Osbert’s letter describing Hugh of Saint Victor’s passing

Here we have a unique letter about the suffering and death of Hugh of Saint Victor, written
by Brother Osbert, physician, and sent to his acquainted John.
It thus begins:

To Father John, in the Beloved Christ, from Father Osbert always in the Lord. Dear brother,
you demand in a pious desire that I tell you something about the passing of your beloved,
namely, Hugh of Saint Victor, so that you can genuinely know how he was during his final
affliction. You will receive what you wish, in everything holy, piously and rightly. But
perhaps you do not want me to speak too briefly, and you want to hear about his passing
more abundantly. I am not able to explain everything, but I will tell you the little I could see
with my own eyes. And, if I am not mistaken, that is exactly what you asked, that I should
write only what I saw and heard on my own. I will not say anything about the pure, full and
perfect confession that he did with a great contrition of the heart, to the head abbot and to me
so diligently, and full with tears beyond human measure; I will not explain in details his
constant thanksgiving, by which, I hearing him in his present affliction, he thanked Our Lord
Jesus Christ, often bringing up that Psalm from his joyful heart: “Blessed be Our Lord in
eternity”. I will not dwell upon these issues. So, I come to what he said or did approaching
the end of his life: and so, my speech follows. The day before his passing, I came to him in
the morning, and asked him how he was feeling. After answering he was good both in soul
and body, he asked me:
“Is there anyone besides the two of us?”
And I:
“No, there is not”.
I answered. And he:
“Have you celebrated Mass today?”
And after answering that I had, he said:
“Come here, and breath in my face in the manner of the Holy Cross, and I will receive the
Holy Spirit”.
And when I did what he ordered, he himself added a Davidian Psalm:
“I opened my mouth and inhaled the Spirit” (Psalm CXVIII),
Knowing faithfully that the Apostles received faithfully the Holy Spirit from the breath of the
Lord Jesus, in opened mouth, he almost drank the Spirit from the spirit, because he knew you
must believe in everything possible according to Lord’s sentence, he believed he could get
from a man what was not from a man. Oh man truly Catholic! Who was already in his
ultimate moments and believed faithfully that he could get the Holy Spirit from a priest
because of the mystery and communion of the body and blood of the Lord, and he so
devotedly yearned for it. Thence immediately cheerful, I think, comforted by God’s Spirit, he
greatly-rejoicing broke out these words:
“Just now I am untroubled, now I walk in truth and purity, just now I am grounded on a
steady stone, and I cannot be moved anymore: now the whole world and his pleasures can
face me and I will judge it as almost nothing and it all will not make me do anything against
God. I only especially know the mercy of God around me, and so from everything that God
has done to me in my whole life until now, nothing was to me so grateful, so pleasant, so
welcome than this moment, which God condescended to do to me. Blessed be Our Lord in
eternity”.
That said, he humbly asked me to receive the forgiveness for all he had done against God.
Then, after giving him the forgiveness asked, I let him rest and left his room. In the next
evening when the rooster was beginning to sang harder, Hugh was sicker, as I realized when I
met him, as soon as he started speaking, and he spoke to me about the health of his soul.
Then, in order to have the forgiveness by brothers who were there, I suggested him to receive
the holy unction. And he, accepting it happily, advised us to not take too long to do
everything that was necessary. Everything being ready, by the time dawn had begun, and the
brothers around him, as usual, was making him a visit with Psalms and prayers. That
finished, I asked him if he would like to wait for the head abbot to come; who was not there
yet, but an order was sent telling him to come quickly. And Hugh said to me:
“Do what you need to do, seeing that God assembled you all here”.
Were assembled around him many venerable religious men, monks, canonical regulars,
presbyters and other clerics, lay people were also there. After celebrating the unction, I asked
him if he would like to receive Lord’s body, which was not ready at the moment, because it
had been shared three days ago. And he rebuked me hard:
“My God! Do you ask me if I want my God? Run fast into the church and bring up quickly
the body of my Lord”.
And having done what he ordered, I went to his room; and receiving the holy bread of eternal
life from my hands, he said:
“Pay homage, I say, and recognize the body of Our Lord”.
And he rising himself, as much as was possible due to his condition, lifting up his hands to
the sacred, said:
“I love my God in front of you all, and I accept it as my health and salvation”.
And then, after receiving Christ’s body, he asked me to give him a cross that was nearby.
When he got the cross, he signed himself with the same cross, and after having kissed it for a
long time, he put the crucified’s feet over his mouth, and thus having them over his mouth for
much time, he tried to drink the blood, which artificially flowed from the crucified’s feet,
almost as if he were a child, full with tears, breastfeeding his mother. It is trustworthy,
because just as, in front of us, he had received the flesh of the Son of man, now the sage man,
in a certain way, was visibly trying to drink His blood. After a little while, when I suggested
him to say this verse:
“I entrust my spirit, Lord, to your hands” (Psalm XXX),
He answered:
“I think you want me to deal with that verse”.
And he said, wanting to hear the solution:
“When the Lord Jesus Christ was about to leave this world, He said: ‘Father, I entrust to
your hands my spirit, which you delivered me, and from you I received it’. That said, He
grew quiet, and approaching the time of death, speaking very little, His Father itself took up
His spirit”.
To that I replied:
“And you, I say, who are about to leave this world, must ask God to take up your spirit”.
Hence, he, for a short time, rising up and taking a deep breath, with all of us watching,
eventually broke out these words:
“To your hands and to your fortress I entrust my spirit, Lord, which you delivered me and
from you I received it”.
That said, he grew quiet and approaching the time of death, speaking very little, got up again,
with the spirit recovered, and I was not able to understand what he started to talk to himself,
and when I asked him, in order to know what he was saying, he answered out loud:
“I received mercy”.
And I:
“What? Explain more you received mercy”.
And he, due to the afflictions, was not able to say much words; and because he was again
asked by us so that we could understand him as much as possible, we stood firm around him,
he answered that:
“I pray, take up my spirit”.
Hence, with hands upon his beating chest, he invoked the Blessed Mother of God saying:
“Saint Mary, pray for me”.
And his spirit being recovered:
“Saint Peter, pray for me”.
And after a while he said to me:
“Who else saint can I invoke?”
And when I mentioned Saint Victor:
“Saint Victor, pray for me”.
That said, he grew quiet and closed his mouth of justice, which had given birth to wisdom:
and his sage tongue, which used to decorate according to knowledge, got attached to his
throat. After that, he survived for about one hour. And finally, with us present and praying, he
delivered the spirit to His hands, as we believe, to Whom he had before bequeathed and to
whose fortress he had entrusted that same spirit. Thus, the venerable and highly learned
doctor Hugh left this world in confession of the Highest Trinity, the eleventh day of
February, at 3 o’clock of that day, good, humble, mild and pious.