Prologue #

¹ David’s witness approving it, it is a pious thing to confess the Lord before all who live, and very honourable to proclaim His works among the people. For the sake of which word, out of that innumerable host of the saints it pleases me to take up Gudwal, priest of Christ, as it were a certain ornament of heavenly glory, to bring him forward, and in him as in a clear mirror to see Your mighty works, O Christ — him who, glorious once among men and now among the angels, was in his time sent by God into the world for the salvation of many, and in his time likewise was gloriously translated by God out of the world. Him, therefore, great before God in the heights, wondrous from God on earth — through the unaccustomed emblems of his miracles, through prodigies famous in every age — the devout Church of the faithful commends to herself as it were a prophet or an apostle. Desiring to exalt his glory, I hand down his memorable life, divinely sprinkled with the fragrance of the virtues, trusting in the offices of my pen and in his patronage: to which I pass over not as a presumptuous intruder, but as a devoted propagator of the divine praise — namely, that the gladness of my heart may have increase of God’s glory, and of that deeper reverence for so great a patron an everlasting jubilee. Nor does the shame of neglected elegance much terrify me, nor the comeliness of another’s eloquence to be preferred: for he will have the ampler matter for glory who, setting aside the allurement of rhetorical fulness, shall like a flooding torrent pour out of himself the affluent stream of divine praise. For He who opened the closed mouths of the prophets — and what say I, of the prophets? who opened the dumb mouth of the ass and shaped it to the measure of human speech — is He powerless to awaken my silence mightily to His glory? And He who makes the tongues of infants eloquent, as it is sung — is He unskilled to raise a festive harmony from the mute instrument of my heart?

² Confidence is also lent me in that the devout Gudwal will be at hand to the work dedicated to him, and will obtain efficacy with God by his prayers — he of whom we read that, with the mere word of authority, he loosed the tongue of one dumb from birth, and by the sole command of his voice shaped the instrument of speech to words. Now, however, since it is time to undertake the holy work of Christ’s precious pearls, I fear lest, after the foulest manner of swine, I should rather trample and scatter them than gather them with due honour and set them before the sons of light. So the wisdom of God is to be invoked with humble prayer, lest in so great a need — to all men at all times exceeding — His grace be found wanting. Hear me, O God, You wisdom of God, who ordained Aaron to be the mouth of Moses, who purged the prophet’s lips with the coal taken from the altar of fire: pour that same grace into my mouth and heart, the offences of my sins being forgiven, whereby I may be pleasing both to You and to yours, in the praise of Your Gudwal, now and for ever — You who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign, world without end. Amen.

The Old Division #

Book 1, Chapter 1 — Of the birth of the man of God, and of the peace granted at his birth.

2. How, being born again in Christ, he was advanced to manhood’s estate.

3. How, for the renown of his merits, he was raised to pontifical glory.

4. How he withdrew himself from the world and joined himself more closely to the divine love.

5. How the enemies of the Church were put to flight and divinely overthrown.

6. How for love of the divine love he began to use a cave by the sea.

7. Of the creatures of the sea, divinely stirred to his service.

8. Of a substance of water drawn by the saint’s prayers out of a dry rock.

9. Where the sea, that untameable element, at the word of the man of God allowed itself to be tamed.

10. Of the innocence of his heart and the cleanness of his hands, declared in the saving sacrifice.

11. Where, entering the sea, he was upheld and strengthened by the right hand of God.

12. How the angels of God answered in turn to the holy bishop’s psalmody.

Book 2, Chapter 1 — Of a place fitting for monks, divinely provided for the holy father’s use.

2. Of the brethren sent to Cornwall, and their embassage to the noble Mevor.

3. Of the aged couple, barren by long sterility, but gladdened with offspring through blessed Gudwal.

4. Of the disciples of the sweet father, wondrously snatched from a band of robbers.

5. Of the rain suspended over the path of God’s servants, and of the fulfilment of noble Mevor’s vow.

6. How he suffused the time of his pilgrimage with the odour of Christ.

7. Of the dead man raised again to the glory of God.

8. Of the thief restored from madness to a sound mind.

9. How he gave to one born dumb the office of tongue and the use of speech.

10. Of the sheep raised again, and of the wolf’s nature changed.

11. Of the wolf healed, and estranged from its bestial sense.

12. How he gave the horse to beggars, yet at morn received its like from heaven.

Book 3, Chapter 1 — Of the angelic visitation and converse, and the revelation of his most holy passing.

2. How before the day of his death he enjoyed the consolation of the saints.

3. Of his falling asleep in Christ, and of his soul departing the body in the likeness of a dove.

4. How a divine splendour shone upon his funeral rites.

5. How the bearing of his body was made famous by solemn miracles.

6. How, being dead, he went on pilgrimage, and chose his rest at Blandinium.

Prologue to the book of Saint Gudwal’s miracles.

1. How the image of the Crucified bowed to Saint Gudwal (§58).

2. Of the sick man healed (§60).

3. Of the ox raised again (§61).

4. Of the dumb woman healed (§63).

5. Of the blind woman given light (§64).

6. Of the fire quenched (§65).

7. A heavenly circle seen hanging above the holy man’s bier (§67).

8. Of the invader of Saint Peter’s right, smitten and healed (§69).

9. Of the sheep delivered from the wolf (§70).

10. Of the woman who profaned the saint’s feast (§71).

11. Of him who committed sacrilege (§72).

12. Of the crippled woman healed (§73).

13. Of the crippled woman made straight (§74).

Book One #

Chapter One: The life of the saint in his own country and on the neighbouring rock, before and after his episcopate, with certain miracles #

¹ In those days, therefore, when the majesty of the Christian Empire prevailed over the whole world, and Christ made His glory known among all nations, Gudwal — beloved of God and of all the devout — was nobly born on earth, to be born more nobly for heaven. He was born indeed in the bounds of Britain, adorned above measure with the distinction of his parents and kin; the time of whose nativity — when the sword of the Lord’s wrath withdrew itself from that land which it had until then afflicted with war, famine, and pestilence — resounded, as it were through an organ of presage, concerning the son of future peace. Exult, therefore, renowned Church of the Britons, resounding in divine praise, because salvation looked upon you when the maternal womb brought forth Gudwal! Then the boy of kindly disposition, purified in water and the Spirit, through the moments of his years and the increase of time augmented by devout deeds the grace of God which he had received; the infant whom mother Wisdom held as it were at her breasts and nurtured with divine milk — nor did she forsake the youth, but raised him aloften on the solid food of the heavenly doctrines. And when the time of his training was accomplished and he now passed into manly strength, and appeared to all a column of light to be raised in the temple of God, the Church turned her eyes upon him by God’s inspiration and gracefully took him up into the degrees of the Levitical and the priestly office. Then, treasure stored from tender years, he opened the treasures of wisdom, and for the immortal profit of his Emperor stirred up the power of his spirit. With the arguments of human knowledge he solved hard questions, with those of divine wisdom he more deeply unlocked mysteries; from the deep abyss of the Gospel’s fount he poured the draught of salvation into thirsting sinners. So, as it were lamps to be set upon the lampstand of Christ, he kindled proven souls, which the ray of the true Sun rendered flame-breathing.

² The Lord therefore, won over by these and suchlike things, worthily repaid the holy man a recompense worthy of such noble studies; for whom a prize was laid up to be possessed with the angels in heaven — He promoted him to ecclesiastical pre-eminence and graciously granted him the pontifical throne. Exalted by which glory, the more loftenily he lifted up his head among the people of God, the more widely did he scatter the odour of devout conversation. In the days of that priest the Holy Spirit magnified the work of His grace, to the joy of all the clergy and the gladness of the whole flock of the Lord. Now the mellifluous bishop was exalted by the title of nobility and illustrious with the power of hereditary right; but abhorring these things through and through, whatever worldly ambition smiled upon him he turned to the glory of God: he offered to Christ the broad turf of his hereditary right, and through Christ established the Church. Seeing also that he was bound to the world, as it were by certain chains, by the pastoral care, he studied to be loosed from these, and through God’s grace to be speedily unburdened of them. So, commending the Church to the chief Shepherd and to a fitting successor chosen by himself, he sought out a certain monastery of his diocese, in which he shone forth as a pre-eminent pattern of the angelic life and of monastic conversation. Here he gave himself to the quiet of the soul, here to divine contemplation; hoping that a place suitable to his desires would the more speedily be revealed to him by divine grace — those desires, I say, whereby he longed to leave his native country and to enter upon voluntary poverty, where he looked to receive the things he hoped for from the divine bounty. For he bore the desire of building a monastery. But of this in its place.

³ While the priest of God, then, was dwelling in the same monastery and, after his noble manner, occupied with heavenly things, on a certain day there came a band of deadly satellites with a blood-stained company of robbers, who, executing after the barbarous manner what their impiety suggested, ran riot with rapacious claws upon the goods of the monastery. And while reason could not persuade them to admit reason, that at least for fear of the heavenly judgement they would abstain from so great a crime, shameless infamy went forth and stained the very air with unholy clamour. At length it came to the notice of the man of God, who, rising against the enemy of the Church by Christ’s authority, drew forth the dart of malediction from the Gospel, saying: “Let them alone: they are cursed, knowing not how to work a good work.” And at once he prophetically added the Lord’s sentence, fitting to the divine punishment now hanging over them: “They are blind leaders; and if the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into the ditch?” Then he prostrated himself in prayer, girded himself with the arms which Moses used against Amalek, poured out silent prayers and terrified the foe like a war-trumpet; he sent forth sighs of the heart, and with them brandished the sword of the Holy Spirit triumphantly. When amid these things he went out of the chapel to check the tyranny of the malignant ones — armed with the zeal of God, but the hostile band was overcome as the Lord’s war went before him. For the sword of the Lord being unsheathed behind them in fury, they were terrified from heaven and terribly put to flight from heaven; one of whom, turned devil, moved by sedition, became a stubborn murderer at his own brother’s throat. So, their madness rising, they so raged in mutual slaughter that, none surviving in that battle, they were all alike swallowed up in the mouth of the sword; and it came to pass that this execrable company, God being judge and avenger, falling together there, found the abyss of one dreadful pit as it were in place of a tomb. Because, according to that which is written, blood touched blood; and while they drew not back the onset of their proud spirit from plunder, they fell by God’s just judgement into the crime of internecine murder. What therefore in this deed? What, I say, do we see, save that on this side God’s mercy is to be embraced, on that His severity to be feared? For it was of mercy that He had compassion on His servants’ injury; of severity, that the iniquity of the impious was allowed to recoil upon their own head.

⁴ Now the bishop of the Lord was dwelling in the same monastery with that purpose, as has been said, whereby he hoped speedily to find a place suited to his desires. Nor were prayers and sighs wanting, poured out to the Lord for the sake of this thing. And so it came to pass, by God’s wondrous dispensation, that the sea, which was near, displayed out of the midst of its bosom a vast projecting rock, as it were a habitable island. This rock, then, resting upon the solidity of marble, though the sea surround it in a circle, no whirlwind of contending waves shakes. Learning this, the saint said “Praise to You, O Christ”, sweetly sounded forth “Alleluia”, and joyfully declared the place suitable to his desires — where, deeming that he would possess the familiar retreat of divine worship and be able to merit the fellowship of the holy angels, inspired by the Spirit of God and armed with the sign of the Crucified, content with but a single companion he hastened there; and at length, God being his companion, he arrived there. Here, after the manner of the ancient hermits, after the manner of the holy anchorites dwelling in caves and lurking in the caverns of the earth, he cut himself a narrow dwelling in the rock. Then the disciples, formed in charity by his sacred instruction and overcome by piety, leaving the monastery sought everywhere with devout care for that temple of God, that consecrated dwelling of God. Finding him hidden like a dove in the cleft of the rock, and — to speak more loftenily — like the Son of God’s dove founded upon the Rock which is Christ, they also, converted to dove-like innocence, strove with joy to share in his holy simplicity and life-giving mortification. But while the narrowness of the place pressed upon them, they cleft the cave with iron wedges and built dwellings sufficient for the servants of Christ. Let the purpled tyrants attend to these things, given over boundlessly to worldly pomp; let them attend to these dwellings of Christ’s poor — let them attend, I say, and thus at least, pricked by divine trembling, weigh what those towers of Babylon, what those spacious palaces, what those walls rising to heaven will profit them, when the narrow urn of the sepulchre has enclosed their little clod of flesh. See, the poor of Christ ascend from these caverns of the earth and caves of the rocks, as great kings, as glorious kings, laurelled and crowned into the court of the heavenly Jerusalem; while the rich of the world fall naked, guilty, and bent beneath the weight of their sins out of their fabric of precious marble — so soon to be dissolved — into the abyss of hell. These things having been said in passing, let us run the course of the happy history begun.

Chapter Two: The bound set to the sea, the ministry of the angels at Mass, and his departure to another country, strengthened by miracles #

¹ There was therefore a recess adjoining the same cave, cut off on either side by the barrier of the rocks that reach into the air; and when the sea at certain hours boiled up with its natural heat, or at times, stirred by an uncertain whirlwind, raised the force of storms, the swollen masses of the waves, threateningly approaching through that same recess, used to menace those dwellings with desolation by their frequent assault and importunate crashing. The man of the Lord was laid low by a heavy anxiety — on this side by the loss of his household goods, on that by the peril to life. He therefore searched his mind in every counsel, whether perhaps anything useful or salutary might present itself; to whom it happened, by the great grace of God, to be left destitute of all the prudence of human reasoning, so that the escape from so great a calamity might be ascribed solely to the Angel of the great counsel. For truly and wisely did he understand that violence cannot be done to the sea, even should all the kings of the earth come together for this purpose. Laying therefore his heart in the hand of the Lord and lifting his eyes to heaven, he invoked the mercy of the Lord, animated by hope and faith; and — to draw some likeness from outward things to the inward — he tuned heavenly music in his mind, uttered his voice upon the spiritual harp, and sounded in the ears of the Lord with the strains of devout prayers. Nor did the most merciful Lord delay the prayers of the just man, who in His wisdom found a newness of wondrous pity which He wondrously fulfilled. I will tell wonders, I will recount the glory of God — a miracle, namely, most renowned and widely famed, stirring heaven with praise and earth with astonishment.

² When therefore Gudwal, beloved of God, had prayed, a wondrous decree went forth from the heavenly citadel, whereby the sea was ordered to bring forth its creatures to the service of the saint. These, stirred by the heavenly command, bore aloften above the very waves of the foaming deep — wondrous to tell and to hear — a certain rampart of exceeding strength, provided by God and found by themselves; by the setting of which they both drove away the threats of the sea and, by God’s grace, rendered the holy man safe and whole. Which thing so remains from that time even to this day, the creature obedient to God its Creator and magnificently serving His almighty command. Who then would not wonder at the mind of the Lord in these things? O wisdom, O prudence of God! how excellent in compassions, how supereminent in all dispositions! Where, I pray, did You hide the counsel of so great depth from the beginning, which now at last, for the sake of Your Gudwal, You have revealed to an astonished world? A wondrous thing and full of God’s grace! To irrational creatures a share in the divine order is granted, and a heavenly service is entrusted. A faithful trust — glory to You, O Christ — they faithfully execute, and in all things obey the divine command: for they bear the rampart, they bar the sea’s approach, nor do they withdraw until they have rendered the dwellings of God’s servants most strongly fortified. Be great glory therefore to the most excellent God for this so ineffable token of His loving-kindness.

³ In that same retreat nature denied water, and thirst vexed the servants of God with its discomfort. But while the flesh fails, faith profits; while faith profits, the mind is uplifted, the spirit strengthened: whereby the illustrious priest of God, animated by the Holy Spirit to redeem the discomfort of the dry thirst, offered the gems of prayer to the heavenly King and weighed out the gold of devout supplication. At whose prayers the richest blessing of God was poured out abundantly, and both drove away the discomfort of thirst and poured forth the copious gift of flowing grace. For just as Moses once struck the rock in the desert of Sinai and brought forth water, so here also He turned the dry rock into a fountain, bidding a chamber of that same rock distil a most limpid drop; which, dripping down most richly and hollowing the marble level by natural erosion, formed a certain rounded receptacle after the manner of a cask, a hollow in which that wholesome liquor, being collected, ministered to the uses of God’s servants. See, the rock which when struck gives forth fire, produced water at God’s nod; just as on the contrary water, hardened into crystal through ice, emits fire, to nature’s amazement. For God is the Lord of nature, and therefore uses it as He wills, as very God. For all these things praise to You, O Christ, who have deigned to glorify Your Gudwal with so special a prerogative of signs; having regard to his peril and compassionating him, You both removed in Your wisdom the assault of the approaching sea, and also take away the want of water by the gracious gift of heavenly dew. Marvellous is the Lord in these high things, marvellous likewise in these excellent things: for to great things, if it may be said, greater succeed, and to wondrous things yet more wonderful.

⁴ That cave therefore, once dreary with the solitude of the renowned father, became by God’s grace a house of prayer, a faithful church, a place as worthy of honour with angelic reverence as of veneration by the throng of monks. There solemn vigils were kept in honour of God; there heavenly oracles resounded in the praise of Christ. For thus it is read in the older exemplars of his deeds: a multitude of nearly a hundred and eighty disciples gathered together, both of aged men wearing out their long years in the service of Christ and of recruits joining in the praise of God — like a most ordered battle-line of God’s camps — laboured in readiness for the warfare of the Lord. When therefore the narrow confines of the place enclosed the assembly of this holy multitude within unequal space, that illustrious worker of signs, after his noble manner, began to treat with God the mysteries of his counsel concerning these things; from whom, taking wondrous confidence and praiseworthy constancy — his prayer, as was his custom, not offered first but girded rather with the great power of God — he did this thing laudably as though by mere authority. When therefore the sea on a certain day drew back into its channel after its accustomed and laid bare the vast surface of the sands by its own retreat, the man of God, knowing no delay, went forth quickly; and tracing in the dust of the earth with the point of his pastoral staff, he said with great constancy: “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, receive a prohibition whereby the Lord Himself forbids you the passing of this bound; by His authority I prescribe you a law which I establish in place of a testament, that your waves which have until now flowed here swelling shall rebound from there, and returning upon themselves utterly perish.” He spoke, and at once the insensible element obeyed the divine command. You might have seen the untameable deep grow mild, restrain its power, hold back its assaults, lay down its swellings. And this, not without the greatest wonder — that so great a part of God’s creation, its natural commotion stilled, hearkened to the word of one man, a servant of God, with such readiness that even to this present day it presumes not to pass the bound appointed it. And as once through its creatures it provided for the salvation of Christ’s soldier, so now it does violence to itself that it may serve his will. Great are these things, and not inferior to the deeds of the ancients. See, the miracles of the Old Law glorify our times: for the devout father Gudwal, like a second Moses, worked the work of the Lord in the sea. As he divided the sea, so did this man bridle it. Great is the Lord, exalted above all praise, who magnifies His saints with so great glory and exalts them with such power: to Him be praise and honour for ever.

⁵ It was the custom of the holy bishop, as was fitting, to frequent the sacred solemnities of the Mass; with what purity he devoted himself to that office, it pleased God, the beholder of that same purity, to reveal. The holy bishop having therefore sent before him the sacred offerings of fasts and vigils, and the incense of devout prayers having been burned to God and the angels in odour of sweetness, when he stood at the holy altars — robed in white with the lawn of virginity, clothed in purple with the royal purple of charity — the heavens were opened, and a spectacle of new joy was offered him from on high. For it was a sight to see — such glory as all other glory on earth must yield to. Hear, O Church of Christ; hear, and be lifted up into joy by the gift of so great an example. When therefore, as has been said, he stood at the altars as one fastened to the cross and lifted up to heavenly things, that heavenly Jerusalem sent down the choir of angels, directed the supernal citizens to visit the servant of God with consolation and to glorify the host most pleasing to God in the immolation of the Lamb of God. You might have saw the ministers of God attending, descending from heaven, surrounding the holy man and standing by him in place of mortals; and as the devout Christian people, flocking to the temple of the Lord, attends upon the ministry of its priest, applauds the office, shares in the blessings — so would you have were amazed at that heavenly company, in that intelligible nature in which it is accustomed to appear to men, visiting the holy man, assisting at the dread mysteries of the holy Eucharist, and glorifying the Lord’s name with so great a bishop in great reverence; whom also they soothed with the instruments of heavenly joys and cherished with devout consolations; and as a man treats a friend, so that angelic choir treated the holy man — nor merely as a friend, but as God their King, joined to them immortally by the pact of an everlasting covenant.

⁶ O spectacle most renowned in every age! On this side the bishop stands like a resplendent column of light, celebrating the holy of holies, immolating the Lamb of God, tasting the heavenly oblation; on that, the choirs of angels, awestruck amid so great a solemnity of mysteries; heavenly things are joined to earthly, and earthly to heavenly; the immortal are joined in fellowship with mortals, and for so great an indulgence of God’s grace they rejoice together with mortals. Meanwhile the holy bishop imbued the souls thirsting for the fount of life with the streams of the Gospel, and fortified them with sacred blessings; and so, gladdened as much by angelic as by human grace, he fulfilled with joy the most holy solemnities of the Mass. And lest what we say should leave any doubt, it is proved both by the example of this wondrous spectacle and by the judgement of the Scriptures’ authority that the sacred mysteries of Christ are never celebrated without the presence and reverence of angels. But to set forth before the eyes of men the merit of this His servant, the wisdom of God was pleased to work this visibly towards him, which the Holy Spirit is known to celebrate invisibly daily in the Church — by His own authorship, whose kingdom with the Father and the same Spirit abides for ever. While therefore these and suchlike things were divinely worked towards blessed Gudwal, he began to be more and more kindled by the warmth of the Holy Spirit — by what responses of thanksgiving he might meet such evident benefits of God. But the man worthy of all manner of praise — what should he do in return? Should he, for the divine love, give up the love of the world, to which he was already crucified, being himself crucified to it? Should he now at last determine to seek the kingdom of God, for which he had not only renounced all things but had even held his own soul in hatred?

⁷ This alone remained: that the very dwellings which he had already begun to inhabit for the Lord’s name, he should now likewise forsake for His name — namely, that as in them he had been an exile from his native country, so from them, made a pilgrim for the love of Christ, he might seek a dwelling lying beneath another sun, as a stranger and unknown. For as one walking between two fires, the more he withdraws from the one fire to approach the other, the more he grows cold to this and warm to that: so this venerable father, set between flesh and spirit, between the world and God — the more he freed himself from carnal hindrances and put the world behind his back, the more he rose the stronger in the spirit and turned his face the more ardently to the love of Christ. Counsel therefore being taken with the brethren, filled with the sevenfold grace of the Holy Spirit, a sevenfold vessel is built in the harbour of that island; where, arriving accompanied by the most holy flock of his disciples — who had grown, as has been said, to the number of a hundred and eighty — he entered upon the sea with them all, the Spirit of God leading. Which he entered by divine and not by human dispensation, that the creature of the other element also might communicate with the earth in the sacred blessing of his miracles. For the angelic company, embracing the bosom of the ships, amid the sailors’ cries soothed their souls with melody and filled the magnificent and spacious sea with the sonorous harmony of heavenly hymns — the deep resounding with grateful echo and ringing with divine jubilations to the glory of God.

⁸ Meanwhile the holy man, trusting in the presence of God and the angels and secure in their help, went forth from the ship; where he was received by the very waves, as one commended by God. Held among them by the unconquered right hand of Christ, he was deemed worthy to be guided by the newness of so great a miracle, that one is more moved to wonder at these things with mingled awe than to utter anything with uncultured speech. For He who made the waves solid for His Peter, and again stretched forth His hand to him as he sank; who amid Paul’s shipwrecks was the haven of salvation — He, by that art and wisdom which He alone knows, upheld His servant and shielded him from the imminent peril of the waves to such a degree that, the whole substance of his body unharmed and the whole compass of his garments untouched by the spray of the waves, he remained wholly unhurt and cheerful by God’s gift. Meanwhile he heard, rejoicing, the voice of the Lord who guided him and stayed with him, saying to him: “Be constant, O My Gudwal; be constant, my elect; fear not, for I your God am with you.” For the brethren testified that they truly heard these things, and that by this gladness of the Lord the holy man was made the more tranquil in soul. What did this voice of the Lord — a voice incomparable with the utterances of angels — what did it sound, I ask, but (to return to Peter) that which was said to him as he sank: “O you of little faith, so did you doubt?” Since therefore we are as it were labouring in the sea, it is lawful for us to cry out: “O devout father Gudwal, kindly father, look down from heaven and graciously draw nigh to your servants labouring in the midst of the deep, lest we be swallowed by the waves and become the prey of the creatures of the sea: reach us the plank, stretch forth your right hand; Jesus walks with you upon the sea, by whose leading you and your holy host are hastening through the waves to the lands. Through Him we ask, through Him we beg, that we may not, suffering shipwreck, strike upon the rocks, but may joyfully attain with you to the solidness of the shore.”

⁹ But since the flowers of his miracles began to blossom and already bore fruit, let them be plucked and eaten, that our palates may be seasoned by their taste. Let us taste, therefore, and see that the Lord is sweet. It happened there, then, a noble thing, a splendid thing, and worthy to be proclaimed with the loudest heralding of praises. For when he was amid the waves, secure of himself by God’s presence as has been said, he bent the tenor of the spirit burning within him the more fully upon the divine praises. And when he was chanting psalms at the hours appointed by the authority of Christ and the apostles, while the company of the brethren stood not by him after his pontifical custom — for they were being carried in the ships, as men laden with the heavy burden of the flesh — angels were present and fulfilled the office of the clergy devoted to God. And when the bishop, as was customary of the Church, gave out the verse, singing and saying “O God, make speed to save me”, the angels raised the solemn response on this side and on that, saying “O Lord, make haste to help me”; and they continued blessing the Lord’s name with him, alternating hymns and praises with so great a bishop in reciprocal modulation. What amid these unusual marvels of the Godhead is more delightful? What more renowned? He embraced Christ in the sea — Christ as companion, Christ as comforter, Christ as helmsman; he saw the holy angels attending upon him in the praise of God, ministering to him, and staying with him.

¹⁰ And where is that which is sung: “In the presence of the angels will I sing praise to You”? See, in his presence the angels sing to God. But what wonder if he enjoys the fellowship of angels in the praise of God, to whom the King of angels Himself is a safeguard in the midst of the deep, as the apple of His own eye? For that whole host of the Lord was borne to the lands with a happy course and a prosperous voyage; and as Israel passed through the Red Sea under the pillar of cloud and fire in the hand of Moses and Aaron, so through the vision to whom the power of the sea was subject, these angelic hosts were carried across through the midst of the deep in the hand of Gudwal. Thanks to You, O God, who never forsake those who hope in You, but ever fulfil in them Your mercy, which all who love You enjoy. See, devout reader and God-fearing hearer, you have the sacred emblems of his deeds digested, whereby holy Gudwal both gladdened the church by the sea and the country of his own birth; whereby also he magnificently stirred the deep of the abyss to the ineffable glory of God. These let us distinguish from those which afterwards shone with great radiance on shores beyond the sea — that as the sea lying between divides country from country and kingdom from kingdom, so we also may distinguish in distinct books the works of the distinct realms.

Book Two #

Chapter Three: The monastery built. The inheritance obtained, and a son given to its owner. Other miracles #

¹ So it came to pass that the man of God, having passed the bounds of his own pilgrimage, was met both by the overflowing kindness of God and by the great humanity of the whole region. For Christ at once spread abroad through all that country the grace of so great a guest, whom also the mighty and greatest marvels commended together with Christ — things whereby, as the same little work testifies, he was already brightly made known to earth and sea, to angels and to men. And when he began to work like wonders there — here to You, O Christ, be praise and honour for ever — the whole land drew to itself the spirit of his love. And first indeed a place suitable for the building of a monastery was sought, though with difficulty. But the man of the Lord, not weakened by the very difficulty, held solid hope fixed like a bronze nail in the Lord — for the preceding benefits of God strengthened his soul. For how could God desert the merit of so weighty a faith, He who is ever most mercifully present as a rewarder to those who hope in Him and presume upon Him? When therefore, as has been said, a place was being sought for the building of a monastery through deserts and trackless ways, a small field offered itself — not wholly suited to the purpose, but which seemed sufficient, as it were of necessity, for the new-comers and untrained colonists. Here they began to labour and build a monastery in the Lord’s name. But God, compassionating their devout endeavours yet vain striving, decreed in this way that counsel should be changed for counsel and place for place.

² On a certain day, then, when in that place of holy labour they were keeping with festive light the ninth hour, at which Christ was about to ascend the cross, a certain very powerful man of that land, arriving surrounded by a military band, reverently drew near to this assembly of the saints, full of joy and wonder. He, armed with the zeal of justice, had raised his lance against the weakly band of robbers and cruel spoilers, and had delivered Christian innocence from their molestation. He, seeing the holy man standing in the midst of the brethren’s assembly like an angel of God, chanting psalms and bending the knee to God at every verse, was pricked at heart and worshipped him thrice with bowed head; and approaching with trembling and reverence, sought a blessing from the holy man. Which being received, he cherished him as it were in requital of a benefit, and encouraged him with the counsel of advantage and consolation. He said therefore to him: “The country from which you are sprung, O noble athlete of God, I know; the most noble stock of your lineage I acknowledge; and at the labour of the voluntary poverty and pilgrimage which you have undertaken for God’s sake I rejoice exceedingly. But since in the building of this place you are consumed with vain labour — which suits neither a regular purpose nor so great a multitude — receive the counsel of God and not my, which shall profit you and yours, God being favourable. There is therefore hard by a place where, if you shall bestow labour of this kind with devout zeal, you shall obtain manifold joy of fruitful work. So, taking with you some of the brethren, direct your steps there for the sake of exploring. For truly I trust that you shall there obtain the gladness of your heart, the desire of your soul, and shall find with joy a place suitable both to God and to those who serve Him.” Hearing these things, the venerable hero, taking up the harp of the Holy Spirit, sang a hymn of praise to God and to Christ. Then, having his monitor for a guide — the grace of God going before and following after — he came more quickly to explore the quality of the place; and embracing its pleasantness and convenience, he offered a sacrifice of praise to God and with all gladness of heart proclaimed “Glory to God in the highest”.

³ This place, then, he dedicated to the glory of God for his dwelling, and invited the fellow-servants of God from every side to dwell with him. And word was sent by a trusty messenger that the most holy company of the brethren should hasten there as speedily as might be, with all the revenues of the ecclesiastical furnishings. Upon whose arrival they resolved to establish a perpetual seat there, and set up a monastery with the cloister of a religious house; where of a rustic spot, of a den of wild beasts, was made a place of prayer, a place of divine contemplation. But since it were overlong to recount singly the zeal of the servants of God, for brevity’s sake I speak a likeness: that you might have saw the holy family fervent in divine pursuits like a prudent swarm of bees. This comparison, taken from the smallest things but applied to the greatest — whoever shall censure it as infitting in respect of kind, let him attend, I pray, to the natural science that inspects the natures of things; in which, if he shall diligently examine and strenuously understand the prudence, nature, laws, customs, exercises of labour and restful ease of this least yet admirable bee, and its other pursuits, he will have, as I suppose, by fitting comparison a corresponding account in something. These things being briefly interspersed, let us resume the course of the happy history, aided by the intercession and intercessions of the blessed man.

⁴ Blessed Gudwal therefore, like one of the living creatures that serve the sky, with eyes before and behind — weighing present things and foreseeing future — began to inquire within himself and treat with others whether a place of such pleasant delight enjoyed a hereditary owner, or why it had so long been neglected by the presence of a lawful lord. And it was told him who a certain worshipper of Christ, Mevor by name, had held ancestral estates there; but not enduring the hostile fury of the citizens, had gone to a country lying beneath another sun, and had removed himself and his household to Cornwall for the sake of peace. Hearing these things, the venerable hero said: “If it is so, my brethren, we must consider what is to be done by us in these matters. For in all things, but most of all in a business of this kind, we must deal in those things that are holy and just. For what avail it if the love of God has made us to reign in this exile, if the love of our neighbour be offended? So let the rule of reason be held, and let the lord of this turf be met with friendly embassage in this matter: for I hope in the Lord that the grace of the Holy Spirit will anticipate his heart and move the bowels of His pity in him; whereby through this patrimony he may look both to the salvation of his own soul and to our advantage, to his crown. Concerning which thing I judge that an embassy of four brethren should be sent, to handle our anxious affair with prudent counsel and to accomplish this notable business with faithful effect.” And when all favoured this counsel wholesomely, the chosen brethren being sent, and certain of the fruit of obedience, entered upon the way — walking by Him and having Him for companion who says in the Gospel: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” And the toil of the long journey now traversed, they come to Cornwall, approach the noble man, give greeting, unfold the embassage, and disclose the laudable undertaking of the renowned father, whereby from divine confidence he had entered the bounds of his estate. “He has entered,” they say, “not as a violent invader to possess your goods, but to obtain them for God the King to your crown. Already Christ has inherited your estates; already He has provided a temple for His worship and gathered His own host there.”

⁵ Hearing these things, the noble Mevor, as one visited by the grace of the Holy Spirit, gave great thanks to God, soothing his soul with devout sweetness — because neither the power of a public tax-gatherer nor the violent lot of enemies was the invader of this noble inheritance, and for this reason most of all because Christ had dedicated it to Himself, since He had already affixed His title-deeds there and had gathered a heavenly soldiery as it were beneath His wings. In this deed indeed — that we may ascribe to the man of God something of ancient history — he held the patriarch Abraham and the prophet David as examples to be imitated: each of whom preferred to obtain with the grace of a purchase what he could have possessed by his own power — the one, because he was a prince of God among his people, the twofold cave for the possession of a tomb; the other, the threshing-floor of Araunah for the building of the temple. Yet the love of God and of neighbour overcame the power of dominion, from which also their seed abides for ever and ever. Then, the brethren being received into his house, the noble Mevor cheerfully showed them every courtesy. Nor was he cheated of the reward of holy hospitality; for He who at the last shall say to His own “I was a stranger and you took Me in”, reserving for him the deposit of an eternal recompense, did not allow him to remain for the present untried in the purpose of His grace. Let them hear and be delighted, whom the grace which works in the servants of God delights.

⁶ Now the noble man of whom we speak and his illustrious wife were dwelling together in Christ — joined, that is, in charity, but parted in carnal union. For nine years had now flowed by since either had known the fellowship of the common bed; and they were advanced in years and worn with age, whom the nature of dear offspring had left destitute, and from whom all the gladness of kinship had ebbed away. The guests received, as though repaying charity with lavish charity — recounting all the mighty works which God had worked through the lord Gudwal — before they went to rest, addressed them honourably in private thus: “We know for certain that the Lord has directed our way; and by the merits of our father, whose embassage we fulfil, you shall inherit the blessing of Abraham both here and in the world to come. Acquiescing therefore in our counsels, in the name of Gudwal, enjoy this night the chaste embraces of lawful wedlock; and joy shall be given you, from which your charity may bless God for ever. For we will join our prayers to the merits of our father and, as we trust in the Lord, the grace of dear offspring shall be given you from on high.” And when they pleaded their age, yet nourished hope of future good in the Lord, the brethren set before them the examples of the holy patriarchs, excused the promptings of desire, and approved the sweet increase of the offspring to be received.

⁷ At last they consented, and were presently to be honoured with heavenly consolation upon their bed. For in the silence of the dead of night, while welcome sleep cherishes all things, a heavenly visitation suddenly drew near. For the holy bishop Gudwal, standing by the woman in a vision, said: “Rejoice, O woman — rejoice, I say, and be glad: for you have conceived a son whom you shall bring forth in his time. Him you shall call Simeon, to be consecrated to the Lord, but to me you shall deliver him to be nurtured.” When morning came, and the servants of God — the authors of this counsel by heavenly inspiration — were now about to set out, this same woman met them with thanksgiving and unfolded the vision of salvation in order. All rejoicing and blessing God for it, the old man also ran up, and he too blessed God. He promised that he would come, and that the son to be born by promise, with the whole integrity of the inheritance, he would deliver to God and blessed Gudwal by ratified laws; and blessing them, he dismissed them in peace. They, praising the Lord above all for the good things they had experienced, came to the father Gudwal, whom they rendered joyful by the mystery of so great an embassage, and together with him blessed God the giver of this gift. God therefore visited the woman, who according to the oracle of the divine presage brought forth a son, and his name was called Simeon; and the joy denied to their flourishing youth, they rejoiced had been granted to their old age — praise to You, O Christ. Surely, as the book of Judges and the holy Gospels testify, it is the office of angels to bring a divine oracle to aged and barren parents for the hope of dear offspring; to which ministry we write that this devout father of ours was appointed, as a true angel of God and a truthful prophet of heavenly foreknowledge.

⁸ Now after the lapse of some years, blessed Gudwal, mindful of the faithful promise of Mevor, met him by chosen brethren with friendly embassage; how the grace of God, how the intercession of the holy man attended them, the reader is here given the means of knowing. For they being set upon the journey, it happened to them to pass through a very great forest; and they suddenly fell in with a certain band of robbers, whose nefarious work witnessed that they were provoked by the chain of Satan. For, gathered like vultures about a certain corpse’s funeral, they were dividing among themselves the spoils they had stripped; neither fearing to offend the Lord by the enormity of so detestable a crime, nor reverencing the modest nakedness of noble nature close at hand. Who, seeing the servants of God coming along the way, rushed to meet them in the fury of an unclean spirit, as though they would presently drink the blood for which they thirsted, or find precious substance in them. But, as it is written, in vain is the net cast before the eyes of the winged. Nothing in this conspiracy of the malignant availed the cunning craft of the devil. For the servants of God, mindful of the Scripture which says that none who fears God need fear the creature, went on unterrified in the way begun. While they, amid the melody of psalms, amid the words of prayers, invoked the Lord through the merit of Gudwal to their aid, the hostile band, driven back as by a whirlwind of wind, collapsed in flight and malignant confusion. And because, as night breeds blindness, so confusion breeds shame — with the ignominy of flight they were punished by God’s just judgement with blindness of the eyes; and the terror of the Holy Spirit invading them scattered them in so great confusion round about that, while they sought the refuge of flight, they dashed their heads against the wood with horrible disfigurement.

⁹ See, a threefold miracle in one: flight, blindness, bruised foreheads. And there was added, increasing the calamity, the din of disordered clamour and madness of mind. For while they were confounded in flight, as has been said, with confused shouting — echoing back upon themselves from the density of the wood — they beat upon the heavens and filled the air, saying: “O terrible name of the Lord! O admirable merit of Gudwal, by whose invocation we are punished with blindness, scattered in flight, and moreover hold death in suspicion, while we feel the sentence of capital punishment in the dashing of our bruised foreheads.” But as the disciples of the venerable father poured out prayers after the example of the crucified Lord, they were restored from madness to soberness; and making a vow to the God of heaven, they deserved to recover the clemency of God in the restoration of their sight. Why do you strive in vain, O envy of the devil? You desire to destroy the counsel of the Most High and of our holy father, to be disposed through these messengers of peace; while you labour to whet the teeth of your beasts upon their blood — but the inevitable counsel of the Lord abides for ever, and your endeavours are at once frustrated and the darts of your snares turned back upon you. For these, executing the demonstration of your craft, gave their hand to their own Emperor, to whom they made a vow and obtained His grace. Glory to the Lamb of God, who, sleeping on the Cross with blood outpoured, so broke the strength of the savage lion that now, groaning prostrate beneath the feet of the saints, crushed, he laments the lost victory of his ancient tyranny.

¹⁰ Bearing about with them such emblems of God’s works, and proclaiming them in praise of the Creator, the same servants of God came to Cornwall; they sought out the God-fearing Mevor and his illustrious wife, approached them, greeted them, and unfolded the embassage. “Be mindful,” they said, “O best of men, of your faithful promise, agreeing with the desires of our holy father; for the joy of your coming he greatly longs for, lest death suddenly break in and prevent you from attaining the good will which Christ inspires.” Mevor answering said: “To the desires of your father my desires also answer, and his grace kindles me to the fulfilling of them. So, meaning to go in the morning and to consummate the work of the Lord, let us feast together today and rejoice with festive gladness for the charity of your coming.” While they feasted in the Lord and wove discourse frequently of Gudwal’s glory, the little Simeon — no small material of so great glory — was set in their midst, and the name of the Lord was blessed the more. The night having passed, when the light of dawn now broke forth into morning, Mevor entered upon the long-desired journey with the servants of God. And the sky suddenly began to grow black, threatening the horrors of storms and inundations of rain. The travellers, taught by the Master to cry to the Lord in tribulation and not to despair of God’s mercy, bent the knee once, twice, and thrice, poured out prayers, and begged the holy Trinity through the merit of Gudwal to aid them in their need. And because God forsakes not those who hope in Him, there was made for them, after the prophetic word, a shelter of devout overshadowing and protection, in security and covert from the whirlwind and the rain. For the rain rushing down from heaven round about, while they fixed their eyes on heaven in hope and prayer, the glory of the Lord appeared in the splendid showing of a miracle. As in the days of Gideon it came to pass that, while all the earth was made wet with the dew of heaven, the fleece alone remained dry, and again, while the fleece alone was drenched, all the earth was dry — so in that time, when the hostile rain wearied the whole sea and all the plains and all the woods round about, the public road alone, bearing those servants of God, remained unharmed by the inundation of the storm. The royal road, I say, upon the invocation of Christ’s name through the merits of Gudwal, remained untouched, while all things under the open sky on either side were held possessed by the stormy horror. For an invisible power was a canopy for His servants above, and a barrier on the right hand and on the left — He who once dried a wondrous path amid the waves, and walled the waters of the sea on either side as with walls. There indeed the water kept its nature that it might flow, but changed it that it might not flow; here the rain obeyed nature that it might flow around, but resisted it through the merits of Gudwal, that it might not wet the road.

¹¹ The grace of God remained with them in this kind of miracle until they reached the presence of the venerable father. To whom the noble Mevor, approaching with reverence and prostrate on the ground, devoutly adored Christ dwelling in so great a father; by whom being most courteously received, he was deemed worthy to be refreshed with the consolation of the long-desired blessing and converse. The holy man himself also rejoiced abundantly in the Lord, hearing of the devout miracle shown from heaven to the brethren returning to him on the way. Amid these things, spiritual gladness increasing, they rendered to one another in turn the offices of holy humility, and held converse of divinely inspired charity. The devout father embraced Mevor as though he had received an angel of God; the noble Mevor reverenced Gudwal as though Christ were receiving him. Mevor therefore fulfilled all things to the accomplishing of which the grace of God and of so great a father had stirred him. Simeon, the boy of kindly disposition, is offered to God; and all that inheritance is delivered by the ratified sanction of laws, under an everlasting testament, before witnesses. Rightly indeed might that Mevor say to God: “You are my hope, my portion in the land of the living”; and again: “You are the Lord who shall restore my inheritance to me.” For Christ is declared to be the inheritance of those in the land of the living by whom He is Himself chosen heir in this land of the dying — that inheritance, I mean, which passes not away with the successions of time, but abides enduring for ever.

Chapter Four: Miracles of Saint Gudwal, worked in raising the dead, and healing the madman and the dumb; likewise in the sheep, the wolves, and the horse #

¹ It came to pass, then, that the monastery of God’s Church which this illustrious bishop — the venerable leader of anchorites and cenobites — founded with God’s help round about that region, and honourably raised, enriched with the unfailing treasures of heaven, became his own see. In which he chose to serve God until the end of his life and to fight for the crown predestined for him before the foundation of the world. Living there, he shone renowned in examples of the virtues as everywhere; in which he gleamed forth so illustrious that, like a royal diadem of precious gems or a garland bound with lilies and roses, he showed himself to those who were present as a jewel-flowing crown laid before their eyes, while to those who were absent he appeared as a roseate garland from the odour of his sweetness: for as in a diadem the splendour of his character was seen, so in a garland the sweet fragrance of his loves was sensed; to the Church indeed he raised the savour of life as of drops of purest balsam, and to every country as from a paradise of delights — thus he shone to some by example, to others he was redolent by fame. But in himself — that is, in the hidden place of his mind — how great was he before God! For he burned wholly in the Holy Spirit with the fire of devout love, whereby he consumed himself inwardly as a fat and marrowy holocaust to God. And so, wholly melted in the divine fire, he came forth from the furnace of temptations like purest and most refined gold, fit for no other use than the glory and honour of the highest King. But while we are silent, his miracles proclaim him more clearly, consonant in equal measure with those who precede and those who follow — whose majesty is so great, whose brightness so great, that they refuse to yield to the signs and prodigies of the earlier saints, the so-called pillars of the Church; in which we deem it pleasant to linger, because the matter of divine praise is infinite and they afford the greatest incitements to following the footsteps of the father to be imitated.

² Blessed Gudwal, therefore, aided by the help of God and of many, persevered unwearied in completing the building of the sacred basilica; when it was nearly finished he had only skilled carpenters to complete the work, but the Lord daily increased the inexhaustible funds to serve the uses of the holy building. On the other side, the envious tempter of all good things, foreseeing losses to come to himself in that same place — after the manner of his near malignity — wove the calumnies of his ancient deceit, and stretched snares to hinder the holy work; nor did he rest from his wicked cunning until he had contrived a fall for one of the workmen from the pinnacle of the temple — procuring for himself thereby joy for a moment but loss for ever, and for the man of God grief for an instant but triumph perpetual. That workman, hurled down to death upon the paving-stones, was crushed and shattered beyond remedy; and the band of his fellows, wounded by so great a friend’s misfortune, was loosed from the work, anxious that the man of God should come to meet them. The devout father, shaken by the noise of them running together from all sides and clamouring as is usual, and himself wounded with heavy grief, came in haste; but sudden death had so quickly seized the wretch that no remedy or spell could avail save the art of this heavenly enchanter. Whom the holy man, knowing to be bereft of life, entered the oratory and poured forth before the divine altar a prayer of this kind: “O Lord, Almighty Father, who punished the human race for the desert of disobedience with a twofold death — one of which You destroyed in Your elect by the precious death of Your Only-begotten, until You shall have destroyed the other, swallowed up in the victory of the resurrection, by the glory of Your advent — condescend to my sighs and pity my tears; let Your grace, O Lord, favour this dead man; let the bowels of Your pity, poured forth with devout affection over Lazarus already stinking, open to him; that the resurrection of one alone may become the manifold quickening of many souls.” And so, the sacrifice of devout prayers having gone before, he returned to the place of mourning, to the sad funeral rites already prepared.

³ Then, bidding all who stood by to withdraw, he remained alone with the dead man. Here, prostrating himself amid the words of prayer and bending wholly over the corpse, he laid mouth to mouth, hands to hands, feet to feet, and limb upon limb — full, doubtless, of that spirit whereby the great Elisha was renowned in a like deed. And as flesh mingled with flesh seems to conceive warmth from flesh, so you would have thought that lifeless corpse to receive the vital fire from the most holy body of him who lay upon it. The soul therefore returns, enters the dwelling of its body; and the living man is brought back to his former state by God’s grace — whom the holy man delivers alive again to his mourning friends, sound and with no traces of the deadly fall appearing, preoccupying by this miracle the great glory of the resurrection to come, when, apart from the marks of the triumphant martyrs, there shall be no wounds of scars in the rising saints. The disciples seeing this, and the people flocking from all sides, poured out devout tears, stirred by joy and amazement. Prostrate here in crowds at his feet, they lifted loud voices to heaven, saying: “Truly you are a saint of God, truly you are a friend of God.” And so it came to pass that the matter of so great a miracle became a mighty proof of God’s power, a mighty manifestation of the merits of blessed Gudwal, to the confusion of the devil and the increase of God’s work. By this so great grace, therefore, whereby, most blessed father Gudwal, you recalled the soul into the limbs of the dead, recall with ampler grace, we beg, the souls carried off in devilish captivity; quicken in Christ those who die to life, and mortify to the world those who live to death — through Him who is the true life of souls and lives for ever.

⁴ When therefore the established order of monastic observance, instituted by the authority of the fathers and the disposition of blessed Gudwal, held its course in happy progress, the reckoning of necessary use demanded that at the ninth hour, the solemnities of Christ’s sacraments being accomplished, the brethren should come together for refreshment. But the venerable father, making himself an immaculate victim to God by stricter fasting, was in the oratory intent upon prayers while they ate. Now a certain man, at the devil’s instigation, having found a time suited to his malice, was accustomed at that same hour to despoil the monastery’s garden — providing, as it were, a remedy for his want by the sacrilege of detestable theft. For plucking the herbs and all the choicest greens, he was unwilling to set a limit to this daily wickedness. The brother who had charge of the garden, bearing patiently the daily loss of his labours that he might correct the thief by a change like the palm of patience — while the other daily took increase of his madness — came to Gudwal and asked what was to be done. But he, ever wholly overflowing with bowels of mercy, said: “Unless the utmost need compelled this guilty man, he would not have made a pact with death in a deed of this kind. But do you sustain the Lord, and tomorrow you shall wonder at the glory of God in this matter.” And it came to pass that on the next day, the brethren sharing the common table and the holy father as was his custom giving himself to psalms and prayers in the oratory, the thief — not forgetful of himself, not forgetful of his perverse habit — set about repeating the calamity of his accustomed device. And while he prepared his furtive snares amid the dense herbs and rejoiced to hide in his darkness, the divine scourge hanging over him for the avenging of His servant was made public by a wondrous revelation. To whom, amid his nefarious work, the hiss of the slenderest wind or the rustle of a falling leaf easily brought terror — there seemed to stand by him a certain personage of terrible priestly reverence, who amid words of harsh rebuke shook at him the rod of a pastoral staff held in the hand. By which blow he was stricken with such senselessness of pain that, while he sought the refuge of flight, he betrayed himself with the enormity of his confused crying. And when he strove to leap over the hedge, held fast by an invisible chain he remained like a motionless statue.

⁵ The brethren, astonished by the shrillness of the unknown voice, came to the garden — for it was near the monastery — and declared God who works such things marvellous, proclaimed Him glorious. At length the venerable father presenting himself with gravity, and seeing the wretch thus possessed by a demon, said moved with pity: “We must have compassion, dearest ones, on the errors of this man — for our brother is in Christ. We must also be persevering in prayer, that God, who wills that none should perish, may deign to perfect a twofold salvation in him.” At which words he himself, hearing them speak, and unable to bear the glory of his face, fell to the earth swooning. And while the disciples prayed according to the Master’s bidding, the saint himself graciously stretched out his hand to him and said confidently: “The Lord raises up those who are cast down, the Lord looses those who are bound.” At whose voice he at once rose unharmed, and stirred all who saw and heard these things to the praise and glory of the Lord’s name. O ineffable wisdom of God, which in the devil’s wickedness uses so great clemency! For what he was devising to punishment, it disposes most mercifully to glory. Mark therefore in this miracle, devout reader and hearer, with what grace of dispensation God often publishes the sins of certain men and pursues vengeance — condescending, that is, that others may be made a cause of example from their like offences. For this reason in the Old Law He published the theft of Achan by anathema and drove him out with great disgrace through His servant Joshua; for this reason He also struck David with a cruel blow, and wondrously cast Saul down from heaven to earth — for whose benefits be eternal praise and thanksgiving for ever.

⁶ In a certain boy also we will proclaim God wonderful and His servant Gudwal praiseworthy. For there was a certain faithful woman who had a son passing now through two five-year spans, who, being deprived from birth of the office of the tongue, was joined with that blind man of the Gospel in the renowned proclamation of divine praise. For as the one merited sight from the Lord that the works of God might be made manifest in him, so this one received the voice of speech that the divine power might be made manifest glorifying His saint — which is certain to have happened in this manner. When therefore the venerable father was dwelling with his people on a certain occasion and treating, after his noble manner, of certain useful things, the same woman came running to plead for her son, and full of faith said: “Man of God, I know that whatever you shall ask of God, God will give you; so for this my son, whom lasting silence has oppressed from the womb, loose, I pray, the bonds of his silent tongue, that blessing the Creator of all whom he confesses in heart, he may worship Him also with the common use of speech.” Then the holy man said: “The Lord has done all things whatever He willed, in heaven and in earth, in the sea and in all the deeps. Ask Him faithfully, vow vows to Him, pour out prayers to Him; for He alone is able to save your son and to loose the bonds of his tongue.”

⁷ The holy man said this, not that he doubted he could accomplish such things by the finger of God — for he knew that he had already done greater things — but that, uplifting himself in the art of humility, he was pouring back upon the Lord, their author, all the glory of his miracles. But she, moved by the affection of piety toward her dear offspring, stung by the goad of maternal love, began to cry out the more and the more, and spread more widely the balsams of precious faith. The servant of God, marking the weighty merit of her faith, stretched out his hand in prayer, put his finger in the boy’s mouth and touched the instrument of his tongue, saying: “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak.” He spoke; and the boy, born dumb, at once received speech. For as a material instrument lies indeed mute of itself, but, tempered by human skill and breathed through, renders distinct measures of harmonies — so the mouth of the dumb, before indeed mute, at the touch and word of the man of God expressing the majesty of the Holy Spirit, you would have were amazed to see suddenly opened; as though the same Holy Spirit reigning in so great a father penetrated by the power of His breath the pipe of the mute voice. Who therefore could keep silence from the praise of the Creator? Joy mingled with amazement arose, and a lasting proclamation of divine praise.

⁸ Let us speak yet of the mighty works of God, renowned in the miracles of His Gudwal — things admirable not only in the very elements, not only to be embraced in human souls and bodies, but also exceeding pleasant in animals and beasts. Among which, what we have learned concerning the sheep and the tamed wolves — changed, as it were, into human reason — let us bring forth into the midst for the praise of God. There were kept folds of sheep for the uses of the monastery, to which the snares of wolves were exceeding hostile. And so it happened that on a certain day a shepherd set before the feet of the holy man one of the lambs, dead — hardly snatched from the wolves’ very jaws. The man of the Lord, recollecting in the dead beast Christ, who was led as a sheep to the sacrifice and like a lamb dumb before his shearer in the passion, turned to the Lord and said: “Let my prayer enter into Your sight, incline Your ear to my petition, O Lord. You, O Lord, who in the figure of David Your servant — scattering the mouths of lions, breaking the arms of bears — snatched the lost sheep from the hand of death; which same good shepherd, leaving the ninety-nine in the desert, You sought and found, and, laying it upon Your shoulders, led it back to the flock — mindful of these mercies, O favourer of our prayers, look kindly upon this sheep, that in its raising again Your great power may be declared, which in other creatures Your power works through us. You know, Lord, that to these prayers we are provoked by praise and glory of Your name rather than by any mortal greed of gain.” He prayed, and touched the sheep with the tip of his pastoral staff, and raised it with a light touch; which at once, while all glorified God, stood upon its feet and returned to its flock, not without the amazement of many.

⁹ Again turning to the Lord he said: “Bid, O Lord, the bloody invader of our flock to come, that in him also we may work that which is of Your grace.” Which said — the wolf, gentler than a fawning hound, drew near, stained yet with the fresh prey; as though conscious of its guilt, making satisfaction to the blessed man and prostrating itself at his feet upon the ground. Seeing this, all who were present praised God and lifted their hands to heaven with thanksgiving. But the holy bishop, made glad in the Lord, said: “Depart, you bloody beast; depart, and never again presume to vex my sheep with any hurt.” So at the saint’s command, withdrawing from there in meekness, it changed its nature, estranging from the same sheep all cruelty which its own nature whets more savagely in wild beasts. And it came to pass that afterwards, as though discharging a shepherd’s office, it kept watch over the flocks with such provident care that, when wolves and savage beasts came upon them with thirst for blood, it would drive them away, meeting their onset not lazily, raging with mouth and gnashing with teeth.

¹⁰ At another season also he saw a wolf in the plains, weak both in walking and in running, dragging rather than bearing the burden of its mass with difficulty. Compassionating its distress, he cried out with voice lifted up: “You beast of the forest, lying in wait for the innocent simple flocks, what mishap has happened to you? What hard thing has happened, that natural swiftness has left you and unnatural slowness succeeded?” At which speech of the holy man a reason befitting the brute beast came to it, because it understood that a thing was to be divinely worked in it whereby the Lord’s name was to be proclaimed among the Christian folk. It approached therefore with what strength it could, showing reverence with bowed head, offering its affection with bent neck; then, displaying the claw of its foot pierced by a thorn, it poured out prayers as it were with such gestures as it could, whereby it demanded the remedies of its recovery. The man of the Lord, weighing so great reason in a senseless breast, gave praise to God, gave thanks to God; and stretching forth the point of the pastoral staff with which he had raised the dead sheep, touching the beast’s lame foot with a light touch, said to the Lord: “Men and beasts You will save, O Lord.” At that voice the heavenly remedy, placed in the hand of the man of God, descended — the same which in the divine power was let down, as through the dry rod, upon the halting member; with which once in Egypt the rod of Moses was imbued for the working of signs and wonders.

¹¹ O wondrous power! O mighty strength of the servants of God — how powerful in miracles, how effectual in cures! Then the holy man said to the healed beast: “Harm you no creature ever, but all your days graze on hay like the ox; on hay, I say, feed, on pulse be filled, and so, keeping the nature of innocency, go on to pay the common debt of death.” Nor were very many lacking who afterwards saw the beast grown tame and bore witness to the obedience shown to the holy father’s command. There are tears for things, and mortal matters touch the mind. See, man, capable of reason, resists reason; beasts, void of reason, partake of reason. Beasts, naturally witless, worship God in His saints with the gesture of the body and the affection of the soul; but men, naturally wise by the draught of the divine mind, with stiff neck and untameable heart fear not God and hate His saints. Look down, O merciful Jesus, from heaven, and render those who resist You like the rugged flint to obedience — by the examples at least of these beasts, by the testimonies at least of these miracles — shining with Your ineffable benefits. It is now a fitting time to commend the blessed man’s glorious passing to the pen, and to note also the most renowned divine revelations concerning him — to which end it is worth our while to set down first the testimony of a clear miracle, whereby his holy eucharist of almsgiving was shown to have stood before God and to have pleased God.

¹² On a certain occasion beggars, about to ask for public alms, came to the monastery and sought the father Gudwal. Being found, they offered the prayers of mendicancy, wove in the laments of want, bent the devout father with their cries. The venerable hero being moved, inquiry is made whether any remnants of alms, any offerings of charity remained. It was answered by the steward that nothing remained of succour for the poor — for his gracious dispensation had already poured everything into the use of charity. But God’s athlete, poor indeed to the world but rich toward heaven, ordered the horse assigned to husbandry be brought rather into his presence. Brought forward, it is set in the midst, and is presented to the poor with great grace; the poor receive the blessing of the man of God, render thanks with downcast face, and pay the tribute of praises to God, the author and giver of all good things. Then, being received into the guest-house, they were gladdened with all courtesy at the charges of the public administration; they are received to a feast, they are indulged with rest through the deep silence of the night. Day is given back to the earth; the use of the husbandman’s labour breaks the morning sleep; restored by the night’s quiet, they return to their accustomed tasks; they confer together that the horse allotted to the labours of oxen had been given to the beggars the day before, and that no like help for husbandry was at hand. Amid these things, lifting up their eyes, a horse appears grazing in the fields, which a most like conformation of limbs and of its whole mass figured as the same — which had been received the day before from Christ by the hands of the poor; and though it was truly another in substance, yet it seemed the very same in appearance — the same form of its limbs deceived the keenness of their eyes. The miracle seen in the field becomes renowned in the monastery. The guest-house is approached where the beggars lodge; inquiry is made concerning the loss of the beast given. “The animal given us,” they say, “stands before our eyes in witness of an excellent virtue: by it we rejoice that succour has been brought to our needs; let the devout father Gudwal rejoice that it has been translated for him into the heavenly treasures.”

¹³ The fame of the deed spreads abroad, the report of the miracle is scattered, the mouths of the crowd are filled, it becomes renowned among the people of God; the strangeness of the thing stirs the hearers to hasten joyfully to the sight: the monks go out, the laity assemble, all are filled with amazement and ecstasy. Diverse praises of so great a majesty of power are celebrated in the Church of God. “And so,” they say, “a beast so like a beast? From what herd did it emerge? Who raised it in the stables from a foal? Who saw the colt or dedicated it to his own riding? Who directed it to the service of the man of God? Who set it up in the place of the other? Unless perhaps, as at the Creator’s command the mother earth brought forth every kind of animal in the beginning of the world and delivered it to the service of men, so also it brought forth this one by His will and provided it as a help to the husbandry of God’s servants.” Truly there is none other than the elect friend of the Lord, than the precious servant of the Lord, whom He so makes wondrous by signs and exalts by virtues. The husbandmen indeed received the horse as a substitute for the horse, and lifted up their hearts for the help divinely granted to their labours. These are Your mighty works, O Christ, these the marvels of Your Spirit, which Your greatest virtue worked wondrously in Gudwal Your beloved. Your therefore, Your it is that Your elect work through You: to whom You fulfil more fully in Your Father’s kingdom the grace which here You begin to impart — where You Yourself shall be made the everlasting crown, who are the palm of momentary labour. All these things being prudently weighed by the prudent, let him weigh, if he can, with how great glory the man of God deserved both to glorify God in the land of his exile and to be glorified by God. But since it is now time that, the door of this life being closed to him, he should pass from the world and ascend to heavenly things, we also, after his example, close the door upon this little book — through which, as it were, we pass from here with him, if perhaps in the following little work we may be able to follow him to heaven, himself leading.

Book Three #

Chapter Five: The time of his death divinely revealed. His devout departure. The translations #

¹ At last, amid the emblems of miracles sparkling with worked prodigies of signs, whereby he had made the seas famous, hallowed the lands, and exalted the holy Church, he knew by God’s revealing it the most desired time of his blessed consummation — concerning which he was found worthy to be divinely consoled and gladdened by both angelic and apostolic attestation. And first indeed, when on a certain day of the holy forty days’ fast — the victim of our redemption having now been offered on the altar-table — he was humbly visiting the sign of the crucified Lord and cherishing the most devout passion of Christ and His death, already experienced in his own mortification, both in mind and in praise, he was deemed worthy to be sublimely honoured by an embassy sent from heaven for the birthday of death now drawing near to him. For an angel, descended from heaven with joyful face, uttered these words of gladness with cheerful mouth: “O renowned athlete of God, may the joy of the Lord ever increase to you, and may His peace abide with you. Since therefore eternal salvation is won by the palm of perseverance, triumph daily before God in the trophy of your most victorious contest, for the crowns prepared for your labours. Let not the constancy pleasing to God fail in you, because after a little while you are to pass from here by divine vocation and invitation; you shall run to meet your King with the palm of victory.”

² And when that messenger of the heavenly King had stayed long with him, he uttered mellifluous words with a sweetness known to God alone; whom, as he returned to heaven, the man of God followed with the avidity of his mind as with the glad light of his eyes. From the sacred benediction of his presence so great a sweetness of divine nectar was left behind, so great a vapour of heavenly fragrance was scattered, as the odour of frankincense and perfumes breathes not, the odour of balsam and of all the perfumer’s powder. Refreshed by which, that happy soul — that body restored, sanctified by the fast of the whole week, wasted by long maceration of abstinence — sang a psalm to God and devoutly paid the vows of thanksgiving. In which benefit of God he both drank in the multitude of the Lord’s sweetness with all the marrow of his soul, and was deemed worthy to taste beforehand the delight of that immortal feast for which he yearned. But the man of the Lord, having received the spiritual satiety of divine reward for his solemn week’s fast, the more and the more stirred up eternal desires within himself, kindled the more in his soul the pleasures of coming to Christ; the day of his most holy departure he awaited the more ardently, dead to the world that was dead to him — as one invited by the heavenly embassage to the banquet which the most bounteous kindness of God prepares in His Father’s kingdom for those who love Him.

³ A yet loftenier glory, and, so to speak, a certain summit nearest the Godhead, crowns the holy man. For on a certain day, the tenth before his most holy passing, he was intent upon heavenly things before the most holy altar and lifted the face of his mind more ardently into the contemplation of the Holy Spirit. Nor did the most merciful Godhead fail him in welcome recompense, which for him burning so with the ardour of His longing at once sent the highest Prince of the heavenly host, in whom also He graciously showed the desirable presence of His loving-kindness. And the Archangel of the Lord, descending to the table of the Lord’s banquet at which the man of the Lord stood, calmly disclosed the glory of his face in these words: “I, Michael,” said he, “having discharged the embassage of my Lord, make known to you by His command the things that are to come upon you in the near time. See, I foretell the hour of your passing: when the sun’s orbit shall have revolved upon itself ten times from now, you shall gladly go forth from the prison of the flesh and shall escape free from the prison of this world, and shall go forth to meet your King with inestimable joy; who shall receive you with glory, upborne by our aid, and shall enrol you a courtly citizen to Himself in His kingdom.” While he yet spoke, glory was added to glory and grace divinely joined to grace. For Peter, the Key-bearer of God’s kingdom, and Paul also, the Key-bearer of the treasures of God’s knowledge — joining the apostolic to the angelic visitation — appeared gloriously to the same holy man, and gently soothed him wearied with the desire of immortality: who, entering the sacred basilica with a ray of light, joined themselves to the holy Archangel at the Lord’s table. Amid words also of exhortation they testify that they are the apostles of Christ and that they have come for the sake of their consolation; according to the Archangel’s word they foretell the near day of his holy release, and multiply joys concerning the reward of the kingdom to be won. “On that number of days,” they say, “on which Christ, ascending to the Father’s right hand, delayed the descent of His Spirit, to you also He defers the ascent into His kingdom. Anticipate this day therefore, after your accustomed manner, with the solemnities of hymns, the sacrifices of prayers, and the feasts of fastings — for by these you shall obtain the crown of the kingdom.”

⁴ But the man of God, drawn as it were out of himself at these oracles from heaven and caught up as in ecstasy — the messengers of the highest King were received back into heaven. In outstanding testimony also of the angelic and apostolic presence, as from the garden of God’s delights, an insatiable sweetness of fragrance came forth and filled that temple with a dewy odour; refreshed by whose pleasantness, the holy mind, the chaste flesh renewed, offered the incense of prayers more ardently before the sight of God. Blessed are you, dear Gudwal of God, whom the Lord has honoured with a special prerogative of graces. For as the venerable Forerunner relates in the Gospel of the Only-begotten of God, that God gives not the Spirit by measure, so I confidently say of you as of a just man that God’s grace was given you as it were without measure. For that an angel of light descended from the citadel of light, that the highest Archangel followed as though sent after a messenger, that the princes of the Church also appeared to you in glory — who shall reckon these things of mediocre measure? And what is greater than these, the King Himself of angels and apostles is truly believed to have been present in them, and through them to have uttered the devout words of consoling grace. Of all these things, though I cannot worthily speak, if only I might worthily suffice to wonder!

⁵ It came to pass, then, that on the following day the venerable father ordered the whole congregation gather to him; and the sacred company of the brethren being gathered into one, amid the excellences of the doctrines whereby he strengthened the state of their souls — now that the course of his life was accomplished — he moistened the thread of his discourse with tears; and revealing that he had been gladdened concerning this by an angelic and apostolic vision and strengthened by divine consolation, he changed the tears of lamentations into tears of joys — the more so because, the sacred revelations of yesterday being unfolded in order, a joyful discourse was brought forth concerning the Saviour’s promised coming to meet him. But while the brethren on this side exulted in the Lord over so great glory of his, on that they mourned abundantly over his bodily departure, the man of God added: “Weep not, most beloved, but rather rejoice, because He has faithfully promised His servant that His reward is already at hand. Pay the debt of charity to my frailty’s departure, and protect it with your prayers — the departure which the oracle of heavenly presage has declared will come within these ten days.” His disciples obeying his wholesome admonitions, he began suddenly to be loosed with a last weakness and wearied with a most healthful sickness. And when the hour of his most holy passing was at hand, the mournful assembly of the disciples surrounded him, soothing with fitting melodies the soul as it departed — the friend issuing from the chamber of the immortal Bridegroom. He himself, rejoicing in the Lord, poured forth for them words of exhortation, and setting before them examples of edification to be imitated, persuading them of the contempt of the world and the desire of the heavenly kingdom — he strengthened his spirit about to depart with the divine mysteries. And so saying a last farewell, he fell asleep joyfully in the Lord. He fell asleep, I say — because he rested in peace by a precious death.

⁶ Without delay the gate of eternal life is opened to him, the door of the heavenly Jerusalem is unlocked, angels and archangels run to meet him, the messengers of God go forth to meet him, the apostles fall upon his neck and bear him before the sight of the Most High. The Majesty Himself sets crowns upon the deserving victor, and enrols him within the walls of the city a courtly citizen for ever. But who shall be astonished that honour was paid to this servant of God by the concourse of angels and apostles, most of all as he ascended the palace of the heavenly court — whose visitation he so often enjoyed while still living in this pilgrimage of exile? Who shall wonder that the Saviour Himself, amid the princes of His kingdom, assigned him a seat — He whom the highest Archangel promised would come forth to meet him with glory? In proof indeed of his faith, of his holy innocence and guileless simplicity, his most holy soul was seen by the disciples to ascend in the likeness of a dove and, received into Abraham’s bosom, to rest with joy. There he possesses the joy of the angels, cleaves in the embraces of the saints; what here he hoped for in faith, in hope possessed, there he was found worthy to obtain in very deed and truth — where he beholds God face to face; where he contemplates His glory, not in a glass and in a riddle, but as it substantially is; which glory, as no mortal can fully feel, so likewise none will be able to tell in words or letters as it is.

⁷ The venerable bishop, then, passed over on the eighth before the Ides of June, commending his glorious passing to the Church of God by the prerogative of signs. For amid the very funeral rites of the venerable funeral, about the memorable remains of his fragrant clay, God’s wondrous glory shone forth and His great grace appeared — where the concourse of holy angels was present, and the reverence of the supernal citizens was not wanting; from whose glorious and admirable presence a light like that of the bright sun glowed through the whole night, so that the divine light put to flight the blindness of night and the radiance of its splendour scattered the natural darkness. For the whole cell shone like the sun in its strength, which needed not the light of tapers nor the brightness of burning lamps — because in testimony of the eternal light that illumines the soul, that splendour poured its beams about the clay of the precious corpse. O man glorious with so great a heralding of praises! whose spirit, translated among the intelligible things, stands crowned before the divine countenances, whose body radiates with the golden beams of miracles!

⁸ There was present in this holy passing of his, among the rest of the faithful, his own venerable mother, exceeding glad at so great glory of her son; his sisters were present also, sharing with joy in the sacred vigils; who, moved by devout love for the departed, fell to every prayer that they might be held worthy that his sacred remains should be borne to the land of their own birth, to the gladness of their own nation. “Let the devout grace of all you fellow-servants of God,” they said, “favour us, that the departed may at least be received into the seat of his own see, and be pontifically honoured in the mausoleum of the Church of his spouse. For the assembly of the clergy awaits him, the people of God sighs after him; and to receive the body of their longed-for one, they lift heart and hands to heaven.” The disciples long resisting, but by God’s will, as is plainly evident, not prevailing, they at last returned to concord with peace and agreed with the affections of the devout parents. For the abominable discord knows not how to be present in this holy assembly — because he who was present, a son of peace, stirred the spirit of unanimity. Committing therefore on both sides what was pleasing to God, they put the decision of beginning the work in the hand of the Lord. That body with great care they both cover and lay upon a bier, lift upon their shoulders, and set upon a waggon yoked to oxen. As they went on their way, a thronging and a meeting of the people took place, eager to celebrate the funeral rites of so great a bishop with great devotion. The choir of monks came forth, the clergy devoted to God went forward, and the illustrious companies of the Christian folk led the patronage of so great a protector; the holy flock, formed by his examples and doctrines, clung devotedly to the service of the venerable funeral. Surrounding the precious body, therefore, with these hymn-singing companies, they came to the mound of a certain hill — to which, for the memorable prodigy there worked by God’s magnifying of His servant, the inhabitants gave the name Gudwal’s Hill. Here, then, the beasts assigned to the office of the sacred burden suddenly grew rigid like a motionless statue, so that they compelled the whole company of that venerable assembly to halt with them. Six yokes more and twice six bodies of oxen came up, which drew after the former ones an equal stiffness of insensibility.

⁹ Then they, turning within themselves, said one to another: “Since to obey God’s will in all things is great salvation, and to resist it is evident damnation — seeing that by His nod nature seems to be changed in these beasts and thereby to resist our endeavours — why do we struggle in vain against His disposition? Not our will, but the will of the Most High, be done concerning this body of the just man.” Counsel therefore being taken, it was determined by common consent that the same herd of oxen being released from straps and yokes, the service of that most blessed burden should be entrusted to the untamed strength of twin bullocks. “Let them,” they said, “ignorant of the roads, offer their steps freely wherever the pre-eminent grace shall impel them.” And it came to pass that the bullocks, left to their own will, halting their steps from the former journey, directed their course by a straight path toward the island called Plecit, God’s grace being both guide and companion. This, unless I err, is that island in which, as was said in the first part of this little work, the same holy bishop, of a noble cenobite, shone renowned as an anchorite — where amid the other emblems of his miracles he brought water from the dry rock and bridled the approach of the sea in the Lord’s name; where also amid the renowned mysteries of Christ he was deemed worthy to be honoured by the concourse of the supernal citizens. To this place, therefore, the most holy body was brought, and with the great devotion of the faithful it took its tomb — not without the wonder of many, for amid the glorious rites of the holy funeral the emblems of signs were not wanting. For when, in great reverence of the priests, the coffer of the precious treasure was being borne to the place of sepulture, a certain man bereft of sight and dragging the darkness of long blindness — as often happens by chance — touched the bier unknowingly; at whose touch he received sight, began to use the sense of his eyes; and, seeing, a man who saw was a noble matter of divine praise.

¹⁰ Here, therefore, the glorious body of the same renowned bishop rested in peace and honour for the space of many years, and raised up the greatest joys of miracles to believers for the glory of God. At last, the courses of many years being accomplished, by reason of the inroads of barbarians and pagans the British people was scattered far and wide, for the most part, here and there; and their ancestral seats being left, it was diffused through the different climes of the world. So also the brethren of the same monastery, bearing away with them the treasure of the most holy body, crossed the sea that divides the bounds of the English and the Franks and sought the country on this side. And it came to pass that, like a sleeping lion with open eyes, the one now dead worked this through dead bones which once, animated by the spirit of life, he had worked living. For as then, leaving his father’s house, he sought as an exile a seat lying beneath another sun across the sea, so now also, forsaking the coffin of his hidden funeral, he sought not without God’s permission a foreign rest. Worthy indeed it was that he who shone with so great a brilliance of heavenly coruscations should, after the manner of the sun tending from east to west, from south to north, circle the different climes of the world through seas and lands, and so show the Church — not divided by the sea from its unity — united to God by the devout communication of miracles and the taking up of relics. And when the same brethren, seeking the country on this side as has been said, had landed in the bounds of Gaul with the sacred burden they bore — that you, illustrious France, among the other patronages of saints in which you glory, might remain the more proudly ennobled also by the benediction of so great a bishop — traversing it here and there, they scattered everywhere, in place of worms welling from a corpse, precious balsams breathing life and spices of Christ sweetly redolent of healing. At length they came to Montreuil, a town for some time made equal to heaven by the presence and grace of so great a patron; where, because due reverence was not paid him, the heart of the great and renowned marquis Arnulf — destined for the salvation of many — was touched by the grace of the Holy Spirit; whereby he understood that it was disposed in God’s wisdom from eternity that those mortal remains of His saint should no longer be reserved there, but should be revealed by the justification of the men of Blandinium and glorified by their reception.

¹¹ So, summoning the venerable Gerard, abbot excelling in industry of ecclesiastical religion and the monastic order, with the authority of the bishop of that same diocese he enjoined upon him an office of this kind, toward which the great grace of God had stirred his desire. The venerable abbot, paying vows of thanksgiving to God, faithfully undertook the faithful business and discharged it the more faithfully; and receiving the treasure of the precious body with faith and great trembling, together with the riches of the limbs of the renowned Confessor of the Lord Bertulf — incomparable with any price — he bore it to the monastery of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, which is set on the illustrious mount called Blandinium, with a great escort of clerks and monks attending. An innumerable multitude of both sexes assembled, applauding with their hands and blessing God with a voice of exultation — who had sent these twin pearls of two gems from the inestimable treasure of His loving-kindness, and set them as an ornament of His Church with so great honour. Which deed is known to have been done on the second before the Nones of December, when Lothair indeed exercised royal sway in the sceptre of the Franks, but our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ruled the monarchy of angels and of the whole world with the Father and the Holy Spirit. In this place, therefore, blessed Gudwal — glorious before God in heaven, wonderful from God on earth — joined to the renowned priest of Christ Wandregisilus and his companions, to be duly honoured at all times with every manner of praise, bestows the bountiful intercession of his intercessions, and obtains for those who seek with faith and devotion the abundant benefits of Christ’s mercies — Himself bestowing them who in perfect Trinity and Unity lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

A Sermon on the Translation of Saints Gudwal and Bertulf #

Taken from the Blandinium Chronicle, by Francis de la Barre, prior of Auchy.

¹ Whosoever keeps the memory of the saints speaks praise to the Creator of all good things; from which also the psalmist says: “Praise the Lord in His saints.” Keeping festival therefore this present day for the glorification of the blessed Gudwal and Bertulf, whatever is done for their veneration is ascribed to the praise of the Creator; because the victory of the soldier is the glory of the Prince. I would call them indeed excellently disciplined soldiers who rose against the prince of this world with the shield of faith and the sword of the Holy Spirit and fought most victoriously. These two most holy fathers, then, shining like the greatest luminaries and coming from different parts of the world — the one from the bounds of the East, of Pannonia, the other from those of the West, of Britain — met together and chose one seat for their rest. Leaning therefore upon the patronage of so great saints, we lean upon great hope; since their merit is such with God that at their nod He opens and closes the heavens. Keeping festival this present day for their solemn translation, we set ourselves faithfully to narrate, as the Lord shall grant.

² Saint Gudwal, then, a most worthy archpriest of God, the remembrance of whom is most delightful to us, after the manifold labours of this world in which he strove unwearied for the prize of eternal life, gloriously finished the course of his contest in the bounds of Britain, in the region of Cornwall; and was translated to the town which is called Plecit and there buried. Whose life adorned with virtues, whoever wishes to know, let him read the little book which is written most fully of his virtues. But when through the courses of many years the relics themselves were venerated in the same place, the people of all Britain — infested on every side by the Cyclici, who are also pirates, and driven from their own seats — was compelled to seek a land lying beneath another sun. From there it happened that the body of the most holy father, more precious than every pearl, was carried by the brethren of that place into the bounds of Gaul, into the town called Montreuil. In those days also the limbs of the blessed Confessor Bertulf were dug up from the place of burial which he had in the place called by its own right Renty, and translated by a certain Count Erchengar, with a concourse of monks and clerks and a mingled crowd of both sexes, with reverence into the city of Boulogne. These things were done in the time when the glorious king of the Franks Charles — whom Count Herbert afterwards seized by treachery and held bound — was honourably wielding the sceptre.

³ After these things, a certain thief, Electus by name, a Briton by birth, instigated by the evil spirit, attempted a robbery and stole the bodies of Saints Gudwal and Bertulf from the same places, desiring to flee across the sea, that he might sell the patronage of so great saints for gain to Athelstan king of the English. At which time the glorious marquis Arnulf held dominion in the same town of Montreuil or city of Boulogne, where he was then dwelling. On a certain day, then, the evening hymns being finished in the same city of Boulogne, he said to the venerable Wifred, bishop of the same city: “Let it not trouble you, most holy father, to visit the places of the saints, that you may know in what places we have the relics of the saints, and whether the seals are safe.” To which the bishop said: “This is not a business for the present hour.” But the marquis persisting in his purpose by God’s will, the bishop went to visit the places of the saints, and found the body of Saint Bertulf carried off, together with the other relics of the saints. At which, bursting into tears and beating his breast with his fists for the loss of so great a patron, both he himself and all who were present fell to weeping abundantly; and a vigorous search being made, the same Electus the Briton was taken, guilty of the theft — for he had already carried off the body to a village called Oditegem and had there secretly hidden it.

⁴ The venerable Wifred then, pursuing him with a strong band of soldiers by blocking the ways of escape, found him in the same village with the body of Saint Bertulf. And, as the prophet testifies, blood touched blood — it seemed not enough to him to have put forth his hand once to the crime, unless he should add sin to sin. For the body of the most holy father Gudwal, more precious than every noble stone, he had secretly drawn away from the same town of Montreuil and hidden with the body of Saint Bertulf. And it came to pass that while they lamented the loss of this one, their joy was doubled by the finding of both, and they exulted the more abundantly in the Lord. For that venomous serpent and insatiable murderer the devil had worked through the henchman friendly to his wickedness — the thief, I say — that the bodies of the same saints should be parted apart and the memory of them blotted out from men, guarding against the time when, being examined by the divine power, he should be brought to the memory of them, where also he would be compelled to go out from the bodies of those who are possessed. But since this is the dragon whom the Lord formed to be mocked, what he was devising for deceit Christ provided for the glory of His saints — or, so to speak, while they rested in a place less cared for, God provided that by such an occasion their bodies should be translated to another place, where they should be honoured with loftenier reverence and venerated with greater devotion.

⁵ Arnulf therefore, summoning the provosts of the monasteries of Saint Bertin and Saint Omer, ordered the bodies of the saints be carried with a concourse of brethren and people of both sexes into his church on the estate of his own right called Harlebeke, which the priest Theodrad, worthy of God, then governed, and there await his presence. Obeying his command, they arrived there on the third before the Kalends of December. And by the marquis’s command there came to meet them the lord Gerard of blessed memory, abbot of the monastery of Blandinium, that this business might be more honourably and religiously conducted by his industry. On the fourth day at last, the second before the Nones of December, he himself arriving, translated the bodies of Saints Gudwal and Bertulf, together with the relics of Saints Omer and Bertin, into the basilica of the Prince of the Apostles Peter, set in the territory of Ghent, in the place called Blandinium, amid hymns and canticles and the devotion of all jubilation.

Book Four #

Prologue and Chapter Six: Later miracles, worked at Ghent and in the neighbourhood #

¹ Blessed be God, who alone does wonders, who ceases not to make wondrous in the eyes of men His beloved Gudwal, worthy to be praised in every age — not by daily and common miracles, but by an unusual and (to speak truly) rare or never-before-found renown of power; whose most precious odour of sanctity — an odour, I say, as of a full field which the Lord has blessed — now fills not only the whole earth but every sea. In a certain sense you are happy beyond others, holy Church of Blandinium, which keep, guard, and possess within you so great a treasure of the divine majesty, predestined for you before all ages and entrusted to you at the end of the ages. Fair indeed are you become and sweet in your delights: your stature is like to the palm tree, sufficient in the fulness of charity; from which fulness we bring into the midst a miracle of the Lord Jesus, true and worthy to be praised, of which witnesses still survive — not only the sons of this Church, but nearly all the people of the surrounding province.

² In the year of the incarnate Word one thousand and forty-three, on the eighth before the Ides of June, the second feria, the passing of the most blessed Gudwal was being commemorated — as precious among the angels in heaven, so glorious among men on earth. It had seemed good to the brethren that the most precious body of this saint of God should be carried forth, for the humility of the suppliant people, to the mount which by the customary name they call Saint Quentin’s — devoutly, that is, not by presumption; since it was permitted to lay their shoulders beneath so sacred a burden and to draw it as it were a yoke faithfully with the faithful. And when the bier of the most holy man was already being taken down from its place of rest by the priests and ministers appointed for this very work, with deep reverence, while the dutiful multitude of the people awaited the sacred burden — wondrous to tell! the image of the crucified Lord which was exalted in the middle of the church at the altar of Saint John the Baptist — the fixing of the nails giving way with a great crash, and its hands lifted from the cross — turned wholly toward the eastern quarter, and seemed with its body, as in homage to its Gudwal, to lower itself and thrice humbly bow. This appeared not to one, nor to lesser persons, but to many, and of the better sort — the better, I say, whose precious faith, known to God, obtained this, that they should be refreshed by so great and so unusual a miracle of the Lord Jesus. What tears, what joy that day held, how much the devotion of the faithful people profited — though I am silent, the prudent reader may perceive. And lest the sons should doubt the fathers telling them of the glory of this saint of God, the same miracle was repeated, for the salvation not only of those who were present but of all who should come after and believe.

³ At length, after the course of forty-one years, when the feast of the most blessed Gudwal again drew near and the most holy body was again being carried forth after that laudable custom — again the hand of the Lord and the glory of God appeared from His holy place. For as they went out of the church, the same image, the same humility of the crucified God, with hands outstretched bowed itself to its Gudwal as he passed by — as though for the profit of those who stood by it seemed to say: “Because you served the Crucified, because you bore my cross, because you were not ashamed of the cross’s glory — I the Crucified repay you thanks, showing Myself crucified in homage to you by bowing.” Yet this appeared not to all, but, as in the former miracle, to many, and to those whose faith deserved it of God. Who would not be amazed, who would not wonder? We faint at the hearing, we grow dull at the thought; and because we have heard the report of the Lord and considered His works, there is no more spirit left in us. These are Your works, O humble Christ; these are Your inestimable mighty deeds — which though we cannot worthily proclaim with uncircumcised lips, may it be granted us at least to admire with humility and due reverence through the prayers of Your Gudwal.

⁴ It were a small thing if I should recount the discomforts of corrupted air healed, the tempests of the troubled sea stilled, the punishments of the languishing orb of earth repressed — which at the invocation of this heavenly senator so obey even to this day that in his name, faith alone being brought, we have seen very many commanding either the elements or diseases. I will tell what was lately done, which the whole neighbourhood witnesses and does not pass over in silence. You know the priest Stomar, the best witness of blessed Gudwal’s miracles and himself skilled in telling them. A fellow-villager of his was so vexed by the extremity of disease that, by the example of a dire calamity, he sought only death as the remedy of a scarcely breathing life. His eyes were closing in death, his loosened limbs sought only the funeral rites. The priest I named was called to visit him; he came, sat down, gave the customary blessing; on some occasion the discourse of exhortation was led on to the memory of blessed Gudwal. When it had pricked the sick man wholly into tears, the priest, pitying the man, said: “If you believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” He answering, “Yes, Lord” — at once the priest took his right hand and said: “In the name of Gudwal, arise and walk.” Wondrous to tell! As though health flowed from that same mouth at once, the man immediately arose and went out to do his business — that what I have said may be believed as heard from his own mouth.

⁵ What of that which, done not unlike, you also heard with me? A certain widow was lamenting the loss of a dying ox, which alone either poverty or an unjust lord had left her. By chance the same priest I named came by, and learning the cause of her complaint, pitied the poor woman. Then indeed, trusting in powerful faith and bringing near the staff on which he leaned, he said: “The Lord commands you, in His Gudwal.” The beast at once rose sound and, restored to its mistress’s herd, soothed her loss. The sweet benefit of a most delightful miracle fell to the whole village. Both deeds were done in the village of Tronchiennes. But truly it is a small thing that our Gudwal through himself should have shone before the merciful Lord Jesus with frequent and likewise most rare miracles; believe me, many in his name, taking upon them the authority of faith, have done many things. This happy mother Britain knows — mother of this precious scion — who, though God has destined for us anew the bones of so great a soldier, which once mightily warred down the prince of this world, yet it cannot be told with how great a bounty of his merits she is illumined — in that place most of all where, after so many sweated agonies, he put off the garment of the flesh to be refreshed by the most abundant breeze of the Holy Spirit: for there are neither the torches of kings nor any tribunals of dukes, no praetorian cohort or power called prefectorial; Gudwal alone exercises the care of the city and the monarchy of his own country. He is the helper of the orphan and defender of the widow; his name invoked ever discerns concerning every doubtful matter by an evident token how greatly the intercession with almighty God commends the souls of those whose bodies it here protects with imperious authority.

⁶ But to pass over things foreign — lest I seem to be building an argument from things far off — who of those whom either loss of household goods has bound, or the chains of gaolers have fastened, or fear of judgement for a deed done, has not made familiar refuge even now with this patron? I pass over the duels, which among these western peoples are of more frequent use by reason of their inborn levity or rather fierceness; who, placed in the last extremity, no sooner cried upon this advocate than at once they were amazed to find themselves equal or superior to their foes — in whose unlike outcome of battle, though no just judgement can be defended by reason, yet the benefit of divine mercy is most frequently accustomed to be experienced. What of the fact that, for his new miracles, they are accustomed to call him by the customary name of the “new Saint”? For what in him has grown old of ancient piety, he ceases not daily to renew with merciful goodness — so that that might be thought spoken of him: “Because mercy grew up with me, and issued with me from my mother’s womb.” I should reckon myself to sin if I did not mix for you, still thirsting, the cup of this renowned newness with which almighty God has made us drunk — since I see you attentive, and nothing more delightful than to speak of Gudwal. For the enumerating of his deeds, even should the streams of Tullian eloquence run dry, it will yet be sweet to taste some drops from the full abundance — because the memory of the just is in blessing.

⁷ At the yearly round of the ever most desired solemnity of this so great patron being proclaimed, the people had assembled as is usual, either for zeal of devotion or for devotion to seeing some miracle. A woman condemned to long silence, whom we also knew, having often pitied her before, mingled herself with the faithful crowd and obtained by powerful faith a place of prayer beneath the body of the saint of God. The wretched creature lay, and though her tongue failed, by frequent sobbing she provoked the benefit of the Godhead; meanwhile her faith also pleaded for her, and the apostles begging — “Send her away, Lord, for she cries after us” — a miracle was being prepared from God’s treasures, and that it might be made the more desirable, it was being delayed. Night also was beginning, in which the miracle was to shine forth to light; and when the frequent assembly had begun matins, we gave out the antiphon: “Let us rejoice to Christ the King with the angels, who shines wondrous in His Gudwal.” No sooner was “wondrous” sounded than — the most blessed Gudwal all in miracles! — and the bond of the dumb woman’s tongue being broken, he released her wholly into talkative jubilation with us. She stretched forth her hands, prepared all her limbs to the praise of God and of her Gudwal, and with easiest garrulity the talkative woman outdid the singing of the men. Questioned, she answered nothing but praise; and as though the long silence still irked her, she continued giving thanks for the divine medicine. The devotion of the people profited not a little too; and what was worked in the tongue of one, the words of many proclaimed to the fruit of good work.

⁸ To this was added another illustrious miracle, worked on the same day by the merits of the same most holy patron. A woman of the town of Ghent — her name does not occur to me, her person I knew — shut in by a blindness of seven years, resolved to compose this quarrel of her long affliction with the goodness of so great a physician. She added also this, that it had been persuaded her in dreams to demand her former light from this divine propitiatory. In which what else is intimated but the mercy of almighty God, which for this end reproves that it may heal, for this end warns that it may be propitiated? Her guide directing her steps, hope going before, she is admitted to another pool of Siloam — one far more capable of cures. With her whole body she casts herself beneath the bier of her physician; she offers the prayers of supplication, weighs out the gold of faith, demands with clamorous tears that the gates of tears be opened to her. While meanwhile the solemnities of the Mass were being performed — in the place where heavenly things are joined to earthly by invisible mysteries — the water of divine mercy was moved and distilled; and bathing the eyes which He created in her infancy, now nearly an old woman, He gave them light. She were amazed at the pupil coming to life again, was amazed at the lid grown movable; her sight restored, she knew men with her eyes and God with her illumined heart. A known person, a frequent assembly, a renowned miracle made the broad day excellently more joyful.

⁹ There was at hand the accustomed annual return of this saint’s holy deposition, to be solemnized with the common joy of the peoples, the tumults of worldly business being lulled. But since the urgency of trading could not easily be torn away, the anniversary proclamation of so great a feast did not restrain the plebeian crowd, ill accustomed to poverty or greed — which the reproach of the divine wrath did not pass by. For the day of the market-fair pressed upon the Ghenters, which moneyed covetousness changed for them — I say not from celebrated, but — from sacred into mournful; in which, while they gaped after public gains, they rendered to Saint Gudwal less than was fitting of reverence and devotion. And so it came to pass that, to attest the prerogative of so great a bishop, they should feel the rod of the divine scourge to their profit. The day was already at hand when, as is sufficiently approved by the devotion of the faithful, the clay of the most holy body should be conducted with solemnity by the people and borne to the mount of Saint Quentin with renowned harmony and reverent worship. Where when the same priest Stomar with eloquent mouth had ended the word of salvation to the people, he complained that very many had been absent from the holy funeral rites — a thing which seemed unseemly enough — and had sweated over their own traffickings; and finding that the Ghenters gaped after the gains of avarice rather than lent themselves to Gudwal’s spiritual office — as Elisha inflicted the wound of malediction upon the mocking boys, so he signified that vengeance of divine animadversion hung over those who held the saint of God in neglect; adding such words as these: “Since this people has refused to visit the saint of God, beyond doubt the saint will not delay to visit them before the present day closes into evening.” He spoke; and the saying did not deceive the sayer.

¹⁰ For the sun’s circle of that day not yet being fully run, fire went out from the Lord, and gradually growing, preoccupied all that stood before it with a flame-haired enormity. The Ghenters began to rush together in confusion and clamour, and throwing themselves wholly to the quenching, could scarce effect anything at all — for the fire prevailed by the hand of the Lord, against which to strive further was neither of strength nor of constancy. Now therefore, as became known to all by easy conjecture, the conflagration had prevailed there for the saint’s neglect; at last, all human contrivance failing, they all betook themselves with unanimous counsel in flight to him whom they had offended — whose bones, by the prerogative, so to say, of dignity more precious than all treasures, they hastily took up with the shrine and opposed to the raging fire, after the not unequal example of Aaron. You might have saw, though not visibly, the high priest standing before the Holy of Holies for the people, and from the most holy censer of his breast burning the incense of prayers to the most high King; whose offerings the supernal clemency, receiving into the odour of sweetest savour, no longer shut up His mercies in wrath, but, that He might be the more appeased, laid the hand of mercy to it and said to the blazing fire: “Now it suffices; cease.” At once, wondrous to tell — that the thing might declare his prayer heard in the court of the heavenly senate — the whole voracious madness of the flames abated at the sight of so great a barrier, and a thing happened then most worthy of all wonder. For a neighbouring house was being burned in one half, the other half still standing intact; but when the saint’s relic began to adjoin the half-burned part, suddenly — marvellous to tell — the fire so died down in the part it had breathed upon that it claimed for itself no approach to the unharmed part. Nor was that unlike this, in which this saint triumphed in a not dissimilar crisis. For when by the sins of the Ghent townsfolk — who deserved it — their houses were being devastated by fire under the divine judgement, an embassage was entrusted to him for reconciling to God the perishing of these believers; and while the sacred burden of the holy body, taken up on the shoulders of its bearers, was being carried through a certain house which the flame had invaded for the most part, the fire presently failed in itself and yielded at so swift a passing of the saint — and what it had already seized upon, it left suddenly half-consumed, and what it had not yet touched, it presumed not afterwards to touch. But now let us put an end to speaking of things spoken, lest we outrun things to be spoken, grown over-fastidious.

Chapter Seven: Other miracles of the same time #

¹ The rains being withheld from the lands, on a certain season the labour of the husbandmen was imperilled by excessive drought, and hope of manifold crops was taken from the eyes of the beholders by the thinness of the seeds. In which peril, the people’s spirits being cast down, a most wholesome counsel was not wanting: that with all urgency of prayers they should bend Saint Gudwal, the friend of true piety, to condescend to them. A public assembly therefore being proclaimed, the whole age, sex, and order came together at the appointed time, that, the commerce of faith and hope being given, they might be gladdened by the benefit of so great a bishop. Them preceding and following in long array the holy bishop himself accompanies — truly the consul of that supernal court. When at last they had come with the most holy body as far as the neighbouring town called Aalst in the common tongue, it pleased them to halt for a little in the plain lying at its foot and rest in the word of salvation for eager ears. The whole people sat down, one alone standing, who declaimed to the people the triumphal victories of Your soldier and Your, O Christ — presently to be approved by the wondrous token of divine miracles. When therefore he had fixed the countenances of all by the weight of his words, suddenly — wondrous to tell — in the supernal citadel of the heavens, opposite the sacred shrine, a crown of three-coloured beauty shone resplendent; in whose midst appeared the sign of the Cross glittering, which held the eyes and minds of the beholders alike suspended in wonder at itself; and while they were astonished at this vision, a torch as it were of fire falling from heaven brought yet more joy and amazement.

² Meanwhile the count of miracles increased upon miracles — for the almighty Lord showed Himself liberal in commending the grace of His friend, who made His people drunk with the cup of so great sweetness amid the greatest glory of miracles. For when the sacred body was lifted from that same place to be borne into the church by the faithful service of its bearers, you might have seen that triumphal sign carried by indescribable virtue through what seemed an extended space equally as far as the church. And while the sacred bearing of the body, the people following, illuminated the burial-ground, it was wondrous to see how the heavenly circle was borne inseparably about them even to the doors of the church. When at last the sacred limbs were received within the church, heaven attending, He restored to two sick persons the state of lost soundness. How delightful, O good Jesus! how devout, how renowned it then was to see Your victorious soldier, crowned with the ethereal diadem, borne into Your church amid so great applause of the assembled people! He gleams with the divine lamp, he triumphs in the cross, he resounds in the crown, he heals by power. But let us say a few things of his justice, that we may add somewhat of his mercy in due course.

³ An estate of hereditary possession adjoining Saint Peter’s land near at hand — over which a certain invader had brooded at that time like an adulterous partridge. Admonished to give his right hand to justice, he descended into contumacy; excommunicated, he fortified the fault of contumacy with defence. He — lest he should seem to be burned by an evil conscience — came to the saint’s place with feigned innocence; but repulsed by the brethren, he withdrew obstinate. A certain terrible threatening was even uttered against him by his own people, unless he should speedily repent of the undertaking. But he, for whom it was easier to defend his fault than to look into it, heaped fault upon fault while he concealed to take counsel for his salvation. He made for his own, to be stricken with punishment because he ruled unjustly over another’s property. When, in the midst of the way, he was rebuked from heaven and stripped of the use of both sight and hearing. He shows what he feels, he takes counsel what to do. Brought back by his own people he is set before the saint; willing or unwilling he confesses the crime; and restoring what was not his to its own, absolved from the punishment he is given back the better. So here, good Peter, you watched prudently enough for your security, while you set Gudwal your fellow to the avenging of your own injuries — who struck your enemy with punishment as you looked on, and gently absolved him as you pitied.

⁴ A certain man had offered a sheep to Saint Gudwal’s uses for the keeping of his flocks, certain that no pestiferous sickness could prevail in the herds which he had assigned to the guardianship of so great a shepherd against impending evils. In proof of which — the beast being received and the keeping undertaken — while the flock stood in the pastures, the wolf, a beast ever hostile to sheep, rushed in with savage onset; and discerning nothing — as though the saint had nothing in common with it — chose out his lamb from them all, and dividing it ill under his own lot, devoured it wholly; and returning to the forest glades, exulted in the captured prey — who would not even consent to share the spoils of the skin with the saint. The saint yielded inwardly, that he might afterwards the more delightfully and powerfully snatch away the stolen sheep. But the shepherd — or, as I rather conjecture, the hireling — at once became the bearer of the sacred loss to the steward; the steward, when he heard it, said: “What is it to me to watch over Gudwal’s affairs? Let him guard his own beast, for whose keeping sanctity and merit readily aspires.” He spoke; and quicker than the word, the saint resisting, flight was forbidden to the wolf: and brought back like a captive it returns with the captive beast, and lays down the restored prey unharmed — not indeed without like interest, and of another ewe for evil omen: for at once seeking the forest with bloody teeth, it appeased the tyranny of its famished belly [with the other]. Now the body of the saint had then taken its stand near at hand with an innumerable multitude of the people, before whose gaze the shepherd presented the beast lately set free; and it was sweet enough to those who were amazed that the saint’s patronage was not wanting even in so small and cheap a matter — who, though he is angry with some of the more negligent with a father’s severity, yet condemns not utterly, but raises up the corrected with a mother’s pity, as will be plain from the following example.

⁵ A certain woman of the neighbouring colony of Ghent, well known to us by name and face, while on the vigil which precedes the solemnities of this saint’s sacred deposition she was untimely plucking green herbs in a garden, was suddenly so suffused with a welling of blood that the innate gore had infected all things as in place of the natural sap. But she, astonished at the strangeness of the thing, shuddered greatly at the event; and smitten from heaven, her hand grew wholly stiff in contradiction of the knife she had held — the joints being bent back into themselves even to the nail, the handle of the iron clung to her hand with such tenacity that the hand could sooner be sundered bone-deep from the arm than the fingers from the handle. The thing could not be hid for its greatness, nor ought it; and the report being scattered on every side, the mournful deed became known to nearly all. The guilty woman — a spectacle wretched to beholders — was presented, with the very torment by which she was racked, to the memory of Saint Gudwal; and as though her soul had clung to the pavement with Davidic humility, she lay grovelling on the ground before the saint of God, and indulging in prayers confessed the guilt of her fault with a shower of tears; and though she paid the penalty, yet she was borne on by hope to pardon. The winning back of health was meanwhile concealed, and by the delaying of the miracle the penal vengeance on the guilty woman was drawn out for the correction of many. Meanwhile some tried whether they might by any means, the iron being torn away, restore the hand to its former vigour — but in vain: for, as was said, hand and handle were so mutually glued together that the one could not be sundered from the other by human aid. Worn out therefore with immense and ceaseless pains through the whole night — when it seemed that the Lord on high had exacted enough of punishment, He looked upon her for His saint’s sake; and hearing the groaning of his prisoner, broke her bonds that she might offer Him a sacrifice of praise: the finger-joints of the ball-like hand were stretched out and restored to their former use and state entire; the iron fell off, the woman rose unharmed by God’s grace; the people resounds praises, the woman gives more praises. Yet perhaps the reader’s faith will fail, and the writer’s time and day, before the matter of writing true things of our Gudwal runs out. Let us set yet one thing briefly in the midst — a most useful lesson of circumspection against incautious rashness. For terrified by this example, let not uninitiated boldness offer itself to the handling and bearing of the most holy relics — those whom a branded conscience scorches. Surely Uzzah the Levite, while he irreverently upheld the Ark — tilted but a little by the wanton irrationality of the oxen — a thing not of his office, was smitten by the Lord; whose easy death — what else does it intimate to us but that they suffer the more perilously in soul who touch holy things with a polluted conscience? Which the wondrous God in His saint Gudwal has deigned to prove by an evident token.

⁶ When therefore the same saint of God was being carried abroad on his feast, a certain youth named Sewal, joining himself to the number of the body’s bearers — while he had laid himself beneath the sacred burden — fell at once, and clinging to the pavement was stripped of the grace of sight and gladness; and he who would unworthily bear up the saint fell wholesomely as the saint cast him down — because it became known to himself and to the rest what in him had displeased the divine gaze. A wonder to beholders, a wholesome counsel is at last offered — by whose assistance he was set before the saint’s shrine; by their prayer he breathes again for the better, and the faculty of speech being granted he is questioned concerning his conscience. He confesses the crime and recalls that he had profaned God’s temple in Friesland with a band of ruffians and there committed sacrilege; yet he pledges with the whole obligation of his mind that he would for the rest be in all things of a more correct life, if by the saint’s indulgence he might be freed from the blindness inflicted. And when the evening synaxis was accomplished, God magnifying His saint, he — stained with much blood from mouth and nostrils — received his sight; he gave thanks to God, returned home; and what he had seized by sacrilege, as he had promised, he presented, returning anew before Saint Gudwal. Being therefore free for the sake of so great a miracle’s monument, he bound himself under the patronage of Saint Peter and Saint Gudwal by an annual tribute in the monastery of Blandinium.

⁷ There is a village named Axel, nearly four miles distant from the colony of Ghent; in it a woman, Ouda by name, great with child by the marital union, was seized by a contraction — which physicians call spasm — so sudden that, her arms with her hands cleaving to her breast on either side and her fingers driven nail-deep into the middle of the palm, she offered a spectacle most worthy of compassion to those who saw. By what judgement of God this happened — whether for the purging of fault or for the proclaiming of His glory — I know not; God knows. It was pitiful, however, to see misery in the wretched woman: when, deprived of the service of her hands, she was fed like an infant by another’s aid; to whom was added, to the heap of calamity and misery, that she grieved for her unborn child more than for herself. For she said: “Alas, wretched me, racked with a double anguish! I want myself, I cannot help myself; and who shall help the child about to be born, who shall succour the babe brought forth? All the aids of handmaids and kinswomen are wanting; all the means of hiring attendants are wanting. Who shall receive the little one born? who shall compose its tender limbs? who shall bind it in swaddling-bands? who shall soothe it babbling in the cradle with ditties? who shall bring it to the breast to suck? who shall take it off when suckled? who shall supply the other needful things? Woe to the wretched mother when she shall see the misery of her child!” By the torment of this evil she was tortured for a course of about forty days. But when it pleased the counsel of the highest Majesty to absolve His guilty one from this affliction and to amplify the name of His holiness through blessed Gudwal among the people, it came into the woman’s mind to visit, with her husband for company, a certain man of approved fame then dwelling in the church of Saint Peter — not indeed for the hope or cause of any future good event, but for the sake of conversing with the same man. Coming there, while she was saw by those who flocked together in so great a calamity, not without great commiseration, a certain one of those who stood by counselled her to seek the intercession of Saint Gudwal, certain of succour if she should humble herself to him with faithful devotion of mind. She delayed not: she entered the church, she prostrated herself before the saint with all devotion of mind. Scarce had she uttered these three words of prayer — “Saint Gudwal, help me!” — when the heavenly grace was suddenly present, which by the merits of its soldier restored health to its suppliant entire. The joints of her hands were raised from the midst of the palm with a crack, her arms restored to their former use. If you doubt of the miracle, the whole multitude then standing round is witness — whose hearts the health of this woman, lost but recovered, stirred to render thanks to God.

⁸ What we saw with our own eyes done in a woman through him, let us bring into the light for the praise of God. It was the custom of this our church in former days that the shrine of Saint Gudwal should be carried to Aalst, and this carriage repeated in the returning years; and — lest the labour or vexation of this carriage should be without profit — that God should be glorified there in this saint and the saint in God by a frequency of miracles. When therefore the abbot Gislebert of reverend memory presided there, God’s instinct — by which he was also frequently illumined — prompting him, the same custom, not indeed long to endure nor restored by one long to live, began to be repeated, and at the same time the miracles familiar and accustomed to this custom began to be renewed. On the first occasion therefore of this custom’s renewal under the father Gislebert — when the long-open working of his signs had been lulled as though he slept — we saw with many still living what we now add. A certain woman, Berta by name, in the neighbourhood, cherished by the munificent beneficence of a certain good and devout mother well known to us with a view to eternal recompense, had been bound for many years by a calamity of this kind: her heels clung to her buttocks as though naturally compacted in perpetual insolubility; her arms also hung over her breast in like bond. The miserable and pitiable woman lay without the office of going or doing, like a trunk and useless log, dead to every function of human utility, dragging out a dead life — indeed, one bitterer than death. She, brought to Aalst, is offered to the heavenly physician to be healed; where she was laid for some time beneath the saint’s shrine. Unfamiliar increases of accustomed adversity are for the most part the beginnings of an ensuing unusual prosperity — that by increased infirmity the power of the miracle might shine forth. Her pain, now nearing its end, began to grow heavier than usual; so that the priest was sent for to administer to the scarcely breathing woman the things which the last hour demands. Meanwhile the branches of that trunk, twisted and bent, were being extended into the straightness of natural use; and while it laboured upon the unusual erection of the body’s columns, not yet well made firm, she slid back to the ground; but the physician not failing, the remedy advancing, she strove again upward, hands and arms loosed, and holding the stays of the shrine which they call trams, crept up little by little, until with the whole mass of her body erect she laid both hands beneath the saint’s shrine. Then joy — indeed, a sort of drunkenness — arose among the people.