A Medieval Venetian Saint and the Art of Interpreting the Holy Scripture
The Life and Teachings of the Martyr Bishop Gerard Sagredo
NOTE: Living very close to the Italian jewel, Venice, I decided to start a series of articles about the sacred treasures of the legendary city. This is the first article in the series. I will also write about the three saints born here: Gerard Sagredo (980-1046), Lawrence Justinian (1381-1456), and Gerolamo Emiliani (1486-1537). Additionally, I will prepare several articles about special Venetian places and famous artists—writers, poets, musicians, composers—who lived here. Any feedback will be highly appreciated.
Saint Gerard of Csanád was born on April 23, 977, in a noble Venetian family, Sagredo. When baptized, he was named after one of the most famous Christian Saints: Georgio (George). He was only five years old when he fell seriously ill. This desperate situation, in an epoch when a flu was enough to lose your life, cause his parents to ask for the help of God to whom they promised the child's life if he survives. Thus, like Saint Thomas Aquino who, at the same age, five, was given to the Monte Casino Monastery, the little Giorgio becomes oblate to the Benedictine abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore in his hometown, Venice. Here he receives the most elevated education.
Later on he will be sent to Bologna to study philosophy, grammar, law and music. At this time, his father dies in a battle waged near Jerusalem. To honor his memory, Giorgio changes his name to that of his heroic parent, Gerardo. In 1004 he is consecrated priest and around 1015 he is chosen the abbot of his monastery. In the same year, during a journey whose final destination was Jerusalem, he met on Pecs the holy King Stephen I of Hungary. His intellectual and moral qualities determine the monarch to entrust him with the education of his son, Prince Emeric. Even though he accepts such a difficult task, Gerard will always prefer to live an austere life of hermit.
In 1030 he is appointed bishop of the diocese of Csanád (Hungary). For the next sixteen years, Bishop Gerard carries out an intense activity, setting up parishes and consecrating many churches. He takes care to set up a school where future clerics study medieval liberal arts and theology. Wishing to prepare his place of rest he creates, in 1037, with the support of King Stephen, a Benedictine monastery in the locality of his Episcopal seat, Csanád.
The death of the sovereign, one year later, will trigger a long series of struggles for succession that will last until 1046 when a new king, Andrew I, will be crowned as the new King of Hungary. In the same year, on 26 August, Bishop Gerard is killed, along with his two companions, bishops Bystrík and Buldus, during their journey to the crowning ceremony. The terrible act was committed by a militia of the pagan Hungarian population who wanted to block the ongoing process of Christianization of the country. The full recognition of the virtues and qualities of the great bishop Gerard Sagredo will take place few years later, in 1068, when he is canonized, simultaneously with his protector, King Stephen of Hungary, and prince Emeric.
Besides a holy life rewarded by God with the crown of martyrdom, Saint Gerard left us an amazing work, entitled Deliberatio supra hymnum trium puerorum (The Deliberation on the Hymn of the Three Young Man). Together with other masterpieces of medieval literature, Gerard’s writing can be placed on the same level beside famous works like the Etymologies of Saint Isidore or the Commentary on Job by Saint Thomas Aquinas. This jewel of biblical interpretation is a true compendium of allegorical interpretation, applied with genius and inspiration to biblical sacred texts.
Saint Gerard’s basis for his whole work is the interpretation of the hymn dedicated to God by those three young and deeply religious Jews, Sidrach, Misach, and Abdenago, presented in the third chapter of the Book of Daniel (verses 26 to 45). This interpretative work will reveal the links between this hymn and many other verses and books from the Holy Bible, all of them solved by Saint Gerard with a mastery comparable with that of Saint Maximus the Confessor. The importance of all those themes exposed by Saint Gerard is so great that hardly can be presented without omitting something significant. For instance, under the influence of the theory regarding the hierarchy of knowledge proposed by Saint Isidore of Seville, Gerard states the analogical similitude of the so called trivium and the whole cosmos: the grammar is Heaven, rhetoric is the Earth while dialectics represents the Sun, the Moon and the Stars. As we can see, as in the case of mystical poets like Saint Therese of Avila or Saint John of the Cross, we can hardly say how much from such a statement is science and how much of it is art or poetry.
What especially has retained my attention is the argument, as brief as succinct, given by the Venetian author to demonstrate the legitimacy of the allegorical interpretation of the Holy Scripture:
I previously said that the philosophers have admitted the existence of seven heavens. This statement does not lack mystery, lest we are impeded by those who say that allegory in the interpretation of the Scriptures is inappropriate. But Paul, the source of the teachings, often directs us to the deepest allegories. But the prophets seem to be enveloped by the clouds of allegories. The Savior Himself only spoke to the crowds in parables. (...) Even in the writings of holy poets (like King David) can be recognized some symbols.
Obviously, for Saint Gerard the main school where someone can learn the difficult but marvelous art of interpreting the Holy Scriptures is the Bible itself. The name of Saint Paul, who teaches us that Hagar and Sarah symbolize the two Testaments (Galatians, chapter 14), is the first invoked. Then the prophets, and especially Christ, the Savior, who teaches His disciples that the seeds from the parable of the sower symbolize the different types of souls and their attitude towards the word of God (Matthew 13: 18-23), or that the tares of from the parable of the tenants are the sons of the devil (Matthew 13: 36-43). So, as Saint Gerard emphasizes, we can even find in the pages of the Holy Bible allegorical interpretations meant to help us in our spiritual growth.
Once having established the full legitimacy of the allegory, Saint Gerard will use it brilliantly to reveal many deep meanings of the third chapter of Daniel, meanings which nowadays are still highly significant. All these meanings are subordinated to the fuga mundi theme which is presented in a verse from the First Epistle of Saint John:
Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him (1 John 2: 15).
But what is the connection between this verse and the episode in which we see how the three young men are thrown into the furnace by the cruel Nabuchodonosor? The interpretation proposed by Saint Gerard unveils, convincingly, the profound meaning which links these two biblical texts. First, he allegorically explains what is—spiritually speaking—that huge golden idol:
Woe to us, who, whenever we listen more to the prince of this world than to God, we often worship the golden statue, and when we hear the sound of the trumpet, and of the flute, and of the harp, of the sackbut, and of the psaltery, and of the symphony, and of all kind of music, we are throwing ourselves to the earth. All these (musical instruments) are devil's instruments. Not from God's music is coming something like this. All the delights of a worldly life are instruments of vices. So, it is better to be thrown into the furnace than to worship the statue at the sound of such instruments like these.
The full power of such an allegorical interpretation is obvious. The whole chapter three from the book of Daniel is not just an old story about ancient people. No, not at all. It is about us, Catholics from the 21st century, and about our way of life. The admirable saint from Venice will address a rhetorical question whose answer fully enlightens us:
What do I mean by worship the golden statue? Love not - he says - the world, nor the things which are in the world (1 John 2: 15). And: Put not your trust in princes: In the children of men, in whom there is no salvation (Psalm 145: 2-3). And: Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord (Jeremiah 17: 5). Trust not in iniquity, and cover not robberies: if riches abound, set not your heart upon them (Psalm 61: 11) and many other like these, countless.
The very world of vices and countless sins committed by the “sons of wrath” (Ephesians 2: 3) is the furnace in which those few, who through the help of divine grace strive to remain faithful to God, are thrown away. For Saint Gerard, the best description of the “furnace of burning fire” where, ceaselessly, are purified all those who love God more than this passing world, is given by Saint Paul in his second Epistle to the Corinthians (6: 4-10). In that passage Saint Paul enumerates all the tribulations and sufferings of the true Christians.
When he summarizes his interpretation given to the third chapter of Daniel, he attacks directly and vigorously all those vicious clerics and lay people who are responsible for the decadent life of numerous baptized Catholics:
Therefore, all that is done to man's liking rather than the praise of God in Babylon, that is, in this wicked age, is not virtue, but vice, and serves the vices. But, because it is not virtue, it is even sin. Today, many—and not just laymen, but also clergymen—to please prostitutes, are doing some like these. But God terrible cuts them with his sword, that they may be swallowed up altogether, for they fill their greedy bellies and become fornicators. The harp—he says—and the lyre, and the timbrel, and the pipe, and wine are in your feasts: and the work of the Lord you regard not (Isaiah 5, 12). But what does that mean? Therefore hath hell enlarged her soul, and opened her mouth without any bounds, and their strong ones, and their people, and their high and glorious ones shall go down into it (Isaiah 5: 14). Because the worshipers of God did not please some like these revelers, they were thrown into the burning fiery furnace. This was done by Nabuchodonosor, the king of Babylon, namely the king of confusion, which clearly is the devil itself, who day and night do not cease to prepare for the servants of God a burning fiery furnace, that is, the temptations of the flesh and blood. The whole world that cannot receive the Holy Spirit must be called a furnace, which every day is heated for all the evil work and does not cease to get wild against the disciples of Christ. But the angel of God, who has descended with Ananias and his companions in the furnace, does not forsake those who bear tribulations for the love of God. And behold—the Lord himself says—I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world (Matthew 28: 20).