Bienheureux Torello de
Poppi
Ermite italien (+ 1282)
Il voulait se livrer aux
bonnes œuvres près des pauvres, mais il les abandonna pour se livrer à une
liaison dépravée avec deux jeunes gens à quoi il ajouta une maîtresse qui
captiva son cœur. Malgré tous les conseils et les reproches, il mena cette vie
dissolue plusieurs années. Et puis, un beau jour, l'enfant prodigue, tourmenté
de remords et dégoûté de cette vie, s'en fut en parler au supérieur du
monastère de Vallombreuse qui l'accueillit avec une grande indulgence et une
compréhensive bonté. Torello commença alors une vie de pénitence et devint
moine-ermite à Vallombreuse, volontairement emmuré dans sa cellule. Il connut
de grandes souffrances et les accepta comme une participation au salut du
Christ sur la croix. Son culte fut confirmé par le pape Benoît XIV.
SOURCE : http://nominis.cef.fr/contenus/saint/819/Bienheureux-Torello-de-Poppi.html
Beato
Torello da Poppi di Arezzo. Dipinto tela, pittura a olio di Marchetti Giuseppe
(1721-1801) conservato nella Raccolta Comunale d'Arte di Forlimpopoli (FC)
Profile
After a wild and misspent
youth, Torello lived 60 years as a hermit in
a walled-up cave. Vallombrosan oblate.
Born
1201 or 1202 at Poppi, Tuscany, Italy
between 1281 and 1292 at Poppi, Tuscany, Italy of
natural causes
by Pope Benedict
XIV (cultus
confirmed)
Additional
Information
Book of Saints, by the Monks of
Ramsgate
Our Sunday Visitor’s Encyclopedia of Saints
MLA
Citation
“Blessed Torello of
Poppi“. CatholicSaints.Info. 3 August 2016. Web. 12 March 2022.
<https://catholicsaints.info/blessed-torello-of-poppi/>
SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/blessed-torello-of-poppi/
Blessed Torello of Poppi,
OSB Vall. Hermit (AC)
Born in Poppi, Tuscany,
Italy, in 1201; died 1281; cultus confirmed by Benedict XIV. Although Saint
Torello led a dissolute life in bad company, he experienced a sudden
conversion. After repenting he received the habit of a recluse from the
Vallumbrosan abbot of San Fedele. He lived as an austere recluse, walled up in
his cell near Poppi, for 60 years. Both Vallumbrosans and Franciscans claim
him. It seems certain that he was, at any rate, a Vallumbrosan oblate
(Attwater2, Benedictines).
SOURCE : http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0316.shtml
Blessed Torello of Poppi
(Beato Torello di Poppi)
Feast Day – March 16
Born 1202 in the Tuscan town of Poppi, Blessed Torell
of Poppi came from the noble family of Torelli. When he lost his parents at the
age of eighteen, he was thinking of devoting himself to the service of God and
gave generous alms to the poor. But he had two bad friends and was soon
corrupted by their example and influence, so that he became the scandal of the
town.
One day, when he was about thirty-six years old,
Blessed Torello of Poppi was amusing himself with his associates at the game of
bowling. During the game a cock perched on his arm and crowed three times.
Torello took this as a warning from heaven, deserted his friends without delay,
and went to confession to a priest at the abbey of San Fedele, one of the
houses of the Vallombrosan Benedictines.
Torello then went into the nearby Cosentino mountains
to look for a suitable place for a hermitage. After wandering around in the
woods for eight days, he found a cave in a secluded spot called Avellaneto, not
far from Poppi.
After purchasing the land around this cave and giving
what remained of his property to the poor, he built a little hermitage at the
cave and cultivated a small vegetable garden to provide himself with food. But
he ate very little and fasted for days at a time. He limited his sleep to three
hours daily, and slept on a bed of brushwood and thorny twigs. To overcome the
persistent temptations of the flesh and the devil, he scourged himself
unmercifully and sometimes immersed himself in freezing water.
Under his wollen habit he wore a shirt of pigskin from
which only some of the bristles had been removed. He kept up this life of
penance for about forty-five years; and as Wadding tells us, he became a member
of the Third Order of St Francis in the fourth year of his conversion.
Like St Francis, he possessed a supernatural power
over the wolves, of whom there were many in the Casentino mountains during the
thirteenth century. He worked several miracles in behalf of children who were
carried off by wolves, and for others who were attacked and bittn by wolves,
both before and after his death. When he was eighty years old, Blessed Torello
went back to the abbey of San Fedele to make a general confession of his whole
life and to ask that his body be buried at the abbey.
Despite the entreaties of the monks that he spend his
last days in their care, Torello returned to his hermitage, where another
hermit, Peter of Poppi, had joined him. And there he died on March 16, 1282,
while kneeling in prayer. He was beatified by Pope Benedict XIV.
At the tomb of Blessed Torello of Poppi in the abbey
church, a man who was an exile from Siena prayed that he might be permitted to
return to his native city. He promised to observe the feast of Blessed Torello
every year and to have a picture of the holy hermit painted. His prayer was
answered, and he engaged the services of an artist. But the latter had never
seen Blessed Torello and did not know what to do. Then he had a dream or vision
in which he saw Torello, wearing the habit of the Third Order and holding a
wolf-cub in his arms. And this is how the painting represents Blessed Torello
of Poppi.
from: The Franciscan Book Of Saints, ed. by
Marion Habig, OFM
SOURCE : http://www.roman-catholic-saints.com/blessed-torello-of-poppi.html
Il Libro
d’Oro – Beato Torello da Poppi
In that time in which the
portion of Tuscany called Casentino was not yet subject to the Florentines, but
was ruled by its own counts, in the lands of Poppi, an important place in that
valley through which runs the river Arno, and not far from its source, a son
was born to a certain good man named Paolo, to whom he gave the name of
Torello, and whom, when a suitable age, he not only taught to fear God, and to
lead a Christian life, but sent to school, that he might learn the first
principles of letters – which he soon did – and to avoid evil companions and
imitate the good. The young Torello, being accustomed to this life, and his
father dying, for some time proceeded from good to better.
But that not pleasing our
common enemy, who always goes about seeking whom he may devour, he so tempted
Torello – God permitting it, for future and greater good – that he abandoned a
virtuous life, and gave himself to the pursuit of the pleasures of the world;
so that instead of being praised for his blameless and religious life, he was
censured by all, and had become the very opposite of what he had at first been.
But the blessed Lord –
who had never abandoned him, though He had left him to wander, in order to
permit him to become a true mirror of penitence – called him to himself in this
manner; as he was one day wandering and seeking amusement with his idle
companions, a cock that was on a perch outside a window suddenly fell, and
alighted on his shoulder, and crowed three times, and then flew back to the
perch. Torello, calling to mind how the Apostle Peter had in a similar manner
been made to gee his guilt, awaked from his sleep of vice and sin in a state of
wonder and fear; and thinking that this could have happened only by divine
Providence, and to show him that he was in the power of the devil, left his
companions instantly, and in penitence and tears sought the Abbot of Poppi, of
the order of Vallombrosa; and commending himself to his prayers, threw himself
at his feet, humbly begging for the robe of a mendicant friar, since he desired
to serve God in the humblest manner. The abbot wondered much, knowing by common
report Torello to be a youth of most incorrect life, to see him thus kneeling
in contrition before him, and endeavoured, together with the monks, to persuade
him to take their habit of Saint John Gualberto. But at last, seeing he had no
heart for it, and remained constant to his first request, he at last granted
it; and he became a poor brother, and almost a desert hermit, for having
received the benediction of the abbot, without communicating with either his
family or friends, he left that country and took his way toward the most desert
and savage places of the mountains, wandering among them for eight days, and
passing the night wherever it chanced to overtake him. But having at last come
to a great rock, near a place called Avellanato, he remained there, adopting it
for a cell eight days more, weeping for his sins, praying, and imploring God to
pardon him; living all this time on three small loaves, which he had brought
with him, and on wild herbs like the animals; and being much pleased with the
place, he determined to make a cell under that great rock, and there spend all
the days of this life, serving God with fasts, vigils, discipline, and prayers,
and bitterly lamenting his past sins and evil life.
Having taken this
resolution, he went to his own country to put his affairs in order; and all his
relatives and friends came about him, praying him with much earnestness, if he
sought to serve God, to leave this life of a wild beast and join some order,
living like other monks. But all was of no avail; and selling all his goods, he
gave the price to the poor, reserving to himself only a small sum of money to
build a cell. And he returned to his solitude with a mason, who made for him a
miserable cell under that same rock; and he bought near it enough land for a
small garden, and there established himself, practising the most severe
austerities.
Having now spoken of the
penitence and life of the Beato Torello, we must make mention of the great
gifts and grace which he received from God during his life, and which were
often granted to him in behalf of those who commended themselves to him in
faith and devotion.
A poor woman of Poppi,
who had only one son, three years old, going to the spring to wash her clothes,
took him with her; and he having strayed from her a little way while she was
washing, a savage wolf seized him and carried him away, and the poor woman’s
shrieks could be heard almost at Poppi, while she could do nothing but commend
the child to God. While the wolf was escaping with his prey between his teeth,
he came, as it pleased God – who thus began to make known the reward of his
service – to the cell of the Beato Torello; who, when he saw this, instantly ordered
the wolf, in God’s name, to lay the child on the ground, safe and sound; which
command the wolf no sooner heard than he came to him immediately, and laid the
child at his feet. And after he had, with evident humility, received the
directions of the holy father, that neither he, nor any of the wolves his
companions, should do any harm to any person of that country, he departed, and
returned to the forest; and the servant of God took the half-dead child into
his cell, where he made a prayer to the Lord, and he was immediately healed of
the wounds the wolf’s teeth had made in his throat. And when his mother came
seeking him with great lamentation and sorrow, he graciously restored him to
her alive and well, but with the command that while he lived she should never
reveal this miracle.
Carlo, Count of Poppi,
being very fond of the Beato Torello, sent him by his steward, one evening in
Carnival, a basket full of provisions, praying the good father to accept it for
love of him. The steward also carried him many other gifts, which some good
ladies, knowing where he was going, took the opportunity to send by his hand.
Having arrived at the
cell, he presented them all to the padre, who thanked him much, and returned
him the empty baskets; when he took occasion to enquire, how he, being alone,
could possibly eat so much in one evening. And Torello, seeing that the steward
thought him a great eater, answered: “I am not alone, as you suppose; my
companion will come from the woods before long, who has a great appetite, and
he will help me.” And the steward, hearing this, hid himself in the wood not
far from the hermitage, to see who this could be who the padre said had such a
fine appetite. He had not waited long when he saw a great wolf go straight to
the door of the saint’s cell, who opened it for him, and fed him until he had
devoured everything that the steward had brought; and he then began to caress
the saint, as a faithful and affectionate dog would his master; and this he
continued to do until Torello gave him permission to go, and reminded him that
neither he, nor any of his companions, should do any harm to the people of that
place until they were at such a distance as to be out of hearing of the bell of
the monastery, which the wolf promised to do and obey, by bowing his head. The
servant, having seen and heard this, returned home, and related it to the count
and the others, to their great amazement.
There was a lady of
Bologna, named Vittoriana, who made a pilgrimage to the holy place in Vernia,
where the glorious Saint Francis received the stigmata; and there her two
children fell ill with a violent and dangerous fever; and being, in
consequence, much distressed and afflicted, she consulted with some ladies from
Poppi, whose devotion had also brought them to the same place, who advised her
to take her children, as soon as possible, to the blessed Torello, and commend
them to him, that by means of his prayers God would restore their health. And
going to him, she commended them to him with faith and tears and hope beyond
the power of words to describe. And truly it was not in vain; for the holy man,
who was most pitiful, kneeled down and prayed to the Lord for her and her
children as only the true servants of God pray; and having so done, he took
some water from the spring of which he usually drank and gave it to the
children, and they were entirely cured and delivered from that fever. And what
is more, the water of that fountain is to this day called the fountain of Saint
Torello, and is a sovereign remedy against every kind of fever to those who
drink of it, as experience has testified and still testifies.
But at last, in the year
of our salvation twelve hundred and eighty-two, the saint having reached the
eightieth year of his life, and spent them all in the service of God – many of
his good works being unknown – an angel brought him this message: “Rejoice,
Torello, for the time is come when thou shalt receive the crown of glory thou
hast so long desired, and the reward in paradise of ail thy labour in the service
of God; for thirty days from this time, on the sixteenth of March, thou shalt
be delivered from the prison of this world.”
The blessed Torello,
having heard this, continued all his devout exercises until the end, which
approaching, he went to the abbot and confessed his sins for the last time, and
received the holy communion from his hands; and they embraced each other, and
he returned to his hermitage. And he took leave of one of his disciples, named
Pietro, and exhorted him to persevere in God’s service; and having with many
affectionate prayers recommended his country and the people of it to the
blessing of God, praying especially that it should not be ravaged by wolves, he
departed in peace.
And all the people of the
parishes around, hearing of his death, hastened to the hermitage; and all
desiring that his holy body should repose in their church, a great controversy
arose, and much scandal would have ensued, had not the Abbot of Poppi passed
into the midst of them and convinced them it was the will of God it should be
laid in his monastery; to which they all finally agreed. And a wonderful and
miraculous event occurred; for while they were all standing around the holy
body, a wolf came in with a little pig in his mouth, and passing through them
without fear, placed it at the foot of the bier, and went away.
– from Il Libro d’Oro: Those Whose Names are Written in the Lamb’s
Book of Life, originally in Latin by Messer Torrelo of Casentino,
Canonico of Fiesole, translated to Italian by Don Silvano, translated to
English by Mrs Francis Alexander
SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/il-libro-doro-beato-torello-da-poppi/
Scuola
forse forlivese, il beato Torello da Poppi, xviii secolo. Abbazia di San
Mercuriale
Beato Torello da Poppi Eremita
1202 - 1282
Secondo l’antica “Vita”
anonima, il beato Torello nacque a Poppi (in Toscana) nel 1202 da genitori pii
e devoti che lo educarono nel timor di Dio.
In gioventù Torello passò
anni nell’inquietitudine. Verso i vent’anni però, quasi improvvisamente, egli
decise di cambiar vita. Per questo motivo si recò dall’abate di S. Fedele,
monastero vallombrosano situato nella cittadina di Poppi, per confessarsi e per
esternagli la sua volontà di ritirarsi come eremita ad Avellaneto, ad un miglio
da Poppi.
Ad Avellaneto, per circa
sessant’anni, Torello condusse una austera vita di contemplazione. Molti
miracoli in quel periodo si attribuirono a Torello, celebri sono quelli che
riguardano i lupi.
Quando Torello si sentì
prossimo alla morte, egli tornò dall’abate di San Fedele per aiuto spirituale e
per esternargli il desiderio di essere sepolto nella chiesa del
monastero.
Ritornato nel suo eremo,
in compagnia del suo discepolo Pietro, il 16 marzo 1282, Torello, ormai
ottantenne, morì.
La sua morte fu
annunciata agli abitanti di Poppi e del Casentino con il suono delle campane.
Dopo la morte, però, ecco
i monaci vallombrosani e vari gruppi di fedeli contendersi il corpo di Torello
per la sepoltura: ciascuno voleva seppellirlo nella propria chiesa. La
spuntarono i vallombrosani, che così poterono seppellire il beato Torello nella
loro chiesa di Poppi.
Verso la fine del XV
secolo, una nuova controversia dovette sorgere sul beato estinto. Quella volta,
il beato Torello fu oggetto di contesa tra i vallombrosani e i francescani.
Ognuno di questi due ordini sosteneva che Torello era appartenuto al proprio
ordine.
La pretesa dei
vallombrosani si basava sui rapporti, indiscussi, tra Torello e l’abate di S.
Fedele; quella dei francescani si basava solo sul fatto che Torello in vita
aveva portato un (solo) abito simile al loro e aveva condotto un genere di vita
simile ai (primi) francescani.
Sembra, però, che Torello
non fosse appartenuto a nessuno di questi due istituti religiosi, sebbene, come
già detto, fu vicino ai vallombrosiani della città di Poppi.
Il culto al beato Torello
è stato confermato da papa Benedetto XIV. Il Martirologio francescano ricorda
il beato il 16 marzo. Nello stesso giorno il beato è festeggiato nelle diocesi
di Forlì e di Arezzo, nonché nella congregazione Vallombrosana.
Tra le fonti per la
biografia del beato vanno ricordate la “Vita” anonima, edita negli Acta
Sanctorum di Parigi del 1865, l’epitome di Gerolamo da Raggiuolo e una Vita,
scritta in volgare nel XIV secolo, attribuita al discepolo Pietro. In alcuni
testi, Torello viene indicato col titolo di santo così come da molti è stato
venerato.
Autore: Francesco
Roccia
SOURCE : http://www.santiebeati.it/dettaglio/92058
Voir aussi : https://www.italiamedievale.org/portale/nel-cuore-della-toscana-una-storia-di-terra-e-di-cielo/?lang=en
