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 CAMALDOLESE

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CAMALDOLESE

to it, and a short cloak fastened with a piece of wood at the throat.

There wen- now in all four hermitages belonging to the congregation, and in January of the year 1524 the first general chapter was held in the monastery of St. diet near Ancona. In this chapter Paolo Gius- tiniani was elected general of the congregation, priors were chosen for the different monastei ies, and the con- stitutions were confirmed. In the same year Cardinal Giulio dei Medici, the friend and helper of Giustiniani, leded to the papacy as Clement VII. Giustiniani immediately repaired to Rome to obtain from the new pontiff confirmation of the acts of Leo X and full pos- session of the monasteries which Gabrielli, holding in commendam, had given over to the congregation when he joined it. Clement readily gave the necessary con- firmation and at the same time granted the congrega- tion certain dispensations from canon law.

This confirmation of Gabrielli 's gift did not imply that the monasteries would remain in the possession of the congregation after Gabrielli's death. Gius- tiniani, anxious that the gift should be made perpet- ual, once more set out for Rome, accompanied tins time by Gabrielli. It was the month of .May, 1527, the very time at which the soldiers of the Emperor Charles V were occupying Rome. Giustiniani and his companion on their arrival were made prisoners, but, having nothing in their possession, were released, and travelled first to Venice and then to Massaccio. In 152S Giustiniani went to Rome for the last time. He saw Clement in the Castle of S. Angelo and ob- tained the confirmation he had sought in the ['receding year. Besides this he received confirmation of a gift previously mud.- by the Abbot of St. Paul's, of the monastery of San Silvestro on Monte Soraete. On his way to tliis monastery, which was about twenty miles distant from Rome, he was seized by his last ill- ness, and died at his newly acquired monastery on the 28th of June, 1528.

< >n the death of the founder, a new general was chosen for the congregation in the person of Agostino di Basciano, who died shortly after. His place was taken by Giustiniano di Bergamo, formerly a Bene- dictine monk. He summoned a general chapter to decide which of the then existing houses was to be considered as the chief of the congregation. Many preferred Massaccio, as being the first-founded, but lence was finally given to the monastery of Mont,- Corona.

In 1540, reunion was effected between the Congrega- tions of Monte Corona and Camaldoli, with the prior ofCamaJdoli < ■-■■ neral. It was arranged that a gen- eral chapter was to be held yearly at Camaldoli. at which the prior was to be chosen. This state of things only lasted for a year; the congregations were again separated and remained so till the year 1634, when they were again united by Pope Urban VIII. This union lasted till 1667, when they were finally separated by a Hull of Clement IX.

(ivi The '■<•" oj Turin owes ite foundation

to Alessandro Ceva, a member of a noble Piedmont- ese family. Born in 1538, he went to Rome in 15(51) to study for the priesthood, and there placedhimself under the spiritual direction of St. Philip Xeri. Eight years later, with the sainl 's ail vice, he determined to join the Camaldolese, and we find him becoming prior of the order in 15S7. From 15S!) to 1595 he with the order concerning tin' reformation of the Breviary ordered by Popes Pius V and Clement VIII. In 1596 he was sent to Turin as prior of the Camald ryol Puteo

Strata, with authority to found hermitages of the order in Piedmont. Two years later a terrible plague visited Turin, during which the Camaldolese monks Undertook the care of the sick, which the secular clergy, whose numbers had been terribly reduced by the pestilence, wire scarcely able to perform. Ales-

sandro Ceva, in the midst of his ministrations in the afflicted city, was called away to assume the priorship of the monastery of San Vito at Milan, and we find him writing from this place in 1599 to the Archbishop of Turin, begging him to ask Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy, to make a solemn vow to God to found a Camaldolese hermitage, that the plague might be ar- rested. The vow was made publicly by the Duke of Savoy and the people of Turin, and the foundation of the new hermitage after much delay was laid in July, 1602, at alonelyspol between Turin and Peceto. The church of this new hermit age was finished in 1606, and endowed by the Duke of Savoy as the chapel of the Order of the Knights of the Annunciation (see Mili- tary Orders), of which order the hermits were to be regarded as chaplains. Little is known about this congregation, which seems to have been reabsorbed into the congregation of Monte Corona in the eigh- teenth century

(v) The Congregation oj Xotre-Damede Consolation. — In the year 1626 there entered the Congregation of Turin Boniface d'Antoine, a French priest belonging to the Diocese of Lyons. Almost immediately he was sent to France by the general of the congregation, to solicit from Louis XIII authorization for the founding of Camaldolese hermitages in France. His first monastery was in his native Diocese of Lyons, near a town named Botheon. It was dedicated to Our Lady of Consolation and was founded and endowed by Balthassar de Gudaigne de Hostun, Marquis de Baume, in 1631. His second foundation was at Mont Peuchant in Le Forez. thanks to the help and munificence of the Archbishop of Lyons. Cardinal de Marque Mont. The Archbishop of Vienne, Pierre de Villars. was also friendly to the new order, authorizing the foundation of the hermitage of Xotre Dame de Grace at Sapet : and testifying at the same time to the sanctity and austerity of d'Antoine. Another foundation in the Diocese of Lyons was made in 1633, when Pere Vital de Saint-Paul, an < Iratorian, and his sister presented the two churches of St.-Roch and Val-.Iesus, situated in the parish of Chambre, to d'Antoine. In the following year Louis XIII gave his formal consent by letters patent to the establishment of the Camaldolese in his dominions, on the condition that their general should always be French. He also prevailed upon the reigning pontiff, Urban VIII, to form the French Camaldolese into a separate congregation, with the title of "Xotre-Dame de Consolation", which was effected by a Bull dated 8 October. 1634. They were to observe the constitutions of Monte Corona, to which congregation they wen^ affiliated. The new order seems to have been popular in France. In 1642 Charles de Valois, almoner of the Due d'Angoulcme, I a house at Gros-Bois near Paris. In 1648, Catherine le Vover. one of the ladies of the court, founded a hermitage at La Flotte. in Vendome, and in 1659 the order was presented with another house in Yondome. at la Gavalerie, in the parish of Besse. A foundation was made in 1674 by the Comte de Guenegaud and his wife, Elizabeth de Choiseul. on their estate at Rogat, in the parish of Congard, in Brittany. In 1671 the new congregation took pos- session of the hermitage of Mont-Valerien, near Paris, whither they had been invited two years previously by a lay religious community. This foundation, how- ever, was abandoned two yars later. In 1679 a Camaldolese community was introduced into the old Benedictine abbey at He Chauvet, in Lower Poitou. This abbey had been held in commendam by various persons, some of whom had been laymen. Ii Henri de Maiipas, Abbot of St.-Donis at Reims and afterward I ccessively of Le Puy and

Evreux, became commendatory abbot, and fifteen years later introduced the Camaldolese, with the con- sent of the Bishop of Lucon, in whose diocese the ab-