¹ The holy virgin Iuthwara, sprung from a noble family, imbued from her earliest age with the grace of the Holy Spirit, strove unceasingly to serve God in good works. Living innocently in her father’s house after her mother’s death, she showed herself amiable to all, and with the passage of age added virtues to virtues; upon the pilgrims who frequented her father’s house she bestowed her service with all cheerfulness of devotion. She had a brother named Bana, and three sisters: St Eadwara, St Wilgitha, and St Sidewella, devoted with the same integrity of mind and given to works of virtue.

² Now when Iuthwara’s mother died, her father married another wife, of sufficiently noble birth, but having a mind infected with the gall of bitterness at the devil’s prompting; and she began to weave deceits in her venomous heart, to devise plots of treachery, and to prepare snares. For Bana was a man strong of body and a constant doer of every wickedness. The virgin Iuthwara, on the feasts of the saints, taking companions with her, took care to be present at the divine office, passing the nights in vigil; and she applied herself besides to fastings, prayers and almsgivings, that given to such services she might overcome and subdue the allurements of the flesh.

³ When at last her father died, the virgin’s pallor grew daily from her frequent vigils, fastings and cares. So the malign instigator of all evil stirred up the virgin’s stepmother, inspiring her with a poison by which to destroy her. She, suppressing the guile of her wickedness and feigning a mother’s affection, approached the holy virgin with sweet words, inquiring the causes of her pallor. Iuthwara, suspecting no evil, lamented the loss of her father’s death, and declared that the pains of her breast, because she loved not much the honours of this world, were the causes of her pallor. Hearing this, the stepmother falsely said she would seek a remedy of medicine; taking two little pieces of fresh cheese still dripping with whey, she persuaded her to put them upon each breast as she went to church, that by such medicine she might be freed from all languor of the breast.

⁴ When the simple virgin had been taken in by her advice, the stepmother went to her stepson Bana, and lyingly told him that his sister was pregnant with a conceived child; and to prove it, she persuaded him to pull the girl’s undergarment from her breast, saying it would be moist with milk flowing from her breasts. He, deceived by youthful rashness, seizing his sister as she came out of the church before all the people, demanded of whom she was pregnant. And when she stood astonished and denied that she was pregnant, he pulled out her undergarment as he had been taught. And finding it moist, driven by a headlong fit of fury he drew his sword and cut off the innocent virgin’s head.

⁵ And without delay the holy virgin, taking her own head in her hands, lifted it from the ground and, to the amazement of all, carried it with unstumbling steps into the church from which she had come out. And to attest the holiness of his beloved martyr, gracious God caused a spring continually to burst from the earth where the innocently cut-off head had fallen; and over the spring a certain tree began to grow up by divine power.

⁶ When many years had passed after these things, it happened that this tree, blown down by an excessive blast of wind, fell upon the neighbouring house and denied all men the means of entering by the denseness of its branches. And when the master of the house strove to strip it of its branches, the tree was at once raised upright by divine power and carried the young man up with it; and he, clinging to the branch he had begun to cut, called the neighbours to his aid with cries. And they, running up at once and giving thanks to God, declared that this had come about by the merits of St Iuthwara.

⁷ When a certain woman had borne a son weak in all his body, admonished in a vision she went to the holy virgin’s tomb, and joyfully received her son restored to health. And a certain lame knight supported on two crutches devoutly approached the holy virgin’s tomb: and with his steps repaired, he returned to his own in health, giving thanks to God.

A Further Story #

¹ [Added in the Tiberius manuscript.] A most holy man named Equicius, when in his youth, wearied by a sharp struggle of the flesh, he sought a remedy from God by continual prayers, saw himself on a certain night made a eunuch by an angel standing by, and all motion cut away from his genital members. And from that time he was so free from temptation as if he had no sex in his body. On a certain day a nun, entering a garden and seeing a lettuce, desired it, and forgetting to bless it with the sign of the cross, bit it greedily, and being seized by the devil, fell down straightway. For as soon as Father Equicius entered the monastery gate, the devil cried out from her mouth, saying: “What did I do? I was sitting upon the lettuce: she came and bit me.” To whom with grave indignation the man of God commanded that he should depart and have no more place in the handmaid of God. And so it was done.