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St. Rose of Viterbo

ST. ROSE OF VITERBO

WHEN the ambitious Frederick II was excommunicated for the second time by Pope Gregory IX the emperor retorted by setting out to conquer the papal states themselves, and in 1240 he occupied Viterbo in the Romagna. A few years previously there had been born in this city, to
parents of lowly station, a girl child, who was christened Rose. From babyhood she displayed a far from usual goodness and her childish virtue and devotion made such an impression that in after years some very surprising legends about her grew up, and it is difficult to disentangle truth from error in her story as it has come down to us.

During an illness when she was eight years old Rose is said to have had a vision or dream of our Lady, who told her that she was to be clothed in the habit of St. Francis, but that she was to continue to live at home and to set a good example to her neighbors by both word and work.

Rose soon recovered her health, received the dress of a lay penitent in due course, and thought more and more about the sufferings of our Lord and the thoughtless ingratitude of sinners. Perhaps inspired by some sermon she heard or the burning words of some indignant Guelf, she
began when she was about twelve years old to preach up and down the streets, upbraiding the people for their suppleness in submitting to Frederick and urging them to overthrow the Ghibelline garrison. Her simple words did not fail of effect, which was heightened by the rumors
of marvels attending her speeches which circulated among the citizens. Crowds would gather outside her house to get a glimpse of her, till her father became frightened, and forbade her to show herself in public; if she disobeyed she would be beaten. Rose replied gently: " If Jesus
could be beaten for me, I can be beaten for Him. I do what He has told me to do, and I must not disobey Him." At the instance of their parish priest her father withdrew his prohibition and for about two years the pope's cause continued to be preached in public by this young girl. Then the partisans of the emperor became alarmed and clamored that Rose should be put to death as a danger to the state. The podesid of the city would not hear of this : he was a just man, and moreover he feared the people; but instead he passed a sentence of banishment against St. Rose and her parents.

They took refuge at Soriano, and here, in the beginning of December 1250, St. Rose is said to have announced the approaching death of the Emperor Frederick II. He in fact died in Apulia on the 13th of the month ; the papal party thereupon got the upper hand in Viterbo, and St. Rose
returned thither. There is a story that before doing so she confuted a zealous female Ghibelline by a successful appeal to the ordeal by fire. She now went to the convent of St. Mary of the Roses at Viterbo and asked to be received as a postulant. The abbess refused, for want of a dowry. " Very well ", said St. Rose smilingly. " You will not have me now, but perhaps you will be more willing when I am dead." Her parish priest took it upon himself to open a chapel close by the convent, with a house attached wherein St. Rose and a few companions might lead a religious life; but the nuns got an order from Pope Innocent IV for it to be closed, on the ground that they had the privilege of having no other community of women within a given distance of their own. St. Rose therefore returned to her parents' house, where she died on March 6 1252, about the age of seventeen. She was buried in the church of Santa Maria in Podio, but her body was on September 4 in 1258 translated to the church' of the convent of St. Mary of the Roses, as she had foretold.
This church was burnt down in '357 but her body was preserved and is annually carried in procession through the streets of Viterbo. Pope Innocent IV immediately after her death ordered an inquiry into the virtues of St. Rose, but her canonization was not achieved until '457·

If any authentic or early materials for the history of this saint ever existed, they have perished, and legend plays a large part in what is now presented as her life. The Bollandists in the eighteenth century collected what they could, but were ill-satisfied with the result: see the Acta
Sanctorum, September, vol. ii. They have, however, preserved substantial extracts from the later process of canonization. The best-known biographies in Italian are those of Andreucci (1750) and
Mencarini (1828), and in more recent years that of L. de Kerval in French (1896), which has been translated into German and Flemish. A short English life was included in the Oratorian series (1852), and we have also a notice in Leon, Aurole SPraphique (Eng. trans.), vol. iii, pp. 98-109.

An article in The Month (September, 1899) gives an account of the festa of the saint at Viterbo and of the famous " Macchina " which is carried in the procession on that occasion. The sources for St. Rose are carefully examined by G. Abate in S. Rosa do Viterbo (1952).