Saint Aldo

Almost nothing is known about Saint Aldo, not even the year he was born. He probably lived in the eighth century, and his name gives him away: Aldo is Lombard, and comes from *ald*, which means old, wise — the same root that gave *alt* to the Germans and *old* to the English. He was a monk and a hermit. His life unfolded first around Bobbio, where he probably took the habit, then in Carbonara al Ticino, near Pavia. And here is the detail that makes him likable: tradition has him as a **charcoal burner**. It seems out of tune with our idea of a hermit, all prayer and silence, but it fits perfectly with the school of the Irish monks, that of Saint Columbanus: withdrawn from the world to contemplate, yes, but with a real trade in hand to earn a living. A man who prayed with hands black with charcoal. His name isn’t in the Roman Martyrology or in the universal calendar of the Church: you find it in the hagiography compiled in the seventeenth century by the Belgian Jesuits, the Bollandists, and in the Benedictine martyrology. His body has traveled quite a bit — from the Church of San Colombano Maggiore in Pavia, then to the cathedral, and finally to the Basilica of San Michele Maggiore. In Carbonara al Ticino there is still a chapel with a statue of him, shown asleep. But the real reason Saint Aldo is named today is that **today every Aldo celebrates**, and in Italy there are quite a few. It’s a short, spare name that doesn’t lend itself to pet forms and sits well in the mouth. A charcoal-burning monk from thirteen hundred years ago, and a name people still carry. The distance between the two is the whole history of this country.