Saint Peter of Arbues

The canon saw in this proposal not the honor and power it conferred upon him, but an opportunity to contribute to the glory of God and the good of his country. He judged that religion and heresy did not allow for refusal; he accepted. In taking on the duties of Inquisitor, Peter of Arbues fully intended to fulfill them. However, to derive all the fruit he hoped for, he relied less on the power of a skillfully organized administration than on the strength of persuasion and charity. Ardent in procuring conversions, he was no less prudent in accepting only those that were sincere and proven, both to avoid the profanation of the sacraments and to diminish the danger of defections that would subsequently expose the guilty to the full rigor of the laws. He was often seen preaching in public; he was encountered wherever a soul shaken by the grace of God was found, wherever a wavering heart of doubtful perseverance was pointed out to him; in the hut of the poor and at the counter of the rich, at the bedside of the sick, in the prisons where the relapsed and apostates were locked away, and even at the foot of the pyres where some were about to sadly expiate their inconstancy. But, as the most effective preaching is that of example, Peter strove above all to show in his own person the virtues of the priest and the apostle, and for this he endeavored to possess them. Not content with having removed from his house and his table all luxury and superfluity, he gave himself over to the most rigorous privations. A voluntary pauper, he was liberal toward the poor and sought with love opportunities to exercise works of charity, both spiritual and temporal. He prayed with effusion, and, even in the midst of external labors, kept his soul constantly raised toward heaven. Such was his humility that, according to the expression of his Italian biographer, he conducted himself toward his inferiors as an equal, and toward his equals as an inferior. A contemporary Spaniard, Juan Gracia Salaverte, adds that he was endowed with the gift of prophecy and that he announced the fall of Granada, a fall that no one yet dared to fo resee, except as something distant.

So much labor and virtue, while attracting the veneration of the faithful, could only earn him the animosity of the enemies of the Church. With his colleague Gaspard Inglario having died in the year 1484, and not having been replaced, did they come to imagine that if Peter of Arbués were to disappear in his turn, the dreaded tribunal would remain abolished? All we know is that a certain number of Jews held a nocturnal meeting where his death was resolved.

At the head of this plot were a rabbi and three wealthy merchants named Gaspard de Santa-Cruz, Matéo Ram, and Pedro Sanchez. They had no trouble finding accomplices to execute what they themselves were prepared to pay for generously. They bribed a certain Juan de Labadia, whom they found already highly exasperated against the Saint, because one of his sisters had been condemned by the Inquisition; a Frenchman by the name of Vital Durant, and another, a Toulousian, called Bernard Léofan; a Juan Sperandio ; a Tristam, f rom Leon; and a Gran, from Valencia; all of that breed of adventurers ready for any crime and who fear, in terms of evil deeds, only those that are poorly paid.

The secret was not, however, so well kept that nothing leaked out. Several friends of the threatened Inquisitor had suspicions. Antonio Salverte, among others, counselor to Their Catholic Majesties and husband of one of Peter of Arbués's sisters, warned him of the peril and implored him to be on his guard. "If I die at their hands, I shall die for the faith," replied the Saint with an air that sufficiently indicated that this prospect gladdened rather than saddened him. And he changed nothing in his conduct.

The hired assassins made an attempt to enter through the window into the room where he slept. But, frightened by the clamor of the people in the house, they withdrew in haste and went to the cathedral, where they hoped to find him chanting Matins. Not having encountered him, they postponed the deed to another time.

During the night of Tuesday, September 14, to Wednesday, September 15, two of them, Juan Sperandio and Vital Durant, entered the metropolitan church at a time when no one was there and hid themselves. The canons, at the hour of the night office, returned one after the other, and Peter of Arbues among them. He stopped before the high altar, on the epistle side, and remained there for some time on his knees, which allowed the two wretches to recognize him perfectly while creeping toward him. Finally, at the moment he was whispering these words of the angelic salutation: "And Jesus, the fruit of thy womb, is blessed," and while the choir was singing these verses of the Psalmist: "Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart," the assassins rushed forward. One, Durant, struck the canon on the head with a dagger and fled; the other, Sperandio, dealt him two blows to the throat and likewise took flight. The Saint fell while pronouncing only these words: "Praised be Jesus Christ! I die for his holy name!" The singing ceased; the other canons ran over. They lifted him up, still breathing, not uttering a complaint and radiant. They carried him to his home, troubled and with the greatest precautions.

However, the two assassins, terrified by the gentleness of their victim more than by their own crime, hesitated and lost their way in the vast church. Already people were running in pursuit of them; they shouted to close the doors; but their comrades, who were waiting for them posted at the entrance and ready to lend them a hand, seized them and dragged them away. Nevertheless, their punishment was only deferred.

Once he had arrived home and was laid down, the wounded man only regained his speech to soothe the tears of his friends and to pity not himself, but the assassins, to pray for them and to forgive them. He exhorted those around him to remain calm and resigned, exactly as if he were not personally concerned by what was causing their emotion. His room had become a sanctuary. People came there, with silent steps, to contemplate the dying martyr and to admire his angelic serenity. Those who could not enter knelt at the door and prayed for him, telling themselves that soon it would be he who, from the heights of heaven, would pray for them. He lived for two days, received the sacraments, and expired gently, forty-eight hours after having been struck, at midnight, on September 17, 1485.

One can easily imagine what must have been the consternation at first, and then the irritation of the inhabitants of Saragossa at the news of this tragic event. The Jews no longer dared to appear in the streets. Without the intervention of the magistrates and in particular of the Archbishop and Viceroy Ferdinand of Aragon, they would all have been massacred, even those who sincerely deplored the crime committed. As a sign of mourning, divine service was interrupted for three days, the altars covered with black cloths; the cathedral, which had been profaned, was solemnly reconciled and re-blessed. For two years, an officiant in mourning vestments recited the Miserere there at the beginning of the night office, and those present responded in a loud voice and on their knees.

The burial took place on Saturday, in the midst of the entire city, one can say without exaggeration. The procession was accompanied by the Archbishop Viceroy and all his clergy. The body was placed in a stone coffin, at the very spot where he had received the mortal blow. A strange phenomenon was then seen. At the moment the body touched the ground, all the blood that was there and which, out of respect, no one had washed, seemed to come back to life. This blood, which was already dried and barely recognizable, became warm, liquid, steaming, and began to flow in large drops, as if it were coming at that very instant from the veins from which it had gushed. It even increased in quantity and overflowed beyond the space it had originally reddened. The population crowded around, amazed. Handkerchiefs, paper, and linens were dipped into it, precious relics that were then religiously preserved; it was barely possible to push through the crowd and approach this miraculous blood, and despite the number of those who wanted to take some away, there was enough for everyone, and much more than the body of a single man can contain.

This prodigy was renewed fifteen days later, on September 29, at the beginn ing of Matins. The Acta Sanctorum, which recounts it, does not accept it lightly. It reproduces in full the official reports that were drawn up of this double event, on the very premises, by the public notaries Lalueza, Francès, Juan de Anellinos, and Antico de Viagès, reports signed in addition by the jurisconsult Barthélemy del Molino and seven other citizens of Saragossa. Forty-two years later, in 1507, in the investigation of the beatification process, there were still six eyewitnesses who attested to the fact under oath.

In life, Peter of Arbues had been considered a Saint; in death, and having died assassinated in the circumstances we have just described, he could only be venerated even more. Patriotism helped as much as piety, and the government, which was keen to nourish animosity against the infidels as long as they possessed an inch of Spanish soil, naturally set the example. But what contributed most to this was something that depended neither on the passions nor the calculations of men; it was the multitude of miracles that God performed at his tomb or through his intercession, not counting the one of the blood recounted above. The Bollandists report several, which would be too long to reproduce here. However, we cannot resist the pleasure of translating the following naive and touching account from Salverte:

"Among the miracles submitted to the bishops of Barbastro and Turiazona, commissioners of the Apostolic Holy See, and recognized as true by them, are two resurrections of dead children. The first of these children had died in Villa-Major, a town near Saragossa. The bells were already ringing and he was being carried to the grave. But the mother, who loved him tenderly, as mothers do, took the corpse and lifted it in her arms, saying, with great anguish and devotion, to Peter of Arbues, for whom she had a particular piety: Saint Mastrepita (it is remembered that this is the popular name of the holy canon), I offer you this fruit of my womb; he is yours; resurrect him, if you please, my Saint! At that very instant, the fresh pink colors that death had paled reappeared on the child's cheeks; the eyes opened, the lips moved and smiled at the mother. The crowd, joyful and amazed, accompanied the mother and child to the sepulcher of the Mastrepila, and they hung there, among the other ex-votos, the shroud in which the little dead boy had been laid."

He is depicted in the vestments of a regular canon, with the palm and the instrument of his martyrdom.

## CULT AND RELICS. Ferdinand and Isabella erected for the martyr Inquisitor, with the magnificence befitting such great princes, a marble tomb upon which his statue could be seen, and which they had surrounded with commemorative inscriptions. In 1490, the municipality of Zaragoza, in recognition of the cessation of a plague attributed to the martyr's intercession, offered two lamps to his tomb, one of which was of solid silver, to burn there night and day at the city's expense. His feast was celebrated from then on on September 15 with solemnity, and when Pope Urban VIII, in 1625 and 1634, had prohibited, in general, all cults having as their object servants of God not yet beatified or canonized, the cult of the venerable Peter of Arbues was formally placed among the exemptions by a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, dated March 23, 1652. This was, in a way, a commitment to do even more and to one day initiate the process of his canonization. Already Emperor Charles V and Kings Philip III and Philip V had addressed a formal request to the court of Rome. Pope Paul V began, in 1615, a regular and rigorous inquiry, which was pursued by three Auditors of the Rota and two Spanish Bishops, in Zaragoza and in all the places where memories related to the martyr lived on. Finally, on April 17, 1664, under Pope Alexander VII, the solemn ceremony of beatification took place with all the Roman and Spanish pomp in the Basilica of Saint John Lateran. That of the canonization was reserved for the glorious pontificate of Pius IX who, on June 29, 1867, in the presence of five hundred bishops, archbishops, and patriarchs, bestowed upon Peter of Arbues the title of Saint. The relics of Peter of Arbues were transferred to a side chapel of the Metropolitan Church of Zaragoza, enriched with all that the piety of the people could find most precious. One sees there, on the tomb, his famous statue in white marble. We have borrowed this life from the Revue du Monde catholique, July 1867 issue.