St Dominic | Laodicea

It was 15^th September, 1870. The French had lost the battle of Sedan a couple of weeks before (Pope Pius IX, a witty man, remarked that France had lost ses dents). Just five days ago, on September 10^th, King Victor Emmanuel II had written to the pope telling him that he intended to march into Rome and take it over. The following day, the 11^th, the Italian armies had entered illegally into the papal domains. By the 20^th, they will have taken Rome and the patrimony of St Peter will be no more.

But to the south, in Sobriano of Calabria, strange things were afoot. The town had a famous shrine to St Dominic. It dated from the 16^th century; for, on 15^th September, 1530, the friars of the convent had received a miraculous image of St Dominic, not painted with human hands. In memory of this favour, a papal bull allowed them to sing Mass at two in the morning every year on that day, since this was the hour when the painting had been received.

In 1865, a large new statue of St Dominic had been sculpted and placed inside the church. It was made of solid wood, weighing more than twenty stone, and had needed five men to put it into place. A single man could only with great difficulty move it even a little on its base.

At two in the morning, on the 15^th September 1870, the Dominican provincial sang Mass. He lived by himself, near the church, since the ‘laws’ of the time had dissolved all religious communities. After the Mass, a few women present in the church thought that they saw the great statue of St Dominic moving by itself.

At eleven in the morning a solemn Mass in honour of St Dominic was sung. Normally there would have been a procession afterward, but this year for some reason it was cancelled. The people are disappointed. So they remain in the church to pray. Again, the statue is seen to move of itself, and by more people this time. It goes back and forwards, left and right, in the form of a cross. Not only this, but the face of St Dominic is clearly to seen to change expression: he looks alternately severe and peaceful. Often he turns to the statue of our Lady of the Rosary, with a tender, confident gaze. The colour in his face comes and goes. His lips open “like those of a man about to speak”. His right hand, which had been closed, opens and gesticulates. The lily in his left hand moves in all directions; so do the star and halo above his head. Wrinkles appear on his forehead, which is bathed in sweat, and his eyes move in all directions.

By noon, the fact has become public in the town. A large crowd, both of locals and of visitors, come to look. Some stand afar off, some go close to examine, all marvel. The platform on which the statue rests does not move. There are no cords attached to the statue, nor is it moved by some concealed person. The movements are not caused by the wind, for neither the draperies of the canopy which overhangs the statue nor the candles on either side of it are moving. In any case, the church door looks north, and there was a strong west wind that day. The bolder folk go to take hold of the statue, and they find themselves being moved by its motion. It rises some inches above the surface on which it rests. Above all, though, it is the head of the saint that moves, and his expression that changes – severe, threatening, then gentle once more.

On 19^th January 1871, the bishop, Philippe Mincione, announces an investigation. Sixty-one witnesses depose under oath to what they have seen, including Fr Thomas Sarraco, the Dominican provincial. Many more people had wished to testify, but the bishop decided to call a halt.

On 11^th February, the episcopal verdict is pronounced. There is no natural explanation for what has happened. Further proof of this, says the bishop, lies in the many graces, and even temporal blessings, received in Sobriano since. The moral effects on the diocese have been excellent. “Having invoked the holy name of God, we declare that everything is supernatural and miraculous in the movements of the statue of St Dominic on 15^th September, 1870”.

{from Fr Pie Marie Rouard de Card, Le Miracle de Saint Dominique à Sobriao, Louvain (C. J. Fonteyn) and Paris (Poussielgue Freres), 1871}

“O God, who wert pleased to enlighten Thy church with the merits and teaching of blessed Dominic Thy confessor; grant, at his intercession, that she may not be wanting in temporal helps, and may always increase in spiritual growth.”

In Greek mythology, Bellerophon was a brave hero who caught and tamed the winger horse Pegasus. By his aid Bellerophon won great victories; but his pride and ambition grew, until thinking himself to be a god he flew up toward Mount Olympus, whereupon Zeus sent a gadlfy to sting the flying horse, who cast his rider to earth. Bellerophon survived the fall, but lived out his remaining days a crippled hermit.

“History is all irony”, said Belloc. There is at any rate a fine irony in the fact that when Napoleon Bonaparte was looking for a way out of France after the great fall at Waterloo, it was to a ship called HMS Bellerophon that he went, as it patrolled the coastal waters off Rochefort. There he surrendered to the British, with the words: “I am come to throw myself on the protection of your Prince and your laws.”

Poor Napoleon, thrown off his magic horse to become a hermit on St Helena! And poor France, with its ‘Law of Separation’, which might equally be called a ‘Law of Death’; for the Church should be to the State as the soul to the body, and the separation of these two is the very definition of death. After such a fall, can any give life to the dead?

POPE HONORIUS, of happy memory, charged St Dominic to gather in one enclosure all the nuns who were lying scattered all over the city, and then, after he had constructed a monastery for them at St Sixtus, to make them continue in common life. St Dominic, however, asked the Pope to name other fitting helpers for carrying out so hard an under taking: accordingly the Pope gave him for helpmates the Cardinal Ugolino, bishop of Ostia, who became Pope later on, Stephen of Fossa-Nuova, Cardinal by the title of the Twelve Apostles, and Nicholas, Cardinal and bishop of Tusculum, and bade them stand by him should he need their aid.

Now when all the other nuns would obey neither the Pope nor St Dominic in this matter, the abbess of St Mary’s across the Tiber, and all her nuns, with only one exception, offered themselves and their property with all the revenues of their monastery to St Dominic. Then St Dominic and the three Cardinals associated with him gave orders that on the first Wednesday in Lent, after the imposition of ashes, they should all meet at St Sixtus for the said abbess to resign her office before them and all the nuns, and make over to him and his companions all rights over the monastery. While St Dominic was sitting with the three Cardinals, and the said abbess and her nuns were standing by, lo, a man came in tearing his hair and shouting aloud: ‘Alas, alas!’ When those present asked what was amiss, he rejoined: ‘The Lord Cardinal Stephen’s nephew has fallen from his horse and is dead.’ The young man’s name was Napoleon, and at the news his uncle swooned away in St Dominic’s arms. The others held him up and St Dominic sprinkled him with holy water. Then, leaving him, he went out to where the dead man lay, horribly crushed and mangled, and bade them carry him into a house outside the enclosure and shut him up therein. Next he told Brother Tancred and the others he had brought with him to prepare the altar for him to say mass.

Now there were standing in that place St Dominic and the Cardinals with their followers, and the abbess with her nuns, for the Cardinals and St Dominic held her in great reverence for her sanctity. Then St Dominic said Mass with abundance of tears. On coming to the elevation of the Lord’s Body, holding it uplifted in his hands, as he generally did, St Dominic was seen to be raised a span from the ground. All who were present witnessed it, and were lost in wonderment at the sight.

When the mass was finished he went back to the corpse, and with him went the Cardinals and their company, the abbess and her nuns, and on coming to the body he with his own most holy hands laid out the crushed and mangled limbs, from the head down to the feet: then he knelt down and wept much while he prayed by the bier. Thrice he composed the lacerated head and limbs, praying the while, then he got up and made the sign of the cross over the body, and standing at the dead man’s head, his hands upraised to heaven, and himself uplifted by divine power above a span from the ground, he called aloud: ‘O young man, Napoleon, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ I bid thee arise!’ And instantly, in the sight of all those who had crowded in to see what marvel would happen, the young man rose up sound and well, and said to St Dominic: ‘Father, give me something to eat.’ Then St Dominic gave him both meat and drink, and restored him to his uncle hale and happy, and without a trace of his injuries; now he had lain dead from early morning till nine of the clock. Sister Cecilia narrated this wondrous miracle just as it is herein set down, for she was present all the while, and saw everything with her own eyes and heard all with her own ears (from the ‘Story of St Dominic’ by Blessed Cecilia Cesarine O.P.)