De monacho a triplici morbo curato.
The Monk's Threefold Affliction
A monk devoted to Saint Edward suffers a threefold illness and, on the eve of the saint's feast, cries out to him in longing and pain.
And I do not think this should be passed over in silence: that to one of the servants of Westminster, a religious and upright man, divine mercy has, through the merits of the blessed king, granted it.12 This man was indeed held by a wondrous affection for blessed Edward, and the remembrance of that name was sweeter to him than honey, and the memory of his holiness above honey and honeycomb, so that with thanksgiving he would daily sing five psalms for the good of his soul.3 But it came about that he was wearied by a threefold affliction, and no remedy was hoped for but a heavenly one. For after a bloodletting, blood had gathered and clotted around a small wound into a most grievous abscess, and the pain, spreading also to the surrounding areas, had robbed his arm of its strength; his heart besides was tormented by breathlessness, and his chest, tight, was drawing breath with great difficulty.4 And an intolerable swelling, seizing his foot, had nearly robbed it of its use entirely. The day was approaching — the annual solemn anniversary on which the holy king departed for the heavenly kingdoms — and he, suffering so great a hardship, was awaiting the joy desired by all with more than customary sadness. On that very night, at the fitting hour, when the community of brothers was eagerly gathering at the bells to be rung in honor of the king, he, weighed down by illness, sat sorrowful, because he could show no cheerfulness, nor offer comfort to the brothers in so great a labor.5 So when those strings were being pulled with the utmost devotion, the holy man burned and, no longer able to bear it himself, said: 'What, my Edward — will you not come to my help, and will you deny strength to this longing of mine?'6
The First Healing at the Bells
The monk rises to pull the bell rope in faith, his arm abscess bursts, and he later prays privately for the remaining healings.
Come to me, I beg you — I am rising now, and I am joining the choirs of the brothers. He grabbed one of the bell ropes, and scorning the disease, he pulled with all his strength using both hands.7 Immediately the abscess burst, and the hardened, putrid blood gushed out; once the swelling was calmed, all the pain departed. With one of his three afflictions now removed, and troubled as he still was about the tightness in his chest, he began — now more confident in his faith and more hopeful — to contemplate the power he had already experienced in the holy king, with a deeper eagerness. It was his custom, when the brothers were returning to their beds after vigils, to linger in the church and to devote himself more privately to psalms and prayers before a certain altar. That very night — the night in which he had perceived the divine presence attending the healing of his arm — he devoutly approached the sweet retreats he had been accustomed to frequent. And prostrating himself before God and his holy confessor Edward, he gives thanks for the favor he has received, and pleads for the one he has not yet received. And this must be ascribed not to presumption but to faith — that he was praying for the heavenly gifts to be tripled to him.
The Second Healing in the Night
While praying in the church, the monk is healed of his chest complaint, yet his foot remains swollen as he and another elder comfort each other with talk of the saint.
So he presses on, weeping and praying — glad about his arm, but sorrowful about his chest. But while praying, a heavy sweat broke from his body, and as it came off him, his breath returned stronger than usual.8 Then his chest, bathed with a kind of heavenly dew, recovered its normal health. The suffering in his foot still remained, which kept him from joining the gathering of his brothers. And so, as he lay one evening in the infirmary with another elder, around sunset, the two of them refreshed each other in mutual conversation, and as they talked they recalled the virtue of the blessed king with warm words.9 Then the man who had now been healed of a double ailment said: 'How great is the abundance of his power, dearest brother — something I, a sinner, have experienced firsthand and dare to speak of — because whatever he asks of the Lord his God, he will easily obtain.' In this way, laying out the miracle that had been worked in him, he stretched out his foot, deformed by a terrible swelling, and said: 'If he had healed this foot for me after the pain was taken away, there is nothing more I would have thought to ask of him.' Comforting each other with these words, as the sun set they returned to their beds.
The Third Healing and Thanksgiving
In the morning the monk discovers his foot completely healed, proclaims the miracle to his brothers, and the text closes with praise and a concluding title.
When morning broke, the man whose foot had been in pain got up and, as usual, placed his hand on the spot that hurt — but finding nothing swollen or painful in his foot, he realized that through blessed Edward he had been restored to perfect health. He cried out with joy, and unfolding to his companions so heavenly a miracle, he moved every heart to love more sweetly, to praise more devoutly, and to extol more fervently a patron of such great merit, to the praise and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be honor forever and ever. Amen. Here ends the Life of Saint Edward, King and Confessor, with his miracles.
Read the original Latin
Nec silentio tegendum arbitror quod uni servorum Westmonasterii, viro religioso et honesto, per merita beati regis pietas divina contulerit. Miro quidem vir iste circa beatum Edwardum tenebatur affectu, et nominis illius recordatio super mel ei dulcis erat et memoria sanctitatis ejus super mel et favum, unde cum gratiarum actione quinque pro ejus anima quotidie psalmos decantabat. Accidit autem ut triplici fatigaretur molestia, nec alia quam coelestis speraretur medicina. Post minutionem namque circa vulnusculum collectus sanguis et coagulatus in pessimum apostema duruerat, et vicina quoque loca dolor invadens, suo brachium vigore privaverat, anhelo praeterea cor cruciabatur spiritu, et pectus angustum cum magna difficultate halitum emittebat. Sed et pedem tumor intolerabilis occupans officium ejus pene totum ademerat. Appropinquabat dies annua revolutione solemnis, qua rex sanctus ad coelestia regna migravit, cum ille tanto laborans incommodo desideratam cunctis laetitiam solito moestior exspectabat. Eadem vero nocte tempore opportuno cum ad signa pulsanda ob honorem regis alacriter fratrum turba concurreret, ipse valitudine pressus tristis sedebat, quod nihil poterat hilaritatis exhibere, nec fratribus in tanto labore praestare solatium. Illis igitur cordas summa cum devotione trahentibus, aestuabat vir sanctus et semetipsum jam ferre non sustinens: «Itane, inquit, mi Edwarde, non subvenies, et huic desiderio meo vires negabis?
Adesto, quaeso, surgo enim, et me fratrum choris intersero.» Arrepta vero una cordarum morbumque contemnens, toto nisu manibus traxit utrisque. Statim apostemate rupto, concretus ille putridus sanguis erupit, sedatoque tumore dolor omnis abcessit. Sublata igitur una trium molestia, de pectoris anxietate sollicitus, expertam jam regis sancti virtutem, fide certior et spe coepit alacrior contemplari. Moris autem erat illi, fratribus post vigilias ad strata redeuntibus in ecclesia remorari, et ante quoddam altare secretius psalmis orationibusque vacare. Eadem vero nocte qua sibi divinam in brachii sui curatione senserat adfuisse praesentiam, ad dulces quas solitus fuerat frequentare latebras devotus accessit. Prostratusque Deo et sancto confessori suo Edwardo, pro accepto beneficio agit gratias, supplicat pro non accepto. Nec praesumptioni sed fidei ascribendum, quod triplicari sibi coelestia munera precabatur.
Instat igitur, plorat et orat, laetus pro brachio, sed pro pectore tristis. Inter orandum autem, e corpore sudor copiosus egrediens spiritum reddidit solito fortiorem. Pectus deinde coelesti quodam rore perfusum solitam recepit sanitatem. Superat adhuc pedis angustia, quae eum fratrum suorum interesse conventui non sinebat. Itaque cum in cella infirmorum cum alio quodam seniore decumbens, die quadam circa solis occasum mutua se collatione reficiunt, et inter colloquendum beati regis virtutem suavi sermone commemorant. Tunc ille qui jam fuerat duplici morbo curatus: «Quam magna, inquit, multitudo potentiae ejus frater charissime, quam ego peccator in memetipso expertus audeo dicere, quia quidquid voluerit, a Domino Deo suo facile impetrabit.» Sic ei miraculum quod in se fuerat operatus exponens, pedem extendit intolerabili quodam tumore deformem; et: «Si hunc, ait, pedem mihi sublato dolore sanasset, nihil est quod ulterius petendum ab eo aestimassem.» His sermonibus se consolantes, sole ruente lectulis sese recipiunt.
Mane autem facto, surgens is cui pes doluerat, solito manum apponit dolori, sed nihil in pede quod vel tumeret vel doleret inveniens, sensit se per beatum Edwardum perfectae sanitati donatum. Exclamat cum gaudio, et pandens sociis tam coeleste miraculum, ad amandum dulcius, et laudandum devotius, et expressius extollendum tanti meriti patronum omnium corda commovit, ad laudem et gloriam Domini nostri Jesu Christi, cui est honor in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
Explicit Vita sancti Edwardi regis et confessoris, cum miraculis ejusdem.
Notes
- 1 ↩pietas divina could be rendered 'divine piety/mercy'; context favors 'divine mercy' as the active healing grace attributed to God, mediated through the king's merits.
- 2 ↩per merita beati regis: 'through the merits of the blessed king' — the Latin attributes the healing instrumentally to the king's merits; flattening to 'through the blessed king' would lose the merit-theology.
- 3 ↩gratiarum actione: 'with thanksgiving' or 'with an act of thanksgiving' — kept as 'with thanksgiving' to preserve the liturgical-devotional register of the phrase.
- 4 ↩anhelo: glossed as 'I pant' but contextually the ablative of manner 'with gasping/panting'; rendered 'by breathlessness' to fit the ablative absolute construction 'cor cruciabatur spiritu'.
- 5 ↩ad signa pulsanda: 'at the bells to be rung' — the bells are the signal-bells for the office; rendered to keep the liturgical sense of the ringing that opens the anniversary.
- 6 ↩vires negabis: 'will you deny strength' — the monk's plea reads as a bold, faith-filled petition to the saint; kept as direct address to preserve the colloquy's emotional force.
- 7 ↩The exact referent of 'una cordarum' is uncertain — likely a bell-rope in the monastic context of ringing bells for the Hours, but the precise sense is unclear.
- 8 ↩solito is ambiguous in case function (ablative of manner or neuter ablative); rendered as comparative adverb 'than usual' as the most natural sense.
- 9 ↩cum at token 5 is ambiguous between preposition ('with') and conjunction; rendered as prepositional reading ('with another elder'), which best fits the context of two conversing monks.
Aelred of Rievaulx, Vita Sancti Edwardi Regis et Confessoris companion
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