Commentaria in Isaiam
Fourth, because many miracles were and are done there: for sinners are converted, demons are put to flight, diseases are cured; St. Augustine is witness, City of God, book 22, chapter 8. Hence there Mary the Egyptian sinner was converted, and from there went into the desert, where for 47 years, without food, she led a most holy life in prayer and tears: Zosimas, an eyewitness, who wrote her Life, is witness. Sophronius in the Spiritual Meadow, chapter 48, relates that Cosmiana, wife of the patrician Germanus, infected with the heresy of Severus, went to the sepulchre of the Lord; but the Blessed Virgin appearing, she was repulsed, so that she might not enter there unless she embraced the true faith. Wherefore, confused and penitent, and embracing the faith and communicating, she was admitted to the Holy Sepulchre and venerated it. And in chapter 49 he relates that the Duke of Palestine, wishing to enter the Holy Sepulchre, was cast back by a ram appearing and butting him with its horns, and this several times, because he was a Severian: wherefore he abjured the heresy, and communicating of the chalice of the Lord, was freely permitted to enter and venerate it.
Hear what Gregory of Tours writes from St. Augustine, book On the Glory of the Martyrs, chapter 7: “The very earth, moreover, that lies beside the sepulchre of the Lord drew from the Lord’s body, placed so near, a certain divine power, so that the faithful who journey thither were rightly accustomed to take eagerly from it what they have been used to employ both for the healing of diseases and for the driving out of demons.” Then he confirms the same by the testimony of St. Augustine: “A trustworthy witness of this matter is St. Augustine, when he writes thus of Hesperius, a man of tribunitian rank: He had received from a friend of his holy earth brought from Jerusalem, where Christ was buried and rose again on the third day; and he had hung it in his chamber, that he himself might suffer no evil. But when his house was cleansed of that affliction, he was thinking what should be done with that earth, which for reverence he did not wish to keep longer in his chamber. By chance it happened that I and my colleague Maximus the Bishop were nearby; he asked us to come, and we came; and when he had told us everything, he also asked that it be buried somewhere, and that a place of prayer be made there, where Christians also might be able to assemble for celebrating the things that are God’s.”
Fifth, the sepulchre of Christ is glorious by the annual representation and pomp with which the faithful in many places are accustomed every Holy Saturday to raise a magnificent sepulchre for Christ who suffered and died, and to represent his glorious burial.
Finally, the sepulchre of Christ was glorious by the magnificent resurrection of Christ from it, by which he passed through it by the gift of subtlety.
Rupert of Deutz, book 8 On the Divine Offices, chapter 4, relates that in the year of the Lord 1114 it happened at Liège in the monastery of St. Lawrence, when on Holy Saturday the antiphon “The women sitting at the sepulchre” was being sung, that the girdle of a certain religious, with which he was girded, leapt out as if thrown before his feet; and when he seized it to gird himself again, he saw it tied and closed with a knot, and heard a whistling:
So could Christ come forth, the sepulchre being closed.
By a like miracle, a ring slipping from a closed girdle to the ground without any breaking of ring or girdle, St. Augustine, City of God, book 22, chapter 8, shows that Christ came forth from the closed womb of the virgin mother. In like manner as with Christ’s, so also the sepulchres of illustrious Christians God willed to be glorious, so that in them too, and not only in his own, Christ might be glorious. So St. Catherine, about to undergo martyrdom, prayed: “Grant, O Lord Jesus Christ my God, that this my body, which for thee was torn, may not be seen by those who seek it.” God, thus honouring and hearing his Martyr, sent Angels, who laid out her body, and they were seen by those present to carry it to Mount Sinai. So her Life has it.
St. Sebastian, pierced with arrows and cast into the sewer, appeared by night to St. Lucina, bidding her take his body out of the sewer and carry it to the catacombs, and bury it near the footprints of the Apostles; which she did.
St. Armogastes, a Bishop, a distinguished champion of the faith against the Arians, in the year of the Lord 456, when about to die, ordered himself to be buried under a tree; those digging beneath it beheld a sarcophagus of most splendid marble made ready, such as perhaps no king at all ever had, says Victor, book 1 On the Vandals.
Theodoric the Abbot, a disciple of St. Remigius, who had raised from the dead the daughter of Theodoric, son of Clovis king of the Franks, when he had worked many miracles, and had departed with glory, the Angels receiving him, King Theodoric, coming to the monastery, bore the holy body on his own shoulders to the sepulchre. So Usuard in the Martyrology, July 1.
St. Ermelendis, a virgin, afflicting her body with fasts and penances, was honoured when about to die by choirs of Angels singing glory to Christ, and because she was beloved of Christ, she was most dutifully buried by them, says the author of her Life, October 29.
St. Peter the Abbot, drowned in the sea, was buried in an ignoble place by the inhabitants of the place. But God, to show how great his merit was, sent every night over his sepulchre a radiant light; which the inhabitants noticing, they translated him to Boulogne, and buried him honourably in the church, as Bede relates, book 1 of the English History, chapter 33.
Blessed Sigismund, king of Burgundy, when he had been unjustly deprived of kingdom and life by Clodomir and his three brothers, sons of Clovis, kings of the Franks, and had been cast with his wife and children into a deep well, soon a bright light shone in the well, and St. Maurice with the Theban Legion (whose bodies rested in the same city of Agaunum) appearing to St. Avitus showed the glory of those dwelling there, as Gregory of Tours relates, book 3 of the History of the Franks, chapter 6, and in the book On the Glory of the Martyrs, chapters 74 and 75, Baronius and others.
St. Cerbonius, Bishop of Populonia, ordered that he be buried in his own church, although it was occupied by the Lombards: this was done without their knowledge and against their will; for a great storm having arisen which scattered them all, only the ship in which the Saint’s body was carried was untouched by the rain falling all around, as St. Gregory relates, Dialogues, book 3, chapter 11.
In the year of the Lord 1007, St. Romuald, Abbot of St. Emmeram, died at Ratisbon, to whose bier Henry, king of the Germans, and afterwards emperor, put his own shoulder, to carry it to burial, as Baronius relates from Count Arnulf.
In the year of the Lord 1079 the body of St. Gerard the Martyr was raised, and, translated on the shoulders of King Ladislaus of Hungary and of the princes, was honourably laid to rest, and shines with miracles, as his Life has it, September 24.
St. Constantius, Bishop of Perugia and Martyr under Antoninus Pius, when by a heavenly warning he was being honourably buried by Levianus, a worthy man, both Levianus and the Saint himself were mocked by two men: who, soon struck with blindness, repenting, by touching the body of the Martyr recovered the light of their eyes. So his Life has it, January 29.
Hence, second, God and the Church willed that the burial of the faithful be adorned with song, lamps, wax tapers, flowers, the tolling of bells, costly vestments, and so on. The Venerable Bede, book 4 of the History of the English, chapter 8, and from him Baronius, in the year of Christ 681, relates that when in a certain monastery of Britain a plague was carrying off many, and the Abbess Edilburga was in doubt where to bury the deceased sisters, the place was divinely shown to her. For after the morning psalmody a light sent from heaven, like a great linen cloth, came over them all, in comparison with which the noonday sun seemed dark; from there it withdrew to the southern part of the monastery, and, staying there for a time and covering those places, in the sight of all withdrew into the heights of heaven, so that no one doubted that this very light, which was to lead or receive the souls of the handmaids of Christ into heaven, was showing the place in which their bodies were to rest and await the day of resurrection: