The Phantom World Part 41

[483] Betrus Venerab. Abb. Cluniac. de miracul. lib. i. c. 28. p.

1293.

[484] Lib. ii. de Civ. Dei, cap. 24.

[485] Aug. lib. ii. de Civ. Dei, c. 25.

[486] Trith. Chron. Hirs. p. 155, ad an. 1013.

[487] Idem, tom. ii. Chron. Hirs. p. 227.

[488] Vita S. Leonis Papae.

[489] Plutarch, in Anton.

CHAPTER XXII.

EXCOMMUNICATED PERSONS WHO GO OUT OF THE CHURCHES.

St. Gregory the Great relates[490] that St. Benedict having threatened to excommunicate two nuns, these nuns died in that state. Some time after, their nurse saw them go out of the church, as soon as the deacon had cried out, "Let all those who do not receive the communion withdraw." The nurse having informed St. Benedict of the circ.u.mstance, that saint sent an oblation, or a loaf, in order that it might be offered for them in token of reconciliation; and from that time the two nuns remained in quiet in their sepulchres.

St. Augustine says[491] that the names of martyrs were recited in the diptychs not to pray for them, and the names of the virgin nuns deceased to pray for them. "Perhibet praeclarissimum testimonium ecclesiastica auctoritas, in qua fidelibus notum est quo loco martyres et que defunctae sanctimoniales ad altaris sacramenta recitantur." It was then, perhaps, when they were named at the altar, that they left the church. But St. Gregory says expressly, that it was when the deacon cried aloud, "Let those who do not receive the communion retire."

The same St. Gregory relates that a young priest of the same St.

Benedict,[492] having gone out of his monastery without leave and without receiving the benediction of the abbot, died in his disobedience, and was interred in consecrated ground. The next day they found his body out of the grave: the relations gave notice of it to St. Benedict, who gave them a consecrated wafer, and told them to place it with proper respect on the breast of the young priest; it was placed there, and the earth no more rejected him from her bosom.

This usage, or rather this abuse, of placing the holy wafer in the grave with the dead, is very singular; but it was not unknown to antiquity. The author of the Life of St. Basil[493] the Great, given under the name of St. Amphilochus, says that that saint reserved the third part of a consecrated wafer to be interred with him; he received it and expired while it was yet in his mouth; but some councils had already condemned this practice, and others have since then proscribed it, as contrary to the inst.i.tutions of Jesus Christ.[494]

Still, they did not omit in a few places putting holy wafers in the tombs or graves of some persons who were remarkable for their sanct.i.ty, as in the tomb of St. Othmar, abbot of St. Gal,[495] wherein were found under his head several round leaves, which were indubitably believed to be the Host.

In the Life of St. Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarn,[496] we read that a quant.i.ty of consecrated wafers were found on his breast. Amalarius cites of the Venerable Bede, that a holy wafer was placed on the breast of this saint before he was inhumed; "oblata super sanctum pectus posita."[497] This particularity is not noted in Bede's History, but in the second Life of St. Cuthbert. Amalarius remarks that this custom proceeds doubtless from the Church of Rome, which had communicated it to the English; and the Reverend Father Menard[498]

maintains that it is not this practice which is condemned by the above-mentioned Councils, but that of giving the communion to the dead by insinuating the holy wafer into their mouths. However it may be regarding this practice, we know that Cardinal Humbert,[499] in his reply to the ____________ of the patriarch Michael Cerularius, reproves the Greeks for burying the Host, when there remained any of it after the communion of the faithful.

Footnotes:

[490] Greg. Magn. lib. ii. Dialog. c. 23.

[491] Aug. de St. Virgin. c. xlv. 364.

[492] Greg. lib. ii. Dialog. c. 34.

[493] Amphil. in Vit. S. Basilii.

[494] Vide Balsamon. ad Canon. 83. Concil. in Trullo, et Concil.

Carthagin. III. c. 6. Hippon. c. 5. Antissiod. c. 12.

[495] Vit. S. Othmari, c. 3.

[496] Vit. S. Cuthberti, lib. iv. c. 2. apud Bolland. 26 Martii.

[497] Amalar. de Offic. Eccles. lib. iv. c. 41.

[498] Menard. not. in Sacrament. S. Greg. Magn. pp. 484, 485.

[499] Humbert. Card. Bibliot. P. P. lib. xviii. et tom. iv. Concil.

CHAPTER XXIII.

SOME OTHER INSTANCES OF EXCOMMUNICATED PERSONS BEING CAST OUT OF CONSECRATED GROUND.

We see again in history, several other examples of the dead bodies of excommunicated persons being cast out of consecrated earth; for instance, in the life of St. Gothard, Bishop of Hildesheim,[500] it is related that this saint having excommunicated certain persons for their rebellion and their sins, they did not cease, in spite of his excommunications, to enter the church, and remain there though forbidden by the saint, whilst even the dead, who had been interred there years since, and had been placed there without their sentence of excommunication being removed, obeyed him, arose from their tombs, and left the church. After ma.s.s, the saint, addressing himself to these rebels, reproached them for their hardness of heart, and told them those dead people would rise against them in the day of judgment. At the same time, going out of the church, he gave absolution to the excommunicated dead, and allowed them to re-enter it, and repose in their graves as before. The Life of St. Gothard was written by one of his disciples, a canon of his cathedral; and this saint died on the 4th of May, 938.

In the second Council, held at Limoges,[501] in 1031, at which a great many bishops, abbots, priests and deacons were present, they reported the instances which we had just cited from St. Benedict, to show the respect in which sentences of excommunication, p.r.o.nounced by ecclesiastical superiors, were held. Then the Bishop of Cahors, who was present, related a circ.u.mstance which had happened to him a short time before. "A cavalier of my diocese, having been killed in excommunication, I would not accede to the prayers of his friends, who implored to grant him absolution; I desired to make an example of him, in order to inspire others with fear. But he was interred by soldiers or gentlemen (_milites_) without my permission, without the presence of the priests, in a church dedicated to St. Peter. The next morning his body was found out of the ground, and thrown naked far from the spot; his grave remaining entire, and without any sign of having been touched. The soldiers or gentlemen (_milites_) who had interred him, having opened the grave, found in it only the linen in which he had been wrapped; they buried him again, and covered him with an enormous quant.i.ty of earth and stones. The next day they found the corpse outside the tomb, without its appearing that any one had worked at it.

The same thing happened five times; at last they buried him as they could, at a distance from the cemetery, in unconsecrated ground; which filled the neighboring seigneurs with so much terror that they all came to me to make their peace. That is a fact, invested with everything which can render it incontestable."

Footnotes:

[500] Vit. S. Gothardi, Saecul. vi. Bened. parte c. p. 434.

[501] Tom. ix. Concil. an 1031, p. 702.

CHAPTER XXIV.

AN INSTANCE OF AN EXCOMMUNICATED MARTYR BEING CAST OUT OF THE EARTH.

We read in the _menees_ of the Greeks, on the 15th of October, that a monk of the Desert of Sheti, having been excommunicated by him who had the care of his conduct, for some act of disobedience, he left the desert, and came to Alexandria, where he was arrested by the governor of the city, despoiled of his conventual habit, and ardently solicited to sacrifice to false G.o.ds. The solitary resisted n.o.bly, and was tormented in various ways, until at last they cut off his head, and threw his body outside of the city, to be devoured by dogs. The Christians took it away in the night, and having embalmed it and enveloped it in fine linen, they interred it in the church as a martyr, in an honorable place; but during the holy sacrifice, the deacon having cried aloud, as usual, that the catechumens and those who did not take the communion were to withdraw, they suddenly beheld the martyr's tomb open of itself, and his body retire into the vestibule of the church; after the ma.s.s, it returned to its sepulchre.

A pious person having prayed for three days, learnt by the voice of an angel that this monk had incurred excommunication for having disobeyed his superior, and that he would remain bound until that same superior had given him absolution. Then they went to the desert directly, and brought the saintly old man, who caused the coffin of the martyr to be opened, and absolved him, after which he remained in peace in his tomb.

This instance appears to me rather suspicious. 1. In the time that the Desert of Sheti was peopled with solitary monks, there were no longer any persecutors at Alexandria. They troubled no one there, either concerning the profession of Christianity, or on the religious profession--they would sooner have persecuted these idolators and pagans. The Christian religion was then dominant and respected throughout all Egypt, above all, in Alexandria. 2. The monks of Sheti were rather hermits than cen.o.bites, and a monk had no authority there to excommunicate his brother. 3. It does not appear that the monk in question had deserved excommunication, at least major excommunication, which deprives the faithful of the entry of the church, and the partic.i.p.ation of the holy mysteries. The bearing of the Greek text is simply, that he remained obedient for some time to his spiritual father, but that having afterwards fallen into disobedience, he withdrew from the hands of the old man without any legitimate cause, and went away to Alexandria. All that deserves doubtlessly even major excommunication, if this monk had quitted his profession and retired from the monastery to lead a secular life; but at that time the monks were not, as now, bound by vows of stability and obedience to their regular superiors, who had not a right to excommunicate them with grand excommunication. We will speak of this again by-and-by.

CHAPTER XXV.