper places of the grateful mind of the men of Pavia toward the Man who had deserved so well of them.

[387] Then (thus does Wadding go on under this year 1493, num. 15 and following), having execrated worldly vanities, he publicly burns the enticements of sins; the paints of women, the instruments of games, the incentives of sins, and having ordered them to be sent away, on the following day he received heaps of dice, wagon-loads of playing-cards, of gaming-boards and counters, countless dice-boxes and gaming-discs, false hair, boxes of balsam and of other unguents, silver and gilt little books of love and of magic, wanton pictures, women's hairpins, curling-irons, fans, mirrors, rouge, masks, mummers' visors, foreign garments, in such quantity and of such price that it exceeded the sum of two thousand gold pieces, which he ordered to be burned in the sight of all. Thereafter the city seemed another, every man being astounded at the Man's efficacy of speech and the power of his doctrine. All marveled, and said within themselves, This is the change of the right hand of the Most High!

[388] "Behold, how liberal now toward the poor is that usurer! he wonderfully reforms the morals of the men of Pavia; How that most intemperate young man has applied a bridle to his concupiscence! Do you not see the vain and unchaste woman flee the sight of men; the young men drawn away from evil arts; the minds of all kindled to better things and called away from the world's delights?" The prætor saw that the hearts of all were so laid up in Bernardino's hand, and so bent by his fiery words, that he reckoned it a grave loss for those who did not hear him speak. Accordingly he provided by a public edict that no one should open a shop while Bernardino was preaching. But since this was burdensome to certain men greedy of gain, the Preacher himself brought it about that it should be revoked. Yet from this he gained more: for those who had unwillingly kept their shops shut, of their own accord with the rest, that they might be present at the preaching and at pious works, abstained from displaying their wares beyond the appointed time. But although it was customary that indulgence be given even at the hour of the sermon to merchants and shopkeepers of every sort, yet he could not endure that the market, or the fair-square, should be held on the sixth day of Parasceve. He afterward obtained that by a rigorous law passed it should thenceforth be wholly abolished.

[389] among other pious fellowships he founds one for supporting foundlings: He established some colleges of men who scourged themselves of their own accord and washed away their guilt by penance, and others also which should serve the sick, and support and rear in Christian fashion exposed infants. These things are confirmed from an ancient manuscript Register of the college of St. Sebastian, out of which Innocenzo of Pavia, p. 247, transcribed in Italian what I here report in Latin: Then indeed in the year 1493, through the preaching and the salutary counsels of the venerable Master Friar Bernardino of Feltre, of the Order of Friars Minor of St. Francis of the Observance, devotion so grew in this magnificent city by those many sermons of his that many colleges of flagellants were erected, and in the first place this our praiseworthy one of the Disciplinants of the Seraphic Order of St. Francis, and also under the title of St. Sebastian, which by the grace of the most high God had its beginning in the aforesaid year, on the tenth day of August, which was a Sunday. Yet there is an error here either in the day of the week or in the day of the month, since the tenth day of August was a Saturday, not a Sunday, as is plain from the Dominical letter F of the same year.

[390] a woman crippled in her limbs is suddenly healed; Concerning the three sodalities of Flagellants founded at Pavia by Bl. Bernardino, Bernardino of Clastidium also agrees in the Italian Life, ch. 19; but concerning the house of exposed infants he writes that in the Blessed man's time it had collapsed without any settled discipline and was almost extinct, so far that four or five goats were kept in it, which with their milk were to fill the place of nurses; but that by his labor a college of noble men was then formed to whose care that house should belong, and that out of their munificence forty or fifty nurses were hired to rear those poor little ones with their own milk. Furthermore, that Bernardino's authority among the men of Pavia might be so great, God brought it about also by prodigies of his omnipotence. Nor were all these things (Wadding adds) accomplished without a display of divine power. A certain woman, while all were running together to make their contributions to the Mount that was to be erected, ordered herself to be carried to the place (for she was destitute of the use of her limbs); her little offering having been made, she returned home on her own feet.

[391] an impious young man is converted by him; a mute and an epileptic are healed. A young man of Mantua, sunk in every kind of vice, a despiser of things above, a mocker of preachers, wholly given over to the magic art, having jested at a fellow student, a hearer of Bernardino, because he was constantly present at his sermons, was at length led by that man's exhortations to hear him once. It happened on that day that the theme of the sermon was: Set your House in order, for you shall die. The demonstration and amplification of this so penetrated the young man's breast, hard as it was, that, becoming now no mocker but a frequent hearer, he put far from him all the impediments and entanglements of the world, and after a few days, and a visible wrestling with the demon who drew him back from his good purpose, he flew to the religion of the Minors, Bernardino bestowing the habit. Another young man, for nine years

mute, an epileptic, twice a day falling to the ground with this falling sickness, having received a morsel of bread which was left over from the Servant of God's table, was at once freed from both evils.

[392] An infant, whom he knew by divine revelation to have been drowned, A certain fisherman asked Bernardino, as he was praying in the cathedral church, to hear him confess his guilt. He did so; and having absolved him, he admonished him to abstain from lies. As he was about to depart, he asked him to fish very early on the following day in the river Ticino, and to bring to him in that place whatever he first caught. Having let out his nets for the catch, the fisherman drew out a little infant, deformed in face, cast out there some days before by its mother, that her sin might be concealed. Pitying the unhappy lot of the ill-fated child, he buried it under the sand, and, the nets being cast a second time, he took a very fine fish. Rejoicing, he brought it to Bernardino in the church: but he, looking at the man with a moved countenance, said, "Did I not yesterday warn you, ask you, charge you, not to lie? Is this perhaps that which you caught first today?" The fisherman, fearing and revering the power of one who reproved him so aptly, confessed that not a fish but a little infant, buried by him in that place, had first fallen to him. "Go," said the Servant of God, "and bring the infant, dug up again."

[393] When he brought it at once, Bernardino placed it upon the altar, he recalls to life and baptizes: he sends a fish to a sick man, and poured out such prayers to God and to the blessed Virgin that he received it alive. Delaying not at all, he dipped it in sacred baptism; and a little after, as it peacefully breathed out its life *, he gave it burial in that church before the chapel of St. Anne, exhorting the bystanders, astounded at the greatness of the miracle, to render thanks together to God, who did not scorn nor despise the prayer of the poor man, but heard him crying to him, and restored a soul to the little rotting body, that, born again by sacred baptism, it might obtain eternal glory. Bernardino of Clastidium in the Life, p. 228, writes that this miracle of the child raised up to receive the grace of Baptism is painted in the same Blessed man's chapel, of which we shall treat below. But this is not yet the end of the prodigies in Wadding, whose words I resume. He ordered the fisherman to go straight to the convent of St. James, and, where the linen covering of the fish should fall off as the wind blew it away, to carry the little gift into the nearest house.

[394] Having watched for the sign, he knocked at the doors of a poor woman near St. Mary in Pertica, which, being tasted, he suddenly recovers: another like thing is told and found that her son, lying on his bed, had in a long and grave illness desired nothing so much as a fish. What his mother's poverty could not do for so long a time, God's providence then supplied through his Servant; and besides it added the greater benefit of health restored, as soon as he had tasted the miraculous food. How great and of what kind are the miracles here heaped up! Thus Wadding in the place cited, in whom there is afterward recited, under the year 1494, num. 56, an elogium of the same Bl. Bernardino from a manuscript codex of Pavia, whose title is, A Catalogue of the holy bodies and relics existing in the city of Pavia, in which elogium something similar is told of a little gift sent by him at Pavia to a poor woman, but with other circumstances, namely in this manner: Of this most blessed Man it is read that, when a certain gift had been given to him, he asked the servant who had carried it to bring that gift to a poor woman laboring under extreme want; who promised that he would do it most willingly, provided that he would show him the poor woman's house.

[395] To whom the holy Man replied: "Son, return by the same road by which you came to me, and enter the house beside which the linen cloth with which the gift is covered shall fall, and having left the gift there, you shall return home." The servant, when he had come near the poor woman's house, at once the linen cloth fell, another like it concerning food sent by the Blessed man to a woman in childbed: and entering the house, he found a woman lately delivered lying in bed, destitute of all human help; who, having received that gift, gave thanks to God, who never forsakes those who hope in him, and to him who had sent it. The aforesaid annalist, noting here in the margin, see the year 1493, num. 22, where there is some discrepancy, has not obscurely intimated that this deed, though set forth otherwise, seemed to him the same as the preceding. Bernardino of Clastidium judged the opposite in the Italian Life, relating the second on pp. 169 and 170, and the first on p. 223 and the following, and warning in both places that they are different, and affirming that the house of that woman in childbed was behind the church of St. Thomas of the convent of the Fathers Preachers, and neighboring on that church; but he cites none but Wadding and the aforesaid Catalogue, in which there exists no mention of the place of that house.

[396] I prefer to think with Wadding, whom the best documents guided, but more probably it does not belong to him. and to believe that this deed was reported by the author of the Catalogue with circumstances belonging to another. Occasion for the error may have been given by another very like this, which is told of Cherubino of Spoleto, a man of the same Order, famous for virtues and miracles, and a contemporary of blessed Bernardino, and which is recounted in Wadding under the year 1484, in which he is said to have died, num. 18, in these words: In the same place (at Florence) he sent back by the bearer gifts of fowl and of the best bread and wine that had been sent to him, asking that he would carry them to the street of Pentolina, and bring them into that house before whose doors the linen cloth or napkin should fall. The servant obeyed, and when a whirlwind arose he saw the linen shaken off, and having knocked at the door he found a wretched and needy woman who had a little before given birth and had nothing to eat. This story, I say, the author of the Catalogue may have heard told in his own time, and incautiously have ascribed it to Bl. Bernardino, whose not dissimilar deed he had not understood accurately enough.

[397] A monument erected to the Blessed man at Pavia. Further, that we may return to our road, amid these things Bl. Bernardino's departure was at hand, since he was ordered to preach at the general chapter of the Observants, to be celebrated on the twenty-fourth day of May of the same year 1493 at Florence in the convent of St. Saviour. And so, many traces of his holiness and doctrine having been left at Pavia, as the same annalist testifies, he had to depart, being about to preach at Florence by the precept of the vicar general at the general chapter reported by us above. As he was about to escort his companion James, who was ill, it was not permitted him to go away secretly; whence, as the companies of citizens followed and demanded a blessing one by one, he had to bestow it. They, meaning to leave to posterity the memory of Bernardino's saving doctrine and of the sermons delivered among them with so great fruit, erected a new pulpit in the lesser square of the Regisolium near the cathedral church, where he was accustomed to preach, and portrayed his likeness, placing above his head those words which he frequently repeated and fervently trod in : Do not love the world.

* perhaps porticu?

* let relief be given.

* i.e. dead

* perhaps Regis Solis, of the King of the Sun?

* read inculcabat, drove home

§ XVII. Making for Florence he heals an epileptic: his deeds there in the year 1493: the huge eagerness of the cities to hear him: Arezzo pacified by him: his return to Florence and his last acts in that city.

[ ] Being summoned to Florence, he preaches along the way, Bernardino having gone out from the city of Pavia, as was said in the preceding §, and hastening his journey toward Florence by the mandate of the vicar general to his Order's chapter, I follow him with Wadding, who followed his usual guides, of whom the chief was the Blessed man's own inseparable companion, friar Francesco. On the journey, when he had come to Dosolo, a fortified town of the territory of Cremona, and had beheld people dancing madly, he said, "Cease from this madness of yours and this incitement of evils"; and stretching out his hand toward the piper, he gravely rebuked him. That man, though young and of sturdy strength, instantly grew quiet; but with trembling voice he added, "May one not dance at the celebrating of a wedding?" And this the newly married woman and the other women repeated, whom the same fear and trembling seized at the little Man's voice. Yet when they learned that it was Bernardino, everywhere most renowned, they asked with the highest entreaties that on the following day it might be permitted to hear him preach. Having gathered them at dawn, he instructed them in many things, but especially in this, in what manner weddings ought to be celebrated according to Christian rite.

[399] Passing secretly through Bologna and Pianoro (or Planorum, in Italian Pianoro, which is a fortified town of the territory of Bologna, distant about seven or eight miles to the south of Bologna), and heals an epileptic: he is forbidden to preach at Florence; with great labor and with his strength broken he crossed the Alps (that is, the Apennines), and reached Firenzuola (commonly Firenzuola, a town of the Florentine Romagna), where on the day of the Ascension (which was then the sixteenth of May) he preached. After the midday meal he hastened his journey, having received repeated letters of the vicar that he should arrive as soon as possible. Having preached once at the fortified town of St. Lawrence, that he might satisfy the wishes of a certain most devout man, most attached to the Minorites, and having healed his epileptic nephew, on the vigil of St. Bernardino (the nineteenth day of May) he entered Florence. As he was about to preach on the following day, it was intimated to him very early in the morning, by the decree of Piero de' Medici and of the senate, that he should not preach. When the vicar (then Bl. Angelo of Chivasso) asked whence and why so severe a precept had issued, the answer was, For fear of stirring up the common people, who hung altogether upon the mouth of that man who might perhaps rub open the old injuries of the exile decreed against him. Smiling, the vicar said to Bernardino, "You are a great Man, O Little Brother, whom the Florentine senate so greatly fears."

[400] Concerning the exile mentioned, which was decreed against him by the Florentine senate in the year 1488, afterward it is permitted him, and its cause, consult §10 from num. 215. But certainly Bernardino's mind was so far from avenging his own injury, or from stirring up the people against the governors of the republic, that I wonder this suspicion could fall upon him, which the integrity of his life and so many cities pacified by him ought to have removed very far from him. Yet perhaps more was feared from the people, namely lest it, which once at Bernardino's words had blazed out against the Jews beyond what was fair and just and contrary to what he himself wished, should now, animated by his presence, be moved to avenge the injury done to the blessed Man. Observe also briefly that no mention is here made of the edict of exile having been violated by Bernardino, from which it is permissible to conjecture either that it had at least been tacitly abrogated, or that the space of time for which he had been ordered to be an exile had then expired. However these things may stand, the faculty of preaching in the city itself could not be obtained for Bernardino except with difficulty and little by little. Hear again Wadding, who from the Diary of friar Francesco, the Blessed man's inseparable companion, could be very well informed about the whole matter.

[401] But when (the vicar) had sent Religious and city messengers to Piero (de' Medici, that he may do it outside the city prince of the Florentine republic) to signify that nothing was to be feared from Bernardino, and that he was not the man to desire vengeance or to aspire to the lordship of the city, it was permitted that on the following day he should deliver a sermon outside the city in the convent of the Friars, where the chapter was assembled. And although the feast of St. Bernardino had passed, the vicar wished him to deliver a sermon on that saint's virtues and glory. And when he complied, and in the course of speaking added, "Behold, now your little Bernardino has returned to you, whom you well know to follow you with Christian love; and who promises anew that he will in no way be parted from you," the whole congregation exulted with wonderful rejoicing, and could not be kept from tears. On the day of Pentecost it was enjoined

upon him the office of preaching; but since, with much rain, the people could not come to the convent of St. Saviour, which was somewhat remote, nor was it permitted, by Medici's contriving, to preach within the city in the church of the Conventuals, he determined to deliver a sermon at St. Miniato, the church of the monks of Monte Oliveto, most capacious, but situated on a steep hill outside the city.

[402] and at last within the city; which he does amid a huge concourse The bell having been rung, neither the continuous rain nor the difficulty of the road held the people back from the ascent; but men of all orders ran up in troops, lest a place be snatched from them. When therefore, three sermons having been delivered, he had not said even the least word about his own expulsion, and no small murmuring arose among the people because it had not been permitted him to preach in the city that day, at length the shrewder men of the Medici faction suggested to Piero that nothing was to be feared from that Man, and that an occasion was now given of gaining favor with the people, if he should grant him to preach in the city. Reluctantly and timidly, he at last consented; and at once it was noised through the city, to the great joy of all, that on the third day the man of Feltre would preach in the square. The procession of the Friars toward the cathedral church having begun (as is the custom at general chapters), so great a throng surrounded Bernardino as he walked with the rest that, unless six strong men had driven off with staves those desirous of seeing and touching him, he would have been altogether overwhelmed in the road by the pressure of the people.

[403] [in the public square; he willingly forgives his adversaries when they ask pardon:] So great a people was present at this sermon that never at another time was it more numerous; but not even the most spacious square sufficed to hold the multitude, and men and women climbed up through the windows and to the tops of the roofs, that, if it were not possible to hear him bringing forth his words, they might at least behold him persuading them by his gesture and movements. The sermon finished, when the chief men had rendered thanks by the touch and kiss of his hands, he returned with greater danger because of the pressing crowd, although the guards employed diligently drove them back. On the following days many parents and kinsmen of those who had consented or subscribed to the edict for expelling Bernardino from the Florentine state came to him, begging pardon for their error, and asking that he would forgive and bless them, their sons, and their whole family; openly announcing that many evils had befallen their households after that iniquitous decree had issued. To whom he piously and kindly pardoned what had been sinned against himself, praying all good things for them and their families.

[404] He answers modestly the envoy of Spain. At that very time there came to Florence a leading Spanish gentleman, envoy of the Catholic sovereigns (Ferdinand and Isabella), to treat of the affairs of the Aragonese and of the tumults which were already springing up in Italy; who reverently visited Bernardino, and seriously consulted him about the dangerous treaties which were being struck * with the French; and at last asked him most insistently that he would be willing to cross over into Spain, there to scatter the sacred seeds of doctrine with a sure increase. To whom he replied with the utmost lowliness of mind that the former matters were outside his own sphere; that the latter belonged to the vicar general, with whom lay the power of commanding. The treaties which he here mentions were those preceding the war which, at the instigation of Ludovico Sforza, usurper of the duchy of Milan, was begun in the following year by Charles VIII, king of France, to claim the kingdom of Naples for himself, and was long ruinous to all Italy. There is no need to note anything further about it, since it in no way belongs to the Acts of Bl. Bernardino, who rightly and prudently answered that business of this kind was outside his sphere; but the obvious historians may be consulted, and the most recent annalist of Italy, Ludovico Muratori, under this year 1493 and the following.

[405] As it was glorious for the blessed Man and worthy of his merits that so singular a zeal and outstanding veneration of the Florentines, even of the nobler among them, In the chapter of the Order there is a dispute should be shown toward him in that city out of which five years since he had been ordered to depart and into which he had been admitted with difficulty; so likewise there fell out prosperously for him the other disputation instituted by his friends, namely the Religious of his own Order, and not from an adverse mind but out of tenderness of conscience, in the aforesaid chapter, which Wadding has set forth in these words. In the chapter and in the secret council of the Fathers, a question having been proposed concerning the manner of erecting Mounts of Piety, Michele of Acqui said that money should be lent without any charge whatever, so that every appearance of odious and unjust usury might be removed; while Bernardino asserted that an obol, or a sextans, or a bagatino (these are names among that people for a very small coin of the slightest value) should be paid upon each pound for the recompense of the officials and the salary of the governors.

[406] Bernardino confessed that it would be more seemly and more religious concerning the manner of erecting Mounts of Piety, if the loan were given wholly without any obol or price, and money lent freely; but that the pious work and the relief of the poor would in that case last but a short time. "For the ardor of men," he said, "is not so great that governors and officials, necessary for the ministry of the Mounts, should be willing to undergo all this labor for nothing: and if they must be remunerated out of the principal sum, or out of the deposit itself, or out of the slender treasury of the Mounts, this will shortly be exhausted, and that convenient and opportune refuge of the poor will assuredly perish." Moreover he said that every scruple had now been removed everywhere, both by the example of the most learned and most pious men — Giacomo of Piceno, Marco of Bologna, Cherubino of Spoleto, Marco of Monte Santa Maria in Gallo, Michele of Milan, Antonio of Vercelli, Fortunato of Perugia, author of the most celebrated legal opinion beginning "The City of Florence, etc." — and of others, who in most cities of Italy erected Mounts thus; and by the written subscriptions of the wisest men and of the illustrious universities of Perugia, Siena, Bologna, Pavia and others; and finally, and this most weighty of all, by the confirmation of four supreme Pontiffs, Pius and Paul II, Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII.

[407] After Bernardino had set forth these things with his own eloquence, and judgment is pronounced for the Blessed man: he preaches to the Poor Clares, with his own humility likewise and love of obeying he said to the assembled Fathers, "But if anything different seems to you more advisable, I am ready to hear and to be taught." The reasons on both sides having been heard and discussed, Evangelista of Perugia, the Vicar general (elected in the same chapter), Francesco Contarini, Giovanni of Sestri, Girolamo Tornielli, definitors; Angelo of Chivasso, Ludovico della Torre, the chief Fathers of the Order, decreed that Bernardino's rule was to be held; but that as concerned those Mounts which had been founded otherwise, the matter should be passed over in silence. After these things the annalist proceeds to the other offices of charity bestowed by him at Florence at that time, writing thus: Meaning to comfort his sisters the Poor Clares of the monastery of Monticelli, founded by St. Clare, he delivered one or two sermons there, and brought back a reward most dear to him, a moderate piece of the tunic of St. Francis kept in that place.

[408] Nor did he disdain to preach to the sick and the attendants of the hospice of St. Mary the New; and in the public hospital he gives fitting counsels. to whom, while he urged concord and mutual love, that each should keep their own duties, he said wittily that to each should be handed his own little book, by which in a few words he might grasp whatever concerned his own office. On the books of the sick these words only were to be inscribed: Patience, patience, patience; on those of the attendants, these: Charity, charity, charity; and each was to take care of his own book, so as not to read the other's. "For if," he said, "a sick man should say querulously to his attendant, Where is your charity? and himself forget patience; or if the attendant should reproach a troublesome and importunate sick man, Where is your patience? and not remember the charity which he owes to the sick man; they will be like boys who, when they ought to read their lesson in their own book, turn each other's little books, and give the master no account of the lesson, and are beaten with the strap. To each therefore we commit his own book to read, that the sick man may bear patiently the failings of the attendant, and the attendant may exercise all charity toward the sick." So welcome was this instruction to the rectors of the hospice that in memory of Bernardino they had two tablets so inscribed hung at each bed, one of which the sick man, the other the attendant should read.

[409] He is sought with wonderful eagerness by various cities, Meanwhile, while the holy Man was thus cultivating the Florentines, many other cities of Italy, and even of Sicily, labored to hear him; in what number and with what eagerness, gather from the things which I subjoin from the same Annals. There had come at this time both letters and messengers from the chief cities of Italy to the vicar general, that it might be granted them to hear Bernardino for some days. Certain of them pressed for Advent, others for the Lent of the following year. The vicar, surrounded by so many messengers and beset with petitions, did not know which way to turn; and he said that Bernardino alone, by the demands of so many peoples, provinces and princes, brought him more anxieties and straits than all the rest of the preachers subject to him. At last this decision was reached: that it should be granted to the men of Brescia for Advent, to the Milanese for Lent, to the men of Ravenna and Faenza for fifteen days, and for eight or ten days to those of Arezzo, Perugia, Assisi, Spoleto, and Città di Castello.

[410] that he may preach: meanwhile he preaches at Florence. To the men of Messina, of Palermo, and to other Sicilian cities the answer was that there was no time left this year for crossing the sea. The city of Vicenza, having suffered a refusal for Lent, not knowing how to be beaten, or impatient of refusal, had recourse to the supreme Pontiff, who revoked the vicar general's orders. Meanwhile Bernardino preached every day at Florence; but from this the convent of St. Saviour felt a burden, since the Friars remained by the hundred even after the chapter was dissolved, upon whom an insatiable desire came of hearing the Man daily. On the day of the solemnity of Corpus Christi he preached in the most capacious church of Holy Cross, unable however to hold so great a multitude as ran together to the sermon.

[411] Being sent to Arezzo, he delivers some sermons along the way Being ordered to set out as soon as possible for Arezzo (which is a city of Etruria, in the Florentine territory, commonly called Arezzo), that he might restrain the rioting people, he departed from Florence secretly, after his custom; yet many nobles, doctors and Religious men followed, who, though he resisted, accompanied him as far as Figline (a place distant from Florence, as far as appears from the geographical maps, about 15 miles). And the men of this town came out to meet him and received him with jubilation. He delivered a sermon in the church of St. Francis, and after the midday meal went off to the fortified town of St. John: yet he remained with his own brethren, placed outside on the mountain, where for two days he instructed the people who came in troops. There came thither a certain professor of the university of Pisa with two Minorites, sent by the Florentines to ask that he would return; for the Nativity of St. John the Baptist was at hand, which they are accustomed to celebrate every year for eight days with the most solemn display. To whom he said that he had been commanded to go on to the men of Arezzo, not to return to the Florentines. But they said, "The superior will command this too." "So long as he has not commanded it," said the Man of God, "I shall fulfill what he has already commanded"; and without waiting for any answer he went on to Arezzo.

[412] On the journey he had to halt at Ponte Levano, whence, when he determined to depart by night about midnight, being eagerly sought, he delivers them: he pacifies the men of Arezzo. more than four hundred men were keeping watch before the doors, to hear the holy Sacrifice and the divine word. Seeing himself thus forestalled, before the twilight of dawn he performed the holy Sacrifice, and turning his back to the altar he finished a sermon of a full hour. He arrived at Arezzo that same morning, the citizens coming out to meet him, who wished to conduct him to the palace of the magistracy; but he

turned aside humbly to his own brethren, with whom, while he took breath a little from the weariness of the journey, he called them to a sermon. All the orders gathered eagerly, to whom he, having taken the theme, Watch, you know neither the day nor the hour, commended peace, and reckoned up the harms of discord. In a second sermon he persuaded them to lay aside their old enmities and savage hatreds, which were driving the city to destruction. Meanwhile letters of the vicar general were brought, and two Florentine nobles were sent, that he should return. Only a third sermon having been delivered, he had to comply, the men of Arezzo weeping at his withdrawal.

[413] At the village of Laterina (seven or eight miles distant from Arezzo), as the country people and reapers flew together from the fields, He returns to Florence, where a most wicked hypocrisy having left their sickles among the crops and covered only with a shirt, he preached most kindly, with a sermon fitted to their life and labor. He did the same in the fortified villages of Varchi and Incisa *; at last, the ridge of the Apennine having been trodden with much labor and hunger (for he never wished for a retinue that should spend money, nor for forerunners to prepare a table, being content enough with his own poverty), he returned to Florence, the whole people exulting. On the very feast of St. John the Baptist, having begun his sermons at St. Reparata, being warned by prudent and pious men that in that city new colleges of prophesiers, strange practices, and superstitious fictions of visions and revelations had sprung up under the patronage of a certain religious man, he judged that a timely remedy must be applied. It was indeed found that many women, and those of the chief sort, having given up the active life in order to devote themselves to contemplations and to see visions, were neglecting their household affairs, defrauding the duties of marriage, communicating in the Body of Christ every single day, and yet very many of them were troublesome at home, wayward, proud, envying one another, and preferring their own visions to others'.

[414] The Man of God resolved to cut away this demoniac fraud and cloaked vice to the quick, publicly attacking it, yet cautiously, that he might not censure its author. During the Octave of St. John, when he had expounded those words, "For indeed the hand of the Lord was with him," and had said that the hand of the Lord meant the divine help and Spirit, and that therefore John had put far from him the painted arts of the demon and the masked appearance of virtue, he came down to the discernment of spirits. "Certain kinds of spirits," he said, "are good, peaceable, humble, in nothing at variance with sacred Scripture and the divine precepts: they who are led by this spirit are peaceful, gentle, in no way suspicious, in no way turbulent, not boastful, not troublesome, and they rejoice inwardly in God their salvation. Other kinds of spirits are evil, sent in by the demon, which disturb and puff up the mind, turn aside from good beginnings to manifest vices, and gradually lead away from the divine teachings. The visions which arise from these are obscure, wrapped in riddles; not teaching but confounding; not consoling, but filling with sadness because of their obscurity.

[415] he teaches the discernment of spirits: If revelations of this kind make you humbler, more peaceable, gentler, and of sounder judgment; if they make you more devout, more observant of the divine precepts, they are from the Holy Spirit; especially if they are found not to have been coveted, nor gained by vain arts. For the good and truly humble spirit reckons itself unworthy of these visions: believe me, he is most proud who affects revelations of this kind. Wherefore if any of you boast that they have these, let them beware lest, while they seem to themselves breathed upon by the divine Spirit, they be led away by a pythonic spirit into various and gross errors." By this prudent instruction many brought their visions and imaginations, written out, to the Man of God, among which was that one celebrated among them, namely that it should come to pass that that teacher of theirs should produce a new exposition of sacred Scripture, truer and purer than any that had gone before. Thus far he himself, prudently concealing the name of that Religious teacher, into which it does not please me to inquire, nor to divine it from probable conjectures. Accordingly I go on to transcribe the rest from the same author.

[416] he instructed nuns: having foretold evils to the city, he bids it farewell, Being asked to teach the enclosed sacred virgins in the afternoon hour, he consented; yet with the doors of the church shut, and with none present save those who had the care of the monastery, saying that the sins and negligences of consecrated men and women are not to be reproved before the people. Witnesses therefore being removed except the superiors and confessors, having reasoned about obedience, poverty, humility, mutual charity, and the merits and fruit of enclosure, he gravely reproved soft and broken chants and the allurements of melody; saying that they were foreign to the divine praises, and came nearer to pleasure, and were handmaids to lust. On the day of St. Paul, having taken from his sword an occasion of discoursing on justice, he said that a great and swift vengeance of God was hanging over the city because of justice ill administered, of too familiar dealing with the Jews, and of public usuries tolerated to the manifest ruin of the poor. He said moreover that exile had once been decreed against him on their account; and against them, as against perpetual and sworn enemies of the Christian faith, he said what he judged necessary for the honor of the city and the remedy of the poor. And at the end of the sermon he bade the citizens a tender farewell, foretelling that they would see his face no more.

[417] never to return thither; concerning which By the evils which he foretold to be hanging over the city of Florence he may have meant those which in the following year, of Christ 1494, it suffered from the French, being brought into peril of its liberty by Charles VIII their king, who had come into Italy with his army to subdue the kingdom of Naples to himself; on which matter the historians may be consulted. He may likewise have meant the fall of the aforesaid Piero de' Medici, who, in order to gain favor with the king, having without the senate's knowledge handed over to him Pisa and three other fortified places of the Florentine republic, was proscribed by that same senate. He truly foretold likewise that he should be seen no more by the Florentines; for after he departed from this city he never returned thither, and in the following year died happily near Pavia. That there is an error in assigning the day of the sermon spoken of by him, and that for St. Paul's should be substituted St. James's, the reckoning of time drawn from the same Annals makes me suspect.

[418] It seems altogether to be said that that sermon was the last certain things are observed which the Blessed man then delivered at Florence. Setting out from here, he reached Siena at most on the third or fourth day, being much afflicted by a vein of the chest broken on the journey. For that cause he rested there fifteen days, after which, his chest being meanwhile strengthened, he delivered his first sermon on the feast of the Assumption of the most blessed Virgin Mother, that is, on the fifteenth day of August, as we shall say in the following §. From this day, therefore, count backward nineteen days, and you will come to the twenty-seventh of July, which consequently must be assigned to his departure from the city of Florence. Now if he preached for the last time at Florence on the day of St. Paul, that is, on the thirtieth day of June, on which the commemoration of St. Paul the apostle is made, it must also be said that he kept holiday there from sermons for twenty-six days, which certainly was very far from Bernardino's practice and custom and apostolic ardor. On the contrary, if we say that the same sermon was delivered by him on the feast of St. James, which is celebrated on the twenty-fifth of July, only twenty days will have passed between, of which he spent fifteen at Siena in restoring his chest, and the remaining five partly at Florence and partly on his journey. For the rest, since St. James also suffered martyrdom by the sword, Bernardino could take occasion of discoursing on justice as well from the one as from the other.

* read icebantur

* perhaps Ancisæ

§ XVIII. Being sent to Perugia, and a vein of his chest having burst while preaching, he recovers at Siena: he strives in vain to reconcile the men of Perugia and Assisi, who were at variance in civil discords: he revisits other cities: he preaches at Brescia, where he corrects morals, pacifies the citizens, heals a boy: he is sought by various cities: at last he preaches usefully at Vicenza in the year 1494.

[ ] Being sent to Perugia, a vein of his chest having burst on the journey, There still remain not a few of Bl. Bernardino's deeds to be narrated under this year 1493, in the month of July of which, as it drew to its close, I said, in the preceding §, that he more probably departed from Florence. The cause of his departure, and what was afterward done by him, I transcribe from Wadding. While these things are being done at Florence, he is sought by sixteen cities through letters and messengers; yet the vicar general ordered him to go to Perugia, and thence to Assisi, to pacify that people, wretchedly torn asunder. On the day on which he departed from Florence he had to halt, because of the prayers of many citizens, near the city at the church of St. Mary of Impruneta, most famous for a very celebrated image of the Virgin, and there to preach on the following day to a most numerous people, who had flocked thither from the city. After the midday meal he went on to the town of St. Cassian, where, while preaching, a vein of his chest burst and he spat blood abundantly.

[420] Being brought to Siena, for fifteen days he ceased from all work by the physicians' counsel, he is brought to Siena, where he somewhat recovers and preaches twice. using the slenderest food. When an opinion had spread through many parts that he had departed from among the living, he said: "Often I perish, yet by a false rumor; but I tell you, it will soon be true, what they now say and it is not believed." And he sent ahead to Assisi his companion James, who was better, to announce the cause of the delay. But when the day of the Assumption of the glorious Virgin came, to whom that city professes itself most devoted, he felt his voice grow solid and his chest grow firm; whence he suffered himself to be led by the citizens' prayers to preach on that day, in the hearing of Francesco Cardinal Piccolomini, archbishop of Siena (who afterward, being raised to the supreme Pontificate, was called Pius III), and of the whole people. On the next day too, at the same Cardinal's request, when he had preached and had tried to go away, he was detained by the Cardinal, who went to see him in the convent and drew out the conversation for many hours, laying open the secrets of his conscience and giving thanks for the benefits conferred on that city; recounting besides what the Man of God had accomplished at Perugia while he himself was discharging the office of legate through that region.

[421] At Perugia he intrepidly rebukes tyranny; Departing thence very early in the morning, he went off to Perugia, where, the divine Spirit protecting and moving him, having consoled the afflicted and humbled people (through the faction of the Baglioni), he frequently inveighed against the tyrannical life, against hatreds and murders, always introducing some person of the ancient tyrants — now Domitian, Nero, Leo and Zeno the Isaurians, Julian the apostate; now Dionysius of Sicily, now Phalaris — with tyranny rebuked, and that life condemned which is always anxious, always full of fear. Guido Baglioni, head of the chief faction, in order to frighten him from speaking by his presence, always sat opposite the pulpit; but so far was he from disturbing him, that rather Bernardino, with his eyes fixed upon him, fearlessly set forth the harms of tyranny and its wretched consequences. And indeed the tyrant, anxious, brooding, pale in his whole face, once returning from the sermon, when he was warned by his followers that the Preacher ran out on these matters too licentiously, replied that what he said was plainly true. "From the Oddi, who have been expelled," he said, "and from their partisans, though I have reason to fear less, yet I have that which more troubles my soul."

[422] but profiting nothing, he threatens divine vengeance. That I may not repeat what has been said, I refer the studious reader to §§7 and 8 and XI, in which I treated of the inveterate bloody feuds and hatreds of the Oddi and the Baglioni, two illustrious families among the men of Perugia, as far as seemed enough for the illustration of our Blessed man's deeds. There also you will read

what that same man attempted for reconciling these adverse parties and restoring peace and concord to the city. But, as sometimes elsewhere, so now too he sang to the deaf, since Guido Baglioni, who after the Oddi had been expelled and afterward also driven back held the first place in the city, indeed approved his words but was obstinate in his hatreds. Hence Bernardino, seeing at last (to use Wadding's words again) that he was wasting all his labor upon a people most obstinate in evils, having threatened in a vehement spirit many scourges which afterward came to pass, went on to Assisi. I could wish that the annalist had here added what those scourges were which proved the prophecy of him who threatened them.

[423] In vain likewise he twice attempts to reconcile Then he adds that he spent his pious labors no more happily upon the men of Assisi, who labored under a like evil of discords, saying this: This city (Assisi) he found stirred by the same furies and wretchedly torn into deadly parties. For that people came to such madness that, when the bodies of the citizens did not suffice for their cruelty, they declared war even on the churches of the Saints. They set fire to the doors of the basilica of St. Francis, that they might kill those who had taken refuge in the church, in the very sacred dwellings; and in other churches they drew their swords for mutual slaughter. Here also, when he profited little, he foretold in many terrifying sermons the evils that hung over them, and in his last sermon he wept bitterly, saying that he beheld their ruin; and that St. Francis, whom they had most grievously offended, would intercede for them no more; nor would God hear them when they should be set in the utmost calamities, who now despise the voice of God thundering through his minister.

[424] For the rest, having often but in vain tried their minds, [the men of Assisi among themselves: revisiting the men of Spoleto and Gubbio he praises them;] he came to Spoleto, where, when he perceived that the things which he had once appointed were observed to a nicety, that the people lived peaceably and kept the laws, he praised them and confirmed them further in good by three sermons. Returning to Assisi and delivering another sermon on the solemnity of St. Francis, and perceiving the people hardened in evils, he set out for Gubbio. I do not sufficiently discern whether Wadding means that the calamities were foretold to the men of Assisi by Bernardino as prophesying them, or only as threatening them out of fear that they might fall upon them: for he declares neither what these were nor when they were inflicted. Further, to the men of Gubbio the Blessed man's coming was more joyful, and to him their sight likewise more welcome, because they religiously kept the salutary warnings received from him in the years 1486 and the following. Here he praised (by the testimony of the same annalist) the people, because they firmly persevered in those things which they had promised him to observe.

[425] The Mount of Piety having been increased, he went on by way of Cagli (a town of the duchy of Urbino), where he preached once, and Urbino, where he preached a second time in the duke's presence, to Montefiore (a fortified village or town, called by the Italians Monte Fiore), and brought it about that two Jews were driven out, one cast out from Padua, the other of Ravenna, who in a few days had drawn to themselves the chief pledges of that region. At Rimini and Ravenna, which received him with great joy, nothing memorable was done; except that he taught the men of Rimini that the excessive license of the Jews and Marranos growing up there must be restrained; and that he prayed many good things for the men of Ravenna, keepers of his commands, seeing the Mount of Piety increased, and likewise the number of the confraternity of the most holy Sacrament, formerly founded by him. Consult §14 of this Commentary, where it was said that Bernardino persuaded the men of Ravenna to the erection of a Mount of Piety and to a greater reverence toward the divine Sacrament of the altar.

[426] Concerning the Marranos, whose excessive license the Blessed man warned must be bridled, and he exhorts those he has praised to constancy in what they have begun well. receive these few words. Marano or Marrano means, to the Italians, treacherous, a traitor; to the Spaniards, accursed, execrable. By Marranos, therefore, any worthless kind of men may here be meant. There are those who, in Du Cange's Glossary, hold that this word is derived from the Moors, as it were Mauriani; and this interpretation agrees well enough with the time of which I write; for when Ferdinand and Isabella, the kingdom of Granada having then lately been stormed, had subdued the Moors in the Spains, many of these could easily have come into Italy, either separately or with the Jews, whom the same Catholic sovereigns had a little after expelled from their dominions, and there, as much as the Jews, have found more credit than they deserved. Bernardino, having continued his journey hence to other cities in which he had at some time preached, did the same at Faenza — most devoted to him, and most peaceful from that time when he preached there — as he had done at Rimini and Ravenna; on which matter go to num. 323 and following.

[427] At Ferrara, one sermon having been delivered in the cathedral church, He preaches elsewhere: at Brescia he removes various abuses, and a conversation with the duchess having been declined, he came to Mantua; where, having preached three times, he went off to Brescia in accordance with the vicar general's precept, to preach during Advent. On the journey he preached at Castiglione delle Stiviere at dawn (this is a little town within the duchy of Mantua, then ennobled with the title of a principality of the house of Gonzaga, in the vernacular called Castiglione delle Stiviere); for a huge multitude gathered by night into the church from the neighboring countryside. At Brescia he wrought many good things; he corrected morals, he removed abuses. He brought it about that the costly mantle, an unseemly dress of women, which they wore wantonly on the left side only, after the manner of men, should be laid aside — even though count Pietro de Gambara, a leading man, pleaded for the women; that separate prisons should be assigned to women (for those accused of both sexes were promiscuously kept under one custody); and that the dowries of wives, which their husbands squandered, should be kept entire.

[428] and he pacifies the citizens who were ready for mutual slaughter: Hatreds being laid aside, he proclaimed peace and freed the city from imminent ruin. For when dangerous foundations of discord had been laid in the great council at the second hour of the night, the gates of the city being already shut, on the following morning, when he had brilliantly and copiously discoursed on civil sedition and its beginnings and harms, he called back to concord the Avogadri and the Martinenghi (illustrious men of the city), who were ready for arms and were drawing the whole city into a brawl. And that you may not think it added in vain that these seeds of discord had been laid in the council the day before at the second hour of the night, the gates of the city being already shut, observe from what is to be said presently that Bl. Bernardino was lodged in the convent of his Order, set outside the walls of that city, so that no one could inform him that night of what had been done in the council; and accordingly it may perhaps seem that the Blessed man was divinely instructed or impelled to speak to the people on this subject the next morning, and to avert the impending storm. That this is so I gather from what follows, which at the same time shows whence he had so great authority among the men of Brescia.

[429] He heals a boy's fistulous foot. What increased his esteem, so that he could do all these things more easily, was the holiness of his life, proved also by a miracle. He was lodging with his brethren in the new dwelling of St. Roch outside the city, whence he came daily through frosts and snows to preach at the church of St. John of the Canons Regular, which the citizens and the bishop (Paolo Zane) preferred to the cathedral that he might be heard more conveniently. To the aforesaid church of St. Roch a certain woman carried a boy who was suffering with a foot fistulous as it were like pumice, with ulcers of seven years' standing, cure having been despaired of by the surgeons, and asked that the Man of God would take pity on the son and on the mother. Moved with pity, he blessed the poor little one and warned him to recite each day the Crown of Mary the Virgin: and he charged the mother to invoke the name of Jesus while treating him. "Whereby it will come to pass," he said, "that he will shortly recover health." While they do so, all the fistulas close up, and within a few days the foot is made whole. Intent upon these works of piety and virtue, he remained at Brescia until the beginning of the following year.

[430] At the beginning of the year 1494, by the Pontiff's mandate Amid these things, therefore, there dawned the year of Christ 1494, which was Bernardino's fifty-fifth, and which brought him the end of his labors and the beginning of blessed immortality. But how diligently and strenuously he spent those last nine months of his life, how many cities and towns he visited and instructed, even with his health gravely afflicted and his poor little body drained of strength, and finally with how great an effort the most illustrious cities of Italy demanded that he be given them as their teacher, it will be a pleasure to hear from the often-praised Annals. It was said above at num. 409 and the following that Bernardino was destined by his vicar general to deliver sermons at Milan during the Lent of this year 1494, and that the men of Vicenza obtained from the supreme Pontiff that this mandate of the vicar should be annulled in favor of their own city. But the men of Ascoli, no less desirous than the rest of hearing him, snatched this favor away from the men of Vicenza by later Apostolic letters; but that these too at length attained their wishes by new efforts, we shall see below.

[431] There are in Italy two cities of Ascoli, both episcopal; Being about to go to Ascoli, eluding the vigilance of the men of Brescia, one of the kingdom of Naples in the province of Capitanata, called Ascoli Apulo; the other of the dominion of the Church on the border of the March of Ancona, where it adjoins Abruzzo Ulteriore, named Ascoli Piceno. Of the latter is our discourse here, in favor of which, since the mandate of Pope Alexander VI stood until then, on the first day of this year (as Wadding has it) Bernardino of Feltre, meaning to obey his superior's precept, resolved to leave Brescia and set out for the city of Ascoli. But when this became known to the men of Brescia, the whole multitude of the citizens gathered to bid him farewell, desiring to be blessed by him. But Bernardino, to whom honorable greetings of this kind were, by reason of his humility, burdensome, and who could also with reason fear that that same crowd, if it did not obstruct his departure, would at least accompany him for some time as he departed, or follow him when he had gone but a little way, prudently guarded himself against both inconveniences.

[432] For, that he might elude the crowds of those following, he withdrew secretly by night, he departs by night: on the journey he is by the Milanese leaving his companions behind, by the sight of whom it might be believed that Bernardino was still remaining at Brescia. Being warned by various letters written from Milan that the duke would shortly receive from Rome a Pontifical diploma by which the letters granted first to the men of Vicenza and soon after to those of Ascoli, that Bernardino should preach among them during the next Lent, would be revoked, he nevertheless wished, in the harsh season of the year, to undertake a long and tedious journey, lest he should seem to obey too grudgingly. Having preached once at Bidozzolo (perhaps to be read Guidizzolo, which village is marked in the maps between Castiglione delle Stiviere and Mantua), when he reached Mantua, a courier of the duke of Milan handed him letters asking that he go no further, because the Pontiff had revoked the letters granted to the men of Vicenza and of Ascoli, at the earnest entreaty of the Cardinals Ascanio Maria Sforza his uncle, and Giovanni Antonio da San Giorgio of Piacenza, bishop of Alessandria.

[433] Scarcely had this messenger been dismissed when, behold, another, having come by a different road, and by the men of Vicenza invited through messengers, announced the same thing, and had therefore been sent that, if the first had not found him, he might be overtaken by this one. But there is present also a third messenger, of the men of Vicenza, likewise asking that he would not depart from Mantua; saying that they had a sure hope that the wishes of the men of Ascoli and of Milan would be void and empty, and that the bishop of Concordia, a citizen of Vicenza, staying at Rome and most acceptable to the Pontiff, was moving every stone, and that the Venetian ambassador was most diligently cooperating with him, that the first promise of all, made to the men of Vicenza, might stand. Ferdinando Ughelli, tom. 5 of the enlarged Italia sacra, col. 365, writes that in this year 1494 Niccolò Donato of Venice sat in the bishopric of Concordia, and that when he was translated to the see of Aquileia

he was succeeded by Francesco Argentino, likewise a Venetian. But Niccolò Coleti in the emendations in the same place and in the preceding column shows that Niccolò Donato was never bishop of Concordia, but that at that time Lionello Chiericati or Clericato, of Vicenza, still sat in this chair; and that Francesco Argentino was not substituted for him before the beginning of the year 1507. For the rest, by Ughelli's own testimony, Lionello Chiericati was a noble of Vicenza, and a prelate of outstanding repute with the Roman Pontiffs; which it may help to have briefly observed here in favor of Wadding's assertions.

[434] Deservedly too the same annalist, on account of so great a zeal of the peoples toward the Blessed man, says: See how much the religious life of a good man, chaste morals, and Christian eloquence can do. So many noble cities contend, so great a strife is in the Roman curia, so ardent and opposed a zeal of princes, that they may draw so tiny a Little Man into their own sight and have him as a corrector of morals. All desire what is good, all love the friends of God and long to hear them. "The faithful in the Church await with pious desire that the friend of the Bridegroom should speak." Again, they who honor their ministry by an unspotted life and an irreproachable word are held in price by all, as those who discharge an embassy for Christ. If they do God's business and not their own, if they seek the fruits of souls and spurn the world's honors, they are honored by all. "The human race is wont to be in some fashion contentious and stubborn ": what you seek, it denies; what you spurn, it grants unasked. After this reflection he proceeds thus in the narrative he had begun.

[435] The Mount of Piety at Mantua having been defended, as he goes on to Ascoli, But while he had stopped at Mantua, awaiting the end of the pious contentions, it happened that the inquisitor, always an adversary of this work, was contriving something against the supporters of the pious Mount. After so many disputations and altercations long since held in vain, in which he always abundantly showed that in a matter so highly profitable there lay no scruple, he routed the opposing arguments with great fervor and ardor of speech, and so drew the whole multitude of hearers to his own opinion that no one thereafter dared to object anything. Further, as Septuagesima was at hand and the Roman edict was delayed, he resolved to make for Ascoli according to the Pontiff's earlier precept. Having begun * his journey in mid-winter through snows and a fearful sky, when, the Mincio being frozen, he could by no means go to Ravenna by a hired boat, he went on foot as far as Riperium, that he might be carried down the Po. But that too being covered with ice, with great labor and weariness he came at last to Ferrara. Setting out thence for Ravenna, when he saw the sea violently swollen, that he might not draw out delay he went on to the port of Cesena, meaning to sail thence to Ascoli.

[436] at last near Cesena he is ordered to go to Vicenza, Such then was the plan of that journey. It would have been convenient for him to make for Ravenna by the river Mincio, in Italian il Mincio, which, issuing from the lake of Mantua, flows a few miles thence into the Po near the village of Sacchetta, and then by the Po itself and by its arm commonly called il Po di Primaro; the rest of the journey being to be accomplished by the Adriatic sea. But since he could not do this, the Mincio being frozen, he went on foot to Riperium, a place unknown to me, meaning to commit himself to the Po; and since that river, because of the intense cold, was either not navigable at all or not safely so, he set out by land for Ferrara and thence for Ravenna, that he might sail from its harbor. And since the sea there swelled too much, he went on to the port of Cesena in the hope that, when meanwhile it had grown calm, having found a suitable ship, or hugging the shore in a small boat, he might at length come in good time to the mouth of the river Truentus (the Italians call it Tronto) for Ascoli. But behold (so Wadding continues) here there came up a messenger from Vicenza, bringing Pontifical letters which annulled those granted in favor of the men of Ascoli and of Milan.

[437] where against the spectacles of the Carnival The men of Ascoli therefore having been informed, and the journey being taken up backward by sea, he landed at Chioggia (a small episcopal city of the Venetian duchy, founded among the lagoons, otherwise Fossa Clodia, and in the vernacular called Chioggia); where, having preached three times on the vanity of the world, and a fourth time on the Purification of the Virgin Mary, in the hearing of the bishop of Teano (Orso Orsini), own brother of Cardinal Giovanni Battista Orsini, and legate into Hungary (from Pope Alexander VI) to set on foot a Crusade against the Turks, on the next day he was received at Vicenza to the highest joy of all, the citizens marveling that he had measured out so very long a journey in so short a time (for the messenger had recounted everything in order). How great his esteem was among that people may be conjectured from this, that while a certain outstanding Dominican preacher, of such fame among his own that he was reckoned almost a second John the Baptist, was still preaching, without waiting for the end of the sermon the benches were carried over to the principal church, where this Little Brother was then about to preach, and all the citizens flew thither.

[438] The Podestà and the captain, chief rectors of the city, preaching successfully, he offends the prætors; had at great expense prepared in the prætorium a theater and places for the dances and spectacles of the Carnival; but Bernardino on the Thursday before Quinquagesima asked with many words that they would abstain from these incitements to sin. When he could not obtain this, on the following Sunday he blazed out vehemently against the authors and patrons of sins; and he said that noble men were doing an unworthy thing who send their wives to such enticements of evil. Hence it came about that none of the noblewomen, although all had been invited, was willing to come forth. The prætors, thus baffled and greatly angered against the Preacher, as if to avenge the injury, abrogated the law which on the past Friday they had passed at the Servant of God's warning, that no one should go about masked, to the indignation of all good men; and they wrote to Venice that Bernardino had disturbed the accustomed spectacles and the people's joy; and to attest their anger further they abstained from his sermons.

[439] Being forsaken by the citizens, when they alone were turning aside to another preacher, [whose penitent little gifts he orders shortly after to be distributed to exposed infants.] they returned to Bernardino covered with blushes, and being reconciled, they sent him little presents from the sweetmeats and fruits preserved in sugar which had been prepared for the noblewomen who were to come to the spectacles. But he, who nowhere allowed delicacies of this kind, ordered them to be carried back; yet since the messenger and the bearers were unwilling, and persisted long that he should accept them, at last, having accepted them, he sent them back by the same messenger to be distributed to the exposed infants at the church of St. Marcellus; so that what * had been destined for the pomp of the wanton was turned to the use of the poor little ones. On the last day of the revels he delivered so plaintive and terrifying a sermon on the restoring of masks and on wanton dancing that he himself and his hearers went into tears, and on that chief day of the revelers they abstained wholly from their accustomed madnesses. Great indeed and divine must have been the Man's power in speaking: for what force of human eloquence would suffice that youth, most prone to merriment, should be so drawn back from an inveterate and pleasing custom?

* from Gregory on the Canticle.

* from St. Chrysostom.

* having begun

* which

§ XIX. Sermons delivered by the Blessed man, and his deeds at Vicenza in the year 1494: the oratory of St. Jerome erected there at his instance: angels seen while he was preaching.

[ ] I go on to relate the blessed Preacher's deeds at Vicenza in the words of the annalist of the Minors. On the first Sunday of Lent, which in that year 1494 fell on the sixteenth day of February, he took up that theme which has now passed into a proverb in the whole territory of Vicenza, At Vicenza he preaches out of a Treatise of St. Basil, Take heed to yourself; and repeating it each day, he applied new arguments for the care of the soul. A certain public schoolmaster of Perugia, professor of humane letters in this city and learned in Greek, when he had heard some argument drawn every day out of the Treatise of St. Basil beginning with those words Take heed to yourself, which he had by him written by hand in Greek, brought it translated into Latin and dedicated to Bernardino, saying: "Receive from the matter of your sermons, religious Father, delivered long ago by St. Basil and now translated by me, stirred up by your sermons, a little gift, slight on my part, precious from its author."

[441] which he had never read. Bernardino received the little book most courteously; but when he said that he then saw it for the first time, the translator marveled, who heard uttered the same praises of virtues and rebukes of vices which he had transcribed. But it is not to be wondered at that one and the same Spirit, by whom inspired the men of God have spoken, should have suggested the same things, and that by heavenly instinct the same things should have been written and taught by those who faithfully serve the same Lord, and who in the house of the great Father of the family strive with one heart and one soul toward the same ministry, although they lived in different times and in different regions. This Treatise or Homily on the words, Take heed to yourself, exists in Greek and Latin among the Works of St. Basil the Great in the edition by Julien Garnier, priest and Benedictine monk of the Congregation of St. Maur, Paris edition of the year 1722, tom. 2, p. 16 and following, where it may be read.

[442] He spits blood; a woman possessed When he had preached for some days (Wadding adds), a vein of his chest having been loosened, he spat blood copiously; whence by the physicians' counsel he had to abstain from the office of preaching for three days. Having resumed his labor, when he had spoken learnedly of the virtue and the Sacrament of penance, he added that such was the virtue of sacramental confession that even the demons would obtain mercy if they could confess their sins. Hence the horrible screechings and most hateful cries of a certain possessed woman, who had come thither from the town of Monte Lugameo (unknown to me), and had thrown the whole assembly into confusion. The sermon being somehow finished, when she was questioned by the suffragan bishop, by the rectors, and by others, she answered everything seriously and shrewdly; and concerning Bernardino she pronounced this little rhyme:

Credete al Santarello Al buon padre Bernardello: Guai a colui, che non gli crede, Misero Christiano senza fede.

That is: Believe the little Saint, the good father little Bernardino: woe to him who does not believe him, a wretched Christian without faith.

[443] breaks out into his praises: These are Italian words, which rendered into Latin sound thus:

Believe the little Holy One, the good father little Bernardino: Woe to him who does not believe him;

Then, when she was violently dragged by her father into the church of St. Marcellus to Bernardino, that he might bless her, he refused to look at her or to exorcize her, saying that he was a sinner and unworthy that unclean spirits should obey him. But she, blaspheming God and the Saints, sharply upbraided also the women who had flocked thither adorned, smeared with borrowed colors and decked with another's hair. "Is it thus," she said, "that Bernardino has taught you? Is this your regard for him? Go on, do as you are wont; my service will not fail you." On the following day the Preacher cast this rebuke of the demon in the teeth of the vain women, and, protesting that it would rise up in judgment against the incorrigible, he related from St. Antoninus that the devil had preached to the people in the person of a Religious man, that he might the more vehemently charge them with the crime of obstinacy at the last judgment.

[144] The possessed woman, at once crying out in the full assembly, said afterward, being forbidden by him, she is silent. that this was altogether true, and that for this very reason she had come to Vicenza; "But alas," she said, "I have lost too much! I possessed half of Vicenza: this Little Brother has terrified the cutthroats and the vain and slippery women; he has snatched a great prey from me." At the other sermons she spoke no more, giving as her reason that Bernardino had checked her tongue and bound it by his command. When a murmuring arose among the people, some denying and others asserting that she had truly been possessed, a certain Giovanni, a count in rank, and distinguished in learning, especially in Theology, took upon himself the burden of examining it.

Having called in learned men skilled in this kind of thing, he questioned her on many matters — on the creation of the world, the forming of Adam, the passion of Christ, the power of the Cross, the torture of the demons, the conception of St. Mary, and other like things — and when the poor country girl had answered each article most eloquently, he judged, not without reason, that a spirit had lain hidden in the wretched woman's body. Whatever there may be in this matter, I do not inquire; but certainly that the demons, whether unwilling or for some other cause, gave testimony to the truth is clear from the Gospel itself, Luke 4, v. 41: And devils went out from many, crying out and saying: You are the Son of God; and rebuking them, (Christ) did not suffer them to speak: for they knew that he was the Christ. I return to the annalist.

[445] From Passion Sunday he preached every day in the open square, [The Blessed man suffers from a hernia, relieves the needy; he sees to it that a certain law is abrogated.] unless bad weather drove him under a roof; and on Palm Sunday and on the sixth day of Parasceve he taught very early in the morning, exhorting the assembly to hear the other preachers of the city after the midday meal. On Easter Monday, while he announces the festal Resurrection of Christ, he is seized by a violent pain of hernia, which cut short the course of the sermon. Wonderful things indeed he accomplished there, and he carried off great fruits of his labor. The society of the name of Jesus, founded by him at another time — namely in the year 1492, as was said at num. 380 — he increased with great growth, that it might relieve the bashful needy. He obtained from both councils, that of Vicenza and that of Venice, that the inhuman and deadly law by which pardon of any crime and of exile was granted to men and women who brought in the heads of their exiled kinsmen should be revoked, especially as regarded women: for they had gone so far in savagery that one woman was seen to have heaped up in the appointed place of the square the heads of four of her kinsmen.

[446] So he there; but as concerns the abolition of that law, A historian of Vicenza denies this about the law, Francesco Barbarano de' Mironi, a Capuchin, opposes him in the ecclesiastical History of Vicenza, published in Italian, book 2, ch. 77. He blames Cimarella and Wadding for having called that law detestable, impious or inhuman; whereas among the canonists it is agreed that a republic or a prince can, for just causes, give to anyone the power of killing those proscribed by itself and condemned to death (they call them Banniti), except for a few whom the law of nature itself forbids. Besides, he asserts that he took care to have the whole archive of the city diligently searched, and yet that no ducal decree was found in it after the year 1492 by which the granted faculty of redeeming the penalty of exile by the slaying of the banished was abrogated; but that many were found, and in particular one of the year 1514 and another of the year 1523, by which the same faculty is given. For these reasons he thinks that Bl. Bernardino did not declaim against this law, but either against those who, abusing it to gain impunity for themselves, killed exiles condemned not to death but only to some other grave penalty; or against those who, setting aside all regard for nature, butchered for the same cause banished men who were indeed stricken with a capital sentence but were most closely joined to them in blood.

[447] Francesco Barbarano, Against the former, he says, there exists a ducal decree, given on the ninth day of October in the year 1489, in which it was enacted that those should not enjoy the aforesaid impunity who had killed a banished man not condemned to death; and that all who by this means had obtained pardon of crimes and liberty should be deprived of the same as unjustly and surreptitiously obtained, and should lie under their former penalties. But against the latter, he says, another decree was issued in the year 1524, on the twenty-seventh day of June, by Andrea Gritti, doge of Venice, who, confirming the old privilege, excluded from it certain kinsmen and connections by marriage; namely a father who should kill his son; a son who should kill his father; a brother who should kill his brother; one who should kill his father-in-law or son-in-law; likewise one who should kill his uncle in the first degree; nephews both by brothers and by sisters, and blood cousins (in Italian it is Cugini di sangue), husband and wife. Thus far, roughly, Barbarano.

[448] whose words are reported, Let it be so; Bernardino may have attacked not the law itself passed against the banished, which certainly can for just causes be passed by a republic and put into execution by subjects (with what is to be observed being observed), but may have condemned the abuse of the law, brought in gradually, perhaps out of its own more obscure wording, with the added connivance of the judges and the patronage of the more powerful and of friends, against the mind of the lawgiver himself; of which kind that one seems to have been for whose removal the decree of the year 1489 cited by Barbarano was issued. What Cimarella, whose Work I do not have, wrote on this subject I do not know: but certainly there is no reason why Wadding should be so greatly blamed here, who did not call every law for killing the banished inhuman and deadly; nor does he say that every such law was disapproved by Bl. Bernardino, but that one by which (whether from a perverse interpretation and connivance, or otherwise) pardon of any crime and of exile was granted to men and women who brought in the heads of their exiled kinsmen; which, if it be taken as generally stated, is utterly abhorrent to humanity.

[449] and are weighed. This same thing was well enough acknowledged also by Andrea Gritti, doge of Venice, praised by Barbarano, when in his decree of the year 1524 he by no means omitted to enumerate certain degrees of kindred and affinity within which that privilege of impunity was to have no place; and in this perhaps he was guided by that other decree, granted then about thirty years before at Bernardino's request, as Wadding asserts, and at that time perhaps less religiously observed, and afterward lost. However it may be, such a law could easily displease a devout, gentle and apostolic Man, since, although justly passed, it is dangerous for the banished, lest, being killed unawares, they be damned eternally; dangerous also for the malevolent, lest out of private hatred rather than out of love of justice and of the republic's safety they butcher the banished. Besides, whom would that spectacle not have moved — shall I say of a woman or of a Megæra — who is said alone to have been seen to have heaped up in the appointed place of the square the heads of four of her kinsmen? Perhaps I could say more certain things, if it had been permitted me to consult the earliest Life of the Blessed man, as it was permitted to Cimarella and Wadding, whose assertions these are, which, since I cannot confirm them from elsewhere, I leave to their credit.

[450] The same annalist Wadding, after the words given above, thus continues concerning the remaining benefits bestowed by Bl. Bernardino in the same year 1494 upon the city of Vicenza: Being asked by the bishop of Vicenza, he drives his hearers The fabric of the cathedral church, at the urging of bishop Marco Barbo, Cardinal, he greatly advanced, much money having been collected. But at that time Marco Barbo of Venice, Cardinal of St. Mark, no longer sat in the bishopric of Vicenza, but had many years since been translated to the patriarchate of Aquileia and had yielded it to another, and had died at Rome in the year 1490 or the following, as may be seen in Ughelli, tom. 5 of the enlarged Italia sacra, col. 127, and in Ciaconius or Oldoinus, tom. 2 of the Lives of the Roman Pontiffs, col. [ ]. There must therefore be substituted for him Battista Zeno, likewise a Venetian, Cardinal first of St. Mary in Portico, afterward of Tusculum, whom the aforesaid Ughelli, col. [ ] and the following, writes to have been substituted for the aforesaid Marco Barbo in the see of Vicenza in the year 1473, and to have sat until the year 1501, in which he met his day; and he greatly commends him both for holiness and other distinguished endowments, and also for his huge munificence in repairing and restoring churches.

[451] Francesco Barbarano, in the place just cited of the ecclesiastical History of Vicenza, writing on the same subject, to a large almsgiving for the fabric of the church. omitted the man's name and called him only the lord Cardinal of Vicenza, which is to be understood of his bishopric, not of his native place, which for both was Venice. But he says that the matter took place thus. The aforesaid Cardinal (understand Battista Zeno, who was often detained elsewhere by the weightiest business for the Apostolic See) had at that time come to Vicenza, bringing a concession of plenary indulgences obtained from the Pontiff. Bernardino, being asked by him to deliver a sermon to the people about them, and to exhort them to contribute large alms for the fabric of the cathedral church, spoke with such success that six hundred ducats were collected, besides another thousand gold coins of the same value which certain others (he calls them the deputed lords) promised if the Cardinal should give as many, and which, when he assented, they actually gave. Let us go on with Wadding.

[452] He founded the Mount of Piety more solidly, a payment of a small denarius having been fixed (namely of the hundred and twentieth part of a silver denarius: and two denarii make up the lira or pound of Vicenza), Bestowing many other good things there, he is accused; without which he judged it would easily fall. With the doors shut, he said many things to the suffragan bishop (who was acting in the place of Cardinal Zeno, prelate of Vicenza), to the canons and priests, concerning the dignity of the priesthood and the greater obligation of consecrated men to live rightly. He filled the convents of the Friars with young men, and the cloisters of the nuns with virgins; usurers, greedy merchants and money-lenders he powerfully induced to restore what had been unjustly taken and wrongfully kept. Yet amid so great a beneficence toward the city there were not lacking those who accused him by letters before his own Fathers at the provincial chapter then being held, on the ground that he condemned lawful contracts, that he approved usury, and that he forbade alms or a stipend to be given for the reading of Masses.

[453] The little books of threats, subscribed by no one, having been sent back to him, he clears himself, and obtains that his calumniators be spared, he answered that he had condemned usurious contracts under a cloak, honorable in name but in fact unlawful; that he had approved the payment of an obol in the Mount of Vicenza, which was not paid before, lest the pious work should quickly fail; that he had reproved the superstition of those who said that thirty Gregorian Masses sufficed for the certain deliverance of any souls whatever from purgatory, and that they must necessarily be read on thirty continuous days without any interruption. When these things (that is, the aforesaid accusations) had come to the consuls of the city, they wished a rigorous inquiry to be made into their authors; until Bernardino obtained that they should be spared. Alas! how often does this happen, that the wicked seek to harm those who do good, and that Satan raises up his own against the ministers of God! "Often the adversaries of the virtues enter into counsels against the good, lean upon depraved devices, betake themselves to the contriving of frauds, and they who ought to disclose those frauds to the good themselves devise them and themselves secretly pass them on *."

[454] and he goes on with greater fervor than before But holy men and faithful preachers of Christ are by no means checked in their fervor by these things: "Nay, the greater the persecution by which they are pressed, the more sharply are they goaded to preach virtue, and while they patiently endure their persecutors, they hasten ardently to draw their hearers to themselves *." Thus indeed Bernardino thereafter began to preach the more fervently, the more diligently he saw that the enemy had laid his snares, so that, the honor of the speaker being blackened, his doctrine also might be despised. On the day of the Ascension, a solemn festival having been instituted and a numerous procession in honor of the crown of thorns of the Savior, which is kept in that city, and the history of the translation of that most noble pledge having been eloquently related, he roused all to its worthy veneration. What is here called the Crown of thorns of the Savior is not that crown, but only a single thorn of that same most sacred crown, which Bl. Bartholomew

bishop of Vicenza brought to Vicenza, having received it from St. Louis, king of France, and laid it up there in a church built for its keeping and called Holy Crown, as may be seen more fully in our tom. 1 of July, p. 184, §3 of the historical Commentary written by Sollerius.

[455] to preach at Vicenza, Wadding, or whomever he followed, may have been misled by that name of the church, or by the shrine in which that sacred treasure was enclosed, and which in Barbarano, book 2 of the ecclesiastical History of Vicenza, p. 110, in the instrument of its donation, made by the aforesaid Bl. Bartholomew to the Dominican Fathers, to whom that church was handed over, is said to have been one crown of gilded silver, in the front part of which stands ONE THORN of the saving crown of thorns with which the King of glory was mocked, given to the said lord bishop (Bl. Bartholomew) by the said king (St. Louis), hidden away beneath crystal. These things I thought should be noted, lest anyone suppose that the most sacred crown of our Lord, which is kept in the Holy Chapel at Paris, is claimed by the men of Vicenza. Then the annalist of the Minors goes on in these words: On another festal day of the city, on which the men of Vicenza recall the memory of the city's being handed over to the Venetians (which had been done in the year 1404, lest it should fall into the hands of Francesco da Carrara, lord of Padua, who was besieging it), he said much in praise of the most serene republic; and that they might persist longer and more happily in fidelity to it, he taught that fidelity must be kept to God before all things: and that if they did not come to their senses from their sins, huge evils and the calamities of wars would come quickly, which to their own hurt they proved true.

[456] [where he was visited by the imperial and the French envoys, and departed thence secretly.] He had as hearers in that city, besides the suffragan bishop and the chief men of the city, the envoys of the emperor Maximilian (the first of that name) and of Charles (VIII), king of the French, on their way to Venice, though on different days; each of whom came to the church of St. Marcellus, where his dwelling was, to venerate the Man of God, and would not depart until he received his blessing. On the birthday of St. Bernardino (of Siena), which the men of Vicenza, being greatly devoted to that most holy man, celebrated solemnly in that year on the Tuesday of Pentecost, he preached for three hours without weariness to his hearers; and having bidden farewell from the pulpit, he departed secretly and in haste, while the whole city was walking in solemn procession. In fact in that year the Tuesday of Pentecost fell on the twentieth day of May, dedicated to the birthday feast of St. Bernardino of Siena, as is plain from the golden number XIII and the Dominical letter E. Thus far Wadding concerning Bernardino's last stay and deeds at Vicenza, to which he never afterward returned, having died a blessed death that same year near Pavia. But before we follow him as he sets out elsewhere, we shall insert in this place a few other things taken from elsewhere.

[457] Barbarano de' Mironi, book 2 of the ecclesiastical History of Vicenza, ch. 77, treating of the pious sodalities erected there by him, He founds there the oratory of St. Jerome, now called of Charity, of which I have already made mention above, assigns besides another in Italian words, which I subjoin in Latin. He was the author of this, that some going forth from the sodality of St. Marcellus founded the oratory of St. Jerome, now called of Charity from the care which it afterward undertook and has, of collecting alms every week throughout the whole city for the sake of the sick, as will be said in book 5 of this History. Again in book 3, ch. 49, on occasion of the reform of the same sodality made by the labor of the venerable father Antonio Pagani, of the Order of Minors Observant, toward the close of the sixteenth century, he referred its first founding to the year 1494, writing thus: He also (Antonio Pagani) set his mind to reforming and completing the Oratory of St. Jerome, which had been erected in the year 1494, while Bl. Bernardino of Feltre, a Minor Observant, was preaching, and which was much advanced in piety by the holy precepts and counsels of father Antonio, as I shall say at length in book V among the foundations of the pious places of the city. But I am sorry that that fifth book, if it was ever published, does not exist among us; for the volume which we have contains only three books.

[458] This without doubt is the same sodality of which Ferdinando Ughelli gave a distinguished elogium in tom. 5 of the enlarged Italia sacra, whose distinguishing marks are its services to the poor. col. [ ], in his account of the city and bishopric of Vicenza, which it has seemed good to report here. A great work of piety, he says, and singular in all Italy, is finally found in this most religious city. For under the divine Jerome as patron there are many laymen, assiduous in mortification and other pious exercises, living in their own houses and free, twelve of whom in every week of the year visit once all the sick, the poor, the needy of Vicenza, street by street and man by man, comfort them with words and with food, and take pains that they may receive the Sacraments of the Christian religion. There is no merchant, citizen or noble whom they do not ask, no door is opened before which they do not stand, demanding alms. And this constant care engages seventy men at most, for the love of God. Whence no man of Vicenza, when he is burdened with sickness, need be seized with despair of necessities. An outstanding institute of charity indeed, and deservedly to be celebrated! And if it is perhaps chiefly to be ascribed to father Antonio Pagani, yet in part it is owed to Bl. Bernardino of Feltre, from whom that same sodality took its beginning, as the aforesaid Barbarano testifies.

[459] To the Blessed man's stay at Vicenza also, whether this one or one of the earlier ones, Many angels seen in the air while he was preaching. belongs what Bernardino de Busti, already praised elsewhere, affirms concerning angels seen while he was preaching, in the Rosary of sermons for Lent, tom. 1 of the Brescia edition of the year 1588, sermon 3, p. 44. When here, in commendation of the preaching of the word of God, he had among other things praised the blessed Man's assertion, saying, Blessed Friar Bernardino of Feltre used to say that there is never a preaching but that there is there a greater multitude of angels than of men — when, I say, he had praised this, a little further on he confirmed it also by an example in this way: While that same blessed Friar Bernardino of Feltre was preaching at Vicenza, more angels were seen in the air than there were men on the earth, who attentively heard the word of God. And this testimony is worthy of the greater credit because it is from a pious and learned man, contemporary with and familiar to the Blessed man himself, who was of the same Order with him; and because it was published in print at that time when the memory of Bl. Bernardino was most recent, and so it could easily have been convicted of falsehood or levity if so illustrious a fact had not been established among the men of Vicenza who had heard the Blessed man preaching: for, as Wadding testifies in the Writers of the Order of Minors, the aforesaid Rosary of sermons was first published from the press at Lyons in the year of Christ 1507, which was only the thirteenth from Bl. Bernardino's own death.

* from St. Gregory, Moralia.

* from the same.

§ XX. Sermons delivered at Padua and in other places; two Mounts of Piety founded: his deeds at Brescia: letters received from Pope Alexander VI: his afflicted health and his journey toward Pavia, and the sermons begun here.

[ ] He preaches at Padua Bernardino, having set out from the city of Vicenza for Padua (by the testimony of Wadding, whose the words are) without any delay interposed on the journey, having taken up that well-worn theme of his, Take heed to yourself, excellently instructed the people in the matters most necessary to salvation, and earnestly commended the worship of the blessed Virgin. He delivered other sermons on various subjects on different days and in different places, but the chief of all on the day of St. Anthony (of Padua, namely, who is honored on the thirteenth of June) among the Minors Conventual, where the holy man rests; and he took part in the solemn procession, so ordering the provincial vicar Ludovico della Torre, who was then present and withdrew himself from the procession, being ready courteously to yield the chief place to Bernardino out of reverence for the Man. While he was speaking from the pulpit, and afterward while he walked with the rest, a certain painter of Udine, ordered by the chief men, drew his likeness from the life.

[461] and at Brescia; at Monselice he sees to it that a Mount of Piety is erected. Being about to go off thence to Brescia, he bade farewell to the vicar, and, foreboding the end of his life, said: "God knows whether I shall return hither again: there is no reason why I should think further about this province of ours: I commend it to the Lord." To the wealthy and populous town of Monselice (in the vernacular Monselice or Monte Silice, in the territory of Padua not far from the river Lesser Meduacus), to which he had often been invited, he now at last resolved to go. As he drew near, the Podestà (or prætor) with the whole people met him at the landing-place, and on that very day of his arrival he preached in the square for an hour and a half on the abolishing of the usury of the Jews, on avoiding dealings with them, on shunning their gifts, and on the usefulness of a pious Mount for the relief of the poor. They go at once into council, and the founding of a Mount is decreed. On the following day, that of St. John the Baptist, at Bernardino's exhortation from the pulpit, so many offerings were made that a Mount could at once be erected according to the laws of the Mount of Padua, with the Venetian senate also approving.

[462] Going on thence to the town of Este, otherwise called Atheste and Ateste He preaches at Este; being forbidden to do so at Montagnana, he departs, (likewise in the territory of Padua and on the river Lesser Meduacus, distant about four miles from Monselice), at the very hour at which he arrived he delivered a sermon, and received the spokesmen of Montagnana (a town situated in the same territory) and of other towns, that he might serve out heavenly doctrine to them also, who thirsted for it. He consented; but while he goes on to Montagnana to preach in the square, the rector of the people showed him letters of the Venetian doge, laying down that Bernardino should not preach, that a tumult of the people against the Jews, which was certain to follow, might be avoided. Hearing this, the Man of God, withdrawing himself secretly, departed from that people. Those who hoped he would preach, and had come together as an assembly to hear him, being informed of his withdrawal, murmured against the rector, followed after Bernardino in troops, and, when he had gone more than two miles, on their knees begged him to return, at least to bless the people.

[463] Overcome by the prayers of so many suppliants, he returns and humbly blesses them; [but being brought back by the people, he founds a Mount of Piety: he preaches at Lonigo,] but when he tries again to go away, he is compelled to preach, the rector also asking it. He said nothing against the Jews; he only recited the canonical and Christian laws by which usuries are forbidden and familiar dealing with the enemies of Christ is condemned. Then he proposed the remedy for these evils, that a Mount of Piety should be erected, after the pattern of the very many erected throughout all the best cities. The proposal pleased, and, all offering, though the Jews raged, there was in a short time heaped up as much money as sufficed to found the Mount. As he departed hence, the spokesmen of the town of Cologna (commonly Cologna, on the river Nuovo) met him, asking that he would comfort them with his presence and his teaching, lest, as befell the inhabitants of Lonigo (which the Italians call Lonigo, and in Latin also Leonicum, and which lies on the same river), to whom Bernardino of Siena had refused to turn aside, they should be reckoned unworthy of the word of God and be held for Samaritans. He went, and comforted them with an evening sermon of two hours.

[464] At Verona, letters of the Venetian prince having been found, sent three years before to Marcantonio Morosini, at Verona, at Peschiera, at Salò,

rector of the city, procured that he should not preach against the Jews, he determined to be silent. Being compelled to preach, and in no way moved either against the Jews or against their supporters, who by false suggestions had obtained the letters against him, he only showed that they were false, and went through the rest of the sermon on the perfect Christian life. A second sermon having been delivered on the feast of SS. Peter and Paul, on ecclesiastical liberty, on the authority of the supreme Pontiffs and on the reverence due to them, he went on to Peschiera, which is a small but well-fortified city of the Venetian dominion in the territory of Verona, commonly called Peschiera, founded on Lake Benacus at the outflow of the Mincio, where he had delivered his first Lenten sermons (namely in the year 1471, as was said above); and there, having preached once in the citadel to the soldiers and the commander, and twice in the open square to the whole people, and having greeted the Friars who lived religiously on an island of the lake, he preached to the people of Salò on the day of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary. Now Salò, which Baudrand in his Lexicon calls in Latin Salodium, is a town of the Brescian territory situated on the western shore of the aforesaid Lake Benacus.

[465] Thence he made for Brescia, where he delivered several sermons in the square of the cathedral church, the gathering of hearers always increasing, and the bishop Paolo Zane and the whole magistracy also running together. and at Brescia, where a false rumor was spread about him, and a specter Two adverse things happened here. First, a report was spread that by a severe Venetian edict he had been ordered to go into exile from the whole dominion: yet it vanished after some days, when the magistracy showed the doge's own letters, in which he forbade only this, that he should preach against the Jews. Secondly, when more than twenty thousand were listening on the day of St. James the apostle, and he had preached most acceptably for two hours on the duty of parents toward their children and of children toward their parents, at a horrible specter of an Ethiopian sitting on a horse and rushing upon the people with a great club, the whole congregation, terrified, betook themselves to a disordered flight, a few being killed, some crushed, many hurt, and all astounded; nor could they be held back from flight by the Preacher, who strongly cried aloud the name of Jesus and gave them courage.

[466] is said to have disturbed the sermon. Perhaps there will not be lacking those to whom this apparition of a specter is suspect, and who think it rather arose from the imagination of one of the hearers, who communicated his panic fear to the bystanders, and these soon to others. Nor can I deny that it could have happened thus, since there is no lack of examples by which it is established that empty appearances born in the brain of one man were believed by others also, as if these too had seen them, and stirred up sudden commotions among a people. Yet it must also be confessed that the demon, God so permitting, or perverse men through the tricks of demons, could have set a specter of this kind before the hearers, that they might break up the sermon and hinder from speaking a Preacher hateful to them. However these things may stand, that some were hurt and crushed in this sudden panic, and a few even killed, seems to have been done not by that specter but by the crowded multitude of the people, seeking safety in headlong flight and trampling down whoever met or went before them. And this indeed will be the less to be wondered at if so great a number of hearers was present as the annalist writes was present, perhaps not without some exaggeration.

[467] [The profane races of men and horses on the feast of the Assumption of the B. V. M.] More certain are the things which he subjoins there thus. There had been in ancient times on that day which is now the vigil of the Assumption of the blessed Virgin (that is, the fourteenth day of August) a custom of contending in a race at the rites of Diana, which, since the men of Brescia could not otherwise remove it, they changed into a race of horses and men, and of women too, to be run on the festal day of the Assumption. Although they had swift horses and other things in readiness, and many had come from distant parts to the spectacles, Bernardino persuaded them by these arguments — that the sacred day should be spent not in profane games but in the worship of the blessed Virgin, and that the price of the prize should be distributed to the poor — so that it was laid down by public decree that these things should be given up, which the Annals of that city also relate. The Annals which he here cites are the Chronicles of the affairs of the men of Brescia by Elia Capriolo, a jurist of Brescia. He lived at Brescia contemporary with Bl. Bernardino himself, whom he could hear preaching, and died already very aged in the year 1519, as Gerardus Joannes Vossius testifies in the Latin Writers; and therefore great authority ought to belong to the brief and notable testimony which he left to posterity concerning the same Blessed man in book 12, and which I have here transcribed.

[468] [he causes to be abrogated by public decree: laboring under a burst vein of the chest,] Two years after (it is not clear enough whether he meant here to indicate the year 1494, as he should have, or the following), Bernardino of Feltre, a preacher of the Minors, a theologian exceedingly venerable, on every day for two months delivered public and almost divine sermons to our city with such an infusion of spirit that at his exhortation he obtained that the most ancient custom of running for prizes should be abrogated, and that gaming-boards and books stuffed with indecency should be burned; and that, like a prophet, he foretold many things to come, which afterward came to pass, to the great terror of his hearers. And to him Bartolomeo Mercanti, son of Michele Mercanti our fellow citizen, thirteen years old, delivered, beyond all belief, a plainly eloquent oration. Thus Capriolo; but from Wadding we have that Bernardino, a vein of his chest having now burst for the third time, was gravely afflicted there, and yet did not refuse, so far as his worn strength allowed, to plead publicly for the Mount of Piety for the sake of the poor. Wadding relates that the matter was done in this way.

[469] Being asked to commend to the people the Mount of Piety, greatly diminished because no salary had been fixed for the officers, [he pleads with difficulty, but successfully, for increasing the treasury of the Mount:] which had to be paid out of the sacred treasury itself, although with a vein of his chest now burst for the third time he was spitting much blood and failing in strength, being carried into the square on a little donkey, with a faint voice and heavy breathing he spoke for half an hour on the relief of the poor and on the praises of almsgiving, and was compelled to be silent; nor yet did he depart thence until an offering of two thousand three hundred gold pieces had been made. The Mount being increased and confirmed, it was judged that the Jews were by no means necessary, but a heavy and pernicious weight upon the republic: wherefore they were compelled to withdraw from that whole city and district. Although the lately praised Capriolo makes no express mention of this deed of the Blessed man, yet perhaps what he noted in these words about the increase of the treasury of the Mount of Piety of Brescia after the years of Christ 1489 and 1492, between which he placed its erection, belongs here: For indeed, since our city understood that nothing was more worthy than to take thought for men's welfare, it heaped up at this time so much money that at one time it relieved ten thousand poor wretches gratis with money suited to their need for half a year; and even now it relieves them more: which office of piety it called the Mount. Of the expulsion of the Jews too he was silent; and if that really happened then on that occasion, I wonder that it was passed over by him.

[470] I go on again with Wadding to narrate his other deeds. he promotes the worship of the divine Eucharist; he heals many. On the following day (after the sermon delivered for the Mount of Piety), as he was returning to preach, by God's will he fell in with a priest who was carrying the sacred Body of Christ to a sick man, accompanied by a single old woman carrying a lantern *. Wherefore, the subject of his sermon being changed, on that day he spoke on this matter at very great length and most fervently, so that through all the churches having care of souls there were formed colleges of men who should religiously accompany the divine Sacrament with lighted candles while it was carried out and brought back. Many, having obtained his blessing and received the name of Jesus written on little slips of paper, were freed from various infirmities of body and tribulations of soul. Finally he terrified the city in the same way in which he had terrified Vicenza and Padua, foretelling the approaching scourge of God, that they might make an end of sinning. You have these things confirmed from Capriolo, cited at num. 468, who then in the same book 12 recounts various calamities of the city and territory of Brescia, which may be judged to have been foretold by Bl. Bernardino under the name of the divine scourge.

[471] He received here (so Wadding adds) that Pontifical diploma By Alexander VI he is ordered to preach at Ascoli by which the men of Ascoli were procuring for the following year what in this one they could not obtain, as was said in the preceding §. And the diploma or letters of Pope Alexander VI, published from the original, run thus.

To our beloved son friar Bernardino of Feltre, of the Order of Minors of the Observance.

Beloved son, greeting and Apostolic benediction. Since, as we have lately learned from their spokesmen, our beloved sons the elders and the commune of our city of Ascoli desire, out of their love toward you and for the exemplary character of your life and the grace in which you are strong in announcing the word of God, to hear you in your preachings, and hope, God favoring, to profit much with you; we, wishing to satisfy in this part the desire of that people, whom among our others we follow with fatherly love, by these presents strictly enjoin and command you in virtue of holy obedience that in the next coming Lent you go to Ascoli to preach, and there, according to the faculty given you by the Lord and according to Evangelical doctrine, strive to gain souls. Notwithstanding any mandate made to you even by us, which we suspend in the meantime, and notwithstanding all other things whatsoever making to the contrary. Given at Rome at Saint Peter's under the Fisherman's ring, on the twentieth day of June, 1494, in the second year of our pontificate.

[472] in the following Lent: he is invited in vain by the men of Bergamo, In the Roman edition of these Annals of the year 1736, which I use, a manifest error has crept into the years of the Christian era, the year 1394 being set for 1494, which I have corrected from their older Lyons edition of the year 1648, in which the aforesaid letters are read rightly and more clearly marked in this way: The 20th day of June, 1494. In the second year of our pontificate. The word antiani, which occurs at their beginning, means the ancients or elders, from the Italian antiano, in Latin antiquus. And so the elders and the commune of the city of Ascoli sounds nearly the same as the magistracy and people of Ascoli. Further, a little more than thirty miles westward from the city of Brescia lies Bergamo, or Pergamum, a city of the Venetian dominion in Lombardy, whose inhabitants, though they sought him even for a short time, he could not oblige. For, by the testimony of the same annalist, being asked by the bishop and the citizens of Bergamo to go thither and preach at least for eight days, he replied that he had been ordered by his superiors to set out straight for Pavia, and that, being broken in strength, he could not satisfy their wishes.

[473] his sicknesses growing worse, he departs from Brescia for Pavia, His sicknesses likewise increased: continual spitting of blood, iliac pains, the stone, and difficulty of making water. He resolved therefore to withdraw, the two months being completed there for which it had been enjoined him to remain in that city; and, the incentives of evils having been burned after his custom, especially wanton books, and among these Boccaccio's Novelle, he departed. At the town of Traiadum he rested for one day, and a sermon having been delivered on the following day, when he was being led to a most sumptuous meal prepared for himself and his companions, he ordered it to be distributed to the poor, and, sitting on the ground under the trees outside the town, he took only bread with fruit. I do not sufficiently know what

is here meant by the town of Traiadum, unless perhaps it is that which is written Travagliato in the geographical maps, distant about seven miles from Brescia straight to the west. What increases the suspicion is that in the same maps, at almost an equal distance from Travagliato, again straight to the west, there is marked the town of Chiari, which seems to be the town Clarinum, to which he will afterward be said to have gone on. Thence he went southward to the town called Orzinuovi, which Wadding in Latin called Ursi novi, distant about twelve miles from the aforesaid Chiari, but likewise situated in the Brescian territory, not far from the river Oglio, which on the south separates this territory from that of Cremona.

[474] Now let us return to the annalist. As he drew near to the town of Clarinum (he says), a certain master of grammar met him with his pupils, who recited many verses congratulating him on his arrival. preaching in some places along the road, He gave thanks, and asked the master to instruct the little boys piously and in Christian fashion, the enticements of all vices having been cut away , and especially wanton books. From the pulpit on the following day, having taken the theme, One is the brightness of the sun, another the brightness of the moon, another the brightness of the stars , he delivered a most learned sermon on the right education of youth: for there were there public schools and an academy of the Greek and Latin tongue. And he persuaded the teachers that, the Amatoria of Martial and Ovid, Petronius Arbiter, and other obscene books being sent away, they should bring in instead the pious poets, Sedulius, Juvencus, Prudentius, and other Christian authors, and should exchange the name of Jupiter and Apollo for that of Jesus Christ and the Saints. This teaching greatly pleased the parents of the young boys, who often complained that their sons, whom they were rearing chastely, were being corrupted in the schools.

[475] As he drew near to Orzinuovi (commonly Orci Nuovi, a town concerning which see num. 473), on account of his gravely afflicted health, when for weakness he could not arrive, the magistracy, having sent leading men to receive him honorably, saw to his being refreshed in a house some miles distant. On the following day, that of St. Augustine, which is the twenty-eighth of August, he came, and, weary, preached on the outstanding prerogatives of the holy doctor, having prefaced the sermon with those words: A vessel solid and adorned with every precious stone (in Ecclesiasticus ch. 50, v. 10, the Vulgate has: As a solid vessel of gold, adorned, etc.), with fitting and suitable instruction of his hearers added. Opposite this town and on the other bank of the Oglio and in the territory of Cremona is the town of Soncinum, called by the natives likewise Soncino, to which, the river being crossed, he went on, and there among the men of Soncino, his strength being somewhat restored, he went on to Crema, a city of the Venetian dominion and head of the territory of Crema, distant about nine miles east from Soncino on the river Serio.

[476] There, when he had been most kindly received, the prætor told him that it had been forbidden by the Venetian senate that he should preach, that provision might be made against the persecution of the Jews. Bernardino said that he greatly grieved he accomplishes it only with the utmost difficulty, that the most serene republic should provide so earnestly for the Jews that not even the word of God should be freely preached; and that it ought rather to have looked to protecting the Christians, whose substance they were devouring, than the Jews. Further, that he neither wished nor was able, with his health weak and worn out from profiting others, to preach. Going on thence to Lauda, or Laus Pompeia — of which name there is a twofold place in the duchy of Milan, one Laus nova, to the inhabitants Lodi, an episcopal city on the river Adda; the other Laus vetus or Lodi vecchio, formerly likewise an episcopal city, but destroyed by the Milanese, and now only a village on the river Sillaro, a few miles from the New toward Pavia; having gone on, I say, to one or the other of these places, after he had rested a little, on the same day he came to the fortified town of St. Angelo. Overcome by the importunate prayer of the men, on the following day he preached on those words, He has given his angels charge over you, the matter being taken from them, and at once withdrew without having eaten.

[477] At almost every mile he had to take breath and to revive his failing little spirit; and he prophesies concerning the evils hanging over Italy. but he wished to accomplish the rest of the journey on foot, however much his companions urged him most earnestly to allow himself to be carried on a horse. As cohorts of horsemen and troops of soldiers met him everywhere, who followed the party of Charles, king of the French, he said to his companions: "So it has been determined in the heavens, that both the head and the members should pay the penalty, and that the princes of Italy should feel the rod of God's wrath. For my part I am weary of my life, and I should not wish to see the evils of our nation, which will come in abundance!" He speaks here of the Neapolitan expedition of Charles VIII, king of France, for which in this year he led a numerous army into Italy, at the instigation and with the help of Ludovico Sforza, ruler of the duchy of Milan, and soon also its duke after the death of Giangaleazzo Maria, his nephew. To how many and how great calamities throughout all Italy this expedition gave a beginning may be read in the writers on those matters, commonly to be had, from whom anyone will easily learn that the blessed Man's forebodings were by no means empty. But God, favoring his wishes, called him a little after to heaven.

[478] At Pavia, while preaching, he obscurely indicates certain things Arriving at last at Pavia (so the annalist goes on), he was received with the utmost exultation of the whole people; and desiring to gratify them, he somehow resumed his strength for preaching, and, the theme being proposed, "Take care of him; to you I commend your soul, to me my own" (he already foreboded his death, as has been said), he began to speak: "Physician, heal yourself; you teach others, turn your doctrine back upon yourself; a great sea must be swum across by him to whom the care of others has been committed; but how much deeper will it be for me, who am a little one? Yet I shall gather myself to the shore." That he made this digression, which his hearers did not then understand, concerning himself and concerning the vicar general, then dead at Ragusa, as we have said, they understood a little after; for within a few days letters were brought to him by which it was announced that by the consent of all he had been substituted in the dead man's place: and yet he steadfastly refused this charge. In the margin he here refers his reader to num. 1 of the same year, where to our purpose he has this.

[479] about the death of his vicar just then, and about his own at hand: Evangelista of Perugia, vicar general of the Cismontane family of the Observants, … while he was managing affairs at Ragusa for the provinces of Dalmatia and Bosnia, fell into a fever and bade farewell to human affairs in this year, on the fifth day of August… There succeeded him in the office of the commissariate, according to the disposition of the Eugenian bull, friar Serafino of Ragusa. Hence we learn about what time Bernardino had the revelation asserted by Wadding; but I wonder that no mention is made here of his being substituted in the dead man's place, and of his humility in refusing an honorable burden. Yet perhaps the annalist passed these over in that place because he was going to narrate them afterward; and although the mentioned digression of the blessed Preacher could rightly be explained as made by him in order that he, who for so many years had borne the care of others by preaching, might prepare himself even more earnestly than usual for the death which he foreboded, yet it is most probable that the interpretation which Wadding gave was not lightly thought up by him, but was taken either from the manuscript Life of the Blessed man himself or from other monuments of his Order.

[480] and strikes sinners with a salutary fear. Further, in his ninth sermon he inveighed against the error of certain men who so exalted God's mercy that they made light of his justice, and said that very few are damned in comparison with the huge number of the elect; and he laid much fear upon sinners, lest by lavish hope of pardon they should loosen the reins to a freer life, forgetting the Apostle's counsel that salvation must be worked out with much fear and trembling. The rest we shall give in the following §.

* laternam

* resectis

* from 1 Cor. 15

§ XXI. The Blessed man's last sermons at Pavia in his afflicted health: his withdrawal into the convent of St. James: his pious preparation for death and his passing: the time and place of this: his published writings: another Work by a man of the same name prohibited in the Roman Index.

[ ] [Sick, and preaching more fervently than usual, he foretells the calamities of Italy,] Wadding set forth in the following words, from the manuscript Legends and from Cimarella, the last period of Bl. Bernardino's life, most worthy of so great a Man. But as his sickness grew heavier and the time of his dissolution drew near, he preached indeed more fervently, like a swan near death; now alluring to virtue by the hope of reward, now calling back from evils by the fear of punishment, he openly announced the scourges which hung over Italy. "Alas," he said toward the end of his discourse, "how great a fume of wine goes up into the heads of many; but so much water is being prepared that it will very swiftly be quenched!" By which figure of words he wished perhaps to signify the coming of Charles, king of the French, the ruin of the duke of Milan and of the king of Naples, and the crushing of the great powers of Italy, which happened a little after. Of the Neapolitan war of Charles VIII, king of France, mention has already fallen more than once above, nor is there need to say more of it here, beyond the few things which I subjoin.

[482] In Muratori, tom. 9 of the Annals of Italy, the aforesaid king Charles is said to have arrived at Asti with his army in this year 1494 on the ninth or eleventh of September, which happened a little after. and thence, after he had recovered from the smallpox, to have set out for Pavia, and to have been magnificently received there by Ludovico Sforza. The same Ludovico afterward, a treaty having been entered against the French, was stripped of the duchy of Milan, and being captured by them and sent into France, ended his life there in prison in the year 1508. Alfonso II, king of Naples, being attacked in that war, at the beginning of the year 1495 yielded the kingdom to his firstborn Ferdinand, and having landed in Sicily, died among the Olivetan monks in the month of November of the same year. Ferdinand II, his successor, his kingdom having been occupied by the French in the year 1495, fled to Ænaria, commonly the island of Ischia, whence, being recalled by the Neapolitans, he recovered Naples in the same year, and after regaining almost his whole kingdom, dying in the year 1496 with no offspring left by his wife, had his uncle Federico as successor. More may be read in the aforesaid Muratori and other historians.

[483] Now let us return whence we digressed. On the Nativity of the blessed Virgin Mary (which is kept on the eighth day of September), having begun a sermon from her praises, He forebodes his death, and being much entreated; and having repeated one by one the things which at another time he had appointed to be done there, and having most amply exhorted his hearers to their observance and to perseverance in good, he asked pardon for his lengthy discourse, saying that there would not always be time for speaking, and that accordingly the short time that remained must not be neglected. On the next day, when he was speaking of the kingdom of God and its angels, he said: "How great is the solicitude of these heavenly spirits for our keeping, I shall teach in a fitting place and time; namely on the day of the prince of the angels, the archangel Michael, if it be permitted me to be with you; which however I think will be denied." From these words the men of Pavia suspected that either his strength had failed or that he had foreseen the time of his approaching death; and nevertheless, seeing him continue his sermons more courageously and fervently, and scarcely hold up his exhausted limbs with a staff, they insistently asked that at least for three days he would refrain from the office of speaking; which they scarcely obtained from the Servant of God, who reckoned that he lost that day on which he did not preach.

[484] at last for quiet's sake he withdraws into the convent of St. James, And so, having set out for his little convent of St. James (situated outside the city walls), although sick he kept no holiday, but by reading, or writing, or praying made the time fruitful. Although the medicines profited nothing, the fever continually increased, and the signs of the disease seemed deadly, he scarcely would lie down in bed; but he betook himself to a chamber adjoining the church, whence he might hear the divine office and Sacrifice, or he visited his sick brethren, or received in a friendly way the chief men of the city who came, and exhorted them with pious warnings to live well and blessedly. Being asked by a certain sick brother, What of the French? (for they were already coming on), he said, "They bring slaughter upon Italy; but she in the end will be their burial place." Which after some years seemed to have come to pass. And when he was leaving him, he said, "Farewell, for I shall not return to you again."

[485] where, as his sickness grew worse, he himself fervent in spirit, From that hour, as his sickness always increased, he could not spring up from his bed; and although the sickness had grown, he never at any time complained either of the physicians, as the sick are wont, or of his companions, or of the seasoning of his food, or of his body's discomfort, but rather rendered thanks to those who served him for every, even the least, attention; and lest he should sadden any of them, he received whatever they brought, though nothing had savor for him, and to the physicians offering him draughts he said: "I shall obey, though I think all your labor superfluous: as for me, it is now finished." Yet in his weak little body there burned a spirit ready to perform all pious works. When the Friars rose for Matins, having called his companion, he recited them sitting in bed, and the other divisions of the divine Office at the appointed hours. But after the physicians, having learned his excessive weakness, had forbidden him to recite the Office, he took care at least to hear it, his companions reading.

[486] being fortified with the last Sacraments, he dies holily Those who came to see him he received sitting: for he was ashamed to be seen lying down slothfully. On his last day, when the most holy Body of Christ was brought, springing more courageously from his bed, he wished to be carried outside his chamber, thinking it unworthy to await the King of heaven within his inner rooms, and not to come forth reverently to meet him. Having revered him on the ground, that he might receive him more fittingly, and having accompanied the Lord into his own chamber, with many tears and beating of his breast, having begged pardon for his errors, he refreshed his departing soul with the sacred Bread, and at once had his body anointed with the sacred oil. Having received at last the Pontifical benediction, which Innocent VIII had long before granted for the agony of death, while the Friars chanted and prayed, without any sign of disturbance, with a calm and serene countenance, he sent forth his holy spirit from his wasted little body on Saturday, the twenty-eighth of September, after the tenth hour of the night, on the vigil of St. Michael, in this year (1494) of Christian salvation, in the fifty-sixth year of his age.

[487] in the year 1494, on the 28th day of September, On the year of Christ all the monuments and writers whom I have read agree, except Ippolito Donesmondi, a Minor Observant, in the ecclesiastical History of Mantua, book 6, where he marked the year 1495; and Peregrino Merula in the Sanctuary of Cremona, edition of the year 1627, p. 30, where he noted that Bl. Bernardino preached at Cremona in the year 1495. But both of these, and any others there may be who prolong the Blessed man's life beyond the year 1494, must certainly be corrected. About the day of the month and of the week there is some disagreement. The old epitaph, cut in marble and formerly placed beside his sacred body, which I shall report entire at num. 515, in Wadding gives the twenty-eighth day of September; but in Innocenzo of Pavia the twenty-ninth day of the same month. The latter day is likewise marked by Marcos of Lisbon in the Third part of the Chronicles of the Order of Minors, book 7, ch. 25, writing that Bernardino died on the day of St. Michael. On the contrary, in the manuscript Catalogue of the holy bodies which rest at Pavia, already elsewhere cited by me, it is held, both in Wadding and in Innocenzo of Pavia, that he died on the fifth of the Kalends of October, that is, on the twenty-seventh day of September.

[488] Pietro Rodolfi, book 1 of the Seraphic History, says that his death occurred on the twenty-eighth day of September, which was a Sunday: the writers who said Saturday, at the tenth hour before the feast of St. Michael. Further, from what has been said and what is to be said it is certain that Bl. Bernardino's death fell on the twenty-eighth day of September, and therefore I scarcely doubt that in the epitaph in Innocenzo there is a printer's error, and that with Wadding the twenty-eighth day is to be read in it: but the authority of Marcos of Lisbon ought not to detain us. The discrepancy of the rest, and at the same time Wadding's less accurate expression about Saturday, seem to have arisen chiefly from the Italians' manner of speaking. The twenty-eighth day of September does indeed coincide with the vigil of St. Michael the archangel, the dedication of whose church on Monte Gargano is kept the next day: but that same twenty-eighth day in the year 1494 was not a Saturday but a Sunday, as we have from the Dominical letter E of that year. It must therefore be noted that the Italians are accustomed to divide their day into twenty-four hours, of which the first (which they call the first of the night) begins from sunset; and the twenty-fourth ends the next day with sunset.

[489] Hence it comes about that, since they go on counting the hours even through the middle of the night, are explained from the Italian manner of dividing the day; they pass from one day of the month and week, which begins at midnight, into another, until the number of twenty-four hours has been completed. That we may therefore rightly understand Wadding: the night of which he speaks had begun from sunset on the twenty-seventh day of September, which was a Saturday; but the tenth hour of that same night, after which the Blessed man is said to have died, belonged to the twenty-eighth day of September, which was a Sunday and the vigil of St. Michael, that is, the day immediately preceding the feast of this holy archangel. So in the clearest words teaches Giovanni Domenico Ferrari, a jurist of Pavia, contemporary with the Blessed man himself, as far as appears, or not far removed from him, whose Latin note from the Register of instruments of Pavia, fol. 4, Innocenzo of Pavia recites in the Life, ch. 17; which, although I have already reported it on another occasion, it will yet be useful to have repeated for the present controversy. Thus then has the aforesaid jurist: Note that in the above-written year 1494, at the tenth hour of the night, Sunday coming on, the twenty-eighth of September, the venerable Father in Christ blessed Friar Bernardino of Feltre, of the Order of the Observance of St. Francis, in the monastery of St. James outside the walls of Pavia, rendered his spirit to the Most High and closed his last day, etc.

[490] In exactly the same way speaks Bernardino of Clastidium in the Italian Life, published at Pavia, ch. 24, whose words rendered into Latin are these: He rendered his soul to his Creator on the night of Saturday, Sunday coming on, and an answer is given about the tenth hour, on the twenty-eighth day of September. Bl. Bernardino was therefore brought to the last moments of his life in the night which ended the twenty-seventh day of September and the Saturday, but breathed out his happy soul in the morning twilight or about the dawn of the Sunday, which in that year 1494 was the vigil of St. Michael. Against these things, however, there may be brought the authority, otherwise most weighty, of Bernardino de Busti, a learned man of the Order of Minors Observant, and contemporary with Bl. Bernardino, with whom, as he himself testifies, he had spoken a few days before his death. He, in the Defense of the Mount of Piety, tract. 2, part 3, as cited by the supreme Pontiff Benedict XIV in his learned Work on the beatification of the Servants of God, etc., book 2, ch. 24, num. 16, says this on the proposed subject: He died in the place of St. James near Pavia in this year, namely 1494, on the twenty-eighth of September, in the following night, as the cock was beginning to crow, to show that he himself had well sung the divine praise and was going to sing eternally in the heavenly glory.

[491] to the authority of Bernardino de Busti, To confess the truth, I cannot easily interpret those words in the following night otherwise than of that night which closed the twenty-eighth day, and consequently cannot refer the cockcrow mentioned to anything but the same night or the beginning of the next day. But this being granted, there will be no place here for naming Saturday even according to the Italian manner of speaking; and Bernardino will rather have to be said to have departed this life on the very feast of St. Michael, the twenty-ninth day of September, a Monday. Yet that passage is read in the same way in the three editions we have of the aforesaid Work of the Pontiff Benedict XIV, namely in that of Bologna of the year 1735, that of Padua of the year 1743, and the Roman of 1747; and it is reported in the same way by Innocenzo of Pavia in the History of the cult, ch. 2; so that it seems to me most probable that it is so read also in Bernardino de Busti's Work, which we lack. But I strongly suspect that in it the word Saturday was omitted by error, and that when this is added everything will stand rightly; namely, reading thus: He died… in 1494, on the twenty-eighth of September, in the night following the Saturday, as the cock was beginning to crow.

[492] and whose passage, like that of another anonymous writer, is weighed. Unless that passage is to be so explained, I prefer to believe that the aforesaid Bernardino de Busti here slipped in memory; and this, besides what has been said, is also manifestly proved by a public instrument of the city of Pavia, produced by Wadding and Innocenzo from the archive of that city, and to be reprinted by me in the following §. For in this it is said that the council of the said city, having heard of Bernardino's death, assembled in the year 1494, on the twenty-eighth day of September at Vespers, and decreed that on the morrow, at the twentieth hour, his funeral should take place. Bernardino had therefore already died on the twenty-eighth day before Vespers; and so long before that, his death being learned, the magistracy of Pavia could be convoked and assemble at Vespers to deliberate on the celebration of his funeral the next day. He did not survive so far into the night which ended the twenty-eighth day, much less into the beginning of the twenty-ninth. As concerns the author of the Catalogue of the holy bodies resting at Pavia, who placed the Blessed man's death on the fifth of the Kalends of October, or the twenty-seventh day of September, unless here too there is an error of the writing or of the typesetter, perhaps he assigned the first part of the night in which he died, in nearly the same manner in which Wadding said that he died on a Saturday.

[493] He died, counting 55 years of life, 38 of Religion, The blessed Man's final age the epitaph mentioned above indicates thus: He lived 55 years; agreeing with which Bernardino of Clastidium, ch. 24, writes that he was, when he died, of the age of fifty-five years; which if we take as completed, Wadding will agree with both, who relates that he died in the fifty-sixth year of his age. From these the often-mentioned Catalogue of the holy bodies of Pavia must be corrected, in which it is read: Worn out with many labors and spent with old age, he met his day in the year 1494. It must be corrected, I say; since a man of fifty-five years may be said to have been spent with many labors indeed, but not with old age. Bernardino of Clastidium also erred, or his typesetter, when in both editions of his Life he attributes to the dying Bernardino only 28 years of Religion, in place of which there must be set

38, as I have already noted in §2, in which from Graziano of Bevagna and Wadding I said that he was clothed in the sacred habit in the novitiate of the Friars Minor Observant in the year 1456, on the fourteenth day of May; so that, departing from this mortal life, he must be said to have counted from the taking of the habit thirty-eight years, four months and thirteen days of religion, all complete.

[494] The place in which he died is beyond all controversy the convent of the Friars Minor Observant, in the convent of St. James near the city of Pavia: sacred to St. James, outside the walls of the city of Pavia, which I myself visited in the year 1752. Wherefore Francesco Gonzaga must be said to have been mistaken, who in the Origins of the Seraphic Religion placed that convent not far from the Augustinian house within the walls of the renowned city of Pavia. Now that convent of St. James belonged to the Genoese province of the Minors Observant and to the dominion of the duke of Milan; but Bl. Bernardino to the province of St. Anthony, in which was also reckoned the convent of the city of Feltre, which obeyed the most serene republic of Venice. This was the reason why the Minors of Feltre asked back some small belongings and books, the use of which religious poverty had permitted to the blessed Man by license of his superiors, and why, in order to carry them away with them, they needed the leave of Ludovico Sforza, who was then still administering the duchy of Milan for his unwilling nephew, and not long after obtained it, and is therefore called by Wadding duke of Milan. Receive his words.

[495] Two days after his death there came his own brother, his small belongings and books are carried to Feltre. Antonio, of whom we have spoken elsewhere, who, although he grieved that he had lost a Brother, yet rejoiced that he had gone to heaven; and having obtained license from Ludovico, duke of Milan, to carry back to his native place the dead man's small belongings and little bundles of books, he returned with Francesco and Giacomo of Feltre, the holy Man's inseparable companions. Concerning Antonio, the Blessed man's own brother, brought by him to the Order of Minors Observant, consult, if you please, what was said at num. 61. Francesco, the same Blessed man's inseparable companion, is that very author of the Acts which we have said guided Cimarella and most probably Wadding also. Concerning Giacomo, the other companion, I have read nothing further to be noted. Further, before I proceed to the care of the sacred funeral, and to the posthumous glory on earth which began from it and grew thereafter, I must here note some things concerning his little Works, published afterward from the press.

[496] Pietro Rodolfi in his elogium thus mentions one of them to our purpose: Two of his little works exist, published in print; He published certain sermons in the vernacular tongue, On the perfection of the Christian life, sufficiently learned. Of this little Work Antonio Possevino also makes mention in the Apparatus sacer, at the word Bernardinus Tomitanus of Feltre, warning at the same time that another Work which bears the same name is not his. He published (he says) some learned Sermons in the Italian tongue On the perfection of the Christian life. He died at Pavia in the year 1494. Moreover this is not that Bernardinus Tomitanus whose Commentary on Matthew is proscribed in the Roman Index. In agreement with these, Luke Wadding in the Writers of the Order of Minors names besides another little Work of his, and adds the place and year of the edition of each, made after the Blessed man's death, as follows. He published in Italian a little Treatise on the manner of confessing: at Brescia at the press of Lodovico Britannico in the year 1542, in duodecimo. Likewise some Italian Sermons on the perfection of the Christian life, and indeed learned ones. They came out at Venice in the year 1532, in octavo.

[497] but that the Commentary or Paraphrase on Matthew, Again, after some things concerning his death and his cult, he likewise warns: Moreover this is not that Bernardinus Tomitanus whose Commentary on Matthew is proscribed in the Roman Index. The aforesaid Roman Index, published by order of Pope Innocent XI, and reprinted in the year 1704, and the more recent and enlarged edition made in the year 1711 under Clement XI, lists a certain Bernardinus Tomitanus in three places. First, under the letter B one reads: Bernardinus Tomitanus's exposition on Matthew. See also: Desiderius Erasmus's. Secondly, at the latter's name, among his proscribed Works, there is placed a Paraphrase on Matthew, which was turned into the Italian tongue by Bernardinus Tomitanus. Thirdly, under the letter E there is again: Exposition on the Gospel of St. Matthew. See: Bernardinus Tomitanus's. However it may be, one may doubt whether one Work is here said to be proscribed under the twin name of Exposition and Paraphrase, or two Works of the same Bernardinus Tomitanus; namely of which one, published in the Latin tongue, has himself as author; while the other was composed in Latin by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam and turned into Italian by the same Bernardinus Tomitanus.

[498] prohibited in the Roman Index, But this doubt, whatever it was, has been removed by the new Index of prohibited books, revised by order of the supreme Pontiff Benedict XIV, in whose Roman edition of the year 1758 at the word Tomitano Bernardino only this is read: See Erasmus; and among the latter's Works there is placed Parafrasi sopra S. Matteo tradotte da Bernardino Tomitano: that is, Paraphrases on St. Matthew translated (into Italian) by Bernardino Tomitano. Nor is anything more concerning Bernardino Tomitano to be read elsewhere in the same Index; so that it is clearly plain that in the older Indexes one and the same Work was indicated in various ways. Further, that this Bernardino Tomitano is not our Blessed man is proved also by the reckoning of the time at which Erasmus is said to have composed that Paraphrase. Ellies Du Pin, tom. 14 of the new Library of ecclesiastical authors, in his article on Desiderius Erasmus writes that he first set his mind on a paraphrase of the Epistle of St. Paul the apostle to the Romans alone, and that when he had completed the first two chapters he was deterred by the difficulty of the Work and did not dare to go further; but that afterward, induced by his friends' prayers, he expounded with a like paraphrase the remaining chapters also, and all the other canonical Epistles, and the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, and that this Work was finished by him in the year 1524.

[499] is not his, but another man's of the same name, And if this is so, by what probable argument will it be said that Bl. Bernardino of Feltre turned Erasmus's Paraphrase on Matthew from Latin into Italian, who in the year of Christ 1494, that is, thirty years before Erasmus completed his Work, closed his day — nay, who most probably had already died before the other had thought of beginning it? Besides, that Bl. Bernardino's writings were examined at Rome in the year 1696 is related by the supreme Pontiff Benedict XIV in his often-praised Work on the beatification of the Servants of God, etc., book 2, ch. 27, num. 10; and although he does not add what judgment was given concerning them, yet that it was favorable one may gather from this, that afterward Benedict XIII in the year 1728 granted to the whole Seraphic Religion, and also to the cities of Pavia and Feltre, an Office and Mass of him to be celebrated every year on the twenty-eighth day of September, as we shall say in its place. But who then, you will say, was that Bernardinus Tomitanus noted in the Roman Index? I confess that so far I do not know.

[500] There flourished after the middle of the sixteenth century another Bernardino Tomitano, unknown to us, is proved. whom Bernardino Scardeone in the History of Padua, published by him in the year 1559, placed, as then in the vigor of his age, among the famous physicians and philosophers of Padua, and greatly praised for his skill in the Latin and Tuscan tongues, and also for the little Works already then published, which he names in the same place; and this may have been that very Bernardino Tomitano, an academic of Padua, whom Pietro Rodolfi, reported at num. 22, affirms to have been a kinsman of the Blessed man himself, and known to himself while he was giving his labor to the liberal disciplines at Padua. This man flourished indeed, I say, at that time at which Erasmus's Paraphrase had already appeared; but even from this one would rashly suspect that the aforesaid Work which is prohibited in the Roman Index is this man's; since, like that physician, so several men of the same name, Bernardini Tomitani, may have lived. For the rest, I do not know whether Possevino and Wadding added the aforesaid warning in order to remove a suspicion once raised about Bl. Bernardino on this subject, or solely lest such a suspicion should steal upon some incautious reader.

§ XXII. The Blessed man's death made illustrious by divine prodigies: the huge concourse of the people to his sacred body, and the benefits obtained: the solemn funeral rites: his burial: the incorruption of his body and its twofold elevation: a precious chest given as a gift.

[ ] [His death is divinely indicated the day before to a Poor Clare, and on the day itself to two others] After the necessary digression concerning his little Works, let us return to the blessed Man's sacred funeral. Wadding narrates certain marvels, of which he says one was done the day before he died, the others at his blessed death itself. Of those Poor Clares (who dwelt in the city of Pavia itself) one, while she was praying the day before for the Man's health, heard a voice saying that she must pray no more for him who on the morrow was to be carried over into the bosom of St. Francis. He had also premised in the same place: At that very hour at which he departed, Angelo, a Minorite, confessor of the Poor Clares in the city, as he was returning after Matins from the choir to his little cell, heard a trumpet sounding clearly. Marveling at the sound at so unseasonable a time, and thinking that the French, whom rumor had reported to have arrived, were at hand, he opened the window, and perceiving nothing else, while he pondered with himself what it might be, a messenger ran up, relating that Friar Bernardino had departed. "Let this wonder of ours cease," said he: "it was indeed fitting that the sweet-sounding trumpeter of all Italy should pass to the heavenly kingdoms with a heavenly trumpet going before him."

[502] He has a third in the same place thus: Luca of Pavia, whom we said a little before to have visited Bernardino in the infirmary, at his death heard a most sweet harmony, and a voice saying: "There is joy and gladness at the death of those who serve God." is divinely indicated: he appears to another in glory, and heals her. This Luca named above I have not read of before. Bernardino of Clastidium writes that he was a layman, but of the best life, and most intimate with the Blessed man; and so he may have been one of those who at num. 484 are said to have visited him in his sickness. A fourth prodigy the same Wadding recounts among the Miracles to be published, num. 1, where the Blessed man is said to have appeared, shining with the splendor of rays, on the same night on which he died, to Caterina, wife of Giovanni a Navi, and to have told her to recite certain prayers; and that soon she recovered the use of her limbs, of which she had been deprived for a whole month, fastened to her bed; and that, having roused her husband, she hastened very early in the morning to the convent of St. James, where they beheld lifeless the body of their Deliverer, whom they had believed to be alive.

[503] The body, lest it be violated by the imprudent piety of the people, These things the aforesaid annalist relates concerning the marvels at his most happy departure: but concerning the unheard-of running of the people to the convent of St. James as soon as they learned of his death, he goes on thus above at num. 25 and following. As day dawned, so great a people flew thither that it filled the whole house. All wished to see, to venerate, to kiss the holy body, to cut off particles of his garment, to touch it with rosaries and little kerchiefs, to commend themselves to his merits. His garment having been cut away up to the knees and torn on every side, the Friars, fearing lest the whole body be stripped bare, and lest they proceed even to its injury in order to pluck off relics, carried it away to the sacristy. Hence so great a tumult and clamor of the people, of the multitude coming up and growing, demanding their Master

and pious Father to see, that it had to be brought forth clothed into their midst a second and a third time.

[504] is enclosed in a chapel: a cripple is healed: But since there was no end of touching the body and of dangerous crushing, the Friars set it forth in a chapel guarded with an iron grating, in a high place, that it might be seen by all. The leading men, to whom it was permitted to touch and handle it, marveled at the flexibility of the limbs and the softness of the whole body. All the societies or confraternities which Bernardino had founded went in order into the church, and prostrate before the bier, chanting the Litanies, added with one and a louder voice: "Blessed father Bernardino, our little one, pray for us." Then a certain tenant of the noble house of Beccaria, contracted in all his limbs, when he commended himself to Bernardino's merits and prayers, at once recovered, and returned home on his own feet. Bernardino of Clastidium, p. 183, citing Cimarella book 7, ch. 82, says that this tenant or bailiff was so crippled in his limbs that he could not walk, but being carried to the church on horseback, after he had there cleansed his soul by Sacramental confession, when he was not permitted to touch the sacred body but only to look upon it through the aforesaid iron gratings, by a humble prayer he suddenly obtained the soundness of body he desired, and returned to his home on his own feet, as has been said.

[505] gout and a bad knee are cured. Two other prodigious cures Wadding writes to have happened on this same day, or the next, before the Blessed man's body was given to burial, among the miracles to be published; which, because they are set forth in few words, I likewise subjoin here as in their own proper place. The first, which he placed under the title of Gout driven away, runs thus: While Bernardino still lay on the bier, Francesco de Caballis of Pavia ran up with others at the report of his death and holiness, though sick himself, and having touched the body, returned home whole; namely from the gout. The second he reported among the lame healed thus: Friar Giovanni, a lay Minorite Observant, had borne with pain for four months a knee which could be healed by no art; a prayer having been made and the body of the Servant of God touched while it lay on the bier, he rises up healed. Thus far concerning the running of the numerous people to venerate the sacred body, and the healings then divinely obtained.

[506] But meanwhile the magistracy and the clergy of the city on the same day on which he had died — that is, according to what has been said above, on Sunday — By the clergy and people of Pavia took counsel to testify their love and the observance due to a Father who had deserved so well of them by a solemn funeral pomp, and perhaps at the same time, the Friars Minor suspecting nothing, to keep the sacred pledge in the city itself. So we learn from a public decree which Wadding recounts under the cited year 1494, num. 53, prefacing this: In the Register of the chancery of the city (of Pavia) there are also three honorable decrees which confirm his holiness and the veneration in which he was held among the men of Pavia. In this year 1494, on the twenty-eighth day of September at Vespers, the council being assembled, and with the bishop's vicar present, and other leading men whose names are expressed, it was thus decreed.

[507] "Having lately understood that the Reverend Father Friar Bernardino of Feltre, honorable funeral rites are decreed him, of the Order of Minors of the Observance, closed his last day in the monastery of St. James outside the walls of Pavia; and considering the holiness of his life and the fruit of his sermons , and how much he labored in his preachings there in past years and in the present, so that even after death he is greatly to be venerated; therefore wishing, so far as can be done, to show themselves somewhat grateful to him * for his merits, they provide for the present that on the morrow, at the twentieth hour, his funeral shall take place; and that all the doctors of the college, and all the colleges of notaries and of merchants, and all the guilds" (that is, all who belong to the public colleges) "of the said city be summoned, together with the whole clergy; and that it be ordered that the bell of the greater church and all the other bells of the churches, convents and provostries be rung, and that all the rest be done as shall seem good to the discretion of the aforesaid lords abbots."

[508] This same decree, but not itself entire, Innocenzo of Pavia also recites from the archive of the same city in the History of the cult, ch. 2, and, the Friars Minor not permitting where he begins thus: 1494, the twenty-eighth day of September at Vespers. The council being convoked, etc., and there the aforesaid lords, having lately understood, etc. But the few words which are read in him a little differently I have noted in the margin. Finally the two other decrees which Wadding mentions just after, since they concern the years 1598 and 1630, we shall likewise report in their own place. Further, although it cannot be doubted that such honorable funeral rites were decreed to Bernardino out of the true piety and grateful mind of the men of Pavia, it is by no means far from probability, as Wadding had premised, that their counsels looked at the same time to keeping the sacred body in the city after it had been carried into it with that great pomp. So at least the Friars Minor Observant believed, who accordingly did not suffer that venerable pledge to be carried far from the convent of St. James, and guarded it by night with watchmen set.

[509] that the sacred body be carried far from the convent of St. James, The aforesaid annalist writes in the same place, num. 26, that the matter was done in this way. Toward evening (of the twenty-eighth day of September, after the aforesaid council had been held) the consuls of the city and the canons of the cathedral church came, to ask that on the following day of St. Michael the holy body should be carried solemnly through the city; and they promised that they would all follow the funeral in ordered ranks, and would at last take charge of it. But Michele, vicar of the province, being warned that they had for this reason desired the body to be brought into the city, that they might keep it with themselves in the cathedral church, although about the hour of Vespers all the orders of the citizens, the magistracy with the nobles, the vicar of Ascanio (Sforza), Cardinal bishop, with the canons and clergy, all the Religious families, all the sodalities or confraternities of men, and two thousand boys walking in mourning after the manner of angels and carrying little banners inscribed with the name of Jesus, had assembled to go in procession together, yet he was unwilling that the sacred pledge should be carried too far from the convent; but a circuit having been made round about the monastery, it returned into the church, where, the body having been raised on high lest it be violated, the canons celebrated the obsequies most solemnly.

[510] it is buried most solemnly in the same church, Concerning the famous pomp of the funeral Pietro Rodolfi has the same in his elogium of the same Blessed man, saying thus: His obsequies were celebrated on the following Sunday (I have proved that it was a Monday) with all the people and the whole clergy, and the convents of the Religious and of the university, with the greatest honor and veneration, and the ringing of bells, and about four thousand boys clad in white surplices and stoles, with little banners (as they call them) in their hands, painted with the name of Jesus and of the Mount of Piety. The author of the often-praised Catalogue of Pavia agrees: The body (he says) was carried, with a certain almost incredible honor, to the church of the divine James outside the walls, accompanied by the whole clergy, both secular and Religious, and by a number of boys, about three thousand, who, adorned with angelic garments, namely a stole and white vestments, carried in their hands a certain ensign on which the Mount of Piety and the name Jesus were inscribed. About the number of the boys these do not agree: for this Catalogue mentions about three thousand; Rodolfi about four thousand; Wadding only two thousand, much more probably than the others, but certainly a large enough number.

[511] and is guarded by the same Religious, lest it be carried off. After the clergy and people of Pavia had in the manner I have said performed the funeral rites for the Father who had deserved so well of the city, when they had departed (so it follows in Wadding), his brethren also performed their own offices. They chanted the whole Office of the Dead, and, the doors being shut, they saw to the burial, with some of the canons and the chief clergy present. The body was laid in a stone tomb and walled about with brickwork; and although it seemed to rest securely, nevertheless the vicar set watchmen, having been secretly warned that it had been decreed in a session of the canons that it should be carried off. For they pleaded that this right belonged to them, because they had obtained his coming into the city, and that by their prayers to the Pontiff and the vicar general it had come about that he ended the course of his life there rather than elsewhere. This reason, such as it was, could seem the more plausible in that Bernardino had departed this life not in his own province, which was that of St. Anthony, but in another, namely the Genoese province of his Order, in which the convent of St. James near Pavia was reckoned; and on this head he could in some fashion be called a stranger to the Minors Observant of that convent. For the same cause we have seen above that Bl. Bernardino's small belongings and books were asked back by the Observants of Feltre and granted them: perhaps they also asked back the body, but in vain.

[512] Funeral rites performed for him by other cities. Nor did the men of Pavia alone repay grateful returns to their beloved Master of morals. For again by Wadding's testimony, when the certain report of his death reached Mantua, Brescia, Verona, Vicenza, Feltre and other cities, they decreed solemn funeral offerings for him, and contrary to custom all the churches, even the parish churches, with bells rung, paid him his due rites. The men of Feltre performed the rites most solemnly, with the participation of the bishop, of the rector Loredano, of the magistracy, of the clergy, and of all the sacred families. These things are indeed great, but he will marvel at them the less who is willing to weigh the outstanding and plainly singular zeal of those same cities toward him while he lived, and the benefits conferred by him upon them, which I have recorded in the course of this Commentary. Bernardino's veneration, thus begun, took a great increase in a short time, especially among the men of Pavia, at the impulse of the miracles and benefits which God deigned to grant at his tomb and at his invocation for the glory of his Servant, and which gave occasion for the elevation of the body, a year and a half not yet having elapsed from his death. Let us hear Wadding.

[513] Stirred by the first miracles and the perpetual concourse of the people, The body, found entire in the year 1496, is elevated and by that of the many who lay upon the sepulcher and of others who kept watch there, the Friars, after the sixteenth month from his death, resolved to transfer his bones, thinking the flesh consumed, to another and more noble place. The sepulcher being opened, the corpse was found entire, injured in nothing, not even in the tip of the nose, which in others easily and often rots away. Being set forth for some days in the sight of all, it was laid in an honorable tomb built out of the frequent offerings; and at the neighboring altar so many Masses began to be celebrated that from dawn until past noon they were multiplied. Yet that these were celebrated not of Bernardino of Feltre but of St. Bernardino of Siena, we shall say below. And this was the first translation, or elevation from the tomb, of the sacred body within the same church, made in the year 1496.

[514] The place in the church in which it was then laid the author of the Catalogue of the sacred relics of Pavia, after the words given at num. 510, thus indicates in Wadding: and placed near the choir Where, laid in a marble chest enclosed in the wall, in a chapel on the right near the choir of the said church (of St. James), and covered with skin still entire, it is most devoutly venerated. Innocenzo recites exactly the same, except the word marble,

Innocenzo of Pavia, from the manuscript codex of the Histories of the city of Pavia, already cited elsewhere. But he adds that there, near the chest, within the place in which the bells are rung — which among the Friars Minor is usually in the choir or about the choir — there was formerly fixed to the wall a stone of great mass, or a marble slab, on which were to be seen carved the likeness of Bl. Bernardino of slender stature, adorned with rays, and the symbol of the Mount of Piety with its usual motto Take care of him, and finally his epitaph in capital letters. He adds that this marble slab, as tradition has it, when the Blessed man's body was laid in a more elegant shrine and placed upon the altar, was set into the wall outside the doors of that church on the left, where it is seen even today.

[515] Concerning the epitaph Wadding agrees, writing this under the year 1494, with this inscription num. 52: To one going out of the church and entering the convent there meets him on the right hand a huge marble stone, on which these words are read carved.

D. O. M.

THE DIVINE BERNARDINO

BY BIRTH OF FELTRE

OF THE FAMILY OF THE TOMITANI

IN DOCTRINE THE LIGHT OF ITALY

IN LIFE THE ORNAMENT OF THE VIRTUES

OF THE OBSERVANCE OF THE DIVINE FRANCIS

BY SUCH ZEAL AND ELOQUENCE

THE TRUMPETER OF THE COMMON SALVATION

THAT HIS THREE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED

SERMONS SPEAK OF HIM

AS ONE FALLEN FROM HEAVEN

HERE HE IS BEHELD, STILL ENTIRE

AS THOUGH BY DIVINE POWER

HE LIVED 55 YEARS

HE DIED AT PAVIA

IN THE HOUSE OF ST. JAMES IN THE YEAR 1494

THE 28th DAY OF SEPTEMBER.

[516] and with verses carved in the marble. The same inscription the aforesaid Innocenzo of Pavia also gives, but for the day of death he has the twenty-ninth of September, most probably from drowsiness or a printer's error; since other authentic documents, which Innocenzo himself alleges and follows, assign the twenty-eighth day as the day of death, nor does he himself raise any doubt on this subject, as he would have had to do if it were read in this epitaph of his that Bl. Bernardino died on the twenty-ninth day. For this reason I have thought Wadding's edition preferable; but from the same Innocenzo I add the four following verses, which, passed over by the annalist, he recites as subjoined to the epitaph on the same tablet.

LET THIS CITY, ONCE THE ROYAL CITY OF THE INSUBRES, REJOICE IN THE ETERNAL

NAME OF SO GREAT A MAN, HERE ENTOMBED AND FAMOUS,

WHO WAS THE SPLENDOR OF ITALY, SENT DOWN FROM OLYMPUS,

AND THE GREAT GLORY OF HIS SACRED ORDER.

[517] Enclosed in a more splendid shrine At what time the aforesaid second elevation of the body, or its translation from the wall to the altar, took place, I have nowhere found: yet so far as I may conjecture from elsewhere, it seems to have happened not before the sixteenth century was nearly at its close, but nevertheless before the middle of the seventeenth century. The reason for the former is that Girolamo Calcagno, provost of the collegiate church of the most holy Trinity at Pavia, in the manuscript Histories of that city, which Innocenzo of Pavia says were written about the year 1583, speaks of that same sacred body, without any mention of an altar, as resting in its tomb set into the wall, in the words given above, which I here repeat: Where, laid in a chest enclosed in the wall, in a chapel on the right near the choir of the said church, and covered with skin still entire, it is most devoutly venerated. Not yet then, therefore, had the Blessed man's body been placed upon any altar, but it still rested in the wall to which it had formerly been raised out of its first tomb. The latter is plain from Wadding, who in tome 7 of the Annals, published in print in the year of Christ 1648, after the words which I have reported above, thus continued: Afterward (that is, after the first elevation of the sacred pledge) it was translated to a special and devout chapel, marked with his name and notable on every side for his deeds painted there, where it rests upon the altar in a gilded chest, and is seen from the front through the clearest crystal, covered with a religious habit of silk and girt with a cord.

[518] it is laid upon an altar. The marquis of Castel Rodrigo which he says was made at the expense of master Girolamo Beccaria de Monte, a noble of Pavia; the often-praised Innocenzo also mentions it, but is likewise silent about the year. It seems to have been made only of wood, skillfully wrought and painted with gold, and furnished in front with crystal or a glass plate through which the incorruption of the body might be seen. In the course of time, as the number of miracles and benefits increased, the veneration of the same Blessed man among mortals also increased, so far that about the middle of the seventeenth century a crystal chest, framed with silver plates, was substituted for that former one. Luke Wadding was then writing the Library of the writers of the Order of Minors, published in print in the year 1650, in which, recounting Bl. Bernardino Tomitano, he noted to our purpose the following. For the burying of the body, always entire, a silver shrine of great price is being prepared in this year 1646, in which I write these things, by Manuel de Moura Corte Real, formerly ambassador at Rome and to the emperor, now the most prudent governor of the Belgians.

[519] That this precious chest, as well as a tablet likewise cast of solid silver, was given by the aforesaid marquis out of a grateful mind for the benefits received from Bernardino, Bernardino of Clastidium, who was then living there, testifies among the miracles at p. 227. a precious shrine of crystal and silver For there, asserting that even in his own time (that is, about the year 1651, in which his little book was first published) miracles are frequently granted to those who invoke that Blessed man, he adds in Italian: Witness to this is the most splendid silver chest having precious plates of crystal, which the most excellent lord Don Manuel de Moura Corte Real, marquis of Castel Rodrigo, lately sent as a gift, and also the great silver tablet given by the same noble man, in thanksgiving for the benefits prodigiously obtained from the divine Majesty through the merits and patronage of this his Servant; toward whom, as he was borne with a special affection of devotion, so by him he was blessed with singular favors and heavenly graces. In that chest, by the same marquis's order, the Blessed man's body will be laid.

[520] Francis Harold in the Epitome of Wadding's Annals, under the year of Christ 1494, num. 6, and a silver tablet he sent as a gift, speaks of it thus: Now in another and more noble chapel, on the left of one going up to the chief altar, he lies in a crystal shrine bound with silver framework, which at more than eight thousand gold pieces Manuel de Moura e Corte Real, marquis of Castel Rodrigo and count of Lumiares, then legate of Philip IV, king of the Spains, with Pope Urban VIII, saw made — a man endowed no less with political prudence than with signal piety. So he; but since Urban VIII ceased to live in the year of Christ 1644, it may be doubted whether the aforesaid marquis, when he had the aforesaid shrine made, was then still discharging his legation with him, or was already governing Belgium, as Wadding affirmed. The inscriptions to be recounted below mention neither office. However it may be, Innocenzo of Pavia also agrees about the donor; but he, although he cites Harold for the value of the chest, has for eight thousand gold pieces as many scudi, in Italian Scudi, which are a coin of less value than gold pieces, unless perhaps he understood gold scudi. But the price of the silver tablet, which Bernardino of Clastidium mentioned above as offered by the same marquis, he affirms to be five hundred scudi.

[521] It will be useful here to have added the epigram which Giovanni Ferrari Garetto, a jurist of that time, composed concerning that same chest and tablet and the donor of both, whose magnificence and which the aforesaid Bernardino prefixed to his little Work. Thus then he has it there: To the most excellent prince Don Manuel de Moura, marquis of Castel Rodrigo, etc., supreme commendator of the Order of Christ, hereditary administrator of the Tertiary Islands, chamberlain of the King our Lord, master of accounts, counselor of state, prefect of the court, and also grandee of Spain, etc., an elogium.

Let no man marvel that crystal and silver are so widely lavished on Bernardino's chest and tablet. It was the gift of the prefect of the court of that king in whose kingdoms all metals have their birth. It was the offering of the governor of an Indian tract most fruitful not so much in silver as in gold.

yet they ought not to have been less; since to the marquis, his chief offices being accomplished, and raised to the highest dignity of the court, nothing now is lacking but the royal character; of which, however, that he has not so much as thought is his highest praise. The planets nearer to the sun are the more like to him. That in a subject so near to his own king there is a royal soul, who should be astonished? A most sagacious courtier, framed to his own prince's temper: when the king had dedicated an excellent chest to the divine Charles, he too dedicated another to Bernardino. Far hence be the too greedy chests made for hoarding treasures: this splendid chest is itself a treasure to him, and it hides a treasure. Fear not the turns of adverse fortune, O marquis, you have a treasure in the chest.

* another reading, sermonis

* another reading, aliqualiter

* in another reading ei is absent

* aureorum

* Castri

§ XXIII. A new chapel built, in which the Blessed man's body was placed, and is honored entire even today: the cult begun soon after his death and continued.

[ ] An elegant new chapel is built, After the often-praised Friars Minor had received that chest, by the testimony of the same Bernardino of Clastidium, action was also taken about building within the same church a new chapel in which the Blessed man's body might be laid more honorably. To this pious work the most excellent lord Luis Carillo de Benavides Toledo, marquis of Fromista and Caracena, and at that time governor of the state of Milan for the Catholic king, soon showed himself exceedingly well disposed; and since many other administrators of the forum and of war, and especially the city of Pavia itself, imitated his signal munificence, the splendid chapel was completed in a short time. Further, in the middle of the chapel (says the same Bernardino, but in the Italian tongue) an altar has been erected of fitting size, behind which rises, separate from it, a mausoleum of eight beautiful columns, which, although they are not of marble, yet by a new invention of art seem to be of marble.

[524] of which some account is given, Upon these columns rests a splendid architrave, adorned with a great cornice and various work. On the summit of the same mausoleum shines the great silver tablet sent as a gift by the most excellent lord marquis of Castel Rodrigo praised above, set into a certain little shrine. The position of the columns is such that four of them stand forth toward the people, the other four toward the rear wall, and between them will be placed the silver chest which contains the Blessed man's body, at its translation from the old to the new tomb shortly to be made. Round about in the chapel hang various votive gifts of silver, and on either side, namely on the right and the left, there are set into the wall two most elegant paintings, of which one represents the miracle of the boy drowned in the river Ticino and recalled to life by Bernardino, the other the same Blessed man's prodigious crossing of the same river, using his cloak for a boat. On the latter miracle consult below Appendix I on the Miracles, num. 2 and 3; on the former, the Commentary, num. 392 and following.

[525] With all these things Innocenzo agrees, except

that he, and the sacred body, because he wrote after the translation had been made, added a few things, some of which seem to have come in after Bernardino's little book had already appeared. In the first place he says that from the aforesaid cornice, which we said was set upon the architrave, there hang many silver votive offerings of no small price, and on either side of the chapel two lamps of the same metal, given by pious persons. On the summit of the mausoleum too, he says, there is seen the emblem of the threefold Mount of Piety with the usual motto on the threefold staff of its banner: Take care of him; and finally, that opposite this Mount there was placed another silver tablet of great value, which the most illustrious lord Matteo de Rosales, count of Vailate, gave for a benefit received; concerning which see what is to be said in the 2nd Appendix on the Miracles and benefits, num. 58, where it is reported under the year 1662.

[526] Further, although from the testimony of the often-mentioned Bernardino of Clastidium, placed in its precious shrine, is set upon its altar in the year 1655, in the year 1651, in which his little book was published, that chapel seems to have been already completed, nevertheless, if Innocenzo of Pavia has rightly noted the time, the translation of the Blessed man's body in its precious shrine to the mausoleum mentioned was first made in the year 1655, on the twenty-third day of the month of March; the cause of which delay he does not himself relate; but one may suspect that it was, if not the only, at least the chief cause, that, since at that time the process for proving his immemorial cult was being examined before the Apostolic See, it was religiously judged that so solemn an elevation must in the meantime be abstained from until that See had pronounced; which it did according to their wishes (as we shall show in the following §) on the thirteenth day of April in the year 1654, by the Roman Pontiff Innocent X; and thus, that obstacle being removed, the other things which perhaps were lacking could be prepared, and the translation itself accomplished in the month of March of the following year. Not many years after, namely in the year of Christ 1662, our Papebroch noted that he had seen that sacred pledge there, in the little book which he left in manuscript concerning his return from the City of Rome into Belgium, saying thus: In the neighboring monastery of the Observants we saw the body of St. * Bernardino of Feltre entire, through the crystal sides of a most august silver chest in its own chapel, but no ancient monuments.

[527] I too saw and venerated it in the year 1752, and it is honored even today, still entire. on the sixth day of November, remarkable for its wonderful incorruption, in the manner in which it is seen from the figure or engraved image of it which I have given to our engraver to copy and which I present, warning the reader that the likeness of the same Blessed man, which is seen in it representing him alive, belongs neither to the chest nor to the altar, but is a copy of that image which is seen painted at Pavia in the church of the Holy Cross of the Reformed Fathers of St. Francis; and that it was engraved on the same copper plate for no other reason than that I might present to the reader both the living and the dead man to be viewed at one glance. I subjoin here also two inscriptions which the often-named Innocenzo affirms to have been composed by the aforesaid jurist Giovanni Ferrari Garetto, and to be read, carved on plates made of the artificial marble of which we have said the mausoleum also was made, on the two sides of that same chapel.

[528] An inscription is recited, The first inscription, then, in him runs thus:

Here now is silent Bernardino Tomitano, who once spoke so well. Though born at Feltre, you would still call him a man of Pavia: for, not content with a decade, he abides here entire. And truly it was fitting that the body also should be preserved entire of him who so preserved his soul entire. The Church wept, the synagogue laughed, at the funeral of this enemy of usury; for where the devout man destroyed Hebrew impieties, there he built up mounts of Christian piety. No less a stern Persecutor of condemned men than of spirits, the former from the cities, the latter from the bodies they besieged, he very often put to flight. Far hence be the deceitful arts of divination; by the teaching of the divine Spirit, in the book of the Crucified Bernardino learned to foretell things to come.

the blindnesses of souls could endure still less those of the eyes. The greatest of the Friars Minor wished to be called the least. More patient of burden than of honor; now by his sermons he called souls back to penance, now by his prayers the sick back to health, now by his miracles the dead back to life. After the unremitting labors of 55 years, on the fourth of the Kalends of October, 1494, he rested. But I am wrong: he has not rested, who every day, moved by the prayers of the faithful, moves God.

[530] and another on the other side On the other side of the same chapel the inscription is such:

He who had lived purer than crystal and silver ought in death to be laid up in the same. The chest that shuts in Bernardino opens up the benefits which the marquis of Castel Rodrigo acknowledges as received. Whoever wishes to obtain graces in heaven or on earth, let him go to this Iberian noble, who is prefect of the court of the most powerful king Philip IV, and who keeps in a chest the Steward of the divine graces.

more carefully, and observe him, on the silver tablet which he vowed, kneeling, he keeps perpetual watch before him. That Friars who profess poverty should have raised a rich chapel, do not be astonished: know that the work was begun by the help of the men of Pavia, and completed by the example of the outstanding bounty of the marquis of Caracena, the most strenuous governor of the Milanese dominion. Nothing, reader, will you here behold that is not choice, except what you are reading; for it endured on either stone not as a testimony of wit but of an enduring homage, Giovanni Ferrari Garetto, doctor of laws.

[532] Although the things which we have thus far brought forward concerning Bernardino's body The Blessed man's cult, begun soon after his death, prove abundantly and more than enough the ancient cult of the same Blessed man, continued down to our own times, yet by the plan of our undertaking we shall bring forward in this § the many things which remain to be said about it. Innocenzo of Pavia, so often praised already, will here bear our chief light; who wrote on this subject a little Treatise in the Italian tongue, and added it to the Life published by Bernardino of Clastidium when it was republished in print. A great part of it consists of miracles to be recounted in a special Appendix. There can be no doubt that Bernardino's veneration, which he had among the people while alive, grew soon after his death, and was changed into the cult which is wont to be paid to the Blessed. This is certainly proved by that perpetual concourse of the people to the sepulcher of the newly buried man, the prayers poured out, the watches kept, the gifts offered, the benefits obtained, and the translation of the sacred body to a more honored place in the seventeenth month after his death, of which we have said much above.

[533] Nor content with these things, the men of Pavia wished also that Masses should be celebrated in his honor; and thereafter always continued, and since this was not permitted without an indult of the Roman See, a way was found by which their wishes might in some fashion be satisfied. So expressly teaches Wadding in the Annals under the year 1494, num. 51, where, treating of the first elevation of the body, he says thus: Being set forth for some days in the sight of all, it was laid in an honorable tomb built out of the frequent offerings; and at the neighboring altar so many Masses began to be celebrated that from dawn until past noon they were multiplied. Then he adds that the same body was afterward enclosed in a gilded chest, translated to its own chapel and set upon the altar, and he adds: But both before and after the translation the devotion of the pious was so complied with in the celebration of Masses that provision was also made for religion; namely that the limits prescribed by the prefects of the sacred rites should not be neglected. The Mass is read in honor of Bl. Bernardino of Siena, until through the Apostolic See proper honors be decreed also to this man of Feltre, for the procuring of which men are pressing at Rome; and processes have been made by Apostolic authority in the city of Feltre and of Pavia. What Wadding here wished for, we shall say in its place was at length granted in this eighteenth century.

[534] and that his images adorned with rays should be publicly displayed Another proof of the ancient cult are the images of the same Bernardino adorned with a diadem or with rays about the head, one of which Innocenzo of Pavia asserts to have been formerly carved, together with the epitaph, on the marble tablet placed behind the Blessed man's body after the first elevation, as was said at num. 514. That besides this there were others also we learn from the bull or decree of Pope Leo X for the granting of the Office and Mass of the Blessed, now St., Francis of Paola, in which that same Pontiff mentioned and approved their use. Hence also the Roman Pontiff Benedict XIV in his learned Work on the beatification of the Servants of God and the canonization of the Blessed, book 2, ch. 24, num. 15, did not hesitate to trace the cult of the same Bernardino back to the time immediately after his death. It will be useful to have adduced Benedict's own words. This blessed Bernardino, he says, died in the year 1494; and his cult had its beginning immediately from his death. For the supreme Pontiff Leo X in his Apostolic letters of the year 1513, by which he granted a Mass and Office to the then Blessed, now Saint, Francis of Paola, testified that an image of the same blessed Bernardino had already then been kept in the churches of the Friars Minor.

[535] Pope Leo X permitted. Then he subjoins the aforesaid Leo's words, which follow. We therefore, who willingly, so far as we can, stir up all the faithful to the veneration of God's Saints and to constant devotion toward them, that they may strive to please him from whom every best gift and every perfect gift proceeds, inclining to petitions of this kind, by Apostolic authority and by the tenor of these presents grant license and faculty to the same Friars, that for the rest, in perpetual times to come, they may in their houses celebrate the Office in memory of the same Francis, of one confessor, under the name of Bl. Francis of Paola, each year as above, and may recite in their Masses and Matins and Vespers the commemoration of the same Francis under the name of Bl. Francis of Paola, and may have his image painted, and may freely and lawfully keep it in the churches of their houses, just as the Friars of the Order of Minors of the family keep painted in their churches the image of Friar Bernardino of Montefeltro, who also died in recent years; the license of the ordinaries of the places, and of any other whatsoever, being in no way required for this: Notwithstanding, etc. Thus far Pope Leo X, whose decree you have published entire among us in the article on St. Francis of Paola, tom. 1 of April, p. 165, where it is noted as given in the year 1513, on the Nones of July, that is, in the nineteenth year after Bl. Bernardino had departed this life.

[536] That he was also called Blessed I pass over recounting the various writers, partly his contemporaries, partly of the next age, who constantly honored him with the title of Blessed, and from

whom I have already praised some in this Commentary, and in particular Bernardino de Busti, or de Bustis, once familiar with him; and others may be read in Innocenzo of Pavia in the History of the cult. Yet one or two have seemed to me to be added here. The testimony of Bartolomeo Simoni of Marostica, who wrote the Blessed man's Life in Latin in the year 1531, the aforesaid Innocenzo thus recounts from his Preface to that Life. But in our own season, in which the perversity of morals is more measureless and faith weaker, God raised up a Physician the mightier in words, bringing forth from this stinking valley a fragrant rose even from the barbed thorns of vices, and a proclaiming trumpet, which, by announcing and threatening the scourge of God prepared for Italy and for the whole Christian race, should bring back very many straying sheep to their shepherd Christ, and should confirm this by purity and holiness of life and by wonders and prodigies.

[537] For blessed Bernardino of Feltre, surnamed the Little One, contemporary writers and those of the next age. predestined from eternity for this our age, prophesied of by St. Bernardino of Siena, made illustrious by the demons, celebrated by all nations, sought after and eagerly demanded, he anointed with the chrism of humility, obedience, purity, chastity, continence, watchfulness, charity for the salvation of souls, and of measureless fervor, and also of an eloquence incredible for the weakness of his body, of knowledge, wisdom and prophetic power. Giacomo Gualla in the Sanctuary of Pavia, which he published in the year of Christ 1505, that is, in the eleventh year after Bernardino's death, but of which we have only the second edition, made in the year 1587, in book 6, ch. 10, ascribed the same title to him in these words: In the church of St. James outside the city of Pavia, which the Friars of the Order of Minors of the Observance serve, lies the body of blessed Bernardino of Feltre, of the same Order, etc.

[538] To the private testimonies of writers I add some proceeding from public authority, out of Innocenzo's Treatise on the cult. The men of Pavia out of reverence for him expel the Jews; On p. 249 and the following he gives part of a decree made by the city of Pavia in the year 1527, on the 3rd day of October, in which, among other vows made to their patron Saints for averting the calamities of the republic, at the urging of the archpriest of St. Mary of Gualdrasco, they framed the following about expelling the Jews. Item, that this grace may be obtained, knowing that formerly the people of Pavia promised to that blessed herald of the sacred word, Master Friar Bernardino of Feltre, that on no account should Jews be permitted to dwell in this city, as enemies of the name of Christ, because that where the aforesaid Jews dwell, there the wrath of God always remains, and it is the more often stricken with the scourge of God; therefore it ordains anew that those Jews be wholly expelled from this city, and that henceforth they be no more admitted to dwell in it; ordaining that a time be appointed for those who hold pledges, that within such time they may recover them; which time having elapsed, let those Jews be wholly interdicted, and no more admitted to dwell in this city.

[539] In the same place, p. 255 and the following, out of Bl. Bernardino's Life published in Italian by Graziano of Bevagna, the following decree of the same city is recited. In the year 1598, on the twenty-ninth day of April. The general Council being convoked. Therefore, that blessed Bernardino of Feltre, who, while he dwelt among men, profited this people of Pavia much by his frequent sermons and exhortations and by other offices of charity and piety, may be able unceasingly to interpose his help with the Most High, the maker of all things, our God and Lord Jesus Christ, for the safety and preservation of this city, in so far as his memory is recalled by some office of gratitude, adhering to the request and prayers, so far as need be, of nearly all the Officials of the guilds (that is, of the colleges) of this city, concerning which a division (that is, a deliberation, decision or voting, from the Italian word partito) was made in the acts, whether it be expedient or not?

[540] Namely, that from now onward, in perpetual times to come, a solemn and general offering be made according to public custom in the church of the divine James the apostle outside, near the walls of this city, and by public authority decree him an annual procession and offering. where the buried body of the aforesaid Bl. Bernardino is kept, still entire and incorrupt after the hundredth year from its laying down; and this on the Kalends of the month of May: and there, according to the custom of the other offerings, let the accustomed torches be offered, both by the city and by the crafts and guilds; and the moneys which are wont to be paid out in the name of the city at the said other offerings. And let the present division, so far as need be, be approved by the general council for its fuller observance, etc. Subscribed: Bonetus, abbot. And the ballots being given (the same as votes) and the votes taken, the division was carried, that it be done as above. Innocenzo adds in the same place that the college of merchants in the same year and on the same day consented to that annual offering, this reason being added: And this for a special grace obtained from almighty God, through the intercession of the said Bl. Bernardino, for the expulsion of the Jews from this present city of Pavia. And the same man, or he whose little Work he reprinted, Bernardino of Clastidium, had premised that this was wont to be paid as an annual tribute down to his own times, during a solemn Mass, by the civic magistracy and all the colleges of craftsmen, on the same 1st day of May.

[541] They invoke his help against the plague; Again on p. 256 and the two following he writes that, when in the year 1629 grave signs of pestilence were had at Pavia, a solemn procession to Bl. Bernardino was publicly appointed and held on the twenty-third day of March, with the most illustrious bishop Fabrizio Landriani accompanying with the whole clergy, both secular and regular, and others, all carrying lighted torches, and with the relics, that is, the arm of St. Sebastian, borne about. And he proves this from a certain register in which he says that a memorial of it exists, written in the following year, that is 1630, on the twentieth day of April, and from which he excerpted these words: Which procession had its beginning from the greater church as far as the church of St. James outside the walls of this same present city, for obtaining the help of blessed Bernardino of Feltre, whose body rests in the said church, and who was always in his lifetime a partial protector of this city and an intercessor with God; and in the said church at his altar a solemn Mass was chanted for obtaining his help.

[542] together with St. Syrus they take him as patron, a vow being made When after this the pestilence nevertheless grew strong (by the testimony of the same Innocenzo), the Conservators of health, as they call them, in the year 1630, on the fourteenth day of July, convoked a council, and in it took Bl. Bernardino, together with St. Syrus, bishop of that same city, as their special patron, a decree being made which I here transcribe from him. The congregation of the lords Conservators of health being convoked, etc. First, that through the intercession of the most blessed Syrus, patron and protector of this city, and of Bl. Bernardino of Feltre, whose body rests in the church of St. James outside the walls of Pavia, from whom the city itself, very many citizens and others have received divers graces in so present a calamity of plague, stronger than all others, and to which, if the grace of almighty God does not come to the rescue in a short time, the city itself will be laid waste; and for obtaining the grace of deliverance, no other readier and better way is discerned * than to offer prayers to the most high Creator and mercifully to implore his help; and that the approach may be easier, to entreat him as suppliants.

[543] And as now the aforesaid lords Conservators, assembled as above, in the name of the whole tribunal and people of this city, concerning the expenses in his beatification or canonization, whose place they hold, have humbly and devoutly made supplication, and on bended knees before the image of the most high Creator have implored his help, that he would deign, through the intercession of the most blessed Syrus and of Bl. Bernardino of Feltre, whom from this moment they have invoked and do invoke as their particular Protectors with the Most High, that they may be freed from so great a conflict of epidemic, in which the city and its inhabitants are most bitterly tormented, and may deserve to obtain such a grace; even as they hope and trust to be made partakers of their help; therefore, in memory of so great a calamity and of their ardent hope of deliverance, the aforesaid lords Conservators, in the name of the said city, have vowed and have made and do make vows to the almighty Creator our Lord, as follows. First, that the city, in the event of any canonization to be made of the said Bl. Bernardino of Feltre, shall in effect and without any delay, and all cause ceasing, pay out five hundred gold scudi, to be applied to the said cause.

[544] Further, for the perpetual memory of the most blessed Syrus, etc., and other things to be done: likewise other processions to this end, that the aforesaid St. Syrus and Bl. Bernardino may perpetually of their piety deign to protect this city, its citizens and inhabitants in the present calamity of pestilence, and always and at every time to protect it and them; even as the aforesaid lords Conservators have humbly and devoutly entreated and do entreat, and hope to obtain. Thus far the decree, very faulty, produced by Innocenzo, who afterward, among the Miracles at p. 267 — with us in Appendix 2, num. 8 — writes that these vows had a happy issue, the pestilence being taken away in the same year. He had also premised at p. 240 that it is a commonly known ancient custom at Pavia for certain pious sodalities or confraternities to go every year, on one of the feasts after Easter, in suppliant procession to Bl. Bernardino's body in the church of St. James outside the walls, for the preservation of the fruits and crops, to be obtained through his merits from almighty God. And he asserts that authentic testimonies of this ancient custom were produced by the sodalities of St. Sebastian the Greater, of the Crucifix in St. Mary of the Thousand Virtues, of St. Mary of Loreto, of the Most Holy Trinity, and of St. Innocent.

[545] Finally he adds that, when in the year 1648 the city of Cremona was being besieged by a hostile army, instituted by the men of Pavia to him. a special procession to the Blessed man's body was instituted by some men of Pavia together with the schools of Christian (or of literary) doctrine, for the raising of that siege, and that on that occasion more than a hundred pounds of wax were offered. The raising of this siege is said, in the historical Memoirs of Europe published in French at Paris in the year 1725, to have happened in the aforesaid year 1648 on the sixth day of October. I forbear to say more, that I may proceed to the cause of beatification agitated at Rome and at last obtained.

* rather B.

* perhaps dignoscunt?

§ XXIV. The cause of Bernardino's beatification introduced and suspended under Urban VIII: resumed under Innocent X, and the cult approved: other things done for his canonization: an Office and Mass granted by Benedict XIII: a devout prayer hung up in his chapel.

[ ] Since Bernardino's cult was already immemorial, I have here as my guiding light the often-praised Innocenzo of Pavia, whose words, rendered from the Italian tongue into Latin, I shall frequently use. He began his Treatise on Bl. Bernardino's cult thus: The memory of the virtues and holy works of the servant of God, Bernardino of Feltre, handed down by our elders to posterity through a long series of years, broken by no forgetfulness, and the continuation of the miracles which, for his merits and patronage, God

has deigned to grant to his devout clients, brought it about that his cult at his images and at his tomb increased day by day, so that, when our own times were reached, it prevailed at last under the title of an immemorial cult. This public fame, widely spread abroad, having been laid as a foundation, processes concerning the virtues and cult of this Servant of God were often drawn up, not only in Italy but also in other parts of the world (which I could wish that Innocenzo had enumerated, if he was able).

[547] his cause was introduced under Urban VIII, and processes drawn up; And first indeed the most illustrious lord Fabrizio Landriani, at that time bishop of Pavia, by ordinary authority in the year 1626 and the two following, examined the articles produced by the procurator of the cause at the order of the most reverend Father Friar Benigno of Genoa. Then, at the prayers of the whole family of the Minors, the cause of beatification was introduced by the Roman Pontiff Urban VIII of happy memory, and committed to the Congregation of sacred Rites. And by this remissorial and compulsory letters were granted, directed to the bishop, archdeacon and dean of Feltre, and also to the bishop, provost and archdeacon of Pavia, that they should draw up processes in specie upon the holiness of his life, his virtues and miracles; which were drawn up by them by Apostolic authority and transmitted, and were opened by the sacred Congregation and committed to the examination of the three senior auditors of the Roman rota.

[548] but afterward it was suspended by a decree of the same Pontiff, But when after these things a decree had issued from the same Urban VIII by which the cult of anyone who had died with a reputation of holiness (but who had been enrolled by the Apostolic See neither among the Saints nor among the Blessed) was wholly forbidden, the case of immemorial time being however excepted, the cause was suspended and the approbation of the processes deferred, until new inquiries had been made concerning the obedience rendered to the decree, or until it had been established that the excepted case applied. Of the decrees which Urban VIII issued on this subject mention has already often been made among us, and Pope Benedict XIV treated of them fully and learnedly in his distinguished Work on the Beatification of the Servants of God, etc. I, for the matter in hand, here observe only that the aforesaid Urban confirmed his earlier decree, which he had issued in the year 1625, by another on the fifth day of July of the year 1634, in which he forbade that any further step be taken in the processes meanwhile begun before it had been proved that it had not been contravened. This then was the reason why, as Innocenzo of Pavia asserts, the processes which the bishops of Pavia and Feltre with their delegates had drawn up by Apostolic authority could not then obtain the desired issue. Let us now go on to narrate the rest from the same Innocenzo.

[549] Thus he continues in the same place: While meanwhile the aforesaid cult grew day by day because of new miracles, and again, at the request of princes, resumed and the whole world judged him worthy of the honors of canonization, which it earnestly desired for him, Spain, Italy and Germany began to petition the supreme Pontiff Innocent X, successor of the said Urban VIII, that he would deign to bring the pending cause to the wished-for end, and to enroll the Servant of God among the Blessed and the Saints, and at the same time to grant an ecclesiastical Office of him to the Religion of the Minors. To this end there sent him their letters the great council of state of the Catholic king, the same king himself, who added to his letters the efforts of his ambassador also, the duchess and duke of Mantua, the cities of Feltre and Pavia, the bishop with his chapter, and finally the most invincible emperor Ferdinand (the third of that name) of most serene memory, the most excellent legate of the most serene republic of Venice at the Roman curia also laboring at it, to whom that republic had vehemently commended it.

[550] The letters attained the end for which they had been given, under Pope Innocent X, the Pontiff commanding that the cause be resumed, and remissorial letters being given by the sacred Congregation on the twenty-first day of August of the year 1652 to the bishop of Pavia, then Francesco Biglia, that by Apostolic authority he should draw up a process on the immemorial cult of the Servant of God, from which it should be established that he was comprehended in the case excepted in the decree of the congregation of the most holy Inquisition. After the process was formed, which was begun on the tenth day of September of that year and was ended in the following year 1653 on the tenth day of October, when from it there was now established the antiquity of images of him painted with rays in various places and exceedingly frequent in the city of Pavia; and when in it there had been proved the ancient custom of offering wax, and the vows made by the city and the colleges, and also the processions instituted by the sodalities and by the schools of Christian * doctrine to his altar in the church of St. James, and to these had been added also the trustworthy testimonies of various writers who, speaking of him whether by design or by chance, named him at all times with the title of Blessed; it was decided in favor of his immemorial cult, and the following decree was issued by the sacred Congregation.

[551] The particular process in the cause of the Servant of God Friar Bernardino of Feltre, of the Order of Minors, drawn up by Apostolic authority by the bishop of Pavia upon the case excepted from the decrees of the most holy Inquisition issued concerning non-cult, which, approving his immemorial cult, and approved and confirmed by Urban VIII of happy memory, on account of the immemorial cult shown to the said Servant of God, having been reported by the most eminent lord Cardinal Aldobrandini, the same Congregation of sacred rites, the Reverend Father Master Promoter of the Faith being present and heard, judged that the aforesaid decrees had not been contravened in the case and to the effect of which we treat; and that therefore it is possible to proceed to further steps in the cause, if it shall please our most holy Lord. The twenty-eighth day of March, 1654. And, report having been made by the most eminent lord Cardinal Sacchetti, his Holiness (namely Pope Innocent X) assented on the thirteenth day of April, 1654.

[552] Hence the supreme Pontiff Benedict XIV, book 1, ch. 3, observes beatified him by equivalence. that our Bernardino was placed in the roll of the Blessed by an equivalent beatification, and numbers him among those who after Urban VIII's decrees were enrolled among the Blessed in this way through the proof of the excepted case. If the sentence of the Ordinary (he says in the same place, num. 4) or of the delegated judge favors the case excepted from Urban VIII's decrees, and the same obtains the strength of confirmation from the sacred Congregation, and the sacred Congregation's response is approved by the Pontiff, the servant of God in whose cause these things have been obtained is said to be beatified by equivalence. He adds this reason: For since beatification is nothing else than the permission of cult for certain determined places; and since there can be no doubt about the permission of cult whenever a case excepted from Urban's decrees is approved; therefore there seems to be no doubt at all about an equivalent beatification. Then at num. 8 he says: In the time of Innocent X, through the approval of immemorial cult, an equivalent beatification was granted to Blessed Bernardo Tolomei, founder of the Congregation of Monte Oliveto, to Nicholas of Flüe, a Swiss Hermit, and to Bernardino of Feltre of the Order of Minors.

[553] New processes were made by Apostolic authority, I return to Innocenzo's account, which he thus continues after the decree of the sacred Congregation just given. That further steps might be taken in the said cause of beatification and canonization, new remissorial letters were sent to three most illustrious and most reverend bishops, master Girolamo Melzi, bishop of Pavia, Carlo Settala, bishop of Tortona, and Girolamo Francesco Miroglio of Casale, who, according to the articles and interrogatories prescribed in those letters, drew up a process on the virtues and miracles of the said Servant of God, meeting in the church of St. Mary of Loreto to examine the witnesses and perform the other juridical acts; and on that occasion there appeared the most bountiful piety and devotion of the citizens in supplying the expenses of so great a business.

[554] especially at Pavia, Thus far the aforesaid Innocenzo, adding then that many miracles and benefits were produced and proved before those delegated judges, which he recounted in the following chapter, and which I shall recite from him in an Appendix. The last of these he says happened in the year 1662 on that very day on which those same bishops had visited the entire body of the Blessed man. In the same year our Elders Godfrey Henschen and Daniel Papebroch were staying at Pavia, of whom the latter in the Acts of St. Francis of Paola, tom. 1 of April, p. 165, num. 92, says this to our purpose: Whose (Bl. Bernardino's) body we venerated outside the walls of the city of Pavia in the year 1662, when the Apostolic commissaries had assembled at Pavia to hear witnesses with a view to the canonization. For the rest, Innocenzo's little book, published in print in the year 1664, records nothing done after the aforesaid year 1662, and closes with the author's wish for Bernardino's canonization to be obtained one day from the Apostolic See.

[555] and the cause was carried further at Rome, Of the same cause afterward agitated at Rome before the sacred Congregation the supreme Pontiff Benedict XIV makes mention in various places of the often-praised Work. In book 1, ch. 32, num. 12, he writes that, although the declaration of the case excepted from Urban VIII's decrees had already gone before, yet an examination was instituted by way of a formal doubt, whether his Theological and Cardinal virtues were established. In book 2, ch. 49, num. 17, on the approval of the validity of that process he says this: When in the Pavian or Feltrian cause of the canonization of Bl. Bernardino of Feltre, of the Order of Minors of the Observance of St. Francis, there was a question about the validity of the process, the sacred Congregation, Cardinal Aldobrandini reporting, on the tenth day of June, 1664, indeed approved the validity of the process, but at the same time said that no account was to be taken of those witnesses of whom it was noted that they answered by the word Rightly, or said, The Article is true. Of that same Congregation, held on the same day and year, he again makes mention in book 3, ch. 6, num. 10, where he adds that among the witnesses admitted there were not three of the four procurators of the cause, although these had been examined.

[556] Again in book 2, last chapter, num. 8, he relates that on the fourteenth day of June of the year 1687 a dispensation was asked and granted but nothing was obtained for the cult except an Office and Mass, that in one and the same Congregation the doubt concerning the Theological and Cardinal virtues might be proposed. In ch. 27, num. 9 and 10, of the same book 2, he speaks of the examination of the Works written by Bl. Bernardino, committed in the year 1696, on the twenty-first day of January, the 1st of September and the twenty-fourth of November, by the Congregation of the most holy Inquisition. But whatever was done in all these matters, Bl. Bernardino's canonization has not thus far been brought to the desired end; yet an Office and Mass were nevertheless granted, although his virtues had not yet been approved. So teaches the aforesaid Pontiff in book 4, part 2, ch. 4, num. 3, where, treating of concessions of this kind, he says: As concerns the practice or custom of the holy See, passing over examples which are earlier than Urban VIII's decrees, there are many examples later than those decrees in which, the excepted case having been proved, the concession of an Office and Mass was made before the discussion and approval of the virtues, in honor of the Blessed beatified by equivalence: namely in honor of Bl. Colomba of Rieti, Bl. Bernardo Tolomei, Bl. Nicholas of Flüe, Bl. Bernardino of Feltre, etc.

[557] This decree, by Pope Benedict XIII in the year

1728, [which Benedict XIII granted to the Seraphic Order and to the cities of Pavia and Feltre.] was communicated to us by the very Reverend Father Friar Hermann Janssens, of the Order of Minors Recollect, ex-provincial and jubilate lector of the province of Lower Germany, and I subjoin it here as follows. Decree for the whole Order of Minors, and also for the cities of Pavia and Feltre. Our most holy Lord Benedict XIII, at the most humble prayers of Father Friar Bernardino of Nice, of the Order of Minors Observant Reformed of St. Francis, and Postulator of the causes of Beatifications and Canonizations of his whole Order, has graciously indulged and granted that on the twenty-eighth day of September, the feast of Bl. Bernardino of Feltre of the Order of Minors of the Observance, in the whole Seraphic Religion, to which he gave his name, and also in the city of Pavia, in which his sacred body rests, and in the city of Feltre, where he was born, his Office of the Common of a Confessor not a Pontiff, under a double rite, and the Mass respectively, may and shall be celebrated. The third day of August, 1728.

N. Card. Coscia.

In place of the ✠ seal

N. M., Archbishop of Apamea, Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Rites.

In consequence of these things the whole Order of Minors celebrates his feast with the Office and Mass from the aforesaid Common in the first place, with the lessons of the first Nocturn from the occurring Scripture, as I have learned from their Directory of the year 1757. For the rest, I willingly join my own to the wishes of the others, that Bl. Bernardino may one day be entered in the roll of the Saints.

[558] An antiphon and prayer hung up in his chapel. For a crown to the work I here set down the antiphon and prayer which Wadding, under the year 1494, num. 59, writes to be hung up in the Blessed man's chapel and to be customarily recited by his devout clients, saying thus. In the chapel in which he lies, and in other places of the convent, there are seen countless votive tablets and gifts of various kinds hung up, which mark the multitude of the miracles. Among the many things which are seen written there, there is also this antiphon inscribed on a beautiful tablet. Serafino of Feltre offered it in fulfillment of a vow, and fixed it near the tomb. Bernardino's devout followers also greet him with this devout commemoration:

"O star of Feltre, gem of charity, splendor of modesty, zealot of poverty, explorer of wisdom, protector of truth, lover of innocence, cultivator of virginity, before the shining throne of the eternal Majesty prepare for us an entrance to the divine mercy. Alleluia.

V. Implore grace for us, blessed Bernardino.

R. Through the abundance of the fountain of divine mercy.

Let us pray. May the illustrious merits of your blessed servant Bernardino avail us, we beseech you, Lord; and may his suppliant prayer before you obtain the saving grace which we ask and which our frailty does not presume upon. Through Christ our Lord. Amen."

* or of literary doctrine

BRIEF ELOGIUM

By Luke Wadding, tom. 15 of the Annals of the Minors.

Bernardino of Feltre, of the Order of Minors Observant of St. Francis, Confessor, at Pavia in Italy. (Bl.)

By Wadding.

The form of his body, his character, his abstinence, With a countenance ^a venerable and grave, but calm and cheerful, and with manners likewise composed and delightful, he carried away the eyes and affections of all. To his nature, however weak, he indulged nothing singular, being content with the common food and clothing. Most sparing in food and drink, in his continual journeyings and perpetual labor he took scarcely what was necessary. Sweetmeats or things preserved in sugar, though suited to his enfeebled constitution and frequently sent by friends, he refused to accept; he either sent the messenger back, or sent what was offered to the sick, saying that such delicacies ill became a poor little beggar. Wine well diluted he drank in the smallest quantity without any choosing; nor was he ever heard to ask for red wine, recommended by the physicians on account of his hernia, or for any other kind whatever, noble, generous or light.

[2] his severe manner of food and clothing. The fasts instituted by the Church, or proper to his Religion, he observed rigorously, with no day passed over, however much he might be worn out by a long journey or by hard labor. On the vigils of Bl. Mary he took only bread and water; on the other days of fasting he ate but once, tasting absolutely nothing toward night. Three times a week, according to the custom of his fellowship, whether residing among his own or wandering abroad, he chastised himself with harsh scourges; giving as his reason to those who urged that he should deal more indulgently with himself, that the demons greatly fear the scourges of Religious, and are put to flight at the very sight of the whip. His garment was poor and patched; and he was ashamed to wear a new one. His sleep was very brief, for the most part of two hours, and for thirty continuous years he never on any night omitted to rise for Matins.

[3] Very early in the morning at dawn, confession always going before, he celebrated or heard the holy Sacrifice, saying that it was a shameful thing, especially for a Religious man, to be forestalled by the sun. Assiduous and fervent in prayer, he pondered with himself whatever he was to say in his sermon, Zeal for a pure conscience and for prayer, with confidence in God: asking God that first in himself, then in his hearers, he would bring forth that fruit which he knew to be more expedient for his glory and for the souls of the faithful. Hence his kindled sermons and fervid utterances came forth from the burning furnace of his breast: whence occasion was taken in the city and territory of Feltre to set these words round his image: Fiery is your speech, blessed Bernardino. When, through the untimely and troublesome visitation of those who came, time was lacking for composing his sermons, he had recourse to prayer, saying that they are composed more briefly and better by praying than by studying. All his hope he placed in God, the author of all good things, and in his Mother: wherever therefore he stayed to preach, he demanded through his companions the prayers of all the Religious and nuns, and of the devout men whom he knew, saying that the scattered seed of the divine word could not bear fruit except by the dew of heaven.

[4] Following the most sacred name of Jesus with the utmost reverence and the inmost affection of his heart, his love for Christ and his Mother, his humility, he had it often in his mouth; and burning vehemently toward the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, he let pass no occasion of increasing its worship everywhere. The praises of the Virgin Mary he celebrated perpetually, nor could he ever be satisfied to his wish with her encomiums. Rich in poverty, he carried only little bundles of books, despising all other worldly things. Rooted in humility, he willingly accepted no prelacy; and when he perceived that both himself and his sermons were commended as much for their eloquence as for their fruit, he said that all praise and thanks were to be rendered to God, whom it had pleased to show the majesty of his power through the weak and contemptible things of the world, and to produce those fruits in Christ's faithful in which he himself had the smallest share; no otherwise than a fly clinging to the horn [*] of a plowing ox. He asserted that the whole belonged to him who said: Without me you can do nothing.

[5] In all the prelacies which he exercised he undertook the meanest offices; his poverty, charity, fortitude. he begged bread from door to door, he swept the house, he washed the utensils, never sparing any labor. He burned with an incredible tenderness toward the poor, the sick, the afflicted; and to free the wretched and needy Christians from the greed of the Jews, what labors and tribulations did he not undergo? With a glad and pleasant countenance he received all most kindly, and cheered his sad companions, wearied by journey or by labor, with pious jests and modest pleasantries. Having undertaken a pilgrimage through all Italy, and stopping in almost no place, that he might gain all for Christ, he never wished to accept the help of a beast of burden ^b; but always going gladly on foot through snows, rains, rough roads, and horrid and harsh places.

[6] When he was being cast out of Florence, as we have related, a fiery ray was seen to leap from his mouth. He is made illustrious by miracles. At Lucca his hearers saw him surrounded with rays as he preached; at another time holding a most beautiful rose in his mouth ^c. At Aquila they saw an angel holding an open book before the face of the preacher ^d. Wonderful indeed was he in all his works, and he fully accomplished the prophecy uttered about him by St. Bernardino of Siena, reported by us elsewhere ^e. But that we may come down to his portentous works, we have thought that the following miracles should be narrated out of the manuscript Legend and Acts and out of the two processes compiled at Pavia and at Feltre, which for the sake of greater clarity and of avoiding tedium we shall distribute according to the various affections of diseases.

ANNOTATA.

* add suadebant, they urged

* rather cornu

MIRACLES AND BENEFITS

Collected by the same Luke Wadding.

By Wadding.

CHAPTER I.

Cripples raised up: epilepsy, disease of the joints, dropsy, hernia, the venereal disease and abscesses driven away: the blind, deaf, mute, lame, wounded and ulcerated healed.

[ ] Two crippled women at Pavia, and another at Venice, Catherine, wife of Giovanni a Navi ^a, for a whole month wholly contracted in her limbs and in no way able to move herself in bed, on that very night on which the Man of God died ^b beheld him appearing to her, shining with the splendor of rays, and heard him telling her to recite certain prayers; and at once, the disease being driven off, she rouses her husband and relates what had happened. Very early in the morning both spouses went on to the church, and beheld him dead whom they had thought to be still alive. From a like disease there was freed, long afterward, the daughter of Filippo Rivoldi, who had lain motionless as though dead for months. When the report reached Venice that Bernardino had died, a certain apothecary, the sinews below his waist being contracted, could not walk without crutches, and for the most part lay in bed. His wife Vincenzina, having heard what was related of Bernardino's wonderful works, prayed for her husband's health, and vowed that she would pay him a devout service. Though her husband had understood nothing of this, he marveled that he had been made whole, with no trace of the disease surviving; but when he learned of the vow from his wife, he asked that it be paid at once, and gave thanks to his Deliverer.

[2] and two boys at Crema, likewise crippled, are healed. In the city of Crema ^c the two-year-old son of Annibale, suffering violently in his leg, arm and whole right side, the sinews being drawn together, was a great burden and grief to his parents; for nothing was omitted that could be of profit, or that the physicians advised. At length friends urged them to make a vow and implore Bernardino's help. Wearied, they answered: "We do not know to whom we should pour out any more vows; so many and so great having been uttered, our head grows dull. Do you offer vows to him; whatever you promise, we shall pay." A wonderful thing! The vow having been uttered by those who urged it, the little boy recovered that night, and the mother rendered what they had promised. In the same city another little boy, powerless in his whole body, when his parents promised that they would bring him clad in the Franciscan habit to the holy Man's sepulcher,

recovered the use of his limbs.

[3] The son of Alessandro Mirandola, a man of Pavia ^d, had his lower parts numb and palsied. Others freed from a like evil, and a woman besides from an abscess. When they were healed by Bernardino's merits, the father hung a silver leg at his sepulcher. Bonacorsi, a citizen of Parma, likewise having invoked him, was healed of a numbness of three months. At Vicenza the daughter of Cipriano, whose shoulder and arm were numb, asking the help of this Blessed man, recovered. Antonio of Bari ^e, for ten years a paralytic, with his neck twisted and his mouth gaping open as far as the ear, remedies having been applied in vain, proved that patronage alone effectual, of Bernardino invoked. A certain woman of Crema, her sinews unstrung, crippled in her limbs, and laboring under a very hard abscess in the groin, when she had lain sick a long time and was bringing in a Jewish physician, and afterward remembered that Bernardino used to inveigh vehemently against those who allowed themselves to be treated by Jews, drove him away, and implored a remedy from Bernardino. And he did not long delay to bring it: for she at once began to be better, and after eight days recovered completely.

[4] Although this Herculean disease ^f yields to no remedy, Four epileptics healed through him; or rather the god-sent one, yet it was more than once overcome by Bernardino's power. Agnesina, wife of Simone Gracini, called the Friars of the convent of Pavia where the Man of God rests, and, holding out a silver image, said, "See, Fathers, I offer this for my daughter, who very often fell down bereft of mind and senses, but is now perfectly freed by the merits of your Bernardino." Antonio of Naples, at once a paralytic and an epileptic, being carried to the monument of the Servant of God, commended himself to him from his heart, and was on the spot healed of both sicknesses. Wherefore, while all who were present marveled, in the presence of the bishop's vicar, the miracle was written down by a notary's hand for the public and firm attestation of the matter, and a tablet was hung at the sepulcher.

[5] Alegrina Mazentina of Pavia, frequently falling with this disease and wretchedly afflicted, the disease of the joints driven off from two after a long and fruitless trial of remedies, by Bernardino's intercession was made firm in her steps, the disease being wholly driven out. Bartolomeo Simoni, one of the writers of Bernardino's acts ^g, testifies that his sister Cherubina, a Poor Clare of the monastery of St. Bernardino of Vicenza, laboring under the same grievous disease, was freed by a little paper on which the name of Jesus had been written by the Man of God's hand, hung about her neck. At Parma, while he was founding a Mount of Piety ^h and appointing officers to manage its affairs, he deputed as president of the whole business an upright and devout man, a lover of the poor. When he pleaded that he was vehemently vexed with gout in the feet and in the hands at fixed seasons of the year, and that therefore he could not undertake that burden, Bernardino praying to God, he felt himself thereafter free from that sharp pain. While Bernardino still lay upon the bier, Francesco de Caballis of Pavia ran up with others at the report of his death and holiness, though sick himself; and having touched the body, he returned home whole.

[6] In the town of Albano ⁱ, when a woman of advanced age, the water beneath her skin swelling immeasurably, was abandoned by the physicians as incurable, and dropsy driven off from two others. she vowed a vow that she would venerate Bernardino, would see to it that a likeness be made in his honor, and would send a painted tablet to his sepulcher; and the humor being dried up most swiftly, to the physicians' astonishment, all the swelling departed by divine power. In the city of Parma a little boy labored under this same lethargy, or watery languor, until, a vow having been uttered by his father to honor the memory of holy Bernardino, he was freed from the swelling of his belly.

[7] Various sufferers from hernia, some after a vow made, Having himself suffered from the troublesome evil of a hernia on both sides, Bernardino knew how to have compassion on those who bore the burden of falling entrails; and God seemed to have granted him all power over sufferers from hernia, who for Christ's sake had patiently borne this grievous affliction for a very long time. At Crema he perfectly healed Cristoforo, a gardener, gravely suffering from a rupture, after he had promised a silver image to be hung at the sepulcher; Friar Francesco Vario, a preacher, and also Friar Peregrino, a layman, when they had touched his drawers; and two others, young men of Crema, of whom one was the son of Bartolomeo de Vermicato, after they had uttered vows.

[8] some by imploring the Blessed man's help otherwise, Francesco, a surgeon, who sometimes freed others from this evil, when he could not cure himself, began to honor the Servant of God most religiously, and to visit the church in which his painted image had obtained veneration, and this especially after he heard that the Servant of God himself had long labored under that evil. And when once he prayed more ardently, on the following night he felt himself wholly freed, after he had lain under this tedious affliction for thirty-five years. At Padua Antonio Turchetto, suffering from hernia, when he was in violent pain at dawn, seemed to see Bernardino appear to him and ask: "Do you know me? Do not fear; make a vow, and you shall be saved." He vowed; and at once his entrails returned to their place and the swelling vanished. To attest the benefit received and to give thanks to his Healer, he sent a silver image to Pavia, to be fixed at the sepulcher.

[9] are restored to soundness. At the bank of the Nanzano ^k the Man of God, having compassion on his brother Friar Giovanni of Chio, of the Order of Minors Observant, who for nine years had carried with great trouble his entrails falling down on the right side, after prayer and vows relieved him of this ugly burden, the rupture being wonderfully closed up. Likewise he immediately healed Friar Peregrino of Nono, of the same Order, long burdened with this evil, and the son of Giacomino de Arena, after the father's prayers and tears. Peregrino wrote the matter as it happened, and had it confirmed by a public notary's attestation. Giacomino with his son went on to the sepulcher and offered thanks and gifts to their Benefactor. The son of Catherine of Pavia, wife of Giovanni Maria de Navi, of whom we spoke above, wearied for eight years with a rupture on both sides, felt himself relieved of this shameful burden while his father was praying for him a third time at the sepulcher of the Man of God.

[10] Invoked with vows, he drives out the venereal disease; Giovannino Piccapredi of Pavia, oppressed with a grave fever and the most foul French disease, as it were with a kind of leprosy compounded of the joint-disease, an abscess, and itching over the whole body, and thence made deaf besides, his wife vowing that she would see to it that some Masses be read, that she would offer her girdle set with small stones, and would place a tablet at the sepulcher, escaped whole, all the depraved afflictions being driven off. From the same horrible and almost incurable sickness Paolino de Rubeis of the same city, after great pustules had broken out over his whole body, and after he had promised that he would carry to the tomb a wax image equal to his own stature, was perfectly cleansed; and many others were freed from this shameful contagion by his merits.

[11] That the various abscesses of many were dried up by him is attested by many wax tokens and painted tablets at his monument. he purges abscesses of various kinds; Bernardino healed Maria Romaria of Pavia, despaired of by the physicians, from a fistula, likewise from a swelling of the throat and from a light abscess which they call Bacium, and from a flux of the belly. He also fully freed the youth Alessandro, son of the Pavian doctor Giovanni Crizzi, from a like evil of five years' standing; and Bartolomeo de Caponibus, own brother of Ippolita the Poor Clare, of whom below, from scrofula, and at Florence from a dangerous abscess of the head, much matter having been discharged through his ears immediately after the vow was conceived. In the same city a heavy and hard abscess, or malignant tumor, curable by no remedy, vexed Catherine, wife of Antonio Quocieco, for a long time below the flanks. The physicians, despairing of the woman's recovery, ceased to treat her. The covering of a bolster or pillow having been applied to the affected part, the abscess at once broke ^l, and in a short time the woman was restored to perfect health.

[12] We shall bring forward one or two instances for each of the benefits conferred. he gives sight to the blind, hearing to a deaf woman, speech to the mute, At Pavia Bernardina, daughter of Bassano de Pagani, deprived of both eyes by a long infirmity; and in the county of Pavia, in the countryside of Gabolo, another, daughter of Bernardo, blinded by a multitude of blotches and an abundance of infected humor, were given light, vows having been uttered. Others received the same benefit. There dwelt near the church of St. James, in which the Man of God rests, a certain woman long growing deaf, perceiving absolutely nothing for many years with either ear: prayers being poured out to the newly dead Bernardino, her ears were opened and she began to hear perfectly. The daughter of Giovannina of Molinatio near Pavia — whose mother had herself been freed from a pain of the head — mute and motionless for five years by the force of a long disease, after a vow was uttered recovered speech also along with health. In the same city the boy of Stefano Eustachio, mute for ten days, prayer having been made to the Servant of God, spoke perfectly.

[13] Giovannina Flocca, crippled in both legs and never walking at Pavia without crutches, he restores their step to the lame or to those otherwise unable to walk. praying at Bernardino's tomb and obtaining her wish, hung her staves at the monument and went away joyfully, walking by her own strength. That Giacomo Sicco at Cremona was on the spot restored whole by merely commending himself to this Servant of Christ, public documents corroborated by witnesses confirm. Francesco the German, lame in one leg; Giovanni Antonio Curzio of Pavia, his foot and leg swollen for three years and by no means able to walk; the wife of Francesco Choortis, always leaning on crutches; Margherita de Eustachiis, long limping with an inveterate hip complaint — by the power and merits of the Servant of God, their steps being made firm, thereafter walked with upright body. Friar Giovanni, a lay Minorite Observant, had borne with pain for four months a knee which could be healed by no art; a prayer having been made and the body of the Servant of God touched while it lay on the bier, he rises up healed ^m. At almost the same time Friar Lazzaro of Monasteriolo in Piedmont, suffering in both legs, coming down into the church and praying, and having venerated the sepulcher of the Servant of God, is freed from his disease.

[14] Near Alessandria of the Statielli ⁿ in Insubria a woman fell from a litter onto a pole, whereby her belly was ruptured and her entrails protruded. Being carried to bed, A woman fallen from a litter, a boy gravely wounded in the head, she began to invoke Bernardino's name, and having fallen asleep a little while, when she awoke she felt her belly closed up. In the village of St. Leonard, three thousand paces from Pavia, a young lad, holding a knife in his hand, falls upon the point, which passed from his forehead through to the opposite part of his head. His mother, running up and with difficulty drawing out the knife which stuck in the bones, sees blood flowing in a stream from both sides, and stops up the holes with linen bandages. Thus gravely and dangerously wounded on both sides she carries him to bed, commends him with vows and prayers to Bernardino, and on the following morning beholds him whole without any injury. In testimony of so great a thing and in thanksgiving the mother hung at the sepulcher the shape of a head and the very instrument of the wounds ^o.

[15] and others gravely wounded, are healed. Contino Stradiotto of Bergamo [p], mortally wounded in the head in the war undertaken about this time against the French for the liberation of Italy; Franchino of Brescia, hurt in the foot by a beam falling from above and afflicted with huge pain; the little son of Sebastiano, a tailor of Padua, falling from his cradle and dashing his head to death, and reckoned lifeless for three hours; Andrea, a barber of Pavia, wounded in the leg by a fall; Gabriele, born in the same city, thrown from his horse to the ground and wounded in the head,

and suffering for seven years with his whole body bruised — all these felt the wonderful help of Bernardino invoked.

[16] Foul ulcers removed. Domenica, born at Monte Lugano [q], living in the territory of Verona, had borne for four years an ulcer in her breast; and when the surgeons determine to apply fire to it, she is terrified and secretly implores the blessed Man's help. The surgeons return as agreed to cauterize it; but they perceive the ulcer healed; and while they scarcely believe it, they bid it be shown them. When they saw it, they worthily praised the power of God in his Saints. A creeping and devouring ulcer sorely tormented Giacobina the Greek, who had her dwelling not far from the church of St. Justina at Pavia; and an ulcer a palm's breadth wide in her belly, out of which worms crawled and an intolerable stench broke forth, greatly afflicted Giovanna, wife of Ambrosino Strada; but Bernardino's mercy heals both.

ANNOTATA.

p Bergomum, in the vernacular also called Bergamo, formerly of the duchy of Milan, now a city of the Venetian dominion, is the head of the territory of the same name, and episcopal under the archbishop of Milan.

q In Bernardino of Clastidium it is called in Italian da Monte Lugano, which place is unknown to me, unless perhaps Lugano is meant, a town of Italy under the dominion of the Swiss and the head of the prefecture of Lugano, on the border of the duchy of Milan, to which it formerly belonged.

CHAPTER II.

Many other evils of the body driven away: offspring obtained: conjugal love restored: detractors chastised: men rescued from imminent death: the dead restored to life.

[ ] Legs and arms broken or hurt, Domenico Longo, a sawyer or cutter ^a, whose leg a heavy falling beam had broken, crying out for forty days without any rest, at last fled to the help of the Man of God; and having invoked him, he at once rose up free. A certain Dalmatian priest, a Minorite, when by the fall of a beam his foot had been so crushed that, among the rest, a certain small bone could by no means be set, and he had been sent to Pavia to be cured, since there was no remedy here either, brought it about that he was carried to the sepulcher of the Man of God. Having touched it, he said with a sigh, "O Bernardino, you who heal others who are strangers, one of your own asks you to bring help to him who suffers wretchedly." As soon as he had spoken, the little bone returned to its place, and he returned home, leaping and exulting.

[18] A little boy, whose small arm was broken in three places, turned to his weeping mother and said: "Stay your tears, mother; Bernardino will heal me if you bring me to his sepulcher." and he made one whole even while he was alive. She carried him in her arms, prayed, and carried him back sound. A man of Crema, finding no remedy for his hurt arm and hand, after four years turned to Bernardino and received what he had despaired of from every other quarter. A poor woman, both her arms broken for fourteen years, unable to do any work or to seek her food, by a happy chance met Bernardino, and asked that he would have compassion on a most unhappy creature. He charged her to recite certain prayers and to perform works of piety; and he bade two loaves be handed to her; and when she refused to take them, saying that she needed not bread but arms, "Why," said Bernardino, "do you lie? I know that you suffer want and are hungry." She, having confessed that not one morsel was left at home, took them, prayed, and did what the Man of God had commanded; and a little after, both arms being made whole, she began to work cheerfully and to perform the services of her house ^b.

[19] He freed various persons from various fevers, Galeazzo Visconti of Milan ^c, who afterward obtained the county of Pavia, greatly wasted by a quartan fever, was restored to his former health by the merits of this holy Man. From the same evil Ubertino of Spisa ^d, to whom Bernardino appeared by night foretelling his health, and Francesco Stratia and Maddalena a Candio, were wonderfully freed by his help. Luchino Re (so surnamed from his family), long suffering from a tertian fever and a trembling of the heart; Francesco Cohortis of Pavia named above; Elisabetta, wife of the Bassano likewise indicated above — when they too were long vexed with this kind of fever, vows having been uttered and Bl. Bernardino's help implored, they were made whole.

[20] and from the accompaniments of fevers, From a continuous fever he recalled to perfect health Francesco Sancio; Ludovico Lumaccio, whose judgment the force and malignity of the disease had disturbed and whose tongue it had bound; the son of Martino Guardi of Brescia, out of his mind and speaking madly; Bernardino Asia, rector of a certain town, burdened with a threefold daily paroxysm, whom he had before freed from a spitting of blood brought on by a fall; and Gregorio de Zacchonis of Pavia from a sudden and acute fever with pustules scattered over his body. He drove off a pestilential fever from the keeper of the wine cellar of count Giovanni Borgini, by the power of the name of Jesus written on a little paper by his hand and bound about his neck; a hectic fever in its last stage, going on to the drying up of the bones, from Benedetta, wife of Bernardo Caudio; and from a sudden and burning fever he healed Alessandro Ariosto, a citizen and merchant of Ferrara ^e.

[21] Very many evil afflictions of the limbs, That we may begin from the head: Franceschina, wife of count Giorgio of Pavia, suffered gravely in the head; Simona de Piscariis, wife of Agostino Sari, from a vertigo of four years; the wife of Bartolomeo the tailor, from megrim and gripings of the stomach; Giovanni Maria Camerito of Pavia, from a swelling or tubercle growing on his eyelid of such size that it took away his sight for a year and a half; Gabriele Marescalco, son of Blasino, the right nostril of his nose being stopped up so that he could not breathe through it for seven months; Giovanni Manfredi of the counts of Gambarana, from a venomous abscess of the throat of five months; a certain woman from the town of St. Angelo, her mouth twisted to the right ear; another of Brescia, from a burst vein of the chest; a certain merchant of Bergamo, one shoulder most grievously affected, many remedies having been applied in vain and various baths used; a woman from a long-standing pain of the middle finger, after many soothing applications tried in vain; and Catherine, whom we have mentioned, wife of Giovanni Maria a Navi, from a burned arm — none of these could find any solace for so many evils except the single intercession of Bernardino above, through which they all fared well.

[22] Antonia, daughter of Giovanni Canavio of Pavia, bore for more than a year, with great danger and pain, a creeping cancer in her breast diseases, discomforts which was making toward her heart, and hoped for no remedy from any other quarter, though she had tried many, but from Bernardino alone. By him at last she was heard, the cancer and the pestiferous veins being plucked out. The wife of Stefano de Vaglia of Milan languished with both breasts affected and dried up; nor could she suckle the little son hanging at her breasts. Prayers having been sent to Bernardino, he restored the dying child with a breast filled from heaven. From colic pains he freed the doctor Antonio Giorgio and Gaspare Caldario, brought almost to death. From the stone, long and troublesomely lodged, Francesco Cortesi, doctor of laws.

[23] From the sciatic pain, or hip disease, which they call Sciatica, and dangers from men and from beasts, he drove away. he healed three; from pains of the whole body and a contraction of the sinews for two months he perfectly healed Elena of Padua. From a periodic frenzy he wonderfully calmed Friar Serafino of Pavia, who felt the approaching languor and commended himself to the Friars (for unless they had restrained him in his raging he would have horribly torn his head and limbs by beating them). He freed Lucino Cohortis from hemorrhoids, and Francesco his kinsman from the stone; several from shipwreck; others from prison — especially a certain man of Feltre, by appearing to him and leading him by the hand, with no gate broken and none opened; and also Lucrezia, wife of Leonardo Olivelli, from a swoon of sixteen hours, and a little after from the colic; and even irrational animals — a horse, a sheep and an ox — he recalled from various diseases, being besought by the prayers of their masters.

[24] Nothing afflicts married women more than barrenness, He obtained offspring for the barren. and nothing consoles them more than the bearing of children, who are reckoned the bond of parents, or the clasps of spouses, and who knit and confirm the love of both. Many destitute of this solace came to Bernardino, for whom he obtained from the Lord the benefit which they desired. Three of these are recorded: one of Padua, another of Brescia, a third of Pavia, and these barren for a long time, who at last, vows having been conceived, were made fruitful. The wife of Jacopo Mercatore of Paris had brought neither of the two children she had conceived to life. Being with child a third time, she vowed that, if Bernardino brought help, she would clothe the infant in the Franciscan habit. A beautiful boy was born, and in due time put on the garment which his mother had promised.

[25] At that time when Charles, king of the French, struck terror into all Italy, He succors the plundered, he reconciles spouses. a triumpher and victor everywhere ^f, certain muleteers of Insubria, carrying many wares, fell in with French plunderers, who stripped them of all their goods and beasts. But they, commending themselves to Bernardino, recovered everything — which was by no means to be hoped for from plundering soldiers. A certain man of Cordona ^g, enticed and drawn away by lust for another woman, drove his wife out of the house and brought in a concubine. She, being cast off, since she had no other help, had recourse to vows. She promises four pounds of her own money every year in perpetuity for the advancement of the Servant of God's honor,

and begins to offer it. A little after, by a wonderful conversion of the man, she is called back home, the adulteress being driven out, and lives peaceably and lovingly with her husband.

[26] A detractor of the Blessed man is amended after punishment: In the town of Candia near Casale of Montferrat ^h a certain smattering youth went over to the opinion of those who contradicted Bernardino concerning the erection of pious Mounts, and asserted too obstinately that the Servant of God had openly approved and taught usuries, on account of the small coin which, as we have often said, was to be given from the loan for the salary of the officers. Being warned to desist from detraction of this kind, he refused, until he felt the divine vengeance upon himself. He was holding a knife in his hand, but it fell; and while he tries to catch it as it falls, he opens and draws in his legs, and drives the knife into the muscle of one of them. Being grievously afflicted, he is admonished to confess the fault committed against Bernardino and to beg pardon. When he had done so, he was healed of the wound.

[27] the same happens in the case of a woman, Cosma Rebuffia of Pavia more than once despised the Man of God when he inveighed vehemently against the vanities of women; but being warned by a kinswoman that, if she wished to escape certain domestic tribulations, she should commend herself to Bernardino and hang candles at his sepulcher, she indignantly answered that she would first trample under her feet what she had at home. A little after, the time of her childbearing came, and the infant, lying crosswise in the womb, put forth one hand and a foot. The midwife, terrified, being a venerator of Bernardino, cried out that the woman in travail should invoke his help in so great a danger. She did so, acknowledged her fault, asked pardon, and devoted the little boy to the divine service; and at once he comes forth whole, and the mother is freed from her danger.

[28] and of another who did not fulfill her vow, and of another calumniator. The wife of Jacopo of Villaverla near Vicenza, being gravely ill, promised that she would go to Pavia and venerate the sepulcher of the Man of God, provided that health be granted her that she might be able to accomplish the journey. Being freed from her sickness, she is wearied by so long a journey, and obtains absolution from her vow from a religious man of the convent of the Holy Crown, of the Order of Preachers, who had the power. She at once paid the penalty of her faithless promise, falling back into a graver disease; but the vow being repeated, and being again made whole, she faithfully paid what she had twice promised. A certain noble count of Valisio, greatly hostile to Bernardino because his son had been received by him into the Order of St. Francis, inflicted what troubles he could. Falling sick, after various remedies and after many Heavenly ones invoked in vain, at last, turning to Bernardino, he received a remedy from him ⁱ.

[29] A boy from a fall, others from the plague, others from asthma, The boy of Agnesina Pelagalla of Pavia fell from the top of a stair, and his mother laid him on the bed as he was breathing his last, and vowed that she would see to it that a threefold offering of the Mass be made in Bernardino's honor. At once the little boy, as if roused from sleep, rose up without any pain. At Parma the wife of Giovanni Battista Prati Sotto had died of the plague, and their son seemed to be following his mother with the same infection; but a vow having been conceived by the father, he escaped the present danger of life. On a noble and very large estate near Pavia, which they commonly call Barco, this same contagion was raging, and some of the tenants were in danger; but the wife of Tommaso Raucha vowing, the pestilence was routed from that whole place. Peregrino Mantovano of Parma was vehemently vexed by a long sickness of drawing breath, so that he thought death near; and since no medicines brought help, turning to Bernardino, he resolved and vowed to visit his tomb. When he had done so, all difficulty of breathing at once ceased.

[30] From the same evil of asthma, inveterate for twenty-four years and threatening imminent destruction, Antonia Calva, wife of Gregorio of Pavia, was freed, and others in danger of their life in other ways, are made safe. after she had vowed that she would see to it that the sacrifice of the Mass be offered in memory of Bernardino. For as soon as the vow was paid, she at once obtained an easy drawing of breath. The wife of Nicola the Fleming, a physician, when she was reckoned by him as dead, Bernardino being invoked, is freed from every evil. The neck of Agostino Margrero was wholly cut through by one of those hooks with which thorn-bushes are cut, and the covering of a bolster once assigned to Bernardino's use drove off imminent death. The servant of Gaspare Ferrara, a jurist, while he plays with others, is pierced in the thigh and at once falls into convulsions ^k, and indeed is reckoned dead. But when he promises to go to Bernardino's sepulcher, he rises from his bed whole.

[31] In the city of Lucca ^l a certain soldier, disabled by six wounds from the French, being commended to Bernardino, is made whole as soon as possible in every part except the amputated hand, which they could not find among the corpses. The son of Sebastiano, a shoemaker of Padua, whom we said above to have fallen from his cradle and mortally dashed his head, having grown bigger, fell into the neighboring river; being carried by the force of the waters into the mill-wheels near Ponte Corvo, he lay long drowned. His mother commends him to Bernardino as though dead, and received him alive when he was drawn out of the river. At Milan a noble matron, for whom funeral rites were already being prepared, rises up free, her husband vowing. That the son of Giovanni Gursorio, a youth, was delivered at Pavia from a desperate sickness is recorded by a silver statue with the miracle inscribed, hung at the sepulcher.

[32] The son of Francesco Gravanato of Pavia, after a long and continuous fever loathing all food, brought to their last extremity, escape whole. at last for three days neither ate nor drank. Brought to his last extremity, he seemed to be breathing out his spirit, when his father asked Bernardino to have mercy. He was heard, his son's former health being at once restored. Ippolita de Caponibus, in the monastery of St. Clare at Florence, brought by a most grave disease to the last breath of life, seemed on a Saturday to have given up her soul; and since no sign of surviving life appeared, many ways of examining her having been used, she remained thus motionless until the Tuesday. One of the Sisters, hearing that many miracles of Bernardino were reported, commended to him this wretched Sister, languishing or almost dead, and laid over her his little cloak, which was kept in that monastery; and at once the poor weak woman gave signs of living, and after three days she who for three days had seemed dead walked on her own feet, whole and vigorous.

[33] A silver likeness of a boy, solidly wrought, was sent from Rome A boy at Rome, and another at Pavia, dead, are restored to life: in the year 1500, which is kept in the sacristy of the convent of St. James, where the Man of God rests, on whose base these words are carved: This boy was recalled from death to life by the merits of blessed Bernardino of Feltre. A certain professor of Grammar at Pavia, lying in bed with his wife and little son, waking in the deep night, when he did not hear his son's breath coming and going as usual, rousing his wife, said, How is the boy? She, having felt him, perceived the little body cold, and a candle being lighted, sees him lifeless ^m. At her cry the household ran up, and the next morning the neighbors weep with them. But the father says, Why so many tears? and snatches up his son; he carries him to Bernardino's tomb, promises many things in his honor, and among these that he would see to it that the boy should wear the habit of St. Francis for three years, provided that he came to life again by Bernardino's prayers. Scarcely are these promises made when the little boy is recalled to life. This miracle the bishop's vicar examined strictly, and approved it as confirmed by seven eyewitnesses.

[34] likewise a third, until he be baptized Likewise examined and approved are the things which follow. The wife of Filippo Doglana, a noble man of Pavia, brought forth a living infant; but while the midwife and the kinswomen were laying the new mother in bed, the boy expires. There follows the greatest wailing of all, and they grieve the more because through the carelessness of the bystanders he had died without Baptism. At last there is discussion of burial, and where he was to be buried outside the sacred cemetery. While these things are being discussed, the grandmother, greatly devoted to Bernardino, takes the cold little grandson into her arms, and with the highest vows and frequent tears adjures and asks him to intercede with God that the child be restored at least for a short time, until he be cleansed with the sacred waters. The father, saying that these prayers were vain and that the time was being spent to no purpose, sees with wonder the infant first gape, then move and weep, and after the grace of Baptism endowed with another and longer life. Public records were drawn up about this matter, confirmed by the testimonies of the parents, the midwife, the household, and the strangers who were present.

[35] [and a fourth, on the very point of being carried out for burial, come to life again.] While the fame of so great a power fills regions not only near but also remote, and glides even as far as Sardinia, a certain woman of Piedmont, married there in the city of Sassari ⁿ, having lost her son by a long sickness, has recourse to the same Consoler of the afflicted. For when the priests approach to carry out the dead, the grieving mother, impatient that her son should be snatched from her forever, rushes into the crowd, embraces her son closely, and with bended knees and eyes lifted to heaven says with a mother's love: "Almighty and most merciful God, I humbly ask that, if the works of your servant Bernardino of Feltre have ever been pleasing to you, you would now show it, by restoring, for his merits, the breath of life to this my dead son." A wonderful thing! Amid his mother's arms and tears the son rises up whole. The grief and mourning of all is changed into gladness, and they redouble their thanksgivings to God and to his Servant.

[36] An altar erected to him at Sassari for this reason. The city, moved by so great a miracle, erected an altar to Bernardino, at which it decreed that the Sacrifice should be offered to God every year in memory of the deed. These are the things I have had to transcribe concerning Bernardino's miracles, whose fame everywhere stirred up the peoples, so that very many ran to implore his help, and countless numbers to show him veneration, and all praised God with the highest praises in his Servant.

ANNOTATA.

APPENDIX I ON THE MIRACLES AND BENEFITS

[ ] Collected by Bernardino of Clastidium.

From the Italian.

Why these miracles are given here. Since Bernardino of Clastidium and Innocenzo of Pavia, in their Lives of Bl. Bernardino of Feltre written and published after tome 7 of Wadding's Annals had been printed at Lyons in the year 1648, recounted some miracles and benefits besides those which he himself had reported, I promised in §1 of this Commentary that I too would give them, partly in their places in the Commentary, and partly and chiefly in this Appendix. I begin therefore with Bernardino of Clastidium, who brought forward things of two kinds or of two authorities: some out of the processes drawn up at Pavia for his canonization, others received from elsewhere. The former, which deserve the greater credit, I shall set first here in the order in which they occur in him on his various pages; for since he has assigned to some a year and to others no note of time, I cannot assign to each a certain time and the order in which they happened.

[2] Being refused by a boatman, he crosses the river Po with his companion, And so at p. 168 and the following, citing in the margin the processes of Pavia, he has this concerning his prodigious crossing of the Po with his companion, in the Italian tongue, like the rest. When Bernardino, not far from the city of Pavia, wished to cross the river Po, which had then swollen violently and had flooded the neighboring fields all around, he most humbly begged the ferryman that he would deign to take him into the boat with the rest for charity's sake and set him down on the other bank. He answered that he would gladly do it, provided he paid the due fare like all the rest. To this the Servant of God replied that he had no money: for the Friars Minor were not permitted to handle it; but that blessed God would repay him a far more abundant reward on his behalf. But the inhuman boatman rebuffed him with a sneer as he said this, and however many prayers the Servant of Christ added, he refused to hear him and did not admit him into the boat.

[3] using his cloak for a boat, and this without its being wetted. Then indeed Bernardino said to his companion: Trust that God will be with us; and soon, having taken the little cloak from his shoulders, he spread it upon the water, and full of heavenly confidence went down upon it together with his companion, and, held up by the waves, began to sail, while the others who were present looked at one another in amazement and as if rapt out of themselves, and the boatman cried out to him to come back and be carried over without any fare at all. But the Servant of God, who was now happily borne in a nobler vessel, with the wind of divine grace breathing, went on with the journey he had begun until he came out on the opposite bank. There a miracle appeared added to a miracle: for the little cloak was neither wet nor even lightly touched by the water, that the power of the Most High and the greatness of the merits of his servant Bernardino might shine forth more manifestly. The year in which this happened Bernardino of Clastidium did not set down, and therefore I could not insert it in its place in the Commentary, in which I have kept the chronological order along with Wadding.

[4] He sees the Crucified bowing his head to a young man: For the same reason I subjoin also another deed from the same Bernardino, citing the same processes at p. 170 and the following. When the Servant of God was preaching in the cathedral church of Pavia, he saw the image of the Crucified Lord bow its head to a certain young man entering that church, and as it were greet him. Bernardino, having observed this, and the sermon being finished, summoned to himself the young man, who was giving his labor to the study of letters in the public schools, and asked him to say what particular good he had done. When the youth marveled and asked to what end so unusual a question was put, he answered that he had been moved to put it because he had seen the image of the Crucified bow its head to him and greet him. Then the young man related: I was on the point of violating a nun, when I felt myself rebuked by an inward voice saying: Beware of doing it, for she is Christ's bride. Then I said: If she be Christ's bride, by no means, O God, do I wish him to suffer this injury; and restraining myself by force, I left the nun untouched and without any stain brought upon her virginity. But this, said Bernardino, is why the Crucified greeted you: amend yourself manfully, and do not abuse the grace of God. This young man afterward corrected himself strenuously, and became a Religious of great austerity. There follows in the same place the miracle of the spring raised by him in the convent of the Minors Observant at Feltre while he still lived among mortals, which we have already given in the Commentary.

[5] Out of the same processes, at p. 136, among other things which we have reported in the same Commentary concerning the Blessed man's prophetic spirit, he foretells that a serpent lies in a flagon that had been stolen. he had premised this: At Pavia a certain noble man had destined two flagons of wine for the Servant of God: but the servant brought only one to him, keeping the other for himself. Bernardino, knowing the matter by divine revelation and accepting the flagon, said: Beware, son, of drinking from the wine of the other; for in it there is a serpent. But the servant, seeing himself found out, covered with shame, hastened to the other flagon; and behold, wonderful to say, he found in it a serpent with its head thrust out and hanging down, just as the Blessed man had foretold to him. The other things which I subjoin happened at the same Blessed man's invocation after his happy death.

[6] At page 186, again citing the same processes, he writes this: A hernia healed by relics of the Blessed man's garment. Margherita de Chierici, servant of the lady Ludovica Garetti, being grievously ruptured with the evil of a hernia, and not enduring for shame that it should be examined by anyone, was in great straits of mind. But since she had by her a patch from the Blessed man's habit, she resolved to use it as a remedy; and having devoutly recited in the Servant of God's honor and reverence the Lord's Prayer and the Angelic salutation, she signed the injured part with that patch and went to bed. The sick woman had signed herself in the evening; but the next morning she rose from her bed whole, nor did she ever suffer that evil again, not only the hernia ceasing but also the pains of the head and eyes that had arisen from it.

[7] The second is read out of the same processes at p. 189 and the following. A nun's contracted leg is wonderfully restored: In the year 1628 Paola Ortensia Grumelli, a Benedictine nun at Pavia in the monastery of St. Felix, having through a long infirmity of one year and nine months her left leg so foully contracted that it was about a palm's breadth shorter than the right, the physicians' work availing nothing, and the nuns planning to make crutches for the armpits, or to procure for her a shoe with a cork heel a palm higher than the other, by which the shortness of the leg might be made up, so that she might at last some time be able to rise from the bed to which she lay continually fastened — she herself vowed to the Blessed man that, if she recovered health, she would send to his tomb a silver image and a vessel of oil to feed the lamp which burned before the Blessed man's body. On a certain night, as she slept, she felt her leg strongly drawn out, but with such pain that, waking, she cried: O Jesus, Mary, what is this? Soon she heard a voice saying: Do not fear, daughter; for I am Bernardino, whom you called to your help: wherefore you shall be healed, and this grace has even now been granted you. The nun at once stretched out her leg and felt it without any sense of pain, and when day dawned she went out of her bed, walking about the monastery and filling all the nuns with wonder; nor did she thereafter feel anything of that evil.

[8] The third, for which the same processes are cited, is read at pp. 197 and 198. A thorn which for seven years had stuck fixed in a foot, The lady Ludovica Garetti (who was perhaps the same as she whom I mentioned just now at num. 6), being most devoted to the Blessed man, had a small piece of his garment, and kept it very reverently as sacred relics, and out of charity lent it to various persons, many of whom were prodigiously healed. Among these was one Margherita de Profeti, who for the space of seven years had borne with grievous torment a thick thorn fixed in her foot, nor could it be driven out by any ointments, oils or fomentations she used, since it had broken off very deep within the foot. It happened that the lady Ludovica sent the said patch to a certain sick woman in the village of Inverno; and the woman who carried it went to Margherita's house and exhorted her to use so holy a relic for her own healing.

[9] after the application of the relics and a vow made, comes out of its own accord. Margherita, taking it with great faith and devotion, vowed to the Blessed man that she would see to it that a Mass be said at his altar in the church of St. James, if she obtained health. Then with the patch she signed her foot with a threefold sign of the Cross, and thereafter, ceasing from all use of human remedy, committed the whole care to the Servant of God. Within very few days there was cast out of its own accord the thorn, easily as long as a finger's breadth and hard as a nail, which she had carried for seven years with huge swelling of the foot and with torments and frequent laments, by which the neighbors who heard them in their own houses were moved to compassion. So he there: and Margherita rightly and devoutly ascribed to his patronage that spontaneous expulsion of the thorn, after so many medicines applied in vain for so long a time, and happening shortly after the invocation of Bl. Bernardino; yet it must be confessed that in this whole account no miracle at least shines out clearly.

[10] He wards off ruin from the monastery of Poor Clares at Feltre. Of another kind is what he has at p. 202, citing the processes of Feltre and of Pavia. At Feltre, he says, in the year 1564, from the long and heavy rains which fell in the month of June, the torrent Cormeda swelled in such a manner that

flooding most widely the whole quarter of the city which is called Borgo delli Terzi, it struck into the inhabitants the fear of death and destruction. And when the flood was also encircling the monastery of St. Mary of the Angels, erected by Bernardino while he lived (as we said in the Commentary, num. 354 and following), the Blessed man was seen to set a most mighty bulwark against the impetuous fury of the swiftest waters on behalf of the monastery which he had himself founded. And that the vision was not empty but true, the prodigious outcome proved. For the swollen torrent tore up two most solid stone bridges, laid flat the strongest buildings of that quarter, and stirred up many other ruins horrid to see; but the said monastery remained unhurt and free of all damage.

[11] A toe cut off from the sacred body by stealth, Much more wonderful is what is read from the processes of Pavia in the same place at p. 203 and the following. Friar Giuseppe of Carmagnola (Carmagnola, commonly Carmagnola, is a city of Piedmont in the marquisate of Saluzzo), a priest of the Minors Observant and sacristan of the convent of St. James, cut off one toe from the Blessed man's body and gave it to Friar Francesco of Serravalle, a lay brother of the same Order and keeper of the infirmary of the convent of Voghera (a town called by the Italians Voghera, in the territory of Pavia). Friar Francesco wrapped these relics he had received in cotton, and, enclosing them in a little box, carried them to Voghera and kept them locked up. On a certain day, visiting a certain woman named Anna, daughter of Giovanni Giacomo de Ricciis, and finding her laboring under a most burning fever, he returned swiftly to the convent, opened the little box, and, taking out the toe, wrapped it in a thin cloth of pure silk; and having so placed it in his sleeve, he returned to the sick woman with the intention of hanging it about her neck.

[12] When he had come there, having unfolded the silk cloth, he found only the cotton, but the toe was gone; [after the fever is healed by its wrapping, it returns of its own accord to the foot.] which yet he himself had a little before taken into his hands and wrapped in the said cloth. Astonished at this event, he told no one, but bound the silk cloth with the cotton about the sick woman's neck; and she, after a short sleep of an eighth part of an hour, knocked with her staff, at which signal her mother, running up with Friar Francesco, found her free from all fever, and she herself left her bed the next day. After this Friar Francesco, having set out for Pavia, told the sacristan what had happened concerning the toe; but he answered that this was no wonder, since the toe had returned to its own place and was joined again to the Blessed man's foot, and adhered as before. Concerning this miracle a most diligent examination was instituted, and it was found most true.

[13] Memorable also is what he relates from the aforesaid processes at p. 210 and the following. [A man brought to the last extremity of life, through the Blessed man's apparition] Master Pietro Paolo Pecorara, a noble of Pavia, was oppressed by a continuous fever and brought to such a state that he could neither turn nor move himself in bed, and had his tongue so swollen that he could not be understood when he spoke. Having now been refreshed with the sacred Viaticum and held by the physicians for a man whose life was despaired of, about midnight, while watch was being kept in his chamber with a light burning, he heard a voice saying to him: What are you doing, Pietro Paolo? Be of good heart, for you shall recover from this infirmity. Hearing the voice, he suddenly (what he had not been able to do before) turned from his left to his right side, and plainly saw Bl. Bernardino standing leaning on the bedstead, in the habit of the Friars Minor with cord and hood, and without a cloak; who went on to give him courage and to say twice that he should not fear, because he was to be healed.

[14] At last, after he had conversed for some space of time with the sick man, is restored to health. talking with him and consoling him with great kindness and familiarity, he suddenly vanished from his eyes. Then indeed the sick man, wholly strengthened, although before he had not been able to speak, called out to his wife, who had fallen asleep during the watch at the foot of the bed, and said with a clear voice: Lady, I bring you good news; I shall not die, for Bl. Bernardino was just now here and three times bade me be of a glad heart, because I am to be healed. His wife was astounded at words so clear, since before he could not be understood; yet she thought that he was raving from the force of the disease. But the outcome showed that it was no raving: for at once he was manifestly better, and, being perfectly healed a little after, he survived many years, in each of which, in memory of the benefit received and in testimony of a grateful mind, he had a Mass sung at the Blessed man's altar.

[15] At pages 213 and 214 the aforesaid Bernardino, again citing the processes, Frequent and violent colic pains says this concerning the removal of the torments of colic: In the year 1606 master Pietro Paolo Orlandi, a physician of the city of Pavia, was so frequently afflicted with colic pains that for the space of four years he used to fall back into them every fifteenth or twentieth day. Once about the end of April they seized him so violently that for four continuous days they racked him and brought him into danger of his life, no help at all being given by the many remedies which he had been accustomed to use and had then used. On the night before the feast of the holy apostles James and Philip the sick man told his wife that, if she wished him safe, she should go with their sons to commend him to the Blessed man and to entreat that he would free him from such bitter torments: for it had come into his mind that night to ask this grace of the Blessed man, and he was certain that he would obtain it.

[16] after a vow uttered are driven off forever. In the morning, therefore, his wife with her four sons went to the church of St. James, where, kneeling down in the Blessed man's chapel, with the inmost affection of her heart she commended her husband to him, adding a vow to procure the celebration of one Mass at his altar if his torments should cease or be lessened. Her prayers finished, she returned home; and behold, quite unexpectedly, her husband had gone out of bed sound and whole, and came to meet her to unbar the door for her; and in that same morning he visited three or four of the sick whom he was treating, nor did he ever afterward feel colic pains, although he survived among the living more than twenty years. On the credit of the same processes, at p. 216 and the following, he brings forward a twofold example of Bl. Bernardino's help happily implored for a prosperous childbirth.

[17] After premature births, using the Blessed man's girdle, she bears happily: The first runs thus: Paola Veronica, born at Pavia, being unable to bring the children she conceived to maturity, having now been five times with child, had as often suffered miscarriage. Being again pregnant, and fearing the same for her child, she obtained Bernardino's hempen girdle from the Fathers of the convent of St. James. When the pains of childbirth came on about the beginning of August in the year 1626, she herself, invoking Bl. Bernardino's help, girded herself with that cord, and at once the pains ceased; and as often as they arose, she girded herself and they left off. By this remedy she brought her child to the time of a mature birth, and happily bore a daughter, sound and lively, on whom out of grateful memory of the benefit received she had the name Francesca Bernardina bestowed at the sacred font of Baptism. The other is subjoined immediately in this manner.

[18] another likewise in danger, a vow being made, is prosperously delivered. The lady Marta, wife of master Giovanni Antonio de i Re, eight months with child, at Pavia in the year 1650, on the thirteenth day of August, about the third hour of the night, was seized with the pains of childbirth, and, fearing what afterward happened, she ordered the midwife to be called at once; who, flying thither soon after, found her near to giving birth before the due time. The child, lying crosswise in its mother's womb, put forth one arm, and could not come forth, whatever the midwife, using all her art, had tried for the space of two hours to deliver it. When after much labor the same midwife desisted from what she had begun, and said that no other remedy remained but that recourse should be had to physicians or others skilled in that art, the woman in travail, turning devoutly to the Blessed man, ordered a certain image of him fixed to the bed at the pillow to be given her, and laid it on her belly, commending herself and making a vow to the Blessed man; and suddenly she gave birth without pain, to the great astonishment of the midwife, who had wholly despaired of the outcome. Observe here briefly that these things were done at Pavia one year before this same Life was printed there in the year 1651.

[19] A man grievously hurt by a fall is healed at his altar. Thus far out of the often-mentioned processes; receive also the rest, which the same writer learned from elsewhere. At p. 189, from a tablet hung at the sepulcher, as he noted in the margin, he thus records another benefit: Giovanni Maioco, dwelling at the two gates of the fishpond, having fallen from a mulberry tree, was so shattered that he remained crippled in almost his whole body, and especially in his right side. He with great confidence and devotion invoked the Servant of God, and with the utmost labor, as best he could, betook himself to the church of St. James to visit the sacred body, being most surely persuaded that he would not depart thence unless he obtained health. But while he prayed at the Blessed man's altar, he fell as it were into a sleep, and seemed to hear Bernardino's voice saying: Rise; your health is restored to you. Nor was that voice empty: for on waking he found himself whole and entirely healed. Wherefore in memory and testimony of the grace received he had a tablet painted and hung it at the Blessed man's chapel.

[20] From a like tablet hung at the Blessed man's sepulcher he relates at p. 212 that the plague was driven off from a certain Friar Minor. A Minorite infected with the plague, In the time of the contagion, he says, which raged in the year 1630, when Pavia was infected with the plague, eight of the Reformed Fathers (of the Order of Minors) devoted themselves to the service of those who suffered from it, and all these were seized by it and died, except only Father Giovanni Maria of Pavia, who escaped in this manner. After he had for some time served those infected with the plague by administering the Sacraments and by rendering other services of charity according to each one's need, it pleased the divine providence that it should seize him too, a carbuncle being born in his breast so black and horrid that he seemed shortly to be brought to his last extremity and about to breathe out his final breath.

[21] Placed in this danger, using the little strength that remained, having invoked him, suddenly recovers. he invoked the Blessed man with the silent voice of his mind, and vowed that, if he were restored to health, and if his superiors permitted, he would labor for his canonization. Since it was already late, he fell asleep; but waking toward dawn, he found that the poisoned carbuncle had so wholly vanished that it had left absolutely no mark, no trace on his breast. He asked that food be given him, and when they refused (because all believed him to be raving), he showed them the place of the carbuncle, to the utmost astonishment of all, since no spot or sign of the evil appeared on it any longer. Wherefore all together rendered due thanks to the Lord God for so illustrious a miracle. For the credit of this miracle I observe briefly that it is said to have happened only about twenty years before the author published his little Work at Pavia, so that he both could have known Father Giovanni Maria and could have been very well informed about the fact itself.

[22] The same writer at p. 200 and the following relates that a certain possessed woman was freed in his own time, namely in the year 1639, at Bl. Bernardino's altar in the often-mentioned convent of St. James, citing as witnesses

eyewitnesses, and those of great authority. At Pavia in the year 1639 the lady Ottavia of Treviglio, wife of the noble man Roderico Penatois, long possessed by many reprobate spirits, was several times adjured by the very reverend master Livio Ferrari, provost of St. John in the Borgo, a man much skilled and practiced in this matter, and by the force of the sacred exorcisms many demons were driven out of her, their prince remaining with some companions, more rebellious and obstinate. After exorcisms continued for twelve days, their head, compelled by the divine power which had destined this victory for its Servant, declared that he would never go out of that body except in the church of St. James at the altar of Bl. Bernardino.

[23] Wherefore the possessed woman was brought to the Blessed man's altar, freed at his altar. and exorcisms were applied by the lord provost for the space of two hours in the presence of the father Guardian and the other Fathers of the convent; she meanwhile being shaken with horrible convulsions and cries from the struggling of the resisting demon. At last, after a long contest, the reprobate, unable to resist further, went out with his companions, leaving the woman utterly wearied and failing in strength, so that for the space of half an hour she lay like one dead and without feeling. Then, being restored to herself, she suddenly broke out into these words: Praise be to God, that through Bl. Bernardino's patronage I am free from the malignant spirits. The lord provost, that he might be more certainly assured of her deliverance, brought her to the chief altar, and held the venerable Sacrament placed upon her head for a quarter of an hour, commanding and adjuring that, if any malignant spirits remained in her, they should manifest themselves. But — which turned to the glory of God and of the Blessed man — neither then nor afterward did any betray itself, nor was she for the rest of her life thereafter vexed by the demon. To all these things the aforesaid lord provost and very many other witnesses who were present bear witness upon oath, especially the Fathers of the convent of St. James, who also sang in the church the hymn Te Deum laudamus to give thanks to God for so signal a benefit.

[24] A boy's grave wound cured. I do not know whether the other things which he besides recites from Cimarella's Annals of the Minors are so certain. At p. 194, after he has reported from him and from Wadding the healing of the most grave head wound of the boy living in the village of St. Leonard — for which see above among the Miracles collected by Wadding, num. 14 — he continues thus: In the same village a like case happened. The son of Giovanni Pietro Sanguini, an innkeeper there, was dreadfully wounded by another boy with a knife, which, piercing through his forehead, had come out at the crown of his head: but when his parents had recourse to the Blessed man's help, and vowed that they would bring him to his sepulcher, in a short time he was restored to his former health, and was brought by his mother to the Blessed man's tomb. So great is the likeness of both these unusual events that it may be doubted whether, the circumstances being a little changed, one has not been made two.

[25] A man in danger from a fever, and a woman from a pain, are healed: There follows at p. 198 another from Cimarella, book 7, ch. 82. Master Giovanni Pietro Bottigella, a citizen and doctor of Pavia, who had once opposed Bl. Bernardino in the founding of the Mount of Piety, laboring under a continuous fever, was in the utmost danger of his life, the physicians plainly despairing of his recovery. Being induced by friends, he commended himself to the Blessed man, confessing that the Mount of Piety was an exceedingly holy work; which having been done, he was at once healed, and leapt out of his bed brisk and full of joy. Again from the same place at p. 213 he says this: At Pavia Bianca de Manetti, wife of Bartolomeo Preda, being suddenly seized by a pain which spread through her whole body like poison, remained afflicted for five days, the physicians finding no remedy for this evil and greatly fearing for her life. Finding herself to be in so dangerous a state, she had recourse to her heavenly patrons, and invoked the various Saints whom she honored with special devotion: but when she felt no remedy, she began to implore the Blessed man, and soon, being heard by God, she escaped whole.

[26] a quinsy removed from another. Concerning a quinsy suddenly taken away, citing Cimarella ch. 83, he relates at p. 217 the following: Master Marciano, of the counts de Sprevera, was so constricted by a violent quinsy that for three days he continued without any rest, and without having swallowed even a drop of water, and therefore his household were treating rather of burying him than of healing him. On the fourth day someone exhorted him to place his hope in the Saint and to implore his merits, promising most surely that the Servant of God would be favorable to him. He did so, and the Saint conferred that grace, succoring him in his danger and driving out the disease by which he had been brought to the last extremity of life.

[27] There remains one thing which, if it truly happened, must be referred to the Blessed man's deeds among the living; He is said, while preaching at Sassari in Sardinia, to have foretold but which I have reserved for this place, because the aforesaid Bernardino of Clastidium received it from elsewhere, and it needs greater authority to gain credit. At p. 135 and the following he writes thus: While the Blessed man was preaching to the people of Sassari in Sardinia in the church of a convent of his Order situated one mile outside the city of Sassari, and the church could not hold the people, he began to preach beside its door. During the sermon a huge marble column fell upon a woman who was carrying a boy in her arms. At once the audience was thrown into confusion, all thinking that the woman had been killed and crushed to pieces. Stop, said Bernardino; no evil has befallen her: the woman lives and is sound, and has suffered no harm at all: lift up the mass, and you will find that I have spoken true. Without delay they removed the column, and found the woman sound and unhurt, with her son alive and whole in her arms.

[28] Then indeed Bernardino said: Know besides that under that column there is another lady that beneath the column, which had fallen on a woman and had not hurt her, carrying a son in her arms — Mary, I say, the Virgin, our Lady. The sermon being ended, they dug out the earth which had been beneath the column, and there they found an image of the most holy Virgin, with a face formed of clay and gypsum, four palms high, most beautiful, most gracious, and so entirely preserved that it seemed to have been made that very day. Shortly afterward in the same aforesaid convent a spacious chapel was built and duly adorned, in which that most sacred image bearing the Son on her arm was placed, which on account of its miracles is held in such veneration that it is displayed to the people only twice a year, namely in the months of May and September, and it is the most devoutly honored of the sacred images which Sardinia has.

[29] Thus Bernardino of Clastidium, for which in the margin he cites Dimas Serpi's History of Sardinian affairs, there lay hidden a buried image of the B. V. M.; and manuscripts sent from Sardinia. Dimas Serpi, a Sardinian of Cagliari, of the Regular Observance (of the Order of St. Francis), a man of great name in that island for virtue and learning, and minister of his own Friars, having stayed many years at Rome at Aracœli, wrote the Chronicles of the Saints of Sardinia, published at Barcelona in the year 1600, in quarto; so Wadding testifies in the Writers of his Order, whose the words are. The aforesaid little Work, which is written in Spanish, I have at hand, and in it at fol. 213 and the following he narrates the same things about the finding of the sacred image and its miracles, and besides adds that in the same place where it had been buried the same column was set up, with a like likeness of the Bl. Virgin Mary, as a perpetual monument of the miracle, and that for this reason an image of Bl. Bernardino of Feltre himself is kept in the sacristy of that church.

[30] The finding of the same image, though he is silent about the manner of the finding, and that it was so discovered: which narrative Salvatore Vitale, likewise of the Order of Minors Observant, also ascribed to our Bl. Bernardino, in the Annals of Sardinia, tome or part 2, where, speaking of sacred images, he says: There exists besides another (of the most holy Mother of God) at Sassari in the church of the Friars Minor of the Observance, renowned for prodigies, of great cult, under the title of Santa Maria de gratia, which Bl. Bernardino of Feltre uncovered during a sermon after it had been buried for many ages. But since he wrote after Serpi, and is said by Wadding in the aforesaid Work on the Writers to have been a man of austere life indeed, but of a readier pen than of a riper judgment, he cannot add much weight here. The chief authority therefore is had from Serpi; for how ancient or of what kind were the manuscripts sent from Sardinia, Bernardino of Clastidium did not explain. But Serpi, a Sardinian by birth, was guardian of his Friars in that same convent of St. Peter at Sassari in which the often-mentioned sacred image is honored, as he himself expressly affirms in the place cited above; so that he could inquire on the spot into the truth of the matter and be informed about it.

[31] I could wish more fully confirmed. Nor did he live so far removed from Bl. Bernardino's age that it is credible that no monuments of that matter, no certain tradition, then survived in that place. For he published that book only a hundred and six years after the Blessed man's death, that is, in the year of Christ 1600, before which — and perhaps many years before — he had already held the presidency of that convent. But it is little probable that in the space of one century, and perhaps not even a whole one, the memory of things formerly done was so obscure among the men of Sassari that it would have been safe for Serpi to invent these things, and for Salvatore Vitale, as concerns the author of the finding, to adopt Serpi's statements. But on the other hand there is this, that it must be said that Wadding, otherwise a diligent investigator of Bl. Bernardino's deeds, found nothing on this subject in the earlier biographers, who it would be strange should have been ignorant of so unusual a deed, or, if they had known it, should have passed it over. It is difficult too to assign the year in which this excursion of Bernardino's into Sardinia is to be believed to have happened, since Wadding has so assigned his sermons and duties after he had taken up the burden of an Apostolic preacher to their several times that you will hardly, or not even hardly, find leisure for his journey to the Sardinians. These things alleged on both sides make me leave it to others, to whom perhaps better documents may be consulted than to me, to pronounce concerning the finding of that sacred image — which I do not doubt is honored there as famous for miracles — and concerning the circumstances of the finding. For the rest, I have already given some account of Sassari in the Miracles from Wadding, among the Annotata to ch. 2, letter a.

A SECOND APPENDIX

On the miracles and benefits collected by Innocenzo of Pavia.

From the Italian.

CHAPTER I.

Children freed from various evils through the Blessed man's patronage: a pestilence driven off: women in childbed helped: a child raised again; fevers, the stone, and other evils driven away.

The author's preface. He who reprinted with additions in the year 1664 the little Work of the aforesaid Bernardino of Clastidium on the deeds and miracles of Bl. Bernardino, published in the year 1651 — Innocenzo of Pavia — added to the rest not a few miracles and benefits drawn from authentic processes, which, that I may stand by my promises, I here

subjoin, turned from the Italian into Latin, to the glory of God and of the same Blessed man. The author prefaces thus. My chief plan and reason for writing this supplement was that I might recount many new benefits and miracles, of which, although some happened before the most accurate Work (of Bernardino of Clastidium) on the Blessed man's life was printed, yet they were not related in it, perhaps because they had not then become known as they are today. They are therefore described here in the first place according to the series of the years in which they happened, purposely noted in the margin, so that, according to the plan I have set myself, his devout clients might be informed not only of his prodigious works, but at the same time also of the new arguments always furnished for his cult, continued through immemorial time.

[2] I, lest I be compelled to depart from the method of our edition, shall carry the marginal notes into the body of the text. A coin obstinately sticking in a boy's throat, And so, citing in the margin the Processes of Pavia, drawn up by Apostolic authority, he begins thus: In the closing year 1605, the most illustrious lord count Alessandro Mezzabarba, a leading knight of the city of Pavia, had a little son named Carlo, to whom the lady countess his mother had given a silver coin as a plaything, as is often wont to be given to little boys. The heedless little boy, his mother not noticing, put it into his mouth and swallowed it as far as his throat; and he could neither get it further down, because the coin was rather large, nor even cast it up, because it had been sent too deep; whereby the boy had come into present danger of choking.

[3] The mother used all the labor both of physicians and of surgeons; after a vow made by his mother, is easily cast out and by no means could the coin be got out. Wherefore she, when she recognized the matter as desperate and beheld the poor little boy dying, commended him to Bl. Bernardino, that he might free them both from these straits. And behold, the vow having scarcely been made, the boy of his own accord and most easily cast up the coin at once, and escaped free of all harm. Wherefore the count, to attest the benefit received, ordered a little garment (I doubt whether I have translated rightly; for in Italian it is una vestina, which word I have not found in the Lexicons) of his son to be carried to the Blessed man's altar, which remained hung at his chapel, a sure monument of a life preserved by his intercession. For what follows, until I note otherwise, there are cited in the margin in the same place the processes of Pavia made by ordinary authority, and those on the virtues made by Apostolic authority.

[4] In the year 1610, on the third day of July, Carlo Alberto, son of master Sacripante Salerno, A boy crushed and held for dead, a doctor and advocate of Pavia, a boy of about nine years, when he had been brought by his mother to the church of St. James outside the city, where the Blessed man's body rests, while she was intent on devout prayers, went to the vessel of holy water to throw into it some little flowers which he had received from the Fathers of that convent. But because that vessel was much too high for the boy's stature, he set both his hands upon its rim, and in like manner his feet against the marble column upon which the aforesaid vessel, likewise of marble, wide and of great weight, was set. But by an unlooked-for accident the vessel, torn from its base, fell upon the poor little boy, and covered and crushed his whole body except half his face, his left arm and part of his legs: so that, with blood flowing copiously from his mouth, he lay dead beneath the weight, since there were none present who could have helped him quickly enough. Yet many women who were present in the church ran up, who with great difficulty removed the mass from the dead boy and carried him in their laps to his sister, who was preparing herself there for Sacramental confession.

[5] is restored to life or to health through the Blessed man's invocation. The mother, stricken by the sad accident, running like one out of her mind to the spectacle of her grief, bewailed her beloved son inconsolably with mournful cries and beatings. The Friars, roused by this lamentation, tried to console her, and urged her to vow her son to Bl. Bernardino. She assented to their devout counsel, and standing with her daughter and her son before the Blessed man's altar, cried out again and again: Blessed Bernardino, give me back my son; blessed Bernardino, grant me my son. When she had persisted in these cries for the space of half a quarter of an hour, one of the Friars standing by opened with a key the mouth of the boy, who gave no sign of feeling or of motion; and he began to breathe, though the blood did not cease to flow copiously from his mouth, nostrils and ears. Meanwhile his father, arriving, ordered him to be carried back to his house, and, some remedies having been applied to stanch the blood, which flowed abundantly for twelve continuous hours, within two or three days the boy escaped plainly whole and sound. For which thing the parents rendered thanks to God and to the Blessed man, to whose patronage they ascribed the life and health restored to their son. The testimonies brought forward in the process concerning the boy's death — whether truly undergone or only supposed — and the other circumstances, would have to be consulted here, that the greatness of the benefit received might be safely judged.

[6] Another boy drowned in the river Ticino, In the year 1611 the son of Bernardo Tirone of Pavia, dwelling in the parish of St. Theodore, named Pietro, of about seven years, being once at the river Ticino, took off his stockings and went into it, and going forward so far in boyish play that his feet stuck deep in the mud, he was drowned, and being thus drowned remained a long time under the water. And when other boys of riper age, who were swimming in the same river, had noticed this, they ran thither, and having drawn him out of the water laid him on the bank, on which also a little after there stood a multitude of men and women whom the report of the deed had roused, some devout persons among whom, seeing him now dead, took him up and carried him to his father's house.

[7] comes to life again through his mother's prayers to the Blessed man. Meanwhile his mother, roused likewise by the report and by love, ran in despair to the unlucky place, and meeting those who were carrying the boy, returned home with them; and when they had arrived there, the corpse was laid upon a table, and lay on it a long time, the report of the matter being meanwhile spread through the whole city. Many flocked thither, drawn by piety and the novelty of the thing; but they found the mother taking better counsel, invoking Bl. Bernardino with tears for her dead son. And not long after, the boy came to life again through his patronage, and at the same time remained unharmed by the water he had swallowed, from which he had swollen all over, and he survived among the living for many years.

[8] A pestilence driven off from Pavia. At the time when the pestilence last afflicted the city of Pavia, God, in freeing many from that infection, made plain how powerful the Blessed man's patronage is with him, as was said in the preceding Treatise on the Miracles; nor is anything to be added here, beyond the general deliverance of the whole city (obtained in the year 1630, as he notes in the margin) and the acknowledgment that it was received as it were from his merits and protection, after the vow reported in the preceding chapter (with us in the Commentary, num. 542 and following), and the devotion with which the most illustrious lord bishop Landriani came with the people and the clergy, Regular and secular, to venerate his prodigious sepulcher in the church of St. James. In particular too, in that year 1630 the lady Chiara Pecorara of Pavia, wife of master Francesco Simonetta, when she perceived that she was seized by that contagious evil and that her recovery was despaired of, being inspired by God, vowed to the Blessed man that, if through his intercession she escaped whole, she would wear for all the time of her life a garment of ash color, such as the Friars Minor use. This vow being uttered, she at once was better, and, being plainly freed, fulfilled what she had vowed.

[9] When the lady Daria Oppizzona, now wife of the most illustrious lord count Andrea Gambarana, He succors a woman in danger in childbed, and but formerly of the most illustrious lord Giuseppe Pecorara, was tormented in her first childbirth with most violent pains, and could not be delivered, because the child lay crosswise in her belly, and therefore the midwives expected the most certain death both of the mother in travail and of the child, her mother-in-law, the lady Girolama Cantona, who was present, with a loud voice implored Bl. Bernardino as the ancient protector of her family, and laid upon the woman in travail the cord of the said Blessed man, which was at hand for this purpose; and soon, against all expectation both of hers and of the midwife, a dead daughter came into the light with her feet foremost, and likewise the mother remained without her senses as though dead, and then, being restored to them, beheld her lifeless daughter with the utmost grief.

[10] The mother-in-law, moved to compassion by the misfortune of both, raises her dead child, who afterward became a nun most diligently searched with the other women whether the child gave any sign of life; but finding absolutely none, and recognizing the case as desperate, she most insistently prayed the Blessed man to raise her up, and meanwhile signed her with his cord, and most devoutly uttered some vows to the Servant of God, when behold, the little infant, coming to life again, began to gape, while all who were present were astounded and cried out with raised voice: A miracle, a miracle! The Blessed man has granted the benefit! Inexplicable was the joy of master Francesco Bernardino, uncle of the girl raised up (whether paternal or maternal; for the Italian word Zio means both), who, anxious about the outcome, was waiting with some of the household in the next room, and who, on hearing the joyful voices and of the benefit obtained, praised God and gave thanks to the Blessed man, at whose altar the aforesaid ladies presented themselves at a fitting time, to have some Masses celebrated and to pay the works of piety they had promised. Further, the daughter was baptized and called Anna Francesca; who afterward, when of ripe age, embraced the monastic state at Pavia in the venerable monastery of St. Dalmatius, of the Order of St. Augustine, and was called sister Girolama Lucia.

[11] In the year 1647 Agostino Cani, son of master Cesare, A boy suffering from fever and worms, and another suffering otherwise, dwelling at Pavia in the parish of St. Epiphanius, about three years old, laboring under a continuous fever and with worms in his bowels, so that he was at the point of death, was healed on the spot after the Blessed man had been invoked. When master Ruggiero Biscossa, a patrician, decurion and general accountant of the city of Pavia, in the month of July of the year noted (namely 1649 in the margin), lay sick and given up by the physicians, who because of his great weakness had abstained from applying medicines, and seemed at every moment about to give up his soul, being admonished by his household to remember Bl. Bernardino of Feltre and to make some vow and alms to him, he vowed and invoked him with heart and mouth, which he also always kept in memory. At the same time his household sent wax and oil to the said Blessed man's altar for the celebration of a nine days' devotion.

[12] after a wonderful vision, he makes them whole. On the night following his invocation the dying man seemed to himself to see the Servant of God saying to him: Raise yourself up; and to have raised himself and come down from his bed by a silken cord which was stretched on both sides before his breast. When he had reached the pavement, he was bidden by the Blessed man to fall upon his knees and to look toward one quarter which he pointed out; and he did so, and it appeared to him that he beheld through the opening of a certain small window a most beautiful theater, like paradise, in which were many statues clothed with pontifical ornaments, among which the Blessed man himself also was seen on bended knees

reciting the Crown; who a little after, putting his hand to his breast, said: Come, go to bed. Soon he seemed to himself to return by the same cord stretched before his breast, little by little and very wearily, into his bed; then, waking, he felt himself much better. But the next morning the physician, finding him free from all fever, said in astonishment: Ha, what is this! But the sick man answered that a vision of Bl. Bernardino had been presented to him, which because of the weakness of his body he could not then relate; but daily gathering strength, before the nine days' devotion was ended he rose from his bed safe and sound. There will doubtless be those to whom that vision will seem rather a dream, and the benefit itself doubtful; but the circumstances of the disease were perhaps such as did not allow of a prudent doubt at least about the latter.

[13] Grave infirmities driven off from a woman; one in danger in childbirth, In the year 1650 the wife of master Giacomo Cerrino, an advocate, called Catherine Vicedomini, had already labored for eight months under certain infirmities which were to last all her life, when she came to venerate the Servant of God at his chapel in the church of St. James; and having done this, being better, she returned home and shortly recovered entire health. The wife of master Giuseppe Maio Solivetta, enrolled in the college of notaries and clerk of the prætorian court of Pavia, having gone through two childbirths with the gravest difficulty, when the Blessed man's help had been invoked and his cord laid upon her, gave birth happily, so that in her third childbirth she brought forth a male child, on whom she bestowed the name of Francesco Bernardino, to testify a grateful mind to her Deliverer for the benefit received.

[14] [and a man suffering from the stone, are freed by the touch of the Blessed man's cord.] Master Lorenzo di Mena, secretary of the most excellent senate of Milan, was brought by the stone into the most present danger of his life: but when he applied to himself the Blessed man's cord, brought by master Deodato Meda, a patrician of Pavia, he remained on the spot free of them and whole (in the same year 1650, on the twenty-ninth day of June). Further, for the grace received he procured a good sum of money for the fabric of the new chapel which was being built for the same Blessed man, and besides another from many gentlemen of Milan, and in particular from the most excellent lord marquis of Caracena, for the same end. In the margin here the Process on the Cult is cited; but I do not know whether this is to be referred to the whole narrative of the miracle or benefit, or only to the building of the chapel. On the latter consult the Commentary, §23.

CHAPTER II.

Others freed from other diseases: others rescued from dangers of life: mortal wounds healed: a woman wonderfully protected by the Blessed man.

[ ] A girl born with a hernia, many remedies having been tried in vain, To the year 1650 belongs also the following cure of a hernia, for which, as also for the others which are then subjoined, the process on the virtues is cited in the margin — at which I wonder, since they would rather belong to the process on the miracles. But whatever be said of the name, this is what is there to be read. While the aforesaid chapel of the Blessed man (in the suburban church of St. James at Pavia) was being built, a certain very skilled architect who had undertaken the care of that fabric, called master Francesco de Vecchi, had a daughter named Anna Caterina, who had been born with a hernia, and after various remedies applied for a continuous ten years had in no way recovered from so troublesome an infirmity. At last by the surgeons' counsel it was resolved to use the knife, for which they summoned a certain man of Norcia skilled in this art: but since he had no time suitable for that treatment except about Easter and the feast of St. Michael, and since always, when the master had come at that season, the sick girl was besides suffering from a fever, he could never be present at a fit time for attempting that last remedy.

[16] Wherefore the father resolved to try nothing further for his daughter's healing, is healed while by her father's vow she visits the Blessed man's body: saying that perhaps it was the divine will that she should remain so. Yet observing that he himself was employed in Bernardino's service, and that none of the human remedies had profited his daughter, he placed his sure hope in his merits, and vowed to bring her on five days in the morning to visit his body. And behold, while he fulfills the vow, after his daughter had once visited his sacred body in the church of St. James, and no one had inquired whether she were better or not, it happened that on the three following occasions, when she had come with her mother opposite a certain image of the Blessed Virgin Mary painted on the wall of the monastery of the nuns of the Senator at Pavia, her bandage, though diligently fastened, fell off.

[17] Noticing at length this wonderful occurrence, they understood she was living as a nun when the author wrote. that the blessed Virgin had wished to indicate that the grace they desired had been granted through the patronage of her Servant; as the mother found when she examined the formerly injured part. In consequence of this, the girl, as she returned on the fifth morning from the church of St. James, threw the bandage away on the road into a meadow, being most surely confident of the health she had obtained. Nor did she thereafter feel anything of that evil; a proof of which is that, when the same girl asked to be admitted into the venerable monastery of St. Helen at Pavia among the Religious sisters whom they call Converse, the nuns exercised her during the year of her novitiate with extraordinary labors for the sake of testing her, and found her plainly sound; such as she is even now in the same monastery, named Sister Francesca Gertrude.

[18] What follows from the same process is said to have happened on the fifteenth day of August of the year 1651. Carlo Alessandro Astolfi of Pavia, in the month of August of the year noted, A lethargic man suddenly restored to his senses. being oppressed with a most grave acute fever and with other evils coming on, and in particular with a deep sleep which had passed into a lethargy, lost sense and motion, sleeping continually with distress and difficulty of breathing. And since by suitable medicines, by biting plasters (commonly called blisters) and by other such medical aids he could not be recalled to the use of his senses, the physicians despaired, and two Religious were fetched from the monastery of the Holy Cross to commend to God the soul that was about to depart. But behold, his wife, at the urging of those same Religious, invoked Bl. Bernardino with a vow, and had a shirt brought to that Blessed man's body in the church of St. James; which afterward had scarcely been applied to the sick man's bare breast when he, emerging from his lethargy, recovered his senses and motion. And when on the morning of the feast of the Virgin Mary's Assumption into heaven the physician came upon this, he was astounded at the unlooked-for event which his art had by no means promised; but hearing of the divine power made manifest through the merits of the Servant of God, he praised God and bore witness to the Blessed man's powerful intercession.

[19] A woman in danger in childbed, a vow being made, bears easily. For what follows, until I give other notice, the same process as above is cited. In the year 1652 Anna de Guarneri, wife of Francesco Antonietti of Pavia, having been shaken for seven days already by the pains of childbirth, could not be delivered because of the narrowness of her body, as the midwives judged; and by their judgment and the physician's alike, the mother must die, because of the great weakness arisen from her long torments, either in the very effort of the birth or soon after she had been delivered. While she was in these straits, the midwives and some devout women, Tertiaries of St. Francis, vehemently urged her to vow to Bl. Bernardino that on her first going out from the house she would come to his sepulcher, and there have a Mass celebrated and offer a wax torch. This vow being uttered, she sent someone to bring the Blessed man's cord, prodigious in cases of this kind. While it is being sought, the woman in travail seemed to herself to be lifted up on high by the Blessed man, and in a single moment with very little pain she gave birth, while those who were present cried out: A benefit, a benefit of Bl. Bernardino! This happened in the month of May of the year noted, and in memory of it the boy who was born was called Carlo Bernardino; and the mother rose sound after three or four days and fulfilled her vow.

[20] A boy is snatched from the most present danger of drowning. In the month of August of the following year the aforesaid Carlo Bernardino, a boy of fourteen or fifteen months, while his mother Anna was busy intent on other cares, went out into a meadow near a water-mill, where the water rushes headlong down a narrow channel to turn the mill-wheel. The mother, not seeing her little son, asked her husband where he was, and, foreboding in her mind what was the case, running swiftly thither, saw him already carried down through the most rapid channel, and that he could in no way be helped. Then indeed, placed in such straits, she cried out to the Blessed man with much confidence, saying, O blessed Bernardino, help my son! Amid this she beheld her son pass under the turning wheel, under which not even a slippery eel would have passed unbruised, and under which a little before a girl had been drowned and crushed and had stopped the wheel with her body. The Servant of God heard the mother's prayers: for the drowned boy's father, flying to the spot, leapt into the water where after passing the mill the channel widens into a shallow, and seized his son; who, being turned head downward, discharged no water and was found wholly unhurt.

[21] Master Francesco Bagnoli, a notary of the college and clerk of the court of Pavia (which they call the Referendary), while on the day of St. Theodore, A man mortally wounded by two leaden balls, the twentieth of May in the year 1653, at the first hour of the night (that is, after sunset), he was taking his ease half-dressed with some of his friends, was struck by the shot of an iron firearm discharged from the college of the Three Marys, in which some students of letters lived; and he received two leaden balls, of which one, breaking through his collarbone, passed a finger's breadth from the hollow of his throat and broke his left shoulder blade; the other, penetrating a palm's depth into the front joint of his right arm, stuck in the body. The pain of both wounds (each of which was pronounced by the surgeons as most deadly) reduced him to the last swoonings of spirit, especially since the wounds grew worse day by day, which, although they were purified with certain sacred relics by father Samuele of San Zenone, procurator of the cause of Bl. Bernardino's canonization, nevertheless tormented the wounded man no less bitterly.

[22] Afterward he, pressed by his pains, begged the said father recovers through relics of the Blessed man's garments applied: to sign both his shoulders with a strip of the same Blessed man's undergarment, which the father had by him, received as a gift two or three days before from the most illustrious lord Nicolás Fernández de Castro, at that time royal ducal senator of Milan and prætor of Pavia, but now president of the magistracy. Wonderful to say! Scarcely had both shoulders been touched and signed with those sacred relics, when all pain in them ceased; nor did it afterward grow worse again, but, the said father continuing the same purification for some days, the wounded man was shortly healed, against the hope and judgment of the physicians and surgeons and of others who had examined the nature of the wounds.

[23] On the fourteenth day of August of the aforesaid year (1653) Siro Benedetto Corradi, a boy's flux of blood is stanched at the kissing of the Blessed man's image. ten years of age, discharged so great a quantity of blood from his nostrils for six continuous hours that, in place of the failing gore, a certain

humor like water began to flow. The remedies applied to stanch the flux availing nothing, his mother, turning to Bl. Bernardino, commended him to that saint with living faith, and urged him to do the same, and at the same time gave him a painted image of the Blessed man to kiss. Amid these very kisses the flux suddenly ceased, and the boy fell asleep, and the next morning rose from his bed sound and whole.

[24] The same year 1653 and the twenty-fourth day of August are set down in the margin for the following cure. A man mortally wounded, the Blessed man's cap being applied to the wound, Master Giacomo Francesco Parmesano of Pavia, wounded in the breast, his inward parts and in particular his lung being injured, and with other accompaniments of the disease coming on besides — delirium, disordered shivering, restlessness, most prolonged sleeplessness, distresses of mind and continual movements — was at last in the utmost danger of life by the judgment of the experts. Being thus affected, and wishing to make his will, he summoned master Carlo Bernardino Trovati, a public notary, and now procurator, then chancellor of the episcopal court of Pavia. This man had a cap with which Bl. Bernardino's head had once been covered for some time, and which he brought forward for the sick man's health, urging him to place it with faith and devotion on the place of the wound; which he also did. At this touch, which took place before the fourth day from the beginning of the illness, the aforesaid morbid symptoms suddenly ceased, with no natural purgation having gone before, since they had been unable to give him any medicine of that kind, nor to open a vein because of his too great weakness, from which even the pulse of his artery had ceased.

[25] is healed, the physicians denying that this could have happened naturally. Wherefore the physicians and surgeons, seeing him at rest (and he rested as soon as he had touched the cap), whereas before he had not had even the least rest, declared that by the rules of their art the thing was wholly unusual and new, that he should be better in this manner at the beginning of a most grave illness, without any previous expulsion of the humors, whether made by sweat or otherwise; and this they denied could have happened even by natural medicines within so short a time. But the divine power, which works in its Saints and is not bound by the laws of nature, suddenly began the work of perfect health, which he shortly recovered, without any fistula being left in the place of the wound, which those skilled in the surgical art judged must have remained, even if it were granted — which however they denied — that the aforesaid wounded man could have been so healed naturally. Further, to give thanks for the benefit received, he afterward came to the Blessed man's altar, where he offered six candles, and, having cleansed his soul by Sacramental confession, was refreshed with the most holy Eucharist.

[26] A woman experienced his help in the danger of two childbirths. In the same year 1653, on the thirtieth day of October, the lady Margherita Valle, wife of master Leonardo Bertolini, being with child, was seized with the pains of childbirth, which lasted until the third hour of the night, the child having been already five hours in the birth. In so present a danger of the life both of the mother and of the child, her husband suggested to her that she should invoke Bl. Bernardino and make him whatever vow she pleased; that whatever she vowed he would gladly pay. The vow being made and the Blessed man's help invoked, after half a quarter of an hour she happily brought forth a son. And indeed she was not ignorant of the power of the Servant of God; for at another time, in the year 1647, in a like case, being despaired of by the physicians, deprived of the pulse of her artery, and afflicted with continuous pains for thirty-five hours, she had implored him, his cord being laid upon her, and had obtained a like happy delivery.

[27] A disease of the legs taken away from a monk of Monte Cassino. Dom Vincenzo of Gravina, a monk and dean of Monte Cassino, when he was suffering gravely in his legs from a certain long infirmity that had gone before, and remedies profited nothing, uttered a vow to Bl. Bernardino, to be fulfilled if he were healed at least within three days. The three days being past, he found himself prodigiously healed against all the physicians' opinion, and two days later set out on foot to pay what he had promised in the church of St. James, where he twice celebrated Mass at the Blessed man's altar, at which, as a token of a grateful mind, he ordered a painted tablet to be hung which set forth the benefit received; and this too he left affirmed in an authentic testimony written by his own hand. Besides this document, the aforesaid process is cited in the same place, and the time is added in the margin, the year 1653, the eighteenth day of November.

[28] A woman bidden by the Blessed man's voice to flee. Of another kind is what is subjoined from the same processes of Pavia, the same year 1653 and the twenty-sixth day of December being noted in the margin. Catherine Bertolotta, daughter of Antonio, wife of Carlo Maggi, a common soldier, dwelling at Pavia in the parish of St. Mary la Perona, on a certain night, the twenty-sixth day of December of the aforesaid year, sitting alone by the fire, was reciting the crown of the Blessed Virgin Mary, beseeching Bl. Bernardino to obtain for her from God concord with her husband, who was of a most turbulent character. While she turned these suppliant prayers in her mind, she heard herself called by name with an articulate voice again and again: and when she answered it, the same voice replied: Flee quickly from the house, for your husband means to kill you. The woman answered: But what have I done, that he should wish to kill me? But the voice went on and said: As a sign of the truth, take this, that he has already filled his saddlebags for flight.

[29] Catherine went and found the sign which the voice had given her, lest she be killed by her husband, she goes out of her house by night: which she believed without doubt to have been that of her Bl. Bernardino, to whom she had then offered her prayers; nor could it have come from anywhere else, the door of the house being carefully shut. She obeyed the voice, therefore; and since she was weak from a long infirmity, leaning on a staff she went out of the house, and with the greatest anxiety, quickening her step, entered the house of a certain noble lady not far off. The lady was astounded to see her in her house at that hour and season, at which she certainly knew that the doors had been barred, and no one could be found who had opened them. But learning the cause of her coming, she received her and promised what help she could. There, then, she passed the rest of the night; but in the morning, after she had prayed a little before an image of Bl. Bernardino which was kept in that house, going out thence she betook herself to the church of the Holy Cross, where she confessed her sins to a certain devout father, a man of great charity, and set forth to him what had befallen her that night.

[30] The father consoled her, and promised that he would use his efforts with her husband returning to him, she is ill-used by him, that he might be reconciled to her and do her no harm; and he brought it about that the husband pledged a reconciliation of concord and promised that he would not hurt her. After these promises Catherine was bidden to return home, although she had no faith in them, and as she was about to depart she said: Father, I go to obey you; but I know that I shall be killed by him. Yet she went off, commending herself continually on the road to her blessed Patron. But her perjured husband, who hid his treacherous designs in his mind and had resolved to carry them out, tried by insulting means to wring from her some harsh word, however just, that under this name he might cloak his iniquitous purpose of killing her. But in vain did he try her patience. For on the following night, being three times ordered by him to rise from bed to mend certain drawers of his, while she, having stirred the fire and lighted the lamp, was beginning to work with her needle, he as often, like a madman, scattered the fire in all directions with a stick and overturned the lamp.

[31] Notwithstanding this, Catherine, when she had risen a second time from bed, and soon barbarously wounded, finding the coals, which had been scattered a little before, prodigiously gathered back into the hearth, and the lamp set in order with none of its oil diminished, recognized the Blessed man's help; and being ordered to rise a third time, she trusted that with his help, no otherwise than the first time, she would find the fire and the lamp, as indeed she found the coals heaped up in the same way and the lamp furnished with its oil and wick, as though it had not been touched. She therefore gave the highest thanks to her Patron; but her husband meanwhile, delaying no longer over the mending of the drawers, dressed himself, put on his boots and spurs, set saddle and bridle on his horse, and, all things being most swiftly made ready for flight, returned to Catherine; and coming to her with a grim countenance, he discharged into her left side an iron firearm loaded with three balls of tin mixed with iron, the gunpowder being fired.

[32] At the violence of the deadly shot the woman fell, and at the same time invoked Bl. Bernardino with confidence, and said to her impious husband: Ah, Carlo, do not butcher me; and held for dead, and dragged into the fire. but since I have already confessed my sins and received the Body of the Lord, have me anointed with the sacred Oil. Which having been said, he fired another such firearm at her and struck her behind the left ear; and when blood flowed from this wound, he said, Take it, here is your sacred oil. Then indeed Catherine felt as it were a hand which, laid on her breast, gently laid her flat on the ground, nor did she feel any pain any longer from the wounds she had received; nor likewise did she feel pain, however much her raging husband leapt upon her head and trampled her with feet shod in boots. At last, believing her dead, he seized her by the feet and dragged her into the fire, and leaving her there to be burned, mounted his horse and fled. As he passed before the house of one of his kinsmen, he asked him to take away the furniture from his house, lest, when the officers of the magistracy should search it on account of his murdered wife, they should carry it off: but this man prudently answered that he would hear no more.

[33] by the Blessed man's help she escapes unharmed, Her husband having gone off, the woman felt herself drawn back and set outside the fire by her invisible Helper; and she heard the same voice which she had heard before saying: Catherine, bar the door; for your husband has gone out. Obeying this voice, which she did not doubt had come from her blessed Bernardino, she rose, and, the doors being barred, remained in her house until it grew light. When morning came, she went thence to a certain uncle of hers (whether maternal or paternal, for in Italian it is Zio), who, when her husband had gone off, had heard that she had been killed. He was astounded therefore at the sight of her whom he reckoned dead; but she soon made him easy, asserting that by Bl. Bernardino's benefit she was by no means dead, yet believed herself very badly hurt in her side, the blood of which wound she carefully pressed back with a part of her garments, scorched by the fiery shot and rolled up.

[34] nor does she suffer herself to be treated by a surgeon: Wherefore he brought her to the hospital, where, when she was being handed over to a surgeon to be treated, she refused, saying that she had no need of his work, because she had already obtained this grace from Bl. Bernardino. And indeed, the wounds being examined, it was found that the tin balls had penetrated only to the skin, two of which were sticking in her shift about the loins, and only one between the ribs. From the other shot there appeared on her left cheek beneath the ear only a swelling with the mark of a ball

and blood; on her forehead too there was seen only a bruise made by the boots, and on her feet an injury from the fire. Since therefore for the reason alleged the woman was unwilling to be treated, the surgeon abstained, but only anointed the swellings around the wounds with oil of roses; and within three days she escaped safe and sound, the scars of the shots and of the fire being left upon her as a perpetual proof of the benefit obtained.

[35] she herself attested all these things, not without another prodigy. This too was plainly wonderful in this woman, that, when she was examined before three bishops as delegated judges, although she was quite deaf, she nevertheless heard distinctly, to the least iota, everything that was said about the Blessed man's cause, even though in a low voice; remaining deaf, as at other times, if other matters than those pertaining to that cause were interposed. This narrative of the aforesaid Innocenzo, in which several miracles or benefits are contained, is worthy of the greater credit because his little book was published in print in the city of Pavia itself only eleven years after these things had happened; so that the author could easily have known the woman mentioned, and no less easily have been convicted of manifest falsehood if he had passed off invented or uncertain things as undoubted and contained in an authentic process. For the rest, that the three bishops named were the judges Girolamo Melzi of Pavia, Carlo Settala of Tortona, and Girolamo Francesco Miroglio of Casale, we said above from the same Innocenzo in the Commentary, §24, num. 553.

CHAPTER III.

Other benefits and miracles obtained from the year 1654 to 1662.

[ ] A sufferer from hernia cured: a woman near death from pleurisy, There follows in the aforesaid Innocenzo the year of Christ 1654, under which he again subjoins these things from the processes of Pavia. Agostino Cani, whom I mentioned under the year 1647 (consult num. 11 of this Appendix), had for seven years used a bandage on account of a grave hernia, when, after many remedies applied in vain, at last, being devoted to Bl. Bernardino, he was healed in the year 1654. The lady Angelica Laghi, wife of master Carlo Giorgio Casale, in the year 1654 on the feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (that is, the eighth day of December), was suddenly seized with a most acute pleurisy together with a most burning fever, and the most skilled physician of the city of Pavia was summoned to treat the pressing evil, than which the sick woman affirmed she had never suffered any equal or graver. He, having learned the gravity of the disease, judged that she was in the utmost danger of life; and as he was returning thence he met her daughters and said that he greatly grieved that they would shortly lose their mother, for whose disease he asserted that no remedy would avail, and who would not see the morning of the next day.

[37] But while the sick woman was at the point of death in the night from the sharpness of the pain, at the Blessed man's invocation she is suddenly restored to health. remembering how powerful is the patronage of Bl. Bernardino, whose Life she had once heard read aloud by her husband, she earnestly invoked him, and meanwhile fell into a peaceful sleep, from which she awoke free of all fever and pain. The most diligent physician, the gravity of the disease pressing, came very early in the morning with two others most skilled in that art; and when he saw her sitting up and dressing her hair, he was astounded at the novelty of the thing; but he ceased to marvel when he understood that she had been thus restored to entire health from a most present death through Bl. Bernardino. From what has been said, this woman seems to have been healed on the day after the Conception of the most blessed Virgin Mother of God, that is, on the ninth day of December; wherefore I do not know whether the tenth day of December was noted in the margin by error.

[38] For the following, the year 1655 and the thirteenth day of June are set down. A hernia taken away from a boy: The event is related thus. When Giacomo Andrea, son of Giovanni Ghidini and Chiara de Sassi, dwelling at Pavia, an infant of about three months, had wept for several nights on account of a grave discomfort of his little body, he was found to have a swelling in his private parts. Hence his mother, fearing that he was ruptured, consulted the midwife, who affirmed that it was so, and urged her to apply a speedy remedy. The mother, obeying, bathed the infant on a cushion with a bath of warm wine; but profiting nothing thus, she vowed him to Bl. Bernardino, and earnestly commending him to that saint, saw to it that he was carried to his altar with the gift of a candle. Having poured out prayers there, she returned home, and, having stripped her son of his bandages, found him so freed from all swelling as though he had never been afflicted with it; nor did he thereafter suffer anything of the kind.

[39] the raising of the siege of Pavia ascribed to him. When in the year 1655 Pavia was encircled with a close siege by the army of the Most Christian king, the city, assembled in council, joined to the vigorous defense of the garrison soldiers and of the citizens bravely fighting for their fatherland the common vows to their proven patron Bl. Bernardino of Feltre, promising an annual Mass to be sung solemnly in the church of St. James, where his body rests, at his altar, if the siege were raised. After the vow was made, certain images of the said Blessed man were hung on the various bastions, and not long after the enemy raised the siege; and therefore, in payment of the vow, that Mass is solemnly celebrated every year on the thirtieth day of the month of July in the said church. The city of Pavia was then besieged for the king of France by Francesco d'Este, duke of Modena, and Tommaso of Savoy, prince of Carignano. And that siege is said, in the Monuments of the universal History of Europe published in French at Paris in the year 1725, to have been raised on the fourteenth day of September of the aforesaid year 1655, a month and a half after the military trenches had been begun before the city.

[40] A foul swelling of a girl, with which she had been born, A clearer benefit shines out in the cure that follows, to which Innocenzo assigned in the margin the year 1658 and the fifth day of February, always citing the same processes of Pavia. Claudina, he says, daughter of master Giacomo Francesco Galloa and of the lady Giovanna Battista de Robiliati, was brought into the light with so great a swelling projecting beneath her right ear that it occupied her throat and neck, and the midwife believed that she had been monstrously born with a double head; and the same swelling hindered the infant from sucking the breasts. A certain one of the most skilled surgeons of the city of Pavia, called in to help, asserted that for that evil, which had been contracted in the mother's womb, there was no remedy; since cutting in that part, in which some of the greater veins and sinews meet, would be most dangerous, and would avail only to hasten death. Finally he added that her cure must be obtained from God alone through the patronage of one of his Saints.

[41] a vow being made and fulfilled, vanishes. Such altogether was also the opinion of the physicians, among whom was master Pietro Francesco Friggio, a man of very well known skill and experience; and acquiescing in his judgment, the grandfather, the mother-in-law and the girl's mother, having taken counsel together, agreed that they should carry her to Bl. Bernardino's altar to be commended to him, and have a Mass celebrated. This purpose they carried out on the feast of St. Agatha in the same year, and at the same time vowed that a silver image should be brought there if the infant were healed. This being done, the swelling began to go down and to be healed, until, after fifteen days, the father, returning home from abroad and learning what had happened, carried the silver votive offering to the said altar, and soon the infant appeared wholly sound, all the swelling being utterly removed, with no hollow trace in the flesh, and absolutely no scar left. For such a miracle, therefore, not only the household but others also who saw the girl healed contrary to what could humanly have been hoped rendered praise and thanks to the Blessed man.

[42] A five-year-old girl crippled in her legs, The lady Costanza, wife of master doctor Giovanni Battista Belcredi of Pavia, had a little daughter so crippled in her limbs that even leaning on two crutches she could scarcely walk. It happened that in the aforesaid year 1658, in the month of August, on the day sacred to the Virgin Mother of God taken up into heaven, the said lady went with that girl, named Giulia, then about five years old, to the monastery of Mustiola, of the Order of Vallombrosa, to visit certain Religious, her husband's sisters. While she talks with them, another girl of the world, who was being educated in the same monastery, Giulia's sister, said to her in the course of conversation: Giulia, will you come with me into the church of our monastery, where we have Bl. Bernardino, who will heal you? Her sister, when she agreed, led her, none of the nuns who were present noticing, into the church to the altar on which the Blessed man's likeness was seen painted.

[43] When they had come there, the same sister, who was the elder, praying before his image, is given a free step. took her in her arms and set her upon that altar, with the help of a nun who happened then to be present. The good little girl, with hands joined, recited the Lord's Prayer with the Angelic Salutation, after which, as she had then been taught, she added these few words: Blessed Bernardino, grant me this grace, that I may be healed and may not walk henceforth with these crutches. After she had uttered this with a devout affection of heart, she was set down on the pavement; and behold, suddenly leaving her crutches and without anyone's help she walked whole toward a certain nun at another altar, to the great astonishment of the many who were present. She was therefore bidden to kneel down on the ground and give thanks to God and after him to the Blessed man, which all the nuns and her household also paid amid tears flowing for joy. As a monument of this miracle the aforesaid crutches which she had used remained hung at the same likeness of the Blessed man.

[44] Agostino Cani named above (first at num. 11 and then at num. 36 of this Appendix), One suddenly recovers from an acute fever, another from pleurisy. laboring in the year 1658 under an acute fever, when, the physicians despairing of his recovery and he being now at the point of death, he was commended with a vow to Bl. Bernardino, was again restored to health that had been despaired of. In the year 1660 pleurisy, or a torment of the right side, had attacked Giovanni Alberto, son of master Bartolomeo Pietragrassa, a patrician of Pavia and doctor of Physic; whereby, being brought into the gravest danger of life, at his father's urging he vowed that he would offer two candles to the Blessed man, would hear Mass at his altar, and would confess his sins; and so on the twelfth day of January of the year noted he was made entirely whole.

[45] In the year 1660 Paola Alvarez, wife of Don Antonio, a soldier in the castle of the city of Pavia, A dropsical woman, who was believed shortly to die, was carried to the hospital with dropsy; but being pronounced incurable by the physicians and surgeons, after eight days she was sent back to her own house. Here, although diligently treated as could be wished, profiting nothing for a long time, she went so far for the worse that she swelled monstrously both in her legs and in the rest of her body, unable to rise from the bed in which she was most violently tormented. Her dropsy had arisen from water beneath the skin; from which she hoped to be freed by cutting the skin, so that the water might flow out. Wherefore she often asked the surgeon to make an incision. But he refused to do it as contrary to the principles of his art and to his experience, in which he was most practiced, asserting that all those on whom

such an incision had been used had died of it. To this the sick woman protested that she was altogether resolved to attempt it with her own hand, if he refused to lend his.

[46] But the skilled and devout surgeon dissuaded her from this with many words, and suggested that she should rather have recourse to the most blessed Virgin and the Saints; for that no other remedy remained for her evil; and after this he bade her farewell. after a vow made The dropsical woman, being set in so pitiable a state, and understanding from the bystanders that she would not live until the evening of that day, earnestly invoked Bl. Bernardino and asked her husband's consent to make a vow to him of wearing the habit of St. Francis for one year; and he assenting, she so vowed on the ninth day of April of the aforesaid year. The next day she felt herself much better, and, being out of bed all that day, was a wonder to all who had destined her for the grave.

[47] escapes whole: her son is freed from a hernia. Then, growing better day by day through the rest of the month, she was at last perfectly freed from all swelling, and soon, going on to the church of St. James, paid due thanks to the Blessed man and had two Masses celebrated. Thereafter, as she had vowed, she put on a garment of ash color, and to all who had seen her in that deplorable state and asked how she had emerged from so incurable an evil, she related the grace received from Bl. Bernardino. When the same Paola's little son suffered from a hernia, after various remedies attempted in vain, his mother's mother-in-law commended him to Bl. Bernardino, and with firm faith, taking off from him all the plasters and bandages, made a vow: and the boy without any remedy was at once wholly healed. Therefore out of her devotion she gave order that the boy be carried to the Blessed man's altar and a Mass celebrated in thanksgiving.

[48] A drowned boy, and believed dead, In the year 1660, in the month of April, at Rovescala, which is a place in the principality of Pavia and a fief of the most illustrious Pecorara family of Pavia, a certain boy of about two years, called Felice, son of Matteo and Anna Bergonzi, fell into a deep ditch filled with water to the height of half a man's stature, and was drowned, while meanwhile it was not known where he was. His mother, anxious about her son who did not appear, sought him through the neighboring houses, and could not find him. But as she chanced to pass by that ditch, she sees him as if floating on the water, and beheld him swollen and with his eyes turned up. At this sight she began to cry out, Woe is me, wretched; my son is drowned! That mournful cry reached the neighbors, and in particular the most illustrious master Francesco Bernardino Pecorara and his wife the lady Angela Francesca Torta, who at that time were in a garden adjoining the said ditch, and who without delay, going to it, helped the mother to lift out the boy.

[49] comes to life again after the Blessed man's help was invoked by others. Being carried into the nearest house, and turned about so that he might vomit up the water, he cast out nothing at all; being warmed with hot cloths, because he had grown wholly stiff, he grew warm in no part, but remained always cold as before, and gave no sign of life. The aforesaid gentleman, seeing that all was attempted in vain, wished to go away to his own affairs; and seeing this, the dead boy's mother cried out weeping, Alas, wretched me, whose son is drowned, and whom my husband on his return home will butcher for it! Moved to compassion by these words, the said gentleman, who held Bl. Bernardino in veneration, himself also cried out: O blessed Bernardino, help this wretched woman, this bereaved mother, that she be not ill used by her husband! And behold, suddenly the boy began to give signs of life and to breathe, and, the water being discharged from every part, the next day he was safe and whole. It can scarcely be told how much devotion so signal a miracle won for the Servant of God; for all followed God and the Blessed man with the highest praises, and the father had a Mass celebrated in thanksgiving.

[50] What follows is said to have happened in the year 1661, on the twenty-ninth day of August. A woman fallen after childbirth into a grave disease and madness, Anna Caterina, daughter of Giacomo Francesco Giorgi, surnamed Barbante, of the city of Pavia, wife of master Siro Magone, after she had borne a daughter on the twenty-eighth day of July of the aforesaid year, the natural purgation being stopped, fell into a madness joined with a sharp fever and continual sleeplessness, and continued for fifteen days unable to bear any food or drink, nor could she admit any remedies except certain clysters. The physician judged the disease to be most deadly, because it in no way yielded to that slight remedy, the use of which alone the sick woman's state permitted, nor could others be applied to her, so that she was believed likely to die on any day. While therefore she was in so present a danger of life, her parents, to whom she was an only daughter, having recourse to Bl. Bernardino, most widely known for beneficence of every kind, saw to it that a nine days' devotion was made at his altar, giving order that a lamp should burn continually before him and one Mass be celebrated daily.

[51] This devotion being begun, the sick woman began to take food, after her parents' prayers and vows yet without the acute fever and the sleeplessness ceasing, nor the frenzy which had been born of them. With the same confidence the aforesaid parents began a second novena; and a greater benefit of their Intercessor appeared, since, the sleeplessness now being interrupted, she took rest, by which, the organ of her mind, before injured, being somewhat strengthened, she refrained from injuring and spitting upon those who visited her; so that the physician himself, visiting her, when he received no more abuse or spittle and heard that she had slept, marveled vehemently, because according to his art he could discern nothing to which he might ascribe so great a change. A third novena being begun, she began to recognize persons, to evacuate her body, and to incline toward perfect health.

[52] At last, the novena being finished, she said to her father, in whose house she was living, she wholly recovers. Father, did you not tell me that you wished to bring me to Bl. Bernardino in the church of St. James? I beseech you, bring me. Wherefore, being brought, to the joy of her own people, to honor the sacred relics of the Servant of God, she prayed devoutly at them, and returning thence whole, sound in mind and body, thereafter lived pleasantly with her husband, by whom, being again with child, she bore happily. Further, she wore for one year a garment of ash color, which is that of the Order of St. Francis, by the vow which her parents had uttered to obtain health for her; and besides she sent a tablet to the Blessed man's chapel as a monument of the grace received, well known to the whole city, which, as it had grieved at her unusual sickness, so it marveled at this great miracle, which had evidently happened against the expectation of all (if human remedies alone be regarded).

[53] In the same year, in the month of December, Antonio Bernardino, He heals a sufferer from hernia, whose mother he had succored in childbirth. son of master Francesco Bagnolo, suffering from a hernia on one side, although many remedies had been tried, could never recover from it, until, all human means being let go, his mother implored Bl. Bernardino, by whose help he was made safe and sound. The same mother, named Anna Brusasca, wife of the aforesaid master Bagnolo, had once experienced in herself the same Blessed man's powerful help, when, laboring in a most dangerous childbirth and destitute of sight, voice and strength, at his invocation alone, made silently in her mind, she was at once snatched from danger.

[54] A woman out of her mind, and another in danger from a flow of blood, There follow here three benefits conferred on three different persons, one in the year 1661, the second in 1662; to the third no year is assigned. The lady Angela Dordona Bruna, wife of master Raimondo Dordone, a notary of Piacenza and one of the officers of the sacred Mount of Piety of that city, had a sister called Agnese Magrana, a widow, made frantic by disease, and so out of her mind that she gave no further sign of reason. Hence she, fearing lest her sister should remain forever out of her mind, implored the help of Bl. Bernardino of Feltre for her with fervent prayer, vowing that she would bring her to Pavia to venerate his sacred body in the church of St. James. The vow being made, the sick woman indeed obtained the health desired, but the aforesaid lady Angela did not stand by her promises.

[55] are made safe after vows uttered to him; Whence in the following year, which was 1662, in the month of July, the lady Angela herself began to suffer from a most grave flow of blood, which, continuing for many days, afflicted her mortally and made her cold in her whole body, the opening of a vein and other remedies which the physician and surgeon of the said city had judged fitting availing nothing. Being thus brought to her last extremity, Religious were already present to commend her soul to God, when, remembering the vow uttered for her sister and not yet paid, she grieved at her negligence, and repeated the vow, and commended herself also continually to the Blessed man, that she might be restored to health. After the vow was renewed she at once was better also, so that within a few days she was already free to fulfill it; which she did on the sixth day of August of the same year, on which day both sisters set out together for Pavia to visit the sepulcher of the aforesaid Servant of God, at which, as a monument of the benefit conferred on both, they hung a silver image, and had a public instrument drawn up there concerning the premises.

[56] a third is set free from a spell. Further, the said ladies had then brought with them to Pavia the lady Barbara Bruna, marriageable daughter of the aforesaid master officer of the Mount of Piety, who likewise attested in authentic form that she too had received a singular grace from the Blessed man; namely that, after a long disease of one year, and the labor of skilled physicians meanwhile diligently but vainly applied, when she was found by ecclesiastical exorcisms to be held by a demonic spell — that then, I say, when she had had recourse to the patronage of Bl. Bernardino and of the glorious St. Anthony of Padua, promising that she would come to honor the said Blessed man's body, she had at once been perfectly healed.

[57] An illustrious man brought to his last extremity by the force of disease, In the year 1662 the most illustrious lord Don Matteo de Rosales, count of Vailate, marquis of Castelleone, knight of St. James, and supreme counselor of the Catholic king, was afflicted with an acute fever and with the gravest accompaniments of the disease — pain of the stomach and palpitation of the heart, and sudden failings of strength and of the senses. And when on the seventh day he had grown more violently worse, the physician greatly feared for his life. Recognizing therefore that he was in most present danger from so many and so great evils, the lady countess his wife and his daughters made a vow for his safety to Bl. Bernardino with great faith, which was also heard. For at once there befell the sick man a discharge of the bowels, after which he began notably to be better, and continued to make progress toward perfect health.

[58] But what commends this benefit of the Blessed man still more is that, while the fever among the other evils was turning for the worse, recovers when a vow is made by his wife and daughters. there came upon him twice the most bitter torments of the stone, from which both the fever ought to have grown heavier and the sick man's strength to have been weakened, yet he nevertheless, through the patronage of the Servant of God invoked, bore them, and their fierce

onset he was able to overcome. For which benefits, that he might repay a grateful mind, the count sent as a gift a most splendid tablet of solid silver to the Blessed man's chapel, toward which in turn he always showed himself most devoted and munificent. That this tablet was displayed in the same Blessed man's chapel we said in the Commentary, §23, num. 525. Perhaps here too someone may, and not without reason, require more certain things before this illustrious man's healing is placed with certainty among the benefits of Bl. Bernardino. But the circumstances of things often speak better than a bare narrative, and he himself certainly acknowledged it as received from Bernardino as his deliverer, as that very tablet sufficiently attests.

[59] To the same year 1662 belongs what is subjoined in the same place. A professor of eloquence is freed from a grave evil of the leg and from a fever; Master doctor Perogalli, public professor of eloquence in the university of Pavia, had his right leg afflicted with a grave inflammation, to which the physicians and surgeons had been able to bring no help. After he had endured it for the space of eight or ten months with great torments and convulsions of the sinews, so that for all those months he lay continually in bed, fearing whether he could rise from his bed in time to discharge his office of lecturer, he commended himself to Bl. Bernardino, and obtained that he could do it at the opening of the studies, and could continue until the end of the third part of the scholastic year (during which alone he was perhaps obliged to attend the school). This being completed, he took to his bed again, laboring besides under a continuous fever, for the curing of which the physicians did not dare to apply the usual remedies because of the sick man's advanced age and weakness. Besides this, in those same days there flowed from his leg a humor beyond the measure of two cups (in Italian it is piu di due boccali); which indeed those skilled in matters of this kind judged curable by no other means than patience. In this state he was when the most illustrious remissorial judges assembled in the meantime to draw up the process on the virtues and miracles of the said Servant of God. Being cited by them as one of the witnesses produced, and ordered to appear that they might be examined in that cause, he conceived a sure confidence in the Blessed man's patronage that he would be able to rise from his bed; and he rose, as he had trusted, his leg being suddenly brought back to its former soundness; and he himself brought forward this grace conferred upon him at that very time.

[60] a consumptive woman, near to death, is healed. On the same day on which the most illustrious lords, the remissorial judges, visited the Blessed man's body, the lady Caterina Rogeria Strazzapatta was laboring so far under a continuous fever and consumption that the physician denied that she could recover naturally. She was therefore handed over by the bodily physician to the spiritual one, who conferred the Sacraments on her and commended her soul to God. But she with living faith implored Bl. Bernardino, and the next day went out of her bed sound and whole. In the margin here the same year 1662 is noted, and an authentic instrument is cited. Finally the same author Bernardinus, who published this little Work of his in print at Pavia only two years afterward, namely in the year 1664, thus concludes it.

[61] The author's epilogue. Most frequent, finally, are the benefits which the divine Majesty deigns to confer upon the devout clients of this his blessed Servant; nor should I easily make an end of this appendix if, besides the aforesaid notes on the miracles and benefits drawn from the processes of his virtues, I wished also to recount all the other benefits and miracles which have since been granted day by day. Let what I have added now suffice for the end I set before me — the greater glory of God, and the propagation of the cult of our Blessed man, whose veneration, immemorial by reason of time, I pray God to make universal also by reason of place: which indult is hoped for from the gracious Apostolic See, to whose censure the author of this addition most humbly submits his own opinions.