Part 18

This consideration moved Camillus to make it the chief end of his new establishment, to afford or procure the sick all spiritual succor, discreetly to suggest to them short pathetic acts of compunction and other virtues, to read by them, and to pray for them. For this end he furnished his priests with proper books of devotion, especially on penance and on the sufferings of Christ; and he taught them to have always at hand the most suitable ejaculations extracted from the psalms and other devotions.[156] But dying persons were the principal object of our saint’s pious zeal and charity. A man’s last moments are the most precious of his whole life; and are of infinite importance; as on them depends his eternal lot. Then the devil useth his utmost efforts to ruin a soul, and _cometh down, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time_.[157] The saint therefore redoubled his earnestness to afford every spiritual help to persons who seemed in danger of death. He put them early in mind to settle their temporal concerns, that their thoughts might be afterward employed entirely on the affair of their soul. He advised those friends not to approach them too much, whose sight or immoderate grief could only disturb or afflict them. He disposed them to receive the last sacraments by the most perfect acts of compunction, resignation, faith, hope, and divine love; and he taught them to make death a voluntary sacrifice of themselves to the divine will, and in satisfaction for sin; of which it is the punishment. He instructed them to conjure their blessed Redeemer by the bitter anguish which his divine heart felt in the garden and on the cross, and by his prayer with a loud voice and tears, in which he deserved to be heard for his reverence, that he would show them mercy, and give them the grace to offer up their death in union with his most precious death, and to receive their soul as he with his last breath recommended his own divine soul into the hands of his heavenly Father, and with it those of all his elect to the end of the world. He instituted prayers for all persons in their agony, or who were near their death.

Every one was charmed at so perfect a project of charity, and all admired that such noble views and so great an undertaking should have been reserved to an obscure illiterate person. Pope Sixtus V. confirmed this congregation in 1586, and ordered that it should be governed by a triennial superior. Camillus was the first, and Roger, an Englishman, was one of his first companions. The church of St. Mary Magdalen was bestowed on him for the use of his congregation. In 1588 he was invited to Naples, and with twelve companions founded there a new house. Certain galleys having the plague on board were forbid to enter the harbor. Wherefore these pious _Servants of the sick_ (for that was the name they took) went on board, and attended them; on which occasion two of their number died of the pestilence, and were the first martyrs of charity in this holy institute. St. Camillus showed a like charity in Rome when a pestilential fever swept off great numbers, and again when that city was visited by a violent famine. In 1591 Gregory XV. erected this congregation into a religious Order, with all the privileges of the mendicant Order, and under the obligation of the four vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and perpetually serving the sick, even those infected with the plague; he forbade these religious men to pass to any other Order except that of the Carthusians. Pope Clement VIII. in 1592 and 1600 again confirmed this Order with additional privileges. Indeed the very end of this institution engaged all men to favor it; especially those who considered how many thousands die, even in the midst of priests, without sufficient help in preparing themselves for that dreadful hour which decides their eternity; what superficial confessions, what neglect in acts of contrition, charity, restitution, and other essential duties, are often to be feared; which grievous evils might be frequently remedied by the assiduity of well qualified ministers.

Among many abuses and dangerous evils which the zeal of St. Camillus prevented, his attention to every circumstance relating to the care of dying persons soon made him discover that in hospitals many are buried alive, of which Cicatello relates several examples,[158] particularly of one buried in a vault, who was found walking about in it when the next corpse was brought to be there interred. Hence the saint ordered his religious to continue the prayers for souls yet in their agony for a quarter of an hour after they seem to have drawn their last breath, and not to suffer their faces to be covered so soon as is usual, by which means those that are not dead are stifled. This precaution is most necessary in cases of drowning, apoplexies, and such accidents and distempers which arise from mere obstructions or some sudden revolution of humors.[159] St. Camillus showed still a far greater solicitude to provide all comforts and assistance for the souls of those that are sick, suggesting frequent short pathetic aspirations, showing them a crucifix, examining their past confessions and present dispositions, and making them exhortations with such unction and fervor that his voice seemed like a shrill trumpet, and pierced the hearts of all who heard him. He encouraged his disciples to these duties with words of fire. He did not love to hear anything spoken unless divine charity made part of the subject; and if he had a sermon in which it was not mentioned, he would call the discourse a gold ring without a stone.

He was himself afflicted with many corporal infirmities, as a sore in his leg for forty-six years; a rupture for thirty-eight years which he got by serving the sick; two callous sores in the sole of one of his feet, which gave him great pain; violent nephritic colics, and for a long time before he died, a loss of appetite. Under this complication of diseases he would not suffer any one to wait on him, but sent all his brethren to serve poor sick persons. When he was not able to stand he would creep out of his bed, even in the night, by the sides of the beds, and crawl from one patient to another to exhort them to acts of virtue, and see if they wanted anything. He slept very little, spending great part of the night in prayer and in serving the sick. He used often to repeat with St. Francis: “So great is the happiness which I hope for, that all pain and suffering is a pleasure.” His friars are not obliged to recite the Church office unless they are in holy Orders; but confess and communicate every Sunday and great holiday, have every day one hour’s meditation, hear mass, and say the litany, beads, and other devotions. The holy founder was most scrupulously exact in every word and ceremony of the holy mass, and of the divine office. He despised himself to a degree that astonished all who knew him. He laid down the generalship in 1607, that he might be more at leisure to serve the poor. He founded religious houses at Bologna, Milan, Genoa, Florence, Ferrara, Messina, Palermo, Mantua, Viterbo, Bocchiano, Theate, Burgonono, Sinuessa, and other places. He had sent several of his friars into Hungary, and to all other places which in his time were afflicted with the plague. When Nola was visited with that calamity in 1600, the bishop constituted Camillus his vicar general, and it is incredible what succors the sick received from him and his companions, of whom five died of that distemper. God testified his approbation of the saint’s zeal by the spirit of prophecy and the gift of miracles, on several occasions, and by many heavenly communications and favors.

He assisted at the fifth general chapter of his Order in Rome in 1613, and after it, with the new general, visited the houses in Lombardy, giving them his last exhortations, which were everywhere received with tears. At Genoa he was extremely ill, but being a little better, duke Doria Tursi sent him in his rich galley to Civita Vecchia, whence he was conveyed in a litter to Rome. He recovered so as to be able to finish the visitation of his hospitals, but soon relapsed, and his life was despaired of by the physicians. Hearing this, he said,--_I rejoice in what hath been told me: We shall go into the house of the Lord._ He received the viaticum from the hands of cardinal Ginnasio, protector of his Order, and said with many tears,--“O Lord, I confess I am the most wretched of sinners, most undeserving of thy favor; but save me by thy infinite goodness. My hope is placed in thy divine mercy through thy precious blood.” Though he had lived in the greatest purity of conscience ever since his conversion, he had been accustomed to go every day to confession with great compunction and many tears. When he received the extreme unction he made a moving exhortation to his religious brethren, and having foretold that he should die that evening, he expired on the 14th of July, 1614, being sixty-five years one month and twenty days old. He was buried near the high altar in St. Mary Magdalen’s church; but upon the miracles which were authentically approved, his remains were taken up and laid under the altar; they were enshrined after he was beatified in 1742, and in 1746 he was solemnly canonized by Benedict XIV. See the life of St. Camillus by Cicatello his disciple, and the acts of his canonization with those of SS. Fidelis of Sigmaringa, Peter Regalati, Joseph of Leonissa, and St. Catharine de Ricci, printed at Rome in 1749, p. 10, 65, and 529, and Bullar. Rom. t. 16, p. 88. Heylot, Hist. des Ordres Relig. t. 4, p. 263.

ST. IDUS, BISHOP OF ATH-FADHA IN LEINSTER.

Was a worthy disciple of St. Patrick, by whom he was baptized. He is often invoked in the old Irish prayer in verse which bears the name of St. Moling. See Colgan in MSS.

JULY XV.

ST. HENRY II. EMPEROR.

From his authentic life, published by Surius and D’Andilly, and from the historians Sigebert, Glaber, Dithmar, Lambert of Aschaffenburg, Leo Urbevetanus in his double chronicle of the popes and emperors, in Deliciæ Eruditor. t. 1 and 2. Aventin’s Annals of Bavaria, &c.

A. D. 1024.

St. Henry, surnamed the Pious and the Lame, was son of Henry, duke of Bavaria, and of Gisella, daughter of Conrad, king of Burgundy, and was born in 972. He was descended from Henry, Duke of Bavaria, son of the emperor Henry the Fowler, and brother of Otho the Great, consequently our saint was near akin to the three first Emperors who bore the name of Otho. St. Wolfgang, the Bishop of Ratisbon, being a prelate the most eminent in all Germany for learning, piety, and zeal, our young prince was put under his tuition, and by his excellent instructions and example he made from his infancy wonderful progress in learning and in the most perfect practice of Christian virtue. The death of his dear master and spiritual guide, which happened in 994, was to him a most sensible affliction. In the following year he succeeded his father in the duchy of Bavaria, and in 1002, upon the death of his cousin Otho III. he was chosen emperor.[160] He was the same year crowned king of Germany at Mentz, by the archbishop of that city. He had always before his eyes the extreme dangers to which they are exposed who move on the precipice of power, and that all human things are like edifices of sand, which every breath of time threatens to overturn or deface; he studied the extent and importance of the obligations which attended his dignity; and by the assiduous practice of humiliations, prayer, and pious meditation, he maintained in his heart the necessary spirit of humility and holy fear, and was enabled to bear the tide of prosperity and honor with a constant evenness of temper. Sensible of the end for which alone he was exalted by God to the highest temporal dignity, he exerted his most strenuous endeavors to promote in all things the divine honor, the exaltation of the Church, and the peace and happiness of his people.

Soon after his accession to the throne he resigned the dukedom of Bavaria, which he bestowed on his brother-in-law Henry, surnamed Senior. He procured a national council of the bishops of all his dominions, which was assembled at Dortmund, in Westphalia, in 1005, in order to regulate many points of discipline; and to enforce a strict observance of the holy canons. It was owing to his zeal that many provincial synods were also held for the same purpose in several parts of the empire. He was himself present at that of Frankfort in 1006, and at another of Bamberg in 1011. The protection he owed his subjects engaged him sometimes in wars, in all which he was successful. By his prudence, courage, and clemency, he stifled a rebellion at home in the beginning of his reign, and without striking a stroke compelled the malecontents to lay down their arms at his feet, which when they had done he received them into favor. Two years after he quelled another rebellion in Italy, when Ardovinus or Hardwic, a Lombard lord, had caused himself to be crowned king at Milan. This nobleman, after his defeat, made his submission, and obtained his pardon. When he had afterward revolted a second time, the emperor marched again into Italy, vanquished him in battle, and deprived him of his territories, but did not take away his life, and Ardovinus became a monk. After this second victory, St. Henry went in triumph to Rome, where, in 1014, he was crowned emperor with great solemnity by pope Benedict VIII. On that occasion, to give a proof of his devotion to the holy see, he confirmed to it, by an ample diploma, the donation made by several former emperors, of the sovereignty of Rome and the exarchate of Ravenna:[161] and after a short stay at Rome, took leave of the pope, and in his return to Germany kept the Easter holydays at Pavia; then he visited the monastery of Cluni, on which he bestowed the imperial globe of gold which the pope had given him, and a gold crown enriched with precious stones. He paid his devotions in other monasteries on the road, leaving in every one of them some rich monument of his piety and liberality. But the most acceptable offering which he made to God was the fervor and purity of affection with which he renewed the consecration of his soul to God in all places where he came, especially at the foot of the altars. Travelling through Liege and Tries he arrived at Bamberg, in which city he had lately founded a rich episcopal see, and had built a most stately cathedral in honor of St. Peter, which pope John XVIII. took a journey into Germany to consecrate in 1019. The emperor obtained of this pope, by an honorable embassy, the confirmation of this and all his other pious foundations. For he built and endowed other churches with the two monasteries at Bamberg, and made the like foundations in several other places; thus extending his zealous views to promote the divine honor and the relief of the poor to the end of time. Bruno, bishop of Ausburg, the emperor’s brother, Henry, duke of Bavaria, and other relations of the saint complained loudly that he employed his patrimony on such religious foundations, and the duke of Bavaria and some others took up arms against him in 1010; but he defeated them in the field; then pardoned the princes engaged in the revolt, and restored to them Bavaria and their other territories which he had seized.

The idolatrous inhabitants of Poland and Sclavonia had some time before laid waste the diocess of Meersburg, and destroyed that and several other churches. St. Henry marched against those barbarous nations, and having put his army under the protection of the holy martyrs St. Laurence, St. George, and St. Adrian, who are said to have been seen in the battle fighting before him, he defeated the infidels. He had made a vow to re-establish the see of Meersburg in case he obtained the victory, and he caused all his army to communicate the day before the battle which was fought near that city. The barbarians were seized with a panic fear in the beginning of the action, and submitted at discretion. The princes of Bohemia rebelled, but were easily brought back to their duty. The victorious emperor munificently repaired and restored the episcopal sees of Hildesheim, Magdeburg, Strasburg, Misnia, and Meersburg, and made all Poland, Bohemia, and Moravia tributary to the empire. He procured holy preachers to be sent to instruct the Bohemians and Polanders in the faith. Those have been mistaken who pretend that St. Henry converted St. Stephen, king of Hungary; for that prince was born of Christian parents. But our saint promoted his zealous endeavors, and had a great share in his apostolic undertakings for the conversion of his people.

The protection of Christendom, and especially of the holy see, obliged St. Henry to lead an army to the extremity of Italy,[162] where he vanquished the conquering Saracens, with their allies the Greeks, and drove them out of Italy, left a governor in the provinces which he had recovered, and suffered the Normans to enjoy the territories which they had then wrested from the infidels, but restrained them from turning their arms towards Naples or Benevento. He came back by Mount Cassino, and was honorably received at Rome; but during his stay in that city, by a painful contraction of the sinews in his thigh, became lame and continued so till his death. He passed by Cluni, and in the duchy of Luxemburg had an interview with Robert, king of France, son and successor of Hugh Capet.[163] It had been agreed that, to avoid all disputes of pre-eminence, the two princes should hold their conference in boats on the river Meuse, which as Glaber writes, was at that time the boundary that parted their dominions. But Henry, impatient to embrace and cement a friendship with that great and virtuous king, paid the first visit to Robert in his tent, and afterward received him in his own. A war had broken out between these two princes in 1006, and Henry gave the French a great overthrow; but being desirous only to govern his dominions in peace, he entered into negotiations which produced a lasting peace. In this interview, which was held in 1023, the conference of the two princes turned on the most important affairs of Church and State, and on the best means of advancing piety, religion, and the welfare of their subjects. After the most cordial demonstrations of sincere friendship they took leave of each other, and St. Henry proceeded to Verdun and Metz. He made frequent progresses through his dominions only to promote piety, enrich all the churches, relieve the poor, make a strict inquiry into all public disorders and abuses, and prevent unjust usurpations and oppressions. He desired to have no other heir on earth but Christ in his members, and wherever he went he spread the odor of his piety, and his liberalities on the poor.

It is incredible how attentive he was to the smallest affairs amidst the multiplicity of business which attends the government of the state; nothing seemed to escape him; and whilst he was most active and vigilant in every duty which he owed to the public, he did not forget that the care of his own soul and the regulation of his interior was his first and most essential obligation. He was sensible that pride and vain-glory are the most dangerous of all vices, and that they are the most difficult to be discovered, and the last that are vanquished in the spiritual warfare; that humility is the very foundation of all true virtue, and our progress in it the measure of our advancement in Christian perfection. Therefore the higher he was exalted in worldly honors the more did he study to humble himself, and it is said of him, that never was greater humility seen under a diadem. He loved those persons best who most freely put him in mind of his mistakes, and these he was always most ready to confess, and to make for them the most ample reparation. Through misinformations, he for some time harbored coldness toward Saint Herebert archbishop of Cologne; but discovering the innocence and sanctity of that prelate, he fell at his feet, and would not rise till he had received his absolution and pardon. He banished flatterers from his presence, calling them the greatest pests of courts; for none can put such as affront on a man’s judgment and modesty, as to praise him to his face, but the base and most wicked of interested and designing men, who make use of this artifice to insinuate themselves into the favor of a prince, to abuse his weakness and credulity, and to make him the dupe of their injustices. He who listens to them exposes himself to many misfortunes and crimes, to the danger of the most foolish pride and vain-glory, and to the ridicule and scorn of his flatterers themselves; for a vanity that can publicly hear its own praises, openly unmasks itself to its confusion. The emperor Sigismund giving a flatterer a blow on the face, called his fulsome praise the greatest insult that had ever been offered him. St. Henry was raised by religion and humility above this abjectness of soul which reason itself teaches us to abhor and despise. By the assiduous mortification of the senses he kept his passions in subjection. For pleasure, unless we are guarded against its assaults, steals upon us by insensible degrees, smooths its passage to the heart by a gentle and insinuating address, and softens and disarms the soul of all its strength. Nor is it possible for us to triumph over unlawful sensual delights, unless we moderate and practise frequent self-denials with regard to lawful gratifications. The love of the world is a no less dangerous enemy, especially amidst honors and affluence; and created objects have this quality that they first seduce the heart, and then blind the understanding. By conversing always in heaven, St. Henry raised his affections so much above the earth as to escape this snare.