Saint Gerard Sagredo of Venice

As the idolaters converted, he had churches built in the cities and towns. The principal one was that which he dedicated in honor of Saint George; he erected an altar there under the title of the Mother of God and wished that incense be burned there day and night; to maintain this pious ceremony, he established two elders who were to watch over it incessantly. Every Saturday of the year, he had an office of nine lessons celebrated, containing magnificent praises of this Queen of Angels; and this with as much solemnity as the day of her Assumption into heaven. On other days, after the morning and evening office, he would come with his clerics to pray in this holy chapel. He had such a tender devotion toward this august Virgin that he could refuse nothing that was asked of him in her name; he would burst into tears when he heard her spoken of, and he called those who assured him that they sincerely believed she was the Mother of God his "dear children." He had her called Our Lady throughout the kingdom, so that all might regard themselves as her subjects. In the same sense, Saint Stephen called his kingdom the family of Mary.

Our Saint had a wonderful skill for mortifying himself: he was seen going into the forest at night to make bundles of sticks to then carry back on his shoulders. He often anticipated the work of his servants and did their chores himself; he usually wore a hair shirt and garments made of goat hair; he tenderly embraced lepers and sometimes let them sleep in his bed; when he traveled, he did not go by horse, but in a cart, so that he could read and study along the way. One day, one of his servants having committed a notable fault, he let himself be carried away by anger against him, as sometimes happens to the greatest servants of God, and condemned him to be whipped and tied for some time to a stake. His people, who knew his clemency and gentleness, pretended to obey him, and, having put the blood of an animal on the back, shoulders, and arms of this poor criminal, they tied him in this state in a place where they knew their master was to pass. This pitiful object touched the holy pastor so deeply that he got down from his cart, ran toward the sufferer, and kissing now his arms, now his hands, now his feet or his bonds, begged him to forgive the severity he had exercised toward him; finally, he had him untied and showed him nothing but love and tenderness. This was to be changed, according to the spirit of the Gospel, into the nature of children, who have no resentment and forget in a short time the injuries that have been done to them.

His dignity and pastoral duties did not prevent him from leading an almost solitary life. He had small cells built for himself in the woods near the towns where he went to preach, to which he would retreat to fill himself with heavenly light before distributing it to his people. He spent his nights there in prayer and practiced austerities known only to God alone. He felt extraordinary joy when he saw people serving God with gladness: one day, having found in his inn a servant girl who was singing while vigorously turning a mill, he exclaimed that she was blessed and had a large sum of money given to her.

After the death of Saint Stephen (1038), Gerard had great trials to endure. The Hungarians took as their king Peter the German, nephew of that holy monarch; but after a few years, no longer able to endure his cruelty and the excesses of his dissolute life, they deposed him and drove him from the kingdom (1041). They then put in his place a lord named Samuel, surnamed Aba, Samuel Usurper King of Hungary whom Gerard opposed. who was no better than he. The clergy and the people consented to his election; but our Saint, knowing how dangerous a consequence it was, opposed it and absolutely refused to place the crown upon his head. He did not fear his power nor dread his cruelty; but he maintained energetically that, the king being alive, he should not ascend his throne. His zeal even led him to rebuke him in public for his injustices, and especially for the fact that, abusing his authority, he had already had several officers of his council impaled. Finally, he predicted to him that his reign would not be of long duration, and that after two years he would go to render an account of it to the just judgment of God. His prediction was truthful; for Samuel having become more insolent and more unbearable than his predecessor, the Hungarians revolted against him and had him shamefully put to death by the hand of an executioner (1044). By this means, Peter, who had been driven out, was restored to his states and took back the reins of government; but it was not for long. Two years later, his new crimes caused him to be rejected a second time, and Andrew I, son of Ladislas the Bald, fir st cousin André Ier King of Hungary who acceded to the demands of the pagans before repenting. of Saint Stephen, was elected king (1046), on the condition that he would restore idolatry, abolish the Christian religion, exterminate its priests and bishops, demolish its churches, and ruin everything that Saint Stephen had so wisely established. This prince, cowardly and ambitious, who preferred a kingdom to the duties of his conscience, acceded to all the demands of his subjects, nourishing nevertheless the design of restoring all things when he would be in peaceful possession of his states.

Gerard, learning what the king had done, believed it was his duty to remonstrate with him regarding his fault and to make him retract what he had so cowardly granted. He therefore set out to find him at Albe-Royale (today Stuhlweissembourg), with three other bishops moved by the same zeal as he. On the way, he had a vision in which he believed he saw Our Lord presenting the chalice of His blood to him and to two of the bishops who accompanied him. He recognized by this that the honor of martyrdom was prepared for them. After they all celebrated Mass together in the town of Gyod, in the church of Saint Sabina, martyr, they continued their journey and arrived at the banks of the Danube, where Duke V atha, the duc Vatha Leader of the pagan revolt and responsible for the martyrdom of Gerard. most wicked apostate and the greatest enemy of Jesus Christ in all of Hungary, having encountered them, ordered his men to beat them to death with stones. Saint Gerard made the sign of the cross over these stones, and at that very hour they remained suspended in the air; but this miracle, not touching the despot in the least, he had the Saint pulled from his chariot, and after he had been dragged with great indignity to the point of the rock that overlooked the Danube, he had him thrown from the top to the bottom. This blow was sufficient to cause his death; but these apostates, seeing that he still had some breath of life which he used, following the example of Jesus Christ and Saint Stephen, to pray for his murderers, finished him off with javelins (September 24, 1047). Bezterd of Neitra and Buld of Erlau, two of the bishops who accompanied him, and a great number of ecclesiastics and laypeople were martyred with him.

The drops of his blood remained for seven years imprinted on the pebble where he had broken his head in falling, without either the rains of heaven or the floods of the river being able to erase the trace. It was like a permanent mark of the injustice and cruelty of the idolaters, and a silent invocation of God's vengeance against the authors of the murder. The king, who had not consented to it in particular, and who, since then, promulgated numerous edicts for the restoration of Christianity in all his lands, had the body of the Saint raised and ordered that it be buried in the church of Saint George and in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin, which he himself had had built. This chapel was located near the place where the Saint had breathed his last. The stone sprinkled and stained with his blood was also transported there, which was incorporated into the structure of the altar as an eternal memorial of his martyrdom. Later his relics were transferred to the cathedral of Csanád. Under the reign of Saint Ladislaus, they were enclosed in a reliquary. The Venetians, having obtained them from the King of Hungary after many solicitations, had them solemnly transported to their cit y and depo leur ville Final location of the transfer of relics in 1200. sited them in the church of Our Lady of Murano.

He is represented: 1st with a censer in his hand before an altar of the most holy Virgin; this is to recall, as we have insinuated above, that he founded before the altar of Our Lady, in the church dedicated to Saint George, a silver censer entrusted to the care of two old men charged with ensuring that incense always burned there; 2nd in the company of Saint Stephen of Hungary, of whom he was a cooperator for the conversion of the Magyars; 3rd carrying an image of the Blessed Virgin, one can guess why; 4th pierced by a lance.

The life of Saint Gerard was written by an author of his time; it is reported by Surius. Benthnius also speaks of him in Book II of the second decade of his History of Hungary. Baronius mentions him in his Annals, where he says that he is called the First Martyr of Hungary, since Saint Stephen, king, had made it Christian. — We have completed the account of Fr. Giry with Godescard and the Acta Sanctorum.