Modern British English translation. The source begins part-way through the editor’s preface.

The editor’s preface (B. Krusch — the surviving portion, rendered in substance) #

…Whether [the monastery] was truly held by gift of King Dagobert cannot be judged, the charter being lost. Both monasteries enjoyed royal immunity and protection granted by Charlemagne, who came to the river Scheldt in 811 to prepare the fleet and inspect the ships at the place called Ghent. Both were committed to the government of the lay abbot Einhard, perhaps by the liberality of Louis the Pious, who at his petition confirmed the privileges of both — Blandinium’s in 815, St Bavo’s in 819. The latter had been consumed by fire in 813 and the other also lay desolate, so that the new abbot found no little to restore. Both were occupied by clerks, not monks: King Charles renewed the privileges of the “canons” of St Bavo in 864, and under Abbot Einhard the Blandinian clerks were twenty-four, whose names — with the priest-sacristan, the priest-dean, six other priests, two deacons, two subdeacons and four clerks — subscribed his praestarial charter of 829. The man, famous for his literary studies and perhaps foremost among the emperor’s learned companions — who so far excelled most of his contemporaries in elegance of speech that their barbarism is almost obliterated for posterity — drew no small stipends from the monasteries heaped on him by imperial grace, and took great diligence in collecting them; the tribute-men established at St Bavo’s and Blandinium were still better instructed in this than we are. Before him the abbot and brethren of Blandinium had enjoyed the monastery’s goods in common, the brethren receiving their stipends from him — from which they often suffered want. Being a good steward, impatient of that disorder, he so divided the household goods that he left the brethren a fixed portion to dispose at their own judgement, and split the alms offered to the monastery in two. With the table separated, the brethren could no longer be defrauded of daily food, and the abbot likewise held fixed what remained to him, suffering no further diminution. Einhard, though he could not reside in all his monasteries, sometimes lived at St Bavo’s — from which at the brethren’s request he sent the relics of his martyrs Marcellinus and Peter in 828. Being bidden to follow the empress Judith to Compiègne, he fell ill a little later and asked — and obtained — leave to be carried by ship to Ghent and there to await recovery at his saint’s side. At his death in 840 cloudy times rose over St Bavo’s, which the Northmen’s raids reduced to ashes in 851.

[On the saint’s feast (1 October) the martyrologies agree; Usuard reads “In the port of Ghent, of St Bavo the confessor”. The biographer recounts Bavo’s conversion by Amandus, his enclosure in a cell at the monastery, his announcing his death three years after conversion, dying 1 October.]

The old Life was written at the command of a certain abbot of St Bavo’s at Ghent, as may be gathered from the prologue; and Mabillon and the authors of the Histoire littéraire judged the author nearly contemporary though not an actual contemporary — Baillet assigning it to the eighth century. The biographer so suppressed the monastery founded in the castle itself — St Bavo’s as opposed to Blandinium — that he even adjudged Abbot Florbert to the Bavonians, though it is fairly certain he presided over the other house; he seems chiefly to have had in view the saint’s cell, which stood by the Bavonian choir and was still shown in John of Thilrode’s day. But what he narrates of that monastery’s origin — that it was of clerks from Amandus’s times and that Florbert was instituted abbot of the clerks, from which he attributes to Amandus himself the honour of the clerical state — cannot have been dictated by an early author. For as it is certain canons resided in that monastery in the ninth century, it is no less certain that monasteries of clerks were unheard-of in Gaul through the seventh, and that the institutes of canons did not pass from the greater churches into monasteries before Chrodegang published his rule. The saint himself — whom the biographer makes first a fellow of the clerks’ monastery, then a recluse in a cell — is called a priest by Alcuin and a bishop by Hrabanus; from which it may be conjectured that the Life we have was available to neither. The author cited Greek and Latin writers with such abundance — although somewhat confusedly — that the Merovingian age is out of the question; and the style, somewhat laboured and not everywhere easy, is that of a man so trained in letters as would hardly have been found in Gaul before the later ninth century. He heaped up passages of sacred Scripture to stretch the text. His account of Amandus’s stay in the castle of Ghent and the temples destroyed he took, keeping some words, from the old Life of Amandus. The patron’s end he described — as the learned W. Levison noted — in the same words Sulpicius used of Martin, whose letters he employed; and the famous passage from which Mabillon deduced his contemporaneity he copied word for word from Gregory’s Dialogues. The monk of that same house who undertook to write the patron’s miracles in three books, beginning from the origin, both cited and pillaged the book of Bavo’s deeds of the late tenth or early eleventh century; and Abbot Othelbold of St Bavo’s (1019–1024) cited it in his letter to Countess Otgiva — in which, enumerating the saints whose bodies were contained there, he scattered new fables about the saint: that he had been count of the Hasbanian country and cousin of Gertrude.

Clerks dwelling in monasteries through the Middle Ages always ended the same way — expelled for living too loosely, with monks given as their successors; and the later writers of St Bavo likewise supposed that after St Peter’s church at Ghent was dedicated, clerks were instituted, Bavo was given the clerical tonsure, and two years later — the clerks removed — a company of monks was gathered by Amandus with Florbert set over them as abbot. The saint’s death was assigned to 629–631 by medieval annals — a rash calculation, since Gertrude the virgin, to whom his spirit appeared according to the biographer, was born only in 626, as J. Perier rightly objected.

All that survives written of Bavo sprang from the rivalries of the two monasteries, St Bavo’s and Blandinium, and carries grave suspicion — both parties ever using the same deceit, either suppressing the other monastery in silence or dating it later than their own foundation by Amandus. Thus the patron’s old biographer mentions only the clerks’ coenobium built in the castle of Ghent itself — that is, St Bavo’s — claiming Abbot Florbert for his own. And when the Blandinians also wished to have been in the same castle, and Abbot Adalwin (986–995) had testified to it in express words in letters to a penitent, Otvinus, abbot of St Peter’s monastery at Ghent, complaining of the old discord renewed, answered that he knew no other castle of Ghent save that on the Scheldt where the Lys joins it — Blandinium’s nature being altogether different. In this contest documents were adulterated or forged in such abundance that it would be long to enumerate them: it suffices to refer the curious reader to O. Holder-Egger’s spicy disquisition, who chastised with his shafts the frauds committed in both monasteries. This one thing I will not pass over: that the Blandinians at last progressed so far in their calumnies as to feign that their adversaries’ patron, nobly born — whom they had diligently promoted to the dignity of count of Hasbania — had been converted by Amandus from a most impious robber, “to be tormented with most foul revilers in fire and brimstone for ever” [as the interpolated Blandinian annals have it].

After the vill of Wintershoven in the Hasbanian country was restored to St Bavo’s monastery by the emperor Otto II in 977, the monks brought home in 980 the bones of that place’s patron, Landoald by name, and his companions. In that interval a domestic poet described Bavo’s deeds in heroic verse — “Fertur apud priscos mos hic viguisse poetas” — conscious of his own rusticity: “Cuius scribendam nunc audeo sumere Vitam / Carmine versifico, sed rusticitate repleto”. This metrical Life of Bavo saw the light before Landoald’s translation, who then still rested in the grave at Wintershoven — “Cuius membra loco pausant feliciter illo, / Qui Curtis hiemis prisco stat nomine dictus”. The poet joined the new saint to the patron’s story by making the other’s sister Bavo’s mother. He first calls the monastery’s inmates “clerks”, then makes them monks under Abbot Florbert.

Of the antiquity of the castle of Ghent, and of the saint’s origin and name, the author of the metrical work treated — a monk of St Bavo’s, perhaps the same who wrote the Miracles. He first knew the names of the parents: Eliolf the father and Adaltrud the mother.

Almost everything later added to the legend was comprehended by him who last reworked the old Life at the Ghent brethren’s command — Theoderic, abbot of St Trudo (1099–1107), while dwelling among them as a monk expelled by domestic discords. He too excused his ignorance of grammar, refusing to require of himself an argumentative loquacity — deeming himself bound to describe a soldier’s deeds not by Donatus’s rules and Aristotelian arguments. Wishing to know much more than his predecessors, he determined the saint’s nativity by the times of pope, emperor and king of the Franks — which agree ill among themselves — and narrated much of the places where he lived before returning to his monastery. Then he would have monks succeed the clerks there under Abbot Florbert, and repeated other things afterwards excogitated — the parents’ names, and the companions Landoald with Amantius. The antiquity of the castle he drew not only from fabulous tradition but cited surer proofs, following our own antiquaries’ footsteps — things dug from the fields: “We,” he says, “rightly gather the place’s antiquity from the many proofs we have seen found there — baked bricks of walls and vessels; moreover — which may seem wonderful to the reader — iron shoes of various sex and age and many such things, which easily compel our assent to the antiquity.” The wretched condition of churches and monks, by which he himself had been afflicted, he lamented at the end.

[Manuscripts enumerated: Ghent University 308 (splendid 11th-c. codex from St Bavo’s, containing the old Life, Otvinus’s letter, the Miracles, the metrical Life and a hymn); Brussels 7460 (Valcelle, Bollandist P 159); Cologne 163 (St James of Liège); Valenciennes 513; Paris 5327 (mutilated); Paris 5270; Brussels 9636-7 (St Laurence near Liège). Codex families 1–2 contain also the Miracles; the third class lacks them and the genuine prologue. Editions: Mabillon (1669), the Bollandists Oct. I (1765 — also printing the metrical Life and Theoderic’s book), Ghesquière’s Acta sanctorum Belgii (1784); an abridged text in a Namur codex.] — B. Krusch.

One. Here Begins the Prologue to the Life of St Bavo, Confessor of Christ #

A mean and lowly man you seem to all peoples to ask, and me unlearned you seek to press — a man through Scythian nations and Parthian lands. For we read that Athens was the mother of all liberal arts and humane doctrines, where of old the knowledge of the Latin tongue flourished under Pisistratus the founder, and from which almost all our arts were poured forth. Neither Hesperia nor Rome nor Ausonia, I say, held me, nor begot or nursed me, nor did Tityrus teach me, nor was I propped by the arguments of Aristotle, Varro, Democritus, Plato, Demosthenes and the other doctors: I am poor in wit and dry in the river of words — a very dull man, I confess. The weight of my dulness presses me and rolls me to the depths, since, void of learning, I dare to write these things as best I can with a feeble pen; yet may the words of the excellent teacher, the priest Jerome, be our example, whereby we may break the snares of detractors. I confess I rejoice, holy father, because you have suffered not my sluggish mind to persist, nor to exult with malicious heart, nor to vex itself with malevolent inquiries; but have compelled me, so far as my unskilled tongue avails, to imitate the footsteps of all the most eloquent men. To you, father, whatever my skill shall have conceived or been able to find I will take care to lay open. Think not that my sloth is puffed up hereby: truly there is no calamity of self-exaltation in the bowels of my tepidity, but humility lies utterly prostrate — since the loftiness of learning remains not in us. Your holiness is joined to me in undivided affection and charity. Why say I so much of your opportuneness? Therefore concerning the man of God Allowin — namely St Bavo — what you have judged to be asked, we desire, as we are able, to fulfil your will. May the Lord of His servants grant me — last of them — ever to rejoice in your conversation, and with the flock committed to you and with St Bavo, who is called by the other name Allowin, to merit the kingdom of heaven.

Here Begins the Life of St Bavo, Confessor of Christ #

¹ The promise of good children is accustomed to shine not so much by dignity of birth as by manners — the Lord approving, who said: “Set the little children to come to Me”; and Wisdom saying: “Forsake childishness and live, and walk in the ways of prudence.” If then a child’s works are clean and right, his bent can be understood, as one says: “How will you find him in old age whom you knew not in youth?” And again: “Receive instruction and you shall find wisdom.” For all things are not expedient for all men. None can receive anything unless it be given him from heaven. For all have sinned and lack the glory of God. And it is not of him that wils nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy. Blessed are they whose God is their hope, and whose desires He deigns to enflame and strengthen to perfection — since what is of God cannot be dissolved, as He Himself says: “You are My friends if you do what I command you.” For he who cleaves to a holy man receives by assiduity examples of his work whereby to be kindled to love of the truth. It is very praiseworthy to be good among the good, but far more praiseworthy to be good among the evil. For holy Church is wide in the carnal, narrow in the spiritual; and therefore not only the manners but also the company of the evil are to be fled. For if you are companion in the conversation of the good, you shall also be sharer in their virtues. I will not stretch out what I desire to narrate of the man of God to tedious length — for a city set on a hill cannot be hid, nor is a lamp lit for all save to shine in the house.

² Allowin, then — the name he received in holy baptism, whom the vulgar call Bavo — of noble stock, born of famous parents in the duchy of Hasbania, was joined in marriage to a wife, namely the daughter of Count Adilio, of whom he begot Agletrud — offspring worthy of God, a virgin of Christ, upon whose first year’s rattles a voice sent to the highest throne echoed: “Believe,” it said, “you creature; by the word of God alone shall you also beget parents of a greater stock — He who made both man.” For in the time of his youth the blessed Bavo exercised the will of the world in perverse deeds. He was constant in base things and kindled to obscene bendings of the flanks; but, Christ aiding, this his continual vice was quickly turned to goodness. From that time also he despised not the judgements of the law but avoided the matter of all crimes; he harmed not his kinsfolk but stretched out his hand more widely to the poor; he refused not the faith of friendships but sought it; nor did he cultivate fortune so much as he imitated the virtues. With mercy he lifted up the oppressed, unceasingly mindful that in all worship of piety God was propitious to him — a sinner — in this: that he strove to lift up all the unjustly oppressed by Him of whom the prophet says: “When the just man falls he shall not be bruised, for the Lord puts His hand under him.”

³ At the same time also his wife died — namely the daughter of Count Adilio, of whom he begot Agletrud, as was said before. After she departed from this light, he would not take another wife; but, the Lord’s mercy inspiring, he sought Amandus the most holy pontiff for the way of conversion. Begging pardon with tears, he prostrated himself at the blessed pontiff’s feet, confessing his misdeeds with compunction; and spoke with him of his contrary passions, meaning to do penance for his sins greatest and least. Then the man of the Lord, Amandus, bearing the care of souls which he hastened to lead with him to the heavenly kingdom, brought forth to him the words of the scriptures whereby he might be won for the Lord, saying thus: “Vices are prudently to be taken away, hidden things subtly searched out, things openly known sometimes gently reproved and sometimes vehemently rebuked. I make known to you the words of the Lord whereby you may comprehend eternal life. The Lord said: ‘Every one therefore that shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven.’ And elsewhere: ‘If therefore you offer your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has anything against you, leave there your gift before the altar and go first to be reconciled to your brother, and then coming you shall offer your gift.’ Again: ‘Amen I say to you, that you shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice; you shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.’ Again He says: ‘All things whatever you shall ask in prayer believing, you shall receive.’ And again: ‘Watch you therefore, praying at all times, that you may be counted worthy to flee all these things that shall come to pass and to stand before the Son of man.’ ‘Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ And again: ‘Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice, for they shall be filled.’ And: ‘Everyone that has left houses or lands, father or mother, brethren or sisters, sons or daughters for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold and shall possess life everlasting.’ And again: ‘Fear not them that kill the body but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear Him that can destroy both soul and body in hell.’ ‘Seek you therefore first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be added to you.’ ‘They that are whole need not the physician, but they that are ill.’ ‘I came not to call the just but sinners to repentance.’ ‘Sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come, follow Me.’”

⁴ Hearing therefore these divine words which the holy Amandus had announced to him according to the evangelical discipline, Allowin the man of God — God inspiring — accounting the riches of this world as a passing shadow or withering hay, distributed the faculties of his estates by law to the places of the saints and bestowed them on the poor, and returned to the foresaid pontiff who was dwelling in the castle named Ghent. In that same castle antiquity had of old set up wicked images and idols, which were worshipped there by the people as God. But the aforementioned pontiff of God, abiding there for the name of Christ, destroyed all the temples, brake the idols and recalled all to holy Christianity. And he caused a basilica to be built there in honour of the blessed apostle Peter — which, relics being inserted, he consecrated to the most high Lord with great honour; in which our Lord Jesus Christ afterwards wrought many virtues, granting sight to the blind, walking to the lame, soundness to the palsied, health to the sick. And, God also consenting, a coenobium of clerks was honourably built in the same castle, where praise is sung to God by the faithful day and night. These things fulfilled, the blessed confessor Bavo, prostrating himself with fullest devotion in that same monastery before the oracle of the Lord’s temple, besought that the hair of his head be cut off; and having obtained the honour of the clerical state from the hands of the venerable pontiff Amandus, he merited to become a fellow of the apostles. He dismissed the hair of his head and found the crown of glory; he left secular garments and received the white stole; he left the pomp of this world and was clothed with the breastplate of faith. Therefore also he was made worthy of the fellowship of angels.

⁵ Then the man of the Lord Amandus went to preach the word of the Lord to the nations; whom the blessed Bavo followed, that he might be fed by his preaching. And he burned exceedingly in soul to drink and draw in justice; for God had breathed into his mind such abundance that he chastised himself with great laceration of the body and with alacrity of mind. Doubtless he laid wounds upon himself, healing the sicknesses of the soul, that doing well he might be secure in the day of the Lord. He daily surveyed his own infirmity, lest he should be proud of the virtues received — since for the most part the heart of the righteous, though the mind profit greatly, yet labours at times in carnal acts. Therefore it is needful that they recur most often to the streams of sacred scripture; for as the flesh is fed with foods, so the inner man is nourished with divine words. Therefore also the blessed Amandus ceased not to preach these documents of faith which follow, the crowds and St Bavo hearing, disputing thus: “He who would be ever with God, let him pray often.” Also: “What is the present life but a vapour appearing for a little? Lay hold on eternal life, to which you are called, and rejoice that your names are written in heaven. Take up the arms of the warfare, the breastplate of faith, and resist the devil’s snares by God’s power. Nothing is stronger than he who has vanquished the devil, and nothing weaker than he who is overcome by the flesh. Man’s life is a temptation; therefore the devil’s arrows must be quenched by the office of vigils, fasts, hospitality and alms. It is therefore a signal virtue, born in the flesh, not to live carnally; and wherein the flesh is worn down, from there the increases of spiritual virtues arise.” When therefore the man of God Bavo asked the aforementioned pontiff that licence be given him to go round the monasteries of Christ’s athletes — that he might learn the life of monks and the conversation of coenobites — the Lord bestowed on him such ardour and compunction of heart that he was not content with the life of good coenobites, but raised himself more and more in God’s service; and set frequently in groaning and tears, in affliction, vigils, fasts and prayers, he exercised the life of the saints nor gave his body rest in any wise — macerating himself in hunger, nakedness, cold, thirst and many tribulations. Doubtless he desired his life to be ended where he had cut off the hair of his head and laid aside the arms of the warfare and the world’s pomp. These things separate not from God but join man to God — for peace and grace grow to every one that works good. “No one,” says the Lord, “has greater charity than to lay down his life for his friends.”

⁶ Therefore Allowin the man of God, returning to the aforementioned castle of Ghent, humbly asked of the venerable man Florbert the abbot — whom the nourishing pontiff Amandus had established there as rector over the flock of clerks — a little cell for himself wherein he might familiarly beseech the Lord’s mercy for his misdeeds. And when the pious father of the monastery heard his petition, he received it with joy and — all the congregation being called together according to the precept of the pious father Benedict — laid open his prayers to the brethren of the same monastery, that if perchance it had been revealed to a younger what was pleasing to the Almighty, he might receive and fulfil it with all eagerness of heart, as it is written: “Do all things with counsel, and you shall not repent afterwards.” Allowin’s petition being heard therefore, the brethren — the abbot narrating — received it with glad mind, and so he obtained from them the little cell he had asked, God granting it. In which, shut in, he invoked God with pious and unwearied prayers — as it is written: “Seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you; for everyone that asks receives, and he that seeks finds, and to him that knocks it shall be opened.” Now this man of God sought not gold or silver or precious gems or the ornaments of this world — which after his conversion he counted as nothing — but the ardour of zeal for God raised him in vigils, fasts, groanings, hungers and alms to the poor, above what can be written. Set therefore in affliction of body, he exercised in soul all the heavenly instruments that the mercy of the Most High put into his mind. [Theoderic’s later Life inserts here Bavo’s earlier hermitage at a place called Bella and at Metmedunc — Mendonk — where he entered a vast hollow beech-tree, spacious six feet within, which still flowers; and where he built a tiny cell in marshy woodland two miles from Ghent.]

⁷ On a certain day of this time the brethren of that monastery went out on an obedience to build the cell of the man of God Bavo. They began therefore to labour with their hands and to fabricate the building. And when the men of the aforementioned Abbot Florbert were conveying cement with a waggon, a certain one of them named Attinus sat upon the cart — whom the dogs coming out of the village surrounded and began fiercely to assail. But he, caught in the devil’s snares, was filled with envy and blushed not to blaspheme the man of God Bavo; and the devil, crueller than every beast, confounded in all things — though he could in no wise hurt him — strove the more to assail the man subject to him, inasmuch as he perceived he had returned to his former service. For the bloody one, seeing his idols changed into God’s temples, gnashing and roaring sought whom he might devour. So he cast the beasts with the waggon upon the aforementioned man, who — crushed by this weight — breathed out the spirit of life. The crowd, seeing him now dead, carried his body with weeping in a boat down to the foresaid castle of Ghent to be buried there, as is the custom of burying the dead. The man of the Lord Bavo, seeing him dead, groaned with exceeding grief; beating his breast with tears and reckoning the fault his own — because he had received death in his labour — he bade the dead man’s body be borne to his own little cell. And at once the man of the Lord bent himself to prayer, beseeching the Lord’s mercy with great weeping in these words: “Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who not only forgivest sins but also justifiest sinners, and to the guilty not only rel easiest punishment but also give rewards — grant to my frailty these aids and benignly inspire the heavenly effect of Your mercies, that I may be found aided by Your holy help. You who raised Lazarus four days dead and stinking from the tomb, let Your mercy profit us unworthy, that they who trust in Your goodness may the sooner be heard by the largess of Your gifts. Renew the saving spirit of Your grace upon this body of Your dead servant, restoring to it the breath of life — You who live and reign for ever and ever, sanctifier and founder of the human race, who reign with Your Son in eternal charity. That by the mystery of Your healing You may be made honourable by all Your servants, and show forth Your presence, that we may exult in Your mercy and rejoice in Your glory — grant it, who live and reign God with the Son and the Holy Spirit through all ages of ages. Amen.” The prayer therefore being finished — after the space of about three hours — that dead man, God commanding, received back the soul he had breathed out; and made whole, stood upon his feet, and afterwards lived unharmed through many courses of years.

⁸ Let us then, dearest, admiring these so great miracles in God’s soldier, strive to follow him in this contest of the present life, that we also may merit with him to receive from God the eternal joys of His elect in heaven. We ought to seek in this present life nothing of worldly consolation and honour, but to rejoice in the abjection of poverty — not only to cast away the faculties of this world but even to root out the pleasures of the world from our hearts. Let it come back to memory also that the man of the Lord Bavo dismissed many faculties for the name of Christ, that he might receive a hundredfold in the heavenly kingdom and life everlasting besides; at whose prayers the Lord raised up a dead man. To as many as came to him, he commended his gifts. For the fattest grace of humility enflames in all the fervour of charity, as oil makes the light abound. He therefore bestowed all his possessions for Christ — not for loss’s sake but even for the finding of gain: for he never fails who profits by good example, and whose humility confounds the pride of many. And the man of the Lord Allowin, breathed upon by heavenly desire, grew daily more and more in God’s service; and, so to say, he seemed not sufficiently afflicted by the want of bread — but the more he profited in goodness, the more he afflicted himself besides with lamentations, fasts, vigils and prayers. With a continual inundation of tears he watered his face, that he might fulfil the word of Truth saying: “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

⁹ On a certain day he espied a certain man coming to him, returned from exile — whom once, dwelling in the secular habit, he had sold. At the sight of whom he gave himself to innumerable lamentations, because he had perpetrated so great a crime on him. Then turning to him and prostrate at his knees, he said: “For I sold you bound with straps; I beg, remember not the injury I wrought you, and disdain not the prayer I ask. I beseech you, for the crime committed against you, scourge my body with whips, shear my head after the manner of thieves, and thrust me bound hand and foot into custody, as I deserve. Perchance the divine goodness, if you do this, will grant me pardon.” Then the foresaid man, prostrate at St Bavo’s feet, said he dared do this in no wise to his lord. But the man of the Lord — being most eloquent — at last persuaded him to do what he had asked. So, long constrained and resisting, overcome at last by his prayers, he fulfilled what had been bidden him: he bound the man of God’s hands, shaved his head, bound his feet in the stocks and gave him over to the public custody; where, shut in with feet bound, the man of the Lord remained until the day of his near departure, ceasing not day and night to weep over his worldly acts which he used to set before the eyes of his mind like a burden of a load. This servant of the Lord, full of so many virtues, exalted not himself swelling; but humbled himself more and more — content with barley bread only, mixed with ash, and water which he drank by measure. So for about four months warring for God in this austerity, he tasted wine and strong drink in no wise; covered there with haircloth and ash, he had set his foot in the fetter after the prophet’s manner; his bed was the bare ground, whereon he used to rest a little by day. The vilest haircloth was spread beneath him, ash sprinkled over it, and a stone set under his head when he slept. Thus he had condemned his limbs which the world’s delight had once polluted. And he strove rather to offer the odours of virtues laudably to God after his conversion than to waste away in his iniquities — mindful of the apostle’s precept who said: “Where sin abounded, grace abounded yet more”; and again: “You were once darkness, but now light in the Lord.”

¹⁰ The most holy man of the Lord, Allowin, set in this seclusion, gladly sustained austerity and hunger. Nor in this affliction did he leave the rule of obedience, but earnestly asked his abbot to shut him in upon the pavement so that, whenever he attended to the praises of almighty God, he would be so fenced about with the pavement right and left that he should have power to decline to no side, but day and night — as though hanging in the agony — might pray to God, stretching to the heavens and drawing deep sighs. Which also was done. Then the man of the Lord, groaning more and more and now panting for the heavenly country, bade the minister obedient to him bring him a stone. And he, fulfilling the command, brought a great tile. To whom the man of God: “Seek yet a greater.” At last he brought him a stone found which could scarce be carried by two men’s hands. Which the man of God received filled with great joy — and whenever he attended to the praises of God, he bore it on his shoulders.

¹¹ But the ancient enemy, the foe of the human race, who ceases not to tempt mankind and exercises the force of his wickedness chiefly against the elect — since the more he sees them profit, the more grievously is he kindled with the torches of envy — strove to cast the aforementioned man of God out of that same cell with various threats and wicked images wherewith he feigned to fill the cell. For with various kinds of beasts, birds and serpents he essayed to bring terror on him, that he might at least come out. But the strongest athlete of the Lord, the more earnestly he saw the ancient enemy press upon him, the more strongly taking up the contest against him, ceased not to strive daily. But the malign spirits, seeing their industry had profited nothing, withdrew confounded; and daring to bring no more on the man of God, they vanished. Then the aforementioned man of the Lord, rendering great thanks to almighty God, ascribed it not to his own strength but to the Lord’s mercy — who deigns everywhere to be present to them that hope in Him. Continuing therefore the work begun unceasingly, he drew not back the hand set to the plough nor looked behind — for he remembered that this gospel word had been announced to him by the most blessed Amandus: “He that shall persevere to the end shall be saved.”

¹² And the day of his reward drawing near, the man of the Lord Allowin persevered unceasingly in the confession of God. And when he had given himself a little to sleep, he saw the angel of the Lord coming upon him in the form of a dove. Him, terrified by this sight, the grace of divine consolation at once refreshed, and filled the whole cell in which the man of God was with the fragrance of inestimable sweetness — that it might be openly given to understand that the angel of light and sweetness had come there. Nor without cause is the angel of light shown him in the form of a dove: for he bore the dove’s simplicity in heart, although he deserted not the serpent’s cunning in temptations. For it is clear that over the redeemer of the human race at Jordan’s streams the Holy Spirit was shown in the form of a dove, where the Father’s voice was heard over His beloved Son in whom He was well pleased — where the Father was in the voice, the Son in the man, the Holy Spirit in the dove, and the whole Trinity manifestly declared together: doubtless to the blessed man Bavo also the Trinity itself showed the angel in the dove’s form, since he bore the same Trinity fixed within his heart — certain beyond doubt that neither death nor life nor any creature could separate him from the love he had in Christ.

¹³ But that the fame of so great a man’s preceding merits might spread far and wide — who, like a city set on a hill, could not be hid — on a certain day he saw the standard of the holy cross descend from heaven upon him, that his faith in the reward might be so much the more increased as he was worthier of the heavenly gazes; and that he might the more securely open the door to the knocking Lord, as he had known sure signs to have been shown him by the Lord. But the man of the Lord, doubting nothing, hesitating nothing, longed with ineffable joy to be dissolved and to go to Christ. Yet this he said unceasingly: “Lord, not my will but Your be done.” I say boldly: though the reason of the time allowed him not martyrdom, yet he shall not lack the martyr’s glory — for he could have been a martyr by vow and virtue, and willed it. In himself indeed he willingly bore all the pains and torments to which human frailty commonly yields, and from the confession of the Lord he withdrew not — remaining immovable in the work of the Lord’s commands, so that rejoicing in wounds and tortures he laughed amid whatever torments. But although he was not smitten by the persecutor’s sword, he yet fulfilled martyrdom without blood. What passions of human dolours did he not endure for the hope of eternity — hunger, vigils, nakedness, fasts, the reproaches of the envious, the persecutions of the wicked, care for the sick, solicitude for the imperilled? For whom did he not grieve with the grieving, burn with the scandalised, groan with the perishing? — besides his daily various contests against the spiritual wickedness of man, while in him, assailed by various temptations, there abounded the fortitude of conquering, the patience of expecting and the equanimity of sustaining — as though the Lord kept repeating to him: “Rejoice and exult, for your reward is copious in heaven.”

¹⁴ It is worth while also to insert in this reading how the blessed man Allowin — who from his birth was called Bavo by affection — departed from this light. The most holy and religious man of the Lord Bavo, therefore, after the confession of penitence which he had received from the blessed pontiff Amandus, warred in this world for the kingdom of heaven for three years besides forty days’ abstinence which he fulfilled — the Lord consenting — with sagacious zeal and wondrous effect. For full of virtues and holiness, the man full of God understood his last day to be approaching. Whereof he announced to the abbot and brethren of his monastery that the dissolution of his body was at hand; and he wished a certain faithful priest dwelling far from him, named Domlinus of the monastery of Torhout, to be summoned — for he longed to enjoy his converse. For great was the space of journey, and the way between the blessed man’s cell and the monastery of Torhout where the aforementioned priest lived was beset by vast solitude of dense woods. At length, summoning the minister, he bade him go to the foresaid priest. And he, refusing not obedience and knowing least of all the way he should go, began to make the journey enjoined on him unknowing. But, the angel of the Lord accompanying him, he came to the same priest with all speed; and through the vast solitude by the straightest path both came to the man of God with incredible haste. At the sight of whom the most blessed man was filled with great joy and bade him take care of his burial. And while he panted unceasingly for the heavenly country and ceased not from divine colloquies — ever intent with eyes and hands toward heaven — he relaxed not his spirit unconquered in prayer, fortifying himself with the body and blood of our Redeemer; and his holy soul, loosed from the flesh, he rendered to almighty God on the first day of the month of October — received into heaven’s hall with ineffable triumph. And at once his spirit, appearing to the most blessed virgin Gertrude with the other virgins dwelling with her far from him, bade that vestments be sent her for the burial of his body; which also was done.

¹⁵ And when the office of his funeral was being performed, a certain woman who had long been vexed by a demon touched the saint’s glebe, and was at once made whole.

¹⁶ Another, a frenzied man, was evilly vexed by a demon. And when he came to the man of God’s sepulchre — the Lord consenting — he received his former health, as though he had suffered no wound of the ancient enemy. Many indeed are the other things the Lord has deigned to work through him which are unknown to us and known to God. For if we wished to pursue all that we have learned of his deeds, the day would end before the discourse — as I think. Let it suffice to have said a few of many, lest we seem to bring weariness to studious readers and those hastening to other things. The man of God was buried with magnificent honour in the place called the castle of Ghent, whose coenobium is now openly called Ganda — where many benefits of his prayers are conferred on the faithful, and the name of the Lord Jesus Christ is praised by all: with whom is, with the eternal Father and the Holy Spirit, virtue, honour, glory and dominion, praise and power for ever and ever. Amen.

Here ends the old Life of St Bavo (the Miracles follow in the same manuscripts).

Two. Specimens of Theoderic’s expanded Life (abbot of St Trudo, 1099–1107) #

From his prologue. …But since it is foolish to pour forth before the history, we care not greatly for the mere trifles and canine eloquence of detractors — whom we think will not fail to appear — against whom the imperious authority of the brethren which compelled me to dare this, and the ever-undaunted charity of obedience, will easily defend us.

From the Life. The glorious athlete of God, Allowin surnamed Bavo, elected and predestined by God before the secular times, of the stock of Frankish princes and heir of Austrasian dukes, was born and nurtured in Belgian Gaul in the Hasbanian country, in a place not obscure — Pelagius administering the universal pontificate, who sat before the blessed Gregory, Justin the younger wielding the sceptre, Chlodovech governing the monarchy of Francia. His father was named Filolf, his mother Adeltrud…

From his epilogue. For who could pass with dry eyes through kingdoms divided in themselves as a sign of desolation, the commotions of peoples as of the sea, the scatterings of the sanctuary’s stones at the head of every street? Alas, the stones of the sanctuary are scattered — for they who were called bishops, the sheepfolds of Christ being broken and sold, set the sheep committed to them before wolves and were turned to flight: not shepherds but hirelings. By their hand churches were burned to the ground, altars stained with human blood, the swarms of monks part led captive, part driven out — right and law, all things confounded.

[The editor adds: the codices used for Theoderic’s text were Cologne 171 and The Hague L 29, both 15th century.]