¹ Now King Clitaucus, while he was in his kingdom in South Wales maintaining peace and the rigour of justice, was made a martyr in virtue and in mind, and was adorned with the crown of heavenly glory together with the palm of chastity of the flesh. For a certain virgin, the daughter of a powerful man, fell in love with him, telling those who asked her that she would marry no one but the illustrious Clitaucus, beloved by all.

² Now when the maiden’s answer was heard, one of the king’s companions, swollen with an evil spirit and kindled with the heat of lust — taking his foundation from the dregs of recklessness and the gall of wantonness — on a certain day wickedly slaughtered with a sword the innocent King Clitaucus while he was hunting; he was waiting beside a river for the crowd of huntsmen, uttering words of sacred eloquence and of prayer with the utmost devotion.

³ And when he was dead, his retainers and noble kinsfolk, yoking oxen and carrying the body away, attempted to cross the ford of the river beside which he had been killed. But when the yokes of the oxen broke and the oxen stood still, they could not move from that place on account of the excessive heaviness of the body. And when they had tried in many ways to move the holy body from that spot and achieved nothing at all, they left the martyr’s body in the place divinely prepared for it. And on the following night after his burial, a column of fire was seen rising wondrously from the tomb to heaven, where a church was built in honour of St Clitaucus.

⁴ A certain powerful man, coming with his wife on the Lord’s day to hear the divine service in the church of St Clitaucus, lay with his wife on the bank of the river, not far from the church; and the sin having been committed, he could not be separated from her — indeed he remained inseparably joined to his wife. And crying out to his companions in a loud voice, he said: “Go to the tomb of the martyr Clitaucus, and promise him that this meadow, which I took away by force and unjustly, shall be restored to him, and humbly intercede for me, I beg you.” Which being done, he was at once freed from the horrible bond.

⁵ Two men, long angry and hostile to each other, said to one another: “Let us be reconciled and go to the church of St Clitaucus, and let us swear together upon his altar, so that, the gall of envy forgotten and a covenant joined, we may ever hereafter be faithful friends and brothers in love.” And the covenant being confirmed, one of them on the way back — peace broken and faith violated — killed the other by treachery. And having committed the murder, he at once pierced himself with his own lance, and so miserably ended his life.

A Further Story #

¹ [Added in the Tiberius manuscript.] Now the devil tempted a certain brother by the beauty of a certain woman, and afflicted him greatly. And when he heard from someone that she had died, at night he went up to the place where she was buried, dug up the spot, and smeared some of the gore of the putrid corpse on his garment. And returning to his cell, when it stank exceedingly, he said, rebuking his own thought: “See the desire which you were seeking; have it, take your fill of it”; and so he chastised himself in that stench until the filthiest assault ceased from him.