February 10
Arnaldo Cattaneo (+1255)
Abbot
Practical advice
During this day, pray for the Pope, the bishops and the priests, remembering that holiness is built in the ordinary.
Biography
Blessed Arnaldo Cattaneo (+1255) Padua was in the power of Ezzelino the Fierce, a tyrant so terrible that it was said that he was the son of the devil. Dante placed him in his Inferno immersed up to his eyes in a pot of boiling blood. Arnaldo, abbot of the monastery of Santa Sabina, had taken refuge with his monks in a cave for fear of the tyrant. When he learned that Frederick II was approaching the city to liberate it, he went out to meet him accompanied by his monks. If the saint had been a prophet, he would have known that Ezzelino would reappear very soon and that he would be as cruel as at the beginning. Arnaldo was arrested and thrown into an infected den. He died after eight years of suffering.