Blessed Eugene III

Blessed EUGENE III

The Tre Fontane community, to celebrate the 850 anniversary of the death of Blessed Eugene III on the 8^th of July has presented a week of celebrations and sessions. In these events aspects of the life, history and contemporary implications of this person have been presented, Eugene from whom Pope John XXIII has said : "to resemble him would be so well”.

Born at Pisa, in Italy, Bernardo PAGANELLI was probably Prior of Saint Zénon when he met Saint Bernard, in 1138. He became a monk of Clairvaux, and returned in the autumn of 1139 to establish a foundation in Italy. The new community was established first near Farfa. At the order of Pope Innocent II, on the 25^th of October 1140, it was transferred to the monastery of Saints Vincent and Anastasias, at Tre Fontane, at the gates of Rome.

Five years latter, at the death of Lucius II, Bernardo, who, since 1142, had been abbot of Tre Fontane, was elected Pope, unanimously, on the 15^th of February 1145, and took the name of Eugene III. Saint Bernard confided to his correspondents his own concerns about this choice of a person, “unskilled and weak”. But one of the correspondents answered, “The Lord graciously gave him immediately such graces that he was able to surpass a number of his predecessors in important actions and in renown.”

His pontificate was troubled by a political situation that was chronically difficult, mainly with Senate of Rome, which often forced him to live outside of Rome. The continued unrest in the Holy Land caused Pope Eugene III to call the Second Crusade which he asked Saint Bernard to preach (6 March 1146).

In 1147 -1148, Blessed Eugene visited France. The trip offered the opportunity to visit Saint Bernard, Clairvaux and Citeaux. The trip also was the occasion to take part in Council of Paris, the synods at Tier and Rheims, where among other questions the doctrinal positions of Gilbert of la Porrée were examined and the visions of Hildegard of Bingen.

In December 1149, Blessed Eugene returned to Rome under the protection of Roger II of Sicily. The hostility of the Roman Senate was still strong and he was soon forced to leave the city. At about the same time there were difficulties with Conrad III similar to the problems with his successor Frederic I, Barberossa.

Eugene died at Tivoli 8^th of July 1153.

Cistercian at heart, Eugene was one of those of whom it can be said, “With Mary, they desire to rest at the feet of the Lord and with Martha, they spend themselves to serve and nourish the many” (Letter 412 of St. Bernard). Eugene always lived the simplicity of the Cistercian life and even wore the Cistercian habit. It seems that St. Bernard wrote the treatise “On Consideration” for Eugene in which Saint Bernard sets forth the demands for being a Pope. John of Salisbury described him as, “as a soul filled with tact and authority with a largeness of spirit and humility”.

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Eugene had been buried in the Basilica of Saint Peter, near the altar of the Virgin Mary, in the choir of the Canons, where Pope Gregory III was also interred. Today his remains can no longer be precisely located since they have been gathered with others in a “polyandry” (a common grave) where they have been placed with other saints in the Vatican undergrounds. There is no free access to that area for the faithful. Eugene III’s epitaph was the following :

Hic habet eugenius defunctus carne sepulchrum, / quem pia cum christo vivere cura facit. / Pisa virum genuit, quem claraevallis alumnum/ exhibuit, sacrae religionis opus. / Hinc ad anastasii translatus martyris aedem / ex abbate pater summus in orbe fuit. / Eripuit solemne iubar mundique decorem / iulius octavam sole ferente diem : / conceptum sacrae referebant virginis anni / centum bis seni mille quaterque decem.

“In this burial place are laid the mortal remains of Eugene, who lived with Christ in the divine goodness. Pisa had given life to the man and Clairvaux had made him a disciple in the holiness of religious life. Moving from his position in the Monastery of the Martyr, St. Anastasias, the abbot became the Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church. In the month of July, when the sun had aroused the eighth day, it carried away the one who was the beacon of light and the illumination of the world, in the year 1153 of the conception of the Virgin.”

Considered saint already during his life, the miracles multiplied near to his sepulcher after his death. Pius IX beatified him in 1872.

(c.f. Virgilio Card. NOÈ, LE TOMBE E I MONUMENTI FUNEBRI DEI PAPI NELLA BASILICA DI SAN PIETRO IN VATICANO, Franco Cosimo Panini, Modena, 2000).

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