bedelaar 7

With this light dawning on his soul... 

soon to grow into full noon, Benedict set out on his travels. He had gone through a long noviceship, living as it were between two worlds, one of which he would not have, while the other had repeatedly closed its doors to him. Now at last, his life proper had begun. 

We can discover his final decision in a letter he wrote to his parents from Piedmont, when he had now left France, and was half-way on his journey to Rome. It is a letter full of soul and warmth, it teems with sympathy and interest for others, there is not a word which implies bitterness or disappointment. The man who wrote it was a happy man, in no way disgruntled. Evidently, his only fear is that he may give pain to those he loved.

This was the last letter he appears to have written to his family.

-

He had promised to write again. 

If he wrote, the letter has perished. 

Indeed from this moment, they seem to have lost sight of him altogether. The next they heard of him, was fourteen years later, when his name was being blazoned all over Europe as that of a saint whose death had stirred all Rome. 

And he never heard from them. He had told them, he could give them no address, because he had no fixed abode. From this time forward, he never had one. Except during the last years in Rome, and that for the most part was in a place where the post could scarcely have found him, as we shall see.

Except to give an idea of the nature and extent of his wanderings during the next six or seven years, it is needless to recall all the pilgrimages he made. They led him over mountains and through forests, into large cities and country villages, he slept under the open sky, or in whatever sheltered corner he could find, accepting in alms what sufficed for the day and no more, clothed with what men chose to give him, or rather with what they could induce him to accept. Alone with God everywhere and wanting no one else. 

During this first journey, he called on his way at Loreto and Assisi. Arrived in Rome, footsore and ill... he was admitted for three days into the French hospital. Then for eight or nine months, he lingered in the city, visiting all the holy places, known to no one, sleeping no one knows where. 

-

In September of the next year, we find him again at Loreto. 

During the remaining months of that year, and through the winter, he seems to have visited all the sacred shrines in the kingdom of Naples. He was still there in February, 1772, after which he returned to Rome. In June he was again at Loreto, thence he set out on his tour to all the famous shrines of Europe. 

In 1773 he was tramping through Tuscany. In 1774, after another visit to Rome, he was in Burgundy. During the winter of that year, he went to Einsiedeln in Switzerland, choosing the coldest season of the year for this visit to the mountain shrine. 1775, being the Jubilee year, he again spent in Rome. In 1776, he was making pilgrimages to the chief places of devotion in Germany. 

At the end of that year, he settled down definitely in Rome, going away henceforth only on special pilgrimages, most of all to his favorite Loreto, which he did not fail to visit every year.

Naturally enough stories are recalled of the behavior of this peculiar man on his journeys. 

He seems never to have had in his possession more than ten sous, or five pence, at a time. When charitable people offered him more than sufficed for the day, he invariably refused it. 

At Loreto, where he came to be known perhaps more than anywhere else, at first he lodged in a barn at some distance from the town. When compassionate friends found a room for him closer to the shrine, he refused it, because he found it contained a bed. 

In Rome, as we have already hinted, his home for years was a hole he had discovered among the ruins of the Coliseum. From this retreat he made daily excursions to the various churches of the city. 

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Except when he was ill, he seldom begged. 

He was content with whatever the passersby might give him of their own accord. 

Once a man, seeing him in his poverty, gave him a penny. Benedict thanked him, but finding it more than he needed, passed it on to another poor man close by. The donor, mistaking this for an act of contempt, supposing that Benedict had expected more, took his stick and gave him a beating. Benedict took the beating without a word. 

We have this on the evidence of the man himself, recorded in the inquiry after Benedict's death; it must be one instance of many of its kind.

[ewtn]